Articles
Majority of rural population without essential health care
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The majority of the world’s rural populations continue to live and work without essential healthcare services, in stark contrast to their urban-dwelling counterparts, according to a new report released today by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO).
The ILO’s findings – published in the Global Evidence on Inequities in Rural Health Protection Report – show that 56 per cent of people living in rural areas worldwide remain bereft of critical healthcare access, with the most acute instances being in Africa where an overwhelming 83 per cent of rural inhabitants are uncovered. The most affected countries are also those which face the highest levels of poverty, the report observes.
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Pan-Afrikanism and the quest for black power to-day
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Let us start by expressing our humble thanks to the organisers for the honour of inviting us to come and share our perspective, on the range of issues that affect Black people in Afrika and other parts of the world. And for also affording us the privilege to be here and be in a position to learn from the many enlightening perspectives of others.
Allow us to also acknowledge the leaders of the various organisations of our people, our guests from the various parts of the Black world, and each and every Black sister and brother, here present. It is always heart-warming to be in the company of our own and freely and to honestly discuss all the issues that concern us as a people. This is an intellectual space we rarely afford ourselves and we definitely need to create more such spaces.
We meet here today on a very special and significant day, which as you know, was initially designated for the 15 of April and referred to as “Africa Freedom Day” and only became “Afrikan Liberation Day” on the 25 of May, 1963, after a historic meeting of Afrikan leaders in Ethiopia.
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Things you probably know about poverty but Bill and Melinda Gates don't
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To fix global poverty, you first need to acknowledge where it comes from.
Bill and Melinda Gates just released their annual letter, “Our Big Bet for the Future,” with their thoughts on the current state of global poverty and the suite of projects they are funding to tackle it. While their hopeful tone and a good deal of what they are proposing is excellent, the story they tell about poverty obscures far more than it reveals. These are not “big bets,” but rather small technical fixes that can’t solve the real, underlying problems.
Read more: Things you probably know about poverty but Bill and Melinda Gates don't
Illicit financial flows correlate with poverty and inequality
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This June 2015 report, the latest in a series by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), highlights the outsized impact that illicit financial flows have on the world’s poorest economies. The study looks at illicit financial flows from some of the world’s poorest nations and compares those values to some traditional indicators of development—including GDP, total trade, foreign direct investment, public expenditures on education and health services, and total tax revenue, among others—over the period 2008–2012.
The report also produces several scatter plots in which illicit flows values for all developing and emerging market nations are compared to key trade indicators and various development indices, such as human development, inequality, and poverty, to determine if correlations exist between the two.
A Milestone on the Road for Fairer Global Taxation?
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For decades, development policy was shaped by the notion that the poor countries of the Global South needed money from the wealthy North in order to advance in their development. At the latest since the 2008/09 financial crisis this view of things has, it seems, begun to change. In the current Global Governance Spotlight, Wolfgang Obenland, Program Coordinator of the Global Policy Forum, analyses the negotiations on the outcome document of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled to take place from 13 to 17 July 2015 in Addis Ababa, and shares his assessment regarding its progressiveness.
