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The role and importance of solidarity for effective health provision is the subject of lengthy and heated debate which has been thrown into even sharper relief by the COVID-19 pandemic. In various ways, and by various authorities we have all been asked, even instructed, to engage in solidarity with one another in order to collectively respond to the current crisis. Under normal circumstances, individuals can engage in solidarity with their compatriots in the context of public health provision in a number of ways, including paying taxes which fund welfare state initiatives, and avoiding others when ill. While there has been significant engagement in solidarity worldwide, there have also been high profile examples of refusals and failures to engage in solidarity, both by individual agents, and governments. In this paper I examine the consequence of these failures with reference to the actions of the current British government, which has failed to deliver an effective response to the crisis. This failure has effectively devolved responsibility for responding to the crisis to people who are simultaneously more vulnerable to infection, and less able to do anything about it. I argue that such responses represent mismanagement of a public health crisis, and a rejection of important democratic and egalitarian norms and values.

On 30 June 2021, Ohio state Governor, Mike DeWine, signed a Bill which would enact the state's budget for the next two years. In addition to its core funding imperatives, the Bill also contained an amendment significantly expanding entitlements of health care providers to conscientiously object to professional duties to provide controversial health care services. This amendment has been heavily criticised as providing the means to allow health care providers to discriminate against a wide range of persons by denying them access to often contested services such as abortion and contraception. In this paper, we examine the implications of this amendment and situate it in relation to other legislative actions intended to guarantee absolute rights to conscientious objection. In doing so, we argue that the entitlements extended to health care providers by these Bills are overly broad and ignore their potential to allow significant harm to be caused to clients. We then argue that if health care providers should have rights to conscientiously object (a question we do not try an answer here), then any legislation intended to protect such rights should be limited, specific, and parsimonious. Where it is not, the ideological liberty of HCPs treads dangerously on the physical freedom of their clients.

Drought is a recurrent and often devastating threat to the welfare of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where three-quarters of the arable land has less than 400 mm of annual rainfall, and the natural grazings, which support a majority of the 290 million ruminant livestock, have less than 200 mm. Its impact has been exacerbated in the last half century by the human population increasing yearly at over 3%, while livestock numbers have risen by 50% over the quinquennium. Virtually no scope exists for further expansion of rainfed farming and very little for irrigation, hence there is competition between mechanized cereal production and grazing in the low rainfall areas, and traditional nomadic systems of drought management through mobility are becoming difficult to maintain. Moreover droughts seem to be increasing in frequency, and their high social, economic, and environmental costs have led governments to intervene with various forms of assistance to farmers and herders, including distribution of subsidized animal feed, rescheduling of loans, investments in water development, and in animal health. In this paper we examine the nature and significance of these measures, both with respect to their immediate benefits and costs to the recipients and to governments, and to their longer term impact on poverty and the environment. We conclude that while they have been valuable in reducing catastrophic losses of livestock and thus alleviating poverty, especially in the low rainfall areas where they are the predominant source of income, continued dependence on these programs has sent inappropriate signals to farmers and herders, leading to moral hazards, unsustainable farming practices, and environmental degradation, while generally benefiting the affluent recipients most. ; Non-PR ; GRP5; IFPRI1 ; EPTD

Recent intemational reviews of forestry and agroforestry research needs in developing areas (such as Bellagio II and the study conducted by the Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on Intemational Agricultural Research [CGIAR)) have placed high priority on policy research, both because of the basic importance of policy constraints in the overall course of forestry development and conservation and because of the existing lack of research in this area. In order to better identify priority issues for policy research, the Intemational Union of Forestry Research Organizations, Special Program for Developing Countries (IUFRO/SPDC), the Intemational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) , and the Agency for Intemational Development (AID), in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Forestry For Sustainable Development Program at the University of Minnesota, convened an intemational workshop on forestry and agroforestry policy research in Washington, D.C., July 9-12, 1991. It was hosted by IFPRI. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Justice in a Complex World: An Introduction -- Part I Human Rights and the World Economy: Questions of Scope -- 2 The (Difficult) Universality of Economic and Social Rights -- 3 Economic Justice and the Minimally Good Human Life Account of Needs -- Part II The Applicability of Global Principles - Some Contemporary Dilemmas -- 4 Toward Another Kind of Development Practice -- 5 Three Approaches to Global Health Care Justice: Rejecting the Positive/Negative Rights Distinction -- 6 Restitution and Distributive Justice -- Part III Justice and International Institutions -- 7 Narrow Versus Comprehensive Justification in Humanitarian Aid: A Case Study of the CERF -- 8 Global Justice and the Mission of the European Union -- Index