CRI is released by Oxfam and Development Finance International. 

• CRI assessed the commitment of 164 countries and regions to fight inequality.
  • SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality. 
• It assessed the performance on the basis of three parameters: Public Services Spending, Progressive taxation and Labour rights and wages.

Key Highlights of the Index 

• Ranking: 
  • Top performers: Norway, Canada, and Australia
  • Worst performers: South Sudan, Nigeria, etc.
  • India’s rank: 127
    • Other South Asian countries such as Nepal (115) and Sri Lanka (118) have performed better than India. 
• Rising Inequality: 
  • Gap between the Global South and the Global North has suddenly grown more rapidly than at any time since World War II. 
  • Billions of people face the terrible hardship of high and rising food prices and hunger, while the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade. 
  • Key Deriving Factor: Conflict, debt crisis, and climate shocks, these are constraining spending in low- and lower middle-income countries. 
    • 84% of countries have reduced their spending on education, health and/or social protection.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) opened the 2024 Hand-in-Hand Investment Forum.

About HIH

• Launched in 2019 by FAO
• It supports the implementation of nationally led, ambitious programmes to accelerate agrifood systems transformations by eradicating poverty (SDG1), ending hunger and malnutrition (SDG2), and reducing inequalities (SDG10).
  • It uses advanced geospatial modeling and analytics, as well as a robust partnership-building approach. 
• Areas of intervention: Developing value chains for priority commodities, building agro-industries, etc.
• Members:72 countries (India is not a member)

CareEdge released its inaugural report on Sovereign Ratings, covering 39 Global Economies.

• Thus, CareEdge became the first Indian credit rating agency to enter the global scale ratings space, including sovereign ratings.

Key Highlight 

• Assigned an AAA rating to Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, and Sweden. 
• India was assigned BBB+, citing its resilient post-pandemic recovery and its focus on infrastructure investment. 
• India's general government debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to reduce from 80% (currently) to 78 % by FY30. 

About Sovereign Credit Rating (SCR)

• Credit ratings are forward-looking opinions on the relative ability of an entity to meet its financial commitments, i.e., credit risk or relative creditworthiness of a borrower.
  • ​​​​SEBI regulates domestic credit rating agencies (CRISIL, ICRA, CARE etc.).
• SCR represent an assessment of a country's or sovereign entity's ability to meet debt obligations, including both capability and willingness to repay debt.
• SCR facilitates borrowing from global capital markets at low cost, boosts investors’ confidence, attracts foreign investment, etc. 
• Currently, SCRs are dominated by 3 US-based rating agencies – S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch.

Global Family Farming Forum (GFFF) was launched at Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Forum (WFF).

• GFFF celebrates essential role of family farmers in building sustainable agrifood systems and tackling the impacts of the climate crisis.
• GFFF also marked the halfway completion of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-28 (UNDFF).
  • UNDFF was declared by United Nations General Assembly and it serves as a framework for countries to develop public policies and investments to support family farming.

About Family farming

• Family Farming: Is a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production that is managed and operated by a family, and is predominantly reliant on the family labour of both women and men.
• Significance of Family farming
  • Food security: With over 550 million farms worldwide, it is the backbone of food production.
    • It produces 70 to 80%of the world’s food in value terms.
  • Nutritional diversity: Family farming, in low- and middle-income countries, grow diverse, nutritious food and support crop biodiversity.
  • Sustainable stewardship: Family farmers use traditional methods, minimal external inputs to maintain soil health and build climate resilience naturally.
• Challenges faced by Family farming: Financial barriers, limited access to assistance, genetics and knowledge., fragmentation of land, market access difficulties, climate threats, lack of generational succession support, etc.