The Director of Education Cannot Wait, Yasmine Sherif, addressed a high-level panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She said private sector financing of education in crises was a critical component of ensuring quality education for all. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
Davos, May 23 2022 (IPS)

Against a backdrop of ongoing social changes, education is becoming increasingly important for success in life. But with disasters, pandemics, armed conflicts, and political crises forcing children out of school, a future of success is often placed far out of reach.

Despite data showing the number of children living in the deadliest war zones rising by nearly 20 percent, according to Stop the War on Children: A Crisis of Recruitment 2021 report, education in emergencies is a chronically underfunded aspect of humanitarian aid.

Speaking today at the backdrop of a high-level panel titled Education in Times of Crisis: How to Ensure All Children are Learning. Why Cross-Sectoral Engagement is Needed at the World Economic Forum, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Director Yasmine Sherif stresses the urgent need to engage the private sector better.

“Private sector has a hugely important and instrumental role to play to address the education for an estimated 222 million children and adolescents in countries affected by climate-induced disaster and conflict,” says Sherif.

“We live in a world of huge socio-economic inequities, and those who have, need to share with those who do not have. It starts with financial resources. This is why ECW is part of the ongoing World Economic Forum because there is a huge private sector audience, and we are engaging with them to get them to rally (behind education).”

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) organized the panel.

Panel discussions were opened by President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis and included Sherif, Jacobs Foundation co-CEO Fabio Segura, Ramin Shahzamani,CEO War Child Holland, and the Director-General of Swiss Development and Cooperation (SDC), Patricia Danzi.

Director-General of Swiss Development Cooperation Patricia Danzi said the long-term education crisis also needed addressing, and private sector participation would assist ensuring the mismatch between business needs and skills could be addressed.

Danzi tells IPS that governments cannot support education alone, and more so, education in emergencies where millions of children are out of school.

“We need other actors to take responsibilities, mobilize, and we need this scaling of other actors as quickly as possible.”

“There are two scenarios where private sector engagement is needed, in emergency situations such as war, a pandemic or disaster where you need money quickly, and this is philanthropy. We also have long-term education crises. This includes a mismatch of jobs and skills. Here the private sector requires a certain skill set that the education system cannot provide – and this goes beyond a crisis.”

Danzi said the mismatch was due to various reasons, including basic education inadequacies, access to (quality) education not guaranteed, or not enough girls being in school.

Sherif agrees, stressing that the focus is on quality education in countries in conflict with large numbers of refugee and internally displaced children.

“Funding and financing are a very big issue here. The private sector is very important because they have the finances required, and we need to get them on board.”

“Education cannot wait,” she says. There is an urgent need for more financial assistance from the private sector because this will make a difference and place SDG 4 and other related SDGs firmly within reach.

Segura says the participation and contribution of the private sector have other advantages.

“One of the things we have learned is that it is not just the financing of the gap in education but the logic and the thinking that the private sector can bring or contribute to managing education and scaling education solutions. That logic, thinking, and intellectual capital are critical even though we do not often discuss education matters in the private sector.”

In emergencies and conflict, the private sector could play a role in scaling what works.

“Also (it can) maintain a line of thinking that will prevail beyond the conflict or emergency situation. We have also learned that the private sector has a way of maintaining consistency beyond situations of emergency and conflict. We need to tap into that logic and their array of resources and infrastructure to finance the gap in education in conflict and emergency education.”

Jacobs Foundation co-CEO Fabio Segura stressed the need to look at the contribution of education in business and, at the same time, look at the contribution of business to education.

Segura stresses the need to look at the contribution of education in business and, at the same time, look at the contribution of business to education. This, he says, makes a case for engagement beyond capital and financing in emergencies as it means expanding horizons for investments and horizons for education returns.

As recent as 2017, and before the complexities introduced into global education by COVID-19, an estimated 262 million children in school were not learning basic skills like reading and writing, according to UNESCO.

“Access to education is critical, and we owe it to the next generation to be well educated. When a child goes to school longer, an opportunity for prosperity is higher for individuals, households, and society,” Danzi emphasizes.

Cross-sectoral engagement is needed to shape the future of learning and development by accelerating the speed of response in crises and helping connect immediate relief and long-term interventions to provide a safe, quality, and inclusive learning environment for affected children.

“We are in a time where all of the funding gaps to achieve SDGs are becoming very obvious, especially post-COVID-19, and so we have to redefine the role of philanthropies, government, business, and private sector in profiting from achieving those objectives that also allows us to cooperate better across sectors to achieve better goals,” he observes.

Sherif says the private sector has resources. They need to join forces with public donors, especially against a backdrop of substantial socio-economic inequities in the world and countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon that lack resources to finance education because of a history of conflict.

Sherif will also be speaking at another high-level panel discussion titled Neutral Ground: Education in Emergencies-Building Blocks for a Safer Future on Tuesday, May 24, 2022, highlighting the central role of education in facilitating success for children and youth in their diversity. This is a joint event by The LEGO Foundation, Street Child International, and ECW. The panel features Sherif; Chair of Learning through Play, The LEGO Foundation, Bo Stjerne Thomsen; CEO & Founder-Street Child International Tom Dannatt; Deloitte Representative/Moderator Melissa Raczak.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Andrew MacMillan
ROME, Jan 13 2015 (IPS)

About a week ago my wife was taken to hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia. She was promptly treated with antibiotics and, wonderfully, is now on the mend.

What has struck me about this experience is not so much the high professionalism of the health workers or their up-to-date hospital equipment but the fact that she has become immersed in what can best be described as “a culture of caring”.

Andrew MacMillan

She and the other patients in her ward are looked after round the clock by an extraordinary team of state-employed nurses in a quiet, efficient and courteous way that inspires confidence.

I suppose that there is nothing particularly unusual about this. Caring for others is a very natural human trait. Everywhere, mothers care for their children; sons and daughters care for their aging parents; and neighbours rush to help each other when they hit problems.

Perhaps, however, “modern” societies – if one dares to generalise about them – are driven more by the quest for individual material wealth than by any widely expressed wish to do things for the general good of humanity.

Unless you live in Bhutan, your country’s performance is measured not in terms of the happiness of its people but by the growth of its Gross Domestic Product; bankers and businessmen reward themselves with salary bonuses rather than with extra time with their families; and those who enjoy the highest pinnacles of wealth vie with each other over the size of their fleet of private jets or the tonnage of their personal yachts.

The idiosyncrasies of the super-rich and celebrities would not matter much if they had not become the new role models for people who aspire to “do well” in life and if their wealth did not entitle them to a voice in the corridors of world power. It seems odd that Presidents and Prime Ministers flock each year in January to [the World Economic Forum in] Davos to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, but perhaps this is simply a tacit admission of the influence that the latter have.“I believe that most people, at heart, want to see globalisation bring greater fairness and justice
even if this comes at the partial expense of our own material well-being”

Much of the recent material gains all around the planet is the result of the processes of globalisation that have successfully combined inventiveness, capital, low-cost but increasingly skilled labour and cheap transportation in new ways that have flooded the world’s markets with an amazing array of tantalising goods.

This apparent success of globalisation, however, may distract political attention from the idea that it could perhaps work better in everyone’s interest.

It seems absurd that 6 billion mobile phones have been produced and sold but 800 million people still go hungry every day; that, as people travel further, faster and more frequently, diseases such as Ebola spread more rapidly and more widely but the institutions responsible for protecting us from increased threats remain desperately under-funded; and that governments hesitate to upset their voters by acting to trim greenhouse gas emissions while, as predicted, the increasing frequency of extreme weather events is repeatedly wreaking havoc upon the unfortunate.

We tend to take these problems for granted rather than face up to the need to identify how to best manage globalisation in the interests of humanity.

I believe that most people, at heart, want to see globalisation bring greater fairness and justice even if this comes at the partial expense of our own material well-being.

I do not think that there are many people who, if asked, would want to see others starve for lack of food, who welcome greater weather instability or who think that it is right that their children should suffer from the environmental damage that results from our unsustainable lifestyles.

In a sense, President Lula of Brazil put this idea to the test during his successful 2002 campaign. Breaking out of the normal political mould, he did not promise his voters higher incomes but simply pledged that all Brazilians would enjoy three meals a day by the end of his term in office.

He unveiled his Zero Hunger Programme on his first day as President, with the State assuming the responsibility for assuring that all the poorest families in the country could fulfil their right to food. There was huge outpouring of popular support for his efforts to create the more just and equitable society that has now emerged.

What many of us would like to see is the emergence of a new international consciousness of social justice similar to that proposed by Lula and embraced by Brazilians twelve years ago.

It must be founded on a growing public recognition of the unique role that multilateral institutions have to play in ensuring that globalisation is harnessed to benefit all people, especially the poorest of the poor. It must also assure greater inter-generational fairness in the use of our planet’s scarce resources.

Nowhere is the need for greater fairness more apparent than in the realm of food management – where we face a crazy situation in which, though ample food is produced, the health of more than half the world’s population is now damaged by bad nutrition.

It is fitting that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, should have launched his personal “Zero Hunger Challenge” in Brazil in 2012 when he called for the elimination of hunger “within my lifetime”.

The fact that the current Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – the United Nations agency that that oversees global food management – is José Graziano da Silva, who was the Brazilian architect of Lula’s Zero Hunger Programme, inspires confidence that it will do all in its power to bring about a world without hunger.

We can already see a renewed FAO in action – committed to ending hunger and malnutrition, more focused in its goals, working as one and embracing partnerships for a better present and future. Four more years will allow Graziano da Silva to consolidate the transformations he has begun and realise their full effect to the benefit of the world´s poor and hungry.

Hopefully 2015 will be a year in which the world’s leaders will become the champions of the justice and fairness – the caring society that my wife has experienced – to which so many of us aspire.

At the very least, they should pick up the thought that, as in Brazil, it should be a perfectly normal function of any self-respecting government to ensure that all its people can eat healthily.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Chinese People's Liberation Army-Navy sailors stand watch on the submarine Yuan at the Zhoushan Naval Base. Credit: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/CC-BY-2.0

By Richard Heydarian
SINGAPORE, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

China’s early-May decision to dispatch the state-of-the-art oil rig, HYSY981, into Vietnam’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), has intensified ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, raising fears of uncontrolled military escalation in one of the world’s most important waterways.

It wasn’t long before Vietnamese and Chinese maritime forces were locked in a dangerous naval standoff, which led to low-intensity clashes in the high seas.

China’s unilateral action sparked outrage across Vietnam, paving the way for unprecedented anti-China protests, which snowballed into massive destruction of foreign-owned factories, principally owned by China and Taiwan, and the exodus of thousands of Chinese citizens to neighbouring Cambodia.

The whole episode undermined years of painstaking negotiations between Hanoi and Beijing aimed at peacefully resolving bilateral territorial disputes across the South China Sea.

Shortly after, the Philippines also released photos suggesting Chinese construction activities on the Johnson South Reef, a disputed feature that falls within the Philippines EEZ in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea.

Later, China confirmed that it was indeed engaged in reclamation activities on the disputed reef, but it tried to justify it by claiming it exercised “indisputable and inherent” sovereignty over the said feature based on Beijing’s notorious “nine-dash-line” doctrine, which covers almost the entirety of the South China Sea.

The Philippines and Vietnam contend that China has flagrantly violated the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which explicitly discourages claimant states from unilaterally altering the status by engaging in, among other things, construction activities on disputed features.

Alarmed by the intensifying territorial disputes between China and other claimant states, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expressed “serious concern” and called for a rule-based, peaceful resolution of the disputes.

Expecting a more vigorous response from ASEAN, Vietnamese and Filipino leaders called for the swift finalisation of a legally-binding Code of Conduct (CoC) in the South China Sea, and vowed to forge a bilateral “strategic partnership” to counter China’s territorial assertiveness. Meanwhile, other Pacific powers such as Japan and the U.S. have also stepped up their criticism of China’s recent actions, underscoring their direct national interest in preserving freedom of navigation in international waters.

“Whatever construction China carries out on the [Johnson South] reef is a matter entirely within the scope of China’s sovereignty,” argued China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Hua Chunyin, dismissing protests by Filipino officials.

Confronting an increasingly assertive and powerful China, the Philippines and Vietnam have moved closer to a genuine alliance. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia in late-May, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung agreed to forge a bilateral strategic partnership, with a particular focus on maritime and defense cooperation vis-à-vis the ongoing disputes in the South China Sea.

“We face common challenges as maritime nations and as brothers in ASEAN,” declared Aquino during his meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, underscoring Manila’s desire to establish a closer partnership with neighbouring countries.

“In defense and security, we discussed how we can enhance confidence building, our defense capabilities and interoperability in addressing security challenges.”

“More than ever before, ASEAN and the international community need to continue raising a strong voice in protesting against [China’s territorial assertiveness], securing a strict observance of the international law, and peace and stability in the region and the world,” lamented Dung, underscoring Hanoi’s urgent desire for the multilateral resolution of the ongoing disputes.

Recognising China’s military superiority, and the inefficacy of existing diplomatic mechanisms, both the Philippines and Vietnam have been looking towards external powers such as Japan and the U.S. to counter China’s territorial assertiveness.

Much of Asia’s trade and energy transport passes through the South China Sea, and there is a growing fear that ongoing territorial disputes will spiral into a prolonged, destructive conflict, which could affect all regional economies.

Influential actors across the region have been desperately searching for new mechanisms to deescalate ongoing territorial tensions, preventing claimant states, primarily China, from undertaking any destabilising action.

“Japan intends to play an even greater and more proactive role than it has until now in making peace in Asia and the world something more certain,” declared Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the recently-concluded 13^th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which brought together leading defense officials, experts, and journalists from around the world, and saw spirited exchanges between top officials from Japan, the U.S. and China.

During the high-level gathering, Abe, the keynote speaker, sought to present Japan as a counterweight to China, with Tokyo relaxing its self-imposed restrictions on arms exports, increasing its defense spending, and seeking new ways to expand its security role in the Asian region.

“We take no position on competing territorial claims [in the South China Sea]… But we firmly oppose any nation’s use of intimidation, coercion or the threat of force to assert these claims,” argued U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, underscoring Washington’s growing alarm over China’s territorial posturing in the Western Pacific.

In response, China’s top representative, Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of staff of the Chinese military, was uncharacteristically blunt in his criticisms, describing Hagel’s remarks as “excessive beyond . . . imagination [and] suffused with hegemonism . . . threats and intimidation.”

Under a new nationalist government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is also expected to play a more pro-active role in the region, given New Delhi’s growing trade with East Asia and its large-scale investments in the hydrocarbon-rich areas of the South China Sea. The U.S.’ treaty allies such as Australia have also stepped up their efforts at containing China’s rising territorial assertiveness, as the two Pacific powers deepen their naval interoperability and defense cooperation.

Overall, it seems that China’s rising assertiveness has encouraged a flexible counter-alliance of like-minded countries, which are heavily concerned with the economic and geopolitical fallout of the brewing conflict in the South China Sea. It remains to be seen, however, whether China will relent on its territorial claims amid growing international pressure.

(END)

'The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things'. Painting by Hieronymus Bosch, kept in the Museo del Prado, Madrid

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

It is a great pity that, beside opening the doors to ethics, social justice and peace, Pope Francis does not also give indications of updating  traditional theology. The most urgent task is to update the Seven Deadly Sins.

The update should be done on their social impact and viciousness. How it is possible to equate, for example, sloth and gluttony with greed? In the 1987 film Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider played by Michael Douglas, says that greed, not gluttony, moves man. And it is very doubtful that all the people who are now moved by greed are also victims of gluttony, when they usually are on a diet!

Roberto Savio. Credit: IPS

According to the United Nations, throughout the world there are over 1.5 billion people who are obese or overweight compared with 842 million who suffer from undernourishment. The problem is that the obese or overweight are not usually the result of overfeeding but of junk food marketing by large corporations (McDonald’s and the like) – and the poor are the most overweight because junk food is cheap.

And sloth is certainly not a social threat, even if urban legend has it that people are poor because they do not want to work.

So, let us concentrate on greed, and see why it is time for an update.“We are rushing forward to the past, and the times of Queen Victoria, when an obscure German philosopher and economist by the name of Karl Marx was working … on his denunciation of exploitation, and preparing his Communist Manifesto”

We have reached a point where the preachers of ethics are central bankers. Speaking last week in London at the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that ”some prominent firms have even been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms.” And Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned that “unbridled faith in financial markets” before the crisis, rising inequality and recent “demonstrations of corruption” has damaged “social capital”.

This must have gone down well in the country of understatement. According to Lagarde, the big banks are still being subsidised to the tune of 70 billion dollars in the United States and 300 billion dollars in the Eurozone. And in spite of this, regulators around the world have imposed 5.8 billion dollars in penalties for attempting to manipulate market benchmark rates.

Mark Carney solemnly told the London conference: “Ultimately … integrity can neither be bought nor regulated. Even with the best possible framework of codes, principles, compensation schemes and market discipline, financiers must constantly challenge themselves to the standards they uphold.”

And this is exactly the problem. James Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank, and with a 74 percent raise in salary for 2013, considers regulations “un-American”. In 2013, the bank paid 18.6 billion dollars in fines. The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has just slapped a 2.6 billion dollar fine on Credit Suisse for helping U.S. citizens to evade taxes. In December 2013, the European Commission levied fines totalling 1.04 billion euros (1.42 billion dollars) on Barclays, Deutsche Bank, RBS and Société Générale for having manipulated the Euribor benchmark interest rate. Are we therefore to think that this is “un-European”?

It is worth noting that, in this orgy of fines, none of those bankers responsible ever went to jail. They just received salary increase, as the case of James Dimon shows. Banks are inanimate objects, they cannot go to jail. The U.S. Justice Department has gone to great lengths to guarantee that banks will not be treated like criminals because banks cannot be put out of business. These are “the standards they uphold”.

A new contribution to theology has been revealed in Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, a recently published book by Timothy Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and U.S. Treasury Secretary during the 2007-2009 crisis. Writing in the Financial Times of May 28, Martin Wolf says: “Mr. Geithner argues not only that crises are sure to recur but that governments must react with overwhelming force … the government must borrow more, spend more and expose taxpayers to more short-term risk – ‘even if it seems to reward incompetence and venality, even if it fuels perceptions of an out-of-control, money-spewing, bailout-crazed big government’.”

But Geithner “also offers a law of unintended consequences. The safer the visible financial system is made, he argues, the greater the danger that the fragility will emerge somewhere less visible, but possibly even more dangerous.” So the new theology of the financial system is that because it is impossible to make it safe, let us not introduce regulations which, Geithner says, “often be self-defeating.”

Yet, until 1999, when then U.S. President Bill Clinton (culminating a process started by Ronald Reagan) repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which had separated commercial and investment banking for seven decades, we had nothing of what we see today.

Deposit banks were obliged to use citizens’ funds under tight regulations, and the money they raised through deposits was used to finance commercial and capital growth. Now, all the money goes into speculation, and as everybody knows, banks have little patience with small investors and citizens because returns are much smaller than from the various instruments of financial speculation. If anything goes wrong, states are obliged to bail the banks out.

Where does this logic lead? Obviously into taking many risks (the higher, the better return), taking home the highest possible salaries, and knowing that the collectivity is there to bail you out when needed. Clearly, this logic could not exist, if it was not as a shining daughter of greed.

It is a sign of the times that in her speech in London, Lagarde used the same language that Oxfam used at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. She reminded the audience that “the 85 richest people in the world, who could fit into a single London double-decker, control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population– that is 3.5 billion people.”

Now, we know from French economist Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling book Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century, that the growth of this concentration of capital is faster than that of general growth, which is a way to say that these 85 people will continue to suck money from the general market, and therefore the rich will become richer and the poor will become poorer.

In other words, what we are witnessing is a progressive reduction of the middle class, while we are rushing forward to the past, and the times of Queen Victoria, when an obscure German philosopher and economist by the name of Karl Marx was working in the British Library in London on his denunciation of exploitation, and preparing his Communist Manifesto.

This trend is happening everywhere, and at every level. The increase in sales of giant U.S. retailer Walmart fell from 5 percent in 2012 to just 1.6 percent last year. Under Walmart’s pay plan, pay increases would only take effect after growth of 2 percent. So what did its brilliant accountants come up with? They took into in consideration only certain items, making sure to come up with a figure of 2.02 percent growth, permitting William S. Simon, president and chief executive officer of Walmart U.S. to receive a salary increase of 1 million dollars, taking his total salary to 13 million dollars. Meanwhile, the average full-time Walmart employee makes 27,000 dollars a year.

Worse still is the case of restaurants chains, which are setting up a strong line of attack to U.S. President Barack Obama’s idea of raising minimum wages (just like they did in Germany). Ever heard of a chain called Chipotle Mexican Grill? Even if you have, the odds are that you did not know that last year, Steve Ellis, its co-chief executive officer, made 25.1 million dollars while the other co-chief executive officer, Montgomery Moran, made another 24.4 million dollars. As you can see, they make even more than James Dimon.

The average salary at one of Chipotle Mexican Grill’s 1,600 restaurants is 21,000 dollars. Therefore, one employee with this salary would have to work for more than a thousand years to equal one year of the co-chief executive officer’s salaries.

By the way, Mr. Ellis has received more than 145 million dollars in Chipotle stocks since 2011, and Mr. Moran at least 104.5 million.

Now, is it possible that it is the gluttony of Mr. Ellis and Mr. Moran that creates such a world of absurd inequalities? No, but greed certainly does.

Time to update the Seven Deadly Sins, Pope Francis … (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

The very contemporary medieval novels of Welsh author Ken Follett transport readers to a time when the rich had everything – and the poor didn’t even own themselves.

These stories, set in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, provide some consolation to today’s readers, who are now surrounded by comforts, freedoms and guarantees.

Poverty was the norm back then. As Follett himself says, “the richest of princes did not live as well as, say, a prisoner in a modern jail.”

Poverty and inequality are not the same thing, but they reinforce each other. In the poverty-stricken Middle Ages, the inequality was terrible. Between the dispossessed common people and the princes, feudal lords and powerful members of the clergy there was a social and economic vacuum that took decades to fill.

Opulence is the overarching parameter of success in 21st century society. But the problem is that all around the world, the rich are getting richer and richer while the armies of poor are pulling out of poverty very slowly, and are never far from the edge.

In India, which is home to 1.2 billion people, the number of billionaires rose tenfold in the last decade. In 2003 they owned 1.8 percent of the national wealth, compared to 26 percent in 2008, according to the international development organisation Oxfam.

Meanwhile, progress in reducing extreme poverty has been too slow: there were 429 million indigents in 1981 and 400 million in 2010, the World Bank reports.

Inequality is increasing across the globe, warn institutions as representative of the neoliberal, free market deregulation mindset as the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum.

According to the Credit Suisse bank, 10 percent of the world population holds 86 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 70 percent (over three billion people) holds just three percent.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report, based on a survey of global elites, stresses income disparity as one of the principal emerging risks.

Are we returning to the Middle Ages?

That would appear to be impossible. The middle classes, or the ranks of the “non-poor”, continue to grow, especially in the large developing countries.

Extreme poverty has been drastically reduced around the world since the 1980s. In 1981, over half of the population of developing countries was extremely poor – a proportion that shrank to 21 percent by 2010, according to the World Bank.

But gaps in income and wealth are growing wider, including in places with well-established middle classes, like Europe or the United States.

Several analysts link the massive numbers of people pulling out of poverty and the growing public perception of inequality with the eruption of social discontent in countries as different as Turkey, Brazil or Chile.

In the 21st century inequality remains a major problem, with new facets in the context of globalised capitalism.

In this scenario, Latin America stands out as an anomaly: while it is still the most unequal region in the world, it is also the only one that has begun to close the gap in the past few years.

Inequality was the focus of a May 22-23 seminar in Santiago, which drew 23 journalists from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. The event was organised by the IPS international news agency with the support of Norway’s foreign ministry.

The seminar, “Other faces of inequality: inequity, corruption and the informal economy in South America”, was aimed at encouraging journalists to report on tough issues like weak tax systems and tax evasion, and the magnitude of informal or precarious labour.

Experts from the United Nations and academia, transparency activists, social researchers and leaders, and student activists offered statistics and viewpoints to inform the discussions and debate in the seminar.

That trove of information included shady aspects that could help explain the social discontent in the most solid and successful economy in Latin America: Chile.

For example, tax evasion stands at 46 percent in the richest segment of the population. And the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, two well-known tax havens, are among the main countries of origin of foreign direct investment in Chile.

In Latin America, poverty was reduced from 48.4 percent in 1990 to 27.9 percent in 2013. And extreme poverty is at its lowest level ever: 11.5 percent, according to Martín Hopenhayn, director of the Social Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

But there are signs that poverty reduction is slowing down. And little progress has been made in modifying the productive structure or the educational system, which are “structural causes of inequality,” he said.

Moreover, the region does a poor job collecting taxes, with direct tax revenue accounting for just 4.4 percent of Latin America’s gross domestic product, against eight percent that comes from indirect taxes, which disproportionately affect the poor.

This is a key aspect, said Hopenhayn, because improved fiscal capacity can correct “the unequalising dynamics of the market.”

But with all of its limitations, Latin America’s experience would appear to be inspiring.

According to Oxfam, “The case of Latin America gives us hope that the global trend of rising inequality can be reversed.”

Latin America is the region where tax revenue has grown the fastest in recent years, and that growth has translated into social spending to curb inequality.

Between 2002 and 2011, income inequality fell in 14 of the 17 countries studied, and some 50 million people climbed into the middle class – which means that for the first time in history, there are more people in the middle classes than in poverty, says the World Bank, although many still have one foot in the abyss.

After winning the inequality championship for so long, Latin America could become a trendsetter when it comes to equality. Other changes will show whether it is just a passing fad.

Intravenous drug users are the last in line to get support from Pakistan's government-run AIDS programme. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2014 (IPS)

In the exclusive, rarified air of Davos, Thursday’s attendees at the World Economic Forum shared in a whiff of decriminalisation at a panel on drug policy in the Swiss alpine city that included former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Texas Governor Rick Perry and the head of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth.

“I believe that drugs have destroyed many people, but wrong governmental policies have destroyed many more,” said Annan.  “When we realised [alcohol] prohibition wasn’t working, we had the courage to change it.”"How can I tell a farmer with half a hectare growing marijuana he will go to jail if in the [U.S.] states of Washington and Colorado it's legal?" -- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos

Santos echoed a common theme, complaining of half-baked policies and lip service paid to drug reforms. Colombia, for many years Washington’s staunchest ally in the so-called war on drugs, has recently made an about-face, joining much of Latin America in questioning the increasingly violent consequences of prohibition.

Perry served as a foil for the other three panelists, though he agreed that U.S. states had the right to decide on policies independently from the federal government.

“I am not for legalisation of drugs,” Perry said. “We certainly would never jump out in front of a parade because that’s where the public seems to be going.”

“I’ve long wondered what it would take to persuade the Davos organisers to put drug policy on the main stage of the forum,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Drug policy reform as a global political movement has come of age.”

Davos comes a month after a leaked internal U.N. document showcased disagreement among member states over the future course of global drug policy. Shortly after, Uruguay became the first country to legalise possession of marijuana, flouting existing U.N. conventions.

The response from the U.N.’s quasi-judicial International Narcotics Control Board was tepid and left the door ajar for more countries to challenge a faltering consensus on interdiction.

“I don’t see any evidence of any political will at the U.N. to penalise states that are exploring these options,” said Sean Dunagan, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in Guatemala and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The U.S., which largely wrote the U.N. conventions that codified the war on drugs, has emerged Janus-faced on the world stage, with a president who admittedly inhaled, recent legalisation in two U.S. states – Colorado and Washington – and a populace increasingly unbothered by drug use among their friends and neighbours.

“How can I tell a farmer with half a hectare growing marijuana he will go to jail if in the states of Washington and Colorado it’s legal?” said Santos.

Despite increasingly viral coverage of the few that flout interdiction – next week’s Superbowl pits teams from Washington and Colorado and has been dubbed the “Marijuana Bowl” – nearly all countries still schedule and criminalise drugs based on guidelines codified in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

“I see the conventions as lagging indicators. I don’t think they will be changed any time soon,” Dunagan told IPS.

In the developing world, Nadelmann says countries tend to pull their punches and can at times feel obliged to follow the path of retrograde policies, even as the countries which authored them distance themselves from those laws.

“Policy innovation in this area doesn’t come easily or naturally in Africa,” Nadelmann told IPS. “I think the old moralistic notions have yet to really be challenged.”

But Nadelmann says Annan’s evolution on the issue is vital for the region and carries significant symbolic weight. In 1998, Annan oversaw a special session of the General Assembly that focused exclusively on eradication, much to the chagrin of activists. But by 2011, Annan had joined other members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy in encouraging “experimentation with models of legal regulation of drugs.”

“What’s most significant in many ways is the fact that Kofi Annan was willing to identify so publicly and boldly with the cause of drug policy reform. He’s been on the global commission since its inception, but it’s only in the last year that he’s begun to step out of it more,” said Nadelmann. “In recent months he’s decided to make a deeper commitment on the issue.”

In May, the Organisation of American States released a report that raised the prospect – long advocated by harm reduction activists – of decriminalisation, elevating the easing of interdiction policies that since the 1970s were accepted as gospel by countries when confronting drug use.

Though Colombia had successfully reined in its once seemingly-untouchable cartels, Santos said increased production elsewhere, particularly in Central America, was an example of the “balloon” effect, where eradication only displaces, rather than eliminates production and does nothing to reduce demand.

While the U.S. relaxes federal enforcement domestically, militarisation continues in Central America, where DEA agents silently accompany local forces on often violent missions in rural areas.

Perry’s Socratic responses seemed to at times befuddle other panelists, particularly when he attempted to draw links to the fight against Al Qaeda. “How long have we been in the War on Terror?” asked the governor to the bemusement of the crowd.

Dunagan said it was important that reform not forget those already incarcerated. In the U.S., half a million prisoners are currently serving terms for drug offences.

“There are declines in prosecutions in Colorado and Washington but people aren’t being led out of jail in those states,” said Dunagan.

“There’s certainly a willingness for world leaders to challenge that orthodoxy that is U.S.-driven, and is enforced by the U.S. via the U.N. The trend is clear but I don’t know if we are at a critical mass.”

Twelve-year-old Maruf lives in a shanty in Nayanagar, close to a Dhaka suburb. He works at a nearby car workshop, fixing luxury car engines for about six dollars a month. He shares this meagre income with his family of four. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Nov 20 2013 (IPS)

Growing income inequality will pose a major threat to social stability in countries around the globe, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum.

Based on a worldwide survey of experts from academia, government and the non-profit sector, the report finds that income inequality is the second most important trend in the top 10 that are likely to impact social stability over the next year.“People see that there is that one percent of the population that is at the very top of the system and keeps on accumulating wealth." -- Christian Meyer

It cites rising tensions in the Middle East and persistent structural unemployment as other major global threats.

But while the findings are primarily geared toward highlighting income inequality within countries, experts suggest that there is also a global picture that needs emphasis, one where national borders are less of a factor.

“Looking at income inequality within a given country makes perfect sense, because government policies will affect the way people live there,” Christian Meyer, a research associate at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank here, told IPS.

“But there’s also an international perspective, one that goes beyond the national level, where if we take people and compare their income levels, without thinking about national borders, we will find that income inequality is incredibly high, much higher.”

The report is based on responses offered by the nearly 1,600 experts that make up the Network of Global Agenda Councils (NGAC), a global community of over 80 councils representing “thought leaders” around the world. The World Economic Forum describes itself as an independent international organisation that gathers world leaders from business, academia and the non-profit sector to try to shape the global social and economic agenda. Its members come primarily from companies and industries from the developed world. 

“Widening wealth disparity affects every part of our lives,” the report notes. “It’s impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale, and looking ahead to 2014, it’s essential that we devise innovative solutions to the causes and consequences of a world becoming ever more unequal.”

According to this new body of research, growing income inequality has become a major threat in both the developing and developed world, including North America, where the survey reveals that income inequality is the number one challenge.

The “incredible wealth created over the last decade in the [United States] has gone to a smaller and smaller portion of the population,” the report warns, “and the disparity stems from many of the same roots as in developing countries.”

According to the WEF survey, nearly two-thirds of U.S. citizens think that the current economic system favours the wealthy. But in some European countries, where people are still recovering from the global economic crisis that has left thousands of people out of work, the percentage is much higher.

Elite capture

As the gap between rich and poor widens according to both national and international metrics, analysts worry that people will be more likely to take the streets to voice their frustrations with a system that paves the way for the privileged few. This scenario, the report notes, is likely to lead to greater social instability and may threaten global security.

“Unrest cloaked in a desire to change from one political leader to another is a manifestation of people’s concerns about their basic needs,” the report notes. It also stresses that it is usually the young who are most willing to do so, as they feel “they have nothing else to lose.”

“People see that there is that one percent of the population that is at the very top of the system and keeps on accumulating wealth,” the CGD’s Meyer says. “So they realise that there must be something wrong going on at the top, that this is a form of ‘elite capture’.”

Indeed, the perception of elite capture, or the lack of social mobility, is what seems to be at the root of much of this widespread disaffection.

“The problem with this concentration of income is that it self-perpetuates from one generation to the other through a series of mechanisms, such as good education, but also through the access to good networks,” Ricardo Fuentes, head of research at Oxfam Great Britain, a humanitarian group, told IPS.

“This self-perpetuation means that the whole idea of equality of opportunity and that ‘all men are created equal’ is seriously undermined.”

This phenomenon, Fuentes notes, has led to people increasingly believing that personal effort and merit will not bring them anywhere, and that their government will only listen to the voices of the rich.

“Even in countries where governments are elected democratically,” he says, “we are increasingly seeing that the rich use their money to influence the government and the media through lobbies and other mechanisms that make them particularly influential.”

Reversing the trend

The report’s release comes as the NGAC’s leaders are gathered in Abu Dhabi Nov. 18-20 for the 2013 Summit on the Global Agenda, where they plan to discuss the topics that will be part of the yearly summit the WEF will hold in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

At the summit’s opening, WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab noted that the “biggest challenge we have today is the incapability of the system of global governance to take the necessary time and devote the necessary attention to construct our future.”

As leaders seek to come up with solutions to income inequality, some suggest that the recent growth witnessed by some Latin American countries may be one way to tackle the issue elsewhere.

“We know from history that having a more equal society is not a utopian objective,” Fuentes says. “Up until the 1980s, there was more investment in public education, a conscious effort by the state to strengthen safety nets, and a growing standard of living for workers.”

More countries, particularly in Latin America, are taking fiscal measures that reflect these policies, he says, at least according to certain indicators. “And now, they have actually started to reverse inequality.”