New European Social Watch Report: Time for Action

The second European Social Watch Report was launched in Brussels with a roundtable discussion at the European Parliament. The event was chaired by Irish MEP Proinsias De Rossa, who was labour minister and head of country delegation to the Social Summit in 1995, when Social Watch was created. From its mere title, “Time for Action: Responding to Poverty, Social Exclusion and Inequality in Europe and Beyond”, the European Social Watch report reflects the Egyptian political crisis as a true demonstration of its findings.

The report points out that 17% of people in the European Union live below the poverty line. Social Watch looks at Europe's approaches to addressing poverty, social exclusion and inequality both inside the EU and in the wider world. The report examines the issues from different angles, including employment, healthcare, housing and financial exclusion. Since “one child in five is born and grows up with economic and social deprivation” and “twenty per cent of young people are currently living at risk of poverty in the EU”, Mirjam van Reisen argues in the report summary that the policies in place to address poverty and social exclusion are “weak” and “have come under pressure in the aftermath of the financial crisis”.

“The fiscal constraints that developing countries have experienced in previous decades resulting from IMF policies are now confronting European countries” says the report, and as a consequence “the ability of governments to implement their national and international obligation to guarantee social security has been compromised”. Social Watch Europe analyses the reality for groups of people particularly vulnerable to poverty and social exclusion, such as migrants and the Roma. Special attention is given to gender and poverty, as well as the young and old who are more vulnerable to social exclusion. It concludes by calling for a universal standard for social protection. It also concludes that if the EU is to play the global role that it claims then the EU must also establish its own “social floor”.

The Report is available >>> here.

A human rights approach is the only way to overcome the current crisis, argues the new Social Watch Report

The unusual combination of financial crisis, food crisis, energy and climate crisis requires a new approach based on human rights, argues the international Social Watch coalition in its 2008 report, launched during the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Doha. Next 10 December, as the report remembers the 60th Anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be commemorated and the title of the new report is, precisely, “Rights is the Answer”. The report documents how governments are falling short in their commitment to eradicate poverty and achieve gender equity through the testimony of civil society groups in 59 countries. Its main message is that the multiple crises currently affecting the world require a “rights-based approach” and provides examples on how the current financial architecture has ignored or openly violated those rights and triggered spiralling inequity all around the world.

The growing income inequalities both within and between countries spurred by capital flight, tax evasion, and privatization have slowed down the progress on key social indicators to a near halt over the last two decades. According to the Social Watch calculations, universal compliance with the Millennium Development Goals is now an impossible feat, if the world governments maintain a “business as usual” attitude. The grassroots activists and civil society analysts from around the world that contributed to the report show how the pervasiveness of extreme poverty and gender inequity is intimately linked to the immediate effects of the current triple crisis and to longer term structural issues ingrained in the global financial architecture. The report documents the widespread, haphazard implementation of policies promoting economic liberalization and deregulation having provoked the curtailment of peoples´ economic and social rights around the globe. That liberalization and deregulation now curtail the ability of many governments to comply with their international commitments to end poverty and achieve gender equality.

Social Watch: New Gender Equity Index

The economic dimension is the next challenge towards global gender equity. More than half the women in the world live in countries that have made no progress towards gender equity in recent years. That is one of the findings of the Gender Equity Index (GEI) 2008 that Social Watch launched here as a contribution to the 52nd Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women that will end next March 8, the International Women’s Day. The GEI, developed and calculated by Social Watch, ranks 157 countries in a scale where 100 would imply complete equality between women and men in education, participation in the economy and in decision-making bodies (empowerment).

Yet the highest-ranking country in the world (Sweden) has an index of 89 and the world average if of 61. Finland (85) and Norway (84) follow Sweden in the table, and after that come Germany and Rwanda, both with 80. While the first four countries are among the richest of the world, Rwanda is one of the poorest. German Women are obviously better educated and live longer than those in Rwanda. What the index shows is that the gap separating their condition from those of men is similar. “The GEI for 2008 clearly shows that income alone is no guarantee for gender equity”, emphasizes Social Watch coordinator Roberto Bissio. Countries with very high per capita incomes, such as Luxembourg or Switzerland, have the same equity level as Mozambique, a country with a much lower income level.

For the first time this year, the GEI is able to show recent evolution (last five years) in 133 countries. While there is no enough evidence yet to show the evolution of very populous countries like China and India, the indicators do show that progress towards gender equity is difficult and vulnerable to regressions. Education is the dimension that is closer to complete equity, with a global average of 90. But in education more countries are regressing than those making progresses. Empowerment is the dimension where most countries are showing progress, but it is also the one where the global average is the lowest, reaching only 35 points out of 100. In terms of the economy, there are as many countries where women make progress as countries regressing.

The economic dimension of the gender equity index measures gaps in women's participation in the labour market and in the salaries earned by them as compared to men. Among the 15 top places in economic participation, the Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland - share the honour with ten of the poorest countries in the world: Mozambique, Burundi, Rwanda, Cambodia, Ghana, Viet Nam, Uganda, Madagascar, Kenya and Guinea. At the root of most of the national regressions in the total GEI the index points out to setbacks in the participation of women in the economy. This is the case of Eastern Europe, the region presenting the biggest reversions in this area. Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia or Macedonia, all of them countries that used to enjoy high levels of female participation in the economy are now to be found in the group of those regressing.

According to Genoveva Tisheva, managing director of the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation and a member of the Coordinating Committee of Social Watch, “in Eastern Europe women are more often unemployed after the completion of a higher educational degree”. Tisheva argues that “legal and regulatory measures should ensure access to the labour market of young women and other groups of women with less bargaining power and from vulnerable groups”. Tisheva warns that the global trends of trade liberalization “have made of women one of the most flexible participants in the labour market, subjected to deregulation, informalisation, lowering of the social and labour standards”.

Affirmative measures such as gender quotas for political participation in elected bodies and pro-equity regulations in the labour market are behind most of the success stories of countries making progress in the Gender Equity Index.

Find more information about the Gender Equity Index and the complete statistical tables >>> here.

UN members must make decent work a prime commitment, say Global and European trade unions

On the occasion of the 46th session of the United Nations Commission for Social Development, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) call for agreement on a strong resolution to go forward to the UN General Assembly, asserting the crucial importance of full employment and decent work in the fight against poverty. Trade unions welcome the UN Commission's decision to focus on 'full and productive employment and decent work' as its 2007-2008 priority. Alarming trends in unemployment in the wake of the current global market turmoil and the threat of recession - revealed in the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) new Global Employment Report 2008 - mean urgent action is needed.

A 20-strong trade union delegation in New York is telling the UN Commission that it is crucial for it to agree on a hard-hitting message identifying decent work as a central objective, to be integrated systematically into social, economic and development policies at national, regional and international levels. While global growth in recent years has brought new jobs, many of them are low-paid and low-quality, leaving many working poor unable to support themselves and their families. Worldwide, an estimated 195 million people are likely to be unemployed in 2008.

Policies should aim at quality jobs, education, and skills development, to address youth unemployment and enable people to escape from precarious or informal work – many of them women. Financial resources are key to success, and must be raised through progressive taxation regimes and development cooperation funding. Decent work further entails the full respect of trade unions’ rights to organise and bargain collectively, a lesson all the more important for governments because unions are central actors in achieving greater income equality through fighting poverty and increasing the purchasing power of low-income workers, the trade unions say in a statement.