Category: News (page 31 of 75)

World Bank and IMF: An Opportunity Missed

The IMF and World Bank closed its historic Annual Meetings in Marrakech – the first in Africa for 50 years – without delivering a response that matches the urgency of the moment.

The institutions still failed to recognise that we are in the worst global south debt crisis ever. Their rhetoric on the impact of severe debt burdens was not matched by action to speed up their sluggish response so far. Beyond baby steps by the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable to agree on basic elements of debt restructurings, neither the IMF and World Bank, nor the G20 Finance Ministers, took any steps to respond to the calls by civil society and global south leaders, to deliver on debt cancellation and debt architecture reform.

Read Eurodad’s analysis

Big Philanthropy is a scam

Getting rich to give to the poor? It never works and is not meant to work.

Big Philanthropy Is a Scam That Makes the Rich Look Better, Conceals Their Crimes | Teen Vogue

A Global Fund for Social Protection

The recent social, ecological and economic crises have not only revealed the gaps in social protection systems across the world, but also drawn global attention to the ways in which international financial architectures have failed to support the development of universal social protection systems and floors. Within this context, this paper examines the idea of a global fund for
social protection (GFSP) which has emerged as a potential solution to these structural failings.
By drawing on the experiences of seven global funds across the health, climate, and agriculture
sectors, the aim of this working paper is to identify key lessons that can guide the possible implementation of a prospective GFSP. Through a careful analysis of the governance structures,
norms and standards of these funds, the paper makes certain recommendations to be taken
into consideration if a GFSP is to be developed and implemented in the future.

A global fund for social protection (ilo.org)

More on the Right to Development

The main theme of the 54th session of the Human Rights Council revolves around economic, social, and cultural rights, with a particular focus on the right to development. This article addresses the importance of the right to development.

H.E. Mr Ali Bahreini

The South Centre | SouthViews No. 252, 21 September 2023

Poverty and the cost-of-living crisis

Low wages are keeping many workers trapped in poverty across the globe.

What a ‘living wage’ really means in today’s cost-of-living crisis – Future of social democracy | IPS Journal (ips-journal.eu)

Fifty years of failure: the IMF, debt and austerity in Africa

ActionAid’s report ‘Fifty Years of Failure: the IMF, Debt and Austerity in Africa’ is based on new research and powerful personal testimonies from across 10 African countries. It is timed to coincide with the first IMF / World Bank Annual meeting to be held in Africa for 50 years. The report documents how the IMF imposes austerity policies, undermining health, education and wider development across the continent. Rather than seek systemic solutions to the mounting debt crisis in Africa, and rather than exploring obvious alternatives such as progressive tax reforms, the IMF continues to enforce cuts to public spending that hurt women and disadvantaged groups most acutely.

Fifty Years of Failure: The IMF, Debt and Austerity in Africa | ActionAid International

Social Security for All: Key Pillar for New Eco-Social Contract

Governments and international financial institutions should make a commitment to create social security systems that enable everyone to realize their rights, 43 human rights and economic justice organizations said today. Governments and financial institutions should end policies that have been failing millions of people.
The groups sent a joint statement to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in advance of the 2023 annual meetings of both institutions in Marrakesh, Morocco, from October 9 to 15, 2023.

Debt Justice

A guide to collecting, analyzing, and presenting data, to shed
new light on how the global debt crisis impacts people’s rights.

By the Centre for Economic and Social Rights

Decoding_Debt_Injustice.pdf (cesr.org)

All work and low pay: Europe’s migrant workforce

To really end labour shortages, Ankita Anand writes, Europe must transform its contract with the global south.

Tax the rich!

In an open letter to G20 leaders as they prepared to convene in New Delhi, India for their annual summit, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) joined economist Jayati Ghosh, Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl, philanthropist Abigail Disney, and more than 300 others in declaring that “we cannot allow extreme wealth to continue corroding our collective future.”

“Decades of falling taxes on the richest, based on the false promise that the wealth at the top would somehow benefit us all, has contributed to the rise in extreme inequality,” the Tuesday letter states. “Our political choices allow ultra-wealthy individuals to continue to use tax shelters and enjoy preferential treatment to the extent that, in most countries in the world, they pay lower tax rates than ordinary people.”

“At the same time, the world has seldom had more need for the richest to pay,” the letter continues, noting that global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades as Covid-19 threw the world into economic chaos.

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