USMCA Agreement: Towards a New Economic Relationship in North America?

The visit of the Vice President of the United States to Mexico on June 8 served to address various issues on the bilateral agenda . The media gave importance especially to the migration issue, but Mrs. Harris gave a prominent place , also , to the labor question. Her appointments deserve some comments.

Modern Slavery: How Consumers Can Make a Difference

Few people want to buy products that involve the exploitation or enslavement of the workers who make them – but that’s exactly what most of us do on a daily basis.

Does a New ‘Gold Standard’ Really Protect Miners?

Many products these days come with the promise that workers and communities all along their supply line  are protected from abuse  under a particular standard or code of conduct. Since the United Nations adopted the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights a decade ago, a plethora of such certification systems have emerged, including for  mining  and connected industries ranging from cars to jewelry and electronics.

Myths, Lobbies Block International Tax Cooperation

Too many have swallowed the myth that lowering corporate income tax (CIT) is necessary to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) for growth. Although contradicted by their own research, this lie has long been promoted by influential international economic institutions.

COVID-19 as Instigator of Bigotry, Chauvinism and Megalomania

By the end of April 2019, a government campaign to vaccinate more than 40 million children under five against polio in Pakistan was suspended after a series of attacks on health workers and police. On 23 April, a police officer protecting polio workers was gunned down in Bannu, the same day a polio worker was in Lahore seriously wounded by a father “protecting his child from vaccination”, these incidents were followed by the murder of another police and a health worker under his protection. Health workers were also seriously wounded in the districts of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries where polio remains, in all other nations of the world vaccination campaigns have eliminated the disease. In April this year, three female polio vaccine providers were killed in Afghanistan.

Digital Media on the Frontline: Supporting the Ones who Support the Rest

For Dr Farzana Khan, a frontline worker and a second-generation immigrant from Pakistan living in California, social media helped her connect and realign herself during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boldly Finance Recovery to Build Forward Better

COVID-19 has become a “developing country pandemic”, retreating from the North’s mass vaccination. With developing countries heavily handicapped, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of a “dangerous [new] divergence”.

Developing Country Health Professionals Sidelined in Canadian Healthcare

In Canada, we are fortunate to have many talented newcomers eager to contribute to the country, including thousands of doctors from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who meet Canadian standards but are blocked from becoming practicing physicians. These doctors are Canadian citizens and permanent residents with recognized training and experience.

Powerful States Push Tax Race to the Bottom

Last week, the largest rich countries, home to most major transnational corporations (TNCs), agreed to a global minimum corporate income tax (GMCIT) rate. But the low rate proposed and other features will deprive developing countries of their just due yet again.

Letter from Rome – Italy at the Crossroads

Italy, as other countries, has been struggling to balance the health and economic challenges posed by COVID-19. Controlling the spread of the virus implied restrictions on economic activity, on school and college attendance, and on personal movement. It also had to deal with the economic and social implications of a fall of almost 10% in GDP. This has been hard for a country which, even before the pandemic, was one of the slowest growing economies in Europe, with unemployment, especially among young people in the South of the country, at alarming levels.

World Day Against Child Labour

 

The facts:- The progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years, reversing the previous downward trend that saw child labour fall by 94 million between 2000 and 2016.

From Climate Change to Covid, Are We Ready to Deal with Disasters?

In the last 20 years, disasters affected over 4 billion people. At global level we witness on average one sweeping disaster a day, the majority of which are floods and storms. From the Covid-19 pandemic to climate change, calamities are taking new shapes and sizes, infiltrating every dimension of society. From the emotional to the political, how do we deal with disasters? How can we create a whole-of-society approach to disaster risk reduction?

Time to End Generational Injustice with a ‘Global Blue New Deal’ to Protect Oceans

Increasingly, youth are rising up to declare that they've had enough of the cyclical exploitation of the environment that jeopardizes their own future.

Indian Muslim Minority Targeted During COVID-19 Pandemic

A Muslim call centre operator at a COVID-19 ‘war room’, who once saw himself a COVID-warrior, is now unemployed after being falsely branded by a top politician as a key member of a bed-for-bribe scam. He is a victim of the rise in Islamophobia in India as the country grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic – with scant evidence of condemnation from the authorities, say activists.

Why Investing in Women Is Key to Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Last year, the Asia-Pacific region recorded its worst economic performance in decades. With the pandemic far from over, the region’s recovery is slow, fragile and highly uneven both across and within countries. As the region struggles to recover, how can countries rebuild their economies and revive their development?

Pandemic Relief Policies Need More Resources, Better Design

Pandemic relief measures in developing countries have been limited by modest resources, fear of financial market discipline and policy mimicry. COVID-19 has triggered not only an international public health emergency, but also a global economic crisis, setting back decades of uneven progress, especially in developing countries.

– Jamaica Failing to Cope with Plastic Waste –

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks. The original article was published on January 20 2021

Pakistanis in Italy: Against All Odds

We met 22-year old Ali B. in a park in Rome’s city center on a rather cold and windy April evening. We could not share a meal, or even a coffee, as all restaurants were shut due to continuing COVID-19 restrictions. He had travelled down from Cerveteri (a small town about 50km north of Rome) where he works for an old couple. They provide boarding and lodging as well as a decent salary and social security benefits. In return, he has to cook for them and look after the kitchen.

The Garment Industry Needs More Women Leaders

If you enter a garment factory in India, or any part of the world for that matter, you will see that the workforce is starkly female. The Indian textile and garment industry employs 45 million people, out of which more than 60 percent are women. This makes it the biggest formal employer of women in a country where 80 percent of them are not engaged in paid work. While that might paint a rosy picture of women’s empowerment at the first glance, a closer look reveals something different.

Challenges with Skill Development Programmes During the Pandemic

India’s evolving Technical and Vocational Education and Training ecosystem (TVET) faced many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the national lockdown, organisations had to remain shut for 7-8 months, until September 2020.

People’s Leader: A Dalit Woman Becomes The Voice of Farmers In India

On 12 January this year, somewhere in the outskirts of the capital, New Delhi, 24 year old Dalit activist Nodeep Kaur was arrested by the Haryana police for protesting outside a factory. During the lockdown in 2020, Nodeep joined a local workers’ rights organization called Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan (MAS) in the Kundli Industrial Area in Haryana. In January Nodeep was accused of allegedly manhandling management and staff of an industrial area during a protest and also assaulting the police team.