To respond to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has committed $1 trillion and as of September 20, 2020 had provided $89 billion worth of financial assistance to countries around the world. Oxfam has reviewed the publicly available IMF COVID-19 loan documents associated with 91 loans to 81 countries, extracting and collating select data from each loan document relevant to spending, accountability, and proposed recovery measures.

Extract from the civil society report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2020. Frontline public service workers continue to receive praise and support for their vital role in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Yet these underfunded public services and brutal working conditions are not inevitable. They are the result of decades of the neo-liberal ideology choices : deliberate erosion of our public services through budget cuts, privatization and understaffing.

Calls for “building back better” by just pushing the reset button will not change the game.We need structural changes in societies and economies that ensure the primacy of human rights, gender justice and sustainability.This is the key message of the 2020 edition of the Spotlight Report on Sustainable Development.

As public authorities seek to provide lockdown and safety measures to beat Covid-19, and are forced to rethink and adapt their policies, public and social housing clearly emerge as an essential part of the solution to beating pandemics and protecting public health. Read here PSI’s new paper “Strong public and social housing services: a key asset in halting global pandemics.”

This report looks at the challenges health and essential workers across the world have faced in doing their jobs in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also flags some broader structural issues in health and social support systems across the world that have exacerbated these challenges and must be urgently addressed.

Realizado por la ISP en alianza con la Fundación NodoXXI, la publicación demuestra cómo la pandemia ha dejado al descubierto el error de años de privatizaciones, desmantelamiento y desfinanciación de los servicios públicos en uno de los países donde el neoliberalismo más ha avanzado en la región, y donde ha posibilitado la subordinación de la vida social a las exigencias del mercado.

These ILO Guidelines encourage governments and Public Emergency Service employers to provide workers with adequate means, tools and resources to be able to respond effectively to emergencies. They can be used by unions to lobby for increased protections for front line workers.

Coronavirus is a deadly threat to frontline public service workers - in particular, our members in the health sector. We rely on them to save countless lives - but for them to be able to do their job, governments across the world must take stronger action now. At this moment, health workers represent about 12% of the infected population globally, and the death toll is unbearable. Illustration by Zoran Svilar

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This document provides evidence to help you make your case for respiratory protection for workers caring for or interacting with suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases. Originally developed by the American Federation of Teachers (with thanks!), updated by PSI for global affiliates.

The core topic of this year’s Oxfam report ‘Public Good or Private Wealth’ is the relationship between public services and economic and gender inequality. It shows the growing gap between rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and fuelling public anger across the globe. It reveals how governments are exacerbating inequality by underfunding public services, such as healthcare and education, on the one hand, while under taxing corporations and the wealthy, and failing to clamp down on tax dodging, on the other. It also finds that women and girls are hardest hit by rising economic inequality.

This report concerns Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in healthcare, known in the UK as the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). It exposes how such PPPs have been an expensive failure in the UK, attracting criticism from government ministers, and yet those same ministers run departments which promote PPPs, including in health, around the world.