unpacking global injustice: searching for fair paths

 Unpacking Global

Injustice:Searching for Fair Paths

Dr Celina Del Felice and Dr Momodou Sallah

What we are going to do

• What does global inequality look like?• What does development mean?• What are the challenges to mainstream

development models?• What would a fair world look like in your

dreams?

Inequality has social, educational, political and health dimensions

Between-country and within-country inequality

“The largest income gap is in Brazil, where the per capita income of the most affluent 10 per cent of the population is 32 times that of the poorest 40 percent” (UN 2005: 49)

What does inequality mean?

A picture of Europe• 50% of under 24 year olds are unemployed in Spain and Greece• 46% of young adults in the EU between 18-34 live with their

parents – after the 2008 crisis • In 2011, 29% of French decided notto go to the doctor to get

cured because of lack of money (11% in 2009)• In 2011 in Belgium, 425,000 were unemployed and only 60,000

(14%) jobs available (Dufour 2012)• 3 out of every 10 children in Greece, Ireland,

Portugal, Italy and Spain have been pushed to the brink of poverty (Caritas)

• Mounting budget deficit, recession, debt, austerity

European Crisis? 13 of the European Union's

27 member states have youth unemployment above 25 percent

In 2011, over 30 percent of those aged 17 years or under in Spain and Greece were at risk of poverty or exclusion, 4% rise since 2005,

25.5 percent in 2006 in Portugal

- In 2010, 37.6 percent of children were at risk of poverty or exclusion in Ireland and 28.9 percent in Italy

• “Eighty per cent of the world’s gross domestic product belongs to the world’s 1 billion people living in the developed world; the remaining 20 per cent is shared by the 5 billion people living in developing countries” (UN 2005:1)

• “....it took 17 years for the bottom billion to improve their share of world income by 0.18 percentage points, from 0.77 percent in 1990 to 0.95 percent in 2007. At this speed, it would take more than eight centuries (855 years to be exact) for the bottom billion to have ten percent of global income” (Ortiz and Cummins 2011:10)

Global Inequality - Economic

The child mortality rate for under fives in Guinea in 1999 was 176.9 per 1000 births, 219.9 for Burkina Faso in 1998/1999 and 229.1 for Mali in 2001. contrasted to 3 per 1000 births in 2002 for Sweden, 4 for Denmark, 5 for Germany and 6 for Belgium in 2002.

“Of the 20 countries with the highest rates, 19 are in sub-Saharan Africa, the region that experienced the smallest decline (from 186 to 174 deaths per 1000 live births, or a reduction of only 2 percent) between 1990 and 2001” (UN 2005:65)

Global Inequality - Health

• What is your initial reaction on seeing these figures?

• What do these figures mean to you professionally and personally?

• What are the root causes of inequality?

Reflection

A dysfunctional system propped up by structural violence

• Within country and between country inequality• A Global Order premised on the Washington

Consensus• Europe being hit harder by the forces of capital• Cuts, unemployment, poverty, suffering and

hopelessness .......• Challenging a toxic normality

A dysfunctional economic system permeates the world, one that has seen the corporate manufacture of inequality; largely guided by the dictum of profit, regardless of the cost to others

Global Inequality: A revolting and grotesque picture

A defective logic and a defective normality

Structural violence

Subverting the construction of oppressive normality

Power and Control

New Internationalist, Issue 365 March 2004 pp 1-7

G8 control 48.18% in IMF & 45.71% of the World Bank

Impact In 2000, the Joint

Economic Committee of the US Congress found a failure rate of 55-60% for all World Bank-sponsored projects. In Africa, the failure rate reached 73%.

• In 1999, the HIPC countries repaid $1,680 million more than they received in the form of new loans.

• For every dollar in grant aid to developing countries, more than 13 comes back in debt repayments.5

• Between 1996 and 1999 the overall amount of debt-servicing payments from the HIPC increased by 25% (from $8,860 million in 1996 to $11,440 million in 1999).5

Destructive Bretton Woods Policies

• Structural Adjustment Policies(SAP)• Programme for Sustained

Development (PSD)• Economic Recovery Programme (ERP)

• Revisiting Structural Adjustment Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Long-Lasting Impact on Child Health, World Medical & Health Policy

SAPs• Reduce role of government in the

economy• Promote private sector operations• Eliminate restrictions in the economy• Ensure market determined pricesSkosireva and Holaday 2010:75Easterly, W. (2012) Was Development Assistance a Mistake? (2012)

Increased SAP• “From 3 per cent of total World Bank

lending in 1981, structural adjustment credits rose to 19 per cent in 1986. Five years later, the figure was 25 per cent”

• Chowdhury, A. (2012) Structural Adjustment and Crises – Which Way Now? Institutions and Economies, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2012, pp. 85-118

A damaged orthodoxy?• “powerful transnational companies (TNCs)

have been left free to engage in investment and employment practices which contribute to poverty and insecurity, unencumbered by anything other than weak voluntary guidelines.” (Oxfam 2002:4)

• Intellectual property rights• Summary RIGGED RULES AND DOUBLE STANDARDS: TRADE, GLOBALISATION, AND THE

FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY

Trade as a key determinant

• In 2000, more than 50 percent of Asia’s exports, 75 per cent of Latin America’s exports, and 70 per cent of Africa’s exports of merchandise goods were destined for Western Europe, North America, or Japan (WTO 2001a) (pg. 97)

• CHAPTER 4 MARKET ACCESS AND AGRICULTURAL TRADE: THE DOUBLE STANDARDS OF RICH COUNTRIES

Unfair trade?• “If developing countries increased their

share of world exports by just five per cent, this

• would generate $350bn – seven times as much as they receive in aid. The $70bn that Africa would generate through a one per cent increase in its share of world exports is approximately five times the amount provided to the region through aid and debt relief.”

Trade barriers?• The 48 least-developed countries (LDCs) face

tariffs on average 20 per cent higher than the rest of the world on their exports to industrialised countries.

• This rises to 30 per cent higher for manufacturing exports (IMF and World Bank 2001a).

• LDCs are losing an estimated $2.5bn a year in potential export earnings as a result of the high levels of tariff protection in Canada, the EU, Japan, and the United States.

CHAPTER 4 MARKET ACCESS AND AGRICULTURAL TRADE: THE DOUBLE STANDARDS OF RICH COUNTRIES

Barriers to trade• Anti-dumping measures (WTO agreement

was signed in 1995, the EU and USA have initiated 234 anti-dumping actions against developing countries)

• Tariffs (The EU applies a 250 per cent tariff on imported meat products, and the USA and Canada impose import tariffs exceeding 120 per cent on groundnuts and meat products respectively.)

• Non-tariff barriers (Import quotas, product standards – from 5.1 to 9%) (Oxfam 2002)

Development Theory• Modernisation• Structuralism/Dependency

theory • Neo-classical/Neo-liberal• Human Development• Post development

What is development?For the neo-liberal (mainstream) model...

Development =

Economic growth

increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services.

Aid for Economic growth

Aid for infraestructure (e.g. roads)Aid for tradeAid for business environmentAid for good governanceAid for education – health

Premised on The Washington consensus

•Global markets integration – liberalisation of tradeo Survival of the best equipped to competeo Comparative advantage: e.g. specialisation in

exporting one product. • Privatization and limited role of governments• Achievement of low inflation and balanced budget

(core IMF conditionalities )• Financial deregulation (World Bank)

Magic words• Competitiveness• Effectiveness• Austerity• Entrepreneurship

‘pensamiento unico’ ‘homogenised orthodoxy’ (Brock and McGee, 2004:53)

“Countries should trade their way out of poverty”

EU: Policy Paper (2006)

What has this meant?• Those that can compete are better

off• Those that are not equipped to

compete are left out. Eg. Local producers who cannot compete with big multinationals.

• Exploitation of natural resources –environmentally unsustainable

• Economic migrations• Resources related conflicts. E.g. oil,

minerals

Human Development“Human development is the expansion of people’s

freedoms to live long, healthy and creative lives; (...) and to engage actively in shaping development equitably and sustainably on a shared planet.”(UNDP 2010:2).

Shift development from the economy as primary to human beings as the centre of development intervention

Human Development Index

UNDP 2011

Post development• “cover up violent damage being done to the so-called

‘developing’ world and its people.”(Thomas 2000: 3).

• Elliot (2013:37) ‘holds of westernisation’, be it as organised by the aid industry or by the activities of western private capital.

• complete overhaul of current development paradigms and instead calls for the establishment of development alternatives (Escobar 1992; 1995; 2000; Rahnema 1997).

Sustainable Development

“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

Articulated by the Brundtland Commission in its 1987 publication, Our Common Future

Alternative visions to shape the post 2015

agendaDe-growth

downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet.

• ecological means, • with open, localized

economies • and resources more equally

distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.

“Buen Vivir” (Bolivia, Ecuador, Andes region). Working towards community well-being - earth

Food sovereignty – climate change

From cradle to graveTo cradle-to-cradle

What do you think should be in the post

2015 agenda?

Task• What is the present picture of

inequality and development?

• What picture of development and inequality would you envision for the future?