Poverty

South/North / Developing Countries/Developed Countries – What is it all about?

11 February 2020 - by CADTM

Lexical choices that are not neutral The terms used to designate the different categories of countries convey the theoretical and political divergences in terms of analysis and strategy. Generally, these divergences are related to the social contents of the economic concepts: the economic (...)
The top 1% own 45% of all global personal wealth; 10% own 82%; the bottom 50% own less than 1%

6 November 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The annual Credit Suisse (CS) report on global wealth has just been released. This report remains the most comprehensive and explanatory analysis of global wealth (not income) and inequality of wealth. Every year the CS global wealth report analyses the household wealth of 5.1 billion people (...)
Local South African Economic Conditions

6 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

As the world economy spirals into crisis stage, with fully-fledged deglobalisation and a new round of financial turmoil, the South African context is just as foreboding. Corporations and workers alike are ill prepared for the period ahead, especially if it entails another export-led drive (...)
Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

16 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy. The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy (...)
South Africa: Resistance and Research for Alternatives to Illegitimate Debt and for Ecosocialism

3 May 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Report on the CADTM International mission to South Africa 31 March – 12 April 2019, part 2. First part available here Wednesday 3 April: Cape town and Cape of Good Hope: highly visible social and racial segregation The fourth day was spent seeing Cape Town and its region out to Cape of (...)
From the BRICS countries to the townships: racial and social segregation continues

22 April 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Over 25 years ago now the people of South Africa won the struggle to end the Apartheid regime. [1] Nevertheless, even though it is now against the law, de facto racial segregation is still apparent. Moreover the capitalist assault on the majority of the population is blatant. The class (...)
Financial globalization, N-S wealth distribution, resource transfers

18 February 2019 - by Yilmaz Akyüz

Geneva, 6 Feb (IPS/Yilmaz Akyuz*) — At a time when the world economy is seen poised for yet another financial turmoil, there is a widespread recognition that emerging economies (EMEs) are particularly vulnerable because of their deepened integration into the global financial system. What is (...)
Gilets jaunes (yellow vests): learning from history and acting now

11 December 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

Some consider that if you are involved in a movement against a tax (supposed, in theory at least, to redistribute wealth) rather than for higher wages, say (in the broad sense, including social security), you are part of a right-wing movement. This is not so: many revolutionary movements (...)
Liberia: The “dictatorship of the multinational corporations”

4 October 2018 - by Moses Uneh Yahmia

Liberia has been taken over by multinational corporations that are exploiting its resources at the expense of Liberians, especially the country’s working class that serves as cheap labour to these foreign companies. Unlike other countries in the sub-Saharan region, Liberia was never formally (...)
UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution adopting the peasant rights declaration in Geneva

1 October 2018 - by La Via Campesina

(Geneva, September 28, 2018) Seventeen years of long and arduous negotiations later, peasants and other people working in rural areas are only a step away from having a UN Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local markets and a lot more. On (...)
Pro-poor or anti-poor? The World Bank and IMF’s approach to social protection

13 April 2018 - by Stephen Kidd

In recent years, the World Bank and IMF have played an influential role in shaping national social protection policies. Social protection comprises a significant share of World Bank loans, reaching almost 10 per cent of lending to low-income countries in 2017, while around 10 per cent of IMF (...)
The Power of a Dollar

11 April 2018 - by Milford Bateman

Microcredit is nothing more than a socially validated way for financial elites to exploit the poor. hirty years ago the international development community was ecstatic. It had found the perfect market-affirming solution to poverty in developing countries: microcredit. The popularizer of (...)
Whether in the South or in the North, women bear the burdens of the debt crisis and structural adjustment policies

23 March 2018 - by Chiara Filoni

The CADTM (Committee for the abolition of illegitimate debt) is an International network that has, over the past thirty years, warned of the effects of illegitimate debt and structural adjustment policies. Public debt and the austerity measures taken to reduce it have social and economic (...)
Shocking report: Macroeconomic indicators improve but Greece’s society is suffering

9 February 2018 - by Confédération hellénique des cadres, artisans et marchands

Greek society in economic decline: Three out of four are long-time unemployed. 51% of the households depends on pensions. One in five households is afraid to lose its home. 70% of the young Greeks want to look for a work abroad. 16.3% say they cannot afford to cover an extraordinary expense of (...)
The Rage of the Poor in Iran

10 January 2018 - by Araz Bağban

The protests against the high cost of living in the cities of Khorasan province on December 28th soon spread to many cities of Iran incredibly quick and almost turned into a revolt within a week. The protests primarily targeted the high cost of living, financial difficulties and corruption. (...)
2018 Report on world inequality: an undisputable diagnosis

28 December 2017 - by World Inequality Lab

This is a synthesis of the 2018 report on world inequality, coordinated by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in WID – World Inequality Lab. At a time when many social conquests are under threat, reading this report is essential. The unequivocal (...)
How microfinance and financial inclusion impinge on human rights

13 November 2017 - by Philip Mader

This blog post is based on a talk given at the ETOC Conference on “Financialisation, Eco-Destruction, and Human Rights beyond Borders” in Brussels, September 28-29, 2017, and should not be regarded as an exhaustive academic paper but as food for thought. Microfinance and financial inclusion are (...)
Puerto Rico is our Future

1 October 2017 - by Richard Heinberg

News reports tell of the devastation left by a direct hit from Category 4 Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans already coping with damage from Hurricane Irma, which grazed the island just days before, were slammed with an even stronger storm on September 20, bringing more than a foot of rain and (...)
Puerto Rico: Belonging to, But Not Part of

1 October 2017 - by Ed Morales

The Trump administration’s delay in sending real aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria is a distasteful display of colonialist racism. But it’s par for the course: our citizenship has always been second-class. “We’re American citizens. How can Trump turn his back on us?” This is one of the (...)
50 years of ADB : Debt, Destitution, Destruction, Disparity, & Displacement

30 May 2017 - by Sushovan Dhar, Ratan Bhandari, Hasan Mehdi

The Manila based Asian Development Bank (ADB) celebrated its 50th year at Yokohama from May 3-7, 2017 with a great display of extravagance and grandeur. Japan’s Crown Prince, Naruhito while inaugurating the 50th annual meeting emphasised on ADB’s remarkable ‘achievements’ in the last half a century (...)
5,000 sacked for demanding higher wages: The human cost of Bangladesh’s $27-billion garment industry

31 January 2017 - by Ikhtisad Ahmed

In December, the government responded to a peaceful strike by workers with use of force, legal action and arrests. Supplanting India, Bangladesh is currently the second largest exporter of readymade garments in the world. This principal source of foreign earning brought in $27 billion in (...)
Brick kiln workers and the debt trap in Pakistani Punjab

3 August 2016 - by Antonio De Lauri

Debt is everywhere a tool of social control, and no more so than in the brick kilns of Pakistani Punjab, where it travels across generations. Central and south Asian brick kilns have long attracted the attention of humanitarian agencies, activists and scholars as sites of severe labour (...)
UN independent expert: “IMF programmes worsen income distribution”

26 April 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

UN expert report links inequality, financial crises and human rights - Report claims IMF programmes are associated with worsening income distribution and reduction of income of the poor - UN expert calls for human rights-based responses to financial crises In early March the UN (...)
How much is inequality increased by regressive taxation and government spending? (We don’t know, but let’s please ask.)

19 April 2016 - by Patrick Bond

‘You have to look at both the taxing and the spending sides of government policy – and, on that basis, South Africa can claim to have one of the world’s most redistributive public purses.’ This argument, made by Business Day associate editor Hilary Joffe (2015), draws on three 2014-15 World Bank (...)
Poverty in Africa, the unvoiced failures of the World Bank

15 April 2016 - by Salaheddine Lemaizi

A recent report from the World Bank tells us that the number of Africans living in extreme poverty has considerably increased since 1990, rising from 280 million people living on less than $1.25 per day in 1990, to 330 million in 2012. For the standard-bearer of neoliberal ideology in the (...)