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	Rising inflation brings striking fall in real wages by ITUC, ILO News, agencies   30 Nov. 2022   Rising inflation brings striking fall in real wages, ILO report finds. (ILO News)   The severe inflationary crisis combined with a global slowdown in economic growth – driven in part by the war in Ukraine and the global energy crisis – are causing a striking fall in real monthly wages in many countries.   According to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report, the crisis is reducing the purchasing power of the middle classes and hitting low-income households particularly hard.   The Global Wage Report 2022-2023: The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power , estimates that global monthly wages fell in real terms to minus 0.9 per cent in the first half of 2022 – the first time this century that real global wage growth has been negative.   Among advanced G20 countries, real wages in the first half of 2022 are estimated to have declined to minus 2.2 per cent, whereas real wages in emerging G20 countries grew by 0.8 per cent, 2.6 per cent less than in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.   “The multiple global crises we are facing have led to a decline in real wages. It has placed tens of millions of workers in a dire situation as they face increasing uncertainties,” said ILO Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo.   “Income inequality and poverty will rise if the purchasing power of the lowest paid is not maintained. In addition, a much-needed post pandemic recovery could be put at risk. This could fuel further social unrest across the world and undermine the goal of achieving prosperity and peace for all.”   The cost-of-living crisis comes on top of significant wage losses for workers and their families during the COVID-19 crisis, which in many countries had the greatest impact on low-income groups.   The report shows that rising inflation has a greater cost-of-living impact on lower-income earners. This is because they spend most of their disposable income on essential goods and services, which generally experience greater price increases than non-essential items.   Inflation is also biting into the purchasing power of minimum wages, the report says. Estimates show that despite nominal adjustments taking place, accelerating price inflation is quickly eroding the real value of minimum wages in many countries for which data is available.   The analysis shows there is an urgent need to apply well-designed policy measures to help maintain the purchasing power and living standards of wage workers and their families.   Adequate adjustment of minimum wage rates could be an effective tool, given that 90 per cent of ILO Member States have minimum wage systems in place. Strong tripartite social dialogue and collective bargaining can also help to achieve adequate wage adjustments during a crisis.   Other policies that can ease the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on households include measures targeting specific groups, such as giving vouchers to low-income households to help them buy essential goods, or cutting Value Added Tax on these goods to reduce the burden inflation places on households while also helping to bring down inflation.   “We must place particular attention to workers at the middle and lower end of the pay scale. Fighting against the deterioration of real wages can help maintain economic growth, which in turn can help to recover the employment levels observed before the pandemic. This can be an effective way to lessen the probability or depth of recessions in all countries and regions,” said Rosalia Vazquez-Alvarez, one of the report’s authors.   http://www.ilo.org/digitalguides/en-GB/story/globalwagereport2022-23#intro http://www.ilo.org/actrav/media-center/pr/WCMS_906750/lang--en/index.htm   * More than 1 in 5 workers worldwide have experienced violence and harassment at work, reveals new ILO report: http://bit.ly/3Be8EU6   Nov. 2022   Create an economy that works for working people. (ITUC)   Workers across the globe are struggling to make ends meet under the weight of a worldwide cost of living crisis.   The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Global Poll 2022 provides a stark insight into a precarious world on the brink of recession.   Two in five households (43 per cent) have experienced a loss of jobs or working hours, and one in two (51 per cent) say their income is stagnating or falling behind the cost of living.   The inequalities and injustices that are at the heart of the failed economic system, with huge deficits in corporate and financial regulation, have been brutally exposed and massively deepened by the Covid-19 pandemic.   Deficient government responses to the ongoing pandemic are driving further precarity, inequality and a deep public health crisis.   The very foundations of democracy and the global economy have been shattered. Governments, cowered by corporate greed, have failed to act in the interests of working people.   When 56 per cent of people polled say that fear of repercussions would prevent them from reporting corporate malpractice, we know that corporate social responsibility has failed, with repercussions across the foundations that working people need for a new social contract:   • Jobs: 66 per cent are worried about people losing jobs.   • Rights: 55 per cent of people are worried about the weakening of labour laws, while 53 per cent say rates of violence in the world of work have increased.   • Wages: One in ten (13 per cent) do not have enough money for basic essentials like housing, food and electricity. Three-quarters of people (72 per cent) think the minimum wage is not enough to live a decent life.   • Social protection: 87 per cent support affordable access to healthcare, but 67 per cent worry about the capacity of healthcare systems to cope.   • Equality: 66 per cent are worried about inequality in earnings and opportunities between men and women.   • Inclusion: 69 per cent believe the economic system favours the wealthy.   The Poll (which was carried by the global polling company YouGov on behalf of the ITUC) shows clearly that working people know that economic and social progress has stalled or is in reverse.   The economic system favours the interests of the few, while government services are stretched to breaking point and workers’ rights are attacked, with violence and harassment at work increasing.   But working people are clear in their demands. They know that the answer is a new social contract based on climate-friendly jobs, rights, wages, social protection, equality and inclusion:   • Some 60 per cent would trust their government more if they increased the minimum wage and committed to decent work.   • 69 per cent want governments to do more to make sure companies pay their fair share of tax.   • More than 80 per cent support social protection: affordable healthcare, decent retirement incomes, maternity leave and unemployment benefits.   • 62 per cent want their government to promote peace, jobs and human rights.   • 46 per cent would trust their government more if they planned a just transition to climate-friendly jobs.   We support working people in their goals of peace with inclusive social and economic progress that delivers prosperity and a sustainable future.   Right now, these objectives are out of reach for many people. But, with the application of these clear demands, with a new social contract, we can turn the tide and create an economy that works for working people.   This is urgent. Governments and companies need to set out an action plan now to deliver a new social contract and to start to repair the damage.   * The global Poll was carried out across 17 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and the United States.   http://www.equaltimes.org/ituc-global-poll-2022-a-world-on http://www.ituc-csi.org/itucglobalpoll2022-en http://www.ituc-csi.org/World-economy-faces-historic-downturn http://www.ituc-csi.org/2022-global-rights-index-en http://www.socialeurope.eu/myanmar-trade-unionists-in-the-firing-line http://www.socialeurope.eu/belarus-support-jailed-trade-unionists http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/increase-benefits-and-wages-line-inflation-or-lives-will-be-lost-un-poverty
	The right to food is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights by OHCHR, FAO, IPES Food, agencies   Dec. 2022   To Achieve Human Rights, start with Food, by Maximo Torero - Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)   This year’s Human Rights Day marks the 74th year since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international document that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all people. The right to food became a legal obligation for countries to promote and protect as part of the economic, social and cultural rights in 1966.   That fundamental right every one of us is entitled to — to be free from hunger — is at risk today like never before. Amid multiple global crises, such as climate change, pandemics, conflicts, growing inequalities and gender-based violence, more and more people are falling into the hunger trap.   There is enough food to feed everyone in the world today. What is lacking is the capacity to buy food that is available because of high levels of poverty and inequalities.   As many as 828 million people faced hunger in 2021, an increase of 150 million more people since 2019, before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most recent projections indicate that more than 670 million people could still not have enough to eat in 2030.   It’s a far cry from the “zero hunger” target the world has ambitiously committed to less than a decade ago. It also shows just how deep inequalities run in societies across the world.   There is enough food to feed everyone in the world today. What is lacking is the capacity to buy food that is available because of high levels of poverty and inequalities.   The war in Ukraine has made things worse. It shocked the global energy market, which has caused food prices to surge even more. This year alone saw an increase of $25 billion in food import bills of the world’s 62 most vulnerable countries, a 39% increase relative to 2020.   During the Covid-19 pandemic, a health crisis rapidly evolved into a food crisis, as it threatened to break down food supply chains. It taught us the importance of understanding the interlinked challenges of meeting growing food demand while protecting environmental, social and economic sustainability, as envisaged under the Sustainable Development Goals.   Eighty percent of the global poor live in rural areas and rely on farming to survive. Many of them — women, children, Indigenous Peoples and people with disability — don’t have access to food and are struggling with poor harvest, expensive seeds and fertilizers, and lack of financial services. They are directly affected by the risks and uncertainties facing our agrifood systems.   The gravity of the situation demands a holistic approach to tackle the hunger problem. We have to fix our broken agrifood systems to make them more inclusive, resilient and sustainable.   It means that we must take a human rights-based approach so as to apply human rights principles in our efforts. International frameworks provide legal and policy guidance to achieve universal, fundamental human rights.   The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, for example, states that the right to food is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights. It emphasizes sustainability in that food must be accessible for both present and future generations.   From availability, accessibility and healthy diets to food safety, consumer protection and the obligation of states to provide adequate food to their populations, it provides the foundation upon which to rebuild our agrifood systems. Creating a coherent policy and legal framework around those core content will help to promote the right to food.   Since human rights are indivisible and interdependent, a human right cannot be enjoyed fully unless other human rights are also fulfilled. Advocating policies that promote other human rights — like health, education, water and sanitation, work and social protection — can positively impact the right to food as well.   Human Rights Day calls for dignity, freedom, and justice for all. Let us remember the critical role the right to food plays in achieving these important principles. And without these principles, we cannot reduce poverty or improve the well-being of all. Food is fundamental to life. And it is key to strengthening our global efforts to find lasting solutions to today’s challenges.   * The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) provides analysis of the severity and magnitude of acute and chronic food insecurity in countries at risk, to inform emergency responses: http://www.ipcinfo.org/   Nov. 2022   Recommit to the right to food- UN expert. (OHCHR)   “One year ago, the international political situation was bad. It was bad because there was no multilateral response to the food crisis,” UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, told the UN General Assembly (GA).   “I can tell you, in last year’s resolution on the right to food you gave the world hope… It was like you gave the world the green light it needed to dedicate more political and diplomatic energy to addressing the food crisis,” he added.   In his latest report to the GA, Fakhri analyses the issues linked to food insecurity and nutrition that were exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time during which communities around the world have been able to adapt to survive. For this, they adopted resilient solutions such as localized markets, public food reserves and public food distribution systems, as well as agroecology, defined by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization as an integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to design and management of food and agricultural systems.   However, Fakhri pointed out that, although Governments on their end were able to implement pandemic relief measures - such as direct cash transfers, universal school meals, the protection of workers’ rights and social protection - they have yet to mobilize and come up with a perennial multilateral response to the global food crisis.   Since Fakhri’s appearance before the GA in 2021, food insecurity, he said, has worsened. Lockdown measures that have restricted the access of food producers to their territories and forced the closure of informal markets where those foods where sold have had an unfair impact on small scale farmers and on the livelihoods of poor urban buyers and sellers.   The expert also pointed out that women, who make up a sizable portion of workers in the informal sector and of smallholder food producers and also bear the responsibility to feed their families, were likely the first to go hungry. Also under these lockdowns, children were denied access to daily school meals. Another concern of the expert was that more children would be pushed into work, especially in the agricultural sector. Last year, child labour increased globally to 160 million, the first rise in 20 years.   Fakhri further said that, this year, an additional 50 million people will face severe hunger, and another 19 million are expected to face chronic undernourishment in 2023. Domestic food inflation in more than 60 countries is reportedly 15 per cent or higher year on year, and about 60 per cent of low-income countries find themselves in, or at high risk of, debt distress.   To overcome these challenges, the expert urged governments to build on what worked during the pandemic as an immediate response. “Many governments are starting to end pandemic relief measures. But measures like universal school meals and direct cash transfers provided proof of what is possible to realise the right to food. Make these programmes permanent, do not end them,” he said.   Fakhri also recommended that governments re-purpose their existing budgets to transition to agroecology, urging them to ensure that their populations have strong land rights and equitable access to land.   He also called on UN Member States to reaffirm their commitment to the right to food by creating a declaration to “inspire and galvanize the world to cooperate and tackle the food crisis.”   “For every moment governments delay enacting a coherent, coordinated food security agenda, more people will become poorer, sicker and hungrier,” Fakhri said.   “But change won’t happen until workers, peasants, pastoralists, fishers and indigenous peoples establish new relationships of solidarity. This has proven to bring about real and equitable change.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/time-coordinated-action-address-food-crisis-and-create-global-plan-un-expert http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a77177-right-food-and-covid-19-pandemic-interim-report-special   A small number of corporations exercise undue influence over the global industrial food system. (IPS)   While grain exports continue to regularly flow to world’s markets since the July 2022 Turkey-brokered agreement between Russia and Ukraine to resume cereals and fertilisers shipments from both countries, food prices are still skyrocketing everywhere. How come?   The handiest answer by establishment politicians and media is that it’s all about the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.   Another argument they use is that it is Russia who interrupted its gas and oil exports, omitting the fact that it is West US-led sanctions that have drastically cut this flow to mostly European markets, causing a steady rise in energy costs, food transportation, etcetera.   Nonetheless, such answers clearly ignore other structural causes: the dominant markets’ shocking speculations.   “It is true that the Russian invasion against Ukraine disrupted global markets, and that prices are skyrocketing. But that also tells us that markets are part of the problem,” last April warned Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, 2022.   In his report to the United Nations Security Council, the Special Rapporteur stated that hunger and famine, like conflicts, are always the result of “political failures.”   Specifically, explains Michael Fakhri, “Markets are amplifying shocks and not absorbing them… food prices are soaring not because of a problem with supply and demand as such; it is because of price speculation in commodity futures markets.”   The current food crisis is caused by “international failures,” he said, while providing two points in conclusion:   For over two years, people and civil society organisations around the world have been raising the alarm about the food crisis. For over two years, they have been calling for an international coordinated response to the food crisis.   And yet Member States have refused to mobilise the Rome-based agencies and other UN organisations to respond to the food crisis in a coordinated way.   According to Michael Fakhri, some Member States and civil society organisations tried to get the UN Committee on Food Security (CFS) to pass a resolution last October in order for it to be the place to enable global policy coordination around the food crisis.   “And yet some powerful countries – some members of the P5 [the five permanent, veto-holder prowers]– actively blocked that initiative. This undermined the world’s ability to respond to the food crisis.”   Meanwhile, in a 7 November 2022 dossier by Focus on the Global South, Shalmali Guttal warned that a perfect storm is brewing in the global food system, pushing food prices to record high levels, and expanding hunger.   “As international institutions struggle to respond, some governments have resorted to knee-jerk ‘food nationalism’ by placing export bans to preserve their own food supplies and stabilise prices….”   In its dossier, researchers from Focus on the Global South write about various aspects of the current crisis, its causes, and how it is impacting countries in Asia.   These include regional analysis, case studies from Sri Lanka, Philippines and India, “the role of corporations in fuelling the crisis and the flawed responses of international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Bretton Woods Institutions and United Nations agencies.”   The recently released State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2022 (SOFI 2022) report presents a sobering picture of the failure of global efforts to end hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. According to SOFI 21, “even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, world hunger levels were abysmally high.”   In their recent analysis: A food crisis not of their making, CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, said:   Governments, and multilateral and international agencies are by and large apportioning the lion’s share of the blame for the current world food crisis to global supply shortages arising from the war on Ukraine, ignoring the persisting impacts in low- and middle-income countries of “the market forces of concentration and speculation, of globally determined macroeconomic processes, and the collapse of livelihood opportunities affecting these countries in the post-Covid world.”   Central to recurring food price volatility, food crises and the entrenchment of hunger and food insecurity are “market structures, regulations, and trade and finance arrangements that bolster a global corporate-dominated industrial food system, and enable market concentration and financial speculation in commodity markets.”   Furthermore, an analysis by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) indicates that the kind of “excessive speculation” seen in 2007-2008 that triggered food price spikes may be back.   “Multilevel market concentration and financial speculation on commodity markets have played pivotal roles in past and the present food crises and present grave threats to the realisation of the Right to Food.”   In addition, a historical examination of food crises over the past 50 years by professor Jennifer Clapp shows that the global industrial food system has been rendered more prone to price volatility and more susceptible to crises because of three interrelated manifestations of corporate concentration:   First, the global industrial food system relies on a small number of staple grains produced using highly industrialised farming methods, making the system susceptible to events that affect just a handful of crops and to rising costs of industrial farm inputs.   Second, a small number of countries specialise in the production of staple grains for export, on which many other countries depend, including many of the poorest and most food-insecure countries.   And third, the global grain trade is dominated by a small number of firms in highly financialized commodity markets that are prone to volatility (IPES-Food 2022; FAO 2022; OECD and FAO 2020).”   On this, Jennifer Clapp, professor and Canada Research Chair, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, explains that “a small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally.”   According to Clapp, “four grain trading corporations– Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus, called the ‘ABCD’– control 70-90 % of the grain trade.”   As “cross-sectoral value chain managers” these grain trading giants are able to compile large amounts of market data, but are under no obligation to disclose this information and can hold stocks until prices have peaked, explains the expert.   “And in each of the three global food crises studied, financial speculation has caused steep increases in prices, making food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people.”   http://ipes-food.org/pages/foodpricecrisis http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/COP27 Visit the related web page
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