 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. You're with Give the People What They Want, brought to you by People's Dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter, coming to you every week. This is our 134th episode. As usual, laser focused our eyes on the question of world hunger. Every time the United Nations brings out a report on the question of hunger, we are right there. People's Dispatch, Globetrotter, not trying to ever obfuscate the fact that people are getting hungrier and hungrier. Prashant, this report, one in ten, I know that the numbers are obviously not as high in these reports as reality, but the trend line is pretty startling. Right, I mean, I think there are two things. One is that I think, of course, like you said, all said and done, these reports are probably an underestimation. And also the fact that when we talk about something like hunger, these official reports often carry categories. The numbers that I mentioned here, people falling into various categories. So we're not talking about hunger versus a good diet or hunger versus good health, for that matter. We're talking about various levels of hunger which is why the numbers are in that way really staggering as well in their own respects. So I think the latest report, and this report is by, of course, five organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, all of them sort of compiling this report and which says that 691 million and 783 million anywhere between this is the total number of people who are facing hunger. Mind you, this is not the people who have access to a good diet will come to that later. Or don't have access to a good diet will come to that later. And I think two important trends that we need to capture because we're looking at this number like I said between 691 million and 783 million people. And if you take, say, the mid-level number that's around 730 or 720 million, this is still a huge increase from pre-pandemic levels. So over the past few years, you know, we often, people often said that, okay, the pandemic is the reason why things are bad now people are saying the Ukraine war is the reason why, you know, things are a bit bad, et cetera, et cetera. But one thing to notice is that even if the pandemic had not been considered and now this is 2023, we can't really use an excuse anymore. The fact is that we are still massively, far more people are hungry when compared to the pre-pandemic years. And I think the numbers are again, 9.2% of the world's population faces chronic hunger in 2022 as opposed to 7.9% in 2019. And I think this is interesting also to sort of look at in the context, the most important question is that is the problem one of food production itself? And the answer is that clearly it's not because, you know, there is enough food for I think to almost feed the world's population twice or almost. So definitely if close to a billion people of some 730 million people are facing chronic hunger clearly it's not an issue of availability of food or the production of food. It's basically a question of how food is distributed, how the world economy structure itself which gives rise to this crisis. But if you go a bit more into the details there are some other numbers which are almost as shocking as well, which is that if you look at the number of people who do not have access to, say, safe, nutritious and sufficient food that's around nearly 30% of the world's population. So you see that is an incredible number 2.4 billion people facing moderate or severe food insecurity. And that I think is more than enough evidence of the fact that there is definitely a problem and you cannot blame this on the pandemic, you cannot blame this on the war because the report itself says so which is the fact that if the pandemic had not happened, if the you know if the war had not happened we still would not be in a position to meet our goals for 2030 which is to eliminate hunger. This is one of the sustainable development goals that the United Nations had put forward that by 2030 we should eliminate hunger. So even if there was no pandemic even if there was no war, we were nowhere close to meeting the kind of target and I believe even if these two were not there there would still be hundreds of millions of people who were hungry and the report makes it very clear. Of course the report also goes more into the impact of urbanization. It talks about you know the impact of stunting how children and women are especially affected by this crisis all that very much in focus and I think the larger numbers which are really which really make you question what is it about how the world is structured right now in this context also just recently went through the tricontinatal dossier on you know a different development model and I think it stresses some of the very similar set of points it's capitalism itself and the kind of development model it has brought across the world it's accessible for this glaring lack of you know equality among people and the fact that millions and hundreds of millions of people are remaining hungry in 2023 at a time when we are producing enough food to almost feed the world twice over. It's a really important story we're going to keep following this of course but let's move on now to another interesting development in Brussels the organization which represents Latin American Caribbean states is meeting alongside the European Union Zoe I was interested to see human rights watch writes a letter to the heads of governments about Nicaragua saying that there are human rights violations in Nicaragua why is Nicaragua participating it's very interesting I looked at the details on incarceration Nicaragua incarcerates 332 people for 100,000 of population United States incarcerates 164 people for 100,000 population double the incarceration rate I didn't see human rights watch write a report about the United States to the NATO members we're going to come back to the NATO summit what's going on in Brussels I mean you could even say how are any of the European countries having the moral ground to even participate in any international space if we're going to put limits on countries but yes they are meeting Monday and Tuesday in Brussels heads of state from CELAC heads of state from European Union an important bilateral meeting by regional meeting sorry that is the first in eight years quite an interesting moment we're seeing that CELAC which is of course a platform of regional integration of Latin American the Caribbean which for a couple of years had sort of fallen into the background as the organization of American states was attempting to resurrect itself but that has once again proved not possible for the OAS has now kind of just been relegated to this figure of ridicule and distress and CELAC has really emerged as the primary platform for economic cooperation for trade for medical cooperation and all sorts of pressing discussions within Latin American the Caribbean and it is the primary partner in these sort of bi-regional dialogues and so they're going to Brussels Monday and Tuesday but this meeting has not been without its difficulties and so in this week leading up to the summit several Latin American authorities and civil society organizations have been raising the alarms about the attitude of the European Union regarding the summit it would appear that Europe is still trapped in this sort of colonial mentality where it thinks that it can dictate who comes to the table what they discuss and what sort of positions they're going to take and so specifically with the war in Ukraine the European Union wanted to invite Glomir Zelensky to participate in the summit despite the fact that the countries of Latin American the Caribbean have really maintained the majority of them a position of neutrality a position of non-involvement of non-alignment of refusing to send weapons of refusing to kind of take this strong position that EU and the US and North American countries have taken they also the EU also in their draft declaration that was circulated to CELAC before in this week it also included a clause that sharply condemned Russia that expressed support behind Ukraine this was also rejected by Latin American leaders who again have had this position of non-alignment and finally of course the EU has continued to attack countries including Nicaragua including Venezuela and they even passed a resolution in the European Parliament days of course in an attempt to intimidate against Cuba saying that Cuba was a violator of human rights and that Diaz Kenneth who is currently in Europe who traveled to Europe for the summit should be sanctioned by the EU so these are clear acts of I mean in some ways the resolution against Cuba is an act of intimidation they also said that authoritarian leaders should not participate in the CELAC EU summit nevertheless Latin American leaders are determined to make this summit a success the cooperation between these two regions is crucial especially in the area of development and especially in the area of the environment where Latin America of course is a region where many different European countries different companies operate where they extract and exploit the natural resources of Latin America as well so it's very important that there is dialogue between these two regions that they can come to agreements that they can engage in a space that's of equal respect and I think that's really what the Latin American leaders have called for well in Brussels you had this place called the NATO headquarters down the road from where CELAC and the European Union will be meeting just down the road in Brussels in Belgium this time the NATO summit was not held in Brussels it was the continent it was held in Lithuania in Vilnius on the 11th and 12th of July now that's interesting Lithuania is one of the first countries that was in the USSR to join NATO it joined NATO in 2004 Lithuania is also interesting because prior to the Russian entry beyond the Donbas line into Ukraine on the 24th of February Lithuania was already supplying weapons to Ukraine it has a very long history of links to this Ukrainian government and there was some expectation from Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine that at this NATO meeting in Vilnius Lithuania Ukraine would be given as it were a clear path into NATO membership this issue of NATO membership is interesting neither the United States nor Germany were happy to allow a full scale entry of Ukraine into NATO at the Vilnius summit principally because they worried that this would immediately trigger Article 5 of the Washington Treaty which set up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 Article 5 of the Washington Treaty says that if one member of a NATO state is attacked then others must respond in kind it's a collective quote-unquote defense agreement that was the articulated hesitancy coming from Washington and from Berlin well okay but on the other hand of the 28 countries that have been arming Ukraine 25 of them are NATO countries and in fact NATO has been in the lead here providing not only diplomatic support to the Ukrainian government but also military assistance and aid of different kinds now Ukrainian forces are training in many NATO countries often at bases which are used by NATO so it's very difficult for NATO to say that Ukraine has not been to some extent brought in but this hesitancy by the United States and by Germany did disappoint Mr. Zelinsky who at a public rally in Vilnius directly and frontally welcomed these countries for not absorbing Ukraine into NATO immediately there is a suggestion in Washington that Mr. Zelinsky is being a little petulant with some of his comments after all NATO is doing everything it possibly can and in fact a close reading of the Vilnius communicate demonstrates that effectively the United States and Germany have said that Ukraine is going to enter NATO with an inevitability it's simply a matter of having the hostilities either suspended with some sort of ceasefire or the end of this conflict after which NATO will absorb Ukraine I think that was very clear in the Vilnius statement equally interesting was the situation of Sweden Sweden had applied to join NATO Swedish membership had been blocked by Turkey and Hungary well Turkey said that the problem with Sweden is that Sweden is a refuge for anti-Turkish Kurdish militants and others and also that Sweden allows people to go off and burn the Quran in public well the Swedes have tightened up some of their laws to try to placate Mr. Erdogan and as well Sweden deported some of the anti-Turkish radicals who are in Sweden this was a step also Sweden said that it would help Turkey drive the agenda to bring Turkey into the European Union you got to imagine that Mr. Erdogan a real bizarre politician was able to get a lot of concessions for withdrawing Turkey's veto on allowing Sweden to enter NATO's looks now that with a vote in the Turkish parliament it looks now that the road for Sweden's entry is pretty much guaranteed interesting the first section of the Vilnius communique talked about NATO as a defensive alliance this is a interesting position that NATO has taken since 1949 talked about collective defence and so on on the other hand article 5 and its usage demonstrates that it's really difficult to think of it as a strictly defensive alliance firstly NATO spends vastly more than half the world's military budget and secondly as NATO pledges to go up to 2% of national budgets for defence as they go up to that threshold the NATO countries are going to be about 75 to 80% of world military spending it's very hard to see that as defensive its own history entering into Yugoslavia to destroy that country in 1999 entering to Afghanistan in 2003 and the destruction of Libya in 2011 that history itself does not really allow NATO to sit back and say very defensive alliance looks pretty aggressive to me as far as things go but we shall see this was the NATO summit it's an annual summit this summit seemed to be the most clear return by NATO to the cold war agenda the very clearest return to the cold war there is no hesitancy any longer you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch that's Zoe and Prashant the co-editors of People's Dispatch I'm Vijay from Globetrotter happy to be with you this week as every week Prashant we're going to go back to Kenya you know it's interesting People's Dispatch one of the few places to give global coverage to countries like Kenya and you just don't seem to want to withdraw from that position of covering important countries in the global south in Kenya quite momentous developments in a few hours we'll have a very detailed copy that lists what's happened here but also over the past few months been regularly covering the situation in Kenya Kenyan President William Ruto recently gained quite a bit of in western circles not right in other circles a lot of interest by his very strong comments against the global financial order but actually if you look at some of his performance ever since coming to power he's pretty much accepted the playbook of course one can argue that he is very little choice but he's accepted the playbook of the IMF and implemented policies which pretty much reflect that and over the past 10 days or so we have seen massive protests and unhappiness in Kenya this is building up for months by the way and a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ruto has sort of while he came to power last year winning an election which is of course as often is the case in Kenya quite controversial but nonetheless he came to power with a very pro pro agenda talking about uplifting the poor but the policies he's sort of he brought in as part of his finance package involved actually substantially raising costs for the poor in the name of what do you call generating revenue for the government and I think one of the most problematic aspects of the for many Kenyans is the fact that there was a proposal to double the value added taxes on fuel petroleum products which would basically mean that there would be a huge hit on the finances of ordinary Kenyans and then there was also this aspect of say cutting from people's salary in the name of adding to a housing fund which the communist party of Kenya many other force on the left said that would actually not benefit the people although it is ostensibly supposed to benefit the people so this has been in the news for many many months now and they have been massive protests and unhappiness about it the unions have taken a very strong stand towards it this is of course taking place at a time when sorry this is of course taking place at a time when you know the cost of living in Kenya is very high as a result of various factors Kenya is dealing with a huge crisis of debt and you know I think up to 60% of its GDP that's the rate in which it's debt lies and in the midst of all this we have this proposal which is you know what you would call a very classic neoliberal proposal so to speak right so the supreme court actually overturned or decided against this finance will operate as fast and to celebrate as a victory for the people but then president decided to implement those policies anyway which is what sparked the massive amount of protests and these protests have been quite deadly the official claims themselves are that six people have been killed and certain reports saying that it could be as many as 12 or 15 people as well and there a lot of reports of even children facing tear gas for instance massive attacks on hundreds of arrests taking place so Kenya going definitely through a very difficult situation at this point of time and at the core of it I think is a situation which many countries are facing in the global south which is that there is a huge restriction on how they can raise revenues and most of these countries are forced by bodies like international monetary fund to actually increase taxes in various ways or privatize public services in order to raise revenues for even basic functioning and there is such a huge focus on this kind of raising revenue that ultimately it is actually the people who suffer the most whereas there is actually very little provision for say in the case of Kenya it might be limited to space but there is very little provision for say imposing taxes on the rich or other forms of say obtaining credit as well and I think this is a larger question which the global community has to see which is what multilateral financial institutions have to see we know there is a BRICS meeting coming up in August does this give the possibility of countries like Kenya for instance benefitting from loans which do not come with so many conditionalities all these are of course larger and long-term questions but right now very a difficult situation on the streets of Kenya Streets of Kenya elections IMF all these things a soup that you have been covering over the past couple of years same in Guatemala you know Zoe it is hard to unravel what is going on there election results first round validated party thrown out what is going on it is a bit of a tangled web and I think that is exactly what they are trying to do is take a lot of different moves make a lot of decisions that kind of obscure what is happening obscure this democratic process and we have been covering the Guatemala electoral process now for the past several weeks since it took place on June 25 I will try to summarize it in a few words so it does not get lost people go to the polls on June 25 they are not able to vote for all of the candidates because some of the candidates were already disqualified by the courts in Guatemala which had been previously condemned they were disqualified on technicalities despite being heavily favored in the opinion polls so people go to the polls on June 25 the initial results indicate that Sandra Torres the former first lady would go to the second round and it is important to state that these elections saw pretty low participation and many many blank ballots cast so she only received for example 15% and Bernardo around 11% so these initial results indicate that they will be going to the second round days later right wing parties that did not make it to the second round lodge a formal complaint and say that there was fraud and that there needs to be a recount and the official results which had not been released yet should be suspended so the court says we are going to suspend the release of these results and we are going to do a bit of a recount and assess these complaints this process takes place and Wednesday, July 12 the supreme electoral court releases the final results affirming that Sandra Torres and Bernardo Arevalo are going to the second round of elections on August 20 an hour later a different court in Guatemala suspends the semiya party says that it suspends the legal character of this party saying that when they were collecting signatures for these elections about 5000 of them were done allegedly illegally however according to the Guatemalan constitution we are going to suspend the legal representative of one of the parties that is actively participating in these elections so the courts are at sort of this impasse where you have the electoral court saying that this party is going to the second round you have another court, the constitutional court saying that the semiya party is suspended and essentially you have people taking to the streets to say this process, these elections have already been undermined there is already a process of undermining the democratic participation of all the different parties and now that we voted they are once again trying to undermine the vote and trying to undermine the full participation of parties that do not pertain to this traditional ruling class in Guatemala the semiya party is a sort of center left party anti-corruption a little more progressive than the other parties in the traditional politics and specifically has spoken out very strongly against the previous governments that have dismantled the corruption investigations have dismantled anti-corruption laws this is one of their big platforms of semiya so right now you have a situation where there is sort of this inter-institutional conflict Bernardo Arrivalo and semiya have gone on the offensive they said this is an attack on democracy this is an attack on all people in Guatemala they have large legal complaints with different courts in Guatemala they say they are going to participate in the second round and will defend the vote of the people so it is a developing situation yesterday people were on the streets rallying, accompanying semiya party there has been a lot of different statements coming from embassies, coming from international human rights organizations saying that democracy is under attack in Guatemala will definitely be following this story as I said every hour it is a new development they have essentially contested the suspension of the party on constitutional grounds so we will see how that turns out but most likely we are going to see a second round August 20 between a semiya and one and anything besides that will be a serious setback in what has already taken place in this sort of convoluted electoral process you will be watching that there has been so much oil prices a few months ago the international monetary funds head of the Arab world made a statement saying that if oil prices don't go about 80 dollars a barrel there is going to be a problem for Saudi Arabia's exchequer Saudi Arabia had been squeezed by its war in Yemen Saudi Arabia had been squeezed by major infrastructural projects such as NIMO the Red Sea Islands project and the IMF said look declining oil prices are simply not going to assist Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia can't pump its way out of this crisis just a quick reminder to people in 2012 oil prices were well above $100 a barrel $111.63 was where it had sat then it plummeted to $43 a barrel in 2016 that decline was precipitous decline is what moved Saudi Arabia to welcome Russia into a new process called OPEC Plus where they would sit around the OPEC countries and countries like Russia which had emerged as a major energy supplier to a lot of the world for them to basically coordinate prices and volumes of oil OPEC Plus now has about 40% of the world's energy providers natural gas inside this grouping it's a very considerable grouping but by no means has the creation of OPEC Plus been easy over the course of the period since 2016 the Saudis and the Russians in particular have been really at each other's throats around volume cuts and who is selling to whom one of the big places of contest is Russia's sales to India and China now Russia is the largest seller of energy to Russia to India and Russia is emerging as the largest seller of energy to China this has been a real dent for the Saudis the Saudis have used the approach of cutting back on the volumes of barrels produced of oil per month by about a million barrels of oil a month they're bringing this down even further they believe that cutting volume is going to help prices except of course that the Russians in this period since the war have been not only upping their energy sales to countries like India and China but also offering discounted prices this is creating a real tension between Russia and Saudi Arabia it's important to focus a little bit on that tension however and by the way it's because of OPEC Plus that in 2022 oil prices were able to rise above $100 a barrel now they're again inching upwards as northern countries enter deeply into their summer of oil the United States have been buying oil in the spring to fill up their reserves in order for all the people in the summertime who drive to go visit family and friends and so on oil price you know often goes up at this time so the United States had basically filled their reserves now prices above $80 a barrel more coordination between Russia and Saudi Arabia at the last OPEC Plus meeting it would be interesting to see what happens as Russia continues to be a dominant seller of energy to India and China and how Saudi Arabia is going to react to this one reason on the table why Saudi Arabia accepted the deal with Iran brokered by China is that Saudi Arabia is eager to continue to be one of the largest energy sellers to China we shall see this is a tangled web between politics and economics can't look at one without the other you've been with give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch that's Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globetrotter very happy to be with you see you next week