Equity

On the ground level, basic needs — including nutrition, housing, healthcare, and adequate schooling — are continually denied for billions of people, feeding the cycle of generational poverty. Ultimately, this allows for the perpetuation of discriminatory laws and practices in ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries alike.

All over the world, historical injustices such as slavery and colonization have created cycles of inequality that are spurred on by newer forms of institutional discrimination. These forms of systemic prejudice amplify and perpetuate social, political, and economic inequity globally.

One of the most obvious manifestations of this inequity is the increasing stratification of wealth occurring on both global and national scales. The richest one percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth US$42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world‘s population. The top one percent of households globally own 43 percent of all personal wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own only one percent.

In addition to economic inequalities, which have led to the poverty, homelessness, and malnutrition of billions, much of the world’s population continues to face severe social and political marginalization due to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, caste, and class. Indigenous and rural communities at the intersection of these identities are particularly impacted and endangered. With the increase of neo-liberal policies, the economic and political divide between privileged and marginalized groups has widened, cementing the inequities that have arisen from discrimination and further impeding societal mobility.