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	Fighting Inequality as we beat back Covid by Lena Simet, Komala Ramachandra, Sarah Saadoun Human Rights Watch, agencies   At the dawn of 2020, our world was already in crisis. High and rising economic inequality meant that someone born with few resources could see their basic human rights, like food and decent housing, violated. Like Sonia Perez, who sells tamales and rice pudding on the streets of New York City, millions of people were struggling to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families. The Covid-19 pandemic only made things worse.   Perez, a single mother who supports her four children with her business, had no choice but to stop working once the pandemic intensified. Not only were there no customers, but she feared that her diabetes would put her at greater risk for a serious case of Covid-19.   Like many others with low incomes and few savings, she was more likely to become infected by, and die of, the virus. People with lower earnings saw their jobs disappear at a higher rate; even more so if they are a woman. As a result, many faced hunger, or homelessness.   Many governments did too little to help. And while more than 9 percent of the world’s population experience extreme poverty manifested in a severe deprivation of basic needs, the combined wealth of global billionaires reached new heights. Up by $1.5 trillion in the last year, an amount that could lift everyone in extreme poverty above $5.50/day for a year.   The economic gender gap has widened too, as women have disproportionally lost work, and had lower social protection coverage. With school closures and a move towards digital education, many have had to juggle—or choose between—work and childcare, without supportive government and workplace policies to mitigate the impact.   Covid-19's economic recession is global. But the level of pain largely varies by where a person lives. The governments of the Netherlands or Germany targeted relief at low-income earners, covering up to 90 percent of lost wages if businesses did not lay off their employees. Indonesia provided free medical treatment to all, regardless of their registration to the national health insurance scheme.   In other countries, people desperately in need of support were left high and dry.   In the United States, much of the relief was temporary. In the first months of the crisis, poverty declined due to an expanded social safety net. But much of the relief expired in July. By October, more than 8 million people fell into poverty—measured by the supplemental poverty measure that weighs income with living costs—and one in two households had trouble paying everyday expenses, like food or rent.   Millions of people reported they could not access healthcare, as they lost their insurance. And from the start, relief excluded informal workers or undocumented people, like Sonia Perez.   The disparity reflects not only the world’s differing safety nets and decisions by governments as to whether to protect basic economic rights, but also countries’ choices over the use of Covid-19 relief funds.   Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, received the largest Covid-19 emergency financing package (US$3.4 billion) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to protect jobs and businesses, in addition to millions in other forms of direct aid. But it is not clear how these funds were used, and Human Rights Watch found that the vast majority of urban poor in Lagos were left without any financial or in-kind relief.   The global recession will have deep and lasting aftershocks. As governments continue to try to save their economies, they need to ensure that relief reaches the millions of people who are struggling to make ends meet, so that everyone has food, housing, and other essentials, and that relief is not captured by a wealthy few.   Countries will have to take bold action to build towards a more just and rights-based economic recovery that confronts, not exacerbates, inequality. Ensuring a role in decision-making for those most affected by the economic crisis, and those meant to benefit from relief assistance, will be critical.   A rights-based recovery means that governments provide access to affordable healthcare for everyone, protect labor rights, ensure gender equality gains aren’t lost, and protect everyone’s access to decent and affordable housing and essential utilities, like water and sanitation.   It means investing in public services and social protection systems, and introducing or strengthening progressive fiscal policies and taxation to fund programs, so that everyone can fulfill their right to a decent standard of living.   Most importantly, it means investing in neglected communities and avoiding harmful fiscal austerity, like cutting social protection programs. As experiences from Spain and Argentina painfully demonstrate, such harmful austerity measures are detrimental to human rights and exacerbate inequality, pushing people into greater economic vulnerability.   In coming years, governments are expected to face budget shortfalls and growing challenges repaying their debts. But international economic actors, like the World Bank and IMF, should support countries in establishing adequate social protection floors and progressive tools for raising revenue instead of enforcing harmful austerity. Portugal’s opposition to such austerity in 2015 demonstrates that another way of bringing an economy back on track is possible; one that occurs alongside stronger social protection, a higher minimum wage, and better pensions.   Addressing economic inequality should be a priority for economic recovery efforts to prevent hundreds of millions of people falling into extreme poverty, many of whom already face intersectional forms of discrimination that limit their access to economic rights.   Governments should be treating economic rights as the basic legal duties they are, and ensure they guarantee them, for everyone.   Had these issues been addressed before the pandemic, its rights impacts may have been less severe for Sonia Perez, and countless others like her. It is time for governments to correct past mistakes, and commit to imagining paths toward a more equal and rights respecting world.   http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/essay/fighting-inequality-as-we-beat-back-covid   The Age of Zombie Democracies, by Kenneth Roth. (Extract)   Over the past decade, autocrats around the world have perfected the technique of “managed” or “guided” democracy.   In Belarus, Egypt, Russia, Uganda, Venezuela, and elsewhere, authoritarian leaders have held periodic elections to enhance their legitimacy but monopolized the media, restricted civil society, and manipulated state institutions and resources to ensure that they remained in power.   Such methods are never foolproof, however, and their effectiveness has diminished as citizens have wised up and learned to operate within rigged systems.   A growing number of autocrats have thus been forced to rely on ever starker forms of repression: they still hold periodic elections since their people have come to expect them, but they do not even pretend that these empty rituals are free or fair.   The result has been the proliferation of what might be called “zombie democracies”—the living dead of electoral political systems, recognizable in form but devoid of any substance.   Just as autocrats have moved from managed to zombie democracy, so too must supporters of human rights evolve.   Whereas they could once counter managed democracy by attacking particular autocratic techniques—restrictions on civil society, say, or arrests of journalists—they must now fight zombie democracy with a more frontal approach, one that deprives autocrats of the legitimacy they seek from electoral charades.   Traditional dictatorships make no pretense of democracy. The Saudi and Emirati monarchies don’t even bother to hold direct national elections. Nor does the Chinese Communist Party; its kin in Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam; or the unapologetically authoritarian governments of post-Soviet Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.   Other authoritarian regimes, such as the military junta in Myanmar that has killed hundreds of protesters and imprisoned thousands more since it seized power in February, have overthrown elected governments and dispensed with democracy altogether.   But in a growing number of countries, governments have cloaked their autocratic rule in the garb of democracy—only to strip away this thin disguise to the point of risibility in recent years.   A good example is Russia, which has hurtled toward zombie democracy status in large part due to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s repeated end runs around the Kremlin’s managed democracy. The Kremlin had long kept the opposition in check by manipulating public opinion through its dominance of state-run television and other media.   But Navalny evaded Moscow’s information controls by producing slick documentaries about the corrupt dealings of President Vladimir Putin that garnered tens of millions of views on YouTube.   After allowing Navalny to run for mayor of Moscow in 2013, when he secured 23 percent of the vote, the Kremlin barred his party as well as other genuinely independent opposition parties from participating in elections.   In 2019, however, Navalny circumvented that restriction by encouraging Russians to vote for candidates from the tame pseudo-opposition parties that the Kremlin had allowed—a “smart voting” strategy aimed at undercutting the ruling United Russia party.   Russian authorities responded by banishing Navalny to a penal colony, seeking to criminalize as an “extremist” any candidate who supported him, and tarring some of the country’s remaining independent media outlets as “foreign agents.” Russia will continue to hold elections, but without even the pretense of a genuine opposition or free public debate.   Putin’s ideological bedfellows in Belarus and Hungary have taken their countries down a similar path toward zombie democracy in Europe.   In office since 1994, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has relied on restrictions on the media and civil society to maintain tight control of his country. When he sought a sixth term in office in 2020, he likely assumed he would coast to an easy victory after detaining the main opposition candidates.   But the public rallied around Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of one of the jailed opposition politicians, forcing Lukashenko to resort to blatant electoral fraud and mass detention and torture of protesters.   Later, his government prosecuted critical journalists and human rights defenders and liquidated dozens of civil society groups and independent media outlets. He even went as far as forcing down a commercial flight to arrest a leading opposition figure.   Hungary has taken a different route to zombie democracy. After coming to power for a second time in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orban took control of much of the country’s media, replaced independent judges with handpicked ones, imposed restrictions on civil society groups, gerrymandered electoral districts, and deployed public funds to maintain a large majority in parliament.   But Orban’s strategy began to fail in 2019, when his party lost local elections in many large cities. Now, faced with the possibility that his party could lose next year’s parliamentary election to a unified opposition, Orban is moving to ensure that his party will control the state regardless of who is in government.   His party has quietly taken control of the boards that run many state institutions and is creating foundations run by cronies that will control many state resources and operate beyond the oversight of the legislature.   Zombie democracy has also taken root in Latin America, most notably in Venezuela and Nicaragua.   After Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s ruling party lost parliamentary elections in 2015, he used his control over electoral and judicial authorities to ensure that future elections would be neither free nor fair.   The Supreme Court allowed government supporters to take over opposition parties, and security forces detained opposition leaders and brutalized their supporters to eliminate the possibility of an opposition victory.   In response to international pressure, Maduro’s government recently appointed two officials associated with the opposition to the country’s National Electoral Council, but it remains to be seen if this concession will meaningfully improve electoral conditions.   In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has grown steadily more autocratic as well. When large-scale protests against his rule erupted in 2018, his government responded with murderous repression: the police and heavily armed pro-government groups carried out a brutal crackdown on demonstrators that left more than 300 people dead and 2,000 injured.   The government detained hundreds more and has carried out another wave of arrests in the lead-up to presidential elections slated for November of this year. Seven presidential candidates and at least 20 critics have been arrested, leaving Ortega to run for his fourth consecutive term effectively unopposed.   The Middle East and Africa have not escaped the scourge of zombie democracy, either. After the coalition government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost mayoral elections in 2019 to candidates fielded by an opposition alliance, Erdogan escalated his attacks on a pro-Kurdish party that had supported alliance candidates, removing and jailing its mayors, green-lighting a court case to shutter the party, and redoubling efforts to prevent its charismatic former co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas, from leaving the prison cell where he has spent the last four and a half years.   In the face of declining public support, Erdogan has sought to eviscerate independent media and exerts control over the courts. His coalition also appears to be preparing to alter legislation on elections and political parties without consulting other parties, raising concerns that the 2023 election could be less than fair.   In Egypt, General turned President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his military junta have sought to foreclose the possibility of victory by an independent party such as the Muslim Brotherhood (which won the last fair presidential election in 2012) by imposing the most repressive rule in the country’s modern history: shutting down independent media, harassing civil society groups, and detaining tens of thousands of people. In 2018, Sisi was reelected with an official—and laughable—97 percent of the vote.   Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, meanwhile, was reelected earlier this year with a less commanding 58.6 percent of the vote, but only after his security forces arrested his main opponent and brutalized and killed many of his supporters.   Finally, Hong Kong has also taken on some of the characteristics of a zombie democracy. An election process that allowed pro-Beijing constituencies to choose half of the members of the governing Legislative Council had long guaranteed a pro-mainland majority.   But after a landslide victory in the 2019 local elections amid large-scale protests, pro-democracy candidates briefly threatened to prevail in the next Legislative Council election by using an informal primary system.   Participants in that system are now being prosecuted, however, and all opposition activity has been shut down under a harsh national security law imposed by Beijing.   The problem of zombie democracies has become so acute that governments committed to promoting genuine democracy need a strategy to address it.   For decades, the standard response to managed democracies has been to attack their tools of electoral manipulation one by one—calling out censorship, opposing limits on civil society, or defending the rights of opposition candidates—to nudge these governments back toward allowing broader civic engagement, unfettered media, judicial independence, and free and fair elections.   But countering zombie democracies requires a more holistic approach. Their leaders have given up trying to manage popular opinion in favor of quashing it, but even the worst zombie democracies rely on some degree of popular consent, coerced as it may be. That gives those seeking to promote genuine democracy a point of leverage.   Democratic States should continue to denounce the censorship and other abusive tactics that zombie democracies use to silence their critics, as well as the political and legal machinations they employ to empty democracy of its meaning.   They should also stop providing sustenance to the leaders of zombie democracies, be it U.S. military aid and arms sales to Sisi or European Union subsidies for Orban.   But countries seeking to promote genuine democracy should go a step further and hit the leaders of zombie democracies where it hurts the most—exposing the corruption and self-dealing that sustain their regimes.   Because zombie democrats no longer trust even a manipulated public to back them, they increasingly rely on cronies in the military and the private sector to prop up their rule.   But generals and oligarchs are rarely true believers in zombie democracy. Their loyalty must be bought through the diversion of public funds, which is the autocrat’s Achilles’ heel.   Democratic governments should spotlight the ways in which the leaders of zombie democracies advance their private interests at the public’s expense.   Sisi and Orban have both left public hospitals decrepit while paying off their cronies. The Kremlin has allowed friendly billionaire oligarchs to prosper while cutting pensions and letting wages stagnate. Maduro has paid off the army while the people of Venezuela suffer a humanitarian crisis. Similar critiques could be made of most leaders of zombie democracies.   The best way to undermine zombie democracies is to demonstrate that their leaders are indifferent to the publics they pretend to serve. Yes, autocrats can resort to brutality to cling to power, but that is a dangerous game.   Even the most committed dictators have a hard time hanging on when the public has completely turned on them. To hasten the arrival of such reckonings, Democratic leaders should stress how, in their quest to retain power, the leaders of zombie democracies have utterly forsaken their people.   * Kenneth Roth is Executive Director of Human Rights Watch   http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021 http://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/12/un-noncompetitive-rights-council-election-aids-abusers Visit the related web page
	The World in 2021 by Isabel Ortiz Inter Press Service, agencies   The year 2020 is ending with the world caught up in an unprecedented human and economic crisis. The pandemic has contaminated 75 million people and killed 1.7 million. With the lockdowns, the global economy has suffered the worst recession in 75 years, causing the loss of income for millions of people. In such a bleak environment, what will the new year bring? Whilst uncertainty is the only certainty, eight points are likely to be key in the year ahead:   1. A gradual but uneven recovery   With the deployment of vaccines and public support, high-income countries will be on the path to recovery from the second half of 2021. However, middle income and particularly low income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America will see recovery delayed – unless the UN or China provide them with sufficient COVID19 vaccines and governments escalate public support. The more affected sectors – tourism, travel, hospitality, entertainment and labor intensive activities – will take longer to recover. China was the only country that experienced significant economic growth in 2020 and that trend will accelerate in 2021. International trade will rebound, but it will be a more “deglobalized” world, with diminished global supply chains and more local components.   2. More poverty and inequality in 2021   While a few have benefited from the pandemic such as online shops, remote tools/software, pharmaceuticals and medical services – the majority have not. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 590 million full-time jobs were lost during the last half of 2020. Numerous social protection measures have been implemented, but these are insufficient and poverty is increasing in all countries.   With forty percent of the world population (3.3 billion people) living below the international poverty line of 5.5 dollars per day, the World Bank estimates that 150 million additional people will fall into extreme poverty by 2021.   More public support and progressive taxation are needed to redress these trends. However, so far large corporations have benefited most from the trillions of dollars of COVID19 financial relief and assistance programs, contributing to growing inequalities. Poverty and inequalities will lead to more protests in 2021.   3. More public health but unnecessary austerity cuts   A positive aspect of the pandemic is that the world has realized the need for public health systems – generally overburdened, underfunded and understaffed after a decade of austerity (2010-20). While public health expenditure will continue to rise, many are concerned about the threat of new austerity cuts.   The unforeseen costs of the pandemic have caused unprecedented levels of debt and fiscal deficits, and governments may resort to austerity cuts and reforms to public services, instead of looking at alternatives to increase budgets such as wealth taxation, fighting tax evasion and illicit financial flows. Governments choosing austerity in 2021 should expect protests and social unrest, given the negative social impacts.   4. Digitalization and changes in the world of work   The pandemic has accelerated technological change at the workplace. More telework and less office time will prevent women from having to choose between work and family and make fathers more involved in household responsibilities. Studies suggest that 47 percent of US companies will let employees work from home full-time after the pandemic.   On the other hand, essential workers such as health workers, cleaning staff, delivery drivers or retail employees, will have more bargaining power in 2021, can press harder for better working conditions.   5. Redressing world disorder   US President-elect Biden will renew multilateralism, the Paris treaty and other international agreements, the defense of human rights and the interests of the Pax Americana. The UN will continue to struggle given low financing. Four years of Trumpism and fake news have left their mark upon the world, and despite democratic attempts to improve world order, 2021 will not yet see a reversal of the trend towards authoritarian nationalist governments – for this, more efforts will be needed to fight polarization, inequality and disinformation. Jihadism will continue to increase in Africa and South Asia.   6. An opportunity on climate change   The world would need to replicate the emissions reductions seen in 2020 during the next decade to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. However, low oil prices may delay investment in alternative energy sources in 2021, even though these will replace fossil fuels in much of the world in the medium-term.   7. The risk of a new financial crisis will remain high in 2021   With industry and services stagnant, investments went to the under-regulated financial sector, where greater profits were to be made from speculation. Stock markets will remain volatile but likely buoyant, de-linked from the real economy. However, rising bankruptcies means that banking risks will increase significantly in 2021.   8. A new roaring 20s   After a year of lockdowns, people will want to make up for lost time and rush to parties, dinners, festivals, shows, sports and travel as soon as possible. The year 2021 may well flourish into a new summer of love, a creative existential time – carpe diem!   The debate on the possible ways out of the current crisis will continue throughout the year. This is an unprecedented crisis that still could have new turns, and governments are learning by doing. Overall, there are two options. One is the restoration of neoliberal policies, austerity and minimal public services eroding welfare, with limited taxation to the wealthy, that will lead to more inequality and social unrest.   The other is a more democratic and socially progressive route, where public policies deliver to citizens, including equitable job-creating economic policies with social protection, financed by progressive taxation, the elimination of tax evasion and illicit financial flows. The coronavirus crisis could be turned into an opportunity to make the world a better, fairer place for all in 2021.   * Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University.   http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/12/the-world-in-2021/ http://news.un.org/en/news/topic/humanitarian-aid http://www.unocha.org/media-centre/news-updates http://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1080682 http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2020/12/29/humanitarian-stories-must-read-editors-picks http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2020/12/24/Famine-food-insecurity-climate-change http://www.rescue.org/article/top-10-crises-world-should-be-watching-2021 http://gho.unocha.org/ http://unocha.exposure.co/ochas-2020-in-reviewnbsp http://www.interaction.org/blog/interactions-top-10-stories-of-2020/ http://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html http://peoplesvaccine.org/   http://carnegieeurope.eu/2020/12/07/coronavirus-as-catalyst-for-global-civil-society-pub-83138 http://findings2020.monitor.civicus.org/downward-spiral.html http://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/reimagining-social-movements-and-civil-resistance-during-global-pandemic http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12/governments-and-police-must-stop-using-pandemic-as-pretext-for-abuse/ http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/what-happened-democracy-2020-we-ask-our-contributors/ http://theelders.org/news-insight http://www.cesr.org/covid-19-resourcing-rights-december-round http://www.icij.org/ http://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2021 http://www.nrc.no/latest-news/ http://www.icj.org/icj-new-global-report-shows-that-the-right-to-health-must-be-central-to-state-responses-to-covid-19/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/COVID-19.aspx Visit the related web page
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