Poverty
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‘Civil society won the debate on inequality but still needs to win the actual fight against it"
CIVICUS speaks to Ben Phillips, Launch Director of the Fight Inequality Alliance,a growing movement of citizens from across the world uniting to take on the crisis of widening inequality, and build a world that works for all.Committed to countering the excessive concentration of power and wealth in the hands of small elites, the Fight Inequality Alliance includes leading international and national civil society organisations (CSOs), human rights campaigners, women’s rights groups, environmental groups, faith-based organisations, trade unions, social movements and other CSOs.
- Why is widening inequality such a worrisome phenomenon?
Widening inequality – and how we start to beat it – is the defining issue of our time. Anti-apartheid leader Jay Naidoo calls the widening chasm between a powerful few and the rest “Apartheid 2.0.” Rising inequality is holding back progress on poverty, hurting growth, making societies less healthy and liveable, widening mistrust and instability, exacerbating violent conflict, facilitating extremists, holding back action on climate change, corrupting politics, weakening the voice of ordinary people and concentrating ever more power in fewer hands. Privilege and wealth are reshaping economic and social systems at the expense of people as a whole and the planet. We are witnessing a world in danger not just of a slowdown in social progress but of a reversal of it.
Seven out of 10 people live in countries where the gap between rich and poor is greater than it was 30 years ago. As I saw for myself in Zambia when I met with dispossessed farmers there, despite the country moving from officially poor to officially middle income status, the number of poor people has actually increased. China, India and Russia have all seen steep rises in the gap between rich and poor. Five per cent of Indians own 50 per cent of the country’s wealth. Growth has seemingly been decoupled from jobs and from broad benefit for ordinary people. Lives and livelihoods are being lost because those who design policies are following a damaging model.
Inequality is intersectional and all forms of inequality influence each other. Our societies are rooted in patriarchy, racism and many other forms of discrimination. Women, especially women of colour, are also the hardest hit by rising economic inequality: they are the workers in the most precarious employment; they suffer the most from cuts in public services; and much of their work, paid and unpaid, is not recognised and rewarded. Challenging patriarchy, challenging discrimination, and challenging the power of the 1 per cent are all essential and inseparable to building societies where all are valued. Governments are loosening their watch over major corporations and big finance, and tightening their watch over civil society, including unions, community organisations and citizens. Civil society space and democratic rights are being eroded to make way for overly powerful elites. So too, an increasingly economically divided world is becoming an increasingly angry and intolerant one, and groups that blame an ‘Other’ (defined through their race, ethnicity, religion or sexuality) have dramatically grown. Every progressive cause, and the dignity of every person, is threatened by the inequality crisis. Uniting to fight inequality is essential for all of us.
- While inequality is truly damaging, the need for action to tackle it, once a controversial idea, is now accepted even in mainstream economic discourse. Does this mean the movement to fight inequality has won?
If only! As civil society, we face the paradox of having won the debate but still needing to win the fight. To hope that commitments would be made by governments to tackle inequality was once seen as an overly ambitious advocacy goal. It has been more than passed. It may have felt like winning. But real government actions to tackle inequality are like flowers in a desert. The mainstream consensus has shifted to recognise inequality without a consequent shift in action. We are feasting on words and fasting on delivery. This is not just because it takes time. It’s because widening inequality is a consequence of a political economy cycle in which ever more power and wealth are concentrated in fewer hands, warping society and politics to further concentrate power and wealth. To break this cycle and catalyse a renewed virtuous cycle therefore requires a process of shifting power.
That is why the focus on the Fight Inequality Alliance is on organising to build up collective power from below, and across organisations and borders. None of this is easy. But that’s also the point: we are faced with a structural challenge of dominance by powerful elites who are not simply waiting to be better informed by civil society before they voluntarily make things fairer. The approach to how we advance change needs to be commensurate with the scale of transformation required. The power of the people can challenge the people in power – but when, and only when, we organise. The Fight Inequality Alliance is helping people build that power today.
- How is the Fight Inequality Alliance working to achieve its very ambitious goal?
The Fight Inequality Alliance seeks to reverse widening inequality and build economies and societies that work for all. Amongst the shifts the Fight Inequality Alliance is calling for from governments and international institutions to ensure this are: action to combat discrimination and tackle entrenched privilege; fairer taxation and progressive spending for quality universal public services and social protection; minimum living wages and strengthened workers’ rights; strengthened land rights; fair and bold action to address climate change; protection of migrants and refugees; and protection for democratic rights and civil society space. At national and regional levels alliance members are developing their own, more detailed, visions and narratives that reflect the regional or national contexts and agreed campaigning priorities.
Crucially, Fight Inequality Alliance members don’t only share a set of values of the kind of society we are working to advance. We also have a shared recognition that it can’t be achieved merely by asking for it from leaders, through insider advocacy, policy papers and pilot projects. As much as these are important, the fight against inequality will be won by deepening people’s collective power and advancing practical actions that challenge and change the status quo and shift power.
Inequality is ultimately a question of power – and societies are only truly more equal when power is more equal. Reversing rising inequality is not just about changing the rules but also about changing who gets to make the rules. That is why we are working together to build people’s power to pressure leaders to act. The alliance’s key added value is in building the strength of people to press for change. The model is one where securing small wins is useful not only in itself but also in strengthening people’s confidence and capability for further small and larger wins. A movement of national alliances is seen as the key driver of change, supported by regional and international solidarity and action to amplify it.
- Who is involved in the Fight Inequality Alliance, and how is it organised?
The Fight Inequality Alliance brings together social movements, trade unions, and progressive CSOs in a common struggle for a more equal world. Those involved in it include the International Trade Union Confederation, CIVICUS, Femnet, Africans Rising, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development, Greenpeace, ActionAid, Oxfam, ACT Alliance, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and many national organisations and movements including Gambia Has Decided, Fees Must Fall, India Social Action Forum and others. It’s a wonderfully diverse group that came together because inequality and its root causes are the common thread in the challenges we face the world over in building societies that work for all, and because all those involved are really clear that they cannot do this on their own, and that if inequality is to be tackled we need to name that as our explicit goal and work together in an alliance.
The Fight Inequality Alliance is coordinated by a steering group representing the different sectors and regions of the world. Global gatherings were held in 2016 on a community-owned farm set up by anti-apartheid leaders in South Africa, in early 2017 in a poor community in Manila, the Philippines, at a convent of radical nuns who had helped defeat Ferdinand Marcos, and in late 2017 at a youth activist-managed hostel in Copenhagen, Denmark. Through these meetings and other joint work, allies have been able to come together with a common platform for change and a common approach, overcoming the challenges faced by different parts of civil society in doing joint work, going beyond the ‘egos and logos’ that can hold back cooperation, and building an alliance big enough to make a difference. It’s a facilitative and enabling way of working driven by the needs of people working for change in their countries. It’s an open and growing movement and we’d welcome any interested readers getting in touch.
- In October 2017 the Fight Inequality Alliance organised a powerful global mobilisation to challenge the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on how their actions contradict their words on inequality, and it is now organising another one to counter the elite gathering of the World Economic Forum at Davos. What happened last October and what can we look forward to in January 2018?
Back in October the mobilisation of Fight Inequality Alliance members surprised and shook the World Bank and the IMF, and helped re-energise civil society groups, by bringing people out on the streets to highlight how the World Bank and IMF’s actions continue to widen inequality. World Bank security had earlier in the week tried, unlawfully, to shoo us away from outside their building, and then we had a bit of a scare when a far-right US pro-gun group claimed on social media that they would counter-protest the Fight Inequality protest, but on the day the sun shone and the Fight Inequality protest brought the attention of the public and media to the inequality crisis and the role of the international financial institutions in perpetuating it, and the World Bank and IMF were shown up by refusing even to comment to the Al-Jazeera correspondent who asked them about a list of examples we gave of the damage they were doing on the ground.
This January, at the same time as political and business elites will meet at the World Economic Forum and claim that they are fixing the problem of inequality, Fight Inequality Alliance groups across the world will show through mobilisations and actions that answers do not come from those elites who actually are making inequality worse; that instead, the way to tackle inequality is through strengthening the power of people by uniting for change and listening to their solutions.
As the world's 1 per cent gather in the luxury Swiss mountain resort of Davos, rallies will be taking place around the world on mountains of a very different sort – the mountains of garbage and of open pit mines that millions of the most unequal call home. People will be gathering in events in countries including Bangladesh, Denmark, the Gambia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe to demand publicly an end to inequality. Events worldwide include a pop concert at a slum next to a garbage mountain in Kenya, a football match in Senegal, a public meal sharing in Denmark, a rally at an open-pit mine in South Africa, a sound truck in Nigeria, and a giant ‘weighing scales of injustice’ in the UK.
Mobilising globally in this way is helping to expose how we cannot put our faith in elites to fix an inequality problem they perpetuate, and that instead we need to recognise as citizens that we, together, are the people we’ve been waiting for. Mobilising together across the world inspires people to recognise their own power and grow in confidence, builds up the movement, and builds up the links that build collective power.
We have rising inequality because the super-rich are determining what governments should do. Davos can never be the answer because the problem is caused by the influence of the people at Davos. Governments around the world must listen instead to their citizens, and end the Age of Greed. We know that governments will only do that when we organise and unite, so we are coming together as one.
- What needs to happen for widening inequality to be reversed?
We, all of us, need to happen! Elites won’t self-correct. The arc of the universe won’t bend on its own towards justice, but collective people power can bend it down.
We’re optimistic. This optimism does not come from a naïve assumption that recent elite declarations of intent to act on inequality will automatically be followed through without public pressure. Rather, the possibility for change comes from people organising and connecting. Around the world, extraordinary ordinary people are fighting inequality – from women garment workers in Bangladeshi factories fighting for living wages; to youth activists in Zambia fighting for mining companies to pay their fair share of tax to fund public schools and health clinics; to LGBTI activists in Liberia fighting discrimination and hate speech; to indigenous communities fighting to prevent fossil fuel companies from destroying their land. The growing Fight Inequality Alliance is connecting these struggles, building a movement to bring people together to challenge privilege and counter the excessive concentration of power and wealth. We are standing together to build a world of greater equality, opportunity and dignity – where all people’s rights are respected, living within the planet’s boundaries.
The struggle to reverse rising inequality is a cause that can be won. Through supporting collective organising and linking that strengthens the power of people, civil society can help ensure that together we can start to push inequality back.
Former CIVICUS leader Kumi Naidoo put it to me this way: “We’ve spent too many years looking upwards at governments, we have to change our gaze and focus on people’s mobilisation.” This is why, in the Fight Inequality Alliance, we do less lobbying and more mobilising and organising. The most important change happens from the ground up. People gather in a circle, see that they are not alone, and start to talk. And from that the most powerful actions build. The change we need won’t be given to people; it will be won by people.
This is a lesson learnt by others who struggled against inequality in the past. As Frederick Douglass, former slave and great anti-slavery campaigner, put it in 1857: “The whole history of the progress shows that all concessions have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation want crops without ploughing up the ground; rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
The good news is that people are organising and connecting. We can win. We can beat inequality. Together.- Get in touch with the Fight Inequality Alliance through theirwebsite orFacebook page, or follow @FightInequalit1 and @benphillips76 on Twitter
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Caribbean Input on the Post- 2015 Global Development Agenda
Since the turn of the century the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have guided global efforts surrounding the eradication of poverty, diseases, gender inequalities and environmental crises. The goals will have reached their target date in two years’ time.
As such, the international community is currently in the process of negotiating the global development agenda to be put in place after 2015. In order to capture diverse perspectives on how HIV and health should be reflected in the period after 2015, UNAIDS is hosting an online consultation until February 3rd which is open to all people.Read more at SKNVibes
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CIVICUS makes a case for the release of Popov at the 14th Session of the Human Rights Council
Item 3
Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights
ID on the Reports of the Special Rapporteurs on Violence against Women, Extreme Poverty and the Right to Health
7 June 2010
Mr. President,CIVICUS wishes to thank all three Rapporteurs for their reports and wants to highlight a few aspects of their work.
1. On violence against women: CIVICUS welcomes Ms Rashid Manjoo's first report and her focus on reparations. In particular, we want to underscore the importance she gives to structural and multiple forms of discrimination and that reparations cannot be just about returning women to the situation on which they were found before the individual instance of violence, but instead should strive to have a transformative potential. We would like to ask her to elaborate further on how to achieve this transformative potential on the ground, for example the area of dismantling patriarchal understanding that is so often the reason for systemic violence.
2. On extreme poverty: CIVICUS thanks Magdalena Sepulveda for her very clear demand to invest in social protection floors, including through non-contributory pensions, as a human rights obligation for governments as duty bearers, to prevent older persons from falling into extreme poverty and society as a whole from gliding into an appalling inequality. CIVICUS also commends her for her stand during her Zambian visit on the rights of civil society to participate freely and/or in cooperation with governments on all these important decisions regarding social protection issues, and not be curtailed through any unwarranted controls and restrictions on their independence and freedom of association.
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CIVICUS: Ending poverty needs serious introspection and hard decisions
Johannesburg, 10 May 2011. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation calls on the United Nations Least Developed Countries (LDC) IV Conference to examine the current development paradigm and ensure progress on commitments related to development aid funding.
It is vital that practical, innovative and time bound approaches to development are prioritised along with a reaffirmation of commitments under the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action.
"After decades of empty promises, missed deadlines and opportunities, the international community must agree that concrete measures need to be taken to ensure domestic ownership of aid. Conditionalities tied to aid packages hinder rather than promote the effective utilisation of aid," said Ingrid Srinath, Secretary General of CIVICUS. "On the other hand, it is equally important that ownership of development processes is democratised at the national level through the inclusion of parliaments, civil society and local communities in developing policies around resource utilisation."
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Donors must improve on Istanbul summit pledge to world's poorest
Budget squeeze no excuse to let targets slip
BRUSSELS, 6th May, 2011: The first UN summit for the world's poorest countries in a decade must ensure that developed nations make good on commitments to help the most destitute, a global coalition of over 1000 civil society organizations said today.
"Richer nations cannot use the economic crisis as an excuse not to follow through on their engagements," said Tony Tujan, co-chair of BetterAid.
"This week's conference must ensure the immediate flow of 0.15 percent - 0.20 percent of the total gross national income of developed countries to the less developed countries, in line with previous commitments."
The four-day United Nations conference on the 48 Less Developed Countries opens in Istanbul on 9 May. The so-called LDC-4 summit will adopt an "action program" for the coming decade that is likely to include a target of cutting the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger by half.
BetterAid insists the Istanbul summit must go beyond good intentions to produce concrete results that go beyond the limited achievements of the last LDC conference in 2001.
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GLOBAL: ‘With a wealth tax on the biggest fortunes, extreme poverty can be eradicated’
CIVICUS speaks about climate change, global inequality and the need for redistribution with Adrien Fabre, a France-based climate economistand founder of Global Redistribution Advocates (GRA).
GRA is a civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes public debate about three global redistribution policies that enjoy wide public opinion support worldwide – a global wealth tax, a global climate plan and a global climate assembly – and advocates towards political parties in several countries to incorporate these into their agendas and programmes.
What inspired you to become a climate economist and found GRA?
I started my PhD in economics with the goal of understanding humanity’s problems and proposing solutions. I always wanted to give voice to every human, so I naturally specialised in running surveys. Then, in the context of the Yellow Vests protests that began in 2018, I surveyed French people about their attitudes towards climate policies. This sparked interest at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which called on me to conduct a similar survey in other countries. I seized the opportunity to ask people questions they had never been asked before, such as whether they supported a global tax on millionaires to finance low-income countries. I was amazed by the levels of support: more than 70 per cent in every country!
I ran complementary surveys in Europe and the USA. I tried asking questions differently and tested policies in which the respondents would lose money, but the results were the same: people in western countries were willing to lose a few dozen euros per month to end climate change and global poverty. Furthermore, the support is sincere: you can read this scientific article or my Twitter thread for details.
Now, if there is such strong support for global redistribution, why doesn’t anyone propose it or defend it in public debate? To advocate for global redistributive policies to transfer resources or power from high to low-income countries I launched GRA in April 2023.
What are your proposals?
We have three main proposals to promote wealth redistribution, environmental sustainability and global cooperation to address pressing global challenges. The first is a global wealth tax on individual wealth exceeding US$5 million, with half of the tax proceeds distributed to lower-income countries.
This tax would spare 99.9 per cent of the world’s population, who have wealth below US$5 million. And if the tax were just two per cent, it would collect one per cent of the world’s GDP, which is more than the GDP of all low-income countries, home to 700 million people, combined. Our proposed tax schedule is moderate: two per cent for fortunes above US$5 million, six per cent for those above US$100 million and 10 per cent for those above US$1 billion. A tax of two per cent is far lower than the interests, rents and dividends such a fortune generates.
Our second proposal is a global climate plan aimed at combatting climate change through a worldwide carbon emissions cap, implemented by a system of global emissions trading, and financing a global basic income.
This plan would enter into force as soon as signatory countries cover 60 per cent of global carbon emissions. Participating countries would enforce a cap on carbon emissions, decreasing each year and down to net zero emissions after three decades, in line with the temperature target. Each year, emissions permits would be auctioned to firms that extract fossil fuels or import them from non-participating countries, making polluters pay. To cover the cost of emissions permits, firms would increase fossil fuel prices, which would in turn encourage individuals and businesses to change their equipment or adjust their habits, eventually reducing carbon emissions. The revenues from carbon pricing would fund a global basic income estimated at US$50 per month for each person over 15.
This plan would bring a massive redistribution from countries with a carbon footprint higher than the global average – like OECD countries – to those with a lower-than-average carbon footprint, including most of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America. It includes mechanisms to encourage participation by all countries, such as a tariff on goods imported from non-participating countries in proportion to their carbon content, a provision allowing middle-income countries such as China to opt out from the mutualisation of revenues to guarantee that it would not lose from the plan while ensuring that it decarbonises with the same carbon price, and a provision facilitating the participation of subnational entities like California or the state of New York even if the federal level does not participate.
The wealth tax and the climate plan would each redistribute one per cent of the world’s GDP from high to low-income countries every year. Extreme poverty can be eradicated. The average income in a country like the Democratic Republic of the Congo would double following the transfers.
Our third proposition is that of a global climate assembly, comprised of representatives elected through proportional representation in participating nations, tasked with drafting a comprehensive treaty to address climate change globally. Before even the beginning of that experiment in democratic governance at the global scale, the assembly would bring a radical change, as the election campaign would foster a global public debate on climate justice.
Please check our website for details: each policy has its own advocacy campaign, with a fully-fledged policy proposal, a petition and a video.
Who are you targeting these proposals at, and how are you working to get the message across?
We are targeting our campaigns at policymakers, scholars, civil society and lay people. Many scholars have endorsed our proposals. GRA is a member of civil society networks in each of our policy domains, and we are hoping that key CSOs will endorse our proposals. We have already met with cabinet members of various governments, including Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany and South Africa, as well as many European Union (EU) politicians. And we are sending dozens of emails every day to get more meetings. Once we get a book on our climate plan and the scientific article finished and published, we will reach out to the public. We will publish an open letter in widely read newspapers, calling on world leaders to discuss global redistributive policies at the United Nations (UN), the G20 and climate summits.
Hopefully, we will get media attention and the movement will grow. It will help if well-known personalities, including celebrities, endorse our proposals. But it will take a social movement to make change happen, perhaps a global demonstration. Our hope is that a large coalition of political parties, CSOs and labour unions throughout the world endorse some common policies towards a sustainable and fair future – ours, or similar ones. This will likely strengthen the parties of the coalition and help them win elections. Our research shows that progressive candidates would gain votes if they endorsed global redistributive policies.
What are the prospects of these proposals being implemented in the near future?
Our proposals are getting more and more endorsements every day. The African Union just called for a global carbon price and will defend this idea in international negotiations.
But our proposal that receives the largest support is the global wealth tax. The next European Parliament elections will be held in June 2024, and left-wing parties will campaign on a European wealth tax. We have proposed that one-third of this European wealth tax would be allocated to lower-income countries outside Europe, and there are good chances that some parties will take this forward. A petition in favour of a wealth tax has recently been signed by 130 members of the European Parliament, and politicians from all parties on the left and centre endorse our proposal. However, a majority in the European Parliament would not suffice, as this proposal would require unanimity at the Council of the EU, that is, the approval of each EU government.
However, three things can help. First, Brazil will chair the G20 in 2024, and we hope that President Lula, along with other leaders, will put pressure on global north states for global redistribution. Second, it would help if US President Joe Biden included wealth taxes on the agenda of his re-election campaign. Third, the campaign for the 2024 European Parliament elections could create momentum for some countries to move forward, even if the EU does not.
I am optimistic that wealth taxes will be implemented – perhaps not in 2024, but within the next decade. However, I fear negotiations might end up being overseen by the OECD, resulting in a disappointing agreement, as happened on international corporate taxation. Negotiations on international taxation must be hosted by the UN, not the OECD. And regarding the content of the negotiations, we should be vigilant of three elements: the exemption threshold, which should not exceed US$5 million; the tax rates, which should be progressive and not too low; and the distribution of revenues, a substantial part of which must go to low-income countries.
Civil society mobilisation will be key to promoting the global wealth tax, making it a central campaign issue and turning it into effective international policy. You can help by signing our petitions, donating, or volunteering for GRA. GRA is also hiring, so feel free to contact us!
What are your hopes and expectations regarding the upcoming COP28 climate summit?
COPs sometimes bring good surprises. Last year, high-income countries finally accepted the principle of a fund to compensate vulnerable countries for the loss and damage from climate change, after 30 years of demands from the developing world.
But I don’t expect any good news this year, as the upcoming COP28 in Dubai is chaired by the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company. More generally, I do not expect much from COPs because its decisions are made by consensus, so countries like Saudi Arabia can block any meaningful proposal. This is what led to the current system of nationally determined contributions: while all countries supposedly share the common goal of limiting global warming to ‘well below 2°C’, there are no binding commitments, no harmonised policies, no agreement on burden-sharing, and the sum of countries’ voluntary pledges is inconsistent with the common goal.
To break the deadlock, states with ambitious climate goals should start negotiations in parallel with the UN framework. I think the EU and China should start bilateral negotiations. If they put forward something like the global climate plan that we propose, countries that would benefit from it would surely accept it, and more than 60 per cent of global emissions would be covered. This would put enormous pressure on other countries to join, and particularly other OECD countries such as the USA.
Get in touch with Global Redistribution Advocates through itswebsite or itsFacebook page, and follow@GlobalRedistrib and@adrien_fabre on Twitter.
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High Level Group Reaffirms Commitment to Develop Framework to Fight Poverty
The panel tasked with advising on the global development agenda beyond 2015, the target date for achieving the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reaffirmed its commitment to work together on a framework to combat poverty in a High Level Panel Meeting in London. According to a news release, discussion among the Panel members covered human development, jobs and livelihoods, and how to reach the marginalized and excluded. The three-day meeting also allowed Panel members to gather input from international civil society, private sector representatives and global youth, answering Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for transparency and inclusiveness in its consultations.
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Malaysia: Migrants and refugees excluded from poverty figures and neglected by policymakers
Statement at the 44th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty
Thank you, Madame President; Special Rapporteur.
CIVICUS and North South Initiative welcome the strong report of the Special Rapporteur on his country visit to Malaysia, which highlights the plight of millions of people including migrants, refugees and stateless people who are systematically excluded from official poverty figures and neglected by policymakers.
We share his concern that migrant workers in Malaysia are set up for exploitation by unscrupulous recruitment agents and employers, a harsh immigration policy and a lack of enforcement of labour protections. Refugees and asylum seekers exist in extremely precarious conditions unable to work or enroll in government schools. Civil society groups have been calling for a single entity to manage migrant workers to ensure better protection of their rights and reduce the risks of them becoming victims of corruption.
CIVICUS research has shown has that migrants and refugees in Malaysia want to participate in the societies they call home. But they continue to face barriers and restrictions in exercising their freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association, all but ensuring ongoing perilous and precarious conditions.
Migrant workers and refugees say that among the challenges they face in speaking out include, a lack of access to information, fear of being fired, detained or deported and harassment or intimidation. The right to assemble in the 2012 Peaceful Assembly Act does not extend to foreigners including migrant workers and refugees – in contravention of international human rights law and standards. Refugee and migrant workers also face various restrictions in exercising their freedom of association.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged earlier this year there has been a crackdown on migrant workers. The UN has noted increased xenophobia and hate speech against them by individuals affiliated with the government and human rights defenders have been threatened for supporting migrants.
We call on the government of Malaysia to immediately take steps to implement the recommendation of the special rapporteur for a comprehensive new approach to migrant and refugee policies that provides them protection, guarantees their civic freedoms and enables a route out of poverty and precarity. We also urge the government to make public the final report and recommendations by the Special Committee on Foreign Worker Management setup by the government.
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Mumbai Monolith Epitomises Need for Post- 2015 Agenda to tackle Inequality
Less widely recognised has been the impact of surging inequality on efforts to reach the 2015 millennium development goals. Widening gaps in wealth and opportunity have acted as a brake on poverty reduction and progress in child survival, nutrition and education. Yet inequality remains conspicuous by its absence from the agenda for the post-2015 development goals.
This week's meeting of the high-level UN panel framing the post-2015 goals provides an opportunity to change this. As one of three commissioners co-chairing the gathering in the Liberian capital Monrovia, Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, should be playing a leadership role in making the case for a strengthened focus on equity. After all, inclusive growth and equal opportunity are central themes running through the UK's Department for International Development's (DfID) aid programmes.Read more at Brookings
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Observations on the quest to build back better
SDG Knowledge Hub’s interview with Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer
- Five years since the passage of the SDGs, the impulse in many quarters is still to scale up existing approaches, rather than to push for fundamental changes in how our societies and economies function to better realize rights.
- In addition, there are worrying signs that COVID-19 emergency restrictions could be used as a smokescreen for a broader crackdown on dissent, which would undermine accountability for the 2030 Agenda.
- Countries that appear to have done better are ones that have empathetic leaders who have been inclusive in their policy responses and have involved civil society in decision making.
The SDG Knowledge Hub spoke with Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, about his assessment of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and impacts on the 2030 Agenda. Mandeep highlights the persistence of “MDG mindsets” and an increase in censorship and surveillance. He also suggests five ways to build a better post-pandemic world.
Read full interview in SDG Knowledge Hub
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SDGs: ‘Radical policy changes are our only hope of ending global poverty’
CIVICUS speaks with Andy Sumner about the prospects for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the underlying dysfunctions of the current global governance system.
Andy is Professor of International Development at King’s College London, president of the European Association of Development Research and Teaching Institutes and Senior Fellow of the United Nations (UN) University World Institute for Development Economics Research.
Why are the SDGs important?
The SDGs are a set of global objectives that are for all states to pursue collectively, as part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They provide a framing for developing policy and a basis for developing strategy by setting goals and targets on poverty, nutrition, education, health and many other aspects of human wellbeing and sustainability. They are the most comprehensive blueprint so far for eliminating global poverty, reducing inequality and protecting the planet.
The SDGs were agreed in 2015 and are to be achieved by 2030. They were approved by all states at the UN, which at least in principle gave them political legitimacy around the world. They are therefore a useful tool for civil society advocacy. They allow you to say to any government, ‘you said you would do this’, and chances are most governments will at least want to be seen to be trying and that means allocations of public spending and other public policies.
Of course, the SDGs have their critics too, because there are a lot of indicators and some of the targets aren’t well defined and not easily measured. Some also say it’s a very top-down agenda developed by governments rather than bubbling up from the grassroots. Nevertheless, it does provide a set of key indicators of development that have been embedded in UN global agreements from many years. And in principle, governments can be held accountable for at least making some attempt to meet the SDGs.
Are the SDGs going to be met on schedule?
The world is currently far behind on the SDGs, at least regarding a range of global poverty-related SDGs. In a recent UN University brief and working paper I published alongside three colleagues from the SDG Centre, Indonesia at Padjadjaran University, we made projections for the SDGs on extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality and access to clean water and basic sanitation. Our projections indicate that economic growth alone will not be sufficient to end global poverty, and the global poverty-related SDGs will not be met by a considerable distance.
Unfortunately, I think we are looking another lost decade for global development, not only due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the SDGs hard, but also due to the enormous debt overhang from the pandemic and the price shocks that have come from the war in Ukraine.
Looking ahead, there is a strong case for urgent debt relief. There is a debt crisis underway, in the sense that across the global south, and particularly in many of the world’s poorest countries, social, health and education spending is being squeezed simply to pay debt servicing. So this is a crisis not for financial markets but a crisis for real people.
Much of the debt is owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, so they could do something about this. Of course, there’s also some debt owed to China and private capital markets, which is potentially more complicated. Still, the IMF and World Bank could be more proactive. There are signs already that the situation is being recognised, but not enough urgency as the worry is driven by concern over debt defaults rather than the ongoing austerity crisis.
Do you think failure to meet the SDGs is linked to structural flaws in the global governance system?
I think it is possible to link the catastrophic failure on the SDGs to a failing global governance system. The measures that would be needed to meet the SDGs, notably debt relief and expanded funding, would require a deep reform of the international financing architecture.
Right now, it doesn’t make any sense. The global south may receive official development assistance and other financial flows, but a substantial share kind of evaporates in that debt servicing is sent back to the north, notably via debt service to the IMF and World Bank. Then we can consider all the global south loses, in for example, profit shifting by global companies, illicit flows to and from tax havens, payments for intellectual property for use of technology and so forth. We do see major signs that climate change and exclusion from western vaccines may be among the issues leading to a new assertiveness by global south governments. Take for just one example the recent UN vote on a global convention on tax cooperation championed by the global south.
Urgent reform of the governance of IMF and World Bank is needed that would lead to a change in their strategies around, for example, austerity conditionalities. For example, most of the agreements that more than 100 governments signed with the IMF during the pandemic included a range of austerity measures. This is totally inappropriate, especially if the goal is to meet the SDGs.
A new financing deal is also needed to address loss and damage, not only in relation to climate change – for which a fund has already been agreed, although against the wishes of the global south, it is within the World Bank for now – but also in relation to colonialism and slavery, regarding which demands for reparations remain unaddressed.
How can civil society best advocate for the SDGs?
The SDGs are very often embedded in civil society campaigning because they offer a way to hold governments to account. They require that spending is redirected towards social spending, public education and public health and other priority sectors. As a result, they require that inequalities across income, education and health are addressed.
Civil society should advocate for radical policy changes, because these are the world’s only hope of meeting the SDGs. What is needed is urgent debt relief, which would release funds for social and productive investments across developing countries, and a new focus on redistribution with growth both at the global and national levels.
To change course, we need urgent policy action on two fronts.
First, a stronger focus on inclusive growth and productive capacities. Specifically, new international financing needs to be made available through debt relief or other forms of finance to expand fiscal space across countries of the global south to allow a stronger focus on SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth. This financing should seek the expansion rather than contraction of social and productive spending.
Second, that focus should entail redistribution alongside growth, through policies that build productive capacities, introduce, or expand income transfers to meet the extreme poverty target, and ensure sufficient public investment to meet the health, water and sanitation SDGs.
In short, today’s trajectory demands a forceful, seismic shift towards redistribution, both globally and nationally. This is the pathway to follow if the world is to have any hope of achieving poverty-related SDGs.
Get in touch with Andy throughLinkedIn and follow@andypsumner on Twitter.
This interview was conducted as part of the ENSURED Horizon research project funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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But the world has changed since the MDGs were first agreed: six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries are African and once developing countries like China, Brazil and India have become major figures on the world stage, while historically powerful economies now face cuts and financial uncertainty.
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