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    Academics Stand Against Poverty: mobilizing the resources and capabilities of academics to accelerate the end of poverty.

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    FemPov: In search of a just and gender-sensitive measure of poverty.

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    The Health Impact Fund: promoting pharmaceutical and access to medicines, across all income levels.

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    Respect for human rights demands greater financial transparency.

WELCOME

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Governing AI for the Good of Humanity - 24-27 October 

Our hybrid (https://yale.zoom.us/j/3713192937Annual 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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GJP Youtube Channel

ASAP Youtube Channel

Journal ASAP

Journal ASAP Special Issue Toward Food Security in Africa completed.

Journal ASAP Awards

ASAP Fellowship Program

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)

Ecological Impact Fund (EIF)

The Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations

The Individual Deprivation Measure (IDM)

Thomas Pogge

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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.”

Congratulations to all winners, and a big thank-you to the jurors! Video presentations of the prize-winning work will be shown on 24 October at the GJP’s annual conference. These presentations will then also be posted on the GJP Youtube Channel. The essays, including Nater Akpen’s, are scheduled for publication in Journal ASAP in 2025. 
 
The Twelfth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition is announced here.
 

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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.

The AU can demand and achieve justice for Africans like no one else can. This opportunity comes with a great responsibility. Foreign scholars, practitioners, politicians, and citizens can and should lend support. But Africans must lead this effort to end exploitation of Africans through odious debts, kleptocrats, illicit capital outflows, tax avoidance, arms sales, brain drain, patent monopoly rents, uncompensated ecological destruction, and inequitable natural resource sales. Far too long have Africa’s impoverished been struggling, and waiting in vain, for basic justice!
 
An extended version of this comment is at https://www.journalasap.org/index.php/asap/article/view/27.
 

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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/

 

Yale’s Global Justice Program collaborated with the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (JENA) and Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) to organize a webinar on African food security. Co-organizer and panelist Kevin Okoth Ouko of JENA produced a detailed report.

With Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty, the Global Justice Program has announced three coequal winners of the Ninth Annual Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition of 2022. In alphabetical order, they are Savictor Sobechi Evan-Ibe for his essay Bombing, Billing, and Cash-Out

A Human-Centered Approach to Health Innovations: Reconciling Intellectual Property with Human Rights * Workshop Agenda * October 29, 2022 9:00-9:15         Thomas Pogge and Peter Yu: Introductory Remarks 9:15-9:55         Joshua D. Sarnoff, Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law: Duties