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	Women’s and girls’ reproductive choices must be respected by UN Office for Human Rights   States must ensure the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health for all, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, without discrimination, as well as access to contraceptives, UN experts said. The autonomous decision-making of women and girls must be respected.   Ahead of the World Contraception Day on 26 September and the International Safe Abortion Day on 28 September, the leading human rights experts experts issued the following statement:   “The world has been experiencing promising developments but also important setbacks affecting the right to sexual and reproductive health, including on the right to a safe abortion. Human rights law stipulates that women must be free to decide when to be pregnant, how many children to have, and how to space pregnancies. The full enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health rights is indispensable to women’s and girls’ ability to exercise all other human rights and for the achievement of gender equality. Laws and policies that deny women and girls their sexual and reproductive health rights are inherently discriminatory.   The setbacks experienced during the last years, including legal restrictions on contraceptives, on ideological grounds, together with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, have had negative effects on those in vulnerable situations or those historically subjected to discrimination, in particular girls, Black and Afro-descent women, indigenous women, migrant, refugee and internally displaced women, women living in rural areas, women with disabilities, sexual minority communities, and women living in a persistent state of crisis, among others.   It is crucial to ensure that all women and girls, in all of their diversity and without any discrimination, have adequate access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of contraception of their choice, including modern short-and long-acting contraceptives and other methods such as emergency contraception, as well as any other method to avoid forced pregnancies.   In doing so, States should respect the capacity of women and girls for autonomous decision-making and not limit the access to contraceptives to the obtention of the authorisation of husbands, partners or parents of girls seeking counselling on contraceptives. Further, sexual and reproductive health strategies should take into account the needs of sexual minority communities for whom they are relevant.   States should redouble their efforts to dismantle all the practical barriers due to the lack of official regulations such as conscientious objection and the imposition of a spousal consent requirement, even when not required by law.   By virtue of their due diligence obligation, States are responsible for any acts, including acts of omission that violate these fundamental rights by State and non-State actors. These obligations include the duty to investigate, prosecute and punish such acts.   According to the World Health Organization, between 14,000 and 39,000 maternal deaths per year are caused by the failure to provide safe abortion. If a decisive step is to be made towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals on gender equality and health and well-being, in particular those aimed at ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health rights and reducing maternal mortality, it is of paramount importance to prevent unwanted pregnancies through access to contraception, safe abortion services and quality post-abortion care.   Women and girls should not be instrumentalised to serve fundamentalist ideologies and populist agendas. Religion and culture should not be misused to discriminate against and further oppress women and girls in a global context of severe backlashes against gender equality. Such access should happen in regular as well as humanitarian settings.   On World Contraception Day and International Safe Abortion Day, we call on States and their institutions to prioritise sexual and reproductive health rights, to adopt legislations, policies and decisions that ensure to women and girls, the full exercise of their right to access sexual and reproductive health services, including safe abortion without fear of being intimidated, stigmatised or criminalised – in line with their international human rights obligations.   We commend the positive steps taken in some countries relating to the constitutional recognition of sexual and reproductive rights and encourage States to follow such promising practices. We also call on States and other stakeholders to ensure women and girls’ participation in decision making and to act at different levels, including the national health system and community levels, to ensure that the right of all women and girls on their territory, without discrimination based on race, religion, or nationality – amongst others, to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including the sexual and reproductive health rights – are fully respected. We hope that States will duly implement the pivotal WHO guidelines on abortion care issued earlier this year.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/topic/gender-equality-and-womens-rights Visit the related web page
	Precarity and the pandemic. The end of poverty postponed by United Nations University, Oxfam, agencies   June 2020   Precarity and the pandemic. The end of poverty postponed, report by Andy Sumner, Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, Chris Hoy for the United Nations University: UNU-WIDER.   Over a billion people living in poverty and a $500 million per day loss of income for the poorest people in the world could soon be reality.   The COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate headlines as the death toll rises and economies falter. However, far too little attention is being given to the worsening crisis in developing countries where coronavirus is spreading rapidly and governments grapple with the devastating economic consequences of prolonged shutdowns and the collapse of world trade. Three-quarters of new cases detected every day are in developing countries.   All of this is likely to trigger immediate and — potentially — permanent increases in global poverty, and the situation could get a lot worse unless governments move faster.   In fact, it could set back progress on reducing global poverty and achieving SDG 1 by decades — as the The Economist called it, the poverty impact of COVID-19 is likely to become the ‘the great reversal’.   In a new UNU-WIDER paper we take a closer look at those poverty impacts building on our earlier estimates that many millions of people could fall into poverty due to the crisis.   How COVID-19 is reversing poverty reduction and revealing the precarity of progress in the last decades   Goal 1 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals aims to end extreme poverty by 2030. The attainment of that goal is looking increasingly challenging due to COVID-19 and the likely increase in the number of people living in poverty as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the existing world’s poor.   Our new poverty estimates confirm our earlier estimates — the COVID-19 crisis could lead to 80-400m new poor living under $1.90 per day and potentially take extreme poverty back over 1 billion people. These numbers represent a reversal of 20–30 years in global poverty reduction (depending on whether one takes absolute or relative counts).   Our research considered a range of impacts based on income or consumption contractions of 5%, 10%, and 20% and found that in addition to the impact on extreme poverty there could be over 500m new poor living under the $3.20 and $5.50 per day poverty lines.   The cost of COVID-19 on the poorest   In addition to increases in the poverty headcount, we find that the intensity and severity of poverty are also likely to be exacerbated too.   The daily losses could be in the millions of dollars per day ($2011PPP) among those already living in extreme poverty, and among the group of people newly pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the crisis.   In our new paper we also find that the location of global poverty could shift too as a consequence of the crisis.   There could be much more new poverty not only in countries where poverty has remained relatively high over the last three decades but also in countries that are not among the poorest countries anymore. Our country-level poverty estimates that show the location of global poverty is likely to shift towards middle-income countries and South Asia and East Asia.   Extreme poverty could almost double in today’s middle-income countries increasing to 680 million people under the worst-case scenario. While immediately prior to the outbreak of the virus sub-Sahara Africa was home to 60% of the world’s poor; our estimates illustrate a resurgence of poverty elsewhere in the world, in South Asia and in East Asia. In countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.   The lesson for progress   These findings expose the extent of precarity in developing countries, but also the fragility of poverty reductions to any economic shock whether it is the current crisis or the next wave of the pandemic.   The results raise questions for how we think about poverty reduction and in particular, the need for new measures of extreme precarity to sit alongside measures of extreme poverty. And the two measures need to be reported together. The extreme poverty measure ($1.90) gave a poverty count of about 700m or 9.9% the world’s population before the crisis. Just above those people sit another 400m people or 5.4% of the world’s population living in extreme precarity, one shock away from poverty whether it is this crisis or the next wave of COVID-19.   http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/end-poverty-postponed   Precarity and the pandemic: COVID-19 and poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries   This paper makes a set of estimates for the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries and on the distribution of global poverty. We conclude there could be increases in poverty of a substantial magnitude—up to 400 million new poor living under the $1.90 poverty line, over 500 million new poor living under the poverty lines of $3.20 and $5.50.   Further, the global income shortfall below each poverty line could expand by up to 60 per cent; the daily income losses could amount to $350m among those living under $1.90 per day and almost $200 million among the group of people newly pushed into extreme poverty. Finally, we present country-level poverty estimates that show the location of global poverty is likely to shift towards middle-income countries and South Asia and East Asia.   Our estimates are indication of the range of potential outcomes. If anything, our estimates show the extent of precarity in developing countries and the fragility of much poverty reduction to any economic shock.   http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/precarity-and-pandemic http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty http://www.wider.unu.edu/news/press-release-covid-19-fallout-could-push-half-billion-people-poverty-developing-countries   Apr. 2020   Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty by coronavirus. (Oxfam International)   The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could push half a billion more people into poverty unless urgent action is taken to bail out developing countries, said Oxfam today. The agency is calling on world leaders to agree an 'Economic Rescue Package for All' to keep poor countries and poor communities afloat, ahead of meetings of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G20.   Oxfam's new report 'Dignity Not Destitution' presents fresh analysis which suggests between six and eight percent of the global population could be forced into poverty as governments shut down entire economies to manage the spread of the virus.   This could set back the fight against poverty by a decade, and as much as 30 years in some regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. Over half the global population could be living in poverty in the aftermath of the pandemic.   The analysis, published today by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, was conducted by researchers at King's College London and the Australian National University.   An 'Emergency Rescue Package for All' would enable poor countries to provide cash grants to those who have lost their income and to bail out vulnerable small businesses. It would be paid for through a variety of measures including: The immediate cancellation of US$1 trillion worth of developing country debt payments in 2020. Cancelling Ghana's external debt payments in 2020 would enable the government to give a cash grant of $20 dollars a month to each of the country's 16 million children, disabled and elderly people for a period of six months.   The creation of at least US$1 trillion in new international reserves, known as Special Drawing Rights, to dramatically increase the funds available to countries.   Jose Maria Vera, Oxfam International Interim Executive Director said:   'The devastating economic fallout of the pandemic is being felt across the globe. But for poor people in poor countries who are already struggling to survive there are almost no safety nets to stop them falling into poverty.   G20 Finance Ministers, the IMF and World Bank must give developing countries an immediate cash injection to help them bail out poor and vulnerable communities.   They must cancel all developing country debt payments for 2020 and encourage other creditors to do the same, and issue at least US$1 trillion of Special Drawing Rights'.   Existing inequalities dictate the economic impact of this crisis. The poorest workers in rich and poor nations are less likely to be in formal employment, enjoy labour protections such as sick pay, or be able to work from home.   Globally, just one out of every five unemployed people have access to unemployment benefits.   Two billion people work in the informal sector with no access to sick pay - the majority in poor countries where 90 percent of jobs are informal compared to just 18 percent in rich nations.   Women are on the front line of the coronavirus response and are likely to be hardest hit financially. Women make up 70 percent of health workers globally and provide 75 percent of unpaid care, looking after children, the sick and the elderly.   Women are also more likely to be employed in poorly paid precarious jobs that are most at risk.   More than one million Bangladeshi garment workers - 80 percent of whom are women - have already been laid off or sent home without pay after orders from western clothing brands were cancelled or suspended.   Many wealthy nations have introduced multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus packages to support business and workers, but most developing nations lack the financial firepower to follow suit.   The UN estimates that nearly half of all jobs in Africa could be lost. Micah Olywangu, a taxi driver and father of three from Nairobi, Kenya, who has not had a fare since the lockdown closed the airport, bars and restaurants, told Oxfam that 'this virus will starve us before it makes us sick'.   Delivering the $2.5 trillion the UN estimates is needed to support developing countries through the pandemic would also require an additional $500 billion in overseas aid.   This includes $160 billion which Oxfam estimates is needed to boost poor countries public health systems and $2 billion for the UN humanitarian fund. Emergency solidarity taxes, such as a tax on extraordinary profits or the very wealthiest individuals, could mobilise additional resources.   'Governments must learn the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis where bailouts for banks and corporations were paid for by ordinary people as jobs were lost, wages flatlined and essential services such as healthcare cut to the bone. Economic stimulus packages must support ordinary workers and small businesses, and bail outs for big corporations must be conditional on action to build fairer, more sustainable economies', added Vera.   # In 2018 there were 3.4 billion people living on less than $5.5 per day according to the World Bank. Researchers used mathematical models to predict how many more people would fall below World Bank poverty lines of $1.90, $3.30 and $5.50 a day based on a 5, 10 and 20 percent drop in GDP. A 20 percent drop in GDP would mean an estimated 434.4 million more people living on less than on $1.90 a day, 611.8 million more people living on less than $3.30 a day and 547.6 million more people on less than $5.50 a day. This represents rise between 6 percent and 8 percent on current levels.   Oxfam is working to raise more funds to scale up its cash transfer programming and food assistance in vulnerable communities across the globe, to allow the most vulnerable households to buy food and basic necessities.   http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/dignity-not-destitution   * Dignity Not Destitution: An Economic Rescue Package for All: http://bit.ly/2JNDUhF Visit the related web page
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