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Category: EVENTS

AnnouncementsEVENTS

Addressing Poverty After The Pandemic

Three upcoming webinars from ASAP UK

This January, Academics Stand Against Poverty UK (\”ASAP\”) is running a mini-series of events addressing poverty after the pandemic. Join the ASAP UK team for some evenings of lively discussion and debate around some of the biggest issues emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Webinar 1. Addressing Poverty After The Pandemic: Human Rights

The first in the series will explore how the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns have once again highlighted the fragility of human rights within the UK and across the globe. Restrictions on travel, contact with family and friends, and increasing economic and health inequality means it is essential that a proactive approach is taken now to implement systematic and lasting change for a fairer and more equal UK in 2021 and the future.

When: Tuesday 19th January (18:00 – 19.30 GMT)

Where: book your place here through eventbrite.

Webinar 2. Addressing Poverty After The Pandemic: Environment

Many of us have seen our relationship with the environment change over the last 12 months. Lockdowns and travel restrictions leading to people spending far more time in their homes and local spaces. But what does this mean for those of us with no access to green space or living in degraded or polluted environments?

When: Wednesday 20th January (18:00 – 19.30 GMT)

Where: book your place here through eventbrite.

Webinar 3. Addressing Poverty After The Pandemic: Challenges and Solutions

Over the last 12 months we have seen a radical change in income and job security in the UK. Not only have we been encouraged to rethink who are “key workers” but many citizens have had to live on 80% income and unable to work for extended periods of time. Labour market disruption, job insecurity and economic recession may be the post pandemic context in which we have to address poverty.

When: Thursday 21st January (18:00 – 19:30)

Where: book your place here through eventbrite

AnnouncementsEVENTS

Linking Poverty To Health

Friday, October 16, 13:00 pm (BST)

To mark International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2020 (Saturday 17th October) ASAP Irish Network, in partnership with the Civil Society Study Group of DSA Ireland, are hosting an event that will bring together an esteemed panel of development practitioners and scholars to explore linkages between health, food and poverty using evidence-based research, and possible strategies to eradicate such poverty. Speakers include:

Paul Ginnell & Alice Kelly

Director; Member @European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Ireland; Glenshane Women’s Group

Paul works on EAPN Europe’s policy group and coordinates the Community Platform, a network of 30 national anti-poverty and equality organisations, and the Better Europe Alliance. Alice worked on EAPN Ireland Giving Health Inequalities a Voice community conversations in Fettercairn and is an Irish delegate to EU Meetings of People Experiencing Poverty in Brussels.

Julie Ahern

Legal and Policy manager @Childrens\’ Rights Alliance, Ireland

Julie is a qualified barrister and holds a BL from the Honourable Society of King\’s Inns, a BCL (Clinical)(Hons) and an LLM in Child and Family Law both from University College Cork. She has led the establishment of the Access to Justice Initiative and projects such as the annual Report Card and the Children’s Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Thomas Pogge

Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs @Yale University

Director of the Global Justice Program at Yale, and a co-founder of Incentives for Global Health. Prof Pogge will focus on the Health Impact Fund proposal and how it would support innovations and their diffusion in a more equitable manner than the present system of patent monopolies does.

We invite you to join us for this critical and lively discussion. Register here

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Support Our Fight To End Poverty – ASAP Needs You!

We are a global community of academics dedicated to confronting and transforming rules and practices that perpetuate and aggravate poverty and inequality. At a time of unprecedented challenge and uncertainty, our mission of supporting the most impoverished, marginalised and discriminated, while fighting for a fairer and more just world has never been more critical.

ASAP Global channels its funding through our network of national Chapters who, being at the forefront of the academia-policy interface, are equipped to leverage evidence to effectively advocate and affect change. Your financial support allows us to continue this important work.

How would your contribution help us to tackle the world’s most pressing poverty-related issues?

DONATE NOW

We have recently been approached by a very generous donor, who would like to remain anonymous, but who is offering to match any donations that we receive up to the 31st December 2020 and up to the value of $40,000.

This means that any donation you make today will have double the impact.

Over it\’s ten years, ASAP has been a leader championing for change on many fronts of the global poverty problem. Part of our uniqueness is the ability to draw on the expertise of our membership, which includes an extensive array of world class academics from across diverse disciplines. Some of the networks most notable achievements include:

Health Impact Fund

The HIF aims to incentivise the development of new medicines for the global poor by delinking the price of drugs from the cost of research.

The project is led by Thomas Pogge (ASAP founder and Global Board member), and economist Aidan Hollis. 

As currently designed, pharmaceutical markets have a fundamental flaw that mainly affects poor people: the development of new medicines is funded exclusively through markups protected by patents. This flaw causes research neglect of diseases concentrated among the poor. It deprives poor people of access to patented medicines even when these can be mass-produced cheaply. HIF will address this flaw by creating complementary incentives that decouple the price of medicines from the fixed costs of innovation and cover the latter through health impact rewards by encouraging pharmaceutical innovators to register new drugs for participation in ten consecutive annual payouts. Each round of payment is divided among registered products according to health gains achieved the preceding year. These reward payments will enable innovators to recoup their R&D expenses and make appropriate profits while, at the same time, allowing the price of these registered medicines to be capped – covering merely their lowest feasible cost of manufacture and distribution. The result will be more affordable drugs to those in middle and lower income countries.

The first step is a 5 year pilot. Find out more about how the Health Impact Fund is progressing.

Launch of the HIF pilot in Kerala, India

Manifesto Poverty Audits

ASAP has developed a methodology and approach for critically reviewing the impact of policies on poverty levels. Called Poverty Audits, the organisation has over the past five years supported multiple country Chapters to conduct audits around national elections.

ASAP Oceania were the first to pilot the audits in 2013. They produced a ground-breaking assessment looking into the manifestos of the three major Australian political parties. The report sets out the implications of the policies for poverty alleviation in key areas including: education, Indigenous policy, housing, foreign aid, migration and many others. Read the report here. Five years on, in 2018, the Oceania Chapter expanded this work to critically review the Australian Government’s progress towards the SDGs. Called: Australia, Poverty, and the Sustainable Development Goals, the report lays out evidence clearly setting out why further action is needed and makes a series of recommendations. Both reports coordinated experts in multiple dimensions of poverty to write brief, accessible responses to Government policy.

The Poverty Audit approach has also been adopted by ASAP Chapters in the UK and Canada, similarly reviewing the policy platforms of major political parties running during national elections. The UK Audit in 2017 saw 29 academics from 23 Universities analyse the running manifestos of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties on 12 key poverty-related topics. The report gained widespread media attention and acclaim. Find out more about the methodology, the report itself, and listen to ASAP Global Executive Cat Tully talking about the project on the ASAP UK\’s poverty audit website.

To build on these past successes, one of the priorities for ASAP Global is to support more Chapters to conduct these innovative appraisals. They are effective means to hold parties and governments to account for their actions to address poverty at home within a country but also towards global commitments, such as through the SDGs.  

Producing the Oslo Principles

In 2012, a group of legal experts from around the world, convened by Dutch Advocate-General Jaap Spier and ASAP co-founder Thomas Pogge set out to answer a pressing climate crisis-related question: how much do human rights and other sources of law require each state to do to reduce emissions, even in the absence of a specific treaty?

Greenhouse gas emissions that were escalating at the time, but that continue to rise at an alarming rate still today, stand to compromise the rights of billions of people around the world. Yet, there was an evident lack of explicit treaties legally binding states to curb their emissions. This was the problem the experts set out to resolve.

After several years of extensive legal research and discussions the group undersigned a set of principles at a meeting in Oslo, Norway, which were adopted in March 2015 as the Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations. The principles detail how international laws such as human rights law and tort law may already require states to reduce their emissions, irrespective of other specific treaties. This work was subsequently expanded to include an examination of the obligations of private enterprises to prevent climate change. Find out more about the impact of these initiatives on the Global Justice Programme website at Yale University.

Redefining Migration Discourse

In June 2019, ASAP Global in partnership with Club de Madrid and Global Justice Now, held a colloquium that brought together a focussed group of interdisciplinary specialists from academia, policy and civil society.

Much of the global narrative around migration seeks to perpetuate dishonest and emotive narratives that distort wider public understandings and cast migrants as negative and disruptive influences on economies and social order. The event aimed to bring together expert knowledge to understand how we can create a significant shift in the positioning of the migration debate.

The panel discussed how current accounts of migration are grounded in deep structural inequalities. Therefore, there is a need to reframe public policy and discourse towards a more sympathetic environment for migration that focuses on the universality of humans. It would encourage a politics of kindness and should be much more closely connected with wider global issues associated with development and the distribution of capital.

To build on the success of the London event we are currently organising a series of follow up workshops that will explore what a more positive migrant discourse looks like and how, as a network, we can use this to shape recommendations that can transform political and public perceptions of migrants.

The Future of ASAP

2020 is an exciting time for the ASAP network. Interest in our work is rapidly growing, not only at the membership level for established Chapters but also new Chapters which we currently see growing in six new countries.

At the same time, we are in the genesis of working with country leads to create a programme of inter-Chapter collaborative research projects for 2021. These stand to produce cutting edge evidence on the most pressing poverty problems the world is facing.

Your donation will enable us to carry out this vital work. From the ASAP Network family, THANK YOU.

AnnouncementsEVENTS

Webinar: Feminization Of Poverty In Venezuela

Friday, October 16, 10:00am Caracas time (-5hrs BST).

Poverty hits women harder than men. Globally, women are paid on average 24% less than men, work longer hours and do twice as much unpaid work within the home (Oxfam). COVID-19 has worsened this situation, and by 2030 poverty levels are expected to increase by 12.6% among women, twice as much as among men (6.6%) (UN Women). Focusing on Latin America, we find that over 51% of poor people are women and one in three women have no income of their own. Here too, COVID-19 has come to accentuate this problem, standing to set the region back 10 years in terms of women\’s participation in the labour market, as high-risk sectors (restaurants, retail, entertainment) account for around 57.2% of female employment (ECLAC).

In Venezuela, the situation is alarming. There has been a 70% fall in GDP between 2013 and 2019 and the average daily income is less than 1 dollar – USD $0.72. Of the 1 million people who have been forced to leave the country annually since 2017, men predominate. This means millions of women have been left alone to run households.  Currently, food supplies have become a major concern for 93% of the population. 72.7% of the country’s poorest households are headed by women, and 3 out of 7 families are severely food insecure. COVID-19 is only deepening this crisis (ENCOVI).

This webinar, the second organised by the emerging ASAP Venezuela chapter, will reflect on some of the most pressing consequences sitting behind these figures and the implications they hold for women in poverty.

We invite you to join us for this critical and lively discussion where three experts will talk about the following:

  • Deepening female poverty in Venezuela due to the complex humanitarian emergency

Adicea Castillo. Professor at the Central University of Venezuela

  • Female poverty and care economy

Rosa Paredes. Professor at the Central University of Venezuela

  • Gender and economy in the long term of asymmetric dependencies

Carmen Ibáñez. Researcher and lecturer at the Free University of Berlin

Register here

AnnouncementsEVENTS

Webinar: Poverty in Venezuela in a Global Context

Wednesday, August 26, 2020 – 11:00 (-4 GMT)

Venezuela’s institutional structures are facing a continuous deterioration that is leading the majority of the population into severe poverty, brought on by high levels of corruption. Yet, the problems Venezuela faces are not exclusive to this nation but are part of a wider, global problem. For instance, the country\’s natural resources arouse attention from greedy foreign governments and corporations hoping to profit from Venezuela\’s oil and other natural treasures but global institutions do not adequately control such interests. Poverty is also a source of unsafe, disorderly and irregular migration. This affects not only the people who move but also those they leave behind and the countries in the region where they arrive, which are likely to be suffering from significant levels of poverty themselves.

The causes and consequences of poverty exacerbation that Venezuela is experiencing are frequently presented and discussed but often using biased or incomplete information and assumptions not based on rigorous research. This webinar will discuss the pressing issues of poverty facing the country and consider their causal connections to global problems. It aims to explore where there are gaps in evidence and research focus, and how these can be addressed.

This webinar marks the emergence of a new ASAP Chapter and the event has been organised by a leading group of Venezuelan academics based at the University of the Andes (ULA, Venezuela), ULA Human Rights Observatory, Transparency Venezuela, University of Antioquia and Pontifical Bolivarian University.

We invite you to join us for this critical and lively discussion:

Wednesday, August 26, 2020 – 11:00 (-4 GMT)
Language: English 

Registration:  https://bit.ly/2X99bCQ

AnnouncementsEVENTS

ASAP Conference 2020 – Coming 12-15th November

“Build Back Better: Reducing Vulnerabilities, Strengthening Justice\”

On the 12th – 15th November 2020 ASAP Global, ASAP Brazil, Quinnipiac Albert Schweitzer Institute and the Global Justice Program at Yale University will be jointly hosting this years Annual Justice Conference, which will be taking place online.

The aim of the Conference is to gather national and international specialists in order to extend the academic studies concerning the battle against poverty, misery and vulnerabilities. The Conference will concentrate its activities towards the following subjects:

  1. COVID-19 and its Unequal Impacts
  2. Environmental Crisis
  3. Historical Oppression, Colonialism, & Racism Today
  4. Social & Economic Vulnerabilities, Universal Safety Net & Basic Income, Right to Development & Sustainable Development Goals (UN).

Registration details coming soon but find out latest developments – here

AnnouncementsEVENTSOpenings

New developments in Colombia

Paula Casal, Chapter Lead for ASAP Spain connected with colleagues in Colombia during the Summer of 2019.

Having spoken to colleagues in both the Universidad EAFIT and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the group of over 30 academics convened by Antonio Barboza, Constitutional Law Professor at Universidad EAFIT, have decided to convene a follow-up meeting later this year.

This event will include academics from different universities across Colombia to discuss how their respective research relates to “the structural drivers of poverty” in order to come together to agree on areas the new emerging ASAP Colombia chapter can work on with a view to organising a formal launch of ASAP Colombia in 2020.

EVENTS

Interdisciplinary international program on \”Ethics, Economics, Law and Politics\” at Ruhr University\’s Institute of Philosophy in Bochum

The programme was part of a graduate-level course for an interdisciplinary international program on \”Ethics, Economics, Law and Politics\” at Ruhr University\’s Institute of Philosophy in Bochum held in July 2019.

ASAP Board member and ASAP Cambodia chapter lead, Pahlaj Moolio of the Paññasastra University of Cambodia, ran an exploratory workshop, to supplement the knowledge to students of their fields of study. The event included 5 speakers from universities in China, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and the US covering the broad issues of poverty, climate change, environment, health, and technology. The workshop engaged 20 students from over 10 countries and regions including Africa, Asia, America, and the EU. 

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Annual Conference 2019, 1st – 3rd November (Yale and Quinnipiac Universities)

The conference, led by Yale Global Justice Program, the Albert Schweitzer Institute at Quinnipiac University, and ASAP will bring together academics, policymakers and NGO leaders for practice-oriented presentations and discussion. We plan to host a total of nine sessions: three longer morning panels, and six shorter afternoon sessions.

For the morning panels, keynote speakers include Branko MilanovicBridget Conley, and Alex de Waal. Branko Milanovic is a former World Bank researcher and is currently a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of \”Global Inequality, the Haves, and the Have-Nots\”. He will set the stage for the conference by presenting a historical perspective on inequality and by analyzing the dynamics of ongoing globalization: the main forces and trends that are likely to shape the evolution of the world economy and international relations over the coming decades. He will outline how extreme economic inequality and competition feed and sustain atrocious violence, which then, in turn, aggravates massive poverty and other deprivations.

The other panels will focus on problems closely related to, if not directly caused by, extreme inequality at both global and domestic level: first, political corruption and (lack of) access to political life; and second, the role, priorities, and constraints of NGOs; third, race and incarceration.

For more details about registration please contact: global@academicsstand.org

AnnouncementsEVENTS

Redefining Migration Discourse

The June event hosted at King\’s College London in partnership with World Leaders Forum, Club de Madrid and Global Justice Now aimed to critically analyse the structural shifts and reorientation in attitudes and rhetoric that need to be taken regarding migration-related policy decision making.

The symposium bought together interdisciplinary specialists from academia, policy, and NGOs to explore and outline the challenges and recommendations on methods to tackle some of the structural challenges associated with the current framing of migration.

(Photograph courtesy of Dorothy Guerrero. L – R: Laura Hammond, SOAS; Yva Alexandrova-Meadway, Consonant; Frances Webber, Institute of Race Relations; Jimi Thinley, WLA-CdM; Kinga Göncz, WLA-Cdm and Myles Wickstead, King\’s College London)

The output report of this event was used to help inform the framing of migration discussions by World Leadership Alliance – Club de Madrid members at the UN General Assembly this September 2019.

A short report on the outputs of the event can be found here.