At the end of 2014, medical researchers published a shocking discovery: that outcomes for high risk cardiac patients at hospitals were better during periods when the top cardiologists were away from the hospitals for national cardiology meetings.
Category: Geen categorie (page 1 of 5)
ITUC’s statement about the needed reforms:
The eradication of poverty has traditionally relied on growing the economy, combined with redistribution: GDP growth, in this approach, is essential to the fight against poverty, a condition for financing public services and social policies.
Prof Olivier De Schutter argues that we now need to move beyond this approach, and to expand our toolkit in the fight against poverty. Understood as the increase of the output of economic activity measured in monetary terms, economic growth remains important in certain areas, such as housing, education or public transport, especially to raise living standards in low-income countries. This is especially true if it is guided by the duty to realise human rights.
To really end labour shortages, Ankita Anand writes, Europe must transform its contract with the global south.
Workers drill holes in the roof of a building where refugees, denied the legally provided shelter, are protected from snow, rain and wind. This is Belgium
What Global Social Justice already questioned in January 2019 is now becoming mainstream in the NGO world:
From the Bretton Woods Project:
“The Covid-19 pandemic and its related shocks have revealed the value of public services and social protection floors. Institutions tasked with ending poverty like the World Bank are increasingly under pressure to support vital public services and play a key role in wider universal social protection (USP) discussions. The World Bank recently released its latest commitment to social protection: A Social Protection and Jobs Compass to “chart a course towards USP,” which provides guidance to Bank staff on jobs and social protection issues.
Following a limited consultation process, civil society were eager to respond to the Compass. Lena Simet of Human Rights Watch concluded that the Compass guidance note, “makes a strong commitment to USP. However, its guidance on how countries can get there is problematic.”
The Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) have long been challenged on their claims of being pro-poor in their approach to social protection. A wealth of evidence has highlighted the flaws of the targeted approaches to social protection preferred by the BWIs, such as Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), which have been shown to be ineffective at reaching the poorest – as the Bank itself acknowledged – prone to corruption, and less likely to protect human rights than universal schemes.
| Instead of simply dismissing public social insurance and potentially creating costly parallel structures, we call on the World Bank to support countries in adapting their social security systems to be more inclusive. DR LAURA ALFERS, WIEGO |
New data on inequality show probably the greatest reshuffling of world incomes since the industrial revolution, Branko Milanovic writes.
Read the interesting article
In a certain way, it is funny to see how a debate on an essential element of social policies can go on for decades. Then, implode because of the semantic confusion that was created about the idea that had hitherto been so passionately promoted. The essential element of social policies was “Income Security.” The idea passionately promoted was “Universal Basic Income.”
In 1986, a Belgian philosophy professor, Philippe Van Parijs, created BIEN, the Basic Income European Network, in which ‘European’ was later replaced by ‘Earth’. The idea was simple. The liberal idea of freedom could never become concrete because inequality of resources was too important. To promote more equality, the best idea was considered to be an equal sum of money given to everyone in society, whether rich or poor, working or not working, ie the Universal Basic Income. It was considered to be the condition for real freedom and real equality of opportunity. The payment had to be unconditional, i.e. without any means of testing. The main goal was to promote social justice.
Read the article by Francine Mestrum
Also in French and Spanish:
Most sub-Saharan African French colonies got formal independence in the 1960s. But their economies have progressed little, leaving most people in poverty, and generally worse off than in other post-colonial African economies.
Decolonization?
Pre-Second World War colonial monetary arrangements were consolidated into the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone set up on 26 December 1945. Decolonization became inevitable after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrawal from Algeria less than a decade later.
France insisted decolonization must involve ‘interdependence’ – presumably asymmetric, instead of between equals – not true ‘sovereignty’. For colonies to get ‘independence’, France required membership of Communauté Française d’Afrique (still CFA) – created in 1958, replacing Colonies with Communauté.
CFA countries are now in two currency unions. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo belong to UEMOA, the French acronym for the West African Economic and Monetary Union.
Read the article by Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
On the multidimensionality of poverty and inequality
It sounds so very reasonable to look at all the different dimensions of poverty and inequality. But is it? Always? Is poverty, in every market economy, not mainly a question of lack of money? Is inequality of income and wealth not the most important aspect of all sorts of differences and discriminations?
Read the article by Francine Mestrum
(also available in French and Spanish)
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