equity
March 21, 2025
Re-imagining foreign aid
Farah Stockman in her NY Times editorial decries the chaos and devastation from cuts in US foreign aid, but also calls for re-imagining a foreign aid that addresses serious flaws inherent in the current forms of aid. We know that local groups (especially under-funded government health systems) are far more cost-effective and attuned to what…
December 21, 2024
Malawi and Mali Demand Unpaid Taxes and Royalties from Multinationals
BBC news recently reported that the governments of Malawi and Mali are demanding hundreds of billions of dollars from U.S.- and Australia-based multinationals to compensate for unpaid taxes and royalties over the past 10 years. Charles Gitonga and Andre Lombard report that the Malawi government has accused Colombia Gem House, U.S.-based gemstone company, of not…
October 1, 2024
IMF imposing austerity on new Sri Lanka government
The new wave of IMF-imposed austerity measures is now reaching Sri Lanka, and their newly elected center-left government is challenging the usual IMF terms of social welfare cuts, rise in the VAT, and other measures that have the effect of doubling the cost of living and reducing the real wages by half for those that…
July 9, 2024
The Shift Towards Private Education in Rural India
India’s education landscape is witnessing a significant shift, with nearly 50% of students now enrolled in 4.5 lakh privately managed schools, making it the third-largest school system globally. This surge is driven by low- and middle-income families seeking quality alternatives to government schools. The ‘State of the Sector Report on Private Schools’ by the Central…
June 8, 2024
Decolonizing must challenge globalized systems of wealth extraction and profiteering.
The authors of a February 2024 Bulletin of the World Health Organization article call for global health actors to challenge current forms of corporate and financialized colonialism that operate through globalized systems of wealth extraction and profiteering. They note that most of the current narrative on decolonization focuses on correcting power imbalances between health actors…
February 10, 2024
More years of schooling improves all-cause mortality globally – Lancet
A systematic review and meta-analysis by the IHME-CHAIN collaborators (Lancet 23 January 2024) demonstrated that increased “years of schooling had a significant and consistent effect on all-cause mortality risk and that the protective effect of education persisted for female and male individuals, across all age groups, and all levels of Socio-demographic Index of the country…
Defunding UNWRA in Gaza is ‘collective punishment’ – Lancet & Health Justice Organizations
Health and political leaders globally have condemned defunding of UNRWA, the principle lifeline for the people of Gaza. Sharmila Devi, in the current issue of Lancet, quotes UN leaders and aid agency leaders (including WHO) “no other entity has the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2·2 million people in Gaza…
January 27, 2024
Tim Schwab & “The Bill Gates Problem” Town Hall Seattle Podcast
Tim Schwab, author of the recently published “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the myth of the good billionaire,” headlined a Seattle Town Hall event in December 2024 sponsored by the Community Alliance for Global Justice. In this podcast of the event, Tim explains how Bill Gates’ uses his foundation as a vehicle for unaccountable…
Wars are never necessary: Gaza is the best example
This short Lancet piece by Souza, Buss, and Alcazar notes that since the Gaza war began in October 2023, “nothing has been resolved and all impasses remain. The costs of lives lost and survivors’ lives destroyed forever are immense. The billions of dollars spent on killing so far could have saved lives, fed and immunised…
January 22, 2024
UN Tax Reform offers hope to Low Income Countries
In late November 2023, developing countries at the UN won a historic vote to set up a tax convention in spite of resistance from rich countries. This Guardian editorial (see below) explains how poor nations’ ability to feed, educate and provide healthcare to their people is hobbled by illicit and hidden movements of capital worth…
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