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Governing AI for the Good of Humanity - 24-27 October
Our hybrid (https://yale.zoom.us/j/3713192937) Annual Yale Global Justice Program Conference opens on Thursday (24th) with the awarding of the Eleventh Amartya Sen Essay Prizes. Its main theme, Governing AI for the Good of Humanity, will be featured throughout the first three days, and especially highlighted on Friday at 11:30am by Yale Poynter Fellow Jennifer Strong., who has very kindly agreed to be with us through most of the conference as a moderator, discussant, and participant. The full detailed program can be found HERE. Student posters were presented at the conference by Jannat Butt & Sana Quadri, by Lily Philipczak, by Elizabeth Connelly & Jannat Butt, by Ryan Hagerman, and by Marcus Opperman, Cameron Morosky, Daniel Velek, Noah Sussal, Tristen Marache, & Aurelien Buisine.
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Led by Professor Thomas Pogge, the Global Justice Program at Yale is an interdisciplinary group that works on assessment and reform of global institutional arrangements. For more information about the Program, people working in and affiliated with it, and the Projects that our fellows and affiliates are engaged in, please use the links above and below.
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Journal ASAP Special Issue Toward Food Security in Africa completed.
Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) with latest newsletter
Ambedkar Grants for Advancing Poverty Eradication (AGAPE)
Illicit Financial Flows | Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition
Pro-Poor Mountain Tourism anthology (Routledge)
A Human-Centered Approach to Health Innovations (Cambridge U.P.)
Incentives for Global Health (IGH) | Health Impact Fund (HIF)
The Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations
The Individual Deprivation Measure (IDM)
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Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition
Administered jointly with Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty, this year’s eleventh Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition has produced three equal-ranked winners of USD 2666.67 each. In alphabetical order:
Wisdom Eissien for his essay titled “Digital Shadows in Illicit Financial Flows: Unraveling Nigeria’s Cryptocurrency Paradox and Illuminating Pathways to Financial Integrity.”
Maunga Mulomba for her essay named “Logging in: Dismantling the Dark Web of Africa’s Timber Industry.”
Thant Thura Zan & Soe Thaw Tar Kyaw Min for their essay entitled “From Casinos to Criminal Networks: the Illicit Financial Flows of Southeast Asia’s Online Fraud Schemes with a Focus on Myanmar.”
Exceptionally, the jury also decided to recognize with honorable mention a fourth strong essay composed by Nater Akpen and entitled “The Biographical, Anatomical, Economic and Legal Aspects of Illict Organ Trade.”
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A Brief Comment on COP28
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Awards Nominations Open (Deadline 31 July 2025)
The Journal ASAP, in partnership with Academics Stand Against Poverty and the Yale University Global Justice Program, is conferring three annual awards for scholarly works on poverty. Nominations for books published in 2024 are now open. The deadline for nominations is July 31, 2025.
An ASAP Lifetime Achievement Award for constructive work related to poverty.
An ASAP Book of the Year Award for the best book on a poverty-related subject, published in 2024 and written by a single author or group of authors.
An ASAP Book of the Year Award for the best collection of poverty-related essays by different authors published in 2024.
Eligible work may contribute to the definition, description, explanation, assessment or eradication of poverty and attend to any of the special challenges poor people face in regard to nutrition, water, shelter, health and health care, sanitation, clothing and personal care, energy, education, social and political participation and respect, physical safety, family planning, environmental degradations and hazards, working conditions in employment and at home, navigating governmental agencies and the legal system, banking and credit, travel and transportation, and communications.
To send a nomination or for any questions or comments, contact Michal Apollo at editor@journalasap.org
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Including the African Union in the enlarged G21
We have worked for eight months within the T20 toward this enlargement of G20 to G21—alongside Doris Schroeder, Jeffrey Sachs, Peter Singer and especially Yale Global Justice Fellow Sachin Chaturvedi who, as Director General of RIS (a think tank within India’s Ministry of External Affairs) plays a key role in India’s chairing of the G20 and T20 proceedings.
G21 membership is a great opportunity for Africa and the African Union (AU). But this opportunity will be realized only insofar as Africa can overcome its key weakness of disunity, can come to present the needs and interests of Africans with one strong and united voice. G21 membership provides a powerful incentive in this direction; it is a chance to transform the AU as much as it is a chance to transform the G20.
Africans are most affected by global warming and by the grave injustices in the world economy and global governance. In 2015, the world’s governments announced the Sustainable Development Goals — with principal goals #1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere and #2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. At that time, 545 million Africans were counted as food-insecure. Since then, this number has risen every single year, reaching 868 million in 2022, a 59% increase. If this trend persists, we will have more than a billion food-insecure Africans in 2030 rather than zero as solemnly promised. Every one child going hungry despite her parents’ best efforts shames us all.
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Transforming the United Nations
A nation is much more than its government. So the United Nations should be more than a negotiation platform for governments. We propose that the UN General Assembly—in coordination with the UN’s upcoming 2024 ‘Summit of the Future’—create a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) and the instrument of a UN World Citizens’ Initiative. The UNPA would allow elected representatives of UN member states to deliberate on and be involved in UN affairs. While considering the concerns of their local constituencies and giving them a voice at the UN, these representatives should be called upon to promote the interests of humanity rather than those of any particular nation or community. To encourage this mindset, the UNPA’s work should be based politically and procedurally on transnational groups established by its members according to shared viewpoints. This would transcend and complement the intergovernmental character of other UN bodies based on geopolitical regional groupings. The instrument of a UN World Citizens’ Initiative would provide individuals with a formal mechanism to influence, if certain conditions are met, the agenda and decision-making of the UNGA, the UN Security Council and indeed a UNPA (if established). For details, see https://www.orfonline.org/research/enhancing-the-legitimacy-of-multilateralism-two-innovative-proposals-for-the-un/
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The Ubuntu Health Impact Fund Pilot
Massive reductions in the global disease burden are possible by better aligning the rewards for developing and delivering pharmaceuticals with their impact on health. It is for this purpose that we have proposed the establishment of a Health Impact Fund that would give pharmaceutical innovators the option to exchange some of their monopoly privileges for impact rewards proportionate to the health gains achieved through their innovations. This approach can be tested and refined through a pilot in Africa which would demonstrate the feasibility of health impact assessments, the willingness of pharmaceutical firms to be paid for performance, and the cost-effectiveness of the impact fund approach. This proposed Ubuntu Health Impact Fund (UHIF) pilot would reward pre-selected pharmaceutical firms that are willing to inaugurate the manufacture of a specific pharmaceutical in Africa and to sell it in a self-chosen African region at or below the globally lowest commercial price for this product. The UHIF would reward such efforts by dividing a fixed pool of reward money among the participating firms according to the health gains generated through their respective products in their target areas over a three-year period. Here, health benefits would include externalities such as third-party health benefits to persons whose risk of infection is reduced. For details see https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-ubuntu-health-impact-fund/