Yeb Sano, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, displays a poster calling for equality for all during the launch of the group "Fight Inequality Alliance" in Manila on Feb. 22. (Photo by Angelica Pago)
Civil society and grassroots organizations from across Asia launched a "global campaign against inequality" in Manila on Feb. 22.
"This alliance is growing and building the power of the people to be stronger than the people with power," said Jenny Ricks, convenor of the new group "Fight Inequality Alliance."
"Together we must turn the tide against rising inequality," said Ricks, adding that a global movement is needed to address and fight the problem, which has reached "extreme proportions."
Lilian Mercado, Asia regional director of aid agency Oxfam International, said inequality is "undermining the work against poverty."
"Given the scale of the challenge in tackling extreme inequality, it is only by bringing activists and organizations to work together can greater impact be achieved," said Mercado.
She said there is an "urgent need" to address the "structural causes of inequality through building a people-powered movement around the world."
"Inequality is part of the root cause of the many issues we face as people of Asia," said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.
In 2016, an Oxfam study calculated that, worldwide, just 62 individuals hold wealth equivalent to that distributed across 3.6 billion people.
The study showed that the wealth of the 62 richest people has risen by 45 percent since 2010, while the wealth of the 3.6 billion people dropped by just over a trillion dollars in the same period.
The average annual income of the poorest 10 percent of people in the world has risen by less than US$3 each year in almost a quarter of a century, according to the study.
Shalmali Guttal, executive director of Focus on the Global South, a regional organization based in Bangkok, noted the "wide gaps between macroeconomic indicators of economic growth … and employment on the one hand, and actual conditions of wellbeing and poverty on the other hand."
Yeb Sano, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, also said environmental catastrophes are a "manifestation of the massive inequality being faced globally."
"It is our stark realization that winning our fight to save the environment is something we cannot do without tackling root causes, without confronting the malaise of inequality," said Sano.
A statement issued by the Fight Inequality Alliance said the group "will be a radical voice for transformational social and economic alternatives."