Social Watch News
Published on Fri, 2020-03-27 09:23
Austerity policies pushed by international financial institutions have weakened public health systems, despite current financial support packages, condemning many people to die.
As health systems of East Asia, Europe, and the Americas buckle under the strain of coronavirus, developing countries are expecting an even higher human toll. Decades of austerity promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and regional development banks have weakened public health systems, impeding the ability of governments to respond to the pandemic.
|
Published on Fri, 2020-03-27 08:50
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on 25 March launched a US$2 billion coordinated global humanitarian response plan to fund the fight against COVID-19 across South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The launch was held virtually in UN headquarters in New York, with the Secretary-General being joined by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
According to the UN, COVID-19 has killed more than 16,000 people worldwide, and there are nearly 400,000 reported cases.
|
Published on Sat, 2020-03-21 10:14
The Covid-19 pandemia is a global health crisis (with major financial and economic consequences) but international organizations, starting with the World Health Organization “are still insufficiently funded to respond quickly to the emergence of dangerous diseases - and to prevent them from spreading to global pandemics” argue Jens Martens and Bodo Ellmers, from Global Policy Forum in a briefing paper published last March 18. People in most Global South countries are likely to suffer its impact even more and therefore “in order to prevent the corona crisis from becoming a global development crisis, solidarity must not end at national borders.”
|
Published on Fri, 2020-03-20 12:13
ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena, warned that the region’s economies will suffer the pandemic’s negative consequences via numerous channels.
The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, warned today that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will have devastating effects on the global economy that will certainly be more intense than and distinct from those felt during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, adding that Latin American and Caribbean countries will not be spared since they will be affected through numerous channels.
|
|
Published on Fri, 2020-03-20 11:41
|
Published on Thu, 2020-03-19 23:59
Cyprus undergoes a trade-off between urgent responses to the economic and financial crisis and its sustainable development commitments. As a member of the European Union, Cyprus should be implementing the concepts of Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) and Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD), yet neither of these is mentioned in the country’s official Voluntary National Review, which in fact omits the whole of SDG 17 (on implementation).
|
Published on Thu, 2020-03-19 23:45
 |
SDG 6, Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, represents one of the easiest – and most fundamental – parts of the 2030 Agenda to achieve. Dynamics of power and inequality shape access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and other basic services, both in terms of tangible metrics (income, nearness and type of family toilet or water source) and because of the unequal distribution of influence over decision-making - the gulf between whose rights and voices count and whose do not. Raising the political leverage of communities facing discrimination in infrastructure and service provision is key in changing the power relationships between users and providers. The preconditions for universal access to WASH at national level must be matched by commitments at international level: to significantly increase official development assistance (ODA), restructure debt, curb illicit financial flows and stimulate new sources of international public assistance through democratic institutions.
|
Published on Thu, 2020-03-19 22:03
Social Watch Philippines, together with a number of Filipino academics and civil society representatives, present a policy matrix that identifies urgent issues, provides analyses and outlines recommendations on trade and development from a wide range of actors from civil society, the academe, and private sector in time for the preparatory process leading to the UNCTAD XV Conference to be held in Barbados from 18 to 23 October 2020.
|
Published on Thu, 2020-03-19 18:32
Ollivier de Sutter, former Special Rapporteur of the United Nations on the Right to Food (2008 to 2014) was voted by the Human Rights Council in its March 13 session as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, from May 1 on.
Commenting on his appointment, De Sutter wrote: “Ironic turn of history: in May 2008, I inaugurated my mandate as Special Rapporteur on the right to food in a context of unprecedented crisis, with an explosion in food prices linked both to a barrel of oil at the highest and speculation on the markets, as well as restrictions on exports of food products ... Twelve years later, this new appointment comes at a time when a major economic recession is coming, with business closings chain, massive job losses, and an increase in poverty in the face of exhausted social protection systems.
|
Published on Thu, 2020-03-19 16:18
An initial assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the global world of work says the effects will be far-reaching, pushing millions of people into unemployment, underemployment and working poverty, and proposes measures for a decisive, co-ordinated and immediate response.
|
SUSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Submit
|
