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	Humanity Divided – Confronting Inequality by UNDP, Oxfam International   Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality. (Oxfam International)   A new report from Oxfam International: "Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality", states that just 85 of the world"s richest people own the wealth of half of the world’s population.   Seven out of 10 people live in countries where economic inequality has increased over the past three decades. In 24 out of 26 countries the top one percent increased their share of income from 1980 to 2012.   In the U.S. following the 2009 financial crisis, the bottom 90 percent has become poorer while the top one percent has captured 95 percent of the growth.   Among the factors that are contributing to policies that favor the rich and corporations over everyone else are tax havens and tax structures that enable tax dodging, financial deregulation, and austerity policies that have benefited investors while hurting everyone else.   The report states, these policies undermine democracy:   When there is growth and diminishing inequality, the rules governing markets are working of the middle classes and the poorest sections of society. However, when only the rich are gaining, the rules start bending towards their interests exclusively.   Concentration of wealth in the hands of the few leads to undue political influence, which ultimately robs citizens of natural resource revenues, produces unfair tax policies and encourages corrupt practices, and challenges the regulatory powers of governments.   Taken together, all of these consequences serve to worsen accountability and social inclusion.   "We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a ‘winner takes all’ windfall for the richest."Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam Executive Director, states that a continuation of such policies will contribute to inequality for generations to come.   "In developed and developing countries alike, we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children," states Byanyima.   "Without a concerted effort to tackle inequality, the cascade of privilege and of disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a ‘winner takes all’ windfall for the richest".   Oxfam is urging those attending this year”s World Economic Forum (WEF) to address growing inequality by supporting fair, progressive taxation, eliminating tax havens, supporting a living wage, eliminating undue influence of wealth on policies, and reversing course on austerity by using tax revenue to fund universal health care, education and social protection programs.   The report shows the wealth of the 1 per cent richest people in the world is worth 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world"s population. It also reveals the world"s richest 85 people control about $1.7 trillion in wealth, equivalent to the bottom half of the world"s population.   And far from hindering the wealthy, the political response to the global financial crisis - including the actions of central banks and the austerity measures introduced by national governments - has made the rich richer.   An Oxfam survey of just six countries - the United States, UK, Spain, Brazil, India and South Africa - has found that the majority of people believe laws and regulations are skewed in favour of the rich, so people are noticing.   "Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend," the report says.   "This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer people presents a significant threat to inclusive political and economic systems."   http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf   Humanity Divided – Confronting Inequality, by Helen Clark. (UNDP)   Raising the alarm against deepening income disparities in countries around the world, the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) called today for a shift to more inclusive growth patterns – supported by redistributive polices and changes in social norms.   “Inequalities on today’s levels are unjust… and they also impede human progress,” said Administrator Helen Clark on the launch of the agency’s new report, Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries, which reveals that income inequality increased by 11 per cent in those countries over the two decades between 1990 and 2010.   Among its striking statistics, the report notes that a significant majority of households in developing countries – more than 75 per cent of the world population – are living today in societies where income is more unequally distributed than it was in the 1990s. Moreover, the richest one per cent of the world population owns about 40 per cent of the world’s assets, while the bottom half owns no more than one per cent.   If left unchecked, this deep disparity can undermine the very foundations of development, economic progress and social and domestic peace. Miss Clark adds in her foreword to the report that signals of the sharp differences in wealth, education, and other material resources influence the way people view themselves and others, “and can make equal participation of citizens in political and public life almost impossible.”   But high and persistent inequality goes beyond income, says UNDP, explaining in the report that, among other concerns, while women are participating more in the work force, they remain disproportionately represented in vulnerable employment and underrepresented among political decision-makers, while continuing to earn significantly less than men.   Equally distressing is that evidence from developing countries shows that children in the lowest wealth quintiles were up to three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children born in the highest wealth quintiles in some regions.   “Social protection has been extended in some countries, yet persons with disabilities are up to five times more likely than average to incur catastrophic health expenditures,” adds the report.   Even as redistribution remains very important to inequality reduction, the report calls for a shift towards a more inclusive pattern of growth, one that raises the incomes of poor and low-income households faster than average in order to sustainably reduce inequality, key to the post-2015 development agenda.   UNDP highlights that in an unprecedented global conversation facilitated by the UN that has involved almost 2 million people across the globe, people are demanding a say in the decisions that affect their lives. People are indignant at the injustice they feel because of growing inequalities and insecurities that exist particularly for poorer and marginalized people.   Miss Clark explains that the report is intended to help development actors, citizens, and policy-makers contribute to global dialogues and initiate conversations in their own countries about the causes and extent of inequalities, their impact, and the ways in which they can be reduced.   “It is only through the action and voices of many that we will be able to curb one of the greatest moral and practical challenges of our times: the quest for equality, shared prosperity, and human well-being,” she said.   http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/poverty-reduction/humanity-divided--confronting-inequality-in-developing-countries.html
	North Korea: UN Commission documents wide-ranging and ongoing crimes against humanity by Michael Kirby Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea   GENEVA (17 February 2014)   North Korea: UN Commission documents wide-ranging and ongoing crimes against humanity, urges referral to ICC.   A wide array of crimes against humanity, arising from “policies established at the highest level of State,” have been committed and continue to take place in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, according to a UN report released Monday, which also calls for urgent action by the international community to address the human rights situation in the country, including referral to the International Criminal Court.   In a 400-page set of linked reports and supporting documents, based on first-hand testimony from victims and witnesses, the UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the DPRK has documented in great detail the “unspeakable atrocities” committed in the country.   “The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the Commission -- established by the Human Rights Council in March 2013 -- says in a report that is unprecedented in scope.   “These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” the report says, adding that “Crimes against humanity are ongoing in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place.”   The second more detailed section of the report cites evidence provided by individual victims and witnesses, including the harrowing treatment meted out to political prisoners, some of whom said they would catch snakes and mice to feed malnourished babies. Others told of watching family members being murdered in prison camps, and of defenceless inmates being used for martial arts practice.   “The fact that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea…has for decades pursued policies involving crimes that shock the conscience of humanity raises questions about the inadequacy of the response of the international community,” the report stated. “The international community must accept its responsibility to protect the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from crimes against humanity, because the Government of the DPRK has manifestly failed to do so.”   The Commission found that the DPRK “displays many attributes of a totalitarian State.”   “There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association,” the report says, adding that propaganda is used by the State to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader and to incite nationalistic hatred towards some other States and their nationals.   State surveillance permeates private lives and virtually no expression critical of the political system goes undetected – or unpunished.   “The key to the political system is the vast political and security apparatus that strategically uses surveillance, coercion, fear and punishment to preclude the expression of any dissent. Public executions and enforced disappearance to political prison camps serve as the ultimate means to terrorise the population into submission,” the report states.   “The unspeakable atrocities that are being committed against inmates of the kwanliso political prison camps resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian States established during the twentieth century. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.”   It is estimated that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are currently detained in four large political prison camps, where deliberate starvation has been used as a means of control and punishment. Gross violations are also being committed in the ordinary prison system, according to the Commission’s findings.   The report noted that the DPRK consists of a rigidly stratified society with entrenched patterns of discrimination. Discrimination is rooted in the songbun system, which classifies people on the basis of State-assigned social class and birth, and also includes consideration of political opinions and religion, and determines where they live, work, study and even whom they may marry.   Violations of the freedom of movement and residence are also heavily driven by discrimination based on songbun. Those considered politically loyal to the leadership can live and work in favourable locations, such as Pyongyang. Others are relegated to a lower status. For example, the distribution of food has prioritised those deemed useful to the survival of the current political system at the expense of others who are “expendable.” “Confiscation and dispossession of food from those in need, and the provision of food to other groups, follow this logic,” the report notes, adding that “the State has consistently failed in its obligation to use the maximum of its available resources to feed those who are hungry.”   Military spending – predominantly on hardware and the development of weapons systems and the nuclear programme – has always been prioritised, even during periods of mass starvation, the report says. The State also maintains a system of inefficient economic production and discriminatory resource allocation that inevitably produces more avoidable starvation among its citizens.   Violations of the rights to food and to freedom of movement have resulted in women and girls becoming vulnerable to trafficking and forced sex work outside the DPRK. Many take the risk of fleeing, mainly to China, despite the high chance that they will be apprehended and forcibly repatriated, then subjected to persecution, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention and, in some cases sexual violence. “Repatriated women who are pregnant are regularly subjected to forced abortions, and babies born to repatriated women are often killed,” the report states.   The Commission urged all States to respect the principle of non-refoulement (i.e. not to forcibly return refugees to their home country) and to adopt a victim-centric and human rights-based approach to trafficking, including by providing victims with the right to stay in the country and access to legal protection and basic services.   “Crimes against humanity have been, and are being, committed against starving populations. These crimes are sourced in decisions and policies violating the universal human right to food. They were taken for purposes of sustaining the present political system, in full awareness that they would exacerbate starvation and contribute to related deaths.”   The Commission also found that, since 1950, the “State’s violence has been externalized through State-sponsored abductions and enforced disappearances of people from other nations. These international enforced disappearances are unique in their intensity, scale and nature.”   While the Government did not respond to the Commission’s requests for access to DPRK and for information, the Commission obtained first-hand testimony through public hearings with about 80 witnesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington D.C., and more than 240 confidential interviews with victims and other witnesses, including in Bangkok. Eighty formal submissions were also received from different entities.   The report includes a letter sent by the Commissioners to the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, containing a summary of their most serious findings, in particular the fact that “in many instances” the systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations “entail crimes against humanity,” and drawing attention to the principles of command and superior responsibility under international criminal law according to which military commanders and civilian superiors can incur personal criminal responsibility for failing to prevent and repress crimes against humanity committed by persons under their effective control.   In the letter to Kim Jong-un, the Commissioners stated that it would recommend referral of the situation in the DPRK to the International Criminal Court “to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for the crimes against humanity referred to in this letter and in the Commission’s report.”   Among wide-ranging recommendations to the DPRK, to China and other States, and to the international community, the Commission calls on the Security Council to adopt targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity, stressing that sanctions should not be targeted against the population or the economy as a whole. 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