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Global South

25 Days Of Debt-Service Payments Could Emancipate African Women From 40 Billion Hours Of Water Harvesting

March 14, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
March is the month of International Working Women’s Day, a day deeply rooted in the socialist movement. Most of the world now only calls 8 March ‘International Women’s Day’, excluding the word ‘working’ from its title. But work is a fundamental part of women’s daily lives. According to UN Women’s annual report Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024, 63.3% of women worldwide participated in the labour force in 2022. However, due to the appalling state of social protections and labour regimes, by 2024 nearly 10% of women were living in extreme poverty.

Sahel Alliance Unveils New Flag; Moves Toward Greater Integration

March 8, 2025 Nicholas Mwangi, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , ,
The Alliance of Sahel States (AES), that includes Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, has taken another decisive step toward regional integration following its recent withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). On February 22, the new flag was unveiled and symbolizes the bloc’s growing autonomy as it seeks to redefine its political, economic, and security structures outside the influence of French imperialism and Western neoliberal frameworks. The new flag showcases the AES logo: an orange sun radiating over a sturdy baobab tree. Beneath the tree, a group of silhouetted figures gathers, symbolizing unity.

Global North Has Nine Times More Voting Power At The International Monetary Fund Than Global South

March 7, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , , , , ,
As far as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is concerned, each person in the Global North is worth nine people in the Global South. We get that calculation from IMF data on voting power in the organisation relative to the population of the Global North and Global South states. Each country, based on its ‘relative economic position’, as the IMF suggests, is given voting rights to elect delegates to the IMF’s executive board, which makes all of the organisation’s important decisions. A brief glance at the board shows that the Global North is vastly overrepresented in this crucial multilateral institution for indebted countries.

The Chris Hedges Report: The World After Gaza

February 27, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , , , , , ,
The Holocaust is the quintessential example of human evil for people in the West. In the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, the atrocity of the Holocaust — genocide — has had a closer proximity both in time and place. Colonialism in Africa, destructive wars in Asia and most recently, genocide in the Middle East, have shaped the lives of billions of people. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his latest book, “The World After Gaza.” Mishra argues that the shifting power dynamics in the world means the Global South’s narrative on atrocity can no longer be ignored and the genocide in Gaza is the current crux of the issue.

Clean Waters And Green Mountains As Valuable As Gold And Silver Mountains

February 14, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
Lost in a colonial fog of inferiority, writers across Asia imagined a world that was beyond the reach of colonialism’s devastation. In 1835, Kylas Chunder Dutt (1817–1859) wrote a remarkable story called ‘A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945’; the story, published in The Calcutta Literary Gazette, came out when the great French science fiction novelist Jules Verne (1828–1905) was only seven years old. Dutt’s account is not strictly science fiction, but largely futuristic. The eighteen-year-old opened his story with this line: ‘The people of India and particularly those of the metropolis had been subject for the last fifty years to every species of subaltern oppression. … With the rapidity of lightning the spirit of Rebellion spread through this once pacific people’.

Garment Workers Are Uniting Like Never Before To Take On Nike

February 12, 2025 Abiramy Sivalogananthan, Inequality.org. , , ,
Absent in the raging debate over trade policy, tariffs, and foreign aid is a truth about the economy that those of us in the Global South know all too well: American corporations and their billionaire owners have built and profit from massive supply chains exploiting low-wage workers in the Global South. For decades these unregulated supply chains have been praised as “development” while in reality, they entrench low pay and disastrous working conditions. Perhaps no company is a more influential innovator or offender in the outsourcing “race to the bottom” than Nike.

The Promethean Aspirations Of The Darker Nations

January 24, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
For decades now, there has been a clear understanding that the models of development proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Washington Consensus – debt, austerity, structural adjustment – simply have not worked. The long history of adversity experienced by the former colonial countries remains intact. A glance at the numbers from the Maddison Project Database 2023 shows that global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms has risen by 689.9% between 1980 and 2022 (from $18.8 trillion to $148.5 trillion).

Hyperimperialism, The Fall Of Syria And Capitalist Gangsters

January 21, 2025 Mnar Adley, MintPress News. , , , , , , , , , , ,
As 2025 begins, California is on fire. And it feels like much of the rest of the world is burning, too. From the slaughter in the Middle East to a new Cold War brewing in Asia, everywhere we look is filled with uncertainty. At home, the California wildfires have exposed much of the true face of capitalism. From prison laborers risking their lives for pennies by fighting the blazes to massive price hikes for rents in Southern California, the U.S. is crumbling. Yet externally, America is as aggressive as ever. Only last month, it helped force through a coup against the Assad government in Syria, and Trump has made noises about using force against Panama, Greenland, and has threatened Canada, Cuba, Venezuela and other nations in the Global South.

International Anti-Fascist Festival In Venezuela Ends With Resolution

January 13, 2025 Ultimas Noticias, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , ,
The International Anti-Fascist World Festival For a New World, held in Caracas, Venezuela, in which more than 2,000 delegates from 125 countries participated, came to an end. At the closing ceremony of the festival, on Saturday, January 11, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked the participants for attending the festival and pointed out that the proposals that have emerged demonstrate the vitality that this movement is gaining. “On behalf of all Venezuela, I thank you for coming to this unprecedented event,” said President Maduro, adding that “we are at peace, in democracy, in full exercise of our national sovereignty, and the people are moving forward in this new stage.”

US Feminists Look To Latin America For Models To Resist Abortion Bans

January 5, 2025 Naomi Braine, Truthout. , , ,
As U.S. residents prepare for the start of a new Trump administration, we face increasing threats to health and bodily autonomy, especially for people facing unwanted pregnancies. Currently, 12 states have completely banned abortion, an additional six states have imposed bans within the first trimester and 19 states impose restrictions specifically on medication abortions. In spite of expanding restrictions, the overall rate of abortions has increased nationally, as clinicians in states that allow abortion expand services to meet the needs of people traveling to find care.

COP29 Contradiction And The Climate

December 21, 2024 Krys Cerisier, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Climate activists are considering throwing in the COP towel after negotiations led to a poor budget deal, with activists walking away with only $300 billion of their $1 trillion goal after this year's dubbed 'finance’ COP. The 29th annual Conference Of Parties, or COP29 was created to facilitate international cooperation over ways to keep the global average temperature rise close to 1.5 degrees C. However, climate activists are now arguing that the process is instead a way for fossil fuel industries to protect their interests. While at COP, climate activist and five time COP attendee Xiye Bastida explained, “It's no mistake that the last three COPs have been in oil [rich] countries."

The Global South Is On The Brink Of A Disastrous Debt Crisis

December 16, 2024 C. J. Polychroniou, Truthout. , , ,
Countries across the Global South are experiencing climate, poverty and development crises — all made worse by the unbearable costs of debt servicing. Indeed, according to Development Finance International, “Citizens of the Global South now face the worst debt crisis since global records began.” Low-income countries, which have seen the amount paid on foreign debt payment increase by 150 percent since 2011, are being hit especially hard. In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Ilene Grabel, a leading economist in global finance and global financial governance, sheds light on the roots of the Global South debt crisis and offers specific strategies for easing the debt burden of developing countries.

Sovereignty, Modernization, And Cooperation Championed At Global South Forum In Shanghai

December 14, 2024 Shiran Illanperuma, People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
Panelists and attendees championed the cause of sovereignty, modernization, and South-South cooperation at the Global South Academic Forum in Shanghai from December 5–6. Over 250 guests from 35 countries and regions attended the forum, whose theme was “Global South and Global Modernization.” The forum was hosted by East China Normal University (ECNU) and organized by the institution’s School of Communication and Fudan University’s Institute for Global Communication and Integrated Media. Co-organizers included Fudan University’s School of Journalism and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of Media and Communication.

The Eighth Continent Is The Continent Of Sleaze

December 13, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
The eighth continent is the Continent of Sleaze. You and I have never been there, only heard rumours about it. On that continent, there are rivers of money in which corporate executives bathe and from which they extract whatever they want in order to increase their power, privilege, and property. The corporate executives venture out to lay their hands on the wealth of the world and carry it back to their Continent of Sleaze. What remains is dust and shadows, barely enough for people to survive so that they can continue to labour and produce more social wealth for the Continent of Sleaze.

As COP29 Winds Down, Poorer Nations Reject Wealthy Countries’ Offer

November 23, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
The COP29 United Nations Climate Conference extended into overtime on Friday, as the offer by the world’s richest countries of $250 billion annually by 2035 to assist poorer nations struggling with the most dire effects of the climate crisis was rejected as inadequate. “I’m so mad. It’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, as Reuters reported. “It feels that the developed world wants the planet to burn.” Representatives from nearly 200 nations at the summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, have been given the goal of coming to an agreement on a financing plan to deal with climate change.
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