Once more this blog draws attention to the racism against the Roma. 

At Prague’s central railway station hundreds of Roma people are sheltering  under what emergency workers say are dangerously unsanitary conditions, in the only place available to them since they joined the millions of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. Unlike other Ukrainians who have been offered refugee visas, these families have found they have nowhere to go and no one who wants them.

More than 500 people are crammed each night into quarters that were originally envisaged to accommodate 260 on a one-night-only basis. Some have stayed for up to 10 nights. Volunteer aid workers say they are overstretched and overwhelmed. 

“We were set up to provide information, but now we are dealing with a humanitarian crisis. It is no longer sustainable,” says Geti Mubeenová, crisis coordinator with the Organisation for Aid to Refugees (OPU).

“We tried to register for refugee protection at the registration centre but they wouldn’t accept us and didn’t give us any document explaining why,” says Zanna, a teenage mother of three children from Kyiv, who says she had arrived in Prague with her family four days earlier. “We came here looking for a place to stay but instead we are just lying on the floor like dogs. We are exhausted and have no energy any more. I’m just feeling really hopeless.”

It is a tale typical of many Roma arrivals, aid workers sy.

According to Mubeenová anti-Roma prejudice is widespread in the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries. Many Roma who left Prague for Germany later returned, she says, including some who reported that police in Dresden refused to allow them to disembark from their train.

Mubeenová says: “I have sat in meetings with representatives of Prague city hall, the police etc, and noticed the narrative changing – people stopped talking about refugees and started referring to ‘economic migrants’ and ‘welfare tourists’. She explained, “Representatives have told me that they don’t have the necessary documents to apply for protection, but they are often not even allowed to submit applications and that’s not legal.”

‘They won’t accept us’: Roma refugees forced to camp at Prague train station | Ukraine | The Guardian

 Britain’s poorest households are expected to see their living costs increase by almost twice the rate as the richest in society do when energy bills rise this autumn, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said.

The fresh surge in gas and electricity bills expected in October could lead to average annual inflation rates of as high as 14% for the poorest tenth of households.

The increase in the energy price cap to close to £2,800 is likely to hit poorer families disproportionately because a larger share of their total spending goes on energy. The IFS said the poorest tenth of households typically spend almost three times as much of their budgets on gas and electricity compared with the richest 10th.

“As poorer households spend more of their budgets on gas and electricity, this increase is likely to hit poorer households harder,” said Heidi Karjalainen, a research economist at the IFS.

In stark contrast to a 14% personal inflation rate for the poorest, the richest tenth could see rates of about 8%, the thinktank said. 

Across all households inflation is likely to reach 10% amid the surge in energy bills, the highest rate since 1982.

The Resolution Foundation said one-off payments targeted at poorer households worth up to £15bn were needed to stop rising energy bills putting millions of families into destitution this winter.

While all households are expected to feel the squeeze from rising living costs this year, the thinktank warned that poorer families were being hit hardest as they spend a greater share of their budgets on energy bills and food – the biggest drivers of the inflation shock sweeping Britain. It said the scale of the crisis meant the number of households in severe fuel stress – whereby families find themselves spending £1 of every £5 of their budget on energy bills – could surge from 325,000 households in England last winter to 1.9 million this year.

Inflation rate for UK’s poorest forecast to hit 14% after price cap rise | Cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 In the United States, children are more likely to experience poverty than people over 18.

In 2020, about 1 in 6 kids, 16% of all children, were living in families with incomes below the official poverty line – an income threshold the government set that year at about US$26,500 for a family of four. Only 10% of Americans ages 18 to 64 and 9% of those 65 and up were experiencing poverty, according to the most recent data available.

The official child poverty rate ticks down when the economy grows and up during downturns. It stood at 17% in 1967 – just about the same as in 2020. In many recent years the rate hovered even higher – around 20%.

Researchers calculate the official poverty rate by adding up a household’s income and comparing it with a threshold of what is needed to survive. The government has calculated this rate the same way since the 1960s.

One of its shortcomings is that it excludes several sources of income, including tax credits and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which are intended to reduce poverty.

In 2011, the government began to calculate an alternative metric: the supplemental poverty measure. It includes SNAP and tax credits. It also uses thresholds based on the cost of living in different areas of the country. For a family of four, this threshold currently ranges from $24,000 to $35,000, depending on where a family lives and whether they own or rent housing. According to this alternative measure, 10% of children were living in poverty in 2020, the lowest rate ever recorded.

Depending on which measure you use, either 7 million or 11.7 million U.S. children lived in poverty in 2020.

Poverty is higher for children of color. The official poverty rate for Black children stood at 26%, and 23% for Hispanic children, while for white, non-Hispanic children it was 10%.

The Persistence of Childhood Poverty in the US – CounterPunch.org

 The supply disruption caused by the war in Ukraine, with Black Sea ports blockaded, is driving up prices, creating shortages and the risk of famine.

Achim Steiner, the administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), tells us that the world is not prepared for what’s ahead: “We are in trouble. The war in Ukraine is dramatic in so many ways. There is an acute crisis in food, fuel and finance. As of today there is no reason to believe this is a short term challenge.

We are in the middle of a series of unfolding crises and the world is not prepared for it.

Hunger, Steiner said, was probably the one thing that got people on the streets because once people found they couldn’t afford to feed their families they lost faith in government. 

“What we saw in Sri Lanka we are likely to see in more and more countries.”

Steiner said 200 million people were facing acute hunger, double the figure of five years ago. “This is very serious”, he said. Higher energy prices – another consequence of the Ukraine war – were causing balance of payments problems for many developing countries. “Wealthier nations have a decision to make. Are they going to step up or do they let things drift on.”

Davos day two: World ‘in trouble’ as food crisis intensifies – live updates (theguardian.com)

The first of the sessions at this year’s Summer School about The Class Divide (19th – 21st August, in Birmingham) has been announced. 

Howard Moss will be speaking on:

The Class Divide and the Role of Trade Unions

Historically trade unions were voluntary organisations set up by the working class to enable them to get as good a deal as possible in selling their skills and energies to employers, while at the same time not having the aim or ability to transcend the class divide they were (and are) a player in. But what about circumstances in which workers decide it is not in their interest to be part of trade unions, as many do these days? Do they lose by this? And what about ‘political’ trade unionism where unions manage to get themselves involved not just in trying to protect or improve the pay and working conditions of their members but instead are used as vehicles for campaigning for various reforms of capitalism or even for Trotskyist-style revolution? What should the Socialist attitude be towards such activities by trade unions?

More sessions will be announced shortly. For more details about the event, please go here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2022/

Trade unions reacted angrily to the suggestion public sector workers should bear the responsibility for restraining inflation.

The TUC deputy general secretary, Paul Nowak, said: “These claims are nonsense. Making sure people can afford to pay their bills and put food on the table is not going to push up inflation. Inflation is being driven by rising energy costs, not pay demands.” He added: “Key workers in the public sector have endured a decade of wage cuts and freezes. At a time when staff shortages are crippling frontline services, this would be a hammer blow to workers’ morale.”

Unions angered by No 10 remarks about public sector pay stoking inflation | Public sector pay | The Guardian

David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), is appealing to the compassion and charity of  billionaires  as the global threat of food insecurity rises. If Ukraine’s supplies remain off the market, the world could face a food availability problem in the next 10 to 12 months, and “that is going to be hell on earth”, Beasley said.

“The world is in real serious trouble. This is not rhetoric and BS. Step up now, because the world needs you.”

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man,  last year challenged policy advocates to show how a $6bn donation sought by the UN agency could solve world hunger. Since then  Musk donated about five million shares of company stock worth roughly $5.7bn to an unidentified charity in November. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filing did not name any recipients for Musk’s donation.

‘Step up now’: UN’s food agency presses billionaires for aid | Food News | Al Jazeera

“Musk put $6bn into a foundation. But everybody thought it came to us, but we ain’t gotten any of it yet. So I’m hopeful,” Beasley pointed out. “I don’t know what it’s going to take,” he said of Musk. “We’re trying every angle, you know: Elon, we need your help, brother.”

 The largest private suppliers of children’s homes and foster care places in England, Wales and Scotland make excessive profits says a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report. Data on 15 large providers from 2016 to 2020 showed steady operating profit margins averaging 22.6%. The CMA says a well-functioning market should generate returns to investors of up to 6%, but the largest children’s home providers make about double that.

“The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution has now crossed the staggering milestone of 100 million for the first time on record, propelled by the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts,” said UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

The figures combine refugees, asylum-seekers, as well as more than 50 million people displaced inside their own countries.

The 100 million figure amounts to more than one percent of the global population, while only 13 countries have a bigger population than the number of forcibly displaced people in the world.

UNHCR said the number of forcibly displaced people rose toward 90 million by the end of 2021, spurred by violence in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and since then, more than eight million people have been displaced within the country, while more than six million refugees have fled across the borders.

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi, said, “This must serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution, and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes.”

He continued, “Compassion is alive and we need a similar mobilisation for all crises around the world. But ultimately, humanitarian aid is a palliative, not a cure. To reverse this trend, the only answer is peace and stability so that innocent people are not forced to gamble between acute danger at home or precarious flight and exile.”

Grandi called for those countries to lift any remaining pandemic-related asylum restrictions, saying they contravene a fundamental human right.

“I am worried that measures enacted on the pretext of responding to Covid-19 are being used as cover to exclude and deny asylum to people fleeing violence and persecution.” 

Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) chief Jan Egeland told reporters, “It has never been as bad as this. The world is falling apart.”

Number of displaced people passes 100 million for first time, says UN (france24.com)

 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has released a worrying report, entitled “Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk.” 

Environment of Risk: Security in a New Era of Risk (sipri.org)

“A compound environmental crisis and a darkening security horizon are feeding each other in dangerous ways,” SIPRI’s researchers write. Felled forests, melting glaciers and polluted oceans are occurring simultaneously with an rise in the number of conflict-related deaths, arms expenditures and increasing numbers of people at risk of starvation. Pandemics pose further dangers.

Lacking a global plan, the world is “stumbling” into these intertwined dangers, according to SIPRI.

“Nature and peace are so closely linked that damaging one damages the other. By the same reasoning, enhancing one enhances the other,” SIPRI’s director, Dan Smith, explained.

SIPRI: From climate to war, world entering a critical era | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 22.05.2022