Languages
Saturday, May 2, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Inequality
Sponsor a University Student in Spain
Adopt a tree. Adopt a polar bear. Sponsor a child in a poor country. The concept has caught on in Spain’s troubled academic system and now people and companies can sponsor a university student.
Southern Libya Awaits Another Spring
“The government doesn’t care about us because we are from the south,” Mohamed Salah Lichekh, head of the Oubari local council in southern Libya, told IPS, expressing the majority sentiment in this part of the country.
Boats of Hope Head for Australian Rocks
It was a decision based on simple sums. Ananda, 28, from Weligama in the southern Sri Lankan district Matara decided to risk it all boarding a boat to Australia last year because he never had enough money.
Robin Hood Activists Take Aim at Wall Street
Five years after the 2008 world financial crisis and two years after the Occupy movement it triggered, U.S. critics of the financial sector are coalescing around the idea of a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions.
U.S. to Require Disclosure of Worker-to-CEO Pay Gap
Regulators here are proposing that most U.S. corporations be required to provide annual public reporting on how the pay received by their chief executive compares to that of their average workers, a requirement proponents say could be a first step in reining in an unprecedented swelling in executive compensation.
Nigerians Uncertain of Future in Bakassi Peninsula
Thomas Effiom, a 35-year old fisher in Jabane, a small locality in Cameroon’s Bakassi Peninsula, scoops off floodwaters from the muddy floor of his house. It is a ritual he performs each time the Atlantic Ocean overflows.
Sliding Back to the Victorian Age
A recent report by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics called attention to the fact that, at the present rate of inequality, by the year 2025, the United Kingdom will have returned to the unequal society of the end of the 19th century. In other words, we are going back to the times of Queen Victoria!
Somali President Rides Through a Bumpy Year
After his first year as president of the world’s most dangerous and failed state, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is still grappling with limited financial resources, corruption, a lack of service delivery, and the ongoing assassinations of government officials, including attempts on his own life.
Pinochet’s lingering political reforms
The dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) from start to end systematically dismantled every vestige of “the Chilean path to socialism” that the government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) had attempted to follow. But it also established political structures that Chilean democracy has not yet managed to eradicate. See the process in the timeline below: 
Education: The mother of all Pinochetista reforms
Free, public education is the main demand expressed today by Chilean society, especially the young. The issue is not that Chileans don’t study, or that school enrolment is low. The problem is the growing privatisation of the system, as shown by this graph, and how that has divided students into different categories, in terms of quality of education. It all began with the reforms ushered in by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
Pinochet’s Policies Still Rankle in Chile
Sept. 11, 1973 marked the start in Chile of a dictatorship that was synonymous with cruelty. But above and beyond the human rights violations, the reforms ushered in by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet continue to mark today’s Chile – a country of dynamic economic growth but a fragmented society.
Egyptian Workers Rising Again After the Uprising
It was the Egyptian state’s brutal restrictions on worker freedoms that transformed Kareem El-Beheiry from a disengaged lay worker into a tenacious labour activist.
Cash Transfers a Strong Tool Against Inequality
Latin America’s cash transfer programmes are a more effective weapon against poverty and social inequality than economic growth alone, according to a study by two Argentine economists.
Poor Picked for ‘Paradise’
“I consider myself lucky after finding my son,” says Muhammad Jabeen, a juice vendor in Bannu, one of the 25 districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northern Pakistan. The Taliban had taken his son, Mateen Shah, away from a madrassa to join their ranks.
U.S. Executives’ Pay on “Inexorable Upward Climb”
Three years after the passage of landmark legislation aimed at strengthening regulation of major U.S. companies, one of the most criticised disparities characterising today's corporate culture – the outsized compensation offered to top executives – continues to grow.
Roma See the Writing On The Wall
The European Commission (EC) has demanded that Slovakia’s second city, Kosice, tear down a wall put up to segregate Roma – the 14th such wall in the country and the eighth built in the last four years.
Doctors in Brazil: Too Few, or Just Too Far Between?
Brazil plans to import doctors to provide healthcare in poor suburbs of large cities, impoverished regions of the interior and border areas. But is there really a shortage of doctors in this country?
The debate on doctors in Brazil – in maps and graphs
The controversy is on: the authorities in Brazil say there are not enough medical professionals, and to resolve the problem, they decided to import this “non-traditional product”. Doctors, on the other hand, are opposed to both the diagnosis and the treatment. But there is one thing everyone agrees on: the areas suffering from a shortage of health professionals are the poor suburbs and impoverished areas in the hinterland and remote border areas. The situation in Brazil as compared to itself and to other countries can be seen in this series of interactive maps and graphs.
Aid Cuts Childbirth Risks in Bangladesh
Seven months pregnant, 24-year-old Shumi Begum has travelled 220 km from her village with her paternal grandmother to consult a specialist on childbirth.
Civil Society Trial Finds Oil Corp Guilty in Colombia
An “ethical and political trial on pillaging of natural resources” in Colombia condemned three foreign corporations, including Canada’s Pacific Rubiales Energy, which has dozens of oil and natural gas operations around the country.
Hard to Stay, Harder to Return
After working in Thailand legally for four years, many Myanmar migrant workers are facing an uncertain future in the coming weeks as their visas expire. Tired of the lack of security, they want the Myanmar government to improve the current labour agreement with Thailand.« Previous Page — Next Page »
As the international community takes stock of the progress over a decade and a half of Millennium Development Goals, rising inequality is the black cloud that hovers over achievements worth celebrating, when the world debates a development agenda beyond 2015. While inequality between countries has declined, many nations have seen a rise in the rift between rich and poor within their borders. Not infrequently, inequality is compounded by a lack of sound governance that allows for corruption, tax evasion and illicit money flows. A handful of countries, however, have managed to combine growth with a historic decline in inequality. IPS tracks the achievements of development, while closely examining obstacles to equal growth and forces driving progressive change.
This page includes independent IPS news coverage supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to put the issue of inequality higher up the news agenda during the run-up to the 2015 MDG deadline and the process to forge a new development consensus
