Fewer than 60,000 people — the richest 0.001% — now control three times more wealth than half of humanity combined.

That is our world’s balance sheet: a planet of over eight billion people ruled, in practice, by a rounding error.

In the World Inequality Report 2026, whose foreword was written by PI Council Member Jayati Ghosh, researchers show that the world’s top 10% now take more income than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half receive less than 10% of global income. Wealth is tighter still: the top 10% own three-quarters of everything, while the bottom half holds just 2%.

Some children are born into a world of libraries, broadband, clinics, and clean water; others are born into a world of debt, plunder, and permanent emergency. Average education spending per child in Sub-Saharan Africa is around €200 (PPP) — compared to €7,400 in Europe and €9,000 in North America and Oceania — a forty-fold gap that reproduces hierarchies forged through colonialism and genocide and sustained by imperialism today.

Apartheid is global: a system organised around who owns, who lends, who takes — and who decides who lives.

No technocratic fix will rebalance an economy structured this way. It will only change through struggle.

And when people demand bread, land, dignity, sovereignty, the security apparatus of extreme wealth answers swiftly: batons, prisons, sanctions, border walls, and war.

Scarcity for the many requires violence. Supply chains are guarded, migrants criminalised, workers disciplined, and whole regions turned into sacrifice zones. Global apartheid travels with an armed escort.

Our world — with extreme wealth, extreme violence, and extreme heat — is hardening by the day.

Yet the story does not end there. Across the world, people continue to prove that deprivation is political — and reversible.

Kerala, an Indian state with modest income levels, has eliminated extreme poverty through sustained public investment in health and education, targeted guarantees, and local democratic planning. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in two generations — the largest poverty reduction in human history. The results are written on bodies as well as balance sheets: children are taller, healthier, and living longer lives.

These victories show what organised public power can do. The powerful insist this order is permanent. The evidence says otherwise. Inequality is produced by policy and power; it can be reduced by policy and power. That is the task before us.

2026 has begun at a disorientating pace. History is moving at a pace. The crises are converging. The Progressive International exists to help assemble the forces capable of meeting this moment: linking struggles for wages to those against debt; land to climate justice; public services to public ownership; national liberation to an internationalist strategy.

Global apartheid will not soften on its own. It will either be dismantled — or deepen, militarise, and destroy.

To bend the arc of rapidly moving history towards justice, there is no shortcut. We must organise across borders. We build institutions that outlast repression. We defend one another. We forge the counter-power needed to defeat the Reactionary International and build a new order.

The world we need will not be granted. We will have to seize it.

Latest from the Movement

The PI Calendar 2026

From the story of the British women who stopped the supply of Hawker fighter jets to East Timor to the establishment of the East India Company, the 2026 Internationalism Calendar features 12 chapters of struggle, victory and defeat. Order your stunning 2026 wall calendar today.

Nuestra América

Delegates from governments, parliaments, trade unions, and social movements from over 20 countries convened in Bogotá by the Progressive International for the Nuestra América emergency convening, adopted the San Carlos Declaration to defend democracy, sovereignty, and peace across the Americas. The declaration denounces revived doctrines of coercion — including sanctions, blockades, and militarised pressure — and commits to coordinated action to uphold the UN Charter, resist unilateral interference, strengthen regional autonomy in trade, finance, energy, and food, defend migrant rights, and build hemispheric solidarity from Cuba to Mexico, Colombia, and beyond.

Amazon confronted in the European Parliament

Trade unionists and Members of the European Parliament confronted Amazon at a hearing in the European Parliament over unsafe warehouse conditions, constant performance pressure, and the company’s resistance to collective bargaining — all while announcing 16,000 layoffs. After years of evading scrutiny, Amazon’s top management appeared under pressure from unions and lawmakers who blasted its record on worker health and democratic rights at work. Unions highlighted relentless surveillance and brutal productivity demands, and called for genuine social dialogue and respect for collective bargaining rather than token appearances.

White farmers in Zimbabwe seek Trump’s help

A group of white commercial farmers has appealed to Donald Trump to press their compensation claims over Zimbabwe’s land reform. The move risks reviving the same sanctions and external pressure that have long punished ordinary Zimbabweans while attempting to roll back historic efforts to redress colonial land theft. The Progressive International’s Hands Off Zimbabwe campaign rejects any foreign interference: Zimbabwe’s future must be decided in Harare, not Washington.

Ecuador: repression and lawfare against opposition leaders

Police in Ecuador carried out raids on the homes and offices of leaders associated with Revolución Ciudadana, including the former presidential candidate Luisa González. Critics denounced these operations as politically motivated lawfare, and raising broader concerns about due process and the erosion of democratic space. The Progressive International echoes demands for fair legal procedures, full democratic guarantees, and an end to political persecution, reiterating that political disputes must be resolved through democratic contestation rather than harassment and raids by security forces.

Art of the Week

Alighiero Boetti (1940 – 1994) was an Italian conceptual artist regarded as a member of the Arte Povera, an anti-elitist art movement opposing established values upheld by institutions of government, industry, and culture.

From the 1970’s until his premature death, he worked under the plural pseudonym Alighiero e Boetti ("Alighiero and Boetti") and in collaboration. He travelled extensively throughout central and southern Asia, frequenting Afghanistan and Pakistan, and visiting Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Influenced by his extensive travels, his most famous Mappa embroideries were made in collaboration with Afghan and Pakistani artisans.