Categoria

Inequality and Social Justice

Health

A COVID-19 VACCINE QUICKLY AND CHEAPLY

By John Scales Avery* The urgent need for a vaccine Public health experts say that if the COVID-19 epidemic is not successfully contained, it could become a global pandemic, perhaps spreading to 80% of the world’s population. With a 1% mortality rate, this would mean that 70…

Civil rights

Many Milestones but Painfully Slow Progress Towards Gender Equality

By Farhana Haque Rahman* ROME, Mar 5 2020 (IPS) – The narrative surrounding women’s rights in 2020 carries much hope and possibility. A new decade is ushering in important anniversaries and milestones: 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, 110 years since the…

Human Rights

Idriss Jazairy – defender of the under privileged

By Farhana Haque Rahman* The world has lost a champion of human rights with the passing of Idriss Jazairy, a former Algerian diplomat and head of multi-lateral institutions who won praise for his work defending the under privileged and his…

Democracy

Britain’s imperial prime minister

The Economist Boris Johnson is busy accumulating power in Number 10 The emperor Nero was reportedly in the habit of dipping dissidents in tar and using them to light his dinner parties. Boris Johnson has not so far shown an inclination to use his ministers as human torches…

Economy / Finance

Lucky Trump Looking Smug

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram* SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb  2020 (IPS) – Meeting the President of the Republic of Korea in September 2019, President Donald J Trump bragged that the “US economy is the envy of the world”. Trump reiterated such claims in his State…

Health

Intellectual Property Raises Costs of Living

By Claire Lim and Jomo Kwame Sundaram (*) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 11 2020 (IPS) – Many medicines and medical tests are unaffordable to most of humanity owing to the ability of typically transnational pharmaceutical giants to abuse their monopoly powers, enforced by…