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	Setting serious goals to combat inequality by 320 economists from sixty seven countries   The explosive rise in inequality, by Jayati Ghosh - Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts.   Recently, more than 320 economists from around the world (including myself) signed a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the World Bank president, Ajay Banga. The letter expressed concern about the explosive rise in inequality, which has recently grown more rapidly than at any time since the second world war.   So acute has this process been that, even as extreme wealth has increased to incredible levels, absolute poverty has also increased. Furthermore, inequality of per capita income between countries, which had been coming down, has once again started to increase.   This unprecedented increase in inequality has many adverse, even destructive, consequences. As we note in our letter, it ‘corrodes our politics, destroys trust, hamstrings our collective economic prosperity and weakens multilateralism’. It also hinders attempts to prevent climate breakdown and address the impacts of climate change.   Indeed, none of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 for realisation by 2030, is likely to be achieved without a strong focus on reducing inequality.   Problematic measurements   This is where the UN and the World Bank come in. Reducing inequality is itself one of the SDGs (10), which are all under mid-term review this year. There has been backsliding on most in the recent past but SDG 10 has been particularly badly affected. It has been an orphan even among the SDGs, marginalised by lack of champions in the multilateral system.   What makes this worse is that the metrics used to track progress on inequality are very inadequate. The World Bank is charged with monitoring this goal.   The bank does not rely on the widely recognised measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient (which encapsulates the dispersion of incomes across the entire distribution and ranges from 0 for total equality to 1 for infinite inequality) or the Palma ratio (the share of the top income decile (10 per cent) divided by the income share accruing to the bottom 40 per cent).   Instead, it applies a notion of ‘shared prosperity’, expressed as the need to ‘progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average’. This is a bizarre idea of inequality: it leaves the rich out of the equation! And it provides very misleading estimates of the extent of inequality or progress in reducing it.   Work by Development Finance International shows that, according to the bank’s indicator, of the 79 countries for which survey data were available for the period just before the pandemic, 42 (53 per cent) showed progress, nine (11 per cent) no change and 28 (35 per cent) deteriorating performance.   Yet countries can show improvement on this indicator even as incomes become more concentrated at the very top. The bank’s own Gini estimates contrastingly show that, among 78 countries, over the same period, the coefficient fell in only 34, remained unchanged in 31 and rose in 13.   Even for this, however, the World Bank relies on consumption surveys, which tend to underestimate top incomes because richer households are less likely to respond accurately, if at all, to such surveys. It therefore makes sense to incorporate other information, such as from mandatory tax returns.   Filling the gaps in knowledge to target the problems   This is what the World Inequality Database provides. Its data cover a much wider range of 172 countries and it discloses much more severe inequality. According to the WID, over the same period 2015-19, only 26 per cent of countries showed improving Gini coefficients, 37 per cent stagnated and 36 per cent worsened. So, three-quarters of countries showed no progress or even backsliding in terms of inequality.   Using the Palma ratio, which captures the difference between rich and poor, the situation is even worse. According to the WID data for this period, only 12 per cent of countries showed improvement in the ratio, while 35 per cent stagnated and the majority, 53 per cent, worsened. And it is well known that inequality increased significantly during and after the pandemic.   This is the lived experience of people across most of the world. Amid increasing divergence between rich and poor, talking of ‘shared prosperity’ looks like fudging, likely only to excite cynicism. Our letter therefore asks the UN and the World Bank to shift to the much more plausible and widely used indicators to track progress on SDG 10.   It is also critical to reduce wealth inequalities, which have increased even more than income disparities. The latest World Inequality Report revealed that the richest 10 per cent of people in the world own 76 per cent of all wealth, while the poorest half have virtually none. Indeed, many are in debt, with ‘negative wealth’. Tracking and reducing wealth inequality is therefore key.   Furthermore, while the stated goal of SDG 10 is to ‘reduce inequality within and among countries’, at the moment no indicator is used to track between-country inequality. Yet it is widely accepted that global economic processes since the pandemic, and then the war in Ukraine, have led to sharp increases in inequalities across countries. Tracking these is an essential first step to working to reduce them.   It is difficult, if not impossible, to do something about a problem if we do not even measure it properly. More and more people across the world recognise this and are demanding change. It is now up to governments and the multilateral process to respond to this demand.   July 2023   Open Letter to the United Nations Secretary-General and President of the World Bank - Setting Serious Goals to Combat Inequality   Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres and President of the World Bank Ajay Banga,   RE: Setting serious goals to combat inequality   As a group of economists and leaders in the fight against extreme inequalities from around the world, we write to request your leadership towards ensuring that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank back vital new strategic goals and indicators, that can redouble efforts to address rising extreme inequality.   We are living through a time of extraordinarily high economic inequality. Extreme poverty and extreme wealth have risen sharply and simultaneously for the first time in 25 years. Between 2019 and 2020, global inequality grew more rapidly than at any time since WW2.   The richest 10% of the global population currently takes 52% of global income, whereas the poorest half of the population earns 8.5% of it. Billions of people face the terrible hardship of high and rising food prices and hunger, whilst the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade.   We know that high inequality undermines all our social and environmental goals. The 2006 World Development Report, as well as multiple other studies, have shown that extreme inequality of the kind we are observing today has a destructive effect on society.   It corrodes our politics, destroys trust, hamstrings our collective economic prosperity and weakens multilateralism. We also know that without a sharp reduction in inequality, the twin goals of ending poverty and preventing climate breakdown will be in clear conflict.   In 2015, all the governments of the world made history by setting themselves a Sustainable Development Goal to reduce inequalities – “SDG10”. Yet since then, following the COVID-19 pandemic and now the global cost of living crisis inequalities have worsened, by many measures. SDG10 remains largely ignored.   Equally troubling, the main SDG10 target, based on the World Bank’s Shared Prosperity goal, does not adequately measure or monitor key aspects of inequality. Evidence from household surveys shows that one in five countries showing a positive trend in Shared Prosperity simultaneously saw inequality by other measures, like the Palma Ratio, increase, including countries such as Mongolia, Chile and Vietnam.   We have a critical opportunity to strengthen our resolve to reduce this deep divide and send a clear signal to people around the world that the institutions designed to serve them are serious about ending this crisis of extreme inequality.   We must strengthen our existing goals. We must act this summer to secure agreement that the UN SDG 10 must also have strengthened targets and better metrics, looking at inequalities both between countries and within them by using indicators that track wealth as well as income inequality.   We are pleased that the World Bank is reviewing its Shared Prosperity goal. The new leadership of the World Bank has an opportunity to strengthen this goal to assess inequalities across the entire spectrum of the income and wealth distribution.   There have been significant advances in inequality data, such as more accurate estimates of top incomes, helping to enable a new generation of policy making rooted in a clear distributional analysis of the impact of policy changes.   These need to be systematised and pushed further, to enable high-level inequality analysis by every government. This will be the only way to ensure broad political consensus for the transformation our economies must make to a zero-carbon future.   Goals matter. Leadership matters. The Bank and UN SDGs are uniquely placed to offer the rallying call for a reduction in inequality that our divided world needs so urgently today. We ask you to seize this opportunity to back stronger goals and better metrics for both wealth and income, as well as wage shares of national income. Also, SDG10 is not a separate, standalone goal: all economic, financial, and social policies should be assessed in terms of their likely impact on this goal. This would clearly signal our collective ambition to forge a more equal world.   http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/economy-and-ecology/taking-inequality-seriously-and-tackling-it-seriously-6874/ http://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/jul/17/top-economists-call-for-action-global-inequality-rich-poor-poverty-climate-breakdown-un-world-bank http://cic.nyu.edu/resources/president-of-namibia-chief-minister-of-sierra-leone-and-other-world-leaders-call-for-bolder-action-on-inequality-and-sdg10-at-unga/ http://www.sdg16.plus/resources/joint-statement-on-sdg-10/   * The 2022 World Inequality Report revealed that the richest 10 per cent of people in the world own 76 per cent of all wealth, while the poorest half have virtually none. Indeed, many are in debt, with ‘negative wealth’: http://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/   Sep. 2023   Poverty & Hunger eradication targets to miss UN’s 2030 deadline by wide margins, by Thalif Deen for the Inter Press service   When the UN’s 193 member states reviewed the current status of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, the verdict was mostly failures—and with little or no successes.   The hunger/poverty nexus was best characterized by Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), who warned last week that under current trends, at least 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030—and as many people suffering from hunger by 2030 as in 2015 (over 600 million people).   “Hunger remains a political issue, mostly caused by poverty, inequality, conflict, corruption and overall lack of access to food and resources. In a world of plenty, which produces enough food to feed everyone, how can there be hundreds of millions going hungry?” he asked.   According to the UN, all developing countries also suffer from severe debt problems. These countries cannot fund progress on the SDGs if they are facing exorbitant borrowing costs and paying more on debt servicing than on health or education.   “Developing countries face borrowing costs up to eight times higher than developed countries – a debt trap. And one in three countries around the world is now at high risk of a fiscal crisis. Over 40 per cent of people living in extreme poverty are in countries with severe debt challenges,” warned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week.   The high-level segment of the UN General Assembly attracted about 88 Heads of State, six vice presidents, 43 Heads of Government, four deputy prime ministers, 41 ministers, seven chiefs of delegations, plus three high-level speakers from UN observer states.   The high-level meetings included the SDG Summit and a forum on Financing for Development (FfD), among others. The active participants also included scores of civil society organizatiions (CSOs).   Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Officer – Evidence and Engagement at CIVICUS told IPS that a major reason the SDGs are off-track is because 85% of the world’s population live in countries with severe civic space restrictions which severely impedes meaningful civil society partnerships and deprives communities of innovations in sustainable development, service delivery to the most excluded, and importantly, transparency, accountability and participation in how development policies are implemented.   The SDG Stimulus put forward by Secretary General Guterres, he pointed out, should be accompanied by guarantees for civic freedoms and effective civil society partnerships.   Otherwise, funds intended for sustainable development, that leaves ‘no one behind’, are likely to be channeled to support networks of patronage and to shore up repressive state apparatuses, he noted.   “It’s unacceptable in this 75th year of the celebration of the Universal of Declaration of Human Rights that civil society activists and investigative journalists should be persecuted for uncovering high level corruption and serious human rights violations”.   He said demanding transformative social and economic policies is a dangerous activity in far too many countries around the world.   “The globe is a facing an acute crisis of leadership due to a toxic mix of authoritarianism and populist nationalism which is leading to unabashed promotion of perceived national interest at the expense of the rules based international order intended to create a better world for all,” Tiwana declared.   Guterres gave a new political twist to the SDGs when he said the ”goals” were really ”promises”   “A promise to build a world of health, progress and opportunity for all. A promise to leave no one behind. And a promise to pay for it”.   This was not a promise made to one another as diplomats from the comfort of this chamber, he argued. “It was — always — a promise to people”.   People crushed under the grinding wheels of poverty. People starving in a world of plenty. Children denied a seat in a classroom. Families fleeing conflicts, seeking a better life. Parents watching helplessly as their children die of preventable disease.   People losing hope because they can’t find a job — or a safety net when they need it. Entire communities literally on devastation’s doorstep because of changing climate. So, the SDGs aren’t just a list of goals, he declared.   In an interview with IPS, Amitabh Behar, interim Executive Director of Oxfam International, said: “Unfortunately, in Oxfam’s programmatic, advocacy, and campaigning work, we see clearly that at this half-way point, we are very off-track to achieve the SDGs.”   The UN SG’s latest progress report shows that 80% of SDG targets are either showing weak progress or regression. Much blame is cast on the pandemic, but in reality – it simply magnified an already bleak trend.   By many measures, he said, Goal 10 is the furthest off-track of all the goals. For example, inequality between countries has risen for the first time in three decades.   Oxfam, a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice, is bringing this focus on inequality (Goal 10) and how it intersects with the entire 2030 agenda, said Behar who previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam India.   At this year’s General Assembly, Oxfam pushed leaders to make bold commitments and more importantly follow-up with action to get the SDGs back on track.   “We know what works to address these challenges, and we know there are more than enough resources to do so. We must ensure that resources and capacity are in the hands of those on the frontlines tackling these complex issues.”   He said the lives and futures of millions of the most vulnerable people are directly impacted by the decisions and actions taken by leaders now and “we are running out of time”.   “We heard leaders reiterating their commitments to tackling issues of inequality, hunger, poverty and more. If they can work together to prioritize and finance the solutions to these issues, there is still hope to get the 2030 agenda back on track.”   Asked what was really needed to accelerate the pace, Behar said: “We are not seeing the financial and policy commitments from leaders needed to tackle the major challenges of our day – economic, gender and racial inequalities, the climate crisis, and the ongoing conflicts and humanitarian crises”.   Most of the trends and barriers which are contributing to the dire state of SDG implementation, he said, were in place before COVID, including the widespread unwillingness to put in place highly redistributive fiscal policy at the national level – or other measures to rein in the power of the top 1% of large corporations, and the failure of rich countries to meet their commitments or responsibilities, climate finance, official development assistance (ODA), debt relief and international finance reform.   “We support the Secretary-General’s emphasis on the importance of financing the SDGs and his call for an “SDG Stimulus” including a surge in development finance, reform of multi-lateral development banks, action on debt relief, the expansion of contingency financing in invest in basic services and clean energy, and to deal with the root causes of this situation”.   “We are calling on leaders to work on these areas so we can regain the momentum we’ve lost on the SDGs and get back on track before we’re too late,” he said.   * Report of the Secretary-General: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: Towards a Rescue Plan for People and Planet : http://tinyurl.com/33prnjwx   July 2023   Creating conditions necessary for peace, justice and inclusion. (TAP Network)   Halfway to 2030, Report on Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) represents a joint civil society effort to assess progress towards peaceful, just and inclusive societies at this critical halfway point to the 2030 target date for the implementation of the SDGs in 2023.   In addition to providing in-depth analysis around key SDG16+ issues, this report is also intended to provide key recommendations to governments and the international community on where action and ambition must be directed in the second half of SDG implementation to 2030. The report also provides insights into the leadership role of civil society in advancing SDG16+ at all levels to-date, showcasing best practices and case studies around civil society action.   A central feature of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is interlinkages; the goals, targets and indicators are interconnected, with the implementation of each supporting the attainment of the others. Given this interconnectivity, when working towards implementation, various goals, targets, and indicators should be considered in tandem, to safeguard against the potential undermining of essential objectives and the effectiveness of the broader agenda.   The preamble of the 2030 Agenda affirms that “the interlinkages and integrated nature of the Sustainable Development Goals are of crucial importance in ensuring that the purpose of the new Agenda is realized.” In other words, all 17 SDGs depend upon one another; no single goal can be fully realised alone.   SDG16 was designed to be an enabler, or in other words, to provide support for the achievement of other Goals. SDG16 targets critically important issues that have significant implications for people worldwide, including violence, insecurity, conflict, injustice, exclusion, inequality, discrimination, weak institutions and poor governance.   These issues also undermine government capacities to achieve sustainable development across numerous fronts: ensuring identity and reducing bribery and corruption to remove barriers to accessing education and essential services; ensuring public participation to give people a voice and a role in decision making; ensuring access to information to facilitate oversight and transparency; ensuring people’s fundamental freedoms to give them the opportunity to challenge decisions; ensuring access to justice for people to protect and assert their rights.   SDG16 is rooted in a human rights-based framework to address issues of universal relevance, significant to individuals in all nations. Sustained peace and non-violence, access to justice, rule of law, effective and accountable institutions, inclusive governance, participatory decision making and respect for human rights are all needed in order to advance other areas of sustainable development.   They are all key elements of SDG16 that ensure that the foundational objectives of ‘leaving no one behind’ and ‘reaching the furthest behind first’ are upheld.   The success of SDG16 is equally reliant on the other goals. Progress on targets for peace, justice and inclusion directly affects outcomes for all other SDGs, while social, economic and environmental progress plays an equally important role in creating the conditions necessary for peace, justice and inclusion.   http://www.sdg16now.org/report/   * The Transparency, Accountability and Participation (TAP) Network is a global civil society coalition working to advance and catalyse ambitious action to achieve SDG16+ to promote peaceful, just and inclusive societies. The TAP Network’s members represent hundreds of civil society organisations (CSOs) around the world.   July 2023   New Forus Report: “Sustainable Development by Shifting the Power”   The Forus network issued a new report at the 2023 United Nations High Level Political Forum, titled “Sustainable Development by Shifting the Power: Capacity Strengthening of Civil Society as a Tool for the Implementation of SDG17”.   The report co-created by 14 Forus members from different regions and contexts, calls for transformative changes in the international development sector, with a focus on power dynamics, localization, and decolonization. It highlights the crucial role of civil society organizations in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and stresses the importance of capacity strengthening initiatives that are driven by the needs and priorities of CSOs themselves. The report also provides recommendations to relevant stakeholders and reaffirms the commitment to support CSO capacity strengthening and foster inclusive practices:   http://www.forus-international.org/en/custom-page-detail/102430-new-forus-report-sustainable-development-by-shifting-the-power   Mar. 2023   How can multilateralism lead the path towards equity? (Social Watch, agencies)   Civil society debated with Ambassador Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the UN Secretary-General, the need for reform of the multilateral institutions, food security and food sovereignty, the role of the financial system, the pandemic, trade and the development-human rights nexus. All the simultaneous crises lead to the need of reforming global governance.   The Round Table discussion: Equity in Multilateralism: Peace, Sustainable Development and Human Rights, was part of the Least Devloped Countries Civil Society Forum held in Doha, Qatar, during March 2023: http://www.socialwatch.org/node/18696 http://www.socialwatch.org/varios/2023-Civil-Society-Statement-at-LDC5.pdf
	Middle East and North Africa: Embrace Social Protection for All by HRW, Arab Region Hub for Social Protection   Sep. 2023   Rashida, 40, works as a domestic worker in three houses in Lahore. She told Human Rights Watch that her 11-year-old son, Arif, wants to know where he can post a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He wants to tell them that even though both his parents each work three jobs, they must ration food supplies and keep the fan off even in 40 C temperatures due to high electricity bills. They are among the millions of Pakistanis forced to make these choices, between food and books, electricity and medicine, dignity and debt.   The deepening economic crisis in Pakistan has historical and structural reasons. However, the recent spike in inflation, increase in electricity and fuel prices, and currency depreciation comes as a result of a $3 billion deal between the IMF and Pakistan in July 2022. It requires the government to end energy and fuel subsidies, increase taxes, and move to a market-based exchange rate.   Both the IMF and the Pakistani government have human rights obligations to pursue economic recovery measures that protect and advance rights in the short and long term, yet the deal puts the burden of recovery on people who are already struggling the most.   On Friday, September 22, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva sent a message to the “people of Pakistan” in a tweet that asked to “please collect more taxes from the wealthy and please protect the poor people of Pakistan.” The government should heed her request, but so should the IMF.   Pakistan is a stark example of IMF conditions that risk undermining people’s economic, social, and cultural rights, but it’s far from the only one. A new report from Human Rights Watch on recent IMF loans around the world found that the vast majority are conditioned on austerity policies that reduce government spending or increase regressive taxes in ways likely to harm human rights. By conditioning its loans on policies that have a long track record of exacerbating poverty and inequality, the IMF is violating its own commitment to respond to the current economic crisis in ways that address deep-seated inequality and build more inclusive economies.   Austerity measures reducing government spending or increasing regressive taxes have a well-documented history of undermining rights. The United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019 adopted guiding principles to ensure that economic recovery measures further “the benefit of the whole population, instead of only a few”.   The principles prohibit governments from pursuing austerity unless they meet strict criteria, including avoiding, or if absolutely necessary, limiting and mitigating, any negative effect on rights.   The IMF’s internal research indicates that these policies are not effective in achieving its primary objective: to reduce debt. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, published in April, observed that fiscal consolidations – a term usually linked to austerity programs – “do not reduce debt ratios, on average”.   Human Rights Watch’s analysis of IMF programs approved to 38 countries since March 2020 finds that over half contain or reduce spending on public wages, compromising governments’ ability to deliver quality public services that are guaranteed as rights. Over half impose value-added taxes, an indirect tax that tends to be regressive and exacerbate inequalities since the rate is the same for people regardless of income.   And over half remove or reduce consumption-based fuel or electricity subsidies or develop plans to do so without adequately investing in social security or other compensatory measures or in clean sources of energy. Fossil fuel subsidies place enormous economic burdens on governments, but they also artificially reduce the costs of fossil fuel production and use, driving fossil fuel dependence at a time when governments should be transitioning to renewable energy to address the climate crisis.   At the same time, removing subsidies without adequately investing in social security often means that price increases disproportionately affect those on low incomes.   To mitigate the impacts of these programs, many IMF programs rely on small improvements to cash transfer programs. In Pakistan, increased spending on the Benazir Income Support Program, a government cash transfer program that targets women living in extreme poverty. The program was initiated in 2008 to mitigate the impact of then-record levels of food and fuel inflation, and continues to be Pakistan’s largest social safety net program.   BISP is an important initiative assisting millions of households, and it needs to be expanded significantly to move toward universal social protection that would provide benefits to a broader range of people who have heightened risks of income insecurity, such as children, older people, and people with disabilities. Research has shown that these types of programs are far more effective than those with eligibility-based on socioeconomic status.   A 47-year-old rickshaw driver in Lahore told us, “I can either get medicine (insulin) for my diabetes or pay for my daughter to go to school or keep the lights on at my house. I can do only one of the three. The IMF should come and see how I am managing my life.”   Social security is a human right enshrined in various treaties ratified by Pakistan, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The right to social security plays an important role in realizing a range of other rights, including the rights to education, food, healthcare, and housing. The IMF needs to change course and put people’s economic and social rights at the front and center of their programs.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/26/how-imf-policies-undermine-rights http://www.hrw.org/report/2023/09/25/bandage-bullet-wound/imf-social-spending-floors-and-covid-19-pandemic http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sri-lanka-government-imf-austerity-deal-will-exacerbate-debt-crisis-by-jayati-ghosh-and-kanchana-n-ruwanpura-2023-09 http://www.icrict.com/press-release/2023/7/3/ac16nhxkvuz4pgt9fpfwzfv5kqyu26   Aug. 2023   Middle East and North Africa: Embrace Social Protection for All   Governments of the Middle East and North Africa region should develop and fund comprehensive social protection systems that fulfill all people’s right to social security, Human Rights Watch said today, in signing the joint Declaration on Building Universal Social Protection in the Arab Region.   The declaration, organized by the civil society-led Arab Region Hub for Social Protection, aims to mobilize broad public support for universal social security systems – that is, a network of programs that protect all people from income insecurity at critical moments in their life course, rather than programs that are targeted based on socio-economic status – and urge governments to pursue new and innovative policy approaches to develop these systems.   “People in the Middle East and North Africa are facing increasing economic pressure and instability yet their governments are not responding effectively to these challenges,” said Sarah Saadoun, senior researcher on poverty and inequality at Human Rights Watch. “Regional governments should end their piecemeal and targeted approaches to social protection and develop strategies to enable everyone to realize their economic and social rights.”   Under international human rights law, everyone has the right to social security, which encompasses protection against income insecurity, including during old age, unemployment, sickness, or giving birth, and caring for dependents. Despite worsening economic conditions, governments across the region have not developed rights-based comprehensive social security strategies, relying instead on narrow and often error-prone programs that seek to target the “poorest” and “most vulnerable.” Only 40 percent of people in the MENA region have effective coverage in at least one area of social protection, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).   The region, as elsewhere in the world, is facing slowing economies in 2023 “as double-digit food inflation adds pressure on poorer households,” the World Bank said in a report that also emphasizes that “the impact of food insecurity can span generations.” In response, many governments in the region have acknowledged the need to strengthen social protection programs.   However, most of these governments have rejected universal programs that provide support to everyone in particular categories, such as children and people with disabilities. Instead, they have adopted piecemeal systems in which only workers in the formal economy can access select benefits such as social pensions, unemployment insurance, or maternity grants, while workers in the informal economy, the majority in many countries, are entirely excluded.   Some governments, such as Jordan and Egypt, have new cash transfer programs to supplement employment-based social protection schemes, particularly as a means of mitigating the impact of removing or reducing government subsidies. For decades, consumer subsidies on items such as bread, electricity, water, and fuel have played an important role in the social contracts of many countries in the region, but governments are coming under significant budgetary and monetary pressures to reduce or remove them.   Subsidies, which are also sometimes referred to as “universal,” differ from universal social protection benefits in that they generally are attached to goods, not people, and so the wealthier generally capture more of the spending because they consume more. Fossil fuel subsidies are enormously burdensome on government budgets and phasing them out is critical for confronting the climate crisis and facilitating the transition to renewable energy sources. Electricity subsidies alone constitute 40 percent of Lebanon’s debt.   However, while the wealthy receive the majority of energy subsidies in absolute terms, fuel and electricity price increases are felt most acutely by people with low incomes who will pay a higher share of their income for goods or services that are essential to their rights.   A study of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) program in Egypt published in June 2023 by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an independent think tank, found that “household energy expenditure contributed to about 40 per cent of the increase in the cost of living between December 2015 and August 2019. For extremely poor households, the increase in energy expenditure constituted about 35.7 per cent of their 2015 incomes, whereas for the top income group it constituted about 21.5 per cent.”   A Human Rights Watch survey in Lebanon, where the government has failed to guarantee everyone’s right to accessible and affordable electricity, found that following the removal of fuel subsidies, as well as many government missteps and failures, the lowest 20 percent of income earners spent 88 percent of their income on electricity provided by diesel fueled generators.   The public savings generated from phasing out subsidies could provide an opportunity to shift towards social contracts rooted in human rights, including universal social protection, which is critical to protecting people from the price increases stemming from removing subsidies.   Yet, most governments are missing on such opportunities and rather using means-tested programs that often reach only a small fraction of the population and exclude even many families whose income is below national poverty lines.   In Egypt, where roughly 60 million people live in or near poverty, the two main cash transfer programs established following the removal of fuel subsidies, Takaful and Karama, only reach 5 million families, which is approximately 17.5 million people. Families are ineligible for the program if they own a car or more than one feddan (4,200 square meters) of land, have a government job or pension, receive transfers from abroad, or have a formal private sector job. According to a 2022 World Bank review, about half of families who are eligible do not receive benefits.   In Jordan, the cash transfer program, also called Takaful and established following the removal of fuel subsidies, reached 120,000 families in 2022, fewer than one in five families living under the poverty line despite a sharp increase in poverty since the Covid-19 pandemic.   The Declaration on Building Universal Social Protection in the Arab Region is the first of its kind for the region, grounding effective social security in a rights-based approach, identifying it as a “responsibility of the state” rather than an “aid mechanism” or “humanitarian service.”   Social security is a well-established human right in international law, including in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The UN treaty body charged with interpreting the covenant identified nine areas of support that should be included in universal social security systems: healthcare, sickness, old age, unemployment, employment injury, family and child support, maternity, disability, and survivors and orphans.   Countries that are parties to the covenant assume the obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil the right to social security in each of these areas, including by making the respective programs available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable. This also requires providing benefits, whether in cash or in kind, that are adequate in both amount and duration.   A growing body of research, including by the ILO and Development Pathways, a consultancy group that supports developing countries in devising social protection policies, has documented that targeted social protection programs frequently have high margins of error, excluding eligible people and including many who are not.   Reasons behind these errors include the use of inaccurate or outdated data, barriers created by the eligibility criteria or during the application process, and patronage and corruption.   Some governments have turned to expensive technologies to address these problems, but Human Rights Watch found that the automated technology that selects beneficiaries for Jordan’s Takaful program, developed with significant financing from the World Bank, is undermined by exclusion errors, discriminatory policies, and stereotypes about poverty.   Countries of the Middle East and North Africa are mostly low or middle-income and face challenges financing universal social protection programs, but they can close financing gaps and maximize resources in ways that protect human rights.   In addition to using savings from phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, governments can adopt progressive tax systems, with higher rates for the wealthy and large corporations, combat tax evasion and avoidance, and eradicate illicit financial flows.   A 2019 global study by the ILO calculated that it would only cost an average of between 2 and 6 percent of a nation’s gross domestic product, depending on its region and country-income group, to establish universal social protection floors.   The ILO identifies some ways to achieve this, including by reallocating existing public spending, raising social security revenues through a combination of taxes and dedicated contributions, increasing development aid and transfers, eliminating illicit financial flows, and improving debt management.   A 2023 IMF study found that Middle Eastern and North African countries are not effectively using existing tax structures to finance social protection. The IMF concluded that “personal income taxes play little or no role in most countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), yielding on average about 2 percent of GDP in revenue.” It further found that regional income tax systems, while generally progressive by law, have very limited redistributive capacity because tax collection is inadequate.   Governments have a human rights obligation to realize all people’s economic, social and cultural rights, which encompass their right to social security, including through ensuring adequate resources to do so, Human Rights Watch said.   Wealthier nations should help support governments’ efforts such as by promoting a Global Fund for Social Protection that would direct resources to enable all governments to achieve universal social protection.   “Ineffective policies have failed to foster the social solidarity needed to address monumental economic challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa region,” Saadoun said. “A universal approach has the potential to protect rights and contribute to reducing inequality and a healthier environment for everyone.”   http://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/14/middle-east-and-north-africa-embrace-social-protection-all http://socialprotection.arabregionhub.net/arhsp-homepage/ http://www.arab-reform.net/publication/declaration-on-building-universal-social-protection-in-the-arab-region/ http://annd.org/en/publications/details/2023-arab-watch-report-right-to-health http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/06/mena-governments-must-establish-universal-social-protection-systems-for-all/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde18/8407/2024/en/ http://www.hrw.org/tag/right-social-security http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/news/universal-social-security-can-reduce-poverty-and-inequality-human-rights-watch/ http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org http://live.ilo.org/events/how-can-social-protection-support-human-rights-and-advance-social-justice-2022-12-08   June 2023   Automated Neglect: How the World Bank’s push to allocate cash assistance using Algorithms threatens Rights. (Human Rights Watch)   Governments worldwide are turning to automation to help them deliver essential public services, such as food, housing, and cash assistance. But some forms of automation are excluding people from services and singling them out for investigation based on errors, discriminatory criteria, or stereotypes about poverty. Despite these harms, the allure of tech-based solutions to complex social problems is proving hard to resist.   The World Bank is one of the biggest development actors driving this trend, particularly in the Global South, placing big bets on data-intensive technologies to help governments deliver services. This includes major cash transfer programs that give certain individuals or families financial support.   In the Middle East and North Africa alone, eight of ten borrowing countries have received Bank loans to upgrade these programs.   The Bank has long promoted cash transfer programs that select beneficiaries by trying to estimate their income and welfare. This approach, known as poverty targeting, has attracted intense criticism for undermining people’s social security rights, particularly in the wake of the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.   Poverty targeted programs are prone to error, mismanagement, and corruption, and routinely fail to reach many of the people they aim to cover. While the Bank has acknowledged these problems, it is financing a range of technologies it claims will make poverty targeting more accurate, reliable, and efficient.   This report documents the human rights impact of one such Bank-financed program in Jordan, known as the Unified Cash Transfer Program, but commonly referred to by its original name, Takaful. After screening out families that do not meet basic eligibility criteria, Takaful uses an algorithm to identify which of those remaining should receive cash transfers by ranking their level of economic vulnerability.   Drawing on interviews with applicants and beneficiaries, government officials, community activists, and an analysis of World Bank documents, Human Rights Watch found that this algorithm is leading to cash transfer decisions that deprive people of their rights to social security. The problem is not merely that the algorithm relies on inaccurate and unreliable data about people’s finances. Its formula also flattens the economic complexity of people’s lives into a crude ranking that pits one household against another, fueling social tension and perceptions of unfairness.   The harms of Takaful’s targeting algorithm highlight the need for cash transfer programs based on the principles of universal social protection – providing all people with support during periods of their lives when their economic and social rights are particularly at risk, such as when they are children, face disability, become unemployed, or reach old age, and regardless of their income or wealth.   On paper, the Bank has endorsed this approach as the “cornerstone of inclusive social policy.” But it continues to fund poverty targeted programs in dozens of countries, despite the wealth of policy options available to finance their transition to universal schemes.   This gap between rhetoric and practice has devastating effects on people’s rights to social security and related rights to food, health, housing, and an adequate standard of living. Although Takaful has extended regular cash assistance to 120,000 households in 2022, this is only a small fraction of the households in Jordan living under the official poverty line, which itself is an inadequate measure of the number of people unable to realize their economic, social, and cultural rights in the face of high inflation and unemployment.   http://www.hrw.org/report/2023/06/13/automated-neglect/how-world-banks-push-allocate-cash-assistance-using-algorithms http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/france-discriminatory-algorithm-used-by-the-social-security-agency-must-be-stopped/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-powered-welfare-system-fuels-mass-surveillance-and-risks-discriminating-against-marginalized-groups-report/ http://www.eapn.eu/an-exploratory-study-on-the-use-of-digital-tools-by-people-experiencing-poverty/   June 2023   Robo-debt: 460,000 low income vulnerable Australians issued illegal debt notices using incorrect computer algorithm   Over 400,000 low income vulnerable Australians were issued false and illegal debt notices by Australian Government agencies. The scheme used data from the tax office and the Department of Social Services Centrelink office to automatically raise debts for thousands of dollars on hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients, debts which in many cases didn't exist.   Laura Tingle (Chief Political Reporter): For years, the government defended robodebt despite concerns the system was unlawful.   Prof. Terry Carney, University of Sydney: It's the conduct that you would expect of a tin pot third world country administration.   Laura Tingle: As debt collectors chased down welfare recipients, including pensioners, the disabled and even the deceased, it was clear that the Government automated system was generating debts that didn't exist.   Penny Cahalan: You can't just tell people they owe thousands of dollars without providing any actual proof.   Katherine Boyle, Welfare Rights Centre: It's a nightmare of a system for most people to try and navigate. They're being encouraged to agree to what are potentially wildly inaccurate debts, if the debts exist at all.   Laura Tingle: The Government robo-debt scheme was found to be unlawful.   Mar. 2023   Robo-debt royal commission hearings final week: ‘It served them right, did it?’, by Rick Morton for The Saturday Paper. (Extract)   The royal commission has heard of at least two cases where a robo-debt victim has killed themselves after receiving a letter or debt collection notice. There are more. Beyond the loss of life, significant in itself, it is impossible to quantify the harm perpetuated against ordinary Australians on a massive scale.   People lost jobs or family through the devastating spiral caused by financial wounds, their physical and mental health conditions worsened. Others were ground down to nothing while attempting to flee domestic violence.   At no stage was it apparent that the people designing the scheme cared enough to imagine what its consequences might be.   Despite all of these personal harms committed against real people, there is an effect even harder to define: the loss of faith in institutions that were meant to intervene and did nothing, or that failed.   As robo-debt victim Matthew Thompson told the inquiry, there is already little regard for the behaviour of this new breed of senior bureaucrats and the ministers they serve.   “I really struggle with the way that politicians talk about people like me who access income support,” he told the commission on March 1. “I am made to feel like a welfare cheat. It makes me feel – I have very little faith in the system. Hearing what politicians say about the issue, it makes me sad and sick.”   Robo-debt was a vortex into which many other agencies were pulled.   Government Ministers demanded fealty and got it. They argued that poor people never did anything for the country and then sought to burnish their already fraudulent money management credentials off the misery of those same poor people.   It is difficult to attach a coda to a years-long abuse that will linger for decades in the minds of welfare recipients past and present. If this inquiry does nothing else, it has furnished the bones of the worst abuse of Australian citizens committed deliberately and with legal and personal impunity over five years.   There were multiple moments where documents were wilfully disappeared or left in the apparently inert state of “draft”; where ignorance was installed as a default operating system; where dozens of public servants from the middle ranks all the way to the top either knew or should have known, who, in their commitment to each other but not the people who suffered under their arrogance, sought to cover up an extraordinary act of cruelty.   Their ministers demanded fealty and got it. They argued that poor people never did anything for the country and then sought to burnish their already fraudulent money management credentials off the misery of those same poor people. What has been examined only slightly in this inquiry is an inconvenient fact: even if it were legal (which it was not), robo-debt would still have killed people. It would still have crushed people.   Robo-debt’s architects didn’t even have the faux-decency to try for legal justification: they had long since given up the moral argument.   Whatever Commissioner Holmes finds in her final report, the key witnesses will have been provided with more procedural fairness and due consideration of law than any of the 460,000 robo-debt customers were ever given.   http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2023/march/rick-morton/robodebt-and-empathy-bypass#mtr http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/tag/robo-debt http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/11/robodebt-five-years-of-lies-mistakes-and-failures-that-caused-a-18bn-scandal http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/royal-commission-into-robodebt http://theconversation.com/amateurish-rushed-and-disastrous-royal-commission-exposes-robodebt-as-ethically-indefensible-policy-targeting-vulnerable-people-201165 http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/shameful-chapter-restitution-but-not-justice-from-robodebt-class-action-ruling/ http://www.anglicare.asn.au/2024/08/26/anglicare-australia-launches-cost-of-living-index-jobseeker-increase-is-urgent-as-payments-fail-to-cover-essential-costs-2/ http://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/ http://australiainstitute.org.au/post/inequality-on-steroids-as-bottom-90-get-just-7-of-economic-growth-since-2009/ http://australiainstitute.org.au/report/ending-child-poverty-in-australia/ Visit the related web page
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