Social Watch news

Czech women are two times more likely to fall into poverty than men. This gap is particularly pronounced among the elderly and single-parent families, notes the Czech branch of the Social Watch network in its report published on the occasion of the International Women's Day.

In the Czech Republic, women are responsible for 87 per cent of single-parent families, with an estimated total number of 180,000. Nearly 20% of these families with one parent are at risk of poverty. Mothers without a spouse often have low incomes and are twice as likely to be unemployed than the national average.

The current model of UN development assistance—operating country by country, and issue by issue, with priorities heavily driven by individual donors and their interests—is no longer fit for its intended purpose.

The ambitious vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development challenges the UN development system to fully respond to the inextricable links across countries and among social, economic and environmental concerns. This is not just an issue of greater efficiency and effectiveness within existing arrangements. It is a question of how the UN development system can meet the high demands of new commitments aimed at transforming the course of development so that it is equitable, sustainable and aligned with human rights, and remains within planetary boundaries.

One of the 11 areas that the World Bank’s Doing Business Report include in ranking a country’s business environment is paying taxes. The background study for the Doing Business Report 2017 (DBR 2017), “Paying Taxes 2016” claims in the foreword that its emphasis is “on efficient tax compliance and straightforward tax regimes.”  The aim is to aid developing countries enhance the administrative capacities of their tax authorities, reduce informal economy and corruption, while promoting growth and investment.

The very noble intention and much needed support for developing countries from the World Bank, at least on paper, deserves accolades. But, in practice, it is not what it proclaims to be.

As the Ontario and Quebec governments design their versions of a basic income pilot program, Canadians find themselves engaged in a policy question we haven’t grappled with in almost half a century: how should the welfare state evolve? 

At the heart of the basic income debate is a discussion about what’s required for everyone to have a basically decent life. Implicitly, it embraces a conversation about the importance of markets in that pursuit.