[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are this has aroused your interest. This Reader is about how Globalization still ignores legitimate HR claims with impunity. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–Economic thinking must evolve towards a shift where nations rendered poor are to reject (unwelcomed) influence. (Gita Bhatt)
Corporations operate globally. Accountability doesn’t (ESCR-NET)
—It is not corporate capture, stupid! It is corporate governance since it has always been like this: no capture in recent decades. (Adam Moe Feyerskov)
1. There is an unprecedented disconnect between corporate productivity and wages, fueled by record executives’ dividends of $2.1 trillion in 2025. This exposes the accelerating global inequality crisis. It reveals that corporate wealth and CEO salaries are surging, while the purchasing power of the average global worker continues to decline. (“Working for the Rich: The Growing Divide Between Workers and Fat Cats”, Oxfam International and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). … this no news to you, is it?
2. Many of you have probably lived in an apartment building. All it takes is one arrogant, quarrelsome person to shatter the peace of the building. It does not take much to break down communication: all it takes is someone arrogant enough to do so.* Today we live in a world where the arrogance of power has created a similar situation: in this ‘global building’, where there are 192 UN member countries, two or three countries behave with extreme arrogance.** This has caused a profound upheaval together with a crisis of international law. (Roberto Savio)
*: “…We but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’ inventor…” (Macbeth, Act I, scene 7) Here, blinded by ambition, Macbeth was musing over the possibility of committing regicide against his king, Duncan, but worried that others might someday do the same to him. [I find that this quote applies precisely (and frequently) to the cyclical hypocrisy of US foreign policy]. (Fred Spielberg)
**: Stop and think: The one-country-one-vote system in the UN General Assembly deceptively allows countries that do not have a one-citizen-one vote regime to vote.
Globalization is geometric: it has angular problems that are discussed at round tables by a bunch of narrow-minded people who, due to their lack of political perspective, offer obtuse solutions (Albino Gomez)
—Actually, geopolitics is replacing globalization as the world’s governing philosophy.
3. For decades, the global economy rested on the premise that international trade was beneficial despite geopolitical differences. The rules of the multilateral trading system were crafted for a world where governments less frequently used trade to achieve geopolitical goals. That world is now under threat. The rise of self-serving geopolitical interests has fragmented the global economy unraveling decades of integration. The problem is that this turn of geopolitics is at odds with the existing institutional framework that was designed for a different era. If the trading system is to survive, it must adapt to a world where countries do not use trade policy to advance geopolitical objectives. (F+D Journal, IMF) …easier said than done, no?
4. Yes, for long now, economic decisions are increasingly subordinated to geopolitical calculations. So much so, that political and economic relations underpinned by a single hegemon has given way to fierce power-based rivalry and a zero-sum competition where the many have become the losers. This geopolitical rivalry is forcing, particularly countries rendered poor, to rethink the tradeoffs of trade, investment and security. (Gedion Timothewos, Ethiopia’s foreign affairs minister)
Bottom line
5. Three optimistic statements here: (??)
- The Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, resulted in the first major agrarian reform, It used the slogan “la tierra es de quien la trabaja”; it guaranteed workers’ rights, and carried out the first nationalizations of multinational corporations.
- Globalization has democratized precision warfare technology, allowing weaker states to challenge American and/or Russian dominance, ending the era of unipolar stability. (Robert Pape). It is just that Capitalism brings-on war just as a cloud brings on a storm (Jean Jaures, Deputy of the French National Assembly, 1859-1914)
- History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, from the Classical Lowland Maya to the Han Dynasty in China and the Western Roman Empire. Historically, for the citizens of rapacious regimes, collapse often improved their lives, because they were freed from domination, discrimination and human rights violations. (Luke Kemp)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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Postscript/Marginalia
Two groups that fall through the cracks globally: These human rights (HR) gaps must be closed
—Exile is not a place. It is a condition you carry. Globally, displacement is often measured geographically, but for many in diaspora communities, exile persists psychologically long after borders are crossed. Human rights legal and policy frameworks typically focus on material conditions: forced migration, asylum status, access to resources and services, and more. These are essential. But they do not fully account for the ongoing psychological and interpersonal consequences of exile, particularly in contexts defined by prolonged political violence. (Bahareh Sahebi)
–The employment gap no country has closed: The right to work for persons with disabilities is not a social policy aspiration; it is a binding HR obligation recognized by virtually every country in the world. Globally, states must enforce antidiscrimination laws and proactively push employers to recruit, retain, and promote persons with disabilities in the open labor market. Until governments dismantle segregated systems, make reasonable accommodation a daily reality, and ensure that new technologies serve inclusion instead of exclusion, the promise of work-on-an-equal-basis-with-others will remain more powerful in the letter of treaties than in people’s lives. Globally too, women with disabilities have lower employment rates than both men with disabilities and women without disabilities. Moreover, they are more likely to work in informal or unpaid family jobs. Many people with disabilities find employment in sheltered workshops that are specially designed and often presented as ‘protected’ or ‘training’ environments. In 2022, the Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities clarified for the first time that such segregated employment settings for those with special abilities are incompatible with the right to work. They isolate persons with disabilities from the open labor market, channel them toward low-skilled roles, frequently pay below the minimum wage and offer very limited pathways into regular employment. (Lucila Anahí Guerreiro)
Moreover, structural inaccessibility in criminal justice systems around the world violates the rights of persons with disabilities. This is not a question of sympathy. It is a question of equal treatment under the law. The alleged offences vary; the structural disadvantages faced by those charged do not. Inaccessible infrastructure falls disproportionately on accused persons with disabilities. Women with disabilities face greater barriers. Addressing this failure is not an act of leniency. It honors a commitment to the foundational principle that equal charges must merit equal treatment. (Vikas Gupta)