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Article / 19th May 2023

The global fight against hunger is going backwards as the world faces a food crisis of unprecendented proportions, the largest in modern history.

Blog / 16th May 2023

A new report - Spotlight on Global Multilateralism - offers critical analyses and presents recommendations for strengthening democratic multilateral structures and policies. 

Report / 12th May 2023

As poverty rises amid intertwining crises, Amnesty International have issued an urgent call for governments worldwide to implement universal social protections to ensure that basic necessities are available to all. 

Blog / 27th April 2023

A person dies of hunger every 30 seconds in East Africa, where famine is looming for the third time in little more than a decade. It does not have to be this way, write Fati N’zi Hassane and Reena Ghelani.

Blog / 27th April 2023

As many as 45 African countries have been further squeezed to their bones as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels, and as a portion of the so-called aid goes back to the pockets of rich donor countries.

Blog / 22nd April 2023

STWR joins the call for governments to change course and focus on rapid, deep cuts to military spending that are driving an arms race and fueling war. 'War costs the earth', says the Global Campaign on Military Spending.

Blog / 21st April 2023

New research estimates that poverty was linked to at least 183,000 deaths in the US in 2019, making inadequate income the nation's fourth-leading mortality driver that year behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking.

Blog / 21st April 2023

Rich countries continue to be the recipients of large amounts of their own aid, according to new statistics released today by the OECD Development Assistance Committee.

Report / 17th April 2023

"For every $1 the IMF encouraged a set of poor countries to spend on public goods, it has told them to cut four times more through austerity measures," says Oxfam. 

Article / 6th April 2023

With a renewal of internationalism again on the agenda, we need to urgently reflect on the concept of the global commons. Do natural resources not belong to all the inhabitants of the Earth? 

Article / 24th March 2023

STWR joins the call of social movements at the 2023 UN Water Conference to insist that ‘water justice’ based on human rights is at the centre of policies to solve the global water crisis.

News / 24th March 2023

Amid a lack of global cooperation, the world is far off-track in achieving universal access to clean drinking water by 2030, according to a United Nations report released as officials marked World Water Day.

News / 21st March 2023

Humanity still has a chance, close to the last one, to prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists report.

Article / 16th March 2023

The data is shocking: three-quarters of African Governments have already reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.

News / 13th March 2023

A scathing open letter from world leaders calls on governments to “never again” allow “profiteering and nationalism” to come before the needs of humanity in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Article / 13th March 2023

While campaigners hail a triumph of multilateralism, the new UN treaty has far from declared the high seas to be the 'Common Heritage of Mankind' and it has yet to agree any mechanisms for sharing ocean resources, explains Binoy Kampmark.

News / 6th March 2023

After 15 years of disagreement, failures and stalled formal and informal talks, there is finally a UN high seas treaty that will help to protect vast swathes of the planet's oceans.

Report / 3rd March 2023

The number of children without access to social protection is increasing year-on-year, leaving them at risk of poverty, hunger and discrimination, according to a new report released by the ILO and UNICEF.

Report / 28th February 2023

The world’s biggest agribusiness corporations made more in billion-dollar profits since 2020 than the amount that the UN estimates could cover the basic needs of the world’s most vulnerable, a new report has found.

Article / 23rd February 2023

Today, there are more children in need of desperate humanitarian assistance than at any other time since World War II. By Baher Kamal for IPS News.

Article / 22nd February 2023

Scholars and activists are developing a new political vision for managing the world economy that is reminiscent of the UN Declaration on a New International Economic Order, now 50 years old. 

Blog / 17th February 2023

There is a practical, possible alternative to the enduring injustice of global inequality: an intergovernmental tax body under the auspices of the United Nations, writes Alex Cobham.

Blog / 17th February 2023

New figures this week from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 13.4m people, or one in five of the population, were left in poverty during the first year of the pandemic over 2020 to 2021.

Blog / 9th February 2023

There is no shortage of money - only a shortage of political will to create a fairer world where prosperity is better shared, writes Gabriela Bucher.

Report / 1st February 2023

A new report concludes that human rights in the UK – including everyday rights such as to food, housing, social security, work, trade unions, health and education – are in a state of crisis.

Article / 19th January 2023

STWR join hundreds of organisations in signing the Santiago Declaration against the commercialisation and privatisation of public services.

Report / 16th January 2023

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today.

News / 12th January 2023

Five million children worldwide died before their fifth birthday in 2021, with almost half (47%) dying during their first month, according to new UN figures.

Blog / 3rd January 2023

Unless austerity is reversed, people in developing countries will lose social protections and public services just when they are most needed. And it doesn't have to be this way, write Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins for Project Syndicate.

Blog / 21st December 2022

A lack of financial resources was a major sticking point at the talks, as well as vague commitments on reducing consumption and production. Report by Catherine Early for The Ecologist.

Blog / 16th December 2022

Pandemics, wars and recessions do not exempt states from human-rights commitments. They must tax multinationals and the richest more to protect the most vulnerable, writes Magdalena Sepúlveda for Social Europe.

Blog / 16th December 2022

The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023.

News / 6th December 2022

A global relief fund of a record $51.5bn will be needed to assist 339 million people suffering because of 2022’s ‘extreme events’.

Blog / 6th December 2022

The UN General Assembly has adopted by unanimous consensus a resolution that mandates the UN to set course for a global tax leadership role.

Article / 2nd December 2022

Richer countries haven't met their $100 billion promise to help poorer countries move beyond fossil fuels. Where's the money going to come from?

Article / 1st December 2022

COP27 marked the point where equity finally took center stage. National fair shares are now on the agenda, if only as the background to an inevitable debate about pragmatic ways forward, writes Tom Athanasiou for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Blog / 1st December 2022

At COP27, wealthy governments are pushing for stronger efforts to limit global warming—while failing to deliver the finance and technology promised for climate action in poorer countries.

News / 22nd November 2022

After days of intense negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters.

News / 22nd November 2022

As the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) closes, the collective power of civil society groups and grassroots climate activists saw a historic outcome with the establishment of a loss and damage fund. 

Report / 16th November 2022

A new report provides a global equity analysis of how climate pledges stack up against the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

News / 15th November 2022

Media organisations worldwide have published a common view about the need for nations to cooperate, accept their moral responsibilities and fairly share the burden of tackling climate change.

News / 14th November 2022

As world leaders gather at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the Climate Clock team is displaying reminders of a looming deadline and just how much high-polluting nations owe the Global South.

Report / 8th November 2022

The US should be paying nearly $40bn towards the $100bn climate-finance target, new Carbon Brief analysis shows. This is $32bn more than the estimated $8bn it actually gave in 2020.

Blog / 13th October 2022

A coalition of 140 organizations from across the globe urge the International Monetary Fund to provide immediate financial relief to low-income nations reeling from the intertwined emergencies of climate change, Covid-19, war, and soaring costs of living.

Article / 13th October 2022

As the IMF and the World Bank will hold their annual meetings, activists are raising demands to #CancelTheDebt. Read below the civil society open letter to all governments, international institutions and lenders.

Report / 8th October 2022

A new report End Austerity: A global report on budget cuts and harmful social reforms shows that 85 per cent of the world’s population will live in the grip of austerity measures by 2023.

Blog / 1st October 2022

It wouldn't take more than 1% of the U.S. population to rise up and get organized behind key popular demands to make them a reality - and yet we continue to endlessly wait, writes Ralph Nader in Common Dreams.

News / 25th September 2022

As a new analysis revealed that the global ranks of the superrich soared to a record number, a coalition of charity groups said Tuesday that hundreds of millions of people around the world are hungry—and that someone starves to death every four seconds.

Report / 22nd September 2022

In a new report on the impact of climate on food supply, Oxfam found a 123 per cent rise in acute hunger in the 10 countries with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events.

Report / 15th September 2022

As the year 2021 began, the need for sharing global resources was unprecedented. Read more about STWR's activities in 2021 and our future plans.

Blog / 14th September 2022

To bring about a 'Great Leap' scenario, it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis, writes Paul Virgo.

Blog / 14th September 2022

Human rights advocates could be more active in using human rights tools to transform economic thought and practice, particularly in holding private and public economic actors accountable for their actions.

Blog / 14th September 2022

Russia's war on Ukraine has wreaked havoc on global commodity markets, driving up energy and food prices and exacerbating hunger emergencies around the world.

Blog / 2nd September 2022

50 years ago, the report ‘The Limits of Growth’ was published — and its scenarios turned out surprisingly accurate. But we can still change course, writes Jayati Ghosh

News / 2nd September 2022

Millions are facing starvation as war combines with financial and climate-driven shocks. Now the U.N. goal to end hunger by the end of the decade looks further than ever.

Blog / 25th August 2022

Change will come, and can only come from committed people mobilizing in common cause as a powerful social movement, writes David Korten.

News / 25th August 2022

Companies at the centre of the global grain trade have enjoyed a record bonanza amid soring food prices around the world, raising concerns of profiteering and speculation in global food markets that could put staples beyond the reach of the poorest.

News / 15th August 2022

U.N. humanitarian projects face a record funding gap this year, with only a third of the required $48.7 billion secured so far as global needs outpace pledges.

Blog / 15th August 2022

Millions of lives are at stake and the world’s most vulnerable do not have the luxury of time, write Abdulla Shahid and Gabriel Ferrero de Loma-Osorio.

News / 5th August 2022

More than 37 million people are facing acute hunger, with approximately seven million children under the age of five acutely malnourished in the region.

Blog / 5th August 2022

As hunger threatens millions, the Biden administration should give its OK for the IMF to distribute financial backing to the world’s poorest countries. By Mark Weisbrot.

Blog / 5th August 2022

The real solution to the threat of nuclear war is in plain sight, but still the powerful weapons makers and war profiteers refuse to yield. By Marcy Winogra and Medea Benjamin for Common Dreams.

News / 3rd August 2022

From today onwards, humanity is living on credit. Every year, Overshoot Day – the date by which humanity has consumed all the resources that Earth can sustainably produce in one year – arrives earlier.

Report / 30th July 2022

The outcome of the 12th Ministerial Meeting (MC12) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a big win for rich countries, but a massive defeat for the global South, explains a dossier by Focus on the Global South.

News / 26th July 2022

The World Trade Organization's 12th Ministerial Conference ended with an agreement on patent rights that campaigners said would do virtually nothing to address vast global inequities in coronavirus vaccine and treatment access. 

News / 19th July 2022

Wildfires and heatwaves wreaking havoc across swathes of the globe show humanity facing “collective suicide”, the UN secretary general has warned, as governments around the world scramble to protect people from the impacts of extreme heat.

Blog / 19th July 2022

The money that is being swallowed into the Western military establishments does not only drift away from any climate spending but also promotes greater climate catastrophe, writes Murad Qureshi.

Blog / 19th July 2022

While one person is dying every 48 seconds in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia alone, Oxfam report that food billionaires have increased their collective wealth by $382 billion since 2020. 

News / 13th July 2022

Western governments should “compel” private lenders to ease loan repayments from low-income countries to tackle a debt crisis, according to campaigners.

News / 8th July 2022

The number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, according to a new UN report that provides fresh evidence that the world is moving in reverse, away from the Sustainable Development Goals.

Blog / 8th July 2022

While the NATO Summit ended in Madrid with net commitments to double spending on weapons and to increase by eight-fold the number of troops in Europe, the total of hungry people worldwide now marks an unprecedented record.

Blog / 24th June 2022

Tens of thousands of people joined the Mass Poor People's and Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18. 

Report / 10th June 2022

Only about half the funds required are being provided by rich countries, according to a report by Oxfam.

Blog / 10th June 2022

How long can billionaires continue to amass wealth while the world's poorest struggle to buy food? By Paul Rogers for Common Dreams.

Blog / 1st June 2022

The invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered a hefty increase in military spending among Western nations and a rise in humanitarian and military assistance to the beleaguered country, is now threatening to undermine the flow of ODA to the world’s poorer nations.

Blog / 31st May 2022

One person is dying from hunger every 48 seconds in East Africa. A global galvanising effort is urgently needed, writes Gareth Owen for openDemocracy.org

Report / 24th May 2022

As the cost of essential goods rises faster than it has in decades, billionaires in the food and energy sectors are increasing their fortunes by $1 billion every two days, according to Oxfam.

Blog / 19th May 2022

Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.

News / 19th May 2022

The UK government has been urged to give the hunger crisis gripping the Horn of Africa “proper attention”, as new polling showed just two in 10 people in Britain are aware that the worst drought in 40 years is even taking place.

Blog / 13th May 2022

Two important reports were released last month, neither getting the kind of attention they deserve, writes Vijay Prashad for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

News / 13th May 2022

World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion. This was the seventh consecutive year that spending increased, reports the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 

News / 6th May 2022

The number of people suffering from extreme hunger reached an all-time high in 2021 and is on track to increase further this year—unless wealthy countries ramp up efforts to "tackle the root causes of food crises rather than just responding after they occur."

Blog / 6th May 2022

As the West is busy dealing with its own economic woes while cutting off Russian exports, little heed is being paid to those suffering the most, writes Ramzy Baroud.

Blog / 28th April 2022

There is plenty of information alerting against the ongoing devastating human war on Mother Nature. And the message is clear, writes Baher Kamal for IPS News.

Report / 12th April 2022

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief.

News / 12th April 2022

After wrapping up a worldwide civil disobedience campaign to call for a "climate revolution," scientists have pledged to keep fighting for the ambitious action they warn is necessary to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of the fossil-fueled global emergency.

News / 25th March 2022

The number of people who are severely hungry in Sudan could double by September as a result of poor harvests, economic crisis, internal conflict and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UN has warned.

News / 25th March 2022

People in Afghanistan are today facing a food insecurity and malnutrition crisis of “unparalleled proportions”, according to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator.

Blog / 22nd March 2022

Putin’s war underlines just how urgent debt cancellation is. When the fighting ends, Ukraine will need a modern-day Marshall plan - made up of grants, not a reconstruction financed by loans, writes Owen Jones.

News / 18th March 2022

Agencies forced to cut back aid in Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia despite growing need as funds go to Ukraine.

Blog / 18th March 2022

A growing number of billionaires is not a sign of success; it is a sign of the failure of the economic system we have created — particularly in the context of millions of people sliding into poverty. By Amitabh Behar for IPS news.

News / 11th March 2022

World leaders are under pressure to conclude years of talks on an agreement to protect open oceans that help sustain life on Earth, cover almost half the planet and currently fall under no country's laws.

Report / 4th March 2022

The COVID-19 death toll has been four times higher in lower-income countries than in rich ones, according to a new report published by Oxfam on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Article / 4th March 2022

Safety and security are at the base of the ‘hierarchy of needs’ pyramid, second in importance only to life’s absolute necessities—air, water, food and shelter, warns a new report from the UN Development Programme.

Article / 4th March 2022

Governments must start treating the climate crisis as a national security concern on a par with war as climate breakdown threatens countries’ stability and safety, the global chief of the Red Cross has warned.

Article / 25th February 2022

Join eighteen organisations and key individuals working in the global justice sector across nineteen countries in ditching the word “aid” and replacing it with more accurate alternatives in our communications. 

News / 25th February 2022

The head of the U.N. food agency has warned that 13 million Yemenis are headed for starvation due to a protracted civil conflict and a lack of funding for humanitarian aid.

Report / 25th February 2022

According to the Hunger Hotspots Report from the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen remain the countries of highest concern.

Blog / 21st February 2022

Dozens of youth-led advocacy groups from around the world have published an open letter urging the European Union, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Switzerland to immediately end their opposition to a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines.

Report / 21st February 2022

The world is spending at least $1.8tn every year on subsidies driving the annihilation of wildlife and a rise in global heating, according to a new study, prompting warnings that humanity is financing its own extinction.

Report / 14th February 2022

Despite urgent calls to ensure the equal distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, pharmaceutical companies tragically failed to rise to the challenge of a once-in-a-century global health and human rights crisis. 

Article / 11th February 2022

The UK currently lacks a legal mechanism for enforcing the right to food. British MPs and activists are fighting for this basic right to be enshrined into law - making the government legally responsible to help anyone who is going hungry.

Report / 31st January 2022

An analysis by the Center for Global Development reports that the average Briton produced more carbon dioxide in the first two days of January than an average person from the Democratic Republic of Congo would in an entire year.

Blog / 31st January 2022

To end the pandemic, we need a transformative shift away from the short-termist and profit-captive model of global health governance. And Cuba is showing the way, writes Zackie Achmat.

Blog / 19th January 2022

If MLK lived today, he would not be celebrated for staunchly opposing wealth inequality and poverty, or for his Poor People's Campaign that demanded a better life for all Americans through nonviolent protest and mutual aid. 

Blog / 19th January 2022

Just a fraction of the giant amount spent on the world's military - 2,000,000,000,000 US dollars - could meet the UN's major funding appeals for ending starvation and tackling the coronvirus pandemic, writes Baher Kamal for IPS news.

Report / 17th January 2022

The coronavirus vaccine divide is costing lives and supercharging inequalities worldwide, a new report from Oxfam warns.

Blog / 14th January 2022

This is the new world order revealed at its most selfish and morally defective: countries trapped in a geopolitics that puts military and economic sanctions before food for the hungry, writes Gordon Brown.

Blog / 7th January 2022

Sharing doses alone is not enough, we also need to share the vaccine technology to end the coronavirus pandemic. But only people’s organising is going to make leaders take that bold action in 2022, writes Ben Phillips.

Article / 22nd December 2021

New research shows that global protests are rising and have much in common - asking for no more than established human rights. By Walden Bello and Isabel Ortiz.

News / 16th December 2021

Over 50 Nobel laureates across the globe have come together and signed an open letter for all the countries to cut their military spending by 2 percent a year for the next five years.

Report / 14th December 2021

New evidence compiled by the World Health Organization and the World Bank shows that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to halt two decades of global progress towards Universal Health Coverage.

News / 14th December 2021

A total of 274 million people worldwide will need emergency aid and protection in 2022, a 17 per cent increase compared with this year, the UN has reported. 

Blog / 10th December 2021

Until we can ensure equal availability of vaccines worldwide, the coronavirus will remain in charge. Critical health technologies must be considered part of a global commons, write Mariana Mazzucato and Jayati Ghosh.

Report / 10th December 2021

Global inequality is as marked as it was in the early 20th century pinnacle of western imperialism after the capture by the super-rich of an increasing share of the world’s income, a new report has shown.

Blog / 30th November 2021

If we do not want COVID-19 to continue exacerbating the colonial world order, we need change - starting with an intellectual property waiver, says Fatima Hassan for Al Jazeera.

Report / 22nd November 2021

For at least the last 30 years, not a single country has met the basic needs of its residents without overconsuming natural resources, according to new research led by the University of Leeds.

Article / 16th November 2021

Activists and civil society representatives have accused rich nations at COP26 of a "shameful" lack of ambition. Reported by Leftfootforward.org

Report / 8th November 2021

The carbon footprints of the richest 1 per cent of people on Earth are set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030, according to new research.

Report / 8th November 2021

A fair share analysis finds current pledges from wealthy countries fall much further below the mark than previously understood, demonstrating the need for international climate action on fossil fuel production.

Article / 26th October 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has cast into stark relief the consequences of decades of privatisation and commercialisation of essential public services. Join the growing movement to build public services as part of a just recovery.

 
Report / 22nd October 2021

The finance industry’s demand for new sources of capital worldwide to satisfy investors, is having a serious negative impact on the enjoyment of human rights, a group of UN-appointed independent rights experts have warned.

Report / 22nd October 2021

Poverty and privilege continue to reproduce themselves in vicious cycles, driven by unacceptable levels of inequality. But with political will, we can break these cycles, says UN poverty expert Olivier De Schutter in a new report. 

News / 16th October 2021

A “toxic cocktail” comprising the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and “increasingly severe and protracted” violent conflicts is contributing to the reversal of progress in eliminating hunger, according to the 2021 Global Hunger Index.

Article / 14th October 2021

A climate debt is owed. It is owed by the richest countries, whose carbon emissions—through centuries of industrialisation made possible by colonial extraction—have been the principal cause of the climate crisis.

News / 13th October 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a “tragic reversal” in development and pushed debt in poor countries to record levels, the head of the World Bank has said.

Report / 30th September 2021

The latest Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2021 report argues that it's time to overcome contradictions and hypocrisy in the COVID-19 crisis. Published by Social Watch et al.

News / 29th September 2021

The head of the UN has called on rich countries to step up efforts to protect workers hit by the Covid-19 pandemic with an additional $1tn injection of funds to avoid a twin-track recovery that widens the gap with the world’s poorest nations.

Blog / 24th September 2021

The UN food summit was hijacked early on by powerful corporate interests – but people are resisting, write Elizabeth Mpofu and Henk Hobbelink.

Report / 24th September 2021

More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says.

Report / 24th September 2021

Six companies at the helm of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out are fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis through their refusal to waive intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology.

Report / 22nd September 2021

Only a third of children under two in many developing countries are fed what they need for healthy growth and no progress has been made on improving their nutrition over the past decade.

Article / 17th September 2021

In a low-growth world, it is essential to share what growth there is more equitably - otherwise the consequences could be catastrophic, writes John Cassidy for the New Yorker.

News / 16th September 2021

A new report from the United Nations highlights divergent economic recoveries between nations and throws fresh urgency behind warnings that richer nations are not doing enough to help poorer countries from falling further behind as the world recovers from COVID-19 disruptions.

Blog / 16th September 2021

Outrageous profits have been made by the extremely rich during the pandemic. They need to show shared sacrifice and solidarity by rallying behind the rest of the world, writes Anthony Kamande. 

News / 3rd September 2021

More than four billion people live without any welfare protection today to cushion them from crisis, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) report, while highlighting how the COVID-19 crisis has pushed up government spending by some 30 per cent.

Report / 3rd September 2021

A new briefing paper by Oxfam shows that the International Monetary Fund is systematically encouraging countries to adopt austerity measures once the pandemic subsides, risking a severe spike in already increased inequality levels.

Article / 1st September 2021

It is possible to satisfy humanity’s universal needs - and keep the world liveable - if we focus on sufficiency and guarantee everyone a fair share of planetary resources, writes Stan Cox for Yes! magazine. 

News / 17th August 2021

Three-quarters of people in the world’s wealthiest nations believe humanity is pushing the planet towards a dangerous tipping point and support a shift of priorities away from economic profit, according to a global survey.

Report / 9th August 2021

A new global study sounds an alert of an emerging austerity shock: most governments are imposing budget cuts, precisely at a time when their citizens and economies are in greater need of public support. By the Initiative for Policy Dialogue et al.

News / 29th July 2021

Humans will have already consumed all the natural resources that Earth can sustainably supply for 2021 by tomorrow — overshooting by five months.

News / 29th July 2021

More than three million people across the globe have died of Covid-19 in the roughly nine months since India and South Africa first proposed a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, a popular measure that Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other rich countries have blocked.

News / 26th July 2021

Over 300 global civil society organizations of small-scale food producers, researchers and Indigenous Peoples’ are gathering online (25-28 July) to protest against the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit.

Report / 13th July 2021

The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report.

Report / 12th July 2021

11 people are likely dying every minute from hunger, now outpacing COVID-19 fatalities, warns Oxfam.

News / 7th July 2021

More than 800 international organizations, NGOs, farming groups and experts call for agroecology, organic, and regenerative agriculture to top the agenda at this year’s UN Food Systems Summit.

Report / 2nd July 2021

STWR’s priorities have remained focused on the core objective of promoting our vision of a massive worldwide citizen’s movement to end hunger and poverty. Read more about our activities in 2020 and our future plans.

News / 2nd July 2021

Billions of people around the world will be unable to access safely managed household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services in 2030 unless the rate of progress quadruples, according to a new report from WHO and UNICEF.

News / 23rd June 2021

Global South states commit to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and production at a four-day 'Summit for Vaccine Internationalism'.

News / 23rd June 2021

Famine is already present in four countries but millions more people are at risk, the World Food Programme have warned, underscoring the need for urgent funding and humanitarian access to reach those in need. 

News / 15th June 2021

G7 leaders have rejected pleas to find billions of pounds to end Covid jab shortages in poor countries, despite Boris Johnson making a plan to "vaccinate the world" his aim for the Cornwall summit.

News / 14th June 2021

Green groups say a lack of fresh finance to help developing countries adopt renewable energy and adapt to a warmer planet threatens key climate talks in November.

Blog / 14th June 2021

How the G7 continues to stand in the way of a more democratic international order - by Nick Dearden for the New Internationalist.

Blog / 11th June 2021

Leading Astronauts from the USA, Japan and South Korea have joined forces in a new short film targeting G7 leaders, who meet this weekend in Cornwall, UK.

News / 9th June 2021

The world’s richest countries have finally agreed in principle to the idea of a global minimum corporate tax rate—a step that could signal a conclusion to a debate that has been raging for nearly a decade.

Blog / 9th June 2021

If aid is to meaningfully tackle poverty, it can’t just be about charity. Instead, it should be about redistributing the world’s resources and dismantling the power structures that maintain global inequality, writes Aisha Dodwell.

Blog / 4th June 2021

G7 negotiations for a global minimum corporate tax rate offers the opportunity for a transformational shift in responses to the pandemic, explains Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network.

Report / 2nd June 2021

Large corporations, rather than ordinary people, have been the main beneficiaries of Covid bailout funds in many lower-income countries.

News / 27th May 2021

On the first day of the World Health Assembly, civil society organisations have sent an open letter to the WHO critisicing the encouragment of privatisation of healthcare amidst a COVID-19 pandemic.

News / 21st May 2021

Nobel Prize laureates and other experts issue urgent call for action after 'Our Planet, Our Future' Summit. This statement was inspired by the discussions at the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit.

News / 21st May 2021

At least nine people have become new billionaires since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, thanks to the excessive profits pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies on COVID vaccines are making.

Article / 21st May 2021

The harms to human dignity caused by over-indebtedness — whether individual or public — are a consequence of unjust policies which violate human rights. Protecting rights must be a core principle of debt justice.

Blog / 7th May 2021

Over 90 million people across the EU live at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Yet the Union's current action plan doesn't come near to the pledge of ‘no poverty’ made at the United Nations.

News / 5th May 2021

The number of people facing acute food insecurity and needing urgent life and livelihood-saving assistance has hit a five-year high in 2020 in countries beset by food crises, according to the findings of an annual report by the Global Network Against Food Crises.

Article / 30th April 2021

The latest figures of rising arms expenditures by some of the big powers makes a mockery of the UN’s longstanding pleas for cutbacks and diversion of funds from the military into sustainable development.

News / 30th April 2021

Over 200 organisations from 67 countries call for the transformation of the WTO into a completely new framework for international trade that is fit for the 21st century – which means it puts people and the planet first.

Blog / 28th April 2021

The pandemic has uncovered unpalatable truths about global injustices and inequalities. We are challenged to see health as a universal common good, not a benefit that can be cultivated for a privileged few.

Blog / 26th April 2021

UK campaigning organisations are urging the government to rethink its military spending decisions in the light of the pandemic and the climate emergency.

News / 21st April 2021

Aid organisations call on governments to give a single day’s military spending to fight hunger. Only 26 hours of global military spending is enough to cover the $5.5 billion needed to help most at risk.

Article / 20th April 2021

The “inequality pandemic” calls for a new social contract, but it will not happen unless millions around the world mobilise to make it a reality, write Imani Countess and William Minter for The US−Africa Bridge Building Project.

Article / 13th April 2021

Protest movements are on the rise worldwide amid deepening inequalities and job crises worsened by the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Article / 26th March 2021

Poor countries are paying more for the doses that remain after rich countries have had their fill. It is perhaps the worst display of national selfishness in modern history, writes Nanjala Nyabola for the Nation.

News / 26th March 2021

Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance, warn the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in a new report on hunger hotspots.  

News / 23rd March 2021

Wealthy countries - including the UK - are blocking proposals to help developing nations increase their vaccine manufacturing capabilities, documents leaked to BBC Newsnight show.

Article / 23rd March 2021

As the UN commemorates World Water Day, Volkan Bozkir - President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly - highlights the moral failure of providing this most basic need to all.

News / 15th March 2021

People in Yemen face famine unless the world takes immediate action, the World Food Programme has warned at a high-level fundraising conference. 

Blog / 8th March 2021

Nearly a billion tonnes of food - a fifth of worldwide production - is binned each year, according to new UN research in support of global efforts to halve food waste by 2030.

Report / 5th March 2021

The coronavirus pandemic is pushing people in fragile states towards catastrophe, with hunger levels rising dramatically and famine looming in several countries, an in-depth report by the Disasters Emergency Committee’s coalition of leading UK aid agencies. 

Blog / 5th March 2021

It’s not often that you can celebrate an outright, global triumph for the advocacy efforts of a movement. But for tax justice, this is one of those days, writes Alex Cobham for the Tax Justice Network.

Blog / 19th February 2021

The climate crisis is set to bear the same hallmarks of inequality, whereby the world’s poorest are expected to suffer most. This is why just transitions are such an integral part of climate action, writes Elaine Burke.

News / 19th February 2021

Civil society groups are ramping up their demand that the new Biden Administration commits to doing its fair share of emissions cuts and honours owed support for Global South countries.

News / 16th February 2021

Ahead of critical talks at the World Trade Organization, civil society and trade unions from the Global South are calling on rich countries’ leaders to stop blocking a proposal to waive certain intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines and other medical products.

Article / 12th February 2021

Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization intellectual property provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

Article / 12th February 2021

The new U.S. administration should begin with an honest accounting of the abundance so unequally hoarded in the nation's coffers, followed by a plan to share it more fairly. By Rev Dr Liz Theoharis for TomDispatch.

Blog / 9th February 2021

Focus on loss of life – and urgently trying to prevent it – rather than whether a famine has been declared, writes Daniel Maxwell et al for The New Humanitarian. 

News / 6th February 2021

The biggest ever poll of climate change views has found that 64 per cent of people think the issue is a “global emergency”.

Article / 29th January 2021

Every year, US$88.6 billion leaves Africa in the form of illicit capital flight according to the 2020 report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 
 

Blog / 29th January 2021

As billionaire wealth soars during the pandemic, we may have seen the greatest ever single-year redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy. Influencers worldwide need to be sounding the alarm, writes Sam Pizzigati.

Article / 26th January 2021

The campaign for 'Footprint Justice' is gathering momentum with a call for UN member states to investigate the legal implications of enshrining a 'Fair Earth Share' as a human right. 

Report / 25th January 2021

The 1,000 richest people on the planet recouped their COVID-19 losses within just nine months, but it could take more than a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, reveals Oxfam. 

Article / 22nd January 2021

David Beasley of the World Food Program and Henrietta Fore of UNICEF discuss the enormous challenge of feeding the world's hungry in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

News / 21st January 2021

The world faces a "catastrophic moral failure" because of unequal Covid vaccine policies, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Report / 18th January 2021

Accelerating biodiversity loss, climate change and over-consumption are swiftly pushing human societies toward a “ghastly future” of growing hunger, political division and societal breakdown, say leading scientists.

Article / 18th January 2021

The past year has seen one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. Around the world, as more and more working-class people slip into debt, or are facing eviction, or have burned through their savings to stay afloat during the pandemic, the world’s ~3,000 billionaires are billions richer.

News / 13th January 2021

Billionaires whose wealth has soared during the coronavirus pandemic should stump up to provide emergency aid to the record numbers of people facing starvation, accordinng to the head of a US charity supporting the World Food Programme.

Blog / 27th December 2020

In late November, what may have been the single largest protest in human history took place in India, as upward of 250 million people around the subcontinent participated in a 24-hour general strike in solidarity with farmers. 

Report / 22nd December 2020

A project by Tipping Point North South works to put sustainable human safety at the heart of 21st century foreign, defence, security and international development policy-making.

Report / 17th December 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures to contain it have hit millions of people hard, with poverty set to increase sharply in almost every country for the first time in decades unless action is taken now, according to a new report by Oxfam.

News / 16th December 2020

Lost among the jubilation of vaccine rollouts in rich countries is an uncomfortable reality: The world's poorest countries will have to wait months and possibly years to see any doses at all.

Blog / 13th December 2020

Campaigners are calling for a right to food and a right to housing to be given legal backing in the UK for the first time, writes Liam Geraghty for the Big Issue.

Report / 10th December 2020

A joint report by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and Christian Aid asks a radical question: what would it look like if we had an econmomy based on human rights?
 

Report / 10th December 2020

Land inequality is directly threatening 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people, according to a recent report.

News / 2nd December 2020

The UN humanitarian office says needs for assistance have ballooned to unprecedented levels this year because of COVID-19, projecting that a staggering 235 million people will require help in 2021.

Report / 25th November 2020

Countries are losing a total of over $427 billion in tax each year to international corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion, costing countries altogether the equivalent of nearly 34 million nurses’ annual salaries every year – or one nurse’s annual salary every second. 

Blog / 20th November 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many existing inequalities, and may worsen divergence among countries. While the poor have struggled to survive, the world’s billionaires have done “extremely well”, report Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury.

News / 19th November 2020

The UN has earmarked $100m (£75m) in emergency funding for seven countries deemed at risk of famine, warning that without immediate action the world could see “huge numbers of children dying on TV screens”.

Article / 18th November 2020

The Transnational Institute sets out ten proposals to mobilise resources to cover the cost of the global COVID-19 pandemic and to pay for the transition away from the fossil fuel economy.

News / 11th November 2020

Over 1,000 health professionals from 66 countries have signed a letter urging the G20 to cancel the debt of developing countries, ahead of an extraordinary G20 Finance Ministers meeting.

Blog / 9th November 2020

'Amid a pandemic that has taken over a million lives, we urge the same level of imagination as the drafters of the Universal Declaration over seventy years ago.' By Gabriela Bucher and Olivier De Schutter.

Blog / 30th October 2020

Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs like housing and water, say present and former UN special rapporteurs.

News / 29th October 2020

Amidst the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, UN member states are negotiating a second revised draft of the groundbreaking treaty on “transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights.”

News / 26th October 2020

In what leading campaigners are describing as “a new chapter for nuclear disarmament”, the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will now come into force on 22 January, after Honduras became the 50th Member State to ratify on Saturday.

Report / 26th October 2020

A new book lays out a progressive agenda for the post-COVID era, which relies on a global Green New Deal, a serious shift of resources from the military to human needs, a major upgrade in international cooperation, and a significant commitment to economic equity. 

Article / 23rd October 2020

As the World Bank and IMF sound the alarm on debts driven sky high by Covid-19 in some of the world’s poorest nations, debt ‘relief’ will not cut it – we need a thoroughgoing transformation of the global economy. By Nick Dearden for the New Internationalist.

Blog / 16th October 2020

The phenomenal rise in extreme poverty -– for the first time in 20 years — has been accompanied by an upsurge in the incomes of the world’s billionaires and the super-rich.

Report / 14th October 2020

Despite its own warnings, the International Monetary Fund is risking another ‘lost decade’ for development, reports Soren Ambrose for openDemocracy.

Report / 12th October 2020

An exit strategy from the World Bank and IMF could lead to serious efforts to create a new system of international governance based on the principles of mutual respect, equality, and cooperation, argues Walden Bellow for FocusWeb.

News / 12th October 2020

The Nobel prize for the United Nations World Food Programme turns an important spotlight on the millions who go hungry around the world and on the devastating consequences of conflict.

News / 8th October 2020

Global poverty is expected to rise for the first time in more than 20 years this year as the pandemic compounds the impacts of conflicts and climate change, the World Bank has warned in a new report.

News / 7th October 2020

More than five hundred of the world’s leading charities, social groups and academics have sent a letter to the International Monetary Fund warning that its support programs are condemning many countries to years of austerity.

News / 7th October 2020

In an encyclical, the most authoritative form of papal teaching, Francis lamented poor cooperation among countries and warned the forces of “myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.”

Blog / 2nd October 2020

The risk of nuclear war is the greatest it has been since the height of the Cold War. But there’s also been incredible progress in the past couple of years, explains Olivia Alperstein for OtherWords.

Article / 1st October 2020

The only way forward for the United Nations is to acknowledge the key difference between 1945 and 2020 - decolonization - and abolish the permanent members of the Security Council altogether.

Blog / 28th September 2020

The High-level Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the UN brought together 111 Heads of State and Government and 14 Ministers, who spoke in support of multilateralism and global solidarity.

Report / 24th September 2020

The Spotlight Report 2020 unpacks the COVID-19 emergency, and calls for a radical redistribution of economic power and resources; bold regulation of global finance; and multilateral solidarity for the common good. 

Blog / 23rd September 2020

Over 200 civil society organizations and trade unions unite to call for a Global Fund for Social Protection to protect the most vulnerable during COVID-19 and beyond.

Report / 21st September 2020

The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth.

Blog / 21st September 2020

When we share and respect the resources of the world, each nation will benefit, explains Fr Andrew Hamilton for the Catholic Outlook.

Article / 17th September 2020

The 75th UNGA is a moment for the world to focus on realising the full potential of the United Nations' founding principle of "achieving international cooperation in solving international problems," writes José Luis Castro for Devex.
 

Report / 15th September 2020

The social responsibility of business is actually to ensure profits are shared equitably, argues a new report from Oxfam International. 

Article / 15th September 2020

Inequality is a system of dominance that we can only overcome if we have enough strength. No one cedes power becasue of a great powerpoint, writes Ben Phillips for OpenDemocracy

Report / 11th September 2020

Current social protection programs are not enough to stop millions of people falling into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Report / 11th September 2020

An analysis released Wednesday by an international think tank warns that as the world's population continues to climb toward and possibly surpass 10 billion by 2050, ecological disasters and armed conflict could forcibly displace roughly 10% of humanity—or about 1.2 billion people.

News / 7th September 2020

The first famines of the coronavirus era could soon hit four chronically food-deprived conflict areas — Yemen, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo — the top humanitarian official of the United Nations has warned.

Blog / 26th August 2020

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa is repeating the failed policies of the past and risks pushing back further the struggle against hunger and malnutrition, explains Timothy Wise for IATP.

News / 21st August 2020

The day humanity exceeds Earth's biocapacity this year, Earth Overshoot Day, falls on August 22, three weeks later than in 2019. The shift is due to the pandemic, but can the contraction happen by design, not disaster?

Article / 17th August 2020

Narrow self-interest makes it unlikely that the global north will commit the resources and know-how necessary to combat the global pandemic — which would also eliminate one of the factors contributing to civil conflict, writes Elizabeth Schmidt for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Blog / 12th August 2020

The UN’s 75th anniversary this year is a chance for taking stock, strengthening the UN and confronting the challenges the system will face in the years ahead, writes Giovanna Kuele for PassBlue.

Report / 28th July 2020

The immediate introduction of a Temporary Basic Income for the world’s poorest people could slow the current surge in COVID-19 and enable close to three billion people to stay at home, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme.

Blog / 28th July 2020

Last week marked 15 years since the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, when leaders of the world’s richest countries agreed debt cancellation for many of the world’s poorest heavily indebted countries.

Blog / 27th July 2020

No private company should have monopoly rights over a Covid-19 vaccine; this is a public resource that should be contributed to the World Health Organisation’s Technology Access Pool and shared for the benefit of all, writes Helen Clark and Winnie Byanyima.

Report / 20th July 2020

A new Oxfam briefing warns that as many as 12,000 people could die per day by the end of the year as a result of hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than could die from the disease.

Report / 8th July 2020

Global poverty is rising, directly contradicting the mainstream wisdom that it is being eradicated, according to a new report to the UN. States are completely off-track to meet their goal of extreme poverty eradication by 2030, and COVID-19 is now rapidly impoverishing many more.

Blog / 26th June 2020

What if more of the arms and defense sector moved into manufacturing health and other products permanently? Surely this is the time for a focus on what peace and security really mean for us all, writes Martin Butcher for Oxfam International.

Article / 26th June 2020

Despite decades of protests against them, the IMF and World Bank continue to force the same discredited policies on poor governments and their people, writes Lara Merling.

Article / 22nd June 2020

The global pandemic could push half a billion people into deeper poverty on some counts and lead to a new COVID-19 apartheid era, warn Andy Sumner, Christopher Hoy and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez in The Conversation.

Blog / 22nd June 2020

The government’s decision to scrap the Department for International Development will set back efforts to fix global inequalities by decades, writes Martin Drewry for the New Internationalist.

News / 19th June 2020

"These numbers should serve as a wake-up call to the international community on the human cost of war, and the social and economic implications exacerbated by Covid-19." By Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams.

Article / 13th June 2020

Despite the coronvirus pandemic, we are experiencing a continuation of rising outrage and street protests throughout the world. Governments need to listen to the demands from citizens legitimately protesting the denial of social, economic and civil rights, write Isabel Ortiz, Sara Burke and Hernan Cortes Saenz for IPS news.

News / 10th June 2020

The world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned as it urged governments to act swiftly to avoid disaster.

Article / 10th June 2020

How can we stop the overshoot of our planet’s capacity and reach fair sharing at the same time? The Dutch Footprint Group present their proposal based on equal rights for all, written by Jan Juffermans for Resilience.org.

News / 7th June 2020

With Europe facing the greatest social challenge in its history since the second world war, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal are calling for a common EU approach to a minimum income.

News / 29th May 2020

Unless countries across the world act together now, the COVID-19 pandemic will cause “unimaginable devastation and suffering around the world”, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres at a virtual high-level meeting on financing for development.
 

Blog / 26th May 2020

There is a danger that Covid-19 will significantly increase the gap between rich and poor nations. It's time to put in place an ambitious plan to overcome this crisis and save more than 30 million lives.

Article / 23rd May 2020

With a “UN 911” first responder for complex emergencies, the UN would finally have a rapid, reliable capacity to help save millions of lives and trillions of dollars, writes H. Peter Langille for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Article / 23rd May 2020

What is happening during this pandemic is not degrowth. Our real goal is to purposefully slow things down in order to live meaningfully through commoning, sharing and working less in more equal societies, write Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria.

News / 14th May 2020

Over 100 former global leaders call for the mandatory worldwide sharing of a Covid19 vaccine - available to all people, in all countries, free of charge.

Report / 13th May 2020

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

Article / 7th May 2020

 Far from being the 'great leveller', COVID-19 has exposed and deepened socio-economic inequalities, writes Meera Karunananthan for openDemocracy.

News / 7th May 2020

Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, Professor Alfred de Zayas, urges civil society to demand a new social contract based on human dignity, social justice and sustainability. 

Article / 30th April 2020

The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say.

Article / 30th April 2020

"This is the time to insist on multilateralism, solidarity, and science based health policy making at global and national level. This is the time to rally behind WHO."

Article / 30th April 2020

"The pandemic has changed the game. We have the resources to build an economic model that doesn’t trash the planet and provides for all." STWR join the statement from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

Blog / 24th April 2020

Now is the time for citizens to ensure that world leaders forcefully respond to the COVID-19 crisis in accordance with human rights, write Isabel Ortiz and Walden Bello.

Blog / 24th April 2020

We need global action now. Only a mighty response by rich, powerful countries will stop the pandemic and prevent a global economic collapse, writes Chema Vera.

Blog / 24th April 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call to stop exceeding the planet’s limits, write Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Kate Raworth.

News / 22nd April 2020

The coronavirus crisis will push more than a quarter of a billion people to the brink of starvation unless swift action is taken to provide food and humanitarian relief to the most at-risk regions, the UN and other experts have warned.

Blog / 21st April 2020

Tackling the coronavirus demands international action and solidarity on all fronts - not just for reasons of equity, but also practicality, writes Vanessa Baird for the New Internationalist.

News / 16th April 2020

International aid and development organisations stress that suspending debt payments during a major global economic and health emergency may not be enough to fight the crises. 

News / 12th April 2020

The economic impact of the global shutdown could push half a billion people into privation, researchers warn.

Blog / 12th April 2020

The coronavirus has brought our economy to a standstill. But instead of rebuilding a broken system, we must explore how we can build back better, write Amanda Janoo and Gemma Bone Dodds for OpenDemocracy & WellbeingEconomy.org.

Blog / 6th April 2020

The time has come for a massively ambitious plan to overcome the impacts of the coronavirus crisis in developing countries, and on a scale we’ve never seen before in our lifetimes. By Chema Vera from Oxfam International. 

Article / 2nd April 2020

Sign a petition from the International Peace Bureau (IPB) calling for a dramatic reduction of military spending in favour of healthcare and meeting social needs.

Blog / 23rd March 2020

While the world's richest have seen a dip in their stock holdings, those on the bottom of the wealth scale will bear the heaviest burden of the crisis, writes Max Lawson for inequality.org.

News / 23rd March 2020

Rapid action is needed to head off the risk of a new debt crisis in the world’s poorest countries amid evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic is raising borrowing costs and hitting commodity exports, according to a leading campaign group.

Blog / 11th March 2020

If the coronavirus has any positive impact, let it prompt us to learn the limitations of the market and the urgent need for regulation, taxation and public services, says Nick Dearden for Al Jazeera.

News / 11th March 2020

The world is "way off track" from meeting targets to limit global warming as the signs of a climate emergency grow more damaging, the United Nations has warned.

Report / 11th March 2020

Public services play a critical role in advancing human rights and fighting inequality. But growing levels of external public debt threaten the very services on which citizens depend in order to have even a basic standard of living, explains a report by Eurodad.

Blog / 6th March 2020

Social protection is a universal human right, and governments have the tools at their disposal to end hunger and poverty sustainably. Yet the majority of humanity remain unprotected, explain Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury.

Blog / 28th February 2020

A new transatlantic project will explore how new models of public ownership can shape the emerging commanding heights of the economy. By Thomas Hanna and Mathew Lawrence.

Article / 28th February 2020

A Green New Deal has the potential to address both the climate crisis and global inequality, with potentially major implications for U.S. foreign policy. But this will mean confronting the structural inequalities, both national and global, that have been violently imposed throughout history and that still shape the present, explains William Minter and Imani Countess.  

News / 21st February 2020

A new study has found that as much as a sixth of foreign aid intended for the world's poorest countries has flowed into bank accounts in tax havens owned by elites.

Article / 21st February 2020

The Earth Charter recognises that achieving social and economic justice will require both ensuring ecological integrity, as well as the rights to freedom of opinion, expression and peaceful assembly etcetera. Written by Brendan Mackey for the Great Transition Initiative. 

News / 19th February 2020

Children in the biggest carbon-emitting nations are healthiest, while those with tiny environmental footprints suffer twofold from poor health and living at the sharp end of the climate crisis, reports Saeed Kamali Dehghan.

Blog / 7th February 2020

In testimony to a House committee this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that the current U.S. administration does not want to recognise the level of poverty in America "because if we did, it would be a national scandal."

News / 7th February 2020

A sophisticated Italian food system is placing a heavy burden on Italy’s workers and farmers, an independent UN human rights expert has concluded, following an 11-day visit to the country that many regard as the world’s food capital.

Article / 30th January 2020

To mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations issued '30 articles on the 30 articles' that summarise this historic document. Below we republish the backgrounders about the economic and social rights which are central to our campaigning activities at STWR.

Article / 30th January 2020

With its latest pronouncements on the threat of rising inequality, can we expect to see an International Monetary Fund that firmly rejects the austerity policies it has historically pushed? Unfortunately not, explains Sam Pizzigati for Inequality.org.

Report / 23rd January 2020

The World Social Report 2020, published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, shows that income inequality has increased in most developed countries, and some middle-income countries including China.

News / 21st January 2020

In a stark reminder of gaping global inequality, a new report by Oxfam reveals that 162 billionaires, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, have the same wealth as the poorest half of the world. 

 
News / 16th January 2020

Southern Africa is in the throes of a climate emergency, with hunger levels in the region on a previously unseen scale, the UN has warned.

Blog / 13th January 2020

Poorer countries are cutting public spending in response to a “growing debt crisis”, campaigners have warned.

Blog / 13th January 2020

A billboards project from World Beyond War highlights how little of current U.S. military spending could permanently end hunger and extreme poverty globally.

Article / 9th January 2020

Únase a STWR, Compartir los Recursos del Mundo, en manifestaciones para el Artículo 25 de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos.

Blog / 7th January 2020

With all eyes on them, Lebanese protesters now have the opportunity to outline an ambitious programme for reform that tackles inequality for current and future generations, writes Mona Fawaz.

Blog / 7th January 2020

The UN's 2019 report on human development is timely in view of the widespread social unrest in many countries that derives, to a large extent, from the inequalities this report analyses. By Yossi Mekelberg.

Blog / 7th January 2020

If multinationals—and the super-rich—do not pay their fair share of taxes, governments cannot invest in access to education, health care, and decent pensions, or take measures to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. 

News / 23rd December 2019

The UN’s relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock, believes next year could be worse than a “terrible” 2019, when conflict, the climate emergency and economic desperation left 165 million people in need of aid.

Blog / 16th December 2019

At COP25, the world has moved even further from core principles of equity in tackling the climate crisis. By Kabir Agarwal for The Wire.

Blog / 13th December 2019

The successful battle against climate change – which has triggered a rash of natural disasters, including floods, droughts and rising sea levels— will be predicated largely on the availability of financing.

News / 13th December 2019

According to OCHA’s “Global Humanitarian Overview 2020,” 168 million people worldwide will need assistance in the coming year — the “highest figure in decades.”

News / 10th December 2019

Despite global progress in tackling poverty, hunger and disease, a “new generation of inequalities” indicates that many societies are not working as they should, the UN Development Programme argues in its latest report. 

Report / 9th December 2019

New analysis sets out how much responsibility the wealthy countries behind the climate crisis must take for the devastating impact that rising global temperatures are already having on developing nations.

Blog / 2nd December 2019

The way we assess economic performance and social progress is fundamentally wrong, and the climate crisis has brought these concerns to the fore, writes Joseph Stiglitz.

Blog / 2nd December 2019

Human rights advocates should be as concerned with the economic injustices giving rise to recent worldwide demonstrations, as with the repressive responses to them writes Ignacio Saiz for the Centre for Economic and Social Rights.

Blog / 2nd December 2019

The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren’t Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

News / 27th November 2019

Global emissions need to be more than halved if we are to save the planet, world's top scientists agree in a new United Nations report.

Article / 26th November 2019

Financing social protection systems that are both adequate and sustainable is not a fantasy. There are a number of measures that governments can take to raise the resources needed, writes Evelyn Astor for Equal Times.

Article / 25th November 2019

Do we really understand what ‘sharing’ means in its totality? For humanity has done everything but actually put into practice a just and equitable redistribution of the food and resources of the world, so that no-one need go without. By Marc Gregory. 

Blog / 25th November 2019

A global civic participation campaign calls for the creation of a World Citizens’ Initiative on the occasion of the UN’s 75th anniversary. This new instrument could enable individual citizens to influence the world organization’s work, writes Andreas Bummel and Bruno Kaufmann.

News / 25th November 2019

Less than 10% of EU aid money reaches the countries where it is most needed, according to a study that found levels of assistance had dropped for the second year running.

News / 6th November 2019

The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists.

Blog / 30th October 2019

We are witnessing the biggest surge in global protest activity since the early 2010s, when a "movement of the squares" saw mass rallies in capital cities across the Arab world, followed by Occupy demonstrations in the global north, writes Jack Shenker.

Blog / 30th October 2019

Protesters are demanding a larger share of the nation’s prosperity — a reality check for its celebrated economic model. There is no alternative to simply spreading the wealth more evenly, writes a group of opinion journalists at the New York Times.  

News / 29th October 2019

Recent protests in cities across the world show that “people are hurting and want to be heard” by political leaders who must now address a “growing deficit of trust”, says the UN chief.

Blog / 25th October 2019

Research makes explicit the link between ending extreme poverty and inequality: even a relatively small amount of re-allocation of the world’s resources could end the injustice of extreme poverty in a world of plenty, writes Danny Sriskandarajah.

Blog / 25th October 2019

It's time to reclaim the policy space lost to footloose capital by creating a new public realm at the global level, writes Richard Kozul-Wright for openDemocracy's Oureconomy.

Blog / 25th October 2019

Austerity and budget cuts do not need to be “the new normal”. Governments can find additional fiscal space to fund public services and development policies through at least eight options, all of which are endorsed by the United Nations. By Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins for IPS news.

News / 15th October 2019

The climate crisis is driving alarming levels of hunger in the world, undermining food security in the world’s most vulnerable regions, according to this year’s global hunger index.

Article / 15th October 2019

Combining analysis, outrage and active citizenship can build and sustain large-scale public engagement, writes Stephen McCloskey for openDemocracy Transformation.

News / 15th October 2019

With one-third of food produced for human consumption lost or wasted, and millions still going hungry, the UN’s food-related agencies are shining a spotlight on the issue.

Blog / 11th October 2019

Last month 195 world leaders once again met in New York for big speeches and grand events. But on inequality, when all is said and done, more has been said than done, writes Ben Phillips. 

Blog / 11th October 2019

Our planet needs action on a truly planetary scale. That cannot be achieved overnight, and it cannot happen without the full engagement of those contributing most to the crisis, writes the UN secretary general.

Article / 4th October 2019

Regenerating the planet through biodiversity-based ecological processes has become a survival imperative for the human species and all beings. It is not just a climate solution, but also a path to eradicating world hunger, explains Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Article / 4th October 2019

After centuries of enclosure, privatisation and colonisation, it's time that the commons were returned to all of us, writes Guy Standing in openDemocracy.

Blog / 4th October 2019

About 100 million Americans are effectively hidden by official poverty statistics, yet enough revenue could be raised from fair taxes to completely eliminate poverty in the United States, writes Karen Dolan.

News / 26th September 2019

A package of new economic justice bills aim to improve the lives of Americans living in poverty, including a resolution for the United States to finally ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Article / 25th September 2019

In actuality, USAID has been a taxpayer-supported program for neocolonial exploiters requiring long-term protection at public expense, writes Barbara G. Ellis for Truthout.

Blog / 25th September 2019

Every dollar of public money financing US militarism abroad is a dollar that could fight hunger, homelessness, or climate change, writes Medea Benjamin for openDemocracy. 

Article / 20th September 2019

The Sanders plan for a Green New Deal recognizes that unprecedented international cooperation will be needed—with the US doing its fair share—if we’re to have any hope of solving the climate crisis. By Tom Athanasiou for The Nation.

News / 18th September 2019

The United Nations will be hosting six high level plenary meetings—unprecedented even by its own standards—during the beginning of the 74th session of the General Assembly in late September.

Blog / 10th September 2019

Christian Aid and other faith-based organisations are calling for global leaders to tackle the poverty and inequality which has fuelled the environmental crisis. By Dr Rowan Williams.

Report / 10th September 2019

We need a positive vision of internationalism that acts as a countervailing power against ethno-nationalist demagoguery, shunting us on an alternative path - before it’s too late, writes Laurie Laybourn-Langton.

Blog / 10th September 2019

The fund’s loan agreement with Ecuador will worsen unemployment and poverty, providing more reasons for serious reform at the IMF, writes Mark Weisbrot.

Article / 28th August 2019

As global leaders gather in the coming months at several summits and meetings, the following open letter is written by the growing global movement to fight inequality - calling out the failure of the current approach by governments and to set out a vision for radical change.

Article / 23rd August 2019

If we recouped the annual global revenue losses due to multinational tax avoidance, we could literally eliminate extreme income poverty around the world, writes Alex Cobham for Truthout.

Blog / 16th August 2019

The World Bank claims poverty is decreasing around the world but UN research shows it depends on what you measure. If we are serious about reducing poverty, we need to start by properly identifying it.

News / 9th August 2019

Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water.

Blog / 9th August 2019

Current plans to cut global carbon emissions are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit - and 2020 is a deadline for action, explains Matt McGrath.

Article / 1st August 2019

The drive for continuous economic growth is the fatal flaw in the UN's plan to end poverty and save the planet, writes Joan Martinez Alier and Nick Meynen. 

Blog / 1st August 2019

On Monday 29 July, humanity will consume more resources through the end of 2019 than the planet can sustainably regenerate for the year, according to the Global Footprint Network, which has been calculating Earth Overshoot Day since 1986.

News / 29th July 2019

Global hunger has increased for a third consecutive year, with more than 821 million people suffering from chronic starvation driven by conflict and climate change, a United Nations report found.

Report / 26th July 2019

The United Nations launched its 2019 report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), showing inadequate progress in the fourth year into the sustainable development agenda and highlighting the need for imminent global action.

Blog / 25th July 2019

The world already grows more than enough food to feed the world population. Why then do we keep getting it so wrong, acting like growing more commodity crops will end hunger? By Timothy A. Wise.

News / 10th July 2019

West African Governments have been blamed for the worsening poverty and inequality levels in their countries. According to the Oxfam and Development Finance International report published Tuesday, inequality is at crisis levels in West Africa.

Report / 8th July 2019

Four years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda the world is off-track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Most governments have failed to turn the transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real transformational policies. 

News / 8th July 2019

Climate crisis disasters are happening at the rate of one a week, though most draw little international attention and work is urgently needed to prepare developing countries for the profound impacts, the UN has warned.

News / 26th June 2019

The world is facing a "climate apartheid" between the rich who can protect themselves and the poor who are left behind, the UN has warned in a new report. 

Article / 26th June 2019

Every national campaign for tackling climate change also needs an international justice plank, because we’re not going to get anywhere near the Paris temperature targets without global sharing and cooperation, writes Tom Athanasiou for Inequality.org.

Blog / 26th June 2019

In conventional economics, growth is recorded as a good thing in itself, even if it comes at the cost of social and environmental breakdown. If we considered growth to be a means to an end, what would that end be? What would we call it, and what comes after it? 

Article / 26th June 2019

The United Nations, in a new report to be released next month, has warned “there is no escaping the fact that the global landscape for the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has generally deteriorated since 2015, hindering the efforts of governments and other partners”.

Report / 19th June 2019

Basic living standards like adequate housing, health care, education, safe drinking water, and access to work and fair wages are rights, not privileges. A moral society will guarantee these to ALL people, write Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev Dr Liz Theoharis.

Article / 17th June 2019

Individual choices matter, but they will not save the world. What we must do is reorient our politics towards a recognition of the limits of our planet, writes Susanna Rustin.

Blog / 12th June 2019

Instead of endless growth, can we put human health and welfare at the heart of the global economy, the prime policy goal of governments and business alike? By Ben Martin for the Green Economy Coalition.

Report / 7th June 2019

The world’s 10 most under reported displacement crises— which have rendered millions of people homeless– have continued to worsen due either to political neglect, a shortage of funds or lack of media attention, according to a new report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

News / 5th June 2019

One in three African children are stunted and hunger accounts for almost half of all child deaths across the continent, an Addis Ababa-based thinktank has warned.

Blog / 28th May 2019

Many notable activists and celebrities are calling for a global climate strike on 20 September. Disrupting our normal lives is the only way to secure our future, says Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and others.

Article / 23rd May 2019

The solution to the problem of resources for health is not for public bodies to go begging to the private sector or to celebrity philanthropists. The solution today, as it was at Alma Ata 40 years ago, is economic justice and an adequate tax base at national and international levels, writes Alison Katz for the People’s Health Movement.

Article / 23rd May 2019

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change, writes David Robson.

Article / 23rd May 2019

The wellbeing of families is facing challenges on many fronts and – particularly in the developing world – climate change is perhaps the greatest of these as it is exacerbating hunger and food insecurity, explains Siddharth Chatterjee for the Inter Press Service.

Article / 17th May 2019

In his 900th column for openDemocracy, Paul Rogers shows how economics and climate demand a new approach to international security.

Report / 10th May 2019

10 May 2019 marks the date by which humanity would have exhausted nature’s annual budget if everybody in the world lived like EU residents, according to a new report by WWF and Global Footprint Network.

News / 7th May 2019

We are destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, threatening the survival of a million species – and our own future, too. But it’s not too late to save them and us, says a major new report.

Blog / 7th May 2019

In the new energy revolution, we risk perpetuating the belief that rich countries are entitled to a greater share of the world’s finite resources irrespective of who we impoverish in doing so, or the destruction we cause. By Asad Rehman.

Blog / 2nd May 2019

We're in a new climate moment, but social movements must ramp up pressure towards a Second World War–scale mobilization for ending the fossil fuel age, writes Bill McKibben. 

Article / 1st May 2019

The UK is an outlier for subscribing to international treaties that enshrine socioeconomic rights, but without incorporating them in domestic law, writes Koldo Casla and Peter Roderick. 

Blog / 25th April 2019

Every day at work we all contribute to a system that is burning us alive. Downing tools on 27 September will help change it, writes McEver Dugan and Evan Cholerton from Earth Strike.

Blog / 18th April 2019

Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent policy specialists.

Article / 18th April 2019

A decade after the financial crisis shook the foundations of the global financial system, the Bretton Woods Institutions face an uncertain future. The following overview is written for a series on the 'crisis of multilateralism' by openDemocracy with The Bretton Woods Project. 

Report / 16th April 2019

A major new UN-led report warns that a comprehensive overhaul of the world’s financial system is necessary if governments are to honour commitments to combatting climate change and eradicating poverty by 2030.

Report / 15th April 2019

We need a radically different and rebalanced financial system which ensures that the very poorest are included and actively supported to thrive, and in which developing countries have an equal say in making the rules governing the global economy. A briefing from Christian Aid.

Article / 11th April 2019

Finance has always been a contentious issue at climate change talks, but developing countries will only dare commit themselves to greater emission cuts when they are assured that the monies pledged will come through, writes Prerna Bomzan for Third World Resurgence. 

Blog / 11th April 2019

The amount of aid matters, but so does how and where it is spent. Development aid must be focused on reducing the inequality that drives poverty, writes Julie Seghers.

News / 3rd April 2019

Debt repayments by the world’s poorest countries have doubled since 2010 to reach their highest level since just before the internationally organised write-off in 2005, campaigners have warned.

News / 2nd April 2019

A joint report presented by the European Union and United Nations finds that that around 113 million people in 53 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2018, compared to 124 million in 2017.

Article / 22nd March 2019

An international group of MPs calls for a body to strengthen the democratic representation of the world’s citizens in global affairs and the UN’s decision-making.

Blog / 22nd March 2019

In the face of evidence of how austerity is contributing to rising income inequality and political instability, we must persuade governments to support the UN's new Guiding Principles on human rights impact assessments of economic reforms, writes Mark Perera for Eurodad.

Blog / 21st March 2019

A comprehensive United Nations report released on Wednesday found that while global human health is under dire threat from the climate crisis and industrial pollution, there is still a window for bold and urgent action if world leaders would but seize it, reports Jake Johnson for Common Dreams. 

Blog / 21st March 2019

Ultimately, the solutions to inequality will come from those who are at the frontlines of it, not the 1% that caused it and continues to benefit from it. And as anger about shocking levels of inequality continues to grow, so will the movement to fight inequality, writes Jenny Ricks for Inter Press Service.

Blog / 11th March 2019

In a speech given at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland (COP24), 15-year-old Greta Thunberg cuts to the heart of the challenge and calls for the principle of equity to be upheld through structural transformations and sharing the world's resources.

Blog / 8th March 2019

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require major disruptive shifts, which people will tolerate only if they believe that everyone is sharing in the sacrifice, the wealthy and powerful included. A review of recent climate change reports, by Sam Pizzigati at Inequality.org.

Article / 8th March 2019

At long last the political debate in the world’s richest country is vibrant with proposals that would help the most vulnerable in our society. And what do we hear in response? A growing chorus of naysayers.

Report / 8th March 2019

Social protection has been on the UN agenda since its inception - and numerous reports from human rights experts spell out that governments and the international community must tackle tax avoidance and adequately fund the public sector, if they are to live up to their human rights and development.

Article / 4th March 2019

To avoid climate catastrophe, we must go beyond what is considered politically possible. A Green New Deal would mobilise resources on a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to tackle the climate emergency and address spiralling inequality, writes Caroline Lucas.

News / 21st February 2019

Hunger in Africa continues to rise after many years of decline, threatening the continent's hunger eradication efforts to meet the Malabo Goals 2025 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2).

Article / 21st February 2019

It took homo sapiens some 200,000 years to reach the first billion by about 1800. In just the 10 years separating the first and second edition of Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster, the human population increased by the same amount putting increased pressure on an already crowded planet. 

Report / 13th February 2019

Environmental breakdown is a fundamental issue of justice, and calls for overall socioeconomic transformations that bring human activity to within environmentally sustainable limits while tackling inequalities and providing a high quality life to all, according to a new study by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Blog / 8th February 2019

At the latest climate talks in Poland, there was no soothing balm when it came to addressing issues of international equity and climate change, writes Kevin Anderson for The Ecologist.

News / 8th February 2019

More than six in 10 children globally lack access to social protection, leaving them particularly vulnerable to falling into chronic poverty, reports the UN, warning also that some governments are cutting State cash entitlements amid continuing economic uncertainty. 

Article / 8th February 2019

We need a politics of finance for the 99 percent in which public and democratically accountable finance is used to invest in water, health care and education as well as ecologically sound industries, writes Lavinia Steinfort for the Transnational Institute.

News / 30th January 2019

Conflict-driven hunger is getting worse, according to a snapshot of the eight places in the world with the highest number of people in need of emergency food support, and the link between them is “all too persistent and deadly” according to a new report delivered to the UN Security Council.

Article / 30th January 2019

World leaders have committed to ending poverty everywhere for all people by 2030. Achieving this aim means facing up to the need for dramatic declines in inequalities – in income, in opportunity, in exposure to risk, across gender, between countries and within countries – over the next decade.

Blog / 30th January 2019

A global gathering of world elites is taking place in Davos, Switzerland, this week, claiming—as it does every year—to “define priorities and shape global, industry and regional agendas.” 

Report / 21st January 2019

The growing concentration of the world’s wealth has been highlighted by a report showing that the 26 richest billionaires own as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population.

Article / 24th December 2018

The UN General Assembly is set to vote on the final draft of the global compact on refugees as a basis for a more equitable sharing of the burden and responsibility for hosting and supporting the world’s refugees.

Article / 24th December 2018

Numerous political leaders from all over the world are gathered these days in Marrakech, under the auspices of the UN, to sign a new migration agreement: the Global Compact for Migration.

Article / 24th December 2018

Seventy percent of the world’s population is fed by small-scale producers. These producers, however, face an onslaught of threats related to economic globalisation. 

Article / 14th December 2018

Heed Monday’s anniversary, for talk of rights is increasingly becoming hazardous to health in vast parts of the globe, writes N. Jarayam for openDemocracy.

Report / 14th December 2018

A review of climate targets and commitments by each country has been released during the UN climate conference in Poland.

Article / 5th December 2018

These are the People’s Demands, our call to government delegates, grounded in people’s movements from every continent, that demand with one voice what is our birthright: climate justice.

Report / 5th December 2018

Dr. Vandana Shiva presents in the report The Future of Our Daily Bread: Regeneration or Collapse new evidence on the imminent collapse of our food systems if we continue on the path of industrial agriculture. 

Report / 5th December 2018

Friends of the Earth International’s People Power Now manifesto sets out positive measures that will accelerate the transition towards a climate just world.

Report / 29th November 2018

The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world.

Article / 28th November 2018

The world must get serious about matching multilateral money with multilateral needs, and devote at least 2% of world income to global public goods. And the time has come to think again about new global taxes, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.

News / 26th November 2018

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) of the UN General Assembly voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.

News / 26th November 2018

The world is facing a biodiversity crisis, and leaders and delegates of the Convention on Biological Diversity must take real action to halt the devastation of global ecosystems. Friends of the Earth International, together with other members of the CBD Alliance, delivered this urgent call for action at the opening of the 14th Conference of the Parties in Egypt.

Article / 26th November 2018

Widespread privatization of public goods is systematically eliminating human rights protections and further marginalising the interests of low-income earners and those living in poverty, a United Nations human rights expert has said.

Article / 19th November 2018

By removing all discussions about power from their agenda, the SDGs reinforce the status quo of socio-political relations, writes Katerina Gladkova for the Transnational Institute.

Article / 13th November 2018

As the UN Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, tours the UK this week, discussions are dominated by a big question: should poverty essentially be made illegal?

Report / 2nd November 2018

A new report analyses the grand fortunes of the wealthiest U.S. individuals and families, comparing their wealth to the absence of wealth at and near the nation’s economic bottom. By Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie for inequality.org

Report / 2nd November 2018

Limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is the only way to achieve social justice while protecting our environment from devastating climate change. And, contrary to prevailing wisdom, it's not an impossible goal, writes Barbara Unmüßig for Project Syndicate.

News / 30th October 2018

Half the world's population lives on less than $5.50 a day despite significant progress in reducing extreme poverty, a new report from the World Bank said Wednesday.

News / 25th October 2018

Yemen is sliding fast toward what could become one of the worst famines in living memory, the UN’s top emergency relief official has warned.

Blog / 25th October 2018

Top corporations continue to accrue revenues far in excess of most governments, figures compiled by Global Justice Now show. Comparing 2017 revenues, 69 of the top 100 economic entities are corporations rather than governments. 

Blog / 25th October 2018

The University of Manchester’s Professor Kevin Anderson responds to the latest report from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

Blog / 12th October 2018

World leaders will meet in Geneva next week to start negotiating a new international law to ensure companies respect human rights and the environment in their global operations. But a lack of support from European governments is putting this vital United Nations treaty at risk.

News / 8th October 2018

Avoiding global climate chaos will require a major transformation of society and the world economy that is “unprecedented in scale”, the United Nations has warned.

Blog / 2nd October 2018

Redistribution via the tax code, progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are realizing, only takes us so far. We need to start limiting inequality before it can dig in, writes Sam Pizzigati for Inequality.org.

News / 1st October 2018

Share The World’s Resources (STWR) have published a book version of the pioneering work by Mohammed Mesbahi, which proposes a ‘people’s strategy for world transformation’ based on a massive mobilisation of civil society to end hunger and life-threatening poverty as an overriding international priority.

News / 27th September 2018

The world’s governments are “nowhere near on track” to meet their commitment to avoid global warming of more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial period, according to an author of a key UN report that will outline the dangers of breaching this limit.

News / 25th September 2018

An estimated 6.3 million children under 15 years of age died in 2017, or 1 every 5 seconds, mostly of preventable causes, according to new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group.

News / 25th September 2018

The war in Syria and a population surge in sub-Saharan Africa have undermined efforts to reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty, the World Bank has said. 

News / 17th September 2018

‘Today, solving social problems within European nations does not require more growth - it requires a fairer distribution of the income and wealth that we already have.’ 238 academics call on the European Union and its member states to plan for a post-growth future in which human and ecological wellbeing is prioritised over GDP.

Blog / 14th September 2018

On 15 September, it will be ten years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers opened a Pandora’s Box. Movements across Europe are commemorating the date with acts of disobedience to relaunch our struggle to rebuild democracy, which can only be done by controlling finance, writes Susan George.

News / 11th September 2018

New evidence continues to signal that the number of hungry people in the world is growing, reaching 821 million in 2017 or one in every nine people, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 released today.

News / 10th September 2018

More than half a million children in conflict zones could die from extreme hunger before the end of the year, new research by Save the Children shows.

News / 10th September 2018

This weekend over 250,000 people took part in more than 900 actions in 95 countries. The Rise for Climate mobilizations demanded political action to keep fossil fuels in the ground and deliver a swift and just transition to 100% renewable energy for all.

Report / 6th September 2018

In an effort to shed light on the complex challenges and scale of homelessness worldwide, the Homeless World Cup have compiled statistics in the countries in which their street football partners operate.

Blog / 5th September 2018

To unlock the needed ambition at the latest climate negotiations in Bangkok, each country must undertake its fair share of action – based on both their share of the responsibility for the crisis and their capacity to act – if the planet is to meet its collective climate goals, writes Adriano Campolina.

News / 4th September 2018

Two hundred of the world’s most prominent artists and scientists signed an open letter in French daily Le Monde on Monday calling for urgent political action to address the “global catastrophe” facing mankind and other species.

Report / 31st August 2018

Complementarities between Vivir Bien, degrowth, the commons, deglobalisation and other proposals are fundamental to advance in the process of constructing systemic alternatives, according to a book compilation edited by Pabo Solón and published by Fundación Solón, Attac France and Focus on the Global South.

Article / 29th August 2018

Owing to the limits of eco-efficiency and the need to liberate environmental space for the global poor, new policy instruments should be designed to bring about ecological fair sharing between countries and a new economy based on the concept of sufficiency.

News / 23rd August 2018

The international human rights lawyer Philip Alston is investigating extreme poverty in the UK, following his similar visit to the US earlier this year. He will examine if the right to an adequate standard of living, enshrined in UN conventions, is being breached across the country.

Report / 23rd August 2018

Every year, governments are diverting $1 trillion dollars away from people and public services into the hands of big companies, whilst across the world, hundreds of millions of people are denied their basic rights.

Article / 17th August 2018

We cannot count on our government officials to offer real solutions—only we can make the necessary large-scale changes in production and consumption on both the individual and systemic levels. What these changes amount to most of all is living simply, personally and collectively. This is the true #resistance, writes Kristine Mattis in Common Dreams.

News / 17th August 2018

After ten long years of negotiations in Geneva, a ‘United Nations Declaration on Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas’ is now at the point of being finalised.

News / 9th August 2018

One NOAA oceanographer warns that even if humanity "stopped the greenhouse gases at their current concentrations today, the atmosphere would still continue to warm for next couple decades to maybe a century."

Blog / 24th July 2018

Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.

Article / 20th July 2018

Fifteen leading economists, including three Nobel winners, argue that 'aid effectiveness' projects might yield satisfying micro-results, but they generally do little to change the systems that produce the problems in the first place. What we need instead is to tackle the real root causes of poverty, inequality and climate change.

Article / 20th July 2018

Three years after its adoption, most governments have failed to turn the proclaimed transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real policies. But despite the many gloomy trends, there is still room for change, writes Jens Martens for IPS news.

Blog / 20th July 2018

Migrants around the world are facing new barriers to humanitarian aid and public services as some governments have criminalized or sought to limit efforts to help refugees, sometimes in a bid to deter migration—and often in violation of human rights, according to (pdf) a new report by the International Red Cross.

Blog / 14th July 2018

Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International, argues that a complete change to the economic system is necessary if we are ever to confront and transcend the environmental, climatic and social crises upon us

Report / 14th July 2018

“The world is off-track in terms of achieving sustainable development and fundamental policy changes are necessary to unleash the transformative potential of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Article / 13th July 2018

A long standing proposal for the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) is slowly gathering momentum.

Blog / 5th July 2018

The root cause of our immigration problems arise out of gross global inequalities, and will have to be dealth with at the international level, sooner or later. Any quest for a solution should also rest on the foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, says Peter Marcuse.

Blog / 5th July 2018

The National Health Service turns 70 today. Despite too many years of austerity cuts, contracting out and PFIs, most of us still feel the NHS is one of the defining achievements of our society, writes Nick Dearden from Global Justice Now.

Article / 28th June 2018

The National Health Service in Britain was inspired by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both now marking their 70th birthday. We can look back at how unrestrained neoliberalism swallowed those dreams of the 20th century and co-opted socioeconomic rights along the way, writes Afua Hirsch.

Blog / 28th June 2018

"Despite the obvious correlation between Western-sustained wars and the EU’s refugee crisis, no moral awakening is yet to be realized." By Ramzy Baroud.

News / 26th June 2018

Every two seconds, someone in the world was forcibly displaced in 2017, according to a new report by the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Article / 13th June 2018

There are increasing warnings of an imminent new financial crisis, not only from the billionaire investor George Soros, but also from eminent economists associated with the Bank of International Settlements, the bank of central banks.

Article / 13th June 2018

Reducing inequality is one of the central pledges of the SDGs, appearing as a stand-alone goal (SDG 10) and as a cross-cutting commitment to “leave no one behind”. Reducing inequality requires resources; both (re)distributing currently available resources more fairly, and raising more resources to invest in goods and services which tackle inequality.

Blog / 13th June 2018

The new Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WE-All) is designed to help facilitate a transformation to an economy that meets all fundamental needs within planetary biophysical boundaries. By Robert Costanza et al.

Blog / 7th June 2018

Federico Demaria addresses the crucial issues of economic growth and environmental degradation, and asks: is the well-being of the individual, societies and nations possible beyond economic growth?

Report / 7th June 2018

How to live on a shared and finite planet? A new booklet by Friends of the Earth Europe explores this question in relation to the vision of 'sufficiency'. This implies a new direction for society, in which a reduction in resource use among affluent countries opens up the opportunity for the global poor to obtain their fair share of the global commons.

Article / 5th June 2018

A scorching report by the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, finds ‘systematic attack on welfare program' will leave millions deprived of food and healthcare.

Blog / 31st May 2018

Governments around the world are engaged in a series of talks that could alter how the movement of people across borders is managed. One dialogue is focused on the protection of refugees; the other on migration.

Article / 31st May 2018

According to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in total, countries around the world spent $ 1.739 billion on arms in 2017. Although there was a marginal increase of 1.1 percent rise in real terms on 2016, the total global spending in 2017 is the highest since the end of the cold war.

Article / 31st May 2018

A new report reveals how western banks and governments turn a blind eye to billions of pounds’ worth of wealth, generated across west Africa, that is squirrelled away offshore, often out of sight of the tax authorities. By Phillip Inman.

Blog / 17th May 2018

Thirty-one countries across the world are now in debt crisis, with a further 82 at risk, according to new figures released by the Jubilee Debt Campaign on 16 May. The figures are being released on the 20th anniversary of the G8 meeting in Birmingham (UK) 1998, when 70,000 people formed a human chain around the summit and called for unpayable developing country debt to be cancelled.

Blog / 15th May 2018

United Nations climate change talks edged slightly closer to completing the Paris Agreement Work Programme, including guidelines on how to put the Agreement into practice, despite rich countries persistently blocking progress on key issues like finance.

Report / 3rd May 2018

Finance for poor countries to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and deal with climate change is lagging behind the promises of rich countries, an Oxfam report finds.

News / 25th April 2018

Donors and governments meeting Tuesday and Wednesday for the Brussels II conference must take the opportunity to bring change for the millions of vulnerable Syrians in their war-torn country and in the region by following through on previous commitments to protect displaced people and fund the aid response.

Blog / 25th April 2018

This week, executive directors of the World Bank were handed a letter signed by more than 80 civil society organizations and trade unions from around the world, urging a change in the bank’s approach to public-private partnerships.

Blog / 23rd April 2018

“Even the most generous of predictions suggest we need to reach zero emissions in the next 40 years—that is, if we want to be around to celebrate Earth Day’s 100th anniversary in 2070.”

Report / 18th April 2018

A major new study makes a clear case that the richest nation in the world has sufficient resources to protect the environment and ensure dignified lives for all its people. The problem is a matter of priorities, as more and more of America's wealth flows into the pockets of a small but powerful few and into the bloated Pentagon budget. By theInstitute of Policy Studies.

Report / 18th April 2018

While the USA and China are stepping into one the potential biggest fights on trade measures in decades, Friends of the Earth Europe is presenting concrete proposals for an innovative trade agenda that serves citizens and the environment.

Article / 12th April 2018

To curb rising inequality, global leaders must work together to stop the flow of illicit wealth and mitigate tax avoidance, write John Irons & Xavier de Souza Briggs in theStanford Social Innovation Review.

News / 11th April 2018

Rich nations spent more on helping poor countries last year but less on refugees at home, leading to stagnation in overall aid expenditure - which remains well below United Nations’ targets.

News / 9th April 2018

More than two-thirds of the world's entire wealth will be owned by the richest 1% of people by 2030, new research warns.

News / 5th April 2018

Protracted conflicts and climate shocks have led to a record breaking 124 million people, across 51 countries, now facing food insecurity or worse conditions, according to the Food Security Information Network’s annual report on food crises.

News / 5th April 2018

Every year, different networks of trade unions, citizens’ groups, NGOs and social movements organize a series of actions in several European cities for World Health Day (Saturday 7 April 2018).

Article / 3rd April 2018

People across the Global South and economically marginalized people in the North are increasingly aware of the need to organize, agitate for and advance a vision of economic equality such as Dr. King proposed 50 years ago. #MLKGlobal advocates internationally for the recognition and take-up of MLK’s original Economic Bill of Rights, revisited for today.

Article / 27th March 2018

There’s enough stuff to go around, enough for everyone to share in a decent life, so long as we all agree not to want too much. But that implies a process of social maturation on a scale never before seen. Because in order to retain our humanity in the face of limits, we have to confront inequality head on, writes Christopher Ketchammay for Pacific Standard.

Blog / 27th March 2018

If we want to rebuild support for international development, it must be recast as an issue of social justice. The UK Labour Party has thrown down the gauntlet for a radically different approach that aims to tackle inequality, transform the global economy and redistribute wealth and power, writes Nick Dearden.

News / 19th March 2018

The expected rise in US interest rates will increase financial pressures on developing countries already struggling with a 60% jump in their debt repayments since 2014, a leading charity has warned.

Article / 15th March 2018

The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here?

Article / 15th March 2018

Fifty years after Martin Luther King's initiative, a new Poor People’s Campaign connects religious faith to social justice. An interview with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, by Eleanor J. Bader for AlterNet.

Report / 8th March 2018

One year into the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, the most pressing question is whether the Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be implemented in ways that are universal and integrated, and that protect and even extend human rights.

News / 8th March 2018

More than half a billion of the world’s poorest children are invisible to the international organisations that could help them most.

Article / 5th March 2018

A new World Bank report comparing economic growth among different regions in the world ignores key factors in addressing wealth and inequality in Africa—particularly the wealth that is stashed offshore in developed countries, says economist and author Leonce Ndikumana in an interview with The Real News Network.

News / 2nd March 2018

No African country is expected to reach the UN target of ending childhood malnutrition by 2030, according to a new study.

Article / 2nd March 2018

Few Americans know that the U.S. military is making the crisis in Yemen worse by helping one side in the conflict bomb innocent civilians. We believe that since Congress has not authorized military force for this conflict, the U.S. government should play no role in it beyond providing desperately needed humanitarian aid, writes Mike Lee, Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy.

News / 27th February 2018

Arguing that only a positive and truly transformative economic agenda will be sufficient to overcome the Republican congressional majority and President Donald Trump, scores of progressive leaders this week endorsed a bold 11-point platform that calls for Medicare for All, tough Wall Street regulation, and a ban on corporate money in elections.

News / 14th February 2018

Ongoing conflicts and climate-related shocks have left millions of people on the brink of starvation, the United Nations agriculture agency warned on Thursday as it launched a $1.06 billion appeal to save lives and livelihoods, and tackle acute hunger in 26 countries.

Article / 14th February 2018

CIVICUS speaks with Barbara Adams, senior policy analyst at the Global Policy Forum (GPF), on the problem of private finance within the UN development system, and the need for civil society action in response to these growing trends.

Report / 14th February 2018

The report ‘Justice for People and Planet’ shows how corporate power has been used to repeatedly abuse and violate human and environmental rights, written by Greenpeace with assistance from SOMO.

Article / 14th February 2018

Although wealthy nations like the US and UK satisfy the basic needs of their citizens, they do so at a level of resource use that is far beyond what is globally sustainable. If all seven billion or more people are to live well within the limits of our planet, radical changes are required based on a fairer sharing of resources, explains Daniel O'Neill.

Blog / 5th February 2018

Growing inequality is not inevitable; it is created socially. If elites are at all serious about tackling the growing gap between the super rich and the rest of us, they know what they have to do - but who will act? By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram for IPS News.

Blog / 5th February 2018

Measuring humanity’s ecological footprint is essential for keeping its demands within the planet’s biocapacity, a minimum requirement for sustainability, writes Mathis Wackernagel from the Global Footprint Network.

Article / 2nd February 2018

What model of farming can end nutritional deprivation while restoring and conserving food-growing resources for our progeny? The answer lies in the emergent model of agroecology, often called “organic” or ecological agriculture, writes Frances Moore Lappé.

News / 2nd February 2018

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was formed in 1945 to ensure the stability of the international monetary system. The letter below to IMF Directors has been signed by more than 50 prestigious economists and development specialists, concerned on IMF’s social protection and labour reforms.

News / 30th January 2018

The number of hungry people living in conflict zones is rising, with eight countries recording crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in at least a quarter of their people, food agencies warned the UN security council on Monday.

Report / 23rd January 2018

Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report.

News / 18th January 2018

Amid concerns that 160 people may have drowned while attempting to cross the Mediterranean this week alone, the UN refugee agency have urged countries to offer more resettlement places.

News / 17th January 2018

Members of the Fight Inequality Alliance will from January 19th to 26th, mobilise across the world to highlight the crisis of rising inequality and demand the end to the age of greed and for a more equal society. The 2018 Week of Action takes place under the theme ‘End the Age of Greed‘ and will be parallel to the annual World Economic Forum, a meeting of the world’s elite in the financial sector.

Article / 15th January 2018

We must develop a new and international progressive movement that takes on the greed and ideology of the billionaire class, and commits itself to tackling structural inequality both between and within nations, writes Bernie Sanders.

Blog / 9th January 2018

The U.N. finds growing numbers of Americans are living in the most impoverished circumstances. How did we get here? asks Premilla Nadasen.

Blog / 9th January 2018

Will Iran listen to groups like the IMF or the voice of its people? Unless the country deals with basic economic concerns and inequality, the frustrations will continue to simmer, writes Negin Owliaei.

News / 2nd January 2018

The UN is moving ahead with a treaty that would allow greater regulation and protection for the high seas.

Blog / 2nd January 2018

The distributive concept of the 21st century is not about redistribution, but about sharing the sources of wealth from the start. An interview with Kate Raworth, by Triodos bank.

Article / 22nd December 2017

A new dedicated website by the P2P Foundation explains the meaning of and relationship between the Commons and peer-to-peer (P2P) frameworks, and details how a growing movement for a commons transition is poised to reinvigorate labor, politics, production, and carework – from both an interpersonal and environmental perspective.

Report / 18th December 2017

The United States, one of the world’s richest nations and the “land of opportunity”, is fast becoming a champion of inequality, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston.

Blog / 15th December 2017

Innumerable observers have noted that the so-called developed world accounts for a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. Yet even those of us who find global inequality troubling and ultimately indefensible hesitate to raise the subject. Unlike George Orwell, that is, whose support for war-time rationing revealed his motivations towards justice at a global scale, writes Bruce Robbins.

Article / 14th December 2017

The richest 0.1% of the world’s population have increased their combined wealth by as much as the poorest 50% – or 3.8 billion people – since 1980, according to a report detailing the widening gap between the very rich and poor.

Article / 14th December 2017

At least half of the world’s population cannot obtain essential health services, according to a new report from the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Blog / 13th December 2017

We all support the aspiration to achieve ‘Universal Health Coverage.’ Who could possibly argue against a world in which everybody has access to the high quality health services they need, without incurring financial hardship?The problem is how we can possibly turn such a lofty ambition into reality.

Article / 11th December 2017

‘Latin America returns to the global economy’. That’s the message that Argentina’s right-wing President Macri wants world leaders to take away from the World Trade Organisation’s 11th Ministerial Summit in Buenos Aires.

Article / 7th December 2017

In advance of French President Macron’s climate and finance summit, prominent economists call for an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure, and encourage a dramatic increase in investments in renewable energy.

Article / 5th December 2017

Without public recognition of the politics behind disease and famine, it is harder to hold leaders accountable, or indeed to take any measures – beyond the purely technical or charity-minded – to mitigate future disasters. And nowhere is the blindness to context in famine reporting more pervasive than in Africa, writes Alex de Waal.

Blog / 30th November 2017

In an analysis (pdf) published Thursday that throws into stark relief the "unjust and unsustainable" nature of what economists have termed the New Gilded Age, the Swiss financial firm UBS found that the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 17 percent in 2016, bringing their combined fortune to a record $6 trillion -- more than double the gross domestic product of the United Kingdom. N

Blog / 30th November 2017

Despite a few victories, the UN’s annual climate change conference ended without achieving its goals or injecting a sense of much needed urgency.

News / 23rd November 2017

The United Nations relief wing on Friday warned of famine-like conditions unfolding in Yemen, as a blockade on aid and other essential goods by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels there enters its 12th day.

Report / 22nd November 2017

Since 2009, a series of expert dialogues at the General Assembly of the United Nations has sought to define a new worldview based on a non-anthropocentric relationship with Nature. The resolutions contain different perspectives regarding the construction of a new paradigm in which the fundamental basis for right and wrong action concerning the environment is grounded not solely in human concerns.

Report / 22nd November 2017

Share The World's Resources is one of many signatories to the latest Civil Society Equity Review, which proposes a policy framework for a fair sharing of efforts and resources to meet the global commitments on keeping greenhouse gas emissions within safe limits.

Article / 20th November 2017

On the last day of the United Nations climate summit in Bonn, Germany, Democracy Now! get a wrap up on the proceedings from guests Dipti Bhatnagar (Friends of the Earth) and Asad Rehman (War on Want).

Blog / 15th November 2017

Tax dodgers may not be literally stealing medicines from the pockets of the poorest. But they are depriving poor countries of billions that could be invested in healthcare - and the reality of under-resourced health services is brutal, writes Rebecca Gowland.

Article / 14th November 2017

The globe’s richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, according to a new report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else.

Blog / 10th November 2017

The recently leaked Paradise Papers underscore the need to crack down on tax dodging instead of passing another giveaway for the wealthy, writes Chuck Collins for Inequality.org

Article / 7th November 2017

The following article is a resource produced by members of Demand Climate Justice to provide background on the global politics of climate change and the upcoming U.N. negotiations in Bonn.

Blog / 7th November 2017

Just days before world leaders are set to gather in Bonn, Germany for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23), tens of thousands of activists from across the globe kicked off a series of planned actions on Saturday by taking to the streets to demand an end to coal, denounce U.S. President Donald Trump's climate denial, and highlight the necessity of moving toward 100 percent renewable energy as quickly as possible.

Blog / 1st November 2017

When companies don’t pay their fair share of tax, it hits the world’s poorest people the hardest – depriving their governments of money that could be spent on vital services like hospitals, schools and clean water. Without these, people in developing countries simply don’t have a fair chance of overcoming poverty. Together we can do something about it.

Blog / 1st November 2017

While President Trump’s 2018 budget proposes giving more than $700 billion to the military, it will come at the expense of trillions of dollars in cuts to the safety net over the coming decade. But an alternative is mapped out in The People's Budget, which aims to limit investment in the military and pump money into jobs, education, health care and climate resiliency. And it's getting growing support, writes Frida Berrigan for Waging Nonviolence.

Article / 27th October 2017

In cooperation with the Network of spiritual Progressives, Congressman Keith Ellison has re-introduced a resolution to the House of Representatives for a Global Marshall Plan that holds the potential to promote peace and prosperity through poverty reduction in the United States and abroad.

Report / 27th October 2017

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should change its priorities and finally let go of the outdated conditionalities of privatization, deregulation of markets, and "austerity" in social services, which in the past have engendered human rights violations, and instead make loans subject to a new set of conditions.

Article / 25th October 2017

Social movements from around the world are in Geneva this week to push the United Nations to adopt a binding treaty on corporations and human rights. Dorothy Guerrero explains why it is a crucial fight for Global Justice Now.

Report / 18th October 2017

On ‘Food Sovereignty Day’ La Via Campesina launches publication that calls for a massive change in the current agro-food systems

Article / 18th October 2017

Globally, 108 million people faced food crises in 2016, compared to about 80 million in 2015 – an increase of 35%, according to the 2017 Global Report on Food Crises. Another 123 million people were ‘stressed’, contributing to around 230 million such food insecure people in 2016, of whom 72% were in Africa.

Article / 17th October 2017

The world’s poorest pay more than a day’s wages for a single plate of food, according to a report from the World Food Programme, which reveals that the same bean stew can cost the average consumer in New York just $1.20, while the price tag is more than $320 in South Sudan.

Article / 12th October 2017

The political landscape may seem particularly bleak at present. But, if we stand back and look at the bigger picture, the dominance of rightwing populists and neoliberal policies is likely to be a temporary blip. The evidence is mounting that greater economic equality benefits all people in all societies, whether you are rich, poor or in-between. Once this is widely understood, politicians and policymakers will be forced to take note, as Danny Dorling explains.

Article / 12th October 2017

Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue.

Article / 12th October 2017

At the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) of July 2016, the initiative was taken to draft a Global Charter for 'Universal Social Protection Rights'. These principles for universal social protection systems, by all and for all, are promoted as a reference for national and local movements organising their diverse social struggles.​

Blog / 6th October 2017

Against all odds, 122 countries agreed in July to ban nuclear weapons. At the heart of the United Nations treaty is an explicit ethical goal: to protect peoples of the world from the humanitarian catastrophe that would ensue if nuclear weapons were employed.

Article / 4th October 2017

More than 30 years after the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development, business-as-usual will not be sufficient to achieve progress, a United Nations human rights expert has said.

Article / 4th October 2017

The number of those needing humanitarian assistance is at its highest since the end of the Second World War – some 145 million people. Several protracted crises in Africa and the Middle East are deteriorating and climate-induced emergencies, sometimes combined with violent conflict, continue to wreak havoc on vulnerable communities. Amid all this, United Nations-coordinated response plans remain severely underfunded.

Blog / 29th September 2017

Does consumerism thrive on our discontentment? Tim Jackson previews his talk at the Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing

Article / 28th September 2017

In order to make the UN system really ‘fit for purpose’, member states and UN bodies have to take bold action to overcome selective multilateralism, the weakening of democratic governance, and the financial erosion of public institutions. A special issue article by Karolin Seitz and Jens Martens for Global Policy.

Article / 28th September 2017

'A sensible and effective foreign policy recognizes that our safety and welfare is bound up with the safety and welfare of others around the world.' By Bernie Sanders.

Report / 18th September 2017

A UN report it reveals that in 2016 the number of chronically undernourished people in the world is estimated to have increased to 815 million, up from 777 million in 2015, although still down from about 900 million in 2000.

Report / 18th September 2017

Fifty years ago, at New York’s Riverside Church, Martin Luther King made a passionate plea for a more equal, more just, more peaceful and more dignified world. Calling for “a radical revolution of values”, King concluded: “We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.

Blog / 13th September 2017

Following the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession in its wake, the ‘new normal’ in monetary policy has been abnormal.

Report / 13th September 2017

A joint civil society report explains how a treaty on business and human rights could improve access to remedy for victims, with seven key recommendations for practical reforms.

Article / 13th September 2017

In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons—the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize.

Blog / 7th September 2017

There is abundant prosperity in the United States - it is time we shared it, writes Ben Leet for Inequality.org

Article / 7th September 2017

Imagine a world with as many as one billion people facing harsh climate change impacts resulting in devastating droughts and/or floods, extreme weather, destruction of natural resources, in particular lands, soils and water, and the consequence of severe livelihoods conditions, famine and starvation.

Article / 7th September 2017

The United Nations has called the situation in Yemen the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with more than 10 million people who require immediate assistance. And the situation could become even worse.

News / 15th August 2017

Twenty million people risk dying of hunger in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and the north-east of Nigeria, including 1.4 million children suffering from severe malnutrition, the United Nations food relief agency said, spotlighting today its worldwide campaign to fight famine.

Article / 14th August 2017

There is still hope of restoring finance to the role of servant to, and not master of, economies and regions. But for that to happen the public must realise that citizens can exercise economic power over global financial markets. The people must lead, so that leaders can follow, writes Ann Pettifor for Red Pepper magazine.

Report / 14th August 2017

A new report explains how the rules governing the US economy are tipped in favour of asset owners over wage earners, and offers solutions to transform our system. Authored by Chuck Collins and published by the Institute of Policy Studies and the Next System Project.

Blog / 14th August 2017

To truly flourish, the circular economy needs to be part of a bigger effort to tackle economic growth, wasteful consumerism and undemocratic power structures in the global economy. It needs to be geared to the real needs of all people, rather than the excessive consumption of a few, writes Micha Narberhaus and Joséphine von Mitschke-Collande.

News / 2nd August 2017

Humans have already used up their allowance for water, soil, clean air and other resources on Earth for the whole of 2017.

News / 1st August 2017

There is only a 5% chance that the Earth will avoid warming by at least 2C come the end of the century, according to new research that paints a sobering picture of the international effort to stem dangerous climate change.

News / 1st August 2017

Nearly four out of five children in Yemen are now in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, leading humanitarian groups announced in a joint statement Wednesday. Executive directors from UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization said the overwhelming majority of Yemen's children now face a "vicious combination" of indiscriminate famine and the world's worst cholera epidemic on record.

Report / 1st August 2017

For over half a century the struggle against poverty has been a focus of global rhetoric. Rarely, however, do people ask the most important question: Who is going to fight poverty? This is where the concept of agroecology comes in, based on peasant farming systems - an approach that defends diversity against monoculture, and gives local markets priority over the global market. The following brochure was collaboratively produced by INKOTA-netzwerk, Brot für die Welt, FIAN, Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, MISEREOR, Oxfam and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

Report / 25th July 2017

For too long aid spending has been driven by notions of charity, national self-interest, and an ideological belief that free markets and multinational business can solve the world’s problems. A new progressive vision for UK aid is urgently needed—re-focused on principles of social justice and the need to redistribute economic and political power in the world. This report lays out the key ways in which this can be achieved, by Global Justice Now.

News / 25th July 2017

Calling for “immediate care and protection” for children caught up in violence in Iraq's war torn Mosul and other Middle East conflicts, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today warned that the lives and futures of some 27 million across the region and parts of Africa are at risk.

Article / 25th July 2017

The Asian financial crisis started 20 years ago and the global financial crisis and recession 9 years back. When a new global financial crisis strikes, the developing countries will be more damaged than in the last crisis as they have become less resilient and more vulnerable. They thus need to prepare from being overwhelmed.

Report / 21st July 2017

The SDG Health Price Tag, published in The Lancet Global Health, estimates the costs and benefits of progressively expanding health services in order to reach 16 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) health targets in 67 low- and middle-income countries that account for 75% of the world’s population.

Report / 21st July 2017

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), usually portrayed as a useful tool towards sustainable development, actually “involve disproportionate risks and costs for people and the public purse”, claims a global coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions in the Spotlight Report 2017 launched earlier this week.

Article / 20th July 2017

Don’t despair that the huge gaps between rich and poor cannot ever be bridged. As Oxfam's new 'Commitment to Reducing Inequality' index shows, government policies really can help to shape more – or less – equal societies and economies. By Max Lawson.

Article / 19th July 2017

Climate change is becoming a permanent reality affecting food supplies in many parts of the world, escalating a new international food crisis in 19 countries. As the trend of increasing migratory flows worsens, there is no escape from the need for a rapid reduction in carbon emissions, writes Paul Rogers for openDemocracy.

News / 17th July 2017

Less than a fifth of Americans are aware that extreme hunger threatens the lives of 20 million people in Africa and the Middle East, yet the overwhelming majority regard it as the most pressing global issue once they have been told, a poll of US voters has revealed.

Blog / 17th July 2017

Civil Society activists critique the first week of deliberations at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, by the Global Policy Forum.

Article / 17th July 2017

A collection of myth-busting insights about global inequality and the creation of poverty, with key questions to ponder in the latest human rights reader no. 417, by Claudio Schuftan.

Article / 17th July 2017

A new politics is needed if the incredible riches of our world are to be shared by the many. But the G20 cannot or will not adopt such a redistributive and regulatory agenda; only massive popular action can bring it about, writes Nick Dearden.

Blog / 1st July 2017

Shouldn't the returns from at least part of our national wealth go to all citizens and not just the already rich? By Stewart Lansley, Inequality.org.

Article / 30th June 2017

Unbridled growth appears to be at odds with social well-being and environmental sustainability. How might we develop a model that reduces the imperative for growth while maintaining economic stability? By Riccardo Mastini for openDemocracy.

Report / 30th June 2017

Transformational changes are needed to make the UN into a body that advances the public interest through democratic governance and commitment to its founding values. These changes will not be easy to bring about, but one thing is clear: a piecemeal approach won’t get us the UN we need. By Barbara Adams and Karen Judd for The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

Report / 29th June 2017

The total number of children that die of preventable causes worldwide continues to decline, says the United Nations children’s agency, but such progress disguises a still-massive and intolerable death toll.

News / 29th June 2017

The next three years will effectively decide the fate of our planet’s climate. This is the stark message of a new commentary in the journal Nature by several high-profile climate scientists and policy makers.

Report / 28th June 2017

Reclaiming Public Services is vital reading for anyone interested in the future of local, democratic services like energy, water and health care. This is an in-depth world tour of new initiatives in public ownership and the variety of approaches to deprivatisation.

News / 27th June 2017

A Special Rapporteur of the United Nations held a panel discussion on universal basic income and the future of human rights on June 8, 2017, in which the prospects for achieving this progressive policy were discussed alongside prominent supporters.

Blog / 23rd June 2017

The recent Progress Report on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) paints a skewed and misleading picture about how SDG implementation is proceeding, while hindering any form of accountability. 

Article / 22nd June 2017

The number of people forced to flee their homes by war and persecution has risen to record levels for the third year running, with 65.6 million people displaced around the world – more than the population of Britain.

News / 22nd June 2017

South Sudan no longer has areas in famine, but almost two million people are on the brink of starvation and an estimated six million people — half the population — will face extreme food insecurity between June and July, according to reports by the government and the United Nations.

Blog / 22nd June 2017

Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to foreign aid disproportionately target the poorest countries, and serve a signal that this administration is not concerned with fighting poverty, writes Aria Grabowski from Oxfam America.

News / 22nd June 2017

From 19-23 June 2017, #TaxJustice for #PublicServices Global Week of Action events are rolling out around the world, from South Africa to Tunisia, Brazil to Perú, Vietnam to Bangladesh, and Spain to the Netherlands.

Article / 22nd June 2017

To stop global inequality, aid agencies must ramp up their campaigns against the issues – such as unjust trade deals and climate change – that help it thrive. By Matthew Bramall of Health Poverty Action.

Article / 22nd June 2017

The two food extremes – chronic undernourishment and obesity – are worldwide challenges, impacting the well being of more than one-fifth of humanity. Despite all the expressed concerns, laudable goals, increased expenditures and commendable efforts, still there is no answer for how to fundamentally tackle these twin crises. By Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division.

Article / 18th June 2017

Analysis of a massive trove of data – much of it leaked from tax havens – suggests that inequality levels across the world should be revised upwards dramatically. By Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman.

Article / 18th June 2017

Representatives from the Global South have called to strengthen and upgrade the Committee of Experts on International Cooperation on Tax Matters, transforming it to an intergovernmental body that represents all. By Tharanga Yakupitiyage.

News / 2nd June 2017

In a statement to the Security Council, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHR) urges the international community to take urgent action to stem the world's largest food security crisis in Yemen.

Blog / 26th May 2017

World leaders must step up and take action in fighting famine to prevent further catastrophic levels of hunger and deaths, said Oxfam. Ahead of the 43rd G7 summit, Oxfam urged world leaders to urgently address the issue of famine, currently affecting four countries at unprecedented levels.

Report / 25th May 2017

New research by UK campaigners shows that more wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it. Africa is rich, but we essentially steal its wealth, writes Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now.

Article / 25th May 2017

Fed up with ineffective leaders who aren’t dealing with the crises on the continent, people are coming together to launch a pan-African solidarity movement. By Kumi Naidoo.

Blog / 23rd May 2017

More than 31 million people, or one person every second, were uprooted in their home country in 2016 because of conflicts and disasters, an aid group has said.

Report / 22nd May 2017

According to a recent UNICEF analysis covering 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa[1], poverty continues to impact at least 29 million children – one in four children in the region. These children are deprived of the minimum requirements in two or more of the most basic life necessities including basic education, decent housing, nutritious food, quality health care, safe water, sanitation and access to information.

Blog / 19th May 2017

The World Bank has released its first annual report tracking progress towards the two key SDGs on poverty and inequality. But the analysis does not explain its claim of a modest, partial reversal of previously growing inequality, while its policy prescriptions remain surprisingly limited, write Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury.

Article / 19th May 2017

The global wage gap is a major driver of inequality between poor countries and rich countries, and there is one obvious solution: a global minimum wage coupled with a universal basic income, argues Jason Hickel.

Article / 17th May 2017

Public services in some of the world’s poorest countries are being starved of resources as a result of their governments’ heavy debt loads, the Jubilee Debt Campaign has warned.

Blog / 15th May 2017

Over the past 10 days the pressure to break ties with the fossil fuel industry has never been greater, as thousands of people attended over 260 events in 45 countries on six continents during the Global Divestment Mobilisation (GDM), demanding institutions divest from fossil fuels.

Report / 12th May 2017

A new primer explains the origins of the commons and P2P, how they interrelate, their movements and trends, and how a Commons transition is poised to reinvigorate work, politics, production, and care, both interpersonal and environmental. Co-published by the P2P Foundation and the Transnational Institute.

Report / 12th May 2017

We must build the case for a new social commons, and urgently, because we’re in danger of losing what we’ve taken for granted for half a century. The old order of politics, including the post-war welfare settlement, is crumbling. So can we envisage a social commons that people shape and control democratically, based on pooled resources, collective action and mutual aid? A report by the New Economics Foundation.

Report / 12th May 2017

This new guide by Oxfam is about inequality in all its forms. It contains practical advice on how to find and use reliable data on inequality in advocacy and campaigning, of use to both professionals and concerned citizens who want to have a stronger and shared understanding of the most important drivers of inequality.

Report / 3rd May 2017

A new study by the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex University and the New Weather Institute points to historical evidence that the sort of rapid, large scale social and economic change needed in the face of climate destabilisation has occurred before and could do so again.

Article / 3rd May 2017

The hegemony of the growth-based model often prevents people from questioning its core assumptions. But the building blocks of a new economy are within reach, central to which is the need to decouple growth from prosperity, explains Tim Jackson in an interview with Allen White. Reposted from the Great Transition Initiative.

Article / 3rd May 2017

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

Blog / 22nd April 2017

This Peoples Climate Mobilization (#ClimateMarch) will be the big sequel to the massive protest that filled the streets of New York in September of 2014. And these marches continue to matter for demanding action that is commensurate with the problem: namely, a World War II–scale mobilization for clean energy, and justice for those communities hit first and hit hardest by global warming. By Bill McKibben.

Blog / 21st April 2017

The advisory opinion of the Monsanto Tribunal reinforces what grassroots movements all over the world have been contending for decades: that the future of our food lies in the hands of small farmers, and it is the ecological model of agriculture which offers the solution to poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the world and to the crisis of climate change. By Ruchi Shroff of Navdanya International.

Article / 21st April 2017

For all its candor and color, here is what the annual Gates letter doesn’t tell you: that our global economic system is designed in such a way as to channel our planet’s wealth into the hands of a tiny elite. And changing that system at its root would require those with power to dismantle the very machine that created their privilege, writes Martin Kirk and Jason Hickel.

Blog / 21st April 2017

The point is not that ‘mass action works’ – it rarely does, on its own. But mass gestures of peaceful protest create their own dynamics that can be massive and far-reaching, writes Paul Mason.

Article / 8th April 2017

The peoples of the world need the United Nations more than at any time since 1945. It must not allow itself to remain mainly as a vehicle for the aggregation of national interests, or worse, as an instrument of power to be deployed by the geopolitical giants - especially the United States.Three UN veterans make their case for reforming and reempowering the world's most ambitious organisation, by Hans-C. von Sponeck, Richard Falk amd Denis Halliday.

Article / 8th April 2017

Despite international efforts to address food insecurity, around 108 million people worldwide were severely food insecure in 2016, a dramatic increase compared with 80 million in 2015, according to a United Nations-backed report on food crises that offers benchmark for action needed to avoid catastrophe.

Article / 8th April 2017

It’s time to write a new economic story fit for this century – one that sees the economy’s dependence upon society and the living world, writes Kate Raworth for openDemocracy’s Transformation.

Report / 24th March 2017

Take a closer look behind the flowery language, and it reveals that corporate influence on the G20 discourse entails considerable risks and side-effects. It's time to the imbalances in G20 policies, and the double standards in its openness towards business and civil society - for which substantial reforms are necessary. A new report by Jens Marten for Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Global Policy Forum.

Article / 24th March 2017

We now need transformative policies able to open a new horizon, without poverty, with less inequality, without destroying our natural environment. Our new situation requires an urgent reflection on power relations and concrete alternatives, central to which is the reconceptualisation of social protection in terms of commons.

Article / 24th March 2017

Today, a new value regime is being born, one that is not based on surplus value created in the market through capital and labour, but through contributions that are recognized as such by ‘sovereign value communities’. The question is: how can we, ourselves, create and control the surplus value that we create through our work, and reinvest it in autonomous peer production communities?

Article / 22nd March 2017

Despite billions spent in official aid to fight poverty, the number of poor people in the world is not diminishing. And Latin America remains the most unequal region in the world, writes Carlos March for openDemocracy.

Article / 21st March 2017

The record-breaking heat that made 2016 the hottest year ever recorded has continued into 2017, pushing the world into “truly uncharted territory”, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

Article / 21st March 2017

Most economic policy around the world is driven by the goal of maximising economic growth, but if you think we have limitless solar energy to fuel limitless clean, green growth—think again. Rather than fighting and exploiting the environment, we need to recognise alternative measures of progress for a sustainable future in which equity considerations are primary. A co-authored case for a new economics, by James Ward, Keri Chiveralls, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Paul Sutton and Robert Costanza.

Report / 16th March 2017

Women’s rights advocates have for years pointed out the negative impacts of inequalities on women’s human rights, on economies and on societies. Many organisations are not only analysing the cross-border impacts of domestic policy, but also showing the universality of human rights - to ensure that women’s rights know no borders. A new report by Barbara Adams and Karen Judd of Global Policy Watch.

Article / 16th March 2017

Just back from Kenya, Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia – countries are facing or are at risk of famine – the top United Nations humanitarian official today urged the international community for comprehensive action to save people from simply “starving to death.”

Article / 8th March 2017

With the rise of robots, the old promise of jobs as the salvation of the poor now looks hollow. The most hopeful response is a universal basic income which, if extended across borders through a global system of redistributive taxation, could instil a new sense of solidarity: that the earth’s natural bounty belongs to us all, writes Jason Hickel.

Blog / 7th March 2017

The Trump White House is framing foreign aid as a devastating drain on America’s treasure. But foreign aid isn’t killing the American dream — inequality is, writes Sam Pizzigati for the Too Much newsletter.

Blog / 4th March 2017

President Trump still seems to be planning massive cuts to development and diplomacy, despite fierce opposition. If he carries through on his plans, they will not only lead to a loss of life among the neediest in the world, they will also undermine American power, progress and prestige, writes Alex Thier for the ODI.

Article / 4th March 2017

Poorer countries routinely put more resources at the disposal of donor country interests than they receive in foreign aid—but it doesn't have to be this way. The idea of implementing a system of global taxation is gaining ground, and may open up a pathway towards an authentic system of redistribution across national borders, writes David Sogge for Open Democracy.

Article / 3rd March 2017

The Republic of Ecuador, currently chair of the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations, is reviving a longstanding campaign for the creation of an inter-governmental UN tax body and the elimination of tax havens and illicit financial flows.

Blog / 18th February 2017

Extreme inequality traps people in poverty and must be stopped. Even the World Bank agrees that eliminating poverty will be impossible unless we simultaneously act to close the gap between rich and poor, writes Nick Galasso for Oxfam International.

Blog / 17th February 2017

The latest set of disturbing data from the UN shows that finance has been flowing out of developing countries at least since 2004, with sobering implications explains Jesse Griffiths from Eurodad.

Article / 17th February 2017

Famine is looming in four different countries, threatening unprecedented levels of hunger and a global crisis that is already stretching the aid and humanitarian system like never before, experts and insiders warn.

Article / 6th February 2017

Since the financial crash of 2008, followers of mainstream economic dogma haven't changed their tune much. But an ever-growing legion of dissenting economists are challenging these cherished myths, as summarised by the New Internationalist in a classic edition of the magazine from December 2015.

Report / 6th February 2017

A real circular economy would expand the definition of the circular economy to one where its operating system is regenerative not only towards nature, but also people; meaning wealth is equitably circulated and shared. A new report by Sharon Ede explains how relocalising production with not-for-profit business models helps build resilient and prosperous societies.

Article / 27th January 2017

We need to disavow ourselves of our misplaced trust in robotisation, and instead focus our energies on creating a truly fair and sustainable economy. The leisure society will only be achieved if we learn to live more locally within our planetary means - for there is enough stuff to go around already, if only we shared it out better, argues Rupert Read.

Report / 27th January 2017

A new paper makes the case that a global billionaire tax is ethical, good for growth, and could solve a lot of the world’s problems - and what’s more, it’s politically viable, explains Josh Hoxie.

Blog / 25th January 2017

The New Economics Foundation has long made the case for a richer relationship with 'stuff' that can help turn the tables on our abusive consumer culture. The good news is that a new form of materialism is already emerging; everywhere people are beginning to make, do, share and get involved, writes Ruth Potts.

Article / 20th January 2017

New research on global financial flows shows that the usual development narrative has it backwards; aid is effectively flowing in reverse. And some of the very countries that so love to tout their foreign aid contributions are the ones enabling mass theft from developing countries, argues Jason Hickel.

Article / 20th January 2017

Is there anything that the world's corporations can do about the scourge of inequality? The answer is yes, but it means rewriting the economic rules - for the only sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity, writes Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Report / 19th January 2017

As the world’s media showcase Donald Trump and the World Economic Forum, ActionAid urge us to stay focused on the presence of social movements that pose the real solution to rising inequality. Only people’s power, united across borders, can reverse the hoarding of power and wealth by a tiny elite, re-democratizing our politics, our societies, and our economies. The following extract is taken from ActionAid's latest brief [pdf] that summarises the publications from its Inequality Series.

Article / 18th January 2017

What we are witnessing in South Africa and around the world is an inequality emergency, and the solutions require all of us to listen to the most marginalised and co-operate with all. Once again we need to follow the inspiration of our young people, and work towards building a mass social movement that fights for economic transformation, writes Jay Naidoo.

Blog / 18th January 2017

As president of the United States, you will have the grave responsibility of assuring that nuclear weapons are not overtly threatened or used during your term of office. The most certain way to fulfill this responsibility is to negotiate with the other possessors of nuclear weapons for their total elimination.

Report / 16th January 2017

Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.

Blog / 13th January 2017

A genuinely “Shared Society” requires the redistribution of power, wealth and income. But there is no value in sharing austerity, inequality and hardship, writes John Tizard.

Article / 4th January 2017

World Basic Income (WBI) is a campaign organisation with a proposal to achieve greater social justice through the provision of unconditional cash transfers. World basic income differs from national-level basic income initiatives in that it would gather money at the global level, and distribute it to every person worldwide.

Report / 2nd January 2017

STWR consolidated its activities throughout 2016, with a renewed focus on our core messages and priorities as an organisation. Following the publication and marketing of our flagship publication, ‘Heralding Article 25’, we continued to promote its case for unprecedented global demonstrations towards ending hunger and life-threatening poverty.

Blog / 20th December 2016

The latest talks of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Cancun, Mexico, failed to address the systemic factors that threaten biodiversity, or the real solutions - such as community forest governance, agroecology and the strengthening of collective rights. A report on CBD COP13 from Friends of the Earth International.

Article / 20th December 2016

Can we get back to the equalizing, 'share-the-wealth' policies of the post-war era? Of course we can — the obstacles are political, not economic, writes Robert Kuttner.

Report / 20th December 2016

Global Financial Integrity (GFI), the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics and a team of global experts have released a study showing that since 1980 developing countries lost US$16.3 trillion dollars through broad leakages in the balance of payments, trade misinvoicing, and recorded financial transfers.

Article / 14th December 2016

The Fight Inequality Alliance aims to bring together activists and organisations to tackle inequality globally and within all countries. The Alliance stands together to build a world of greater equality – where all people’s rights are respected and fulfilled, a world of shared prosperity, opportunity and dignity, living within the planet’s boundaries. Read the current draft of the shared vision below.

Report / 13th December 2016

Collecting tax is one of the key means by which governments are able to address poverty. But big business is dodging tax on an industrial scale, depriving governments across the globe of the money they need to address poverty and invest in healthcare, education and jobs, according to a new report by Oxfam.

Article / 13th December 2016

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights retains its vigour six decades after its adoption. Yet, in this first decade of the twenty-first century, there still remains a long way to go in order to achieve the plenitude of the international protection of human rights. And there is great need to conceive new forms of protection of human beings, writes Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade.

Article / 5th December 2016

More than at any other time in history, our species needs to work together by breaking down, not building up, barriers within and between nations. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present, writes Stephen Hawking.

Report / 5th December 2016

We urgently need a new approach to trade that prioritizes the needs of people and planet. This discussion paper by the Sierra Club asks the question: What, then, will it take for trade and investment agreements to support – not undermine – action on climate change?

News / 5th December 2016

Over 450 public interest groups from across Europe and Canada have urged legislators to vote against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

Article / 30th November 2016

Both Trump and Brexit can be explained by the failure of mainstream political elites to address the pain inflicted on ordinary citizens in the neoliberal ere. In the US and the UK, working class voters rightly rejected the corporate globalisation that has created so much poverty and insecurity. But the real solutions lie in relocalisation, not hatred, write Helena Norberg-Hodge and Rupert Read for the Ecologist.

Article / 30th November 2016

Though it is a defining issue of our time, politicians who depend on corporate money and media dare not mention the growing power imbalance between corporations and governments and its sweeping implications, writes David Korten in YES! Magazine.

Article / 30th November 2016

Europe is not faring well on the challenges posed by the sustainable development goals. Rather than battening down the hatches and chasing economic growth at any cost, the European commission must place respect for human rights at the centre of their forthcoming plans, writes Tanya Cox, Jussi Kanner and Evert-Jan Brouwer.

Blog / 24th November 2016

Many of the aspirations contained within the UN's Sustainable Development Goals are to be supported, despite their reliance on too much economic growth. But on the question of how to create a new socially just, redistributive and regulatory global economic and social policy, Agenda 2030 falls down, explains Bob Deacon.

Blog / 23rd November 2016

An equal share in economic growth is not enough to lift millions of people out of extreme poverty - governments must adopt a package of redistributive measures, and realise they are servants to their citizens, not vested interests, writes Winnie Byanyima.

Article / 21st November 2016

The following collective statement was issued by organisations, networks, and movements gathered in Marrakech at COP22, in response to Donald Trump becoming President-Elect of the United States of America and its potentially devastating implications for the cause of climate justice.

Article / 21st November 2016

In the following statement from human rights and other civil society organisations, governments are urged to place human rights at the core of international investment and trade agreements - and therefore reject any proposed agreements that do not meet this essential requirement.

Report / 15th November 2016

A new report from a diverse coalition of civil society organisations reveals what governments must do immediately to achieve goals of Paris Agreement, based on a 'fair-shares' analysis of 2020 pledges and support.

Blog / 15th November 2016

How are people across the world taking back power over the energy sector, kicking-back against the rule of the market and reimagining how energy might be produced, distributed and used? How can the concept of energy democracy be deployed to demand a socially just energy system, with universal access, fair prices and secure, unionised and well-paid jobs? This short video summarises the discussions and outcomes from an international workshop on energy democracy held in Amsterdam in February 2016.

Blog / 8th November 2016

Sophia Murphy, from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) speaks with The Real News on how for the past 20 years, the World Trade Organisation rules have failed to address basic inequities in world agriculture. What is urgently required is a new framework for global agriculture that embraces principles of agro-ecology, remunerative prices, sustainable livelihoods and ecological sustainability.

Blog / 8th November 2016

On November 15, the first meeting of the European Commons Assembly(ECA) will take place in Brussels to discuss, showcase, and bring into practice the commons in and for Europe.

Report / 7th November 2016

The coexistence of deep and persistent inequalities as well as increasing prosperity is a paradox of our time, a paradox that calls into question global development and processes of modernization in today’s world. The latest World Social Science Report for 2016 includes a compendium of knowledge from relevant experts on this immense challenge of the 21st century, with a concluding section on transformative pathways to a just world.

Blog / 5th November 2016

After 24 years of negotiations we are hurtling towards a 3.5 degree world, which will be catastrophic for millions. By Nika Knight, Common Dreams.

Article / 31st October 2016

Wealthy nations are doing “nowhere near enough” to help the world’s poorest people cope with the effects of climate change, Oxfam has warned after 38 developed countries claimed they were on track to meet their pledges to provide aid.​

Report / 27th October 2016

The Living Planet Report 2016 reaffirms WWF’s ‘One Planet Perspective’ on the need for better choices for governing, using and sharing natural resources within the Earth’s ecological boundaries. Ultimately, addressing social inequality and environmental degradation depends on creating a new economic system that enhances and supports the natural capital upon which it relies.

Blog / 26th October 2016

There are reasons to question the World Bank's upbeat estimate of global poverty, especially if non-income dimensions are considered. If we adopt a truly international poverty line, there could be around five billion poor people in the world - far beyond the 700 million estimated, explains Iyanatul Islam.

Report / 21st October 2016

A new report by the Environmental Working Group confronts the myth that American farmers must double their food production to 'feed the world'. Instead, the key to ending world hunger while protecting the environment is to help small farmers in the developing world increase their productivity and income, and to promote “agro-ecology” everywhere.

Blog / 21st October 2016

Who owns outer space? Our most idealistic visions of the future require us to transcend our narrow personal or nationalistic interests, but increasingly, space seems likely to be divvied up among the powerful, as has so often happened with the Earth. Can space be managed to serve the common interest? A commentary by EarthSharing.

Article / 21st October 2016

Following the Monsanto People’s Assembly in The Hague, activists converged around the need to 'globalise the struggle' for a new model of food and farming led by the grassroots, writes Ronnie Cummins.

Article / 18th October 2016

The UN's 2016 State of Food and Agriculture report warns that without measures to halt and reverse climate change, food production could become impossible in large areas of the world. Consequently, millions more people could be living in extreme poverty by 2030, despite new government pledges in the sustainable development goals. Reported by Claire Provost for the Guardian.

Article / 18th October 2016

The route to reducing inequality is not through generating more philanthropic endeavour, but rather through transformative solutions that rely on sacrifice and sharing—hence altering the production and distribution of wealth and power in fundamental ways, argues Michael Edwards in openDemocracy.

Blog / 8th October 2016

Five years ago, the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States was adopted in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and these Principles are increasingly being used by civil society organisations to hold States accountable for their extraterritorial conduct. Human rights obligations are now well recognized to extend beyond borders, as explained in the following news update published by the ETO Consortium.

Article / 8th October 2016

A global alliance of civil society organizations are demanding a binding treaty to regulate the activities of transnational corporations with respect to human rights. The Treaty process presents a unique opportunity for governments to prove that it is in their hands to put human rights above the interests of big business. Because profits can be shared—human rights cannot, write Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz.

Blog / 7th October 2016

Is poverty really on the decline across the world, as widely reported by the World Bank and United Nations? This ‘good news’ narrative is far from the whole truth, explains The Rules team.

Article / 6th October 2016

The expansion of corporate control in agriculture is reflected in three international treaties that establish the global rights of various stakeholders to seeds, germplasm, and plant varieties. But the balance of power needs to tilt back the other way, with farmers’ rights taking precedence over agribusiness profits, whether in these treaties or in trade deals, explains Karen Hansen-Kuhn.

Article / 6th October 2016

Civil society groups have organised a people’s assembly to hold Monsanto accountable for their crimes against humanity and the environment, and to spell out an alternative vision for the future of food and farming based on reclaiming the commons, earth democracy and agroecology.

Article / 4th October 2016

A rapidly growing global web of tax havens is one of the key drivers of global inequality, allowing some of the world’s super rich to pay no taxes or far less than they should. Now is the time for a historic ethical pact to finally deliver tax justice to the world, and to end the existence of tax havens altogether, writes Rafael Correa.

Article / 4th October 2016

We need a deep rethinking of how we prioritize and respond to security threats. If we want a healthy Earth, justice, peace, and democracy, we need a 21st-century security agenda that addresses the causes of contemporary conflicts, encourages cooperation and diplomacy, and supports every person in their quest for a healthy and dignified life, writes David Korten.

Blog / 13th September 2016

As world leaders gear up for the first ever UN Summit on refugees and migrants, civil society organisations already expect the summit to fail to agree any concrete steps for governments to share the responsibility for dealing with the escalating crisis. That is why calls for putting the equitable sharing of responsibility into practice will continue well after the Summits, reports Josephine Liebl of Oxfam International.

Blog / 13th September 2016

The power of corporations has reached a level never before seen in human history, often dwarfing the power of states. That is why civil society organisations are backing the new UN initiative for a legally binding global treaty on transnational corporations and human rights, as explained by Aisha Dodwell of Global Justice Now.

Article / 13th September 2016

There are many questions still to be answered in the growing literature on the commons, central to which is the role of the state in respecting and fulfilling our basic socioeconomic rights. The ‘commons’ can become a very strong discourse and practice to re-order today’s progressive political forces, but does it mean we have to abandon universal claims of equality and human rights? An enquiry by Francine Mestrum.

Article / 7th September 2016

The arguments for rich nation's moral duty and responsibility to help the distant needy are well known, but short-term political and commercial advantages are dominating the practice of redistributing foreign aid. And the underlying problem is a lack of critical public engagement and concern, writes David Hulme in an extract from his new book, 'Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?'.

Article / 7th September 2016

According to a new report by Friends of the Earth International, it is a gross injustice that the world’s richest multinational corporations and individuals do not pay their fair share of taxes and continue to pollute without limit. But we can stop tax avoidance and use that money for building sustainable and just societies through a clean energy revolution.

Article / 1st September 2016

What is common wealth? And how might we use it to build a more local, equitable and sustainable economy? Peter Barnes imagines an economy in which everyone benefits from a variety of co-inherited and co-created assets.

Article / 31st August 2016

The UN is a place of contrast between selfishness and sharing, and represents the major battle line for the future of humanity’s soul and collective wellbeing. It is the locus for the emergence of higher values concerning humanity as a whole, and the rebirth of the race as a Planetary Entity, writes Donald Key.

Article / 22nd August 2016

In this thinkpiece for The Next System Project, David Korten sets out his 'natural case for sharing'. No-one has a right to own or control, for his or her exclusive private benefit, a share of assets essential to living far beyond any conceivable personal need, if this results in depriving others of a means to life, he argues. Redistribution to achieve a semblance of economic democracy is not only just, it is an imperative of a viable human future.

Article / 18th August 2016

If the Sustainable Development Goals are to become a reality, what has to be done, and what specific policy changes are necessary at the international level? The Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has produced the first annual Spotlight Report assessing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the structural obstacles in its realization, with contributions from many prominent civil society observers.

Article / 18th August 2016

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Right to Development, the Human Rights Council held a Panel discussion at the Palais des Nations (Geneva) on 15 June 2016. As argued in a speech by the South Centre, this Declaration remains an important framework for the achievement of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, and it has an enduring practical relevance for the key global issues of our time.

Article / 17th August 2016

Two of the Elders, Graça Machel and Ricardo Lagos, call on the African continent's leaders to invest substantial political capital to make Universal Health Coverage a reality for their peoples. Countries like Malawi and Ethiopia prove that it is possible to provide free services to the entire population, if governments prioritise health in their budgets.

Article / 15th August 2016

It’s time for a rational conversation on the norms, rights and duties of every citizen for global common goods: the shared resources that must be negotiated and organized by the world’s people themselves, writes James B. Quilligan.

Article / 12th August 2016

Our defining challenge is to seek out the ‘middle way’ between over-consumption and under-consumption, where basic material needs are sufficiently met but where attention is then redirected away from superfluous material pursuits, in search of non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning, writes Samuel Alexander in a new book.

Article / 11th August 2016

The world already produces enough food to feed everyone. But the only way to eliminate hunger by 2030 is to implement well-designed social protection and scale up pro-poor investments - and the world can easily afford the needed investments, argue Hilal Elver and Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

Article / 8th August 2016

In just over seven months, humanity has used up a full year's allotment of natural resources such as water, food and clean air – the quickest rate yet, according to a new report.

Article / 8th August 2016

Save the Children tells Rio nutrition summit that despite global pledge to end malnutrition by 2030, millions of children will be malnourished far into the next century

Article / 5th August 2016

Technology is at the heart of human development. It enables people to produce food, access water and energy, and keep in good health. But access to technology and its benefits are not fairly shared, argues a new report from Practical Action.

Article / 4th August 2016

The Human Rights Council adopted by consensus two important resolutions reaffirming that access to medicines and enhancing capacity building in public health are fundamental elements for achieving the full realization of the right to health, write Adriano José Timossi and Viviana Muñoz-Tellez.

Article / 1st August 2016

We can rapidly realise the human rights of the world’s poor through global institutional reforms that reduce inequality and share the planet's natural resource wealth, argues Professor Thomas Pogge.

Article / 1st August 2016

Our planet and the human race face multiple challenges that require us to collaborate and share, both within nations and across national borders, if humanity is to survive, writes Stephen Hawking.

Article / 12th July 2016

At the close of UNCTAD's 14th session, a coalition of civil society organisations call for a new development model that is inclusive and socially just, in which governments uphold their obligations to provide social services and guarantee Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article / 28th June 2016

UN children’s agency report highlights toll on youngsters by 2030 unless world leaders turn rhetoric into reality on fighting poverty.

News / 24th June 2016

A coalition of NGOs strongly condemn the new EU policies to contain migration, calling on member states to shoulder their fair share of responsibility for protecting people who flee their homes.

Article / 31st May 2016

An extra $50 billion or so per year could help ensure that children everywhere have access to basic health care and schooling - a sum that could easily be found through redirecting military spending and taxing the global rich, argues Jeffrey Sachs.

Article / 18th May 2016

At a recent gathering in Brazil, an alliance of campaign groups reaffirmed their call for a binding international instrument to address human rights abuses committed by transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

Article / 23rd February 2016

New research by ActionAid reveals how tax avoidance strategies used by some multinational corporations deprive the world’s most impoverished communities of vital revenues. Tax treaties play a facilitating role in many of these schemes - and it is time they came to an end.

Article / 28th March 2012

The policy interpretations given by some critics of the World Bank's global poverty data are yet another form of their own political filtering. Some people just don't want to accept that the living standards of the poorest could evolve over time in any way contrary to what their political beliefs would appear to dictate, argues Martin Ravallion.