Inequality

It was a grey day with a drizzle here and a drizzle there when mourners gathered at St George’s Cathedral in a usually sunny Capetown to pay their last respect to the Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, the moral force against Apartheid struggle in South Africa was subdued and thoughtful as human beings when death and a rendezvous with eternity have been called. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa led his nation and the world in remembering Tutu. He described him as “our moral compass a ...

Their boat-if you name a large rubber pumped up like a giant tire, was rocked by waves, and the engine halted its movements. On November 24, all the 29 passengers tried to reach coastguard stations in France and England via their cell phones few minutes between life and death. No one answered, and when finally contact was established by another, still floating migrant boat, witnessing the tragedy in the making (New York Times December 14, 2021), they were asked to pinpoint their l ...

Xenophobic violence against minorities and non-nationals has erupted periodically in different parts of Africa: against Somalis in Kenya, Nigerians in Ghana, Chadians in Libya, and Asians in South Africa. Scholars have offered various explanations for these outbursts of violence, focusing on inequality or how simultaneous market reforms and democratization can unleash resentment against “market- dominant minorities.” Others see the violence as linked to elections, noting how politic ...

A Case for Regulators to Green Financial Inclusion Financial Inclusion is an Excellent Tool for Combating Poverty It is well known that supporting financial inclusion is a relevant tool in lifting people out of poverty. There is plenty of empirical evidence showing that financial inclusion significantly reduces poverty and income inequality in developing countries. Concerted efforts to support financial inclusion globally have existed since the United Nations Capital Development ...

On 16 December 2019, the Honorable Chakib Benmoussa, then Morocco’s ambassador to France, gathered 35 fellow citizens in a conference room at the Royal Academy in the leafy outskirts of Rabat. The three dozen members of the Commission spéciale sur le modèle de développement (CSMD) had been selected for their scientific, economic and political expertise, as well as eminence in the cultural and non-profit sectors. The Commission’s mandate, given by King Mohammed VI, was a daunting one ...

The rhythm of samba is being replaced by funeral hymns. Almost 560,000 Brazilians (608,000 as of October 31,2021) have succumbed to COVID-19, the world’s second highest death toll, and no end is in sight. There have been “Staggering losses”, as the BBC reported (on July 8), provoking Medecins sans Frontières to warn of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Brazil. Supplies of drugs and oxygen, confirmed British publication The Lancet, “are running short”. Yet, Jair Bolsonaro, president o ...

Scarcity of inputs and goods has been felt all over the world because of disruptions to global value chains since the beginning of the pandemic. Factory closures in China at the beginning of 2020, lockdowns in many countries and, subsequently, congestion in logistics networks for transporting goods, capacity constraints in the face of sudden increases in demand, and labor shortages, have combined to negatively affect the availability of inputs and products worldwide. Higher freight ...

If any proof was needed that change was in the air and repression on the horizon, it was in the center of Kabul: a simple sign was changed, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was turned into the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtues and Prevention of Vice. This was nothing less than the return of the Taliban’s moral police, well remembered by the older population, ready to enforce a harsh interpretation of the religious law, the Sharia, including stoning, amputation, lashing, and publi ...

In July 2021, the United Nations issued a condemnation against the “dramatic rise” in attacks against “descent-based slaves” in Mali, calling the violence “unacceptable”[i]. The statement was in response to a tragic episode in the eastern region of Kayes, where landowners using machetes and rifles assaulted a group of indentured laborers to prevent them working on the landowners’ fields. Tomoya Okobata, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, said these “assaul ...