Pomegranate vendor

Worldwide over 2 billion people — 60% of the global workforce — work in the informal economy: without contract, protections or pension. The share exceeds 80% in much of Africa, South Asia and the Mediterranean.

Worldwide street vendors are estimated at 100-200 million: 70% are women, and in most countries they have neither licence nor social protection. Together with small producers they still account for 35% of world food distribution, while receiving less than 10% of the final shelf value.

Hierarchy is not only in wages and contracts: it is in bodies, in postures, in who stands and who sits, in who speaks and who is silent.

Street vending is not a remnant of the past: it is the form in which half of humanity survives.