Education is a fundamental right for every child according to Article 28 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child 

The report Fixing a Broken System: Transforming Education Financing by Save the Children revealed that 1 in 3 of the world’s poorest nations spends more on paying off debt to wealthy countries and investors than on educating its own children.

It shows that 21 out of 70 low- and lower-middle-income countries with available data spent more on external debt repayment than on education in 2020.

 According to the publication, interest payments are expected to account for an average of 10% of the annual budget in this category of countries by 2024, up from 7% in 2015.

“Education systems desperately need more and better funding across low- and lower-middle-income countries. Instead, they are being gutted to service unmanageable debts,” Hollie Warren, Save the Children U.K.’s head of global education policy and advocacy, said in a statement. “It is wrong that the world’s poorest children are having to suffer because of a debt crisis that was not of their making,” she continued. 

Nearly 1 in 3 children in low-income countries still do not finish primary school.

1 in 3 of World’s Poorest Countries Spend More on Debt Repayments Than Education (commondreams.org)

 United Nations experts joined people across the globe on Monday in marking the 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty by calling for an end to capital punishment. Despite more than 170 states having repealed the death penalty or adopted moratoriums, there was a reported 20% increase in the number of executions last year. At least 579 people were killed by 18 countries that used four methods: beheading, hanging, lethal injection, and shooting.

“Abolition of the death penalty is the only viable path,” asserted Alice Edwards, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Morris Tidball-Binz, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, stated, “The death row phenomenon has long been characterized as a form of inhuman treatment, as has the near total isolation of those convicted of capital crimes and often held in unlawful solitary confinement,”

UN Experts Say Abolishing Death Penalty ‘Is the Only Viable Path’ (commondreams.org)

 Research by two thinktanks, Common Wealth and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), showed investors had benefited from a boom in dividend payouts since the Covid pandemic at a time of meagre growth in workers’ pay. The value of dividends paid to shareholders in UK-listed companies has returned to 2017-18 levels after a drop during the Covid pandemic, without an equivalent increase in wages for workers.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is pushing ahead with a multimillion pound tax cut for wealthy individuals with a reduction in the rate of income tax on dividends. Dividend tax will be reduced by 1.25 percent.

Chris Hayes, a senior data analyst at Common Wealth, who wrote the report, said: “It is a shame that the chancellor’s U-turn does not extend to his tax cuts on dividends, which benefit the very wealthy and are already subject to very generous treatment. For two decades, shareholders have been enjoying ever greater payouts that could have been invested productively or paid to workers. Further tilting the balance in favour of shareholders will not unleash economic dynamism. It will only deepen our stagnation.” 

Among firms currently listed in the FTSE All Share index dividends steadily climbed in value at a faster rate than employee earnings during the decade from the 2008 financial crisis up to the Covid pandemic, up from £17.3bn in 2014 to £28bn in 2019.

Share buybacks, an alternative form of corporate payout whereby companies purchase shares from their investors to raise the price of the stock, have also risen sharply. The research showed share buybacks more than doubled from £3.4bn in 2015 to £8.2bn in 2019, and have since more than quadrupled from 2015 levels to reach £16.2bn in the second quarter of 2022.

George Dibb, head of the Centre for Economic Justice at the IPPR, said the rise in dividend payments and share buybacks since the pandemic showed companies were prioritising shareholder payouts over productivity-boosting investment and higher wages for workers.

“It raises serious concerns for the prospects of increasing the UK’s low levels of investment. Companies engage in share buybacks when they are unable to identify investment opportunities better than driving up their own share price. This is a symptom of an economy where firms don’t lack funds to invest – they lack the stable environment to invest in.”

Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts will benefit richest amid dividend boom – report | Economic policy | The Guardian

 World Economic Forum warns of the cataclysmic consequences of climate change. 

The 2030s:

Ice caps and crucial ice sheets continued to melt, swelling sea levels by 20 centimeters [7.87 inches]

90 percent of coral reefs are threatened by human activity, while around 60 percent are highly endangered

Dwindling crop yields have pushed more than 100 million more people into extreme poverty

Climate change-related illnesses are killing an extra 250,000 people each year

The 2040s:

The world has already shot past its 1.5-degree Celsius [2.7-degree Fahrenheit] Paris Agreement temperature rise limit

Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand are threatened by annual floods, sparking mass migration

Eight percent of the global population has seen a severe reduction in water availability

The Arctic is now ice-free in summer

Sea levels have risen 20 centimeters [two feet] in the Gulf of Mexico, where hurricanes now deliver devastating storm surges.

 Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the combined death toll from the diseases could be halved in the next four years in the countries where the fund invests. Without enough money, Sands warned, governments on the frontline of the fight will be forced to prioritise “basic life-saving essentials” over more sophisticated efforts to curb the diseases once and for all.

However, he said that “extraordinary opportunity” would only be possible with sufficient financial resources to allow badly affected countries to use new scientific tools such as Oxford University’s promising malaria vaccine and a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug developed by a British pharmaceutical company.

Britain has been the third-largest donor to the Global Fund, which provides two-thirds of all international financing for malaria programmes and three-quarters of the money for TB programmes. But at a recent conference aimed at securing the fund’s resources for the next three years, Britain failed to make a pledge. The government has until late October, when the fund will begin the process of allocating its resources to the countries in which it invests.

“The challenge is that if most of the money is just going on delivering … essentials [such as antiretroviral treatment and insecticide-treated bed nets] there’s very little resource to enable the rapid introduction of the newer tools that will actually win against the disease,” Sands explained.

Pledge aid or deprive Commonwealth’s poorest in diseases fight, UK warned | Global development | The Guardian

Across the world, people with mental health issues like depression and anxiety are on the rise. 

According to the WHO World Mental Health report published earlier this year, depression and anxiety rose 25% in the first year of the pandemic, bringing the total number of people living with a mental disorder to nearly 1 billion people.

“What’s more, mental health services have been severely disrupted in recent years, and the treatment gap for mental health conditions has widened,” a WHO spokesperson explained.

Mental health issues like depression and anxiety on the rise globally | Science | In-depth reporting on science and technology | DW | 10.10.2022

 Germany is one of the richest countries in the world, yet signs of increasing poverty are becoming increasingly visible across the country. Homeless people sleeping rough, mothers forgoing meals in order to feed their children, pensioners looking for discarded bottles to trade for the deposit.

As inflation skyrockets in Germany, more and more people will find themselves unable to make ends meet without assistance. It is becoming increasingly difficult for many to afford bread, milk, fruit, and vegetables, which are over 12% more expensive than they were a year ago. In 2020, around 1.1 million people made use of food banks. That number is now closer to 2 million.

According to the Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband, Germany’s umbrella organization for welfare organizations, 13.8 million Germans either live in poverty or are at risk of slipping below the poverty line. 

The term poverty in this context does not mean that millions of people in Germany are at risk of starving or freezing to death. Instead, it refers to relative poverty, which is measured by the average living conditions of the society in question.

In 2021, Germany was ranked the 20th richest country in the world, measured by GDP per capita. This means that if you add up the value of all the goods and commodities produced in a country and divide the figure by the number of inhabitants, you get $50,700 (€52,200) per person per year in Germany on average. By comparison, that number is $136,700 in Luxembourg, the world’s richest country, and $270 in the poorest, Burundi.

In Europe, although relatively few people live in absolute poverty, millions are affected by poverty relative to the national average. This means they live with severe material restrictions, and can only make ends meet by restricting their lifestyles in a way that the majority of the population takes for granted. In the EU, a person is considered to be at risk of poverty or poor if their income is less than 60% of the median in their respective country. If it is less than 50%, it is considered extreme poverty. For Germany, this means that single people who make less than €1,148 in net income a month are considered below the poverty line. For single parents with one child, that figure is €1,492, and for a household of two parents and two children, €2,410.

Anyone in Germany who cannot find a job, or is unable to work, receives basic social security — a system still known colloquially as Hartz IV. This money is meant to cover basic living expenses such as rent, heating, and water, and well as health insurance. Under this system, individuals and single parents have only €449 a month for food, clothing, household goods, personal hygiene products, and bills such as the internet, telephone, and electricity. For each child, a parent or a couple receive between €285 and €376, depending on age. Hartz IV and other public welfare programs have been repeatedly criticized in Germany for covering only the barest of necessities. In response to this, the federal government has proposed raising the standard rate to €503 per month, beginning in 2023, and changing the name to Bürgergeld, or “citizens’ money.”

However, according to social scientist and poverty researcher Christoph Butterwege, even that will be far from enough. Butterwege told DW that at least €650 is necessary for people to live “with dignity” and, for example, to eat healthy food for every meal. Under the current system, only €5 per person per day is earmarked for food, leaving poorer households to either buy less food or food of lesser quality.

Poverty is also on the rise amongst the elderly. Even after decades of work, a monthly pension is often not enough to cover all expenses. Women in particular are feeling the strain, as they are more likely to have worked part-time and been paid less. According to a new study from the Bertelsmann Foundation, old-age poverty is expected to affect 20% of Germans by 2036. People with pension payments below a certain threshold are allowed to claim government assistance. However, many shy away from doing so out of a reluctance to be seen as needy. Studies show that two-thirds of those entitled to claim benefits are ashamed to do so. Older people often prefer to try to work longer, or collect cans and bottles with a refundable deposit from rubbish bins, in order to put a few more euros in their wallets.

 The number of people who cannot live on their income despite having a full-time job is also rising — even with a recent increase in the minimum wage. At €12 per hour, a single person with no children who works 40 hours a week would receive a net income of around €1,480 per month. Although this is nominally above the poverty line, the excess has been eaten up by inflation.

Students are also greatly affected by the situation, especially recipients of federal funding. These students receive a maximum of €934 a month, which includes money for housing and health insurance. This amount puts students well below the poverty line.

Life in Germany will remain expensive for the foreseeable future, and this will be felt above all by those who have no financial buffers and little savings.

Germany: What poverty looks like in a rich country | Germany | News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 10.10.2022

 Inflation in Turkey has climbed above 83% – a 24-year-high. The transport, food and housing sectors have seen the biggest rise in prices. Independent experts the Inflation Research Group estimate the annual rate is actually 186.27%. The transport sector saw the sharpest increases in annual prices at 117.66%, followed by food and non-alcoholic drinks at 93%.

 In a recent report, the International Rescue Committee (IRC)  chronicled Afghan refugees’ difficulties in Greece and the serious impact on their physical and mental health.

After Ukrainians, Afghans account for the second-largest group of asylum applicants in the EU and by far the biggest in Greece, where more than 37,000 – more than a third of the total number registered nationwide – have filed asylum claims.

“Many Afghans fleeing conflict and persecution in their own country think their troubles will be over once they reach Europe. This is simply not the case,” says Dimitra Kalogeropoulou, the IRC’s Greece director. “Instead, people face the stark reality of violent pushbacks from Greek borders, months or years living in fear of being sent back to Turkey or Afghanistan, where they could face untold horrors, extended periods trapped in prison-like reception conditions, far from towns and cities and an alarming lack of support to begin rebuilding their lives,” she says.

For the estimated 70,000 Ukrainians who have sought refuge in Greece, it has been a different story. After Russia’s invasion on 24 February, the EU moved quickly to issue a temporary protection directive to safeguard the rights of people desperate to leave the war-torn country. Although relatively few Ukrainians have headed to Greece, the reception they have received there has been unusually warm, with senior officials often referring to the newcomers as “real refugees”.

Sofia Kouvelaki, who heads the Home project, an NGO that supports unaccompanied minors, said: “Ukrainian refugees have proved a point. In Greece, and in the EU, they have shown that if we want to integrate we can, and if we want to welcome people with a human face we can do that too.”

 “While the Greek government has welcomed refugees from Ukraine, by efficiently registering them, issuing legal documents and allowing immediate access to employment, Afghans in Greece, alongside other asylum seekers and refugees, continue to be isolated from the Greek society in which they seek to rebuild their lives,” the report’s authors wrote.

The biggest barrier for Afghans claiming asylum is the Greek government’s controversial decision to label Turkey a “safe third country” for people not only from Afghanistan but also from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria. The decision has prevented thousands of people from being able to explain why they need international protection. . In September, the migration minister, Notis Mitarachi, noted that the country had blocked about 50,000 migrants from entering Greece in August alone. International bodies have echoed the IRC in rebuking Athens for resorting to tactics of brute force to keep asylum seekers out.

Concluding a 10-day fact-finding tour of Greece in June, Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, accused the Mitsotakis government of creating a “climate of fear”, not only for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing poverty and persecution but also for groups defending migrants’ rights on the ground. Illegal evictions of asylum seekers at land and sea borders had become a general policy in Greece, she said.

 New audio uploads for Summer School 2022 – ‘The Class Divide’, held at Fircroft College, Birmingham, 19th-21st August 2022.

Sadly, due to technical difficulties only three of the talks were recorded, and none of the Discussion sessions.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio-index/spgb-summer-schools/

1) ‘Let Them Do Yoga! Inequality, Mental Health & Social Revolution’, Brian Gardner

2) ‘The Class Divide and The Role of Trade Unions‘, Howard Moss

3) ‘How Middle Class Are You?’, Mike Foster