Tag Archives: Inequality

Voice – UN DESA Monthly Newsletter for July 2023

The July edition of VOICE a monthly newsletter from UN DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs is filled with information about the upcoming High-Level Political Forum. The first article is about turbocharging the SDGs. This is followed by how action for climate change and the SDGs create synergies that reinforce each other.

In my last posting, I did not mention anything about the call of the Secretary-General for an SDG stimulus. There is a section in Voice entitled 5 things you need to know about the SDG Stimulus to deliver the 2030 Agenda. In February 2023 the Secretary-General called for the G20 to deliver US $ 500 billion annually to Sustainable Development. The crunch will be on September 18 and 19 when the SDG Summit is taking place – will the call be answered? Will the money be provided? If one does a tour of the UN one sees the amount spent on military expenditure – currently at 5 Billion a day. This is a steep increase from November of 2022 when 1 Billion a day was recorded.

The Sustainable Development Goals Report will launch on July 10 at 12.30 EST. You can watch live on UN WebTV

As I write this piece I am reminded of the working document or ‘instrumentum laboris,’ towards the Synod released at the end of June. The document outlines the current reality as characterized by too many wars, the threat represented by climate change, the cry to oppose an economic system that produces exploitation, inequality, and a throw-away culture, the desire to resist the homogenizing pressures of cultural colonialism that crushes minorities, persecution to the point of martyrdom, and emigration that progressively hollows out communities. This is the current reality that is at the heart of the High-Level Political Forum and the global framework outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals. This desire for implementation is often thwarted by counter-systems that are war-mongering, that demand to invest in militarism and fossil fuels.

These counter-systems uphold neo-liberal capitalism, maintain inequality – including gender inequality, profit from the exploitation of child labour, migrant labour, bonded labour and human trafficking, maintain a throw-away culture, crush minorities, harass women leaders, to the point of murdering women’s human rights defenders and others calling for change. The Global NGO presence and voice at the United Nations call for, propose and witness to an alternative reality – a reality informed by dignity and human rights, inclusion and respect for all people and our common home opposing and resisting the dominant narrative. Read More

‘Good Shepherd’ participation in the 57th Session of Commission for Social Development February 11- 21, 2019

Attending the Civil Society Forum, February 15, 2019 – See more photographs

Participation at the Commission was in the following ways – submission of a written statement, (also available in French and Spanish) attendance at panel discussions, delivery of an oral statement, sponsoring a side event, moderating a panel, attending the Civil Society Forum and contributing to the Civil Society Declaration. The keynote speaker for the forum was Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. View the webcast! Start at marker 34.05 The issues being addressed are inequality, fiscal policy, wage policy and social protection which may be intimidating, boring, and uninteresting; issues to be addressed elsewhere. You may experience resistance to a discussion on fiscal policy but the reality is that the policies we care most about – the rights of girls and women, and human rights more broadly are fundamentally determined by how economic policies are evolving worldwide. Throughout the world today we are seeing the triumph of neo-liberal policy prescriptions – taxes are being cut in many countries and governments are under great pressure. Governments are less relevant, less interested and less able to respond to the sorts of agenda that are before this group. Privatization is the only option – governments cannot do it. Deregulation becomes important because we need a more conducive environment for business. This becomes problematic if the starting point is how to protect and promote the rights of girls and women or how to protect the least well off or those close to it – which is a much higher number. Policies of austerity are often anti-girls and anti-woman. He cited examples from Ghana – an African success story determined by neo-liberal policies but 1/4 of all girls are married before their 18th birthday and there are direct connections between child, early and forced marriage and poverty; and the UK where he identified that single mothers were under the greatest pressure – with a moralistic response coming from a male-dominated government and punitive policies designed to force young mothers out to work and make it difficult to get the benefits they are entitled to. We need to bring alive and create awareness that fiscal policy and austerity measures have social consequences for everyone but in particular for girls and women.

Our recommendations to the Commission are as follows: Implement national social protection floors, in line with ILO Recommendation 202 and SDG 1.3, while scaling up existing social protection policies towards universal social protection. Realize SDG 8 by protecting and promoting human and labor rights, decent work, and living wages so that people can work and live in dignity and prosperity. Achieve SDG 10 by empowering and promoting the social, economic and political inclusion of all, and by creating inclusive fiscal, wage and social protection policies that create resilience and economic opportunity among vulnerable communities. Implement progressive tax systems and end impunity for tax abuse to mobilize resources for social protection floors and other public services. Invest in financially inclusive loan programs, microfinance loans, and small business cooperatives that empower socially excluded people to reclaim their dignity and become active participants in their financial decisions. These recommendations are at the heart of our position paper for Economic Justice “The disparity between the accumulation of extreme wealth and the inescapability of extreme poverty offends the dignity of human beings, is an affront to the common good, and tends toward disastrous cyclical misery. Extreme amassment of wealth and refusal to share resources and material goods are both cause and effect of social and spiritual ills.”

Delivering oral statement (marker 0.27) on Tuesday, February 19th, 2019
Alexis Schutz, Cynthia Mathew, Winifred Doherty and Bhumika Muchhala – panel presenters at Mahila – Addressing Inequalities and Challenges to Social Inclusion in the Community Context.
Social Protection as a Strategy for Addressing Inequalities and Challenges to Social Inclusion
It’s not all serious! What about some SDG ball play! I am rooting for SDG 10!
With Molly Gerke, Maria Nicole Insuasti Torres, Alexis Schuts and Cecelia O’Dwyer.

Unanimous Voices in Acknowledging the Absolute Importance of Reducing Inequalities

Promoting Equality for Sustainable Development    Paul Quintos                                     Remarks at the OWG8                                   Feb. 7, 2014                                                 By Paul Quintos                                            IBON International

Good morning to everyone and thank you for inviting us to join this panel and share our perspectives on the question of Equality. For us, equality is one of if not the most central issue that must be tackled by the Post-2015 development agenda. 

Tackling inequality is probably the most serious challenge to SD today and more so in the future.

The grossly unequal distribution of wealth, resources and power is the principal reason for the persistence of poverty and human deprivation despite the leaps and bounds in the aggregate growth of material wealth produced in the world. Altogether, around 15 million people die every year largely due to a lack of access to nutritious food, basic healthcare services, or clean water for drinking and sanitation – equivalent to more than 40,000 preventable deaths every single day. This is not due to the lack of available resources or the limits of science and technology. It is a question of distribution and justice.

The wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of global resources and are responsible for the vast majority of global warming and environmental destruction. The poorest 20% of the population who lack sufficient access to essentials such as food, clean water and energy account for just 1.3% of global resource consumption. The ecological footprint of high-income countries is three times that of middle-income countries, and five times that of low-income countries.

We are heartened that all of our speakers yesterday as well as delegates who spoke from the floor were unanimous in acknowledging the absolute importance of reducing inequalities between rich and impoverished, between men and women, between developed and developing countries. We are particularly supportive of the proposals from the G77 and others regarding universal social protection, progressive taxation, a focus on creating decent work for all, strengthening workers rights, ensuring equitable access, ownership and control over productive assets and natural resources, ending all forms of discrimination and ensuring equal and effective participation of all people in decision-making including and in particular that of people living in extreme poverty.

We would like to add the need to expand the commons including community-based and public or collective forms of ownership and control over the means of production and distribution. We need to progressively ensure that peoples’ access to the necessities for a dignified life is not determined by their purchasing power.
On the other hand, we would like to underscore the need to rein in the concentration and accumulation of private wealth and power, particularly corporate power. We need stricter regulatory frameworks for big business especially transnational corporations to ensure that they are fully transparent, respect human rights and are held accountable whenever they violate these rights.

A fairer international system is also urgently needed. The financial system needs to be seriously regulated through taxation of speculative flows, clamping down on tax havens, preventing tax competition, cancelling unsustainable debt burdens; and making finance serve sustainable development rather than maximizing profits. The WTO, trade agreements and investment treaties should be circumscribed by human rights norms and principles rather than the other way around.

The establishment and governance of a fairer international economic order should be coordinated by a reformed, democratic and more effective UN system. The UN can start by fully disclosing all contributions coming from the private sector and the terms and conditions of its partnerships.

We agree with the proposal to have a stand-alone global goal for reducing inequality in every country in order to raise its visibility and focus efforts in addressing it.

At the same time we should incorporate equality targets across other goals and require disaggregated data in measuring progress towards meeting these goals and targets, particularly for the lowest quintile of the population.
Thank you.

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How does this compare with yesterday’s posting?