Economic impact of global shutdown could push half a billion people into privation, researchers warn
Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty as economies around the world shrink because of the coronavirus outbreak, a new study has warned.
Poverty levels in developing countries could be set back by up to 30 years, research released by the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research warned on Thursday.
Continue reading...Pledge comes in response to claims that order cancellations to minimise Covid-19 losses have hurt millions of workers in the developing world
Primark, one of the UK’s most popular retailers, has announced it will create a fund to help pay the wages of the millions of garment workers affected by its decision to cancel tens of millions of pounds worth of clothing orders from factories in developing countries across the world.
The pledge followed sustained criticism of the fashion retailer after data from the Bangladeshi and Garment Exporters Association (BGMEA) revealed it had cancelled all orders already placed with suppliers.
Continue reading...Coronavirus cutbacks amount to a ‘wholesale abandonment’ of garment workers, says labour rights group
More than a million Bangaldeshi garment workers have been sent home without pay or have lost their jobs after western clothing brands cancelled or suspended £2.4bn of existing orders in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic, according to data from the Bangladeshi and Garment Exporters Association (BGMEA).
Primark and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill are among retailers that have collectively cancelled £1.4bn and suspended an additional £1bn of orders as they scramble to minimise losses. This includes nearly £1.3bn of orders that were already in production or had been completed, according to BGMEA.
Continue reading...People in Naples have been filling bread baskets with hot and cold food, and lowering them from their balconies for the homeless and people struggling during the nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The initiative started in one street, but has been copied by other residents in the city. Lucarriello, who filled a basket, said it was important to look after each other while people waited for state intervention
Continue reading...WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the poorest from each community would struggle for their 'daily bread' as more and more countries implemented lockdowns of various degrees. He added poverty was a global problem, not one unique to India, and governments should take each individual into account when implementing measures
Actions taken to suppress coronavirus reveal what measures are possible in an emergency, say experts
Government responses to climate breakdown and to the challenges of poverty and inequality must be changed permanently after the coronavirus has been dealt with, leading scientists have urged, as the actions taken to suppress the spread of the virus have revealed what measures are possible in an emergency.
The Covid-19 crisis has revealed what governments are capable of doing and shone a new light on the motivation for past policies and their outcomes, said Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, and chair of the commission of the social determinants of health at the World Health Organisation.
Continue reading...Fare (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse) delivers food parcels to vulnerable families in the Greater Easterhouse area, east of Glasgow’s city centre.
It has also taken on the role of a food bank during the coronavirus crisis, delivering provisions to self-isolating elderly people
Continue reading...Campaigners call for fashion brands to protect workers in their supply chains globally as coronavirus causes orders to dry up
The fashion industry is facing calls to step in and protect the wages of the 40 million garment workers in their supply chains around the world who face destitution as factories close and orders dry up in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Many factories in garment-producing countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam are already closing due to a shortage of raw materials from China and declining orders from western clothing brands.
Continue reading...It has been two years since the government apologised for the scandal and promised to rectify the injustices. Yet those affected are still being failed by the Home Office - with some still destitute
It requires a military level of discipline to live most of your life in Heathrow airport. Gbolagade Ibukun-Oluwa, 59, has been homeless since 2008 and for the past five years has developed a routine that sees him spending several nights a week in the cafes just outside the departures area. He arrives between 11pm and 1am, as day staff are replaced by the night shift, rotating between a Caffè Nero in Terminal 4 and a Costa coffee shop in Terminal 5, where the workers know him and offer him a cup of hot water. If flights have been cancelled and the cafes are very busy, he takes a bus to a 24-hour McDonald’s on the airport slip road, and waits there until dawn, occasionally managing to sleep for an hour or two in his wheelchair.
In the past, Heathrow security have been hostile, calling the police, who would put him in a van and drive him beyond the airport perimeter, where they would drop him and tell him: “If we ever see you there again, you’re in big trouble.” But that aggressive approach has stopped, and mostly he is ignored by passengers and staff; at a glance he looks like any other traveller, his belongings tidily packed into a few bags. “I have a routine to arrive as late as possible and to move on as early as possible,” he says. “They don’t bother me. They’re used to people waiting all night for a flight.” For all the hassle, the airport is at least warm and safe.
Continue reading...Special rapporteur says successive governments have contributed to what she called a ‘human rights crisis’
When Leilani Farha touches down in a new city, the first thing the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing does is look up.
In Melbourne, Toronto, London and Dublin, the skies above are filled with cranes, Farha says, soaring across the skylineto construct new homes for their booming populations.
Continue reading...Special rapporteur says urgent action is needed to tackle ‘appallingly high’ poverty rates
Spain is abandoning people in poverty and failing to take social rights seriously despite its post-recession recovery, according to a UN expert who has finished a 12-day fact-finding visit to the country.
Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said that while Spain had largely bounced back from the economic crisis of 2008, poverty rates remained “appallingly high” and urgent action was required.
Continue reading...Interactive quiz: With only 10 years left to achieve the UN’s sustainability goals, find out how your priorities compare
Continue reading...By providing free school meals to some of the poorest children on Earth, a UK charity is also ensuring they get an education
It’s breakfast time in Domagbamatma (population: 63) in the depths of the Liberian rainforest, but there’s no food in evidence in the home of Massa Kamara. The eight-year-old has been up since dawn, collecting firewood, fetching water.
Now she’s ready for school in a crisp white shirt and navy-blue skirt in her family’s muddy, two-room shack.
Continue reading...When Fazle Hasan Abed set out to lower death rates among poor children in rural Bangladesh, by teaching mothers how to treat dehydration, he was careful not to pay his field workers per household reached, but on how well their subjects, often illiterate or semi-literate mothers, could answer questions afterwards.
His approach, to reward high-quality instruction and rigorously monitor results of a door-to-door pilot scheme in the 1980s, fed lessons from the field back to research labs in Dhaka, and has been credited with saving countless lives from being lost to diarrhoea, a major source of child mortality in the country. It also propelled Brac, which Abed founded in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee to help refugees returning to their homeland after the liberation war of 1971, to become one of the largest non-profit development organisations in the world.
Continue reading...Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark
Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.
The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.
Continue reading...A farmer in eastern Uganda says he clings to the hope that the UN sustainable development goals could change things
Where I live, people are organised in clans. I belong to a clan where even 100 people, gathered together, can’t raise $100 (£75) to organise a funeral.
I come from a family that couldn’t afford to pay tuition of $10 a term when I was a student two decades ago. Many of my young relatives are out of school now, because their parents can’t afford a full academic term of $15.
Continue reading...Plan to drop dedicated fund while defence spending rises dismissed as false economy
The European commission has been accused of seeking to cut EU funding for the continent’s poorest people by 50% to secure post-Brexit cost savings and extra funds for defence projects.
Jacques Vandenschrik, the president of the European Food Banks Federation, said the EU executive’s proposed spending plans for the next seven years posed a risk not only to the most vulnerable but to the stability of wider society.
Continue reading...After years in exile, my hopes for a joyous family reunion were dashed by the country’s miserable economic situation
My brothers and I leapt out of bed at the first glimmer of dawn on Christmas morning – and there they were. Every Christmas of my childhood that I can remember, the shiny black school shoes were neatly lined up by the door. A new pair for all of us. Then came the new clothes proudly presented by my parents – the fruit of long hours of labour. And then, in our new finery, off we went to church. The long sunny hours of Christmas Day, usually with a brief but refreshing afternoon thunderstorm, were spent at huge family gatherings, feasting on chicken and rice, washed down with an array of brightly-coloured soft drinks – cherry plum, cream soda and Fanta orange.
As the years went by and independence came to Zimbabwe, many things changed. But Christmas traditions remained much the same, with big gatherings to which people travelled many miles, new clothes, lots to eat and drink.
Continue reading...The mood may be one of despair, but this election is critical to the country’s future. The best hope lies with Labour, despite its flaws
Britain has not faced a more critical election in decades than the one it faces on Thursday. The country’s future direction, its place in the world and even its territorial integrity are all at stake, primarily because this is a decisive election for Brexit. The choice is stark. The next prime minister is going to be either Boris Johnson, who is focused on “getting Brexit done” whatever the consequences, or Jeremy Corbyn, who with a Labour-led government will try to remodel society with a programme of nationalisation and public spending.
Continue reading...Action by city authority for ‘public safety’ reasons provokes social media outcry
The idea was simple: ask Dubliners to hang warm coats on the Ha’penny footbridge for the city’s burgeoning homeless population.
Shortly after #warmforwinter notices appeared on lampposts near the popular landmark last week, an array of anoraks, parkas and fleeces started to line the railings.
Continue reading...