The concern over COVID-19 has eclipsed many other diseases but these such as TB and malaria still remain a pestilence upon the planet. 

We know how to prevent HIV transmission, and we have the medical know-how to keep every person living with HIV healthy. No one has to die of AIDS.

Yet there were at least 680,000 people due to AIDS-related illnesses in 2020 worldwide. In 2020 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV. Forty years since the first AIDS cases were reported in the world HIV/AIDS still threatens. 

Our society has the ability to break the chain of transmission of HIV. Treatment as prevention – works – along with a whole collection of HIV prevention options. Inaction is unacceptable and the cause of new infections and untimely deaths to name a few. 

Lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART) and viral load suppression, along with the whole cascade of HIV care and support, keep them healthy and away from AIDS-related illnesses. 

“Thanks to scientific research and strong evidence that has given us tools to effectively prevent transmission of HIV, diagnose HIV, treat people living with HIV. That is why it is possible for people living with HIV who can live fulfilling normal lives…” explained Dr Ishwar Gilada, who is on the Governing Council of International AIDS Society (IAS). “We know how to beat AIDS, we know what the inequalities obstructing progress are and we know how to tackle them. The policies to address inequalities can be implemented, but they require leaders to be bold and not cold!”

When People With HIV Can Live Normal Lives Then Why 680,000 AIDS Deaths In 2020?| Countercurrents

 The United Nations is predicting that a record 274 million people – who together would amount to the world’s fourth most-populous country – will require emergency humanitarian aid next year.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in its annual overview of future needs, is projecting a 17% jump in the number of people who will need urgent assistance in 2022.

“The climate crisis is hitting the world’s most vulnerable people first and worst. Protracted conflicts grind on, and instability has worsened in several parts of the world, notably Ethiopia, Myanmar and Afghanistan,” said Martin Griffiths, the head of OCHA. “The pandemic is not over, and poor countries are deprived of vaccines.”

Griffiths cited estimates by the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization that 45 million people are at risk of famine, in dozens of countries.

UN projects soaring humanitarian needs in world in 2022 | AP News

 

YORKSHIRE

We are pleased to advise the formation of a Yorkshire Discussion Group. If you are living in the Yorkshire area and are interested in the Socialist Party case you are invited to attend our forums which currently alternate on a monthly basis either on Zoom or physical meetings in Leeds. For further information contact: fredi.edwards@hotmail.co.uk

 El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America and has one of the highest population densities in the region, with more than 300 inhabitants per square kilometer. 

Alongside Guatemala and Honduras, it also ranks among the poorest countries in the Americas. 

More than 40% of children in El Salvador live in poverty. 

Remittances from Salvadorans abroad account for more than $400 million (€345 million) or 22% of El Salvador’s GDP.

 Drought and forest fires are destroying areas used for food production, while hurricanes and floods cause widespread devastation. Degraded soil and increasing urban sprawl pose a threat to water and food supplies.  

El Salvador has used the US dollar as legal currency for two decades, but recently it became the first country in the world to make bitcoin a national currency.

 The number of hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean has risen by 30 percent since 2019.

 59 million people across the region currently are not getting enough to eat, an increase of 13.8 million people in just one year.

More than nine percent of people across Latin America and the Caribbean are going hungry.

Along with the people who are going hungry in absolute terms, four out of every 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean – 267 million people – experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, said the UN report. That is 60 million more people than in 2019.

In 2020, 41.8 percent of women in the region experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, compared with more than 32 percent of men.

 A coalition of United Nations agencies called the situation “critical”.

“We must say it loud and clear: Latin America and the Caribbean is facing a critical situation in terms of food security,” Julio Berdegue, a regional representative with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said. “There has been an almost 79 percent hike in the number of people living in hunger from 2014 to 2020.”

The coronavirus pandemic has “exacerbated the situation”, added Rossana Polastri, regional director of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN’s agricultural bank.

In Brazil, the region’s largest and most populous country, some 19 million people have gone hungry during the pandemic, according to a study published earlier this year, while nearly 117 million – more than half the country’s population – live with some level of food insecurity.

Globally, 11 people die from hunger every minute, according to a July report from Oxfam, which found the number of people facing famine-like conditions has increased by six times over the past year.

Hunger increased by 30 percent in Latin America since 2019: UN | Food News | Al Jazeera

  The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the number of international migrants grew to 281 million in 2020, or 3.6 percent of the global population.

That marks an increase from the 272 million international migrants counted in 2019, when they made up 3.5 percent of all people in the world.

The IOM stressed that there would have been another two million international migrants last year had it not been for the pandemic, which made it far more complicated to move across borders.

“We are witnessing a paradox not seen before in human history,” IOM chief Antonio Vitorino said in a statement.

“While billions of people have been effectively grounded by Covid-19, tens of millions of others have been displaced within their own countries.”

Some 40.5 million people were living as internally displaced at the end of 2020, up from 31.5 million a year earlier.

UN says international migration rose last year despite Covid-19 impact (france24.com)

 For the likes of liberal progressives such as Bernie Sanders, the welfare state of “Scandinavian socialism” is frequently lauded as the aspiration of the American left-wing. 

In  2018 the richest 10 percent of Norwegians own 60 percent of the country’s wealth. 

The top 1 percent controls 21 percent of total wealth.

Statistics Norway researcher Rolf Aaberge describes the inequality figure as underestimated. 

According to Aaberge’s estimates, the top 1 percent of income earners take home 20 percent of all income. The richest 0.01 percent earn 6 percent of total income. (income and wealth are not the same.)

Despite socialised healthcare, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health noted the gulf between the life expectancy of the richest and poorest in society.

 In Oslo, life expectancy varies by up to eight years between rich and poor neighbourhoods.

Life expectancy for those with the highest education levels is five or six years more than for people with the lowest level of education.

 Cuts to education spending in England over the last decade are “effectively without precedent in postwar UK history” and have hit the most deprived schools hardest, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Its report highlights how the most disadvantaged fifth of secondary schools have faced the biggest cuts, with a 14% real-terms fall in spending per pupil between 2009 and 2019, compared with 9% for the least deprived schools.

Colleges and sixth-forms have faced the biggest cuts, and even with additional funding from the spending review, spending per student will still be lower in 2024 than in 2010, the report says.

It also says recent changes to the way education funding is distributed has compounded that disadvantage by providing bigger real-terms increases for the least deprived schools, making the government’s stated levelling-up goals harder to achieve.

It also confirms earlier findings that the most deprived schools have lost out most in the reorganisation of schools funding via the national funding formula, with the least deprived schools receiving real-terms increases of 8%-9%, compared with 5% for the most deprived, between 2017 and 2022.

The pupil premium, which provides additional funding for children on free school meals, has failed to keep pace with inflation since 2015. “These patterns run counter to the government’s goal of levelling up poorer areas,” the report states.

In the early 1990s, health and education spending each represented about 4.5% of national income, but while education investment has stayed pegged at about this level, health spending rose to more than 7% of national income before the pandemic.

“Whilst we have been choosing to spend an ever expanding share of national income on health, we have remarkably reduced the fraction of national income we devote to public spending on education.”

The IFS said: “The cuts to education spending over the last decade are effectively without precedent in postwar UK history, including a 9% real-terms fall in school spending per pupil and a 14% fall in spending per student in colleges.

It said the government had ambitious goals to level up poorer areas of the country, including a big role for technical education. “However, changes to the distribution of education spending have been working in the opposite direction. Recent school funding changes have tended to work against schools serving disadvantaged areas. Cuts to spending have been larger for colleges and adult education, and still won’t be reversed by 2024.”

Luke Sibieta, an IFS research fellow and an author of the report, said: “Extra funding in the spending review will reverse cuts to school spending per pupil, but will mean 15 years without any overall growth. Recent funding changes have also worked against schools serving disadvantaged communities. This will make it that much harder to achieve ambitious goals to level up poorer areas of the country and narrow educational inequalities, which were gaping even before the pandemic.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the IFS report was a “grim indictment” of the government’s record. “It is a pretty dreadful legacy to have presided over cuts to education which are without precedent in postwar UK history.”

Most deprived schools hit hardest by education cuts in England, IFS says | Education policy | The Guardian

 At the Tusk conservation awards, Prince William suggested that population growth was responsible for the endangerment of wildlife in Africa. He was promoting the theory that argues humans are overburdening the planet and that some populations are more responsible than others.  It is an ideology with racist undertones – in short, Black, Brown and marginalised people are blamed for overpopulation and consequently the environment’s demise.

Heather Alberro, a lecturer in global sustainable development at Nottingham Trent University, explained, “Focusing only on human numbers functions as a red herring. What research increasingly shows is that extreme poverty, socioeconomic inequality and capitalist systems predicated on endless growth for maximising shareholder value are greater predictors of ecological decline.

“Is it any wonder that a poacher, driven by poverty and the lucrative price tag associated with ivory, would be compelled to kill an elephant?”

She argued, the focus should be on how global inequities are at the heart of the climate crisis. 

“Reckoning with the ongoing, violent legacies of colonial capitalism, which continue to drive the exploitation of people, places, resources, other species, is an important first step towards truly transformative change,” she said. “The irony is that recent research has found that Indigenous peoples are often the best stewards of ecosystems.”

“‘Conservation’ comes from a very colonial time. It treats people who are living there as feckless and worthy of being kicked off the land,” Josina added. “Some of the most dangerous narratives come from upper-class environmentalists. It’s not just Prince William; it’s not just his father, it’s also David Attenborough, it’s also Jane Goodall,” they said, referring to the British broadcaster and natural historian, and English primatologist.

“All these people promote this idea that it’s other people irresponsibility, that it’s poor people’s responsibilityJosina, from the grassroots environmental collective Land in Our Names, who also has a background in sexual and reproductive health, told Al Jazeera that the narrative on overpopulation is often linked to the “demonisation of Black and Brown women’s fecundity”.

“There’s a long history of Black women being blamed for having too many children. Now, what is too many? There’s no one in the royal family who will be demonised for having too many children. Boris Johnson has got quite a lot of kids.”

We should also recall the environmental damage done to the moors by the Royal Family with its game-bird shooting and heather burning. 

Most experts agree that Africa will witness a population boom. However, according to the UN, the continent only contributes to 2 to 3 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Experts critique Prince William’s ideas on Africa population | Wildlife News | Al Jazeera

 At the Tusk conservation awards, Prince William suggested that population growth was responsible for the endangerment of wildlife in Africa. He was promoting the theory that argues humans are overburdening the planet and that some populations are more responsible than others.  It is an ideology with racist undertones – in short, Black, Brown and marginalised people are blamed for overpopulation and consequently the environment’s demise.

Heather Alberro, a lecturer in global sustainable development at Nottingham Trent University, explained, “Focusing only on human numbers functions as a red herring. What research increasingly shows is that extreme poverty, socioeconomic inequality and capitalist systems predicated on endless growth for maximising shareholder value are greater predictors of ecological decline.

“Is it any wonder that a poacher, driven by poverty and the lucrative price tag associated with ivory, would be compelled to kill an elephant?”

She argued, the focus should be on how global inequities are at the heart of the climate crisis. 

“Reckoning with the ongoing, violent legacies of colonial capitalism, which continue to drive the exploitation of people, places, resources, other species, is an important first step towards truly transformative change,” she said. “The irony is that recent research has found that Indigenous peoples are often the best stewards of ecosystems.”

“‘Conservation’ comes from a very colonial time. It treats people who are living there as feckless and worthy of being kicked off the land,” Josina added. “Some of the most dangerous narratives come from upper-class environmentalists. It’s not just Prince William; it’s not just his father, it’s also David Attenborough, it’s also Jane Goodall,” they said, referring to the British broadcaster and natural historian, and English primatologist.

“All these people promote this idea that it’s other people irresponsibility, that it’s poor people’s responsibilityJosina, from the grassroots environmental collective Land in Our Names, who also has a background in sexual and reproductive health, told Al Jazeera that the narrative on overpopulation is often linked to the “demonisation of Black and Brown women’s fecundity”.

“There’s a long history of Black women being blamed for having too many children. Now, what is too many? There’s no one in the royal family who will be demonised for having too many children. Boris Johnson has got quite a lot of kids.”

We should also recall the environmental damage done to the moors by the Royal Family with its game-bird shooting and heather burning. 

Most experts agree that Africa will witness a population boom. However, according to the UN, the continent only contributes to 2 to 3 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Experts critique Prince William’s ideas on Africa population | Wildlife News | Al Jazeera