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	Migrants and minorities still vulnerable to discrimination at work by International Labour Organization (ILO)   16 May 2011   Migrant workers and minorities are among groups that continue to face discrimination in the labour market as a result of the global economic crisis, despite positive advances in anti-discrimination laws, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report unveiled today.   “Economically adverse times are a breeding ground for discrimination at work and in society more broadly. We see this with the rise of populist solutions,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia at the release of Global Report on Equality at Work 2011: The Continuing Challenge.   The report warns against a tendency during economic downturns to give lower priority to anti-discrimination policies and workers’ rights in practice.   “Austerity measures and cutbacks in the budget of labour administrations and inspection services, and in funds available to specialized bodies dealing with non-discrimination and equality, can seriously compromise the ability of existing institutions to prevent the economic crisis from generating more discrimination and more inequalities,” the report points out.   It urges governments to put into place human, technical and financial resources to improve data collection on discrimination at the national level.   The report notes that there has been significant progress in advancing gender equality in the workplace, but the gender pay gap remains, with women’s wages on average 70 to 90 per cent of men’s earnings.   While flexible arrangements of working schedules are gradually being introduced as an element of more family-friendly policies, discrimination related to pregnancy and maternity is still common, according to the report.   It also highlights sexual harassment as a significant problem in workplaces, with young, financially dependent, single or divorced women, and migrants the most vulnerable. Men who experience harassment tend to be young, gay or members of ethnic or racial minorities.   Barriers impeding equal access to the labour market still need to be dismantled, particularly for people of African and Asian descent, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, and above all, women in those groups.   Increasing numbers of women and men experience discrimination on religious grounds, while discrimination on the basis of political opinion tends to take place in the public sector, where loyalty to the policies of authorities in power can be a factor in access to employment, according to the report.   Work-related discrimination continues to exist for many of the world’s 650 million persons with disabilities as their low employment rate reveals. People living with HIV/AIDS are vulnerable to discrimination through mandatory testing policies, or testing under conditions which are not genuinely voluntary or confidential, the report added.   The report recommends a series of steps to combat discrimination, including: promoting the universal ratification and application of the two fundamental ILO Conventions on equality and non-discrimination; developing and sharing knowledge on the elimination of discrimination in employment; developing the institutional capacity of ILO constituents to more effectively implement the fundamental right of non-discrimination at work; and strengthening international partnerships with major actors on equality.   “The fundamental right of non-discrimination in employment and occupation for all women and men is part and parcel of decent work policies for sustainable and balanced economic growth and fairer societies,” said Mr. Somavia.   “The right response is to combine policies for economic growth with policies for employment, social protection and rights at work, enabling governments, social partners and civil society to work together, including changing attitudes through education.” Visit the related web page
	Commodities boom may be fuelling global hunger by Christian Aid United Kingdom   May 2011   Pension funds and other institutional investors that have poured billions into commodity index funds could be unwittingly fuelling a rise in global hunger, says a new report from Christian Aid.   Such investments in indices of commodities bundled together have become increasingly popular in recent years following deregulation and the bursting of the dot.com bubble.   Food price rises led World Bank President Robert Zoellick last month to warn: ‘We are one shock away from a full blown crisis.’   Cereal prices, which are of crucial importance to the world’s poorest people, hit a record high in recent weeks on the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s price index. Even with inflation taken into account, the rate was 5.5 points above the previous record in mid-2008, when food riots broke out in more than 30 countries.   Almost a billion people now live in chronic hunger, with a further 44 million forced into extreme poverty since mid-2010, surviving on the equivalent of just $1.25 a day.   Christian Aid’s new report Hungry for Justice: Fighting Starvation In An Age Of Plenty, calls on policy makers to investigate why food price rises have in recent years begun to mirror the level of investment in food futures.   Christian Aid chief policy adviser Alex Cobham says: ‘A wealth of evidence is emerging that while at one time commodity prices moved independently of other investments, they have now started responding to the massive amounts of money that have flowed into the market.   ‘Deregulation in the US in 2000 meant that US banks and other financial institutions were suddenly able to develop and trade a variety of unregulated financial products.   ‘That in turn attracted an influx of non-traditional investors, such as pension funds, looking for a safe place to put their money after the dot.com bubble burst. Between 2003-2008, the volume of index-fund related investment soared by 1,900 per cent.   ‘It is time for policy makers to conduct a proper investigation into the effect deregulation has had on food prices. In addition, they should commit to carrying out a full assessment of the potential impact on the poor of any further significant regulatory changes.   In the report, Christian Aid says it does not appear to be investment in commodity indices themselves that directly causes problems. Rather, it is the fact that for every such investment made, the wealth fund manager or investment bank handling the trade will make a similar investment in ‘futures’ of each of the individual, underlying commodities.   The sheer amount of money arriving has had the effect of distorting prices, forcing them to rise with the market, driven less by fundamentals such as consumer demand and the success or otherwise of harvests, and more by international finance and macroeconomic considerations.   Hungry for Justice: Fighting Starvation In An Age Of Plenty also looks at the effect on food prices of climate change, ‘land grabs’, tax manipulation by some multinationals in poor countries and conflict.   In addition, it assesses the impact of population growth on food security, with global numbers expected to rise to 9bn by 2050, saying that it is not the increased numbers that pose the problem, but the nature – and spread – of ‘rich country’ consumption patterns, particularly meat eating.   Major improvements to food security in the developing world, it says, could be brought about by a massive increase in support for small-holder farmers, and the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.
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