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 Annual Conference 2026 (join us as a presenter or participant)
Journal ASAP Special Issue Indian Perspectives on Environmental Justice, completed.
Journal ASAP Special Issue Toward Food Security in Africa, completed.
ASAP Awards, next deadline is 31 August 2026.
ASAP Fellowship Program, 2026 deadline has passed.
Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) with latest newsletter
Ambedkar Grants for Advancing Poverty Eradication (AGAPE), rolling deadline.
Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition | Illicit Financial Flows, deadline 31 August 2026.
Nelson Mandela Essay Prize Competition for young African scholars, 2026 deadline has passed.
A globally universal school meals program
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 Ecological Impact Fund (EIF) initiative
The Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations with a brief video explainer
The Individual Deprivation Measure (IDM)
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Save the date: 5-8 November 2026, for the next Yale Global Justice conference!
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Second Nelson Mandela Essay Prize Competition for Young African Scholars 2026
Administered jointly with Academics Stand Against Poverty, the University of Zambia, and the University of Lusaka, this call has produced 574 qualifying essays from 30 African countries.
Two essays won First Prize and $2000 each: Shapil Blessings Ngutwa (Malawi) and Yusra Patel (Mauritius) for their essay “Closing the Governance Gap: A Grassroots Climate Resilience Pathway for Africa’s Climate Justice”; and Wakjira Tesfaye (Ethiopia) for his essay “The Maputo Fiscal Safeguard and Women’s Economic Rights in African Fiscal Governance.”
Two essays won Second Prize and $1000 each: Dr. Abigail Afful (Ghana) for her essay “When the Oxygen Runs Out: Emergency Medical Systems Failure in Africa and the Case for Global Governance Reform”; and Jeremiah Thoronka (Sierra Leone) for his essay “Maintenance Justice as Climate Justice: Why Africa Should Lead a Global Governance Agenda for Service Continuity.”
Third Prize and $700 were won by Dr. Papa Kwasi Opare (Ghana) for his essay “The Tripartite Transition Compact: Reclaiming State Responsibility for Children with Disabilities in Ghana and Africa.”
Revised in light to readers’ comments, these five essays will appear in a Special Issue of the Journal Academics Stand Against Poverty. Three other outstanding essays have also been invited to join this Special Issue. They are: “Who Owns the Credit? Article 6.4 Legal Framework as Adaptation for African States and Small Island Developing States” by Reeshabh Shayan Tupsee (Mauritius); “The Unfinished Decolonization: African Sovereignty in the Digital Governance of Critical Minerals” by Harrison Eze (Nigeria); and “The New Mineral: Data Colonialism, Artificial Intelligence, and Africa’s Struggle for Digital Self-Determination” by Loveson Anselm-Ahman (Nigeria).
Hundreds of young African scholars have honored Nelson Mandela with their work on how the people of Africa can overcome its headwinds and reach their full potential. Two dozen readers have read their essays and sent comments to all semifinalists. Rohan Goyal has volunteered his time to do most of the data processing involved, including the statistics below. This has been a tremendous learning experience for all involved. We much look forward to celebrating the winners on 22-23 October 2026 in Cape Town.
Analytics:
|
Measure |
Value |
|---|---|
|
Qualifying Essays |
574 |
|
Total words |
3,084,766 |
|
Mean words per essay |
5,374 |
|
Median words per essay |
5,271 |
|
Range |
487 – 16,195 |
Main Themes (many essays addressed two or more)
|
Theme |
Essays |
Share of essays |
|---|---|---|
|
Governance (democratic participation, accountability, corruption, public administration, institutional design) |
520 |
90.6% |
|
Economic inclusion (poverty, livelihoods, employment, entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and social protection) |
464 |
80.8% |
|
Digital and AI (digital access, data rights, technology transfer, digital sovereignty) |
368 |
64.1% |
|
Education (learning access, curricula, assessment, skills, universities, civic education) |
332 |
57.8% |
|
Global economy (international trade, debt, taxation, intellectual property, reform of global institutions) |
250 |
43.6% |
|
Gender (gender inequalities, women’s economic participation, care work, gender-based violence) |
222 |
38.7% |
|
Health (healthcare access, medicines, public health and health systems) |
206 |
35.9% |
|
Climate and environment (climate adaptation, mitigation, biodiversity, pollution, waste, water, environmental justice) |
185 |
32.2% |
|
Energy and infrastructure (energy access, transport, housing, sanitation, maintenance of physical infrastructure) |
169 |
29.4% |
|
Agriculture and food (farming, food security, nutrition, land rights, agricultural value chains) |
134 |
23.3% |
|
Peace and migration (conflict, peacebuilding, security, displacement, trafficking, statelessness) |
114 |
19.9% |
|
Social inclusion (disability, minority exclusion, child protection, equal rights). |
85 |
14.8% |
|
Other (substantive themes beyond above-listed categories) |
8 |
1.4% |
Reform proposals
4,944 proposals extracted into 15 families. Mean 8.6 per essay.
|
Reform family |
Essays |
Share of essays |
|---|---|---|
|
Accountability (introduce transparency, anti-corruption, participatory monitoring, oversight, enforceable obligations) |
408 |
71.1% |
|
Education and skills (change educational access, curricula, assessment, vocational training, or civic education) |
365 |
63.6% |
|
Digital rights (establish data sovereignty, privacy, AI safeguards, open standards, or public digital infrastructure) |
309 |
53.8% |
|
Regional cooperation (establish regional coordination, pooled procurement, shared standards, or joint African institutions) |
294 |
51.2% |
|
Public services (expand or redesign delivery, staffing, and equitable access to public services) |
285 |
49.7% |
|
Finance access (expand fair credit, cooperative finance, enterprise funding, or financial access) |
252 |
43.9% |
|
Community power (transfer decision-making, ownership, or resources to communities, cooperatives or local governments) |
223 |
38.9% |
|
Local production (build local manufacturing, research, technology transfer, or domestic value chains) |
221 |
38.5% |
|
Debt, tax, and finance (reform debt, taxation, austerity, international financial institutions, or climate-finance rules) |
167 |
29.1% |
|
Climate resilience (adopt adaptation, conservation, clean energy, circular economy, or resilient infrastructure measures) |
155 |
27.0% |
|
Gender rights (introduce gender-responsive budgets, care support, gender protections, or women’s representation) |
145 |
25.3% |
|
IP and trade rules (reform patents, licensing, trade agreements, or market-access rules) |
122 |
21.3% |
|
Social protection (provide income support, insurance, safety nets, or targeted protections for excluded groups) |
74 |
12.9% |
|
Peace and legal status (strengthen peace institutions, conflict prevention, migration protections, or legal identity) |
62 |
10.8% |
|
Other (a proposed reform outside the above families) |
149 |
26.0% |
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The Ecological Impact Fund
An extended argument for this proposal won a GBP 20,000 policy innovation prize from the London-based Office of Home Economics. The proposal has also been presented in India and Germany as well as in the run-up to this year’s deliberations at the COP (Brazil) and the G20 (South Africa). See also the backgrounder “Ecological Degradation” and the comprehensive project page.
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A Globally Universal School Meals Program
Wherever healthy food is lacking, each child should have a full, healthy meal, locally sourced, on every school day. Any lower-income country willing to initiate, enhance, or expand a domestic school meals scheme should receive need-based financial support funded by capacity-based contributions from higher-income countries. With advocacy in India, Germany, and internationally, we are pushing this proposal at the G20 and elsewhere. If all OECD countries contributed, the program would cost them about $20 per citizen per year or 5 cents per day. China’s contribution would lower this cost. The program would substantially improve the abysmal record of the Sustainable Development Goals: by eradicating poverty (goal 1) and hunger (goal 2), by promoting health (goal 3), education (goal 4) and access to decent work (goal 8), it would reduce social and economic inequalities (goal 10), promote responsible consumption and production (goal 12), and create fairer, more inclusive societies (goal 16) through an international partnership (goal 17) in which experiences are shared and reliable needs-based support is available to all lower-income countries to enable and incentivize their participation.
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Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition
Administered jointly with Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty, the 2025 twelfth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition has produced four winning essays:
First Prize ($3,000). Ekoja Solomon: “Deep Dive into Livestock Rustling: The Improvised Oil Well Fueling Under-Development, Animal Abuse and Terrorism in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin.”
Second Prize ($2,500). Aremu Ololade Mustafa: “Old Ghost, New Shadows: Resource Curse Dynamics and the Growing Illicit Flows in Africa’s Carbon Market.”
Second Prize ($2,500). Wasima Khan: “Ancient Riches, Modern Crimes: Illicit Financial Flows in Today’s Global Art Market.”
Honorable mention. God’sWill Dickson: “A Penny for One’s Thoughts About the Future: Decentralized Prediction Markets and its Architectural Risks of Illicit Financial Flows.”
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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/