As part of the Asia-Pacific Social Forum 2025: Another World is Possible, a special programme titled “Towards Dignity, Freedom, and Justice: Building a Future of Care through Universal Basic Income” will be held on November 2, 2025 (Day 2) from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the College of Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS), Room 301, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Jointly organized by the Justice Peace and Integrity Commission (JPIC), the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), the Montfort Social Institute (MSI), the India Network for Basic Income, and WorkFREE, this programme will explore the transformative role of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in shaping a more just and caring future.
Bro. Varghese Theckanath (MSI & JPIC) will discuss UBI in reality, focusing on its effects on marginalized communities and its power to restore human dignity and social justice. John Michael (BIEN Asia-Pacific) will reflect on the broader Basic Income movement across the Asia-Pacific and Global South, examining how UBI challenges entrenched colonial, patriarchal, racial, casteist, and ableist structures.
The session will also feature a screening and discussion of the film Unconditional (30 minutes, English subtitles), which portrays real-world Basic Income experiments in India and Bangladesh — stories that redefined the meaning of justice, care, and social transformation.
Together, the programme invites participants to imagine and build futures where dignity, freedom, and justice are not privileges, but the foundations of society.
They’re out! MGI, CGI, and LGI have released data from 25 guaranteed income pilot programs from across the country. One thing is crystal clear: guaranteed income works.
Here are the top lines:
Improved financial resilience: Over and over again, researchers found a temporary or sustained increase in recipients’ financial stability. Many recipients reported that they were able to pay down debt, save for emergencies, and increase their earning power.
Increased employment: Not a single pilot has shown decreased employment among recipients of guaranteed income. In fact, the vast majority of pilots have shown increased rates of full-time employment.
Greater housing & food security: The vast majority of pilots have improved either housing security, food security, or both. Given sharp increases in housing and food costs, while wages have remained stagnant, guaranteed income helped recipients weather tough economic conditions.
Better physical & mental health: In many studies, recipients demonstrated reduced stress, less chaotic home environments, and better mental health. An increased sense of agency and hopefulness was a common finding. In several cities, the recurring cash payments helped recipients seek needed medical care for themselves and engage in other health-promoting behaviors, and some showed improved physical health.
Supports parenting & caretaking: Increased parent-child time is another common finding, and several cities have demonstrated better outcomes for children, including better grades and fewer absences from school.
As part of the Ethical Consumer Conference in London on 7 November ‘How can we move beyond corporate power?’ (https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/about/ethical-consumer-conference ) UBI Lab Network will offer an online workshop on 5 November, 16 – 17 hrs ‘How a Universal Basic Income (UBI) can help to liberate citizens, producers and consumers from the corporate stranglehold’. You can find out more about the workshop and register by clicking here.
In a landmark event at Korea’s National Assembly, Sarath Davala, Chairman of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), declared South Korea a “hot spot” in the global push for basic income.
The forum, hosted by Hyosang Ahn, Chair of the Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN), marked the launch of a new comprehensive book on the movement and underscored the nation’s pivotal role following the recent election of a pro-UBI president.
The event drew key figures from the movement and scholars around the world.
For years, Davala has carried the idea of basic income from India’s villages to European parliaments, from university seminars to grassroots assemblies. In Seoul, his words carried a special charge.
South Korea, Davala said, looking out over the forum, is near the “very top” of the global basic income conversation.
One of the key participants was also Yong Hye-in, a young lawmaker from the Basic Income Party, one of the few political parties in the world devoted entirely to the idea. She argued for using gradual reforms to bring basic income to the forefront of Korean politics.
The gathering marked the release of a new book documenting more than 22 years of Korean research, pilot projects, advocacy and policy experiments.
The new book asks “how?” How can Korea design transfers that are universal, unconditional, individual, periodic, and cash-based while still threading the needle of political and fiscal reality? How can existing pilots, such as the Youth Dividend in Gyeonggi Province, be scaled into something enduring and national? And how might renewable energy revenues (which Korea is calling sunshine income) be converted into a reinvention of the commons?
As Davala reminded the Assembly, basic income is not a single model stamped identically around the globe. It is a global idea, always “locally rendered.” In Brazil, it emerged through Bolsa Família, tethered to poverty relief. In the United States, it was rebranded as “guaranteed income.” In India, where Davala piloted early cash experiments, it arose from rural farm crises.
In Korea, the rendering has been unique. It is the product of a coalition: researchers writing steadily, provincial governments testing dividends, politicians building platforms, and activists sustaining networks. “This critical mass coming together,” Davala said, “is what (makes Korea) electrifying.”
The metaphor he reached for was telling: Korea’s basic income debate, he suggested, is as culturally visible as K-pop and as suspenseful as a K-drama. Everyone is watching to see how the next episode ends.
The Korean speakers that followed painted a sobering picture of a society on edge. Nearly half of households are now single-person. The fertility rate has plunged to 0.78 children per woman, the lowest on record globally. Stable employment, once the cornerstone of Korea’s post-industrial promise, is eroding in the face of automation, outsourcing, and the gig economy. In this context, basic income is being debated as a practical shield against income insecurity.
“Income insecurity is the new reality,” one speaker said. “And politicians must respond.”
Davala supplied perspective to the other speakers. “Evidence we already have,” he said. He noted that decades of pilots, from Namibia to Stockton, show what unconditional cash can do: increase security, improve mental health, reduce poverty.
But numbers, he insisted, do not make laws.
“Basic income is not just about fiscal feasibility,” Davala said. “That is a political call…if there is political will then fiscal feasibility becomes possible. So far, South Korea has already proven this.”
Davala recounted earlier turning points: the 2015 Swiss referendum, which even in defeat sent shockwaves through global politics; Andrew Yang’s 2020 U.S. campaign, which placed the idea on prime-time television; Brazil’s legislative experiments; India’s pilots. Each was a step forward. Now, Korea is taking its own steps.
“Even coming to this point itself,” Davala told the attendees, “is a major achievement.” He said that basic income is no longer just a “pipe dream” in Korea and it is being turned into “practical policy that can be implemented.”
Several speakers pointed out that Korea’s path is not straightforward. Like all social reforms, basic income faces what Davala called “three steps forward, two steps back.” Yet there was also a recognition that the very act of debating it seriously in Korea, backed by scholarship and a dedicated political party (the Basic Income Party and a supportive president in the Democratic Party), represented progress of its own.
“If we look back from 2035, 2025 could be the Korea milestone in the history of the basic income movement,” Davala said.
South Korea’s basic income debate has become, like its cultural exports, a phenomenon watched beyond its borders. It has suspense, global attention, and the possibility of altering not just Korean society but the conversation about income security everywhere.
Whether this story ends with a national basic income program or another pause in the long march of reform remains unknown. But for now, the world is watching Seoul, and for the basic income movement, Korea has become one of its most fascinating stages.
Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan hosted Sarath Davala, chairman of the Basic Income Earth Network this month. He was joined by national legislators Mr. Sean Liao and Dr. Juchun Ko, with civil society groups, Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency advocates, as well as UBI Taiwan’s team in attendance.
The forum comes as Taiwan is preparing to deliver its second universal cash transfer by the end of October. Davala discussed Taiwan’s widening inequality, young people delaying families, plunging fertility rate and the quiet epidemic of loneliness.
“These are the symptoms that the system needs innovation,” Davala said.
The discussion turned to how basic income might be distributed. Legislator Ko pressed a sharp critique of proposals to use central bank digital currency (CBDC). For him, he was concerned about putting this much power in the government.
Davala, who later spoke on Ko’s podcast, discussed some of the philosophy of how UBI should be constructed.
“At its core,” Davala said, “it is about freedom.” He went on to describe how the basis for this freedom comes from love for your fellow citizen.
The exchange captured the tension between two possible futures: one where innovation risks becoming surveillance, and another where it serves as a tool for deeper freedom.
Taiwan’s demographic crisis was a centerpiece of the forum. With one of the world’s fastest-aging populations, the country faces the prospect of becoming a “super-aged society.” Henry Lee of UBI Taiwan presented their policy proposal for a youth basic income.
Lee argued this would improve education, investments, and family stability. From these starting points, the demographic cliff may soften.
The meeting signaled growing mainstream discussions of basic income in Taiwan. Both Liao and Ko have met UBI Taiwan repeatedly this year.
Davala concluded his presentation by noting that Taiwan can be a laboratory for how societies will respond to economic precarity and social fracture.
“We need structural change, not small change,” Davala said.
On October 1, 2025, one of the co-founders of BIEN, Claus Offe died in Berlin, the city in which he was born on March 16,1940. He was one of Germany’s most distinguished sociologists, associated with the Frankfurt School of thought. He long identified himself as ‘Green Left’ – being a founding member of the German Greens – and as such saw basic income very much as a transformational policy. He was our friend and colleague for forty years and will be sorely missed.
Claus studied sociology and political science in Köln and at Berlin’s Freie Universität, was an assistant of Jürgen Habermas at the University of Frankfurt, where he obtained his doctorate in political science. Habermas remained influential in his research and publications, along with Albert Hirschman, whom he also greatly admired.
He subsequently worked at the Universities of Konstanz, Bielefeld and Bremen, before returning to Berlin after the fall of the wall in 1989, first at Humboldt University and then at the Hertie School of Government, of which he was a co-founder. Along the way, he had several periods in the United States, at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and the New School in New York, as well as in the ANU in Australia.
November 1985, Claus Offe, then still at Bielefeld, was invited to participate in the “first international conference on basic income”, held in Louvain-la-Neuve in September 1986. He replied straight away: “I find the whole idea of your conference very promising and attractive, and I gladly accept your invitation. As you may know, I am presently involved in the work of the group that tries to develop concrete legislative proposals on basic income for the green group within the Bundestag… Let me just say that you are really providing a public service in taking the initiative of this conference.”
Claus (first from the left) at an Executive Committee meeting in Brussels (November 1999), preparing the 2000 Berlin congress of BIEN which he organized
The conference turned out to be the meeting at which BIEN was founded. Together with Peter Ashby, Claus Offe agreed to serve as BIEN’s first co-chair, a position he held until September 1988, when the duo was replaced by Edwin Morley-Fletcher and Guy Standing. Claus Offe remained an enthusiastic member of BIEN and regular participant in its congresses in the decades to follow. In particular, he rejoined the executive committee in 1998 as the efficient organizer of BIEN’s 2000 congress, hosted by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.
Claus (second from the right) at an Executive Committee meeting in Barcelona (October 2003), preparing the 2004 Barcelona congress of BIEN, which turned BIEN into the Basic Income Earth Network
During his long career, Claus played an active role in the international scientific community and in Germany’s and the EU’s public debate. His superbly argued Europe Entrapped (2015), for example, was an exceptionally lucid and influential contribution to the discussion of the European monetary union, the conclusion of which was captured in one sentence: “The euro was a big mistake, the undoing of which would be an even bigger mistake.”
Among his other influential books was Disorganized Capitalism, a set of essays published in English in 1985 probing the links between social power and political authority, in which he first advocated a basic income as a response to modern unemployment. For a while, he was drawn to Tony Atkinson’s idea of a Participation Income, but came to see the limitation of that variant of basic income.
In recent years, Claus’s lung cancer increasingly limited his mobility, but not the sharpness of his mind and the warmth of his friendship. He was an enthusiastic fisherman, loving to prowl on the banks in search of ‘the big one’. Above all, he was one of those formidable intellectual personalities who helped give the worldwide basic income movement its strength and influence.
