The Relevance of the CRPD and the Marrakesh Treaty to the Global South’s Book Famine

Screen Readers ◽

Digital Format ◽

Global North ◽

Marrakesh Treaty

Coupled with the expansion of low-cost screen readers, digital format e-books have made worldwide reading equality an achievable dream. Nevertheless, copyright laws, industry practices, and lack of political will have resulted in a book famine that prevents persons with print disabilities across the globe from reading. The book famine is serious in the Global North, and even more critical in the Global South. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in combination with the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty), have transformed international law so that the print disabled have equal rights to access books and attendant enabling implementation schemes. But will the human right to reading quality manifest in practice, especially in the resource-challenged Global South? This chapter analyzes the new sharing model and reflects on its potential impact.

Critical Thinking on Disability and Development in the Global South

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190093167.013.9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shaun Grech

Keyword(s):

International Development ◽

Research Policy ◽

Global South ◽

Critical Discussion ◽

Inclusive Development ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Emerging Issues ◽

Global North ◽

Development Goals

The need to focus on disability in the Global South as an academic and practice endeavor has garnered some support in recent years, often backed by frequent references to a disability and poverty relationship, and a consequent need to link disability and international development. Indeed, calls for disability mainstreaming, disability targeting, and emerging discourse on disability-inclusive development (DID) have stepped up, accompanied by policy developments and declarations such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the sustainable development goals (SDGS). Despite these shifts, disability remains marginalized in development research, policy, and programs. Overall, there is a lack of critical discussion on “disability and development,” and difficult questions, including those regarding the implications of development for disabled people, are often forsaken in favor of an approach that seeks to simplify and generalize. The result is that accounts on disability and development are not only partial and fragmented but also neocolonizing. Inspired by critical disability studies and decolonial theory, this chapter reflects critically on some of these concerns, addressing emerging issues that arise when Global North disability discourse and “development” confront complex and dynamic heterogeneous Southern spaces and disability.

Accessible Technology and the Developing World

10.1093/oso/9780198846413.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Developing World ◽

The United States ◽

Global South ◽

Information And Communications Technology ◽

Design Development ◽

Non Governmental Organizations ◽

The World ◽

Most research on information and communications technology (ICT) accessibility and innovation for persons with disabilities, whether in the fields of law, tech, or development, has focused on developed regions (“Global North”) rather than developing parts of the world (“Global South”). The goal of this book is to increase awareness of ICT accessibility in developing areas, under three common themes. First, innovations created in developing states often get little attention, even though they are frequently less resource-intensive, and therefore more sustainable, than corresponding Global North solutions. Second, when Global South countries evolve their technology infrastructures (as many are doing now), it is important to avoid barriers to equal access for people with disabilities. Third, Global North design, development, and implementation techniques often will not transfer well to the Global South, and should not be applied without thought. Three international legal and policy initiatives ensuring accessibility and equal availability of ICT in developing areas are discussed: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, and the Sustainable Development Goals. This book brings together a unique combination of authors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (technology, law, development, and education), from non-governmental organizations that are part of the public zeitgeist (the World Wide Web Consortium and Benetech), significant United Nations entities (the World Bank and G3ict), universities in the developing world (Pakistan and Uganda) and the developed world (the United States and Norway), and Global North industrial labs innovating in the Global South (Microsoft Research, India), among others.

Who Benefits from Market-Based Carbon Mitigation?

Perspectives on Global Development and Technology ◽

10.1163/156914911x610385 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 10 (3-4) ◽

pp. 406-428

Author(s):

Jeremiah Bohr ◽

Brian Dill

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Emissions Trading ◽

Sustainable Development Goals ◽

Low Cost ◽

Global South ◽

Investment Climate ◽

Carbon Mitigation ◽

Developing Nation ◽

Global North ◽

Development Goals

Abstract As world leaders increasingly recognize the dual imperatives of mitigating carbon emissions and ensuring economic growth, emissions trading schemes have become popular policy options to pursue sustainable development goals. As the foremost program of sustainable development to date, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has held out hope that low-cost abatement in the global North could be achieved by channeling investments to the global South, creating a win-win situation of both mitigation and economic development. Unfortunately, the results of the CDM have shown an asymmetrical distribution of benefits in the global South despite contrary objectives. This paper argues that the investment climate promoted by the CDM excludes many developing nation markets from participation, thereby limiting one of the key benefits promised by CDM proponents. This is partly because the CDM encourages investors to seek projects that are doubly profitable, ones that demonstrate the potential to generate a profit independent of emissions credits, placing many nations at a structural disadvantage, as they are deemed too risky for sustainable development investment.

Disability Discourse in South Asia and Global Disability Governance

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies ◽

10.15353/cjds.v5i4.314 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 25 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Hari KC

Keyword(s):

South Asia ◽

Disability Studies ◽

Medical Model ◽

Global South ◽

Civil Society Organizations ◽

Social Model ◽

Human Beings ◽

The Social ◽

Disability studies, although an emerging discipline, has already advanced in the Global North compared to the Global South in that the discourse around disability has shifted its focus from mere survival debates of the persons with disabilities to subtler and more nuanced forms and manifestations of disability existence. Even at the policy level, the “medical model” of disability has been substituted by different versions of the “social model.” The main idea of the “social model” of disability is that human beings are extremely diverse in terms of mental and bodily faculties, functions and structures, and disability indeed results from the “disabling” infrastructures and environment that society has created without taking this human diversity into account. Some versions of the “social model” go so far as to glorify the bodily and mental disabilities, deeming them merely as manifestations of human variation or diversity that offers a unique experience to be valued and celebrated (Roush & Sharby, 2011). Disability in any form is merely a variation of humanity, but the disadvantages this diversity creates are the lived-realities that should not and cannot be left unattended. What I find even more problematic is the idea of glorifying and romanticizing disability. Such a glorified notion of disability, I argue, becomes yet another means to oppressing the persons with disabilities. The “medical model” that some disability studies scholars in the Global North have discarded can prove still relevant to the Global South, and particularly to South Asia. If disability activists and civil society organizations relish only in the rhetoric of disability as a “human rights” issue, and not pay ample attention to the physical and mental realities of the persons with disabilities, the “rights-based” discourse could ultimately be counterproductive.

Oceans and Landless Farms: Linking Southern and Northern Shadow Places of Industrial Livestock (1954–1975)

Environment and History ◽

10.3197/096734020x15900760737202 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Floor Haalboom

Keyword(s):

Animal Feed ◽

Marine Ecosystem ◽

Global South ◽

Humboldt Current ◽

The Public ◽

The Pacific ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Boom And Bust ◽

History Of ◽

This article argues for more extensive attention by environmental historians to the role of agriculture and animals in twentieth-century industrialisation and globalisation. To contribute to this aim, this article focuses on the animal feed that enabled the rise of ‘factory farming’ and its ‘shadow places’, by analysing the history of fishmeal. The article links the story of feeding fish to pigs and chickens in one country in the global north (the Netherlands), to that of fishmeal producing countries in the global south (Peru, Chile and Angola in particular) from 1954 to 1975. Analysis of new source material about fishmeal consumption from this period shows that it saw a shift to fishmeal production in the global south rather than the global north, and a boom and bust in the global supply of fishmeal in general and its use in Dutch pigs and poultry farms in particular. Moreover, in different ways, the ocean, and production and consumption places of fishmeal functioned as shadow places of this commodity. The public health, ecological and social impacts of fishmeal – which were a consequence of its cheapness as a feed ingredient – were largely invisible on the other side of the world, until changes in the marine ecosystem of the Pacific Humboldt Current and the large fishmeal crisis of 1972–1973 suddenly changed this.

Job Referrals in the Global South

Contexts ◽

10.1177/1536504221997867 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 36-41

Author(s):

Lindsey Ibañez

Keyword(s):

Job Search ◽

Global South ◽

Labor Market Institutions ◽

Industrialized Countries ◽

Employment Relation ◽

Global North ◽

Social Safety Nets ◽

Sociological Studies ◽

And Control ◽

Lower Income Countries

Most sociological studies of job searching are from higher-income, industrialized countries, often referred to as the Global North. Much less is understood about job search behavior in the lower-income countries of the Global South, where there are fewer labor market institutions, weaker social safety nets, higher underemployment, more informality, and more precarity. In this environment of deprivation and insecurity, low-wage workers in the Global South turn to their personal networks for the resources that markets and states cannot provide. While job referrals allow workers to earn a living, however, they also extend employer surveillance and control beyond the bounds of the employment relation.

Dimensions of Urban Blight in Emerging Southern Cities: A Case Study of Accra-Ghana

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13158399 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (15) ◽

pp. 8399

Author(s):

Sally Adofowaa Mireku ◽

Zaid Abubakari ◽

Javier Martinez

Keyword(s):

Cultural Practices ◽

Global South ◽

Economic Decline ◽

City Development ◽

Study Approach ◽

Population Loss ◽

Land Transfer ◽

Urban Blight ◽

Urban blight functions inversely to city development and often leads to cities’ deterioration in terms of physical beauty and functionality. While the underlying causes of urban blight in the context of the global north are mainly known in the literature to be population loss, economic decline, deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, there is a research gap regarding the root causes of urban blight in the global south, specifically in prime areas. Given the differences in the property rights regimes and economic growth trajectories between the global north and south, the underlying reasons for urban blight cannot be assumed to be the same. This study, thus, employed a qualitative method and case study approach to ascertain in-depth contextual reasons and effects for urban blight in a prime area, East Legon, Accra-Ghana. Beyond economic reasons, the study found that socio-cultural practices of landholding and land transfer in Ghana play an essential role in how blighted properties emerge. In the quest to preserve cultural heritage/identity, successors of old family houses (the ancestral roots) do their best to stay in them without selling or redeveloping them. The findings highlight the less obvious but relevant functions that blighted properties play in the city core at the micro level of individual families in fostering social cohesion and alleviating the need to pay higher rents. Thus, in the global south, we conclude that there is a need to pay attention to the less obvious roles that so-called blighted properties perform and to move beyond the default negative perception that blighted properties are entirely problematic.

Indicators, security and sovereignty during COVID-19 in the Global South

International Journal of Law in Context ◽

10.1017/s1744552321000318 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 249-260

Author(s):

John Harrington

Keyword(s):

Global Governance ◽

Third World ◽

Global South ◽

Governance Mechanisms ◽

Health Governance ◽

The Face ◽

Global North ◽

The Government

AbstractThe spread of COVID-19 has seen a contest over health governance and sovereignty in Global South states, with a focus on two radically distinct modes: (1) indicators and metrics and (2) securitisation. Indicators have been a vehicle for the government of states through the external imposition and internal self-application of standards and benchmarks. Securitisation refers to the calling-into-being of emergencies in the face of existential threats to the nation. This paper contextualises both historically with reference to the trajectory of Global South states in the decades after decolonisation, which saw the rise and decline of Third-World solidarity and its replacement by neoliberalism and global governance mechanisms in health, as in other sectors. The interaction between these modes and their relative prominence during COVID-19 is studied through a brief case-study of developments in Kenya during the early months of the pandemic. The paper closes with suggestions for further research and a reflection on parallel trends within Global North states.

Reframing refugee crisis: A “European crisis of migration” or a “crisis of protection”?

Environment and Planning C Politics and Space ◽

10.1177/2399654421989705 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 239965442198970

Author(s):

Maissaa Almustafa

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Global South ◽

Global Media ◽

Developing Regions ◽

International Protection ◽

High Commissioner ◽

The Face ◽

Global North ◽

Displaced People ◽

Resettlement Programs

The end of 2015 witnessed a global record in the number of forcibly displaced people fleeing because of wars and persecution. The unprecedented total of 65.3 million displaced individuals, out of which 21.3 million were refugees, was the highest number that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded since its establishment in 1950. During the same year and in the face of this large-scale crisis, only 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement through official resettlement programs, whereas 3.2 million people applied for asylum globally. And in spite of the fact that the majority of the world refugees are hosted in ten developing regions, the dominant narrative in the global media was about the “unauthorized” arrival of more than one million asylum seekers in Europe by sea during 2015. This paper argues that the unexpected nature of refugees’ arrivals has proven that refugees were supposed to be contained in their camps in the Global South, deterred from reaching the territories of the Global North, represented here by Europe. Thus, the paper proposes that these arrivals are rather reflections of a crisis of protection that developed in the Global South where containment and deterrence strategies against refugees from the Global South exacerbate their inhumane displacement conditions in home regions. In the same context, the paper discusses how international protection structures have been reconstructed to serve the same goals of containment and deterrence, with the ultimate aim of putting people ‘back in place’ with minimal access to protection and rights.

ResUHUrge: A Low Cost and Fully Functional Ventilator Indicated for Application in COVID-19 Patients

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s20236774 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (23) ◽

pp. 6774

Author(s):

Francisco José Vivas Fernández ◽

José Sánchez Segovia ◽

Ismael Martel Bravo ◽

Carlos García Ramos ◽

Daniel Ruiz Castilla ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Low Cost ◽

Pulmonary Ventilation ◽

Lung Infection ◽

Health Condition ◽

Multidisciplinary Research ◽

Global North ◽

Severity Of The Disease ◽

Open Source Hardware ◽

The University

Although the cure for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) will come in the form of pharmaceutical solutions and/or a vaccine, one of the only ways to face it at present is to guarantee the best quality of health for patients, so that they can overcome the disease on their own. Therefore, and considering that COVID-19 generally causes damage to the respiratory system (in the form of lung infection), it is essential to ensure the best pulmonary ventilation for the patient. However, depending on the severity of the disease and the health condition of the patient, the situation can become critical when the patient has respiratory distress or becomes unable to breathe on his/her own. In that case, the ventilator becomes the lifeline of the patient. This device must keep patients stable until, on their own or with the help of medications, they manage to overcome the lung infection. However, with thousands or hundreds of thousands of infected patients, no country has enough ventilators. If this situation has become critical in the Global North, it has turned disastrous in developing countries, where ventilators are even more scarce. This article shows the race against time of a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Huelva, UHU, southwest of Spain, to develop an inexpensive, multifunctional, and easy-to-manufacture ventilator, which has been named ResUHUrge. The device meets all medical requirements and is developed with open-source hardware and software.