Ninety-Nine magazine - October 2022 (issue 24)

The

Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now

Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.

Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS

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Editor: Jonathan Stevenson

Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.org

Cover: Kenyans protest against inflation and the cost of living, especially higher prices of basic foodstuffs, in Nairobi in July. Photo: AP Photo/Brian Inganga.

Printed on 100% recycled paper.

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Truss’s disaster economics can be beaten

Jonathan Stevenson Head of communications

It’s almost possible to forget that we were facing a cost of living crisis even before Liz Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, added a self-inflicted financial crisis on top last month, such has been the level of outrage. Their calamitous bankers’ budget could have been designed to illustrate that trickle-down economics is a trick, a project for helping the rich accumulate more wealth while shrinking the size of the state that supports everyone else. However much Truss subsequently u-turns, the mask has slipped – and people don’t like what they see.

As Nick Dearden explains on page 8, the global dimension of the cost of living crisis, which our campaigning naturally focuses on, runs deeper than Truss’s missteps – but it’s not simply the unavoidable fallout of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. Decisions in the global north, including in London, have a real impact on its severity. For her next trick, Truss wants to deregulate the banking system, including the rules to limit food speculation that our campaigning won a decade ago. What could possibly go wrong? It falls to us to make sure we don’t have to find out.

In other catastrophes foretold, this summer’s 40 degree temperatures may already feel a long time ago, but as the global north increasingly sees the impacts of our changing climate, the folly of rich countries failing to take a climate justice approach to unlock the necessary global emissions reductions becomes ever more apparent. As Lumumba Di-Aping writes on page 12, climate breakdown is one problem that can’t be shut out by the rich building everhigher walls.

If the summer feels like the distant past, we must all hope the pandemic recedes even further into the memory. Yet as Tim Bierley reports on page 14, there is still a battle to be won to finally vaccinate everyone in low-income countries, as well as prevent the next global health emergency from repeating the same injustices. In South Africa, the seeds of a revolutionary transformation of our pharmaceutical system are being sown, and it is very energising to see this happening after more than two years of campaigning.

As we face the prospect of probably the most pro-inequality, antienvironmental government we have had for a generation, it’s worth taking courage from the knowledge that change can happen quickly, once the groundwork has been laid. That’s something we must never forget.

With Liz Truss’s calamitous bankers’ budget, the mask has slipped, and people don’t like what they see.

Corporate courts treaty under pressure as fossil fuel payouts continue

The campaign to persuade governments to exit the controversial Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) has been growing in recent months as talks to reform the treaty reached a decision point. The ECT, a giant ‘corporate court’ treaty between 50 countries specifically for the energy sector, is being used by fossil fuel companies to sue governments over things like phasing out coal power and banning fracking.

This August, UK oil company Rockhopper won over £210m from the Italian government over a ban on offshore oil drilling using the ECT – six times more than the company’s actual investment in the drilling project. Rockhopper’s share price immediately shot up, as the company is treating this win as a financial asset

which will help it move on to open a new climate-destroying project drilling for oil off the Falklands.

Global Justice Now is working with groups all across Europe calling on our governments to exit the ECT. Spain and Poland have already said they’re leaving, the Dutch parliament has voted for exit and many others have concerns. At the same time though, there is a move to just greenwash the treaty with some weak reform proposals to ‘modernise’ it.

This so-called modernisation would actually give fossil fuel companies ten more years to keep suing in corporate courts, blocking climate action during the crucial next decade for energy transition. If the ECT continues to protect these projects for ten more years, there is a problem. Either

governments will actually cancel them and the fossil fuel companies will sue, massively increasing the cost of the transition. Or governments will delay even longer to avoid being sued, at irreparable cost to the climate.

We’ve continued to raise the profile of this secretive treaty in the media, with MPs and reaching out to the wider climate movement. At the end of October we’ll be taking further action, ahead of a key ECT meeting in November. Alongside allies we’ll be protesting at government departments, calling on the UK to join with other countries in a coordinated withdrawal from the ECT.

Join the day of action: globaljustice.org.uk/ect-action

© Krasnyi

Collective/Jerôme Peraya

A protest at the Energy Charter Treaty secretariat in Brussels.

Human cost of vaccine inequality clear as WTO fails again

Global Justice Now’s campaign to end Covid-19 vaccine monopolies stepped up in June ahead of a key decision-making World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Geneva. Shortly before the summit, we took our campaign to parliament, asking MPs to pledge their support for life-saving measures to suspend intellectual property. After a day of engaging conversations with politicians from across parties, we delivered their pledges by hand to the Department for International Trade. We also took to the media to warn that a system which can’t bend its pro-big business rules to allow for the rapid scale-up of medicines is simply not fit for purpose.

Throughout the pandemic, the UK has played a particularly damaging role when it comes to vaccine

access around the world. It has failed on donation targets, binned hundreds of thousands of doses, and repeatedly blocked global south-led efforts to break up big pharma monopolies at the WTO.

The UK government continued its wrecking efforts at the summit in June, ensuring that the deal that was finally reached was a pale reflection of what was needed.

But the fact a deal was reached at all shows global agreement that pharma monopolies have failed us. Realising this, lobbyists for the drug companies themselves came out in anger against the deal. While these corporations have already enjoyed a record-breaking pandemic windfall, the millions of dollars they pour into maintaining their monopolies are suddenly looking less effective. And if people

didn’t already see how deadly corporate capture of medicines can be, a Lancet report showing that vaccine inequality had cost the lives of 600,000 people in low-income countries alone, confirmed it. This devastating and unnecessary loss of human life must be a wake-up call, and the beginning of the end for pharma monopolies.

While exposing big pharma’s crimes is an important step in achieving change, we also need to support new systems. That’s why in September we took a delegation of politicians and journalists to visit the South African lab which has reverse engineered Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine and started sharing that scientific knowledge with the world (see pages 14-15).

A People’s Vaccine protest at the WTO ministerial in Geneva

Polluters must pay for climate damage

Ahead of COP27, and during a global cost of living crisis where fossil fuel corporations are raking in record profits, Global Justice Now has been campaigning to make polluters pay compensation for the climate impacts, such as the devastating recent floods in Pakistan, they are causing.

We launched a new petition calling on the UK to help set up a new ‘loss and damage’ fund at COP27 and to finance it through increased taxation on fossil fuel corporations. We have also been collaborating with the Make Polluters Pay coalition and helped organise a Loss and Damage Action Day in September, with

actions happening in London, Nottingham, Edinburgh and numerous other locations. Thank you to everyone who took part.

We have also been building public support for this approach in the media, including an appearance by our climate campaigner Daniel Willis on Jeremy Vine in August to argue that BP’s record profits should be used to provide climate compensation to the global south.

Read our new climate reparations briefing at: globaljustice.org.uk/ climate-reparations

Pressure on Blackrock grows over Zambia debt crisis

As the global debt crisis intensifies, Global Justice Now is working closely with a revitalised international debt justice movement to push back against profiteering private lenders.

At the start of the summer, big banks finally agreed to stop collecting debt payments from Ukraine. This is a sign that debt relief can happen when the political will is there; now we need to make sure that other countries in debt crisis like Zambia are also offered a just resolution.

In September, as Zambia headed into negotiations with the banks, we stepped up our campaign against Blackrock, the US bank which holds a large share of Zambia’s private debt, by taking action outside their London offices and co-ordinating over 100 economists to publish an open letter calling for debt cancellation.

In October, we took part in global days of action against debt, building pressure on the G20 to act on the debt crisis before it’s too late. Ahead of COP27, we’ll continue working with this global debt movement, and green groups like Debt for Climate, to make debt cancellation a central element of international climate action.

©

Call for climate reparations following Pakistan super-floods

Campaigners in Pakistan have called for debt cancellation and climate reparations following the devastating floods which left more than one-third of the country under water in August. At least 1,300 people were killed, more than 50 million were displaced from their homes, and up to $10 billion of damage was caused to Pakistan’s economy.

Pakistan is facing some of the worst consequences of the accelerating climate crisis, despite producing less than 1% of global carbon emissions. Yet global south calls for ‘loss and damage’ for countries bearing the brunt of climate change impacts continue to be resisted at UN climate talks.

In the aftermath of the floods, the IMF issued Pakistan with a new $1.1 billion loan, but the country continues to face annual debt payments of more than $13 billion. As Farooq Tariq of the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee wrote: “Without debt relief or funding to compensate for loss and damage, Pakistan’s cycle of debt and climate crises is only set to worsen.”

Mass protests over Rwanda deportation plan

Migrant rights campaigners took part in dozens of protests around the UK this summer over the government’s controversial plans to deport people seeking asylum to Rwanda. Global Justice Now joined protests outside detention centres in Heathrow and Yarl’s Wood, as well as the Home Office.

The Rwanda plan deepens the UK’s hostile environment for migrants by criminalising people seeking asylum for their method of travel to the UK. For the vast majority of refugees, there are no safe routes to apply for asylum from outside the UK, forcing people to take dangerous options like crossing the Channel.

The first Rwanda deportation flight was due to take place in July but was blocked until a High Court legal challenge has concluded. The case, which heard that the UNHCR does not consider Rwanda to be a safe country to send asylum seekers to, took place in September and a verdict is expected later in the autumn.

A solidarity protest in the Philippines in September.

NEWS SHORTS

Walden Bello vows to resist charges of ‘cyber libel’

World-renowned author and activist Walden Bello has vowed to resist spurious charges of cyber libel against him after his arrest in the Philippines in August. Bello ran for vice-president in May against the daughter of former president Rodrigo Durtete, who he criticised online for failing to take part in a televised debate.

Antigua expected to vote on becoming a republic

The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda announced that the country will hold a referendum on becoming a republic within three years, following the Queen’s death in September. The Caribbean country is one of 14 to retain the British monarch as their head of state. It follows Barbados becoming a republic in November.

Australia scraps planned coal mine

The new Australian government blocked the development of the Central Queensland coal mine in August as it introduced a stronger 2030 emissions reduction target, but declined to back amendments ruling out any new coal, oil or gas projects. Up to 26 further new coal mines are due to be decided on in the country.

Global demands for Egypt to release political prisoners ahead of COP27

International human rights and climate justice groups have called for the Egyptian government to release thousands of political prisoners ahead of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in November, amid fears that the conference will be used to whitewash Egypt’s human rights abuses.

The Egyptian government of President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi came to power in a military coup in 2013, and there are an estimated 65,000 political prisoners in the country, including British-Egyptian activist Abd El Fattah, who has been on hunger strike

for months. “It’s hard to imagine that any significant progress can be made towards climate justice at a conference hosted by one of the world’s most repressive regimes, whose prisons are full of its brightest thinkers, youth activists and defeated idealists,” said Abd El Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif.

The government has also been criticised for operating a closed application process for Egyptian NGOs to attend the summit, while protests will only be allowed in a designated protest area.

Chile to continue fight to replace Pinochet’s constitution

Social movements in Chile have vowed to continue the fight to replace the country’s constitution, after a proposed new one was defeated in a referendum in September. 62% of voters rejected the change after an extraordinary mobilisation by business and conservative groups against it.

The existing constitution dates back to the rule of western-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. 80% of Chileans voted in favour of replacing that constitution in 2021, following mass protests over growing inequality.

The proposed constitution, drafted by an elected assembly over the last year, would have enshrined rights to free healthcare and education, access to housing, as well as gender equality and environmental protection. It would also have given Indigenous peoples a stronger status by recognising Chile as a plurinational state, like Bolivia. A further process to revise or redraft a new constitution is now expected to be convened by Chile’s leftist president Gabriel Boric.

Chileans march in support of the new constitution in Santiago ahead of the referendum in September.

© Alberto Valdes/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The global cost of living crisis

In August, when the Bank of England hiked interest rates to fight inflation, the Bank’s governor warned workers to refrain from asking for inflation-matching pay claims, saying this would only intensify the problem. Many economists pointed out that inflation isn’t being driven by wage claims, however, so the Bank’s actions will simply cause pain without tackling the real problem. Hit hard by rocketing energy and food prices, ordinary people are being asked to pay the price for a crisis which they didn’t create, and over which they have no control.

This was all before Liz Truss brought her own form of disaster economics to bear on the crisis. Armed with an extreme version of free market economics, Truss managed to send the pound into freefall in September, further threatening

living standards. The problem was not that her government agreed to freeze energy prices for the consumer, but that she did it purely by borrowing at precisely the same time as cutting taxes on the richest.

Instead of charging those benefiting from high prices – the fossil fuel industry, in particular, which is making tens of billions of pounds in windfall profits – Truss again shifted the cost to ordinary people because she sees these corporations as the ‘wealth creators’, who must be allowed to return bumper funds to their super-rich investors in the City.

As we move further into the autumn, we will see the result of this misguided policy. And we’ll see an increase in resistance, with strikes proliferating and ‘don’t pay’ campaigns building in strength.

Speculation is driving the spiralling cost of food and energy across the world. Yet Liz Truss wants to make it even easier for bankers to gamble with the essentials of life, writes NICK DEARDEN.

We are still ruled by politicians who seem to believe the market can do no wrong, even when it’s so plainly the cause of our problems.

© Jose

Left: Indigenous protests over Ecuador’s IMFbacked austerity cuts in June.

Right top: Thousands joined cost of living protests in Westminster in October.

Right bottom: A vendor at a market in Bangkok.

Inflation is at a 14-year high in Thailand.

A GLOBAL PROBLEM

Britain’s crisis is exacerbated by the trickle-down, pro-market policies implemented over many years. But across the world, food and energy price inflation has also fuelled a global cost of living crisis. In one survey of global south countries, ActionAid found families spending two, three or four times as much on food and fuel as they did last year, with average prices of bread and pasta up 50%.

Oxfam predicted that over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme poverty this year, in “the most profound collapse of humanity

into extreme poverty and suffering in memory.”

But as Oxfam’s international director points out, it’s not bad news for everyone. Mass impoverishment is “made more sickening by the fact that trillions of dollars have been captured by a tiny group of powerful men.” Corporate titans in the food and energy sectors have made nearly half a trillion dollars in the last two years, with 62 new billionaires created off the profits of the food industry alone, while five of the largest energy companies, including BP, Shell and Total, are making $2,600 of profit every second.

Yet just as there is no shortage of wealth so, paradoxically, there is also no shortage of food. It’s true that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with Covid-19 and the increasing effects of climate change, have disrupted supplies. But we are still producing more food than ever before. The problem is that many people are unable to afford this food, because the prices have been driven up by speculators who want to make a quick buck. This is the cause of much of the food and energy price inflation.

In a new book called Price Wars, which I review on page 19, Rupert Russell argues that it is precisely this speculation, through raising the price of commodities like oil, which has handed the government of Russia the resources to behave as it does.

BETTING ON HUNGER – AGAIN

After the financial crash of 2008, money flowed out of risky corporate shares and sub-prime mortgages into the commodity markets. After all, what could be safer than investing in the basics of life, like food and energy? But far from being the secure place

© Andrea Domeniconi/Alamy Stock Photo

© Matt Hunt/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

many assumed, these markets had been deregulated under the Clinton administration and were now awash with funds which were being used to bet on the future price of commodities. As more money piled in, prices were sent into the stratosphere.

These price hikes caused severe impoverishment. In Haiti, the poorest were driven to eat dirt ‘biscuits’, before the prime minister was eventually removed. In Egypt food riots broke out, and many believe the price hikes sparked the chain of events that led to the overthrow of governments across North Africa.

Many commentators assumed crop failures or increases in demand from emerging countries were the factors driving up prices. But it turned out that there wasn’t a shortage of food. There was a price crisis, driven by speculation. And while many had nothing to eat, banks and investment funds, which played no role in the process of making food, were raking in hundreds of millions of pounds. As UN special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter recently said of the financiers: “They are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.”

Back in 2010, we campaigned for rules to control this commodity speculation. And we won something

– a set of rules which, among other things, constrained the size of the market which individual traders could take. Sadly it wasn’t enough, and ever since the financial sector has been lobbying to weaken these standards.

In Britain, the financial markets have found an enthusiastic ally. The Financial Services and Markets Bill is a massive piece of legislation, currently making its way through parliament, which aims to revoke many rules put in place after 2008. In particular, it would revoke the commodity speculation rules we won a decade ago. It’s all part of freeing up the City from that troublesome red tape that gets in the way of their profits – what former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak called a ‘Big Bang 2.0’, mirroring Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s financial deregulation.

THE MARKET CAN DO NO WRONG

We are still ruled by politicians who seem to believe the market can do no wrong, even when it’s so plainly the cause of our problems. Globally, we can see this reflected in the growing global debt crisis (see page 5). Throughout the pandemic, hedge funds and banks have been collecting debt payments from countries struggling to pay for basic healthcare and education. Many times, these

will be the same financial institutions invested in the commodity markets, and the same institutions collecting healthy dividends paid out of the bumper profits of the energy and food corporations. The unwillingness of regulators to take any action against the financial markets mean that they instead foist the cost onto the victims, whether forcing nations to service unpayable debts, or by disciplining workers through unemployment and holding down wages.

But there are hopeful signs. In Ecuador, the Indigenous rising against the cost of living crisis forced the government to hold down prices. In Sri Lanka, the government was toppled in a peaceful uprising sparked by rising costs. Economist Jayati Ghosh made clear: “Sri Lanka is not alone; if anything, it’s just a harbinger of a coming storm of debt distress.” And indeed, these will not be the last victories.

In Britain, we will see more campaigns emerging as people refuse to pay the cost of a crisis they did not create. It’s important to support these campaigns. But we also need to remember this is a global crisis, and the poorest globally will be hit the hardest. There are alternatives, primarily the transformation of our food and energy systems, redistribution of wealth, and constraining a financial system that allows a tiny minority to profit at the expense of wider society and our environment.

Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now.

TAKE ACTION

Join the campaign against the government’s plan to deregulate the banks: globaljustice.org.uk/ banks-action

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng faced a barrage of criticism after their bankers’ budget in September.

© Dylan Martinez/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo

Global Justice Now supporters

Events for your diary

Exit ECT day of action

Monday 31 October

Fossil fuel companies are using the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), an outdated trade agreement, to sue countries in shadowy ‘corporate courts’ when governments adopt climate policies that hit their profits. We have until 22 November to persuade the UK government to join other European governments pledging to withdraw from this treaty, rather than accept a ‘modernised’ version that will actually lead to at least ten more years of corporate courts. On Monday 31 October we will come together in action to demand the UK government follow other European countries in refusing to lock in climate breakdown. Find out more at: globaljustice.org.uk/ect-action

Global day of climate action Saturday 12 November

As world leaders meet in Egypt in November at the global climate talks, the COP27 Coalition is calling for decentralised mass mobilisations across the world, bringing together movements to build power for system change – from Indigenous struggles to trade unions, from racial justice groups to youth strikers. The global day of action is on Saturday 12 November, during the second weekend of the COP. Find out more at: globaljustice.org.uk/12nov

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Global Justice Now local groups and activists are an important part of the way we bring about change. The activism team supports groups to do everything from street stalls, to film screenings, to lobbying their MP. But you don’t need to be in a Global Justice Now group to help further our campaigns locally. Our campaign against corporate courts, for instance, has been picked up

by individuals and local activist groups from other organisations. Our activist newsletter, Think Global, goes to a whole range of people by email once a month. It includes updates on our campaigns, brief explanations of campaign strategy and useful activities you can do locally. Sign up to receive it at: globaljustice.org.uk/think-global

Today is a very important moment in the history of struggle for climate justice and reparations. It has become self-evident that the goal set in March 1994 by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of preventing dangerous human interference with climate systems has been subverted – by the global north’s political and economic elites, by their industrial complexes and by climate denialists – into a simple process of destruction by inaction. Day after day, the cowardice is spreading.

The central idea of the UN efforts was to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate systems. Yet the IPCC in April 2022 stated that 1.5 degrees of warming will be reached in the early 2030s under all the emissions scenarios it considered – except the

highest emissions scenario, where 1.5 degrees will occur even earlier. The truth is that the world is set for a global average temperature rise of between 3.2 and 5.7 degrees. The earth is becoming our bleak house of extinction.

A CONTINUUM OF STRUGGLE

The global south climate claim for reparations is a struggle which is part of a continuum of our struggle against colonisation – against extinction of natives across the world, against enslavement, subjugation, appropriation of land, wealth and now atmospheric space – the limited capacity of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases. For centuries the global north has been silent about the suffering and the exploitation of non-whites, pure and simple. There is no way of hiding it.

Below: The almost dry bed of the river Po near Piacenza, Italy, in June.

Right: A protest in London demanding an end to fossil fuel extraction, ecocide and ‘reparations now’.

The global north is learning that the climate has no borders

The impacts of climate breakdown are vastly unequal, but felt by everyone, says LUMUMBA DI-APING. Only reparations can bring about climate justice.

© Pierpaolo

Climate reparations and climate justice are in essence about saving our common home. But they are being challenged by the powerful in several ways. The most dangerous form is what I call soft denialism, which is really what the G7 states and intellectuals have adopted as their way of inaction. It is greenwashing. Who needs a denialist when the establishment itself prevents the meaningful action we need. As such, we need to really ask ourselves: what should we do?

YOU CANNOT BLOCK THE AIR

There are three central issues that we have to address. First is the issue of radical reduction of emissions, because even 1.5 degrees, as the IPCC has already mentioned, is simply carnage. Any global average temperature rise will translate to three to four times that in parts of the global south. That’s why it was possible 20 years ago for Lake Chad and the River Niger to disappear and nobody in the global north actually thought it was a threat. Now we see what is happening in Italy with the River Po, which is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years. That drying up of rivers was coming. And unlike the refugee crisis, there’s no border to halt that process. You cannot block the air, you cannot block the atmosphere and the changes that are happening globally.

The second issue is that the reduction of emissions is actually about addressing the whole planetary boundaries that are being destroyed

– biodiversity, ocean acidification, the destruction of agriculture, sea level rise, all these issues we are facing today. It’s effectively like a cancer hitting the world from every single corner, and there is no place that is safe. Even those industrialists who think

that they are going to go to Mars – if they go with that attitude, they will destroy it too. The third issue I want to stress

is that climate reparations are not aid. Climate reparations are not a charitable act from the global north towards the under-privileged and the wretched of the earth. It is actually about justice, about all the things that the global north has historically appropriated and continues to destroy.

The problem with the ‘net zero’ approach following the Paris

Agreement is that it has no target towards the reduction of emissions. Net zero is about inaction, it’s kicking the ball to the 2050s, living comfortably now, but there is no radical reduction of emissions, there is no comprehensive energy transition to renewables or anything like that. By celebrating the Paris Agreement we are being goaded into commemorating humanity’s peril.

The task ahead of us is to continue to fight and work to convince people that they are wrong. We have to effectively adopt a very messianic perspective and advocate and advocate and advocate. We live in an age of epistemic violence. Sometimes you will be shut down. Sometimes you need really meaningful dialogue with people because they are simply misguided. There are no shortcuts. What will happen if we don’t change course is a continuation of fossil fuels hanging a noose above our heads.

Lumumba Di-Aping is a former UN climate negotiator for the G77 group of global south countries. This is an edited extract from his speech at our national gathering in July.

Climate reparations are not a charitable act from the global north towards the underprivileged and the wretched of the earth. It is actually about justice.

© Guy Bell/Alamy Stock Photo

The South African vaccine hub taking on big pharma

In September, Global Justice Now organised a parliamentary and media delegation to a ground-breaking vaccine project in Cape Town, TIM BIERLEY reports.

In June 2021, at the height of Covid-19 vaccine inequality around the world, the WHO backed a radical project which aims to break the stranglehold that big pharma corporations enjoy over the distribution of life-saving vaccines. The mRNA Technology Transfer Hub, as it is known, brings together a group of scientists and manufacturers to work out how mRNA technology works, share that knowledge with others, particularly in Africa, and set up production outside the hands of big pharma. Already the hub has managed to successfully reverse engineer Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine and its scientists are now working on turning their successful experiments into vaccine production. Even more importantly, they have started sharing their breakthrough with scientists in other countries.

During a pandemic when global north governments have pursued vaccine nationalism and pharma companies have exploited the crisis to make windfall profits, this project emerging in South Africa has shown that global south countries can build something better. The hub, based at a company called Afrigen in Cape Town, aims to prove that we don’t have to hand our medical needs over to big business to make vast amounts of money for their shareholders by monopolising know-how. Rather, we can build a collaborative model, where we freely share knowledge and distribute research and production around the world. The trip was only possible thanks to the incredible generosity

of Global Justice Now supporters, who have got right behind this project of international solidarity.

We and our partners in the global south are working to make sure the hub has strong political backing, especially as the big pharmaceutical corporations are already lobbying against it. Up to now, the British government has consistently cosied up to big pharma, fiercely opposing the waiver of intellectual property rules on Covid-related medicines and equipment before diluting an already weak agreement at the World Trade Organisation this summer. Rather than backing the hub, the UK has studiously avoided mentioning it, potentially a bad harbinger for the future. Organising a delegation from parliament was an important step in building

Above: Sindiswa Zibaye, a community health committee member in Gugulethu township, Cape Town, joined the delegation.

Right: SNP international development spokesperson Chris Law MP (centre) was part of the visit to the mRNA vaccine hub.

© Alfonso Andrew Stoffels

support for the hub in the UK, and we also wanted to make sure the international media understands what is at stake.

TOO IMPORTANT

On a tour of the facility, Caryn Fenner, the technical director at Afrigen, described how the hub was launched during perhaps the worst period of vaccine inequality, when even as rich countries were rolling out booster shots, most health workers in Africa hadn’t received a single jab. But the rapid development of technology and upskilling of workers means countries like South Africa could be in a better position to meet future health crises head-on. Crucially, mRNA isn’t just a useful tool in fighting Covid-19. It could be vital in fighting many other diseases, including HIV, malaria and certain types of cancer. Clearly, this knowledge is too important to be hoarded by one or two companies. The hub has taken a necessary but bold move in issuing a challenge to

the pharmaceutical establishment that guards its patents closely and keeps legal teams on speed-dial. As one young scientist put it: “If we weren’t doing this here, it probably wouldn’t be happening at all.”

After visiting the vaccines hub, we were invited to meet some community health workers in the township of Gugulethu, on the outskirts of the city, who provided frontline care during the pandemic. They told us about their sense of duty to help their neighbours, even while they had no access to the vaccine, and described the spirit of solidarity at that time. It was a stark contrast with the cynical attitude of pharma companies, which resisted all collaboration, even as they shattered revenue records. Most of the community health workers are unpaid and we heard how the health system is under deep strain, like so many others around the world. Activists we spoke to made clear the link between this and the extortionate sums South

Africa spends on medicines, not helped by lax patent laws and the predatory pharma companies that take advantage of them to charge eye-watering prices.

The delegation also heard from veterans of the struggle against big pharma control of AIDS drugs, who explained that this disregard for the health of people in the global south is ingrained in the system. Several activists also highlighted how huge funds were mobilised to combat Covid-19 when it hit the global north, while diseases like TB and malaria, which also kill millions of people every year, receive far less attention. It was particularly significant, then, when we were informed that the hub has started work on the design for a new TB vaccine. There is still a long way to go, but with the determination of a growing network of dedicated scientists, a fairer pharma system could be possible.

Tim Bierley is the pharma campaign manager at Global Justice Now.

A life or death battle in the Amazon

As Brazil faces a presidential run-off to prevent deforester-in-chief Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election, The Territory chronicles an Indigenous community’s struggle to defend their land.

Alex Pritz’s compelling feature documentary The Territory provides an immersive on-the-ground look at the tireless fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against the encroaching deforestation brought by farmers and illegal settlers in the Brazilian Amazon.

The film takes audiences deep into the Uru-eu-wau-wau community and provides unprecedented access to the farmers and settlers illegally burning and clearing the protected Indigenous land. Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, the film relies on vérité footage captured over three years as the community risks their lives to set up their own news media team in the hopes of exposing the truth.

The film was released in cinemas in September and is available for local screenings. For details of how to apply to host a screening, including publicity materials and a discussion guide, see: theterritoryimpact.org.

Alex Pritz/Amazon

1. A fire lit by local farmers burns in the Amazon rainforest during the summer of 2019.

2. Neidinha Bandeira, an environmental activist, bathes in a river.

3. A cattle feed lot in southern Rondônia, where beef production accounts for the majority of deforestation. This area was once all rainforest.

4. An invader rides his motorcycle through the rainforest fire blaze.

5. Bitaté Uru-euwau-wau (right) and members of the Jupaú Surveillance team patrol the river by boat.

The UK-India trade deal must be rethought

We, as organisations representing Indian and UK civil society, call on the Indian and UK Governments to rethink the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) currently being negotiated.

We recognise that trade has the potential to bring benefits to both countries. However an FTA between the two countries, as outlined in the UK government’s Strategic Approach report and in the limited statements made by both governments, will fail to serve the interests of large numbers of ordinary people in India and the UK or to align with Sustainable Development Goals.

This approach to our countries’ trading relationship prioritises increased trade at any cost, and compromises the ability of governments to design policy that supports the protection of the environment and tackling climate change, and promotes local businesses, secure livelihoods and access to public services and medicines. We are particularly concerned these negative impacts will be disproportionately borne by women and other already marginalised groups.

The UK government has an explicit goal of signing as many FTAs as possible, without a published strategy outlining how it will ensure these align with its commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and other international agreements. As a result, its current approach to trade fails to properly align with fundamental human and labour rights, and our countries’ shared commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

The ongoing FTA negotiations are being conducted in a non-transparent, antidemocratic way. The Indian and UK governments have offered civil society and

trade unions very limited access to information or opportunity to input into negotiations, particularly in comparison to business groups. Parliamentary input into and scrutiny of final deals will likewise be insufficient. There is no parliamentary ratification process in India, and in the UK parliamentarians are denied a guaranteed and meaningful vote on FTAs.

We are appealing to the governments of both countries to halt negotiations, ensure these urgent concerns are addressed and craft a trade relationship fit for 21st century challenges.

Organisations representing Indian and UK civil society, including Global Justice Now, released this joint statement to coincide with the end of the fifth round of negotiations on the deal.

A UK-India trade deal could hurt small-scale farmers, undercut access to medicines and damage climate action. Civil society groups in both countries are calling for talks to be halted.

© Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street

Then-foreign secretary Liz Truss meets the Indian minister of external affairs.

PRICE WARS: HOW CHAOTIC MARKETS ARE CREATING A CHAOTIC WORLD

Rupert Russell

W&N, 2022

In Price Wars Rupert Russell lays out his theory of how price movements triggered by financial speculation are at the heart of so many crises we’ve faced in recent decades, from the Arab Spring, to economic collapse in Venezuela and ISIS’s brutal rampage through Iraq. Particularly relevant, Russell’s work debunks the dominant view that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the cause of the cost of living crisis. Rather, he argues, price rises empowered Putin to attack his neighbours, just as they’ve empowered the aggressiveness of numerous leaders of oil and gas-rich states.

For Russell, prices are like the butterfly wings in chaos theory, with price rises setting off a seemingly unrelated chain of events which can cause immense suffering around the globe. At times, as in his description of Brexit, he overplays the theory. But Russell’s very readable analysis underlines the overwhelming importance of financial markets in our world, and the urgent need to constrain them.

Nick Dearden

MY FOURTH TIME, WE DROWNED

Sally Hayden

Fourth Estate, 2022

In this shocking investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa, journalist and author Sally Hayden puts the voices of migrants and refugees front and centre. She follows the experiences of those seeking sanctuary, while also surveying the wider picture, from the negligence of NGOs to the economics of the 21stcentury slave trade.

The book tells of an unwinnable system, one so cruel and dysfunctional that it is barely comprehensible. In this game, nobody comes out a winner – not the EU, not the UN, not the politicians. But none lose more than the migrants.

Reviews THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS

It is by no means an easy read and there is no happy ending.

Hayden makes no qualms about placing the reader in a position of abject hopelessness, so effectively communicating the desperation of the people in the book’s pages. It is a vital chronicle of the ongoing migrant crisis and urgent reading for anyone who wishes to understand the moral depravity we find ourselves facing.

Frances Leach

Amitav Ghosh John Murray, 2021

Nutmeg originally only grew in the tiny archipelago of Banda (part of Indonesia today). In 1621, the Dutch East India Company got tired of trying to negotiate with the people who lived there and instead killed and expelled them and took over running the islands as plantations.

Ghosh starts with the story of this all too routine, colonial act of genocide. From these roots he expands into tackling the systemic crises of the present. Fossil fuel, climate, trade, migration, militarism, racism; Ghosh draws out the historical threads he sees connecting it all, always looping back to Banda. Written during lockdown, this is a massive outpouring in a demand

for change and a ‘vitalist’ politics.

Who is allowed to make meaning and who is dismissed as uncivilised, is at the heart of it all for Ghosh. This book seeks to remake both the meaning of our history and how we define the problems that face us now.

Jean Blaylock

All the books reviewed in Ninety-Nine can be ordered via globaljustice.org.uk/books