Africa

Former Premier League striker Emmanuel Adebayor says the gun attack on the Togo team 15 years ago has made "a huge difference" in his life.

The Afropop singer began her musical career in the 1980s and also appeared in popular TV series.

Siddipet cotton fabric being woven. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
SIDDIPET, POCHAMPALLY & KOYALAGUDDEM, India, Jan 8 2025 (IPS)

The southern Indian state of Telangana has always been home to exquisite cotton and silk weaves. But in recent years, lack of market access, expensive inputs, and government apathy have taken their toll on the weaving community. As a result, the younger generation is refraining from pursuing this traditional occupation and opting for more lucrative pursuits.

This is evident when one visits the weaving towns of the state. Take Siddipet, which is about 100 km from the metropolitan city of Hyderabad. Siddipet has always been known for its exquisite cotton saris and stoles. But today, only about a hundred wizened individuals, spread over seven handloom cooperatives, still weave.

Srivikailasam is a renowned middle-aged weaver who was honoured by the Chief Minister with the Konda Laxman Bapuji Award. His saris, dupattas and stoles are prized items in the export market. Yet none of his children—a son and two daughters—want to inherit his craft.

Another weaver, known as Ilaiyah, has been weaving for the past 60 years, since he turned 15. Yet his children have turned their backs to weaving.

Yadagiri has also been weaving for the past 60 years, like his fellow weavers. But neither his son nor daughter are interested in learning to weave.

Master weaver Mallikarjun Siddi, who also owns a marketing outlet in Siddipet, followed his father, renowned weaver Buchaiah Siddi, into the profession. But his children have opted out of this traditional occupation.

However, Siddi defends the youngsters.

“Why would youngsters want to adopt a profession that pays so little? A weaver earns Rs 1000 (USD 11.82) a day here, and it takes three full days to weave a sari. A job in the IT hub of HiTech City in Hyderabad fetches a lot more.”

Worse, the Telangana government does not subsidize electricity; this has resulted in the Siddipet weavers continuing to use handlooms instead of switching to powerlooms, making their work even more tedious and hard. Electricity is Rs 10 (USD 0.12) a unit. If subsidized, the cost comes down to Rs 1 (US$ 0.012) per unit. Power loom machinery is expensive, ranging from Rs 1.5 lakh to 6 lakh (USD 1773.5 to USD 7101). With electricity subsidy, a weaver can bear the burden. Otherwise, it is not possible. Hence, even today, you see only handlooms here,” explains Siddi.

Master weaver Laxman Tadaka prepares his materials. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

Marketing the product is also tough. The government buys the product at higher rates but does so lackadaisically. “Their representatives come only once a year, and although the payment is higher, it is not immediate. Private parties come regularly, and often, pay immediately,” say weavers.

The story is hardly any different in Pochampally, world-renowned for its ikat silk weaves. Ikat here can be either single ikat or double ikat, with the second being even more expensive. The yarn has to be initially soaked and then dyed before weaving. Since ikat weaves require every thread of the yarn to be dyed separately, a power loom can never be used. Thus, ikat weaves, whether cotton or silk, must be woven on a handloom, as master weaver Laxman Tadaka points out. The silk yarn comes from Bengaluru and is priced at Rs 4500 (USD 53.20) per kilogram. A weaver needs an average of 6 kg of yarn to weave seven saris a month. To bear the cost of inputs and the effort, a weaver must make enough sales. “The 15 percent subsidy extended by the government can hardly suffice,” Tadaka points out.

Rudra Anjanelu, manager of the Pochampally Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society, says they are dependent on subsidies.

“Our silk saris are expensive. But we cannot afford to give discounts unless the government supports us. A major problem is the 5 percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) that has now been imposed by the central government. It makes saris and other silk products even more expensive.”

In the past, the state government used to render marketing support through its outlets, offering the products to customers at discounted prices, especially during the festive season, while subsidizing weavers. This is not forthcoming anymore, making it tough for weavers.

Most weavers have to rely on the Telangana State Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society Limited (TSCO), their apex cooperative, to sell their product.

“We had suggested a method to jack up our sales. The Telangana government has a Kalyanalakshmi scheme, wherein parents of girls are given Rs 1 lakh (USD 1182.32) for their daughter’s wedding. Along with the money, the government could easily provide a sari worth Rs 10,000 (USD 118.23) for the bride. This will help us weavers too, while helping the parents with the bridal trousseau,” Anjanelu says.

Besides, most weavers are not happy with the quality of the subsidized yarn provided by the government through the National Handloom Development Corporation.

Muralikrishnan, a weaver from Koyalaguddem, a village renowned for its cotton ikat, laments, “The yarn provided by the government is of inferior quality and this, in turn, can affect the quality of our end product. It is unlike what we get from private traders.”

Moreover, as Anjanelu points out, “Yarn has to be paid for. When sales are down, how can weavers buy any yarn?”

A big challenge for handloom weavers remains the flooding of markets by printed duplicates, which sell at a fraction of the price of handloom fabric.

On hindsight, though, it is not as if nothing was done for weavers by the Telangana government. However, if weavers have not experienced long-term benefits, could this be attributed to the outcome of the ballot?

The previous Chandrashekhar Reddy (state) government, for instance, introduced a 36-month savings-cum-insurance scheme for weavers termed the Thrift Scheme, wherein the government contributed an amount matching the investment made by an individual.

In Pochampally, land was also sanctioned for a handloom institute, and a handloom park was set up on the outskirts of the town. However, with a new Chief Minister getting elected, the plans came to naught. The Handloom Park too suffered from bad planning. Weavers who had set up shop at the park now have to market their products from their homes.

It is ironical that the weavers of Pochampally, Koyalaguddem and Siddipet find it tough to sell their exquisite weaves, despite being located in the vicinity of metropolitan Hyderabad, which boasts of an upwardly mobile population with high disposable income.

Notwithstanding the problems faced, there are a few who have found a solution. Dudyala Shankar and Muralikrishnan of Koyalaguddem have diversified their range of products to include ikat fabric and bedsheets, alongside traditional saris, dupattas, and stoles. Muralikrishnan has been accessing markets all over India through the internet, from his dusty little village.

“It is the only way out,” he tells me.

Indeed, the World Wide Web can certainly fill in where humans cannot. Product diversification and market access translating into sales may ultimately wean back the younger generation to keep the weaving tradition alive in Telangana and prevent it from dying out.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The United Nations Security Council Meets on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Sudan. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 8 2025 (IPS)

As the Civil War rages on in Sudan, the nationwide humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. Armed conflict has caused an escalation in civilian casualties and displacement in the past few months. Additionally, famine looms in the nation’s most conflict-impacted areas, which is exacerbated by tightened restrictions that impede humanitarian aid deliveries. Despite numerous calls for a cessation of hostilities by the international community, relief efforts are severely underfunded.

In 2025, humanitarian organizations seek to assist approximately 21 million people in Sudan, which is roughly half of the country’s population. However, this number is projected to increase following the escalation of armed hostilities recorded in December of 2024. According to a report from the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), the ongoing siege in El Fasher, the capital city of Sudan, left at least 782 dead and 1,143 injured from May 2024 to December 2024.

According to Edem Wosornu, the Director of Operations and Advocacy for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Zamzam refugee camp, the nation’s largest refuge for internally displaced persons, has faced severe shelling in the final weeks of 2024. Approximately 80 people were killed and 400 were injured as a result of artillery shelling in western Darfur. Civilians and humanitarian aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), have attributed these casualties to hostilities perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, described the current situation in the Zamzam camp as a “kill box”. The escalation of warfare has forced Sudanese refugees to move toward dangerous RSF territories or toward the barren deserts where they face the risk of starvation. “We can see from space people camping under trees, on the side of the road. They’re going out of the frying pan and into the fire,” said Raymond, adding that many of these people have been severely injured or immunocompromised.

On January 6 2025, the United Nations (UN) Security Council warned that famine conditions are projected to spread throughout Sudan if humanitarian organizations do not effectively intervene soon. According to Wosornu, famine is present in five areas, including the Zamzam, Al Salam, and Abu Shouk camps, as well as regions in the western Nuba Mountains.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) states that five additional regions, including Um Kadada and El Fasher, as well as 17 other high-risk areas, could face severe famine-like conditions by mid-2025. Women, children, and the elderly are predicted to be disproportionately affected.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Deputy Director Beth Bechdol, the vast scale of famine is a direct result of extended warfare, displacement, and restricted humanitarian access. Additionally, the IPC report states that “only an immediate cessation of hostilities can prevent the crisis from worsening.”

It is crucial for humanitarian organizations to have unimpeded access to critically endangered areas in Sudan. The Adre border crossing, which provides direct passage from Chad to some of Sudan’s most affected areas, has seen numerous delays and blockages of aid. According to Wosornu, “key areas in South Kordofan are effectively cut off from external assistance,” while “visas for humanitarian personnel are not being granted swiftly enough”.

The start of 2025 is a major tipping point for the Sudan crisis as action must be taken now to ensure stability for millions of Sudanese people. Bechdol states that “immediate and unimpeded” humanitarian access is urgent at this time for humanitarian organizations to be able to deliver “multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance”.

The 2025 Humanitarian Needs Response Plan seeks approximately 4.2 billion dollars to provide life-saving assistance to 21 million Sudanese civilians that are struggling to stay alive. The funding from this plan would help to restore basic services such as access to food, water, and shelter, as well as protection services. “The risk of famine and its spread has been on our collective conscience since August, and now it is here, not only with people dying from hunger, but also with a breakdown of health systems, livelihoods and social structures,” warns Bechdol.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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In the Pacific, Investing in Coral Reefs and the Blue Economy programme will channel finance towards the protection of Fijian coral reefs and communities. Credit: UNDP

By David Smith and Neisha Manickchand
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jan 8 2025 (IPS)

Climate change is one of the most serious global threats to the future of the world’s population. Its impact extends far and wide, from the economy to governance to the very health and well-being of society.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 2030 and 2050, some 250,000 extra deaths per year will occur because of the climate crisis’ impacts on nutrition and health. Extreme weather events directly affect food and water security and quality of life, resulting in an increase in malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory illnesses, and heat stroke, among other illnesses and stressors.

And they will reach every country, city, and municipality, in every corner of the world — but some areas are more vulnerable than others. Some of the most vulnerable? Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/list-sids

SIDS health systems are rarely built or have the resources to withstand the ever-growing, ever-changing impacts of the climate crisis. In the Caribbean Islands, for example, drought and excess rainfall have caused outbreaks of diseases transmitted by insect vectors. Dengue Fever — perhaps the most well known — has surged in recent years, nearly reaching 57,000 in 2024, a 469% increase over the same period in 2023.

The surge was likely fueled by El Niño and unplanned urban growth. The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) has also reported increased hospitalisations and deaths due to Dengue and other vector-borne diseases like Zika and Chikungunya.

Beyond vector-borne diseases, climate change also affects non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and other health-related issues. Trinidad, a Caribbean island, saw increased hospital admissions for asthma due to high temperatures, and Belize, a country in Central America, reported that increased heat resulting from climate change is impacting schoolchildren and other vulnerable persons.

In the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICT), overall population health status has also deteriorated with increasing climate change-induced health risks. According to an internal report, surveys carried out by Fiji National University note that increased rainfall and flooding have caused crop insecurity, leading to changes in diet and water-borne illnesses.

The frequency of extreme weather events in SIDS is not expected to slow down. Major hurricanes in the Caribbean are projected to increase, and tropical cyclones are expected to carry more and more rain.

The first Category 5 hurricane, “Beryl”— the highest category on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale — of 2024 was uncharacteristically early, badly damaging Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and parts of Jamaica. Beryl’s destruction is telling of future weather patterns and of small island nations’ vulnerability.

As this haunting trend progresses, climate experts, policymakers, and the global community are gathering the research to establish innovative and necessary solutions. The University of the West Indies (UWI) in the Caribbean, for example, is collaborating with other SIDS researchers to understand the impacts of climate on health which is demonstrated in the 2024 Small Island Developing States report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

The report notes that addressing heat through adaptation efforts would be an extremely effective and life-saving intervention in SIDS. Establishing more urban green spaces, for example, can provide local cooling benefits and alleviate heat exposure in cities.

Furthermore, UWI and Fiji National University recently presented new research on the impacts of climate change on community health and wellbeing at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa.

And at the COP29 in Azerbaijan, participants developed a Special Report on Climate Change and Health, outlining priority recommendations from the global health community for governments, policymakers, and other sectors to place health at the heart of climate solutions.

Yet, for SIDS to truly adapt or combat the effects of climate change, increased access to financing is also crucial.

The research is evident and the urgency has been established. For SIDS, adhering to these recommendations and other global commitments is vital. The health impacts of climate change will continue to persist unless the necessary actions are taken.

Dr. David Smith is a Coordinator of the Institute for Sustainable Development at the University of the West Indies and Chair of the SDSN Caribbean Network. Neisha Manickchand is a Project and Resource Mobilisation Officer for the Institute for Sustainable Development at the University of the West Indies and Network Manager of the SDSN Caribbean Network.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Cerebral palsy is believed to be one of the most common neurological disorders in Nigeria.

Cerebral palsy is believed to be one of the most common neurological disorders in Nigeria.

Cerebral palsy is believed to be one of the most common neurological disorders in Nigeria.

Mubarak Bala was jailed for blasphemy in a case that attracted criticism from rights groups.

Abidjan residents and environmentalists raise concerns after part of the same shipment was dumped in the UK.

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Displaced Palestinians walk through the Nour Shams camp in the West Bank. Credit: UNRWA/Mohammed Alsharif

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 7 2025 (IPS)

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions have collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed.

“The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, and how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.”

Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy. Meanwhile, mighty boosts of Israel’s weapons and ammunition were coming from the United States. Nearly half of the Palestinians they killed were children.

For those children and their families, the road to hell was paved with good doublethink. So, for instance, while the Gaza horrors went on, no journalist would confront Biden with what he’d said at the time of the widely decried school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when the president had quickly gone on live television.

“There are parents who will never see their child again,” he said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.” And he asked plaintively, “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

The massacre in Uvalde killed 19 children. The daily massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many Palestinian kids in a matter of hours.

While Biden refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and mass murder that he kept making possible, Democrats in his orbit cooperated with silence or other types of evasion. A longstanding maneuver amounts to checking the box for a requisite platitude by affirming support for a “two-state solution.”

Dominating Capitol Hill, an unspoken precept has held that Palestinian people are expendable as a practical political matter. Party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries did virtually nothing to indicate otherwise.

Nor did they exert themselves to defend incumbent House Democrats Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, defeated in summer primaries with an unprecedented deluge of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by AIPAC and Republican donors.

The overall media environment was a bit more varied but no less lethal for Palestinian civilians. During its first several months, the Gaza war received huge quantities of mainstream media coverage, which thinned over time; the effects were largely to normalize the continual slaughter. Some exceptional reporting existed about the suffering, but the journalism gradually took on a media ambience akin to background noise, while credulously hyping Biden’s weak ceasefire efforts as determined quests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in for increasing amounts of criticism. But the prevalent U.S. media coverage and political rhetoric — unwilling to expose the Israeli mission to destroy Palestinians en masse — rarely went beyond portraying Israel’s leaders as insufficiently concerned with protecting Palestinian civilians.

Instead of candor about horrific truths, the usual tales of U.S. media and politics have offered euphemisms and evasions.

When she resigned as the New York Times Magazine poetry editor in mid-November 2023, Anne Boyer condemned what she called “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.” Another poet, William Stafford, wrote decades ago:

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in paperback this fall with a new afterword about the Gaza war.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The face of Bangladesh’s founding father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, will soon be erased from the country’s currency. Credit: Kumkum Chadha/IPS

By Kumkum Chadha
DELHI, Jan 7 2025 (IPS)

History seems to be chasing Bangladesh even while the interim government is grappling with real issues of administering a country thrown into chaos.

In July last year, this south Asian country faced an upheaval when a students’ movement drove out Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from office.

Protestors took to the streets over a quota system for government jobs. Their angst—disproportionate benefits to descendants of freedom fighters.

Once political parties and fundamentalists jumped in, the focus shifted, with protestors demanding Hasina’s resignation.

Hasina was forced to leave the country she had ruled for 15 years. She landed in India for what was then flagged as a temporary refuge: “For the moment only,” as India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar had then told the Indian Parliament.

Back home in Bangladesh, an interim government headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of governing a country clearly at a crossroads—in other words, a toss-up between Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s legacy or charting a new course without the baggage of history.

It is against this backdrop that one must examine the new narrative of the interim government to reprint Bangladesh’s currency notes.

Initiated by the Central Bank of Bangladesh, the new notes will no longer carry the customary picture of Bangabandhu as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, as the former leader who led the country to independence is known. In common parlance, Bangabandhu means Friend of Bangla people.

“Phasing out” is how officials from Bangladesh Bank explained the move, while 70-year-old Alamgir, a witness to the War of Liberation, called it “an altered history,” in other words, pressing a delete button on Bangabandhu’s legacy.

To say that the sins of a daughter have adversely impacted her father’s legacy may be a bit of a stretch because even on his own, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a controversial figure.

A folk hero turned dictator, he failed to address the real issues of Bangladesh. Instead, he became authoritarian and suspended rights. As Prime Minister, his daughter Hasina followed in her father’s footsteps.

Hence the anger of the people that spilled to the streets last year took a toll both on Sheikh Hasina and the legacy.

For starters, the current generation, many in the forefront of the students’ protest in Bangladesh, resent the undue space accorded to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through the years, particularly when Hasina ruled. Not only do they want to erase his imprint, but they also intend to rewrite and, if possible, clean up the bloody chapters of history.

In this context, is the currency note redesign the first substantive step taken by the interim government headed by Yunus?

Fazal Kamal, former editor of The Independent and Bangladesh Times, does not think so.
“It is not the government that has taken the initiative. It is an intense reaction from among the people of Bangladesh to Hasina’s insistence on ensuring Mujib’s seal on everything. It is this overkill that Bangladeshis want to end. The interim government is only going along,” he told IPS.

Given the hullabaloo, it must be pointed out that this is not the first time that Mujibur Rahman’s mugshot, if one may be allowed to use the term, has been taken off currency notes.

In 1976, a year after Bangabandhu and some of his family members were assassinated, the series of notes that were introduced did not have his image. It was only in 1998 that he made a comeback on the taka and has remained since. A taka is a basic monetary unit in Bangladesh.

Therefore, when Farid Hossain, who has served as Minister at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, calls the currency issue “much ado about nothing,” he is not off the mark.

“On ground, people want governance—they want law and order and currency, which can buy more rather than which image it carries,” Hossain said, adding that the move is indicative of the interim government “giving in to pressure” from the radicals.

To many, Hasina’s ouster is nothing short of a “second independence.” Yet there is a large segment that is against what Hossain has termed “wholesale erosion” of history and legacy: “Today Bangladesh faces an ideological divide and the narrative that was buried years ago seems to have resurfaced.”

In other words, today’s generation in Bangladesh wants to resurrect the real face of Mujibur Rahman and strip him of the legacy draped in grandeur. And in this, the interim government has been an active player.

“The intention of the interim administration is to take the country away from its historical legacy. The current regime has pandered to its unruly student followers who have been crushing every symbol of history,” says political analyst Syed Badrul Ahsan.

As for succumbing to pressure, the interim government is in the eye of a storm on another issue—the tricky and sensitive issue of Hasina’s extradition.

Bangladesh has sent a note verbale to the Indian government saying that it wants Hasina back for a judicial process. A note verbale is a diplomatic communication from one government to another.

There has been a persistent demand, as Kamal points out, for leaders of the previous regime to be brought back and tried. Call it vendetta politics if you will but the popular sentiment seems to be that Hasina should be sent to the gallows.

Though India and Bangladesh have an extradition treaty in place, it exempts political vendetta.

Article 6 of the treaty states that extradition may be denied if the alleged offence is of a political nature. That Hasina is being tried for her political offences is a given: “A note verbale is not enough. The interim government does not have a mandate. It is there to administer and steer reforms and not indulge in politicking. But it seems to be taking up the side issue of radicals and seems to be giving in,” Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, former Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, told IPS.

Dismissing the extradition request as “mere rhetoric resulting from domestic pulls and pressures,” the former ambassador says India is unlikely to accommodate its neighbor on this issue.

He also did not rule out Yunus using this as a “pressure tactic” to tell India to restrain Sheikh Hasina from making political statements from Indian soil.

For record, in a virtual address last month, Hasina stated that Yunus was running a “fascist regime” that encouraged terrorists and fundamentalists. Interestingly, the extradition request had followed soon after.

Both issues seem to be hanging in the air—the new currency notes are yet to be printed and on Hasina’s extradition, the Indian government is silent.

As for Mujib’s legacy, his statue can be vandalized, his images defaced and his daughter’s sins denigrate his legacy, but Bangabandhu’s footprint from history, however controversial, cannot be erased.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 7 2025 (IPS)

The forthcoming fourth United Nations Financing for Development conference must address developing countries’ major financial challenges. Recent setbacks to sustainable development and climate action make FfD4 all the more critical.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

FfD4
The FfD4 conference, months away, will mainly be due to efforts led by the G77, the caucus of developing countries in the UN system. The G77 started with 77 UN member states and has since expanded to over 130.

The 1944 Bretton Woods conference outcome was primarily a compromise between the US and the UK. In 1971, when its Bretton Woods obligations threatened to undermine its privileges, President Richard Nixon refused to honour the US pledge to deliver an ounce of gold for US$35.

Over two decades later, President Bill Clinton promised a new international financial architecture. It rejected Professor Robert Triffin’s characterisation of international monetary arrangements after the early 1970s as an incoherent ‘non-system’.

Foreign aid
Several issues are emerging as G77 priorities for FfD4. In 1970, wealthy nations at the UN agreed to provide 0.7% of their national income annually as official development assistance (ODA).

This was much lower than the 2% initially proposed by the World Council of Churches and others. Only 0.3% has been delivered in recent years, or less than half the promise.

Most ODA conditions reflect the priorities of donors, not recipient countries. New aid definitions, conditions, and practices undermine ‘aid effectiveness’, reducing what developing nations receive.

Despite breaking its ODA promises, the new European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to contribute 0.25% of national income to Ukraine. By early December 2024, Europe had provided well over half the USD260 billion in aid to Ukraine!

Some European nations now insist that only mitigation qualifies as climate finance. Although most developing countries are tropical and struggling to cope with planetary heating, little assistance is available for adaptation.

Debt
More recently, developing countries’ new debt has been more commercial and conditional but less concessional. With the transition to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the World Bank encouraged much more commercial borrowing with its new slogan, ‘from billions to trillions’.

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, Western countries adopted unconventional monetary policies, eschewing fiscal efforts. Quantitative easing enabled much more borrowing, which grew until 2022.

However, most Western governments did not borrow much. Some private interests borrowed heavily, often for unproductive purposes, with some using cheap funds to finance shareholder buyouts to get more wealth.

Meanwhile, many developing countries went on borrowing binges as creditors pushed debt in developing countries in various ways. Rapidly mounting government debt would soon become problematic.

From early 2022 until mid-2024, interest rates rose sharply, ostensibly to counter inflation. The US Fed and European Central Bank raised interest rates in concert, triggering massive capital outflows from developing countries with the poorest worst affected.

Institutional reform
A third priority is reforming multilateral financial institutions. While these institutions have changed much over time, they remain dominated by the Global North, especially the West.

Most countries at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference were from Latin America. Initially, 47% of voting rights were the standard ‘basic votes’ for all members. By 2008, Global South membership had increased severalfold as its votes fell to 11%.

The West, especially Europe, still dominates the International Monetary Fund. Many alternative governance arrangements have been proposed. Consideration of alternative regional monetary arrangements grew after the 1997-98 Asian financial crises.

The Chiang Mai Initiative (Multilateralisation) is now a multilateral currency swap arrangement among the finance ministries and central banks of ASEAN+3 countries when liquidity is needed. The Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR) was created later in 2014.

Taxation
The Global South has long wanted the UN to lead negotiations on international taxation arrangements to provide more financial resources for development. However, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rich nations’ club has long undermined developing countries’ interests.

The OECD achieved this by misleading finance ministries in developing countries. It bypassed foreign ministries that had long worked well together on contentious Global South issues. With the OECD making up new rules for the world, developing country finance ministries signed on to a biased tax proposal on which they were nominally consulted.

At the FfD3 conference in mid-2015, the OECD blocked Global South efforts to advance international tax cooperation. An independent international commission proposed a minimum international corporate income tax rate of 25%.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen counter-proposed a 21% rate, the US minimum rate. However, at the G7 meeting he was hosting, Boris Johnson pushed this down to 15% while adding exemptions, reducing likely revenue.

Instead of distributing revenue as with a corporate income tax on profits from production, the OECD proposed revenue sharing according to consumption spending, much like a sales tax.

Poor countries would receive little as their population can afford to spend much less, even if they produce much at low wages. Rather than progressively redistribute, OECD international corporate income tax revenue distribution would be regressive.

Dollar
The US dollar remains the world’s principal currency for international transactions. US Treasury bond sales enable this, subsidising the world’s largest economy. Trump recently threatened the BRICS and others considering de-dollarization.

The leading BRICS proponents of de-dollarisation, Brazil and South Africa, have failed to persuade the other BRICS to de-dollarize. Instead, China’s central bank has issued dollar-denominated bonds for Saudi Arabia.

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) should be issued regularly to augment discretionary IMF financial resources. This can be done without Congressional approval, as happened after the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak. Such resources can be committed to the SDGs and climate finance.

But this cannot happen without collective action by the Global South seriously mobilising behind pacifist, developmental non-alignment. Inclusive and sustainable development is impossible in a world at war.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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