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Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, leaving their poorest worse off, writes Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

The global finance system is giving fossil fuels a lifeline, indebting vulnerable countries and delaying a just energy transition, writes Bronwen Tucker and Shereen Talaat for Oil Change International.

UK government policies continue to entrench poverty and inflict unnecessary misery on millions of people, says Just Fair director Jess McQuail and UN’s Olivier De Schutter.

The latest Hunger Hotspots report provides a telling reminder of critical humanitarian emergencies that risk falling under the radar while the world’s attention is on the conflict in Israel and Palestine. 

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are returning to Africa, for the first time in decades, with the “same old failed message”.

When the UN’s 193 member states reviewed the current status of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, the verdict was mostly failures—and with little or no successes.

Eight years after the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the world’s low-income countries have struggled to achieve even a single goal.

Global military spending reached $2.2 trillion last year, enough to cover the UN appeal for global humanitarian needs more than 42 times.

As many as 45 African countries have been further squeezed to their bones as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels, and as a portion of the so-called aid goes back to the pockets of rich donor countries.

New research estimates that poverty was linked to at least 183,000 deaths in the US in 2019, making inadequate income the nation's fourth-leading mortality driver that year behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking.

New figures this week from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 13.4m people, or one in five of the population, were left in poverty during the first year of the pandemic over 2020 to 2021.

Unless austerity is reversed, people in developing countries will lose social protections and public services just when they are most needed. And it doesn't have to be this way, write Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins for Project Syndicate.

Pandemics, wars and recessions do not exempt states from human-rights commitments. They must tax multinationals and the richest more to protect the most vulnerable, writes Magdalena Sepúlveda for Social Europe.

At COP27, wealthy governments are pushing for stronger efforts to limit global warming—while failing to deliver the finance and technology promised for climate action in poorer countries.

It wouldn't take more than 1% of the U.S. population to rise up and get organized behind key popular demands to make them a reality - and yet we continue to endlessly wait, writes Ralph Nader in Common Dreams.

To bring about a 'Great Leap' scenario, it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis, writes Paul Virgo.

Russia's war on Ukraine has wreaked havoc on global commodity markets, driving up energy and food prices and exacerbating hunger emergencies around the world.

Millions of lives are at stake and the world’s most vulnerable do not have the luxury of time, write Abdulla Shahid and Gabriel Ferrero de Loma-Osorio.

As hunger threatens millions, the Biden administration should give its OK for the IMF to distribute financial backing to the world’s poorest countries. By Mark Weisbrot.

The money that is being swallowed into the Western military establishments does not only drift away from any climate spending but also promotes greater climate catastrophe, writes Murad Qureshi.

While the NATO Summit ended in Madrid with net commitments to double spending on weapons and to increase by eight-fold the number of troops in Europe, the total of hungry people worldwide now marks an unprecedented record.

The invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered a hefty increase in military spending among Western nations and a rise in humanitarian and military assistance to the beleaguered country, is now threatening to undermine the flow of ODA to the world’s poorer nations.

As the West is busy dealing with its own economic woes while cutting off Russian exports, little heed is being paid to those suffering the most, writes Ramzy Baroud.

To end the pandemic, we need a transformative shift away from the short-termist and profit-captive model of global health governance. And Cuba is showing the way, writes Zackie Achmat.

Just a fraction of the giant amount spent on the world's military - 2,000,000,000,000 US dollars - could meet the UN's major funding appeals for ending starvation and tackling the coronvirus pandemic, writes Baher Kamal for IPS news.

This is the new world order revealed at its most selfish and morally defective: countries trapped in a geopolitics that puts military and economic sanctions before food for the hungry, writes Gordon Brown.

Until we can ensure equal availability of vaccines worldwide, the coronavirus will remain in charge. Critical health technologies must be considered part of a global commons, write Mariana Mazzucato and Jayati Ghosh.

If we do not want COVID-19 to continue exacerbating the colonial world order, we need change - starting with an intellectual property waiver, says Fatima Hassan for Al Jazeera.

Leading Astronauts from the USA, Japan and South Korea have joined forces in a new short film targeting G7 leaders, who meet this weekend in Cornwall, UK.

If aid is to meaningfully tackle poverty, it can’t just be about charity. Instead, it should be about redistributing the world’s resources and dismantling the power structures that maintain global inequality, writes Aisha Dodwell.

UK campaigning organisations are urging the government to rethink its military spending decisions in the light of the pandemic and the climate emergency.

The climate crisis is set to bear the same hallmarks of inequality, whereby the world’s poorest are expected to suffer most. This is why just transitions are such an integral part of climate action, writes Elaine Burke.

As billionaire wealth soars during the pandemic, we may have seen the greatest ever single-year redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy. Influencers worldwide need to be sounding the alarm, writes Sam Pizzigati.

In late November, what may have been the single largest protest in human history took place in India, as upward of 250 million people around the subcontinent participated in a 24-hour general strike in solidarity with farmers. 

Campaigners are calling for a right to food and a right to housing to be given legal backing in the UK for the first time, writes Liam Geraghty for the Big Issue.

Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs like housing and water, say present and former UN special rapporteurs.

The risk of nuclear war is the greatest it has been since the height of the Cold War. But there’s also been incredible progress in the past couple of years, explains Olivia Alperstein for OtherWords.

The High-level Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the UN brought together 111 Heads of State and Government and 14 Ministers, who spoke in support of multilateralism and global solidarity.

Over 200 civil society organizations and trade unions unite to call for a Global Fund for Social Protection to protect the most vulnerable during COVID-19 and beyond.

When we share and respect the resources of the world, each nation will benefit, explains Fr Andrew Hamilton for the Catholic Outlook.

The UN’s 75th anniversary this year is a chance for taking stock, strengthening the UN and confronting the challenges the system will face in the years ahead, writes Giovanna Kuele for PassBlue.

Last week marked 15 years since the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, when leaders of the world’s richest countries agreed debt cancellation for many of the world’s poorest heavily indebted countries.

What if more of the arms and defense sector moved into manufacturing health and other products permanently? Surely this is the time for a focus on what peace and security really mean for us all, writes Martin Butcher for Oxfam International.

There is a danger that Covid-19 will significantly increase the gap between rich and poor nations. It's time to put in place an ambitious plan to overcome this crisis and save more than 30 million lives.

Now is the time for citizens to ensure that world leaders forcefully respond to the COVID-19 crisis in accordance with human rights, write Isabel Ortiz and Walden Bello.

The coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call to stop exceeding the planet’s limits, write Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Kate Raworth.

Tackling the coronavirus demands international action and solidarity on all fronts - not just for reasons of equity, but also practicality, writes Vanessa Baird for the New Internationalist.

The time has come for a massively ambitious plan to overcome the impacts of the coronavirus crisis in developing countries, and on a scale we’ve never seen before in our lifetimes. By Chema Vera from Oxfam International. 

While the world's richest have seen a dip in their stock holdings, those on the bottom of the wealth scale will bear the heaviest burden of the crisis, writes Max Lawson for inequality.org.

If the coronavirus has any positive impact, let it prompt us to learn the limitations of the market and the urgent need for regulation, taxation and public services, says Nick Dearden for Al Jazeera.

A new transatlantic project will explore how new models of public ownership can shape the emerging commanding heights of the economy. By Thomas Hanna and Mathew Lawrence.

Poorer countries are cutting public spending in response to a “growing debt crisis”, campaigners have warned.

The UN's 2019 report on human development is timely in view of the widespread social unrest in many countries that derives, to a large extent, from the inequalities this report analyses. By Yossi Mekelberg.

The successful battle against climate change – which has triggered a rash of natural disasters, including floods, droughts and rising sea levels— will be predicated largely on the availability of financing.

The way we assess economic performance and social progress is fundamentally wrong, and the climate crisis has brought these concerns to the fore, writes Joseph Stiglitz.

The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren’t Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

A global civic participation campaign calls for the creation of a World Citizens’ Initiative on the occasion of the UN’s 75th anniversary. This new instrument could enable individual citizens to influence the world organization’s work, writes Andreas Bummel and Bruno Kaufmann.

Protesters are demanding a larger share of the nation’s prosperity — a reality check for its celebrated economic model. There is no alternative to simply spreading the wealth more evenly, writes a group of opinion journalists at the New York Times.  

Research makes explicit the link between ending extreme poverty and inequality: even a relatively small amount of re-allocation of the world’s resources could end the injustice of extreme poverty in a world of plenty, writes Danny Sriskandarajah.

Austerity and budget cuts do not need to be “the new normal”. Governments can find additional fiscal space to fund public services and development policies through at least eight options, all of which are endorsed by the United Nations. By Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins for IPS news.

Last month 195 world leaders once again met in New York for big speeches and grand events. But on inequality, when all is said and done, more has been said than done, writes Ben Phillips. 

About 100 million Americans are effectively hidden by official poverty statistics, yet enough revenue could be raised from fair taxes to completely eliminate poverty in the United States, writes Karen Dolan.

Christian Aid and other faith-based organisations are calling for global leaders to tackle the poverty and inequality which has fuelled the environmental crisis. By Dr Rowan Williams.

The fund’s loan agreement with Ecuador will worsen unemployment and poverty, providing more reasons for serious reform at the IMF, writes Mark Weisbrot.

The world already grows more than enough food to feed the world population. Why then do we keep getting it so wrong, acting like growing more commodity crops will end hunger? By Timothy A. Wise.

In conventional economics, growth is recorded as a good thing in itself, even if it comes at the cost of social and environmental breakdown. If we considered growth to be a means to an end, what would that end be? What would we call it, and what comes after it? 

Instead of endless growth, can we put human health and welfare at the heart of the global economy, the prime policy goal of governments and business alike? By Ben Martin for the Green Economy Coalition.

In the new energy revolution, we risk perpetuating the belief that rich countries are entitled to a greater share of the world’s finite resources irrespective of who we impoverish in doing so, or the destruction we cause. By Asad Rehman.

Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent policy specialists.

A comprehensive United Nations report released on Wednesday found that while global human health is under dire threat from the climate crisis and industrial pollution, there is still a window for bold and urgent action if world leaders would but seize it, reports Jake Johnson for Common Dreams. 

In a speech given at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland (COP24), 15-year-old Greta Thunberg cuts to the heart of the challenge and calls for the principle of equity to be upheld through structural transformations and sharing the world's resources.

At the latest climate talks in Poland, there was no soothing balm when it came to addressing issues of international equity and climate change, writes Kevin Anderson for The Ecologist.

Top corporations continue to accrue revenues far in excess of most governments, figures compiled by Global Justice Now show. Comparing 2017 revenues, 69 of the top 100 economic entities are corporations rather than governments. 

World leaders will meet in Geneva next week to start negotiating a new international law to ensure companies respect human rights and the environment in their global operations. But a lack of support from European governments is putting this vital United Nations treaty at risk.

Redistribution via the tax code, progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are realizing, only takes us so far. We need to start limiting inequality before it can dig in, writes Sam Pizzigati for Inequality.org.

On 15 September, it will be ten years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers opened a Pandora’s Box. Movements across Europe are commemorating the date with acts of disobedience to relaunch our struggle to rebuild democracy, which can only be done by controlling finance, writes Susan George.