Social Watch News

Currently, negotiations on bailout deals and Greek economic reform are taking place between the Greek government and its creditors (the IMF, the ECB, and EU member states).  Previous budget cuts and other austerity measures intended to reform Greece’s economy, combined with privatizing public services, have done anything but lead to growth. Instead, austerity measures have led to an economic and humanitarian crisis in Greece. One in four people is out of work. Youth unemployment stands at 60 per cent. Child poverty in Greece grew to 40.5 per cent in 2015 from 23 per cent in 2008, while cuts to health services have led to devastating social and health consequences. In fact, because of the conditionality that accompanied the financial support of its creditors, Greece was found to have violated the right to social security due to the austerity measures it imposed, according to the European Committee of Social RightsImposed economic adjustment measures can often have devastating effects on the exercise of human rights, and this link underlines once again the importance of raising sufficient domestic revenues for states to be able to respect, protect and fulfill human rights.

Revised global standards on the treatment of prisoners were adopted in Vienna to provide greater protection to persons deprived of their liberty. The detailed guidelines currently in effect were established by the United Nations 60 years ago. The four-year-long revision process took into account contributions by CELS and other national and international human rights organizations.

The text adopted at the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice will be sent to the General Assembly for final approval. Starting in 2011, CELS and other organizations participated in the revision process during meetings of experts and the Commission's sessions.

Ever since the Group of 20 decided to tackle infrastructure as part of its development agenda, in 2010, the push for increasing investment in infrastructure never ceased. Today, infrastructure finance is not only top of the agenda at the Group of 20 – where its sheer continuity would be already remarkable –, but also at public lending institutions, led by the World Bank, and at the United Nations where it is expected to feature prominently in a new financing for development deal for the post-2015 era.

Within the new infrastructure finance agenda emerging in such forums, the USD 85 that institutional investors, and in particular pension funds, are estimated to hold in savings, are seen as playing a starring role.

Simmering conflicts in higher education have reached the boiling point across Canada and around the globe. Teach-ins, occupations, strikes, and mass protests are being mobilized against exorbitant tuition fees, declining educational quality, mismanagement, the commodification of research, and the suppression of free speech and critical inquiry. A Penny For Your Thoughts, a new book from CCPA's Education Project, shows how Canadian higher education has come to this point.

Through 17 real time studies, it tracks how the deteriorating condition of postsecondary education is rooted in corporatization, the process through which universities and colleges increasingly work for, with, and as businesses. The book’s central message is that the current state of Canadian universities is neither natural nor inevitable: it is the outcome of choices, policies, and actions that can be unmade and undone. Authors Claire Polster and Janice Newson do not prescribe easy recipes for achieving this. Instead, they help citizens to arrive at their own understandings of corporatization and to identify where and how they can intervene strategically in their local universities and communities to reverse its effects. By so doing, Canadians can reclaim their universities as public-serving institutions that realize their highest aspirations and meet their own, their fellow citizens’, and the global community’s most pressing needs.