Author Archives: MonikaZakrzewsk
UN Report Says UK Economic Policies are a Violation of Human Rights
Mother Jones
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The hits keep on coming for the UK. Amid swirling acrimony and indignant finger-pointing in the aftermath of the nation’s vote to leave the European Union, a UN body piled on this week with a damning assessment, declaring the UK’s austerity policies to be in breach of international human rights obligations.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights wrote that it was “seriously concerned about the disproportionate adverse impact that austerity measures, introduced since 2010, are having on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups.” After fielding testimony from the Just Fair Consortium, a human rights alliance representing over 80 British and international charities and community groups, the committee issued an unequivocal assessment, condemning austerity policies for their impact on homelessness, unemployment, health care access, and discrimination against women and minorities, among other things. The report catalogs various concerns, including:
• “Persistent discrimination against migrant workers in the labour market”
• The minimum wage, which “is not sufficient to ensure a decent standard of living…does not apply for workers under the age of 25”
• A rise in “temporary employment, precarious self-employment, and ‘zero hour contracts'”
• “The increase to the inheritance tax limit and to the Value Added Tax, as well as the gradual reduction of the tax on corporate incomes,” leading to “persistent social inequality”
• “Persistent underrepresentation of women in decision-making positions in the public and private sectors”
Economic anxieties and Britain’s austerity regime provided a key backdrop for last week’s Brexit referendum, and may have motivated many who voted to leave the EU.
This is Britain’s first review by the UN body since 2009, whose report is one verdict on the austerity agenda pushed by many countries in the wake of the financial collapse. According to a statement from Jamie Burton, chair of Just Fair, the UN’s conclusions are beyond argument: “It is clear that since 2010, ministers were fully aware that their policies would hit lower income groups hardest…without offering any long term gain for the pain they inflicted.”
The verdict also gives extra firepower to those questioning austerity measures already imposed on the economies of Greece and Argentina, or that might be put in place in debt-wracked Puerto Rico. Despite the resounding terms of the UN’s report, Mark Blyth, Eastman professor of political economy at Brown University and author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, doubts it will convince countries to reconsider deep cuts to social spending. “This is just more evidence that should matter—if evidence mattered,” Blyth told Mother Jones.
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UN Report Says UK Economic Policies are a Violation of Human Rights
Campus Christian Groups Should Be Allowed to Remain Christian
Mother Jones
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I think I’m over the stomach bug that laid me up this weekend, so let’s get back to this blogging thing. Today, the New York Times informs me that university Christian groups are losing official recognition because they won’t agree to allow anyone, regardless of religious beliefs, to become a group leader:
At Cal State, the nation’s largest university system with nearly 450,000 students on 23 campuses, the chancellor is preparing this summer to withdraw official recognition from evangelical groups that are refusing to pledge not to discriminate on the basis of religion in the selection of their leaders. And at Vanderbilt, more than a dozen groups, most of them evangelical but one of them Catholic, have already lost their official standing over the same issue; one Christian group balked after a university official asked the students to cut the words “personal commitment to Jesus Christ” from their list of qualifications for leadership.
At most universities that have begun requiring religious groups to sign nondiscrimination policies, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and mainline Protestant groups have agreed, saying they do not discriminate and do not anticipate that the new policies will cause problems. Hillel, the largest Jewish student organization, says some chapters have even elected non-Jews to student boards.
Apparently this was sparked by a court decision that ruled it was OK for public universities to deny recognition to student groups that exclude gays—including Christian groups. I’m fine with that. But requiring Christian groups to allow non-believers to lead Bible studies and prayer services and so forth? That seems pretty extreme. I have to admit that if I were a member of a campus Christian group, I’d have a hard time believing there were no ulterior motives at work here.
As for the Jewish/Muslim/Catholic/etc. groups that “do not anticipate” problems, I hope they’re right. But this is the kind of thing that’s ripe for mischief-making. I can easily imagine a bunch of campus halfwits who think it would be the funniest joke in the world to join a religious group en masse and then elect an atheist president. These are 19-year-olds we’re dealing with, after all.
But maybe not. Perhaps that requires too much sustained effort. Nonetheless, if it were up to me, I’d allow Jewish groups to remain Jewish and Christian groups to remain Christian if that’s what they want to do. It’s hard to see the harm.
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Campus Christian Groups Should Be Allowed to Remain Christian
