Jobs, wages, Refugees and Workers' Rights at G20
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- Written by ITUC
- Category: Articles
ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said “labour markets need to work for working people, and the Ministerial Declaration is a basis for a global economy that works for everyone. Global supply chains are based on a model of low wages, insecure and unsafe work with increasing informal work and modern slavery. We would like to see every country mandate the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for workers in global supply chains, with due diligence and grievance procedures that enable remedy against exploitation for the millions of workers on whom multinationals rely on for their products and services.”
Global Debt Crises and Threats Increase around the World
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- Written by Jubilee Debt Campaign
- Category: Articles
Twenty-seven countries across the world are in debt crisis, with a further 80 at risk of being so, according to new figures released for World Debt Day on 16 May.
The figures, calculated by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, classify countries as in debt crisis if they have a large financial imbalance with the rest of the world and large government payments on external debt, as a proportion of revenue.
Poverty drives wages down
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- Written by Eric Larsson / IPS
- Category: Articles
H&M has made promises to raise wage levels and increase worker influence in the garment factories of Cambodia. The validity of these supposed ambitions is being criticized. ”What have they actually achieved? Nothing!”, says Sajsa Beslik, sustainibility banker at Swedish Nordea.
At night, mosquitos make their ways through the crack of air between the corrugated metal roof and the aged plaster of the cement wall, untroubled by a long row of steel doors.
Seng Chhun Leng, 26, opens the padlock on her street level 15 square meter room. Several mattresses line the floor. She sleeps here together with her younger brother and his fiancée. She recently moved out of a room that cost just over 50 dollars per month.
”This was cheaper, just over 40 dollars, so I chose it instead”
The Financial Crisis and the Global South: Impact and Prospects
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- Written by Yilmaz Akyüz / South Center
- Category: Articles
The world economy has not still recovered from the effects of the financial crisis that began almost a decade ago first in the US and then in Europe. Policy response to the crisis, the combination of fiscal restraint and ultra-easy monetary policy, has not only failed to bring about a robust recovery but has also aggravated systemic problems in the global economy, notably inequality and chronic demand gap, on the one hand, and financial fragility, on the other. It has generated strong destabilizing spillovers to the Global South.
Major emerging economies that were expected a few years ago to become global locomotives have not only lost their momentum, but have also become highly vulnerable to trade and financial shocks. Policies proposed by the new administration in the US could entail a double blow to emerging and developing economies which have become highly dependent on foreign markets, capital and transnational corporations. The EU remains a global deadweight, generating deflationary impulses for the rest of the world economy. The jury is still out on whether the second largest economy, China, will be able to avoid financial turmoil and growth collapse. This state of affairs raises serious policy challenges to the Global South in responding to external shocks and redesigning the pace and pattern of their integration into the global economy so as to benefit from the opportunities that a broader economic space may offer while minimizing the potential risks it may entail.
Role of Tax for Gender Equality
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- Written by Sarah Dayringer and Karen Judd / Global Policy Watch
- Category: Articles
The 2017 meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women agreed on the need for “progressive tax systems, improved tax policy, more efficient tax collection and increased priority on gender equality and the empowerment of women in official development assistance”. This call for an independent global tax body in connection with women, along with the call on Member States to strengthen government oversight of PPPs is significant. Does it perhaps signal a new willingness of CSW to take on constraints to women’s rights and empowerment beyond the national level?
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenged participants at the 61st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 61) in March 2017: “Do not let us at the UN off the hook. Keep our feet to the fire.” Many civil society organizations (CSOs) are doing just that – calling for more from the CSW.
Focus on the Global South and 50 years of ADB
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- Written by Focus on nthe Global South
- Category: Articles
2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the second largest source of development finance in the Asia-Pacific region, next to the World Bank Group. In the last five decades, the ADB has moved more than USD 250 billion in a bid to promote economic growth, facilitate regional trade integration, and expand opportunities. However, for many civil society groups, social movements, and communities affected by ADB financing, the institution has been an agent of inequitable development, fostering inequalities and mis-governance. The ADB has enjoyed the highest degree of immunity as guaranteed by its own charter. This means that it is immune to legal liabilities and accountability to national laws for problematic investments, faulty policy advice, violation of people’s rights and livelihoods, and destruction of the environment.
Focus has long been researching and sharing analyses of the negative impacts of ADB operations, calling for an end to the ADB’s immunity and lack of accountability. In 2017, we join people’s movements and civil society in building a region-wide challenge to the ADB’s immunity
On the occasion of the 50th Annual Governors’ Meeting of the ADB which is happening in Yokohama, Japan from May 4-7, 2017, Focus on the Global South is releasing this special newsletter highlighting the Asian people’s resistance against the Bank. Earlier writings and materials on the ADB produced by Focus can be found here: https://focusweb.org/page/adb50
America's war-fighting footprint in Africa
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- Written by Nick Turse / Pambazuka
- Category: Articles
A set of previously secret documents, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, offers clear evidence of a remarkable, far-ranging and expanding network of outposts strung across the continent. In official plans for operations in 2015 that were drafted and issued the year before, Africa Command lists 36 U.S. outposts scattered across 24 African countries.
General Thomas Waldhauser sounded a little uneasy. “I would just say they are on the ground. They are trying to influence the action,” commented the chief of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) at a Pentagon press briefing in March, when asked about Russian military personnel operating in North Africa. “We watch what they do with great concern.”
And Russians aren’t the only foreigners on Waldhauser’s mind. He’s also wary of a Chinese “military base” being built not far from Camp Lemonnier, a large U.S. facility in the tiny, sun-blasted nation of Djibouti. “They’ve never had an overseas base, and we’ve never had a base of… a peer competitor as close as this one happens to be,” he said. “There are some very significant… operational security concerns.”
Money laundering: European Parliament draws veto card and demands a real blacklist
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- Written by Sven Giegold, MEP
- Category: Articles
MEPs are pushing the EU Commission to re-assess which countries should be included on the blacklist of uncooperative money laundering jurisdictions. A joint vote of the Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and Civil Liberties (LIBE) committees asked the Commission to rethink the list in a resolution on Wednesday. The resolution will now be put to a vote in the upcoming plenary.
The EU Commission identifies high-risk third countries which are then subject to increased customer due diligence measures. The most recent blacklist from July 2016 includes eleven countries. In January 2017, the European Parliament rejected a Commission Delegated Act to remove the State of Guyana. The Commission now proposes simply following the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international forum against money laundering and terrorist financing, and replacing Guyana with Ethiopia. ECON and LIBE today rejected this copy pasting as insufficient.
Read more: Money laundering: European Parliament draws veto card and demands a real blacklist
Human Rights Watch Response on IFIs
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- Written by HRW
- Category: Articles
Human Rights Watch believes it is important for UN experts to ground their work on IFIs in the human rights obligations of these institutions. With the exception of the European banks, IFIs often argue that they are bound only by their own internal standards, rather than international human rights standards. In our view it is essential to counter this.
Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries
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- Written by GFI
- Category: Articles
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) from developing and emerging economies kept pace at nearly US$1 trillion in 2014, according to a study released today by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based research and advisory organization. The report pegs illicit financial outflows at 4.2-6.6 percent of developing country total trade in 2014, the last year for which comprehensive data are available.
Titled “Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries: 2005-2014,” the report is the first global study at GFI to equally emphasize illicit outflows and inflows. Each is found to have remained persistently high over the period between 2005 and 2014. Combined, these outflows and inflows are estimated to account for between 14.1 and 24.0 percent of developing country trade, on average.
Read more: Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries
ITUC: End Corporate Greed - The World Needs a Pay Rise
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- Written by ITUC
- Category: Articles
The achievements of generations of working people, celebrated on May Day, are under continuous and systematic
attack, as powerful multinational corporations and a handful of immensely wealthy people are writing the rules
of the global economy. Governments are in retreat, pandering to the ultra-rich and failing in their duty to ensure
decent work for all and an end to poverty. Nationalism and xenophobia are eroding solidarity, at a time when the
world is confronted with the biggest refugee crisis in 70 years and as migrant workers are deprived of the dignity
of equal treatment.
Tens of millions of women and men are trapped in modern slavery, and many more make up the hidden workforce
of global supply chains, denied the right to a union or to a living minimum wage and often trapped in dangerous and
degrading work. 40% of the world’s workforce is caught in the informal economy, with no rights and living handto-mouth.
Read more: ITUC: End Corporate Greed - The World Needs a Pay Rise
