Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
zil, Chile and Venezuela. The combined results of national household surveys indicate that 21 1 million people in the region were experiencing absolute poverty at the end of the 1990s, compared with 136 million in 1980 and 200 million in 1990. In Eurasia, the region encompassing the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, dramatic increases in both income inequality and extreme poverty occurred in the wake of the enormous political and social upheaval accompanying the shift from a planned economy to a market economy. In the Russian Federation, for example, the income share of the poorest 20 per cent of the population fell from 11.9 per cent in 1991 to 5.9 per cent in 2001, while the share of the richest 20 per cent rose from 30.7 to 48.3 per cent. During this period, 80 per cent of the country's households experienced a drop in income. Absolute poverty affected 50 per cent of the population in the Russian Federation and around 80 per cent in most of the Central Asian republics at the end of the twentieth century. Over the past few years, with the resumption of a certain level of economic growth, levels of extreme poverty in the region have improved somewhat. Income inequality has increased markedly in a number of OECD countries; towards the end of the 1990s, Gini indexes were 41.7 per cent for Australia, 41.4 per cent for the United States, 40.2 per cent for New Zealand, and 32.5 per cent for the United Kingdom. Levels of income inequality have remained stable in other OECD countries, including France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Sweden, and have actually declined in Canada, Italy, Norway and Spain. A few other exceptions to the general trend of worsening income distribution are also worth noting; in Latin America, income inequality has improved in Honduras and Uruguay and has apparently remained relatively stable in Mexico. For the Forum, these exceptions seemed to suggest that those Governments that wished to do so somehow found it possible to resist the wave of liberalism that has arguably been responsible for the deepening of income inequalities in the world. However, it would be imprudent to attach too much meaning (and for those involved in activities aimed at reducing income inequalities, too much hope) to these deviations from the general trend; countries that have not experienced increased income inequality may yet do so at some point in the future. In all of the OECD countries, absolute poverty, measured according to national poverty lines, has become more prevalent during the past 20 to 25 years. There is no compelling evidence indicating that those countries that have experienced stable or improved income distribution have managed to avoid worsening inequalities in the other domains listed below.