Schlagwort: Amnesty International

Human rights-aligned economic policies are desperately needed to change course

Governments across Latin America and the Caribbean must urgently ramp up spending on the right to social protection and health in order to tackle the region’s obscene socio-economic inequality that has proven fatal during the Covid pandemic, said Amnesty International and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) in a new joint report released today.

Unequal and Lethal: Five key actions to recover from the human rights crisis unleashed by the pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean explains the factors behind the region’s disproportionate death toll from Covid compared to other parts of the world. With only 8.4% of the world’s population, the region has endured 28% of total global deaths due to COVID-19. The report finds that those countries with the highest inequality and lowest public spending on health and social protection suffered most during the pandemic, with the most devasting impacts on historically marginalized groups.

A human rights-based rethink of economic policies is key to avoiding future calamities in what is, by many measures, the world’s most unequal region. Despite the staggering inequality and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, over the last decades governments have failed to collect sufficient tax revenues and to do so in a way that combats inequality, even during times of economic boom. This has inevitably resulted in meagre spending on healthcare services and social protection – including unemployment, pensions and childcare support – which are vital for a life of dignity and to truly uphold human rights for all.  

“Governments have the obligation to proactively mobilize the resources needed to protect their populations from the worst impacts of discrimination, disease and economic disaster. If Latin American countries had done this in the decades before the pandemic, the region could have avoided so much pain and loss of life,” said Kate Donald, Acting Executive Director of CESR. “Now is their chance to prevent the next inequality-induced disaster and make the shift towards a rights-based economy.”

Countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Peru, where the richest 1% of the population hoards over 30% of national wealth, have recorded the highest numbers of Covid deaths in the region proportional to their populations. Chile, where the richest 20% of the population takes home 10 times more income than the poorest 20%, also has one of the region’s highest death rates per capita.

Governments have the obligation to proactively mobilize the resources needed to protect their populations from the worst impacts of discrimination, disease and economic disaster

Kate Donald, Acting Executive Director of CESR

While many Latin American countries provided cash transfers during the pandemic, none of them expanded health insurance nor took sufficient action to implement universal social security mechanisms and expand coverage to ensure the most disadvantaged people were covered.

The impact of these shortcomings across the region fell most severely on women, who lost jobs at a higher rate than men and whose disproportionate role in caring for children and family continues to affect their unequal enjoyment of rights – even more so if they are Indigenous or of African descent.

“Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a certain postcode should not determine your chances of dying of infectious diseases like Covid. Two years into the pandemic, governments in Latin America have still not caught on to the urgency of implementing a human rights-based approach to recovering from the pandemic and tackling inequality,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“Promoting equality does not mean treating everyone in the same way. Latin America’s present situation is the result of hundreds of years of colonial injustices that mean certain groups have been historically and systematically denied their rights. As countries recover from the pandemic governments need to address this head on by adopting a substantive equality approach and affirmative action measures.”

Although the Pan American Health Organization calls for a minimum of 6% of GDP to be spent on health in order to ensure universal coverage, nearly all the countries in the region spend far less on public health services, which means that they do not have enough hospital beds, doctors or nurses to effectively deal with Covid-19 or other health crises. In Peru, for example, in the decade prior to the pandemic, authorities failed to increase public spending on health despite years of sustained economic growth, only investing 3.3% of its GDP. Meanwhile in Mexico, over 15 million people lost access to health coverage in the two years before the pandemic, due to bureaucratic inefficiencies in government health policies.

In Chile, taxes and social security contributions only account for half of spending on healthcare, with the other half coming from patients through mandatory prepayment fees and voluntary and out-of-pocket expenses. Chile’s per capita public spending on health represents just a third of the OECD average, and it has half as many hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants as the OECD average.

“Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a certain postcode should not determine your chances of dying of infectious diseases like Covid

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International

Even when they have adequate policies in theory, governments stumble on implementation, with a key barrier often being the failure to generate sufficient fiscal resources to make them effective. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean generally collect less revenue from taxes than others with similar levels of development in different parts of the world. In 2019, the region only collected on average 22% of its GDP in taxes, compared to 33% for OECD countries.

Moreover, many have regressive taxation systems with taxes that do not ask enough from those most able to pay, thus undermining their resources to overcome inequality and redistribute wealth. For example, Latin American countries depend heavily on indirect taxes – which are more regressive as they represent a larger burden for poorer sections of the population – and collect very little from wealth taxes which target economic elites.

“Without boldly facing the need to tax more and tax better – as is their human rights obligation – countries in Latin America will continue to be dragged down by a malaise of socio-economic inequality, favouring a rich elite while harming society as a whole,” said Kate Donald.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Duncan Tucker (Amnesty International): duncan.tucker@amnesty.org

Auska Ovando (CESR): aovando@cesr.org

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Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

• The region has accounted for 28% of all COVID-19 deaths in the world, despite having only 8.4% of the global population.
• Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people living in poverty remains 14 million higher compared to 2019.
• Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people living in extreme poverty in LAC has risen by 16 million.
• LAC was the region that experienced the most drastic drop in employment in 2020. Women, young people and people working in the informal sector have been the most impacted.
• Almost 60% of the children who missed an entire school year in the world were in LAC.
• 44 million people became food insecure, of which 21 million became severely food insecure.

COVID-19 Exacerbated by Inequality

• LAC continues to be the world’s most unequal region. In 2019, the richest 20% of the population held almost half of total income, while the poorest 20% held less than 5% of total income.
• The richest 1% in the region holds almost one quarter of total income.
• There is a link between higher levels of income inequality and the impact of the pandemic in terms of lives lost. The most unequal countries in the region (such as Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Paraguay) had very high numbers of COVID-19 deaths per million people.
• In 2019, 30% of homes in the region were considered overcrowded. 50% of homes of people living in poverty were overcrowded.
• Less than a third of vulnerable households have access to a computer at home.

Social Protection Responses and Health during COVID-19

• In 2019, only 47.2% of employed persons were affiliated or contributed to pension systems. One in four people aged 65 or over did not receive a pension.
• In most LAC countries, emergency social protection measures adopted covered less than two thirds of the population.
• A total of 64 cash transfer programs were implemented in 24 of 33 countries. However, more than half of the interventions directly benefited less than 10% of the population, and consisted of additional amounts of less than a minimum monthly wage.
• In LAC, 30% of people do not have access to free public health care, due to the lack of health insurance coverage.
• Not one country in the LAC region expanded health insurance or enabled emergency insurance during the pandemic.
• Except from Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, no other country in the region spends 6% of their GDP in public health, the minimum amount to secure universal healthcare established by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
• Due to the lack of effective access to free and public health, millions of families cover their health expenditures from their savings. Out-of-pocket expenses represent 28% of the total health spending in the region

Taxation and Inequality in LAC

• LAC countries collect less taxes as a percentage of GDP compared to countries with a similar level of development. On average, the region only collects 22% of GDP in taxes, compared to 33% for OECD countries
• In LAC, collection depends heavily on indirect taxes, such as consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect women and other groups who are overrepresented among the poor.
• In 2019, countries in the region collected, on average, 46% of their total tax revenues from indirect taxes, compared to only one third from direct taxes.
• Tax evasion in LAC has led to hundreds of billions of dollars of lost public revenue each year. In 2018, LAC lost approximately US$350 billion, 6.1% of GDP the region’s GDP. This amount would be sufficient to cover the minimum resources to secure universal health in the region.
• LAC countries are estimated to lose annually US$40.1 billion to corporate tax abuse. It is estimated that with the income that has been lost over the last 10 years, the region could have guaranteed access to drinking water to 492,632 people or have prevented the death of 42,281 children.

The post Unequal and Lethal: Facts and Figures appeared first on Amnesty International.

QUOTE

Responding to the proposed framework of the “Data Protection Act, 2022” by the Government of Bangladesh, Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner, said:

“The draft of the proposed Data Protection Act which has opened for public feedback is a dangerous bill that is aimed at usurping people’s right to privacy in Bangladesh. The Bill uses vague and overbroad provisions to enable and legitimize intrusive actions by authorities such as granting access to encrypted communication on personal devices physically or remotely. It violates an individual’s rights solely on the basis of pre-empting a law-and-order deterioration without adequate justification.

“The Bill exempts authorities from civil, criminal and any other legal proceedings for harms caused to people in the course of its actions. Keeping in mind how existing laws like the Digital Security Act have led to gross human rights violations in the past, the proposed bill is the newest addition to an insidious pattern in which the government wants to control the digital lives of people.

Instead of breaking away from ambiguity in laws that promotes repressive actions, the proposed bill violates Bangladesh’s constitutional and international obligations including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.

Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner

“We call on Bangladesh’s government to ensure public ownership, participation, transparency and protection of people’s right to privacy and right to information in the law and that no one including the authorities are exempted from accountability for human rights violation.”

Background:

The proposed “Data Protection Act, 2022” aims to severely trample people’s privacy rights and relieves all liability of authorities in accessing people’s personal data both physically and remotely.

The proposed law states that it will have precedence over all existing laws thereby having an overriding effect on Bangladesh’s Right to Information Act, 2009, which is a key instrument that protects people’s right to information in the present time.

In the backdrop of vague and overbroad terminologies such as the protection of ‘spirit of liberation war’, ‘sovereignty of state’, ‘friendly relations with foreign states’, the government has reserved the right within the bill to issue any direction as it sees fit.

Amnesty International’s detailed submission with recommendations on the draft Data Protection Act, 2022 can be found here.

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Responding to the execution of Malaysian national Nagaenthran Dharmalingam in Singapore, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Regional Director Erwin van der Borght said:

“The execution of Nagaenthran is a disgraceful act by the Singapore government – ruthlessly carried out despite extensive protests in Singapore and Malaysia and an outcry across the world.

“Nagaenthran’s hanging highlights the deep flaws of the death penalty in Singapore and the horror of its continued use. He was executed after he was sentenced to the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking, amid concerns about his mental health state and despite having a diagnosed intellectual disability – in violation of international law and standards.  

“Having carried out two executions in the space of a month, and with another man scheduled to be hanged on Friday, Singapore’s government is pursuing a cruel path that is severely at odds with the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty.

“There is no evidence to back up the government’s claim that the death penalty is the answer to tackling drug-related problems in the country.  The Singapore authorities must immediately stop the current wave of executions and urgently review legislation on the use of the death penalty, with a view towards abolition, in light of this shocking case.”

Background

Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam was convicted and sentenced to the mandatory death penalty on 22 November 2010 for importing into Singapore 42.72 grams of diamorphine (heroin) in April 2009. His conviction and death sentence were upheld in July 2011. International law and standards prohibit the imposition of mandatory death sentences as these deny judges the possibility of taking into account the mitigating circumstances in the case. Moreover, international law and standards require that the imposition of the death penalty be restricted to the “most serious crimes” involving intentional killing.

Medical experts who assessed Nagaenthran in 2013, 2016 and 2017 found that he has borderline functioning intelligence and concurrent cognitive deficits, which “may have contributed toward his misdirected loyalty and poor assessment of the risks in agreeing to carry out the offence”. The Court of Appeal dismissed the concern, stating that “[h]is alleged deficiency in assessing risks might have made him more prone to engage in risky behaviour; that, however, does not in any way diminish his culpability.” The treaty bodies for the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), to which Singapore is a party to, prohibits the imposition of the death penalty on people whose mental and intellectual disabilities have impeded their effective defence. Nagaenthran’s other motions and appeals were subsequently rejected including a last-minute appeal by his mother who filed a criminal motion on Tuesday, in the absence of a lawyer.

Nagaenthran’s case resulted in unprecedented protests in Malaysia and Singapore days before his execution. On 25 April, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Singapore’s only space for public protest, Hong Lim Park, for a three-hour vigil. On 26 April, a demonstration outside the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur also drew large numbers before it was shut down by police. Nagaenthran’s case has received widespread attention internationally, including from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN experts.

Malaysian man Datchinamurthy Kataiah is set to be executed on 29 April for drug-related offences, despite a legal challenge he has pending at a Singapore court, for which there is a hearing in May. International safeguards guaranteeing protections of the rights of those facing the death penalty state that executions may not be carried out pending any appeal or other recourse procedure.

Singapore commonly cites the death penalty as a way to deter people from committing crime and solving problems associated with drugs. This claim has been repeatedly discredited, and there is no evidence that the death penalty is any more effective in reducing crime than life imprisonment.  Punitive drug policies mandating harsh punishments have been shown to harm, rather than protect people from problems caused by drugs.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.

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Following the adoption at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) of a landmark resolution which requires the Assembly to meet every time a veto is used in the Security Council, Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International said:

“This resolution, and the enormous support from member states, sends an unequivocal message – no longer can members of the Security Council evade accountability for abusing their veto power. No longer can they simply hold up their hand and block measures that could have saved lives without expecting any recriminations.”

“The UN Charter states clearly that the Security Council works on behalf of the entire UN membership. Now the membership will get to hold the Security Council to task when it fails in its mandate, as we have seen it do too many times in the past. “

“This initiative is not about sanctioning one country or situation. It is a way of addressing the acute failure of the Security Council to take effective action on various situations as result of the veto. Much more needs to be done to address the paralysis, but this resolution is a first step towards increasing the cost of using the veto – and it could not have come soon enough.”

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:        

Alison Abrahams on alison.abrahams@amnesty.org or +32 483 680 812        

Out of hours contact details        

+44 20 7413 5566        

email: press@amnesty.org         

twitter: @amnestypress  

The resolution was adopted by consensus. Effective immediately, the President of the General Assembly will have ten working days after a veto is used to call a meeting of the General Assembly to discuss the issue at hand, and invite the veto wielding power to speak in front of the entire UN membership.

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