INFLUENCE OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT'S POLICY OF “KULAK” AND REPRESSION ON UZBEK WOMEN

This article discusses the negative effects of the Soviet government’s “kulak” and repressive policies on Uzbek women. The Covet government, by organizing training courses, trained women; involved women in social life in exchange for the sacrifice of hundreds of women. At the same time, the above-mentioned policy of kulak and repression has led to the suffering of Uzbek women as well as men. Below we meet some of these women. КEY WORDS: repression policy, kulak, austerity policy, sentence, imprisonment, criminal code, People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, counter-revolutionary activity, family, Uzbek woman.

Accountability in Global Governance

How can international organizations (IOs) like the United Nations (UN) and their implementing partners be held accountable if their actions and policies violate fundamental human rights? Political scientists and legal scholars have shed a much-needed light on the limits of traditional accountability when it comes to complex global governance. However, conventional studies on IO accountability fail to systematically analyze a related, puzzling empirical trend: human rights violations that occur in the context of global governance do not go unnoticed altogether; they are investigated and sanctioned by independent third parties. This book puts forward the concept of pluralist accountability, whereby third parties hold IOs and their implementing partners accountable for human rights violations. We can expect pluralist accountability to evolve if a competitive environment stimulates third parties to enact accountability and if the implementing actors are vulnerable to human rights demands. Based on a comprehensive study of UN-mandated operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the European Union Troika’s austerity policy, and global public–private health partnerships in India, this book demonstrates how competition and human rights vulnerability shape the evolution of pluralist accountability in response to diverse human rights violations, such as human trafficking, the violation of the rights of detainees, economic rights, and the right to consent in clinical trials. While highlighting the importance of studying alternative accountability mechanisms, this book also argues that pluralist accountability should not be regarded as a panacea for IOs’ legitimacy problems, as it is often less legalized and might cause multiple accountability disorder.

Basic Income and Sovereign Money: The Alternative to Economic Crisis and Austerity Policy, Geoff Crocker (2020)

Review of: Basic Income and Sovereign Money: The Alternative to Economic Crisis and Austerity Policy, Geoff Crocker (2020) Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 98 pp., ISBN 978-3-03036-747-3, h/bk, £44.99, ISBN 978-3-03036-748-0, e/bk, £35.99

Daseinsvorsorge in Gefahr: öffentliche Bibliotheken zwischen Digitalisierung und Austerität

Public libraries are an important public service of general interest and, as part of social infrastructures, contribute to educational justice. This article discusses their development against the background of the interaction of digitization and austerity. As voluntary services they are particularly affected by the current austerity policy and have to increasingly justify their services and structures. At the same time, they are being rediscovered in the course of local authorities' urban development strategies. Based on empirical results from Bonn, the paper discusses central municipal strategies for the further development of the local library system and sheds light on the associated ambivalent socio-spatial implications.

Austerity policy and child health in European countries: a systematic literature review

Background: To analyse the impact of austerity measures taken by European governments as a response to the 2008 economic and financial crisis on social determinants on child health (SDCH), and child health outcomes (CHO). Methods: A systematic literature review was carried out in Medline (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and Sociological abstracts in the last 5 years from European countries. Studies aimed at analysing the Great Recession, governments’ responses to the crisis, and its impact on SDCH were included. A narrative synthesis of the results was carried out. The risk of bias was assessed using the STROBE and EPICURE tools. Results: Fourteen studies were included, most of them with a low to intermediate risk of bias (average score 72.1%). Government responses to the crisis varied, although there was general agreement that Greece, Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom applied higher levels of austerity. High austerity periods, compared to pre-austerity periods were associated with increased material deprivation, child poverty rates, and low birth weight. Increasing child poverty subsequent to austerity measures was associated with deterioration of child health. High austerity was also related to poorer access and quality of services provided to disabled children. An annual reduction of 1% on public health expenditure was associated to 0.5% reduction on Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccination coverage in Italy.Conclusions: Countries that applied high level of austerity showed worse trends on SDCH and CHO, demonstrating the importance that economic policy may have for equity in child health and development. European governments must act urgently and reverse these austerity policy measures that are detrimental to family benefits and child protection.

Austerity policy and child health in European countries: a systematic literature review

Objectives : To analyse the impact of austerity measures taken by European governments as a response to the 2008 economic and financial crisis on social determinants and child health (SDCH), and child health outcomes (CHO). Methods : A systematic literature review was carried out in Medline (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and Sociological abstracts in the last 5 years from European countries. Studies aimed at analysing the Great Recession, governments’ responses to the crisis, and its impact on SDCH were included. A narrative synthesis of the results was carried out. The risk of bias was assessed using the STROBE and EPICURE tools. Results : Fourteen studies were included, most of them with a low to intermediate risk of bias (average score 72.1%). Government responses to the crisis varied, although there was general agreement that Greece, Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom applied higher levels of austerity. High austerity periods, compared to pre-austerity periods were associated with increased material deprivation, child poverty rates, and low birth weight. Increasing child poverty subsequent to austerity measures was associated with deterioration of child health. High austerity was also related to poorer access and quality of services provided to disabled children. An annual reduction of 1% on public health expenditure was associated to 0.5% reduction on Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccination coverage in Italy. Conclusions : Countries that applied high level of austerity showed worse trends on SDCH and CHO. European governments must act urgently and reverse these austerity policy measures that are detrimental to family benefits and child protection.

Breaking Britain’s Working Class: the Left Out

This chapter draws upon ethnographic research within working-class communities in Nottingham and East London, families which rely upon public services, welfare benefits, and social housing. Since 2010 they are being subject to harsh cuts in their welfare benefits and also social goods through austerity policy linked to the banking crash of 2008. Rather than focus upon the economic situation of the poorest, this chapter addresses the key argument that there has been a significant change in the representation of working-class people, who have been negatively re-branded and stigmatised over the last 30 years. Successive governments have connected economic poverty with cultural and aspirational poverty. Austerity has been a constructed narrative that centres upon removing poverty by removing the practices, and the culture of the poor. The chapter argues that this rhetoric does the work that is needed in order to push through and justify inequalities. Those inequalities have taken the working class from positions of relative stability into serious precarity and undermined their ability to exert agency.