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From: Thomson Reuters Foundation
From: Thomson Reuters Foundation
From: Thomson Reuters Foundation
From: Thomson Reuters Foundation
By Ban Barkawi
AMMAN, 20 August (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The gap between the richest and poorest in the Middle East and North Africa, the world’s most unequal region, is widening due to coronavirus, according to an Oxfam report Thursday.
Twenty-one of the richest tycoons in the Middle East in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have noticed that their net worth has accumulated at $10 billion since the start of the pandemic, according to the humanitarian agency.
However, COVID-19 is expected to push forty-five million Arabs and North Africans into poverty and 1.7 million are at risk of losing their jobs.
The pandemic has “overfed” an economic collapse through years of confrontation and places the greatest burden on the most vulnerable.
Even before coronavirus, 76% of the source of income in the Middle East and North Africa belonged to only 10% of the population.
Inequality has worsened since anti-government uprisings hit the Arab world in 2010 and have noticed countries introducing austerity measures.
Weak social protections and corporate-friendly fiscal policies over working-class citizens also influenced, according to the 32-page report “For a decade of hope, not austerity.”
In Tunisia, for example, corporate tax revenue fell by 37% between 2010 and 2018, while family taxes increased by 10% over the same period.
The coronavirus threatens the livelihoods of 700,000 women in the Middle East, about 40% of the 1.7 million jobs expected to be lost. This despite 20% of the region’s female workforce.
The closure would possibly have stimulated virtual solutions in some schools and workplaces, but in countries like Iraq and Morocco, where only a portion of women have access to the Internet, many will be left behind.
The region’s 16 million casual employees, many of whom paint on structural sites in Persian Gulf countries like Qatar, are vulnerable because they lack legal and social protections if the virus leaves them out of place.
Nearly 14% of the world’s migrant staff in the Middle East, where the sponsorship formula called kafala binds them to their employers and can lead to exploitation.
In Gulf countries, where they have no social security or retirement guarantees, the highest infection rate among migrant workers, many of whom had already lost their jobs and were forced to use their savings to survive.
While there is no quick fix, especially with civil wars and continuing instability, governments will want to introduce policies that provide physical care and education for all, raise the minimum wage, and taxes, Oxfam said.
In Lebanon, the United Nations said a national solidarity fund was needed to help the country overcome the poverty gap in the wake of an economic crisis and a massive explosion that devastated Beirut on August 4.
If Lebanon had imposed a 5% solidarity tax on wealth last year, it may have only generated $3.7 billion to help rebuild infrastructure and others after the explosion, Oxfam said.
Similarly, across the region, if countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Morocco had implemented wealth taxes of 2% as of 2010, they may have generated more than all the International Monetary Fund’s loans in recent years and moved away from austerity measures.
(Report through Ban Barkawi @banbarkawi; edited through Tom Finn. Please mention the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Thomson Reuters’ charitable arm, which covers the lives of others around the world struggling to live freely or justly. Visit http://www./ newsArraytrust.org)