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Education systems are being weakened by austerity, debt, and privatization
by Dr. Maria Ron Balsera
Executive Director, Center for Economic and Social Rights
 
As governments mark the International Day of Education on January 24, too many are left behind because of chronic underinvestment.
 
Education systems are being weakened by austerity, debt, and privatization. This moment demands a clear shift toward public financing that is grounded in rights and accountable to people.
 
Education is essential for peace, dignity, equality, and participation in public life. Yet across the world, this right is being denied.
 
Chronic underfunding, deepening inequalities, unsustainable debt, and growing military budgets are pushing education further out of reach for millions of people.
 
On this International Day of Education, we movements around the world in calling for public financing that meets the scale of the crisis. Governments must not delay. Fulfilling the right to education requires investing public resources where they are most needed, guided by human rights and international cooperation.
 
The right to education is well established under international law. The 4As framework defines its core components: availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. States must ensure enough schools and trained teachers, eliminate barriers to access, deliver quality and culturally appropriate education, and adapt to the needs of different learners and communities.
 
But these commitments cannot be fulfilled without accountability. Transparency, participation, and enforceable remedies are necessary to make the right real. Without them, states avoid consequences when they fail to meet obligations, and communities are denied the power to shape decisions that affect them.
 
Public education systems are under growing pressure. Governments are cutting spending, even as needs increase. Many countries are locked into cycles of debt and austerity, spending more on interest payments than on health or education.
 
In 2024, developing countries paid $921 billion in interest on public debt. Over 3 billion people live in countries where debt service exceeds public investment in core social rights.
 
This crisis is rooted in systemic inequalities. Wealthier countries and institutions have structured global finance in ways that limit public budgets in the Global South. Debt relief is delayed, borrowing costs are unequal, and tax systems remain regressive and porous. In this environment, education is often treated as optional, rather than as a right protected by law.
 
Militarization is adding to the strain. As conflicts escalate, military budgets are expanding, while social investment is deprioritized.
 
The promised shift from defense to development, often referred to as a “peace dividend,” has not materialized. On the contrary, schools and teachers are being sidelined in favor of weapons and warfare.
 
Governments can and must reverse course. A justice-based approach to public finance can strengthen education systems while upholding rights. The 4S framework provides a clear path forward:
 
Share: Increase the proportion of public budgets dedicated to education. Meeting or exceeding the global benchmark of 15 to 20 percent is a necessary step to fulfill legal obligations.
 
Size: Expand the overall amount of resources available. This requires reducing debt payments, raising more revenue through progressive taxes, and ending tax loopholes and harmful exemptions that benefit the wealthy. International cooperation is key. A UN-led tax convention would help create fairer global rules and allow countries to mobilize resources for rights.
 
Sensitivity: Budget decisions must prioritize equity and inclusion. That means focusing on the needs of marginalized learners, including girls, children with disabilities, rural and migrant communities, and others who are too often excluded. Equity must be built into every stage of the budget process.
 
Scrutiny: Transparent, participatory, and accountable budget systems are essential. People must have access to information, a voice in decisions, and mechanisms to hold institutions to account.
 
Under pressure to deliver services without increasing public spending, some governments and donors have embraced privatization. But these approaches have repeatedly failed to uphold rights. Low-fee private schools often exclude the poorest students and students with special needs and disabilities.
 
Public-private partnerships shift risk onto the public while private actors profit. Financialization turns education into an investment product, removing it from public oversight.
 
These models deepen inequality and weaken public systems. They are promoted by powerful corporate interests, but they are incompatible with the right to education. Governments have a duty to regulate, not retreat.
 
The right to education cannot be realized through domestic policy alone. Wealthier countries and international institutions shape the rules of the global economy, and they must be held to account. That includes:
 
Supporting debt relief and restructuring instead of pushing austerity. Ensuring that international financial institutions do not impose conditions that restrict public investment. Contribute adequate, grant-based funds to multilateral education mechanisms like the Global Partnership for Education.
 
International cooperation is not an act of generosity. It is a legal obligation rooted in the right to development and global human rights law.
 
Public education is a foundation for dignity, equality, and shared prosperity. It supports gender and climate justice, strengthens democracy, and enables collective action.
 
Financing it is not a secondary concern. It is a test of whether governments are serious about building fair and sustainable societies.
 
On this International Day of Education, the demand is clear. Fund education as a right. Fund it publicly. Fund it fairly. And do it now.


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We cannot accept a future where the rich thrive while billions are left behind
by OHCHR, Oxfam, World Inequality Lab, agencies
 
Mar. 2026
 
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk at 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council (Extract):
 
"Inequality is the quiet force deciding the fate of millions. It dictates who eats, who learns, who gets housing and healthcare – and who does not.
 
Around the world, one in four people face food insecurity, and one in three lack adequate housing.
 
Over half the world’s population work in the informal economy, without access to paid sick leave, maternity leave, or other forms of social protection. This is particularly true for women. Nearly 60 percent of employed women work in the informal economy.
 
The 2030 Agenda is alarmingly off track, with many goals now slipping into reverse. Severe cuts in international development aid are projected to lead to more than 22 million avoidable deaths by 2030.
 
Faced with these realities, people — especially young people — have taken to the streets to demand their rights to work, to health, to education, and to be free from corruption. They are calling for economic systems that are fair, transparent, and accountable.
 
Their frustration reflects deep structural failures in the global economy, which continue to deepen inequalities within and between countries.
 
In 2024, developing countries paid a record 415 billion US dollars in interest, more than double what they paid a decade earlier.
 
Interest payments trap states in a spiral of under-development and shrink the resources available for health, education, social security, and other economic and social rights.
 
Many developing countries face the worst climate impacts despite contributing least to the crisis. Yet, those labelled as middle-income economies – including most small island developing states - are denied the concessional financing needed for climate adaptation and recovery.
 
Low-income countries often receive inadequate levels of debt relief, grants and concession-based finance that they desperately need.
 
Meanwhile, many of the richest countries under-invest in economic, social and cultural rights. Their tax systems reward the wealthy while failing to protect those who struggle.
 
Over the past 20 years, the richest one percent have captured 41 percent of all new wealth, while the bottom 50 percent receive just 1 percent. Last year alone, billionaires amassed enough wealth to eliminate extreme poverty twenty-six times over.
 
The consequences of deep inequalities within countries are devastating. Poverty, unemployment, and the lack of social protection, make people vulnerable to brutal exploitation. A recent report from our office highlighted for instance grave abuses against people trafficked into scam centres across several regions.
 
Commitments on financing for development need to be backed by action to enable countries to access the resources needed for sustainable development. Reform of the international financial architecture, including debt restructuring is desperately needed.
 
Debt servicing must not compromise international human rights obligations. States and international financial institutions should integrate human rights impact assessments systematically into their decisions on debt, in order to safeguard the fiscal space needed to realize the rights to health, education, a healthy environment, and social protection, among others. Stronger representation of developing countries in international decision-making is also crucial.
 
It is high time to move beyond gross domestic product as the main metric for progress. The measure of development should be whether the economy is improving people’s wellbeing and whether economic benefits are shared equitably across society.
 
Economic indicators should capture positive contributions to society – including the unpaid care work largely done by women, and the value added by the informal economy. And they should exclude economic activities that are harmful to human rights, such as burning fossil fuels.
 
Broader access to social security is a matter of justice. All States need to realise universal and legally protected social protection floors.
 
It is critical to expand resources for States on the frontlines of environmental damage. In an advisory opinion last year, the International Court of Justice stressed that international cooperation around climate change is a legal obligation. This includes providing enough financial support for climate action.
 
We cannot accept a future where a few thrive while billions are left behind. Together, we need to build economies that deliver for everyone, and make equality and justice the measure of our progress".
 
Mar. 2026
 
The manufacturing of poverty, by Olivier De Schutter - UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
 
In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Heads of State and Government and High Representatives stated that they were determined to “end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions” by 2030 and resolved to “combat inequalities within and among countries”. These pledges will not be fulfilled.
 
More than a tenth of the world’s population, or 845 million people (388 million people in East and Southern Africa alone), still lived in extreme poverty in 2025, and 8.9 per cent of people will still live in extreme poverty by 2030 unless a dramatic change of course occurs.
 
Those figures are optimistic to the point of being misleading, since they rely on the extremely low international poverty line of $3 per day in purchasing power parity. Using the more realistic $8.20 per day in purchasing power parity, 45 per cent of the world’s population, or 3.7 billion people, would be considered to be living in extreme poverty.
 
Using that same measure, 89.3 per cent of the sub-Saharan African population (670 million people) live in extreme poverty today, a rate that has remained unchanged for the past 30 years.
 
At the same time, 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2024. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that followed the rise in energy prices in late 2021 and during the first quarter of 2022 increased this figure by 335 million people compared with 2019.
 
At the time of writing the present report (March 2026), Governments are bracing for what may be the worst cost-of-living crisis since the great financial crisis, as a result of the energy crisis triggered by the conflict in the Persian Gulf.
 
Worse, Governments are also facing what has been recognized as an “inequality emergency”: nine in ten people in the world live in countries that meet the World Bank’s threshold for high inequality (Gini coefficient above 0.4), and wealth inequality in particular has risen dramatically over the past 40 years.
 
In India, the top 10 per cent of earners capture about 58 per cent of national income, while the bottom 50 per cent receive only 15 per cent, and the richest 10 per cent hold around 65 per cent of total wealth (the top 1 per cent owning about 40 per cent). In the Russian Federation, the richest 10 per cent hold 75 per cent of total wealth, and the top 1 per cent alone hold 47 per cent.
 
In Mexico, the top 10 per cent of earners capture around 59 per cent of total income, while the bottom half receive only 8 per cent, and wealth inequalities are even larger: the richest 10 per cent hold 71 per cent of total wealth and the top 1 per cent hold about 38 per cent.
 
In Colombia, which has one of highest income Gini coefficients in the world (0.53), the top 10 per cent of earners capture 60 per cent of total income, while the bottom 50 per cent receive around 7 per cent, and wealth inequalities are extreme: the richest 10 per cent hold around 71 per cent of total wealth, a situation that has in fact worsened over the past decade.
 
The growth of income and wealth inequalities within countries is a ticking bomb. By reducing social mobility and making it more difficult for the poorest groups to overcome disadvantage, such inequalities transform societies that pride themselves on being “meritocratic” into caste-based societies; a betrayal of the ideal of equal opportunities that has far-reaching political consequences.
 
Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the current Governments of countries such as Brazil, Colombia and South Africa are advancing progressive policies in the global fight against inequalities. In these countries with high inequality and low social mobility, it takes nine generations or more for those born in low-income families to approach the mean income in their society unless significant changes occur. The Governments of these countries understand, better perhaps than others, the huge costs of inaction because the persistence and, even worse, the growth of inequalities breed discontent and distrust towards the State. Countries with high inequality are seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.
 
Entrenched inequality worsens poverty, which is a relational concept: it is extreme material deprivation, but also the social exclusion of people who cannot meet the norms of behaviour that are expected within the society to which they belong. Inequality moreover limits opportunities to save, acquire or inherit assets. Particularly when paired with low coverage of social protection, inequality means that people experiencing poverty are rarely able to change their life trajectory.
 
While wealthier households can absorb external and internal shocks through accumulated assets and social networks and access to higher education that lead to better-paid employment, poorer individuals have far fewer options to manage risks or recover from crises, reinforcing the vicious cycles that perpetuate and exacerbate inequality. Inequalities also favour speculation on certain assets, particularly land and housing, from which people living in poverty are priced out.
 
Poverty and inequalities are manufactured. While catastrophic for the victims experiencing exclusion, they are not natural disasters: Governments can choose to address them before they happen. In what follows, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights sets out his understanding of the challenge. He explains the role of anti-poverty strategies in this regard..
 
http://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/62/42 http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/putting-people-balance-sheets-un-expert-calls-rights-centered-global http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-expert-demands-global-action-democratise-water-governance-and-protect http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/development-cannot-be-achieved-dying-planet-un-committee-issues-new-guidance http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-binding-accountability-agribusiness-safeguard-peasants http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80213-corporate-power-and-human-rights-food-systems-report-special http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/12/kenyas-seed-sharing-ruling-milestone-peasants-rights-and-food-security-un http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5848-right-food-finance-and-national-action-plans-report-special http://ipes-food.org/industrial-food-system-failing-as-un-finds-733-million-still-hungry/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/02/fair-and-effective-tax-policies-needed-advance-economic-social-and-cultural http://www.cesr.org/states-adopt-un-resolution-to-further-rights-enabling-economic-policies/
 
Jan. 2026
 
The world is extremely unequal (World Inequality Lab Report 2026)
 
Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention. The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.
 
This report draws on the World Inequality Database and new research to provide a comprehensive picture of inequality across income, wealth, gender, international finance, climate responsibility, taxation, and politics.
 
The findings are clear: inequality remains extreme and persistent; it manifests across multiple dimensions that intersect and reinforce one another; and it reshapes democracies, fragmenting coalitions and eroding political consensus. Yet the data also demonstrate that inequality can be reduced.
 
Policies such as redistributive transfers, progressive taxation, investment in human capital, and stronger labor rights have made a difference in some contexts. Proposals such as minimum wealth taxes on multi-millionaires illustrate the scale of resources that could be mobilized to finance education, health, and climate adaptation. Reducing inequality is not only about fairness but also essential for the resilience of economies, the stability of democracies, and the viability of our planet.
 
The first and most striking fact emerging from the data is that inequality remains at very high levels. Today, the top 10% of the global population’s income-earners earn more than the remaining 90%, while the poorest half of the global population captures less than 10% of the total global income. Wealth is even more concentrated: the top 10% own three-quarters of global wealth, while the bottom half holds only 2%.
 
The wealthiest 0.001% alone, fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires, control today three times more wealth than half of humanity combined. This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating. Extreme wealth inequality is rapidly increasing. Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centi-millionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population.
 
Inequality is not only a question of income and wealth. It is also embedded in the structures of everyday life, shaping whose work is recognized, whose contributions are rewarded, and whose opportunities are constrained. Among the most persistent and pervasive divides is the gap between men and women.
 
Globally, women capture just over a quarter of total labor income, a share that has barely shifted since 1990. When analyzed by regions, in the Middle East & North Africa, women’s share is only 16%; in South & Southeast Asia it is 20%; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 28%; and in East Asia, 34%. Europe, North America & Oceania, as well as Russia & Central Asia, perform better, but women still capture only about 40% of labor income. Women continue to work more and earn less than men. Women work more hours than men, on average 53 hours per week compared to 43 for men, once domestic and care work is taken into account. Yet their work is consistently valued less.
 
Studying inequality across countries and over time reveals that policy can indeed reduce inequality. Progressive taxation and, especially, redistributive transfers can significantly reduce inequality. Taxation often fails where it is most needed: at the very top of the distribution. The ultra-rich escape taxation.
 
Effective income tax rates climb steadily for most of the population but fall sharply for billionaires and centi-millionaires. These elites pay proportionally less than most of the households that earn much lower incomes.
 
This regressive pattern deprives states of resources for essential investments in education, healthcare, and climate action. It also undermines fairness and social cohesion by decreasing trust in the tax system.
 
Progressive taxation is therefore crucial: it not only mobilizes revenues to finance public goods and reduce inequality, but also strengthens the legitimacy of fiscal systems by ensuring that those with the greatest means contribute their fair share.
 
Reducing inequality is a political choice. But fragmented electorates, underrepresentation of workers, and the outsized influence of wealth all work against the coalitions needed for reform. This reality can change. It reflects political choices about campaign finance rules, party strategies, and institutional design that can be reshaped with sufficient will. Inequality can be reduced. There are a range of policies that, in different ways, have proven effective in narrowing gaps.
 
One important avenue is through public investments in education and health. These are among the most powerful equalizers, yet access to these basic services remains uneven and stratified. Public investment in free, high-quality schools, universal healthcare, childcare, and nutrition programs can reduce early-life disparities and foster lifelong learning opportunities.
 
Another path is through redistributive programs. Cash transfers, pensions, unemployment benefits, and support for vulnerable households can directly shift resources from the top to the bottom of the distribution. Where well designed, such measures have narrowed income gaps, strengthened social cohesion, and provided buffers against shocks.
 
Progress can also come from advancing gender equality. Reducing gender gaps requires dismantling the structural barriers that shape how work is valued and distributed. Policies that recognize and redistribute unpaid care work, through affordable childcare, parental leave that includes fathers, and pension credits for caregivers, are essential to leveling the playing field. Equally important are the strict enforcement of equal pay and stronger protections against workplace discrimination. Addressing these imbalances ensures that opportunities and rewards are not determined by gender but by contribution and capability.
 
Tax policy is another powerful lever. Fairer tax systems, where those at the very top contribute at higher rates through progressive taxes, not only mobilize resources but also strengthen fiscal legitimacy. Even modest rates of a global minimum tax on billionaires and centi-millionaires could raise between 0.45% and 1.11% of global GDP and could finance transformative investments in education, healthcare, and climate adaptation.
 
Inequality can also be reduced by reforming the global financial system. Current arrangements allow advanced economies to borrow cheaply and secure steady inflows, while developing economies face costly liabilities and persistent outflows.
 
Inequality is a political choice. It is the result of our policies, institutions, and governance structures. The costs of escalating inequality are clear: widening divides, fragile democracies, and a climate crisis borne most heavily by those least responsible. But the possibilities of reform are equally clear. Where redistribution is strong, taxation is fair, and social investment is prioritized, inequality narrows.
 
The tools exist. The challenge is political will. The choices we make will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity.
 
http://wir2026.wid.world/ http://wir2026.wid.world/insights/ http://wir2026.wid.world/insight/executive-summary http://wir2026.wid.world/insight/global-economic-inequity/
 
56,000 people own three times more wealth than half of humanity, highlights Ricardo Gomez-Carrera
 
Consider half of the world’s adult population, about 2.8 billion people, and add up everything they own: their houses, their savings, their belongings, minus their debts. Then do the same for the 56,000 wealthiest adults on the planet, a group small enough to fit inside a single football stadium. The stadium’s wealth would be greater. In fact, the wealth of the people of the stadium would be three times as large as that of half of humanity combined.
 
That is one of the headline findings of the World Inequality Report 2026, which I co-authored with Lucas Chancel, Rowaida Moshrif, and Thomas Piketty, and which draws on research and data compiled by more than 200 researchers affiliated with the World Inequality Database and the World Inequality Lab.
 
The report’s central message is simple and astonishing: the world is extremely unequal, and at the very top, extreme wealth inequality is still rapidly increasing.
 
Income inequality is large, but wealth inequality is extreme
 
The global top 10%, about 560 million adults, earn around 53% of all global income in a given year. The bottom half of humanity, 2.8 billion people, collectively receives 8%. So, 10% of the world earns more than 6 times what half of the world earns. That alone is a striking gap.
 
But when you look at wealth, the picture is far more extreme. The top 10% owns three-quarters of whatever there is to own while the bottom half holds only 2%. Meanwhile, the top 1% alone controls 37% of all wealth, roughly eighteen times more than the entire bottom 50%..
 
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2026/05/12/56000-people-own-three-times-more-wealth-than-half-of-humanity/
 
Jan. 2026
 
Resisting the Rule of the Rich. (Oxfam International, agencies)
 
Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion – its highest level in history, according to a new Oxfam report as the World Economic Forum opens in Davos.
 
Billionaire wealth has increased by 81 per cent since 2020. This comes as one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty.
 
The report Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power analyses how the super-rich are securing political power to shape the rules of our economies and societies for their own gain and to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of people around the world.
 
The surge in billionaire wealth coincides with the US Trump administration pursuing a pro-billionaire agenda. It has slashed taxes for the super-rich, undermined global efforts to tax large corporations, reversed attempts to address monopoly power and contributed to the growth of AI-related stocks that have provided a boon to super-rich investors world-wide.
 
His presidency has sent a clear warning sign to the rest of the world about the power of the ultra-rich. Rather than solely a US phenomenon Oxfam’s paper demonstrates that rising oligarchy is undermining societies worldwide. Oxfam’s report finds:
 
The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $2.5 trillion, almost equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity – 4.1 billion people.
 
The number of billionaires topped 3,000 last year for the first time, while the richest, Elon Musk, became the first ever to surpass half a trillion dollars.
 
Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people.
 
The $2.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
 
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable.” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
 
Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens. A World Values Survey of 66 countries found that almost half of all people polled say that the rich often buy elections in their country.
 
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said.
 
Billions of people are being left facing avoidable hardships of poverty, hunger and death from preventable diseases because the system is rigged against them. Worldwide one in four people face food insecurity, having to regularly skip meals.
 
The rate of poverty reduction has stagnated with levels broadly where they were in 2019. Extreme poverty is rising again in Africa. Political decisions made by governments across the world last year to slash aid budgets have directly hit people living in poverty and could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
 
Civil liberties and political rights are being rolled back and suppressed; 2024 was the nineteenth successive year of decline with a quarter of all countries curtailing freedoms of expression. Last year there were more than 142 significant anti-government protests across 68 countries which authorities typically met with violence.
 
“Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger.” said Behar.
 
The chances of democratic backsliding through, for example, the erosion of the rule of law or the undermining of elections is seven times more likely in highly unequal countries.
 
“No country can afford to be complacent. The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast,” he said.
 
Governments are allowing the super-rich to dominate media and social media companies. Billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies.
 
“Our societies feel more toxic today because they demonstrably are, but not always for the reasons we’re being told. The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty. Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change and tax fairness,” Behar said.
 
Oxfam is calling on governments to prioritise:
 
Realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress.
 
Effectively taxing the rich to reduce their power, including with broad-base taxes on income and wealth at high enough rates to reduce massive levels of inequality.
 
Stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich, ensuring more media independence, and banning hate speech.
 
Accountability for the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including stronger protection for people’s freedoms of association, assembly and expression and for civil society organisations and trade unions.
 
* Forbes March 2026: 3,428 billionaires wealth now a record $20.1 trillion, up $4 trillion from last year. The U.S. has 989 billionaires, including 15 of the top 20. China, including Hong Kong, is next, with 610, and India (229) ranks third.
 
http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-2025-highest-peak-ever http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/resisting-rule-rich http://www.equals.ink/p/billionaire-wealth-reaches-historic http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2026/01/27/democracy-at-risk-resisting-the-rule-of-the-richest/ http://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2025/dec/10/just-0001-hold-three-times-the-wealth-of-poorest-half-of-humanity-report-finds http://www.taxobservatory.eu/publication/a-blueprint-for-a-coordinated-minimum-effective-taxation-standard-for-ultra-high-net-worth-individuals http://ipdcolumbia.org/event/landmark-g20-report-led-by-nobel-laureate-joseph-stiglitz-sounds-alarm-on-inequality-emergency-and-calls-for-international-panel-on-inequality/ http://www.unognewsroom.org/story/en/3054/unrisd-ipi-committee
 
http://www.equals.ink/p/agnes-callamard-on-rising-inequality http://www.equals.ink/p/the-great-global-wealth-transfer-thomas-piketty-on-inequality http://www.equals.ink/p/who-pays-when-countries-fall-into http://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/un-ecosoc-a-blueprint-for-financial-integrity http://publicservices.international/resources/news/our-new-research-shows-global-corporate-tax-reforms-would-boost-public-revenues-by-50-?id=16364&lang=en http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2026/02/financing-social-protection-a-matter-of-global-justice/


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