The Tax Justice Network released a new tool to track the global extent of tax-related illicit financial flows, how much tax revenues each country loses, and which jurisdictions facilitate these enormous losses. Tijmen Tuinsma authored an article on their website with a description of the tracker and some of its implications. The tracker shows how $1,624,708, 158,000 (over 1.6 trillion dollars) in 2022, with an estimated tax revenue lost of over $433 billion. As an example, they estimated that Ghana…
Tag: Structural violence
6 million more children missing out on education
Oluwaseun Ikusika, in UNtoday (1 October) draws attention to the growing global crisis in education, where the number of children missing out on any schooling has increased by six million globally to 250 million total. And this doesn’t even take into account the rapid and sustained growth of privatization of education, where the public schools that serve the poor are often extremely crowded and underfunded. The education crisis is critically important for global population health, were lack of education is,…
Humanitarian Aid Substituting for Justice? Rethinking UNRWA
For over seven decades, humanitarian aid has sustained millions of Palestinian refugees, but it has also quietly replaced the political solution they were promised. What began as emergency relief has evolved into a system that risks managing, rather than resolving, one of the world’s longest-running refugee crises. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War displaced roughly 700,000 Palestinians, creating a humanitarian emergency that led to the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, in 1949.1,2 Intended as…
Illicit financial flows cost Africa $88 billion annually
The African Union, in an August 2025 report, estimates that illicit financial flows (IFFs) cost countries in Africa $88 billion per year. IFFs are illicit or illegal funds derived from criminal activities and/or illegal tax practices that are moved or transferred across countries, including international trade manipulations (the most common), tax evasion, smuggling, government corruption, and money laundering. Nearly half of these losses come from the ‘extractive sector,’ mostly mining. IFFs are fundamental drivers of economic injustice, and enormously undermine…
Art for global health equity
A July essay in PLOS Global Public Health argues that art and its expression are critically important in the struggle for global health equity. Reñosa and his colleagues make the case that art can be leveraged to (1) to amplify disenfranchised voices, (2) to advance social justice activism, (3) to strengthen communities and individuals, and (4) to improve global health communication. They argue that art facilitates the inclusion of diverse cultural perspectives and engagement and uplifts marginalized voices. They provide a…
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 where the data were collected. These findings are similar to the protective effects of a good diet and physical activity and the harms of risk…
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 personal power and influence, using taxpayers dollars. He describes how dogmatic belief in the primacy of the private sector and their patent interests and the…
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 people, recovered the malnourished, built equitable systems, and provided essential medicines in many parts of the world.” They draw our attention to a recent BBC…
[BOOKS] on Medical Appartheid
Medical apartheid refers to the systemic discrimination, segregation, and unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on their race or ethnicity within the healthcare system, leading to disparities in access, quality of care, and health outcomes. Book recommendations on medical appartheid: “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet A. Washington (2006) Washington meticulously documents the history of medical exploitation and mistreatment of Black Americans, offering a comprehensive…
Gaza: The root of violence is oppression
This blog from the Jewish Voices for Peace condemns the violence, mourns the lives lost, and provides a context for understanding the roots of the conflict in Israel and Gaza. The authors note that The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to U.S. complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/10/statement23-10-07/ Another good resource is a brief, 100-year history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by the Al-Jazeera newspaper staff. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide Both articles…