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The Global Economy is not only Extremely Unequal but Deeply Sexist: here are five ways in which we could do development differently

A raft of independent reports published this year, raise serious questions about economic instability and rising levels of poverty, particularly among low paid women. This new blog from the Centre for Global Education suggests how we can start to narrow the poverty gap and do development differently.

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Centre for Global Education Film on the Climate Strikes

On 20 September 2019, seven thousand people took to the streets of Belfast to demand urgently needed action on climate change.  Inspired by the 16-year old Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, and her ‘Fridays for Future’ climate strike movement, the Centre for Global Education produced this film to give a voice to some of those involved.  The strike on 20 September was a ‘General Strike’ in which trade unions and civil society movements followed the lead of young climate activists to call for political action on the climate emergency locally and globally.  In the film we spoke to climate activists to find out why they got involved with the climate strikes and what they think should happen next.  Please share the film in schools, in the workplace, in communities and on social media.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j8a087sgzx8xmqu/AADK-z_5rgI-IypVzVnKXy1na?dl=0&preview=Climate-Strike-september-d3.mp4

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Greta Thunberg, Global Learning and Social Change: Lessons for International NGOs from the Climate Strike Movement

This new blog from the Centre for Global Education argues that the global movement for climate action inspired by Greta Thunberg has exposed the lack of critical interrogation by INGOs of government and corporate inaction to reduce global warming.  It reflects the growing inertia of an INGO sector trading in ‘incremental change’ rather than ‘systemic political and economic transformation’. Part of the solution lies in embracing the radical pedagogy of global learning as part of internal capacity-building and external stakeholder engagement.

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When They See Us is Event Television about Racial Injustice that Resonates in Trump’s America

23 million account-holders with Netflix have watched When They See Us, a drama recreating a scandalous miscarriage of justice inflicted on five Black and Latino teenagers in New York in 1989.  Stephen McCloskey suggests that the drama captures the unease and concern over race relations in Trump’s America. 

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It’s time for the Wealthiest One Percent to Start Paying their Way

An alarming new report from Oxfam points to extreme levels of global economic and social inequality ten years on from the international financial crisis. This is largely attributed to the under-taxing of the world’s wealthiest one per cent, cuts to public services and gender discrimination.  Stephen McCloskey argues that it’s time for the one percent to start paying their way.

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The Shock Economics of Austerity have Targeted the Poor to Disastrous Effect

A damming report from the United Nations Rapporteur on Poverty has condemned the UK’s austerity policies as ‘punitive, mean-spirited and often callous’.  Stephen McCloskey argues that the shock economics of austerity have been used to implement punitive new welfare policies that have hit the most vulnerable hardest.

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Caring for Calais

Maria McCloskey is a solicitor, Chair of the Immigration Practitioners’ Group NI and Vice Chair of the Centre for Global Education’s Management Board. In July 2018, Maria volunteered with Care4Calais. Here, she talks about her experiences and some of the people she met.

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Gaza’s “Great March of Return” is an International Rallying Call for Peace and Justice

Reduced to refugee status 70 years ago when dispossessed of their land and homes, subjected to three wars since 2008 and an eleven-year economic siege, Israel now denies Palestinians the right to protest against these outrages.

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Trump has dropped any pretence of the US as an ‘honest broker’ in the Middle-East

The Trump Administration in the United States has rocked the Middle-East with two devastating policy announcements in recent months that have created fear and instability for the five million Palestinians living in the region. 

In December, President Trump announced a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby reversing a longstanding US commitment to have the status of the contested Holy City agreed as part of a negotiated Middle-East settlement. 

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Western Complicity is Fuelling Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis

On 26 December, a crowded market in the Al Hayma district in Yemen was hit by airstrikes from a Saudi-led coalition that left 54 civilians dead, including eight children with 32 others injured.  It was the latest bloody episode in a conflict that has been raging for a thousand days and claimed 10,000 victims with 20 million more (from a population of 28m) in ‘dire need of assistance’.  The United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, has described the conflict as ‘absurd’ and ‘futile’, characterised by ‘the destruction of the country and the incommensurate suffering of its people’. 

The Saudi Coalition airstrikes began in March 2015 in response to Houthi rebels’ seizing control of much of Yemen in late 2014.  There was widespread disillusionment in Yemen with Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose transitional administration was dogged by corruption, unemployment and food insecurity. The Houthi uprising forced Mr Hadi to flee abroad in March 2015 which signalled the start of Saudi airstrikes.  On the larger canvass of Middle-East relations and current tensions, the Sunni Saudis accuse the Houthis of being proxies for Shia Iran, their main regional rival.

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