Labour

The Global South in the New Cold War

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Marginalised and dominated economically by the Global North, developing countries must urgently cooperate to better strive for their shared interests in achieving world peace and sustainable development.

VIETNAM: ‘Human Rights Conditions Will Likely Worsen as the Country Descends into a Police State’

By CIVICUS

 
CIVICUS discusses recent leadership changes in Vietnam with David Tran, coordinator of the Alliance for Vietnam’s Democracy, a civil society platform that promotes democracy in Vietnam and the region through international cooperation and the strengthening of local civil society.

Struggling at Sea: The Plight of Indian Fishworkers Amid Climate Change and Government Policies

By Aishwarya Bajpai
Climate change forces millions of India’s fishworkers to venture beyond the country's exclusive economic zone into the perilous high seas.

Global Poverty Grows as Super-Rich Get Richer Faster

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Siti Maisarah Zainurin
Oxfam expects the world’s first trillionaire within a decade and poverty to end in 229 years! The wealth of the world’s five richest men has more than doubled from 2020, as 4.8 billion people became poorer.

Uganda Coffee Smallholders Grapple With EU Regulations on Imports

By Wambi Michael
In Kubewo village in eastern Uganda, children often go to work with their parents in the coffee gardens. Earnings from Arabica coffee are used, their parents and grandparents say, to pay for children’s education and other expenses for the family. 

Handling Financial Crises in the South

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
When history repeats itself, the first time is a tragedy; the next is a farce. If we fail to learn from past financial crises, we risk making avoidable errors, often with irreversible, even tragic consequences.

Chilean Fisherwomen Seek Visibility and Escape from Vulnerability

By Orlando Milesi
The number of organisations that bring together fisherwomen who seek to be recognised as workers, make their harsh reality visible and escape the vulnerability in which they live is growing in Chile.

Cambodia’s Young Environmental Activists Pay a Heavy Price

By Andrew Firmin
It’s risky to try to protect the environment in authoritarian Cambodia. Ten young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group have recently been given long jail sentences. Two were sentenced to eight years on charges of plotting and insulting the king. Another seven were sentenced to six years for plotting, while one, a Spanish national banned from entering Cambodia, was sentenced in absentia.

Kenya’s Protests: More than a Question of Tax

By Andrew Firmin
Kenya’s President William Ruto has withdrawn the tax-increasing Finance Bill that sparked mass protests. He has sacked his cabinet and the head of the police has resigned. But the anger many feel hasn’t gone away, and protests continue. The protests have brought Kenya’s Gen Z onto the political stage, with young people – over 65 per cent of the population – at the forefront. Since the protests began, they’ve made full use of social media to share views, explain the impact of proposed changes, organise protests and raise funds to help those injured or arrested.

AFGHANISTAN: ‘The Doha Meeting Has Raised Concerns the UN Is Indirectly Legitimising the Taliban’

By CIVICUS

 
CIVICUS discusses the exclusion of women from international talks on Afghanistan currently being held in Qatar with Sima Samar, former chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). The AIHRC is the Afghan national institution devoted to the promotion, protection and monitoring of human rights. Its status is now a matter of contention: on returning to power, the Taliban decreed its dissolution, but the AIHRC refuses to abide by the decision due to the illegitimate nature of the Taliban regime.

Emergence of a New Proletariat

By Daud Khan
Immigrants are essential to Europe’s economic survival. They are needed for doing the jobs that most Europeans no longer want to do. Jobs that involve manual labor in agriculture and industry; or providing home help, care for the elderly; or working un-social hours in the catering business.

Finance Healthcare, Not Insurance Premia

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Comparative research on healthcare financing options shows revenue-financed healthcare to be the most cost-effective, efficient, and equitable, while all health insurance imposes avoidable additional costs.

Conflict Deprives Children of Education in Northern Syrian IDP Camps

By Sonia Al Ali
Twelve-year-old Walid Al-Hussein, displaced from the city of Kafranbel to a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in northern Idlib on the border with Turkey, has given up his dream of becoming a lawyer. "The distance of schools from our home (in the camp) made me leave education and give up my dream and my mother's dream of becoming a lawyer who defends the rights of the oppressed," Al-Hussein told IPS.

Indignity, Disease, Death—The Life of a Sewer Worker in Pakistan

By Zofeen Ebrahim
A dark head emerges, followed by the torso. The balding man heaves himself up, hands on the sides of the manhole, as he is helped by two men. Gasping for breath, the man, who seems to be in his late 40s, sits on the edge, wearing just a pair of dark pants, the same color as the putrid swirling water he comes out from.

Climate Change, Pollution Push Karnaphuli Fishers Out of the Profession

By Rafiqul Islam
Jishuram Das, a sexagenarian who was born in Jelepara, located in Chattogram, has been catching fish from the Karnaphuli River since his childhood. But nowadays, he often sits idle without going to catch fish, as their catches have drastically fallen.

Let’s play!

By Heike Kuhn
For the first time ever, we will commemorate the joy of playing with an International Day of Play“ on June 11, 2024. On their website, the UN state that this „marks a significant milestone in efforts to preserve, promote, and prioritize playing so that all people, especially children, can reap the rewards and thrive to their full potential“. But why ist playing so important?

Let the Dead Speak: Forgotten Workers

By Jan Lundius
Immigration policies are among the most hotly debated topics in Europe. Xenophobia, combined with curbing immigration, have become the main reason to why ever-increasing large crowds of voters are supporting populist parties.

Panama’s Elections: Has Impunity Prevailed?

By Inés M. Pousadela
Regional experts called it Panama’s most important election since the 1989 US invasion that deposed de facto president General Manuel Noriega. Panamanians went to the polls amid high inflation and unemployment, with a stagnating economy. Endemic corruption was also high on their long list of concerns, along with access to water, education and a collapsing social security system.

Niger’s Military Coup Triggers Child Marriages, Sex Work in Neighboring Countries

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou. They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Trade Deception Returns in Pan-Africanist Guise

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The World Bank has exaggerated probable gains from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to promote partial and uneven trade liberalisation that is unlikely to enhance development on the continent.

Rural Entrepreneurs Thriving Against All Odds in Zimbabwe

By Jeffrey Moyo
With heavy sweat drenching his face and his shirt soaked in the sweat, 39-year-old Proud Ndukulani wrestled with a homemade knife, which he dipped in some used oil, before turning the glistening knife upon a rather tough and dusty tyre obtained from what he said was a forklift. His assistant stood by his side as he (Ndukulani) cut some tough rubber from the giant tyre lying outside an open shade roofed with aging asbestos sheets at Juru Growth Point, located 52 km east of Harare in Zimbabwe’s Goromonzi district in the country’s Mashonaland East province. 
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