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A Ukrainian farmer works on his farm, before the war in his country begins with the invasion of Russia on 24 February. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

Two months after the start of the war, on 24 February, the data on the substantial increase in the cost of food products, the rise in prices and shortages of fertilizers, the destruction of land and plantations in Ukraine, the sanctions, the difficulties with the transport of cereals from the world’s main granary, represented by Russia and Ukraine, and the massive migrations, especially from rural areas, are just a few aspects that confirm the pessimism that had been generated after the outbreak of the conflict.

Data released at the end of March by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicated that food prices had increased 12.6% compared to the previous month.

This situation only increases the risk for the 50 low-income, food-deficit countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that get more than 30% of their wheat from the war zone, which will now have to look for replacement producers to prevent prices from significantly affecting the economies of those countries. Of these 50 nations, 26 get more than 50% of their imports from these two countries in conflict


This monthly increase had never been seen before this century and can only be compared to the increase in the 1980s. Cereals increased by 17.6% in one month and the prices of vegetable oils increased by more than 23%, even meat increased by 4.8% compared to February of this year.

This situation only increases the risk for the 50 low-income, food-deficit countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that get more than 30% of their wheat from the war zone, which will now have to look for replacement producers to prevent prices from significantly affecting the economies of those countries.

Of these 50 nations, 26 get more than 50% of their imports from these two countries in conflict.

It is enough to think that countries with large populations, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, which are wheat importers, buy about 60% from Russia and Ukraine. Other countries with strong internal conflicts, such as Libya and Yemen, and nations such as Lebanon, Pakistan, and Tunisia are also heavily dependent on these imports.

The dramatic situation in Ukraine, a predominantly agricultural country, has led to a concentrated effort to save as much as possible of the current crops that should be harvested in May/June, and in turn, avoid interrupting the production process and planting new crops in June/July.

FAO technicians pointed out that 115 million USD dollars are urgently needed to prevent further deterioration of the food insecurity situation in Ukraine, to assist its farmers in planting vegetables and potatoes during the European spring and to try to ensure producers have minimal conditions to go to the fields and save the winter wheat harvest.

“As food access, production and general availability are deteriorating in much of Ukraine as a result of the war, efforts to support agricultural production and the functioning of food supply chains will be essential to avert a crisis in 2022 and even in 2023”, said Rein Paulsen, Director of FAO´s Office of Emergencies.

According to experts, if the dramatic situation continues, one third of crops and agricultural land may not be harvested or cultivated in 2022.

The forced displacement of civilians fleeing the war and the recruitment of men into the territorial defense forces are leading to labor shortages and an increased burden on women, as well as reduced access to crucial agricultural inputs for plantations.

The war has led to the closure of ports, the suspension of oilseed crushing activities, and the introduction of export licensing restrictions and bans on some crops and food products. Major Ukrainian cities are being surrounded and continue to be heavily shelled, leaving people isolated and exposed to severe shortages of food, water, and power.

It is difficult to think that other producing countries can replace the production levels of Russia and Ukraine to any significant extent in the face of a disrupted export market.

Just think that Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, with Ukraine the fifth largest, and that together they provided 19% of the world’s supply of barley, 14% of wheat, and 4% of corn, and also accounted for 52% of the world sunflower oil market, while Russia is the world’s largest producer of fertilizers.

As Pope Francis pointed out, without peace the problem of hunger will not be solved, recalling that, in addition to the dramatic nature of this war in Europe, there are serious unresolved conflicts such as those in Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and others that also condemn many millions of people to starvation.

As FAO Director-General QU Dongyu has repeatedly called for since the start of the conflict, every effort should be made to keep the food and fertilizer trade open, to seek new and diversified food supplies.

The same effort should be made to support the most vulnerable groups, including the internally displaced, with social assistance, avoid special regulatory reactions per country that can harm international markets in the short and medium-term, contain the spread of African swine fever, and strengthen the transparency of markets.

Excerpt:

This is an op-ed by Mario Lubetkin, Assistant Director-General of FAO

If forest loss continues at the current rate, it will be impossible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius as pledged in the Paris Agreement. Credit: José Garth Medina/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

In case you were not aware, please know that humanity used to cultivate more than 6.000 plant species for food, but now instead fewer than 200 of these species make major contributions to food production. Out of these, only 9% account for 66% of total crop production.

Also that 33% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished.

And that 26% of the nearly 8.000 local breeds of livestock that are still in existence are now at risk of extinction.

“Many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline. The proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing. Overall, the diversity of crops present in farmers’ fields has declined and threats to crop diversity are increasing”

And most coral reefs face too many pressures from pollution to overfishing and habitat destruction.

In addition, many species, including pollinators, soil organisms and the natural enemies of pests, that contribute to vital ecosystem services, are in decline as a consequence of the destruction and degradation of habitats, overexploitation, pollution and other threats.

There is also a rapid decline in key ecosystems that deliver numerous services essential to food and agriculture, including supply of freshwater, protection against storms, floods and other hazards, and habitats for species such as fish and pollinators.

All the above facts do not come out of the blue – they, among many others, are based on specific scientific findings provided by 91 countries and 27 international organisations, and contributions from over 175 authors and reviewers, who elaborated The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.

 

What is biodiversity for food and agriculture?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) explains that biodiversity is the variety of life at genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Biodiversity for food and agriculture is, in turn, the subset of biodiversity that contributes in one way or another to agriculture and food production, it says, adding the following:

Biodiversity includes the domesticated plants and animals that are part of crop, livestock, forest or aquaculture systems, harvested forest and aquatic species, the wild relatives of domesticated species, and other wild species harvested for food and other products.

It also encompasses what is known as “associated biodiversity”, the vast range of organisms that live in and around food and agricultural production systems, sustaining them and contributing to their output.

Biodiversity supplies many vital ecosystem services, such as creating and maintaining healthy soils, pollinating plants, controlling pests and providing habitat for wildlife, including for fish and other species that are vital to food production and agricultural livelihoods, adds FAO, while also explaining the following:

Biodiversity makes production systems and livelihoods more resilient to shocks and stresses, including those caused by climate change. It is a key resource in efforts to increase food production while limiting negative impacts on the environment.

It makes a variety of contributions to the livelihoods of many people, often reducing the need for food and agricultural producers to rely on costly or environmentally harmful external inputs.

Biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystem levels helps address the challenges posed by diverse and changing environmental conditions and socio-economic circumstances.

Diversifying production systems, for example by using multiple species, breeds or varieties, integrating the use of crop, livestock, forest and aquatic biodiversity, or promoting habitat diversity in the local landscape or seascape, helps to promote resilience, improve livelihoods and support food security and nutrition.

“Many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline. The proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing. Overall, the diversity of crops present in farmers’ fields has declined and threats to crop diversity are increasing.”

 

More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. A sea of soy is seen near the city of Porto Nacional, on the right bank of the Tocantins River, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

 

Demolishing our own home

Should this not be enough, please also know that the world’s oceans are getting warmer because of increasing global carbon dioxide emissions.

Also that the world’s best-known coral reefs could be extinct by the end of the century unless more is done to make them resilient to our warming oceans.

In short, “We are wreaking havoc on our own home – the only home we have, the one home we all share,” UN General Assembly President Abdulla, Shahid said on 22 April 2022 on the occasion of the International Mother Earth Day.

 

But who is behind the destruction of biodiversity?

Obviously, those who have been making voracious profits by exploiting the essential infrastructure of all kinds of life on Earth, through their industrial intensive agriculture, the collection of genetic resources of flora and fauna to register them as their own “property”, the production of genetically modified food, and the over-use of chemicals.

They are also the big timber business destroying forests, inducing the waste of huge amounts of agriculture and livestock products to keep their prices the most profitable possible, and a long, very long etcetera.

 

And who profits from such destruction?

A specific, accurate answer to this question may be deduced from the numerous studies elaborated by Professor Vandana Shiva, the world-famous environmental activist from India, who is known for her opposition to big multinationals such as Monsanto for their “nefarious influence on agriculture.”

In her ‘must read’ report, The Corporate Push for Synthetic Foods: False Solutions That Endanger Our Health and Damage the Planet, Vandana Shiva informs that fully artificial food is an increasingly popular trend focused on developing a new line of synthetically produced, ultra-processed food products by using recent advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.

“These new products seek to imitate and replace animal products, food additives, and expensive, rare, or socially conflictive ingredients (such as palm oil), explains the world-known physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers.

“Biotech companies and agribusiness giants are seeing the opportunity to move into this promising market of “green” consumption and hence these products are marketed to a new generation of environmentally conscious consumers who are growing critical of the grim realities of industrial food production.

“As a result, meatless burgers and sausages, as well as imitations of cheese, dairy products, seafood, and others, have begun to flood the market, being found anywhere from fast food chains to local grocery stores.

Such products market themselves as ‘eco-friendly’, ‘healthy’, and ‘sustainable,’ says Vandana Shiva, who already three decades ago, founded Navdanya and the Navdanya movement to defend Seed and Food sovereignty and small farmers around the world, as well as the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology (New Delhi, India).

In short: big business has largely contributed to destroying the essential web of life… and big business now supplants Nature by producing synthetic food.

Students eat lunch in the cafeteria of the João Caffaro Municipal School in Itaboraí, in southeastern Brazil. Schoolchildren returned to eating vegetables and drinking natural fruit juices when the school canteens and the supply of family farming products to the National School Feeding Program resumed in April this year, after an interruption brought about by the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
ITABORAÍ, Brazil , Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

“I like lettuce, but not tomatoes and cucumbers,” said nine-year-old Paulo Henrique da Silva de Jesus, a third grader at the João Baptista Caffaro Municipal School in the southeastern Brazilian city of Itaboraí.

He and Tainá Cassia Faria, a 13-year-old fifth grader, both dislike yams (Dioscorea spp., a popular tuber), but say they love the food the school serves them. “We eat everything, we don’t leave anything on our plates,” they said in the cafeteria of the public primary school. Noodles, beans and meat are their favorites.

“Today we have cake!” said another excited schoolboy.

This year it has been possible to offer “a greater variety of quality foods, incorporating fruits and vegetables,” with the full reinstatement of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), said Deise Lessa, the school’s principal since 2011 and a teacher for 35 years in this municipality located about 50 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro.“Many children have their only full meal of the day at school, given the poverty and unemployment affecting the local population.” -- Mauricilio Rodrigues

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the schools in this South American country closed their doors from March 2020 until the gradual return of students to the classrooms began in mid-2021, along with the return of school meals, which ensure adequate nutrition for a large part of Brazil’s poor children.

“The PNAE is fundamental in school life. Many children have their only full meal of the day at school, given the poverty and unemployment affecting the local population,” said Mauricilio Rodrigues, Itaboraí’s secretary of education since the current municipal authorities took office in January 2021.

“Eighty percent of the students in our schools are from low-income families,” he noted during the day that IPS spent at the same primary schools in Itaboraí that we visited in 2015, to check on the post-pandemic school feeding situation.

Two changes were evident at João Caffaro. One was the use of masks by schoolchildren in the classrooms, which are only removed in the dining room and outdoor playground, despite the fact that in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where the municipality is located, masks are no longer mandatory.

Another is that in the dining room, as a measure to curb the spread of the disease, the multicolored tablecloths of the past have disappeared, and now the tables are bare and disinfected before each group of children comes in. Furthermore, the groups are limited in size and are spread throughout the large space which in the past was crowded with schoolchildren. In addition, we were not allowed to enter the kitchen this time, for health reasons.

Lunch is a feast for the children at the João Caffaro Municipal School. They are served food that they rarely have in a single meal at home, with meats, assorted vegetables, fruits, natural juices and even cakes for dessert. The meals are a guarantee of good nutrition that was only partially alleviated by food distribution when schools were closed during the peak of the pandemic, in 2020 and much of 2021. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Alliance between schools and family agriculture

“Many children never miss class because of the lunch we serve,” said the principal of the municipal school with a student body of 450, located in the Engenho Velho neighborhood, where most of the population lives in poverty, in this city of 245,000 inhabitants.

School meals, as an initiative of the Brazilian government, began to be served in the 1940s, when few people went to school. They evolved with the democratization of education, especially after the 1988 national constitution recognized the right of primary school students to a food supplement provided by the government.

To carry out the program, the municipal and state governments receive funds from the National Education Development Fund (FNDE), administered by the Ministry of Education.

In 2009, a new law established a requirement with positive effects on child nutrition and local economies: that a minimum of 30 percent of PNAE purchases in each municipality must be of products from local family farms.

This is what makes it possible for elementary school students in Itaboraí to eat fresh vegetables and a variety of fruits. Banana, orange, tangerine, guava, cassava, pumpkin, sweet potato, lettuce and kale are the most purchased foods from local farmers, said Ana Beatriz Garcia, coordinator of school food programs in the prefecture.

Lunch is a feast for the children at the João Caffaro Municipal School. They are served food that they rarely have in a single meal at home, with meats, assorted vegetables, fruits, natural juices and even cakes for dessert. The meals are a guarantee of good nutrition that was only partially alleviated by food distribution when schools were closed during the peak of the pandemic, in 2020 and much of 2021. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Interruption due to the pandemic

That was not possible in 2020, when schools were closed because of the pandemic and students took classes online throughout the country. An attempt was made to alleviate the closure of school cafeterias by distributing basic food baskets to students’ families, but it was not the same. Perishable fresh produce could not be included.

On-site classes in Itaboraí were partially resumed as of June 2021, with each group divided into two halves that took turns in the classrooms every two days. Thus, regular purchases from family farmers could not be resumed either.

But the mayor’s office promoted fairs in schools, where families could pick up fresh food for home consumption, replacing school meals, said Lessa, the principal of the João Caffaro school.

In this country of 214 million people, most children attend primary and secondary school either in the morning or the afternoon. These public school students are served two meals, lunch and a snack. Children in other schools attend for the entire day, and are served four meals: breakfast, lunch and two snacks.

“Despite the difficulties, we met the goal set by the PNAE, acquiring 36 percent of the food served to students from family agriculture,” said Secretary of Education Rodrigues. This year they expect to reach between 35 and 40 percent during the February to December school year.

“The biggest difficulty is the logistics of getting the food to the network of schools,” he said. There are four or five trucks or vans that carry the meals every day, operated in a joint effort by the municipal secretariats of Education and Agriculture.

Two teachers and several elementary school students work in the vegetable garden at the Jueza Patricia Acioli Full-Time School in the city of Itaboraí, in southeastern Brazil. The aim is both educational and nutritional, to foment the consumption of vegetables and fruits when schoolchildren grow them with their own hands. CREDIT: Secom/Itaboraí

Itaboraí has 35,000 students in its 92 public nursery and elementary schools, in addition to adult education. They include children of preschool age, four and five years old, and first to fifth graders.

In Brazil, the municipalities are responsible for the first five of the nine years of basic education. The states are responsible for the last four years of primary school and the three years of secondary school. They are also required to provide meals in their schools, although compliance is less strict.

To plan purchases, design the menu and provide orientation for the schools, the Itaboraí Municipal Department of Education has a central team of 13 nutritionists, in addition to a nutritionist in each school.

“We have to be flexible in the plans, each product has its harvest time and can be scarce because of too much or too little rain, or can be ready early as is happening with the persimmon harvest this year,” said Larissa de Brito, one of the chief nutritionists.

“That’s why we are in constant dialogue with the farmers,” she added.

“Our relationship with the farmers has improved, because we visit them at the beginning of the year and now accept purchases from individual producers, whereas before purchases were only arranged through their associations,” explained coordinator Garcia.

Alcir Coração, an 81-year-old family farmer, stands next to an orange grove on his farm, where he harvests fruit that he sells to the Itaboraí municipal government for school meals. He lost his entire harvest in 2020 and part of it in 2021, because of the COVID pandemic that forced schools to be closed in Brazil. But this year he expects to do even better than the good sales of the pre-pandemic years. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Recuperating markets

The municipality of Itaboraí is 11 percent rural, and the rural population makes up only 1.2 percent of the total. But there are many family farms, encouraged by the proximity of large markets. Oranges are the star product, due to their renowned quality.

Alcir Coração is the 81-year-old president of the Association of Family Farmers of Itaboraí and Neighboring Municipalities (Agrifami), which has relied on the PNAE since 2009, when the program decided to make family farmers suppliers of at least 30 percent of its purchases.

“This will turn out well,” he predicted at the time. So he decided to expand his production, especially of oranges, on his 10 hectares of land, divided into two farms of 6.5 and 3.5 hectares in size, 10 kilometers from the town of Itaboraí.

He enlisted the support of his 41-year-old son-in-law, Marcio da Veiga, as a partner in the undertaking.

“In 2020 we harvested 3000 kilos of oranges and lost everything, waiting for the demand from the schools that did not arrive,” lamented Coração. In 2021 the loss was smaller; the PNAE orders “arrived late,” but they eventually did.

“This year started well,” with a call for purchases as early as April. It was never done so early and also doubled the limit for the annual sale of each farmer in relation to last year, raised to 40,000 reais (8,600 dollars at the current exchange rate), he said, visibly pleased.

He and his son-in-law produce different varieties of oranges, called selecta, natal and lima, as well as tangerines and lemons. “Lemons are harvested all year round, but their price is low, oranges yield more income,” Da Veiga said, explaining why they decided to expand their orange groves.

From a young age, students grow vegetables for their own lunches at the Patricia Acioli School. As it is a full-day school, where students attend for eight hours, they receive four meals: breakfast, lunch and two snacks. CREDIT: Secom/Itaboraí

Gardening as education

In 2021, some public schools in Itaboraí also started to grow some of their own vegetables. At the Juiza Patrícia Acioli Municipal School, the 265 students plant and harvest lettuce, carrots, kale, cabbages, eggplants and other vegetables.

The aim is educational, to help students learn what the land has to offer, how food is produced and what healthy eating is, school principal Alessandra Wenderroschi told IPS.

“By taking part in growing the food with their own hands, students have more motivation to eat vegetables, even arugula,” she said. It is a “valuable educational activity,” she added.

Related Articles

• School Meals Bolster Family Farming in Brazil
• School Meal Programs Getting Back on Track in Central America, Despite Hurdles
• Brazil Drives New School Feeding Model in the Region

Gender equality in the labour force is a significant way to empower women. Credit: Mentor Together.

By Arundhuti Gupta
BENGALURU, India, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

Today, approximately 19 million young women are accessing post-secondary or tertiary education in India. Yet, such education has not translated into expected gains in female labour force participation. Only 34 percent of women in India with post-secondary education are active in the labour force, compared to 81 percent of men.

Gender equality in the labour force is more than an economic end in itself; it is also a significant way to empower women. Women who work in India have more say in household decision-making and can delay their age of marriage and the birth of their first child.

The relatively low number of women in the workforce includes both women who are employed and those actively searching for jobs. Therefore, I examined the impact of three interlinked factors that uniquely constrain young women’s capabilities or choices to participate in the workforce: a skills deficit, a network gap, and restrictive gender norms.

 

• Skills deficit: Post-secondary curricula rarely address eight of the ten skills  employers currently value most, which relate to problem-solving, self-management, and working with people, and they are seldom built through traditional instructional approaches in classrooms.

• Network gap: Women in India tend to have small professional networks because social norms restrict them from engaging freely. A small network means a lack of role models, which limits aspirations and reduces the likelihood of women breaking gender stereotypes and pursuing career paths where they do not see other women. It can also mean access to fewer job-market opportunities at the time of planning for entry into the labour market.

• Restrictive gender norms: Indian social norms define a woman’s role as primarily that of a caregiver, and thus discourages female labour force participation. In urban areas, women’s participation in the labour force drops off in their early- to mid-twenties—when marriage- and family-related responsibilities tend to increase.

 

In conceptualising the role that mentorship can play to tackle these three challenges, I reviewed more recent research that model mentoring programmes as a context for activities, and not just as a set of one-to-one relationships.

The latter has been the predominant format in which mentoring programmes have emerged across the globe as an effective positive youth development practice. Viewing mentorship as a context for activities recognises the many systems surrounding a young person that also need active shaping or reshaping.

The three to four years of tertiary education offers government, educators, employers, and civil society a unique opportunity to empower young women through supportive skills, networks, and norm changes. The return on investment on 15 cumulative years of education will be much higher when we ensure that young women can transition into and thrive in the labour force

As in this case of female labour force participation, focusing solely on young women’s skills is necessary but insufficient. If we do not increase the opportunities she has access to or the support her family provides her, we cannot meaningfully change her life outcomes.

A newer format of mentoring—digital mentoring—holds promise in tackling all three of these factors collectively. Additionally, it can be accessed by several young women, given India’s exponentially increasing internet user base and shrinking gender gap in mobile phone usage.

I explored three pathways for change in digital mentoring: skills exchange through individual mentoring relationships, opportunity expansion through the transfer of social capital across a large and trusted mentor network, and the role modelling of egalitarian gender norms through new actors who can influence family and community.

 

What evidence exists on this model today?

Data from Mentor To Go—the digital mentoring programme that Mentor Together runs—demonstrates how digital mentoring reached marginalised girls across 10 Indian states.

From March 2020 to April 2021, women comprised 61 percent of the total enrolment of 7,100 mentees in the programme. Female mentees were 89 percent more likely than men to complete all the eligibility requirements to get a mentor, and they resultantly accounted for 70 percent of all mentorships.

The programme saw higher interest from young women in their first two years of college. Most of these women were pursuing engineering degrees and came from low-income backgrounds.

The young women in mentorship experienced changes in their career decision-making, work readiness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, life satisfaction, and emotional regulation skills that were statistically highly significant. Seventy-nine percent of mentees post mentorship scored higher than the average score of the group pre-mentorship in their career decision-making skills.

Similarly on emotional regulation, 70 percent of mentees post mentorship scored higher than the average score of the group pre-mentorship. An evidence-based work readiness mentoring curriculum emerged as important to help them learn and practice these skills with their mentors.

Digital mentoring supported the creation of a large and diverse network of career mentors more than 4,000 volunteer mentor applicants over 13 months. The mentor pool was gender-balanced, with mentors having seven to eight years of work experience on average and speaking more than 10 languages.

The mentor network was created through outreach efforts driven by 26 large corporates. Mentee trust in the network was rooted in mentor screening. Building a large and diverse mentoring network cannot happen at the cost of building trust through processes that vet member identity and intent.

Despite creating a large network, facilitating new information and opportunity exchange was limited to individual mentoring relationships; the mentoring network at large was not tapped into to identify new information for all mentees.

Closing this network gap is vital for young women who lack career pathways through their immediate family or extended networks. The average number of young women who knew someone working in the field that interested them was five to seven.

Only one in five young women had a parent who had studied for a tertiary degree or higher. Only 25 percent of fathers worked in formal salaried jobs, whereas 25 percent were in casual labour or daily wage jobs and 43 percent were self-employed.

When it came to gender norms, the young women in this study lived in two parallel worlds. As tertiary education students in the programme network, their aspirations, career plans, and economic empowerment were championed by mentors.

Meanwhile, their families were planning for more traditional routes of marriage and familial responsibilities. A key question emerged: Could a large network of mentors who champion more egalitarian gender norms discuss the impact of traditional patriarchal norms in mentees’ lives or advocate for such norms to be changed with families, communities, and networks at large?

There is evidence from other countries that negative beliefs held by family members around women working, such as the overestimation of disapproval by others or mistaken beliefs around prevailing practices, can change when countered with correct information.

Additionally, there is promising new evidence that secondary networks of socialisation where new norms are practised—a network of mentors in this case—can facilitate the transmission of new ideas quicker than traditional primary networks.

 

Recommendations for a sustainable digital mentoring practice and policy ecosystem

Developing a digital mentoring policy and practice ecosystem can support young women’s transition to becoming economically empowered women who participate in the labour force.

This ecosystem must include actors in a range of roles with different responsibilities across community, institutional, and regulatory spheres.

The recommendations for different actors seeks to achieve three main goals:

• ensuring access to tertiary education
• promoting inclusive participation of young women in mentoring programmes
• delivering quality digital mentoring at scale

 

Some key recommendations are:

1. Collect and publish data on student income profiles
Leverage the All India Survey of Higher Education report for this, so that financial support needs can be understood and addressed by different central and state scholarship schemes.

2. Include digital access costs in financial support
All tertiary education scholarships should support costs of laptops, mobile phones, and internet access, so that economically marginalised young women can fully participate in virtual learning.

3. Set up a nodal organisation for the state that coordinates all preparation activities for college to workforce transition
Ensure that such a body has a gender focus subgroup that is concerned with the specific needs of young women in tertiary education. Designate such an organisation in each state to disseminate mentoring programmes across higher education institutions (HEIs).

4. Align HEI mentoring programme design with National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) requirements
Work closely with HEIs undergoing the NAAC assessment process so that their mentoring programme is part of their formal assessment.

5. Recognise mentoring as an approved internship in the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) internship portal
Drive greater participation in mentoring programmes through the alignment of the design of mentoring programmes with AICTE internship requirements.

6. Address the work readiness skills gap
Mentoring programmes should closely track emerging skills needs and use evidence-based frameworks to draw up mentoring curriculums that promote the required skills. The targeted skills should transcend those that are narrowly seen as important for work and cover broader aspects, including gender sensitivity, religion and caste sensitivity, and climate change consciousness.

7. Close the network gap
Activate mentor networks and make social capital more real for mentees. This can be done by tapping existing networks, such as LinkedIn, to create more equitable ways for mentees from backgrounds where social capital is limited to be introduced to rich and diverse opportunities and the information present in existing networks of mentors.

8. Act to influence decision-making in the family networks of young women
Leverage the larger mentor and mentee network to influence the immediate families of young women, especially in decisions that typically exclude young women. Mentors can work actively with the families to dispel myths and set positive examples.

9. Transform social norms
Launch nationwide campaigns that champion the notion that women belong workplaces and present the right to work as a human right. Emulate policies and programmes that have contributed to female education becoming acceptable and desirable, such as the Right to Education Act, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao.

The three to four years of tertiary education offers government, educators, employers, and civil society a unique opportunity to empower young women through supportive skills, networks, and norm changes. The return on investment on 15 cumulative years of education will be much higher when we ensure that young women can transition into and thrive in the labour force.

Arundhuti Gupta is the CEO of Mentor Together, a nonprofit organisation in India that provides mentoring relationships and networks to young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Socio-economic inequality and job scarcity, as well as unequal opportunity to quality education have created a view that democracy has not delivered a better life for all. Credit: Denvor DeWee/IPS

By External Source
BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

South Africans believed that the introduction of democracy in 1994 would transform their lives for the better through equality of opportunities. This hasn’t happened.

Socio-economic inequality and job scarcity, as well as unequal opportunity to quality education have created a view that democracy has not delivered a better life for all.

The country celebrates 28 years of democracy at a time when democracy is under threat globally, in the context of growing inequality and mistrust in democratic institutions.

Increasingly, scholars focus on what makes democracy valuable amid its decline. This is important given the global rise in populist and anti-democratic politics and authoritarianism.

The Human Science Research Council’s South African Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually, show that South Africans are increasingly dissatisfied with democracy. In 2004, when the country celebrated a decade of democracy, 59 % were satisfied with democracy. Now only 32 % are satisfied with how democracy is working in South Africa.

 

Democratic Satisfaction. Constructed from the Human Science Research Council South African Social Attitudes Survey

 

Are South Africans giving up on democracy, as some are asking. And what’s to be made of some political elites who are speaking out against the value of the country’s constitutional democracy?

After almost three decades of democracy, it is important to ask: What meaning do South Africans attach to the idea of democracy? This is important considering that democracies endure when there is an intrinsic commitment to democratic values and principles, even during economic hardship.

Based on my research, as well as the results of recent surveys, it’s clear that there is a sense of disempowerment among South Africans, most notably among young people. This sense of disempowerment is premised on the view that their voice, life choices, and sense of freedom are undermined by a lack of equality of opportunity.

This inequality of opportunity is seen as a form of continued oppression informed by the view that the quality of life has not necessarily improved for most South Africans.

 

Views of democracy

South Africans attach an instrumentalist value to democracy. This is evident in the views that democracy does not deliver, most notably among the youth. Democracy is valued more because of delivering socio-economic goods such as social welfare, housing, and income grants. They don’t necessarily view democracy as having intrinsic value as the best political system to achieve a just society based on human rights, dignity, freedom and equality.

In other words, they value democracy based on what it can do for them, not because they believe it is the best form of government. This is evident in the growing levels of institutional mistrust and growing political disengagement from formal democratic processes like voting.
This creates a weak foundation for the sustainability of the country’s democracy in that in times of economic hardship, the legitimacy of democracy as a political system declines in the public view. Therefore, democracy becomes ‘illegitimate’ because it cannot deliver social and economic goods to create equality of opportunity.

It is not surprising that citizens place a high value on equality as an essential democratic principle given that South Africa is still the most unequal society globally.

Why do South Africans hold a strong instrumentalist attachment to democracy? The answer may lie in the expectations of what freedom and democracy meant in 1994, when apartheid came to an end.

 

Tales of despair

My research shows that the ‘Dream of 1994’ was the restoration of human dignity, something centuries of settler colonialism and apartheid had denied the black majority. Indeed, asked what 1994 meant for them, an interviewee said:

I was very happy. I felt extremely happy because this was the first time that black people gained freedom … And it made me feel free as a person as well. Even just strolling around I felt free; I didn’t have to be so conscious around white people. There was no longer any fear … I felt good, really good. What I was thinking. I was thinking that now we are free. That you can talk with everybody, you can walk with everybody. You know, that you can be friends with everyone that you want to be friends with. I thought that now that the party {the ANC} would take over, they’d know what we had gone through then.

Equality of opportunity was an essential characteristic of what the ‘Dream of 1994’ meant for South Africans. An interviewee reflected:

Talking of expectations, because I grew up in that old era, in that old regime. So my intention was, should Nelson Mandela be free, we would be living in a free country … our expectations were that we would gain free education and that there’d be lots of jobs, that everyone would be employed, things like that. And that everyone would have his or her own house, things like that … and those were the things that we expected, which I expected.

The sense that freedom and democracy remain an illusion was more palpable among the youth. An interviewee said:

I think, in my own opinion for those who lived before 1994, their aim of freedom was to free Mandela, then after it was to have their own black government. But for me, who was born in 1987, the word freedom for me is still an idea … the reason I say that is because for me the word freedom is too big for South Africa. If education was free, then I would say yes, we have freedom.

 

Historical patterns

South Africans see a continuation of historical patterns of exclusion and marginalisation where equality of opportunity is not a lived reality for many. And, given that South Africans may continue to delegitimise democracy on the basis that it has not delivered on the expectations of the Dream of 1994, stronger populist and anti-democratic rhetoric are likely to take root in the future.

Joleen Steyn Kotze, Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Lebanon, the impact of the Beirut port blasts, a rapidly weakening local currency and the effects of COVID-19 have sent more people into poverty. Nine out of 10 Syrian refugee families in Lebanon are now living in extreme poverty. Credit: World Food Programme (WFP)

By Sami Halabi
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)

Lebanon is perpetually at a crossroads, one where local, regional, and international interests seem to play against each other—all the more so today with the war in Ukraine.

Now, tiny Lebanon, all too familiar with the ripple effects of global conflicts, has been almost completely cut off from its staple food— wheat — which was almost entirely supplied by Russia and Ukraine before the conflict.

The country has found no viable alternative to affordable wheat and, without it, flour mills and bakers have had trouble supplying Lebanon’s main food, Arabic pita bread.

At the same time, global oil price spikes triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict coupled with COVID-era supply chain issues have hammered affordability, and it’s not just bread that has been affected: the price of maize, sugar, vegetable oil, and cooking gas have created an affordability crisis that has precipitated Lebanon’s food security freefall.

Understandably, many fear that a vicious food insecurity cycle —currently in its nascence — could be the death blow for crisis-struck Lebanon, with the country finally entering the realm of failed states beset by conflict.

Lebanon can ill afford another protracted crisis. According to the World Bank, the country’s current economic malaise is one of the most severe crises since the mid-nineteenth century.

In just a span of two and a half years, the economic crisis has caused the poverty rate to rise from 30% to around 80%, and that’s just for the Lebanese. Syrian and Palestinian refugees — who were already poor and food insecure — are faring worse as the prices of basic staple foods have skyrocketed and the government is scrambling to find other, albeit less affordable, food sources.

The government has approached other suppliers such as India and the US to try to secure alternative wheat suppliers. But in a global context where every other state is dependent on Russia and Ukraine for wheat, Lebanon has little bargaining power to secure a sustainable supply, much less outbid larger players.

Perhaps the worst part of the current food insecurity cycle is that it was predictable. For decades, the international community has warned that without a real long-term food and nutrition security strategy, Lebanon’s next food crisis would be deeper and existentially damaging.

Import dependency, stemming from 1990s and early 2000s neoliberal economic policies, meant trade and services were promoted at the expense of agricultural production. The result was an inadequate food security infrastructure and financial policies that benefitted elites over hungry mouths.

Now, a hugely unequal society underpinned by a rentier economy, resilient sectors such as agriculture are so underdeveloped that Lebanon imports many foods that are native to its territory. Even simple measures have been neglected: Lebanon never instituted a strategic grain silo policy, which would have seen the country build and buy stocks (when prices were relatively low) to stave off shocks like the current one.

Such a policy could have taken advantage of the supply capacity of Beirut port’s national grain silos. The silos have now been slated for destruction, while alternative short-term storage alternatives are being patched together. That’s because the country has neither the funds nor the interest in rebuilding the silos—given that their presence stands as a thorny reminder of the incompetence (if not worse) which ultimately led to the Port blast on August 4th, 2020.

The only thing that seems certain at this juncture is that Lebanon’s food security crisis will most likely get worse before it gets better—with no short-term solutions in sight. Right now, coping mechanisms are being employed, both at the individual and state levels. The food insecure are increasingly eating less, skipping meals, borrowing food, and spending less on health and education.

The state and the financial system which supports it have resorted to the last resort: using up the very last of Lebanon’s foreign currency reserves to purchase the bare minimum of food supplies. This month, flour mills went on strike to protest the fact they had not been provided fresh foreign currency from the central bank’s reserves.

The state scrambled to find a credit line, which it eventually did from IMF funds that were supposedly earmarked to deal with the COVID-19’s economic impacts. These reactive policy strategies look likely to stay in place at least until elections are held in mid-May, and most likely until a government is formed many months after that.

In the meantime, price-taker Lebanon will continue to hope the conflict in Ukraine abates alongside higher oil prices—an unlikely scenario given Russia’s renewed focus on the Donbas region. With no huge breakthrough expected for Lebanon’s opposition in the upcoming election, the ruling class will almost certainly retain most levers of power.

Their track record in dealing with food insecurity notwithstanding, the scale of the current crisis compels them to take some action. As usual, that will probably come in the form of piecemeal measures rather than what is truly needed: a holistic solution to the financial crisis, deep economic reform measures, coupled with a sustainable, long-term food and nutrition security strategy. There is, however, some hope.

The contours of an IMF deal have been penned, even if it currently lacks enough substance or support from co-funders to deal with the magnitude and content of key pivotal issues. The programme would be the start of a new process for Lebanon, one where optimists hold that the victory for a significant slice of opposition figures creates a scenario where independents play kingmaker in future parliament quotas.

Under this scenario, the financial crisis would start to be resolved, people would gain more access to their savings, and food insecurity would begin to abate. Pessimists will wager that deeper food insecurity in an electoral season is just the right recipe for national instability—something which the political class is all too adept at creating and taking advantage of to delay elections and deepen patronage amidst people growing more destitute.

Reality is often found somewhere between the best- and worst-case scenarios. Whatever the case, without a clear, fair, and accountable solution to the financial crisis and a real food security plan, Lebanon’s bellies will soon become as empty as its coffers.

Sami Halabi is the Director of Knowledge and Co-founder of Triangle, where he directs the operations of the company’s strategy and knowledge outputs across its three focus areas: policy, research and media. Sami’s portfolio includes work with UN organisations, international NGOs as well as a range of print and broadcast media outlets.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Every other Tuesday, a working group of Mayan women meets to review the organization and progress of their food saving and production project in Uayma, in the state of Yucatán in southeastern Mexico. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Ko'ox Tani Foundation

By Emilio Godoy
UAYMA, Mexico , Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

Every other Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. sharp, a group of 26 Mexican women meet for an hour to discuss the progress of their work and immediate tasks. Anyone who arrives late must pay a fine of about 25 cents on the dollar.

The collective has organized in the municipality of Uayma (which means “Not here” in the Mayan language) to learn agroecological practices, as well as how to save money and produce food for family consumption and the sale of surpluses.

“We have to be responsible. With savings we can do a little more,” María Petul, a married Mayan indigenous mother of two and a member of the group “Lool beh” (“Flower of the road” in Mayan), told IPS in this municipality of just over 4,000 inhabitants, 1,470 kilometers southeast of Mexico City in the state of Yucatán, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The home garden “gives me enough to eat and sell, it helps me out,” said Petul as she walked through her small garden where she grows habanero peppers (Capsicum chinense, traditional in the area), radishes and tomatoes, surrounded by a few trees, including a banana tree whose fruit will ripen in a few weeks and some chickens that roam around the earthen courtyard.

The face of Norma Tzuc, who is also married with two daughters, lights up with enthusiasm when she talks about the project. “I am very happy. We now have an income. It’s exciting to be able to help my family. Other groups already have experience and tell us about what they’ve been doing,” Tzuc told IPS.

The two women and the rest of their companions, whose mother tongue is Mayan, participate in the project “Women saving to address climate change”, run by the non-governmental Ko’ox Tani Foundation (“Let’s Go Ahead”, in Mayan), dedicated to community development and social inclusion, based in Merida, the state capital.

This phase of the project is endowed with some 100,000 dollars from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the non-binding environmental arm of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), formed in 1994 by Canada, the United States and Mexico and replaced in 2020 by another trilateral agreement.

The initiative got off the ground in February and will last two years, with the aim of training some 250 people living in extreme poverty, mostly women, in six locations in the state of Yucatán.

The maximum savings for each woman in the group is about 12 dollars every two weeks and the minimum is 2.50 dollars, and they can withdraw the accumulated savings to invest in inputs or animals, or for emergencies, with the agreement of the group. Through the project, the women will receive seeds, agricultural inputs and poultry, so that they can install vegetable gardens and chicken coops on their land.

The women write down the quotas in a white notebook and deposit the savings in a gray box, kept in the house of the group’s president.

José Torre, project director of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation, explained that the main areas of entrepreneurship are: community development, food security, livelihoods and human development.

“What we have seen over time is that the savings meetings become a space for human development, in which they find support and solidarity from their peers, make friends and build trust,” he told IPS during a tour of the homes of some of the savings group participants in Uayma.

The basis for the new initiative in this locality is a similar program implemented between 2018 and 2021 in other Yucatecan municipalities, in which the organization worked with 1400 families.

María Petul, a Mayan indigenous woman, plants chili peppers, tomatoes, radishes and medicinal herbs in the vegetable garden in the courtyard of her home in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Unequal oasis

Yucatan, a region home to 2.28 million people, suffers from a high degree of social backwardness, with 34 percent of the population living in moderate poverty, 33 percent suffering unmet needs, 5.5 percent experiencing income vulnerability and almost seven percent living in extreme poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit this Latin American country in February 2020 exacerbated these conditions in a state that depends on agriculture, tourism and services, similar to the other two states that make up the Yucatán Peninsula: Campeche and Quintana Roo.

Inequality is also a huge problem in the state, although the Gini Index dropped from 0.51 in 2014 to 0.45, according to a 2018 government report, based on data from 2016 (the latest year available). The Gini coefficient, where 1 indicates the maximum inequality and 0 the greatest equality, is used to calculate income inequality.

The situation of indigenous women is worse, as they face marginalization, discrimination, violence, land dispossession and lack of access to public services.

More than one million indigenous people live in the state.

Women participating in a project funded by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation record their savings in a white notebook and deposit them in a gray box. Mayan indigenous woman Norma Tzuc belongs to a group taking part in the initiative in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Climate crisis, yet another vulnerability

Itza Castañeda, director of equity at the non-governmental World Resources Institute (WRI), highlights the persistence of structural inequalities in the peninsula that exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis.

“In the three states there is greater inequality between men and women. This stands in the way of women’s participation and decision-making. Furthermore, the existing evidence shows that there are groups in conditions of greater vulnerability to climate impacts,” she told IPS from the city of Tepoztlán, near Mexico City.

She added that “climate change accentuates existing inequalities, but a differentiated impact assessment is lacking.”

Official data indicate that there are almost 17 million indigenous people in Mexico, representing 13 percent of the total population, of which six million are women.

Of indigenous households, almost a quarter are headed by women, while 65 percent of indigenous girls and women aged 12 and over perform unpaid work compared to 35 percent of indigenous men – a sign of the inequality in the system of domestic and care work.

To add to their hardships, the Yucatan region is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, devastating storms and rising sea levels. In June 2021, tropical storm Cristobal caused the flooding of Uayma, where three women’s groups are operating under the savings system.

For that reason, the project includes a risk management and hurricane early warning system.

The Mexican government is building a National Care System, but the involvement of indigenous women and the benefits for them are still unclear.

Petul looks excitedly at the crops planted on her land and dreams of a larger garden, with more plants and more chickens roaming around, and perhaps a pig to be fattened. She also thinks about the possibility of emulating women from previous groups who have set up small stores with their savings.

“They will lay eggs and we can eat them or sell them. With the savings we can also buy roosters, in the market chicks are expensive,” said Petul, brimming with hope, who in addition to taking care of her home and family sells vegetables.

Her neighbor Tzuc, who until now has been a homemaker, said that the women in her group have to take into account the effects of climate change. “It has been very hot, hotter than before, and there is drought. Fortunately, we have water, but we have to take care of it,” she said.

For his part, Torre underscored the results of the savings groups. The women “left extreme poverty behind. The pandemic hit hard, because there were families who had businesses and stopped selling. The organization gave them resilience,” he said.

In addition, a major achievement is that the households that have already completed the project continue to save, regularly attend meetings and have kept producing food.

Credit: UNHCR

By Lori Silberman Brauner
TEANECK, New Jersey, Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

It was a long, harrowing road for Freshta and Shabaneh, two mothers (their names are pseudonyms) who fled Kabul, Afghanistan, late last summer before eventually settling in the southern New Jersey township of Hamilton.

Shabaneh, 30, the mother of three boys who was then between four and five months pregnant, recalls her flight out of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on a U.S. army plane under less-than-optimal conditions.

Whatever seats had been in place had been removed from the plane to accommodate all the passengers, and she had no choice but to sit with her kids on plastic bags on the floor. “They were crying and I was nauseous,” she said through a translator. “I was feeling terrible.”

Freshta, 27, a medical student who fled the country with her husband and three kids, was then between two and three months pregnant. Before leaving, she had to pass through checkpoints manned by the Taliban, who questioned her paperwork, hassling her before she bravely told them: “Put your guns away, there are children here.”

The two families were among the more than 84,600 Afghan nationals, American citizens, and Lawful Permanent Residents who (as of Feb. 19) have arrived in the United States as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the coordinated federal government effort to support and resettle Afghan refugees — including those who worked on behalf of the United States — with more than 76,000 Afghan nationals having been resettled across the country, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Both women’s husbands worked for American organizations, which enabled them to come to the United States on Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs): Shabaneh’s at a U.S. NGO, and Freshta’s at an American security company. Both women have parents and extended family left behind in Afghanistan, and requested pseudonyms to protect their well-being.

Through a translator, Sara Abasi, a volunteer ESL teacher who has been tutoring her, Shabaneh said that due to the Taliban takeover “our life was in danger,” so they decided to come to the United States.

The scariest moment before her departure was the morning, Aug. 15, when the Taliban took over Kabul; her husband was at work. “We couldn’t contact my husband,” as the Taliban had shut down the phone system. “I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.” He eventually returned home at 9 p.m. after walking for hours from his office.

Freshta’s family, it turns out, could have come to the U.S. in 2018 through the SIV program, but changed their minds because, as Abasi said, “they had a good life over there.”

But after last summer’s Taliban takeover, because of their connection to the U.S. government (her brother-in-law was also working for them), “their data was in the Taliban’s hands, so their lives were in danger.” Freshta, who had been training as a medical student in Kabul, then had two girls and a boy.

After Shabaneh’s family’s six-hour flight, they wound up at the Al Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar, where they spent 13 days before coming to the U.S. While “the food was great,” the living conditions were terrible, with no real beds or privacy, Shabaneh said. “We couldn’t sleep.”

It may have been even worse before her arrival — an Aug. 24 report in Axios detailed an email sent by supervisory special agent Colin Sullivan, an official at U.S. Central Command, to his colleagues titled “Dire conditions at Doha,” stating that the base, which had no air conditioning, was awash in loose feces and urine and infested with rats.

Following the revelation, the Pentagon told Axios it had taken concrete steps to improve conditions on the ground, including installing more than 100 toilets and offering 7,000 traditional Afghan meals three times a day.

The next stop for Shabaneh’s family was in the United States, at the Fort Bliss military installation outside of El Paso, Texas. There she had four or five prenatal check-ups and they had pillows and beds to sleep in, but conditions were still far from pleasant. The location had “very big bugs” — cockroaches — according to Lindsey Stephenson, another translator for the women. They grabbed the first resettlement opportunity they were offered, in New Jersey.

Freshta spent eight days in Qatar before coming to the U.S., and three months at the Fort Pickett military base in Virginia. As she tells it, “we didn’t have enough doctors,” only for emergencies, and it was difficult to eat the food while pregnant and nauseous — although she did have two ultrasounds to check on the baby’s health.

By the time conditions had improved, her family had left the base to be resettled in Hamilton, a large Trenton, NJ, suburb.

While the women were finally able to live in real housing, challenges remained for them in terms of accessing health care. Stephenson explained the women’s situation while having their initial post-base check-ups in New Jersey.

Noting that their resettlement agency had a contract with Eric B. Chandler Health Center, a community health center in New Brunswick affiliated with Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Medical School, she said that it was a good 45 minutes away. While pregnant women receive priority, it is still a hassle; and on top of that, “they don’t drive. They have to be driven… and guess what, their kids weren’t in school either.”

Shabaneh, who discretely nursed her two-month-old son while speaking in her apartment — as her kids, Freshta’s kids, and Stephenson’s kids noisily played around them — eventually gave birth at RWJ University Hospital. “They were really kind to me,” she said. From the beginning she chose to breastfeed, although she was offered formula as a feeding option.

Freshta also praised the care she received as a pregnant woman, noting that when she experienced a change in the baby’s movements, she instantly was told to come to the hospital — Capital Health in Hopewell, NJ — where she remained for 25 hours for evaluation.

Yet despite the quality care she received, she still prefers the Afghan medical system. “Our doctors in Afghanistan were more knowledgeable,” said Freshta, who spent considerable time working in a hospital setting as a medical student and could only look on while U.S. medical staff struggled to insert a needle in her arm for routine blood work. As Stephenson noted, “because of the lack of technology, then people actually have to be more skillful with their hands.”

Virtua Health Systems, which has five hospitals in southern NJ, and whose Mt. Holly location is just down the street from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst — the military base where many of the Afghan refugees were housed after coming to the United States — saw some 123 births from this population and over 1,000 encounters “in triage,” said Pamela Gallus, RN, assistant vice president of patient care services, Virtua Mt. Holly Hospital. “And we really early on saw them for a lot of other things other than deliveries. We did a lot of their prenatal care when they first arrived.”

What kind of medical care had these women previously had in Afghanistan? “It was somewhat variable,” said Dr. Michelle Salvatore, medical director, OB/GYN Hospitalists at Virtua Mt. Holly. “Some of the patients had what we would consider regular physician prenatal care prior to coming.

I would say that was not the majority of patients. Many of the patients lived in remote places in Afghanistan and villages and…and hadn’t really had a lot of interface with health care…. So, this was a little bit of a different scenario as we were trying to provide more of a preventative care-type model for them.”

Asked about their physical conditions when they landed in the hospitals, Dr. Nicole Lamborne, Virtua’s vice president of clinical operations-women’s health, said that despite the “incredible amount of stress they were under… physically, I don’t think we saw too many issues of really malnourished [patients], just different nourished.”

While in general, they were thinner patients, “it actually reduces some of our obstetrical complications — they were much more used to walking places. So, I think physically, in a lot of ways, they’re healthier than some of the patients that we have in the United States.”

Afghan women demonstrated interesting cultural patterns for breastfeeding after giving birth. “Every one of them was seen by a lactation consultant,” said Gallus. While only about 40 out of some 120 patients breastfed exclusively, “there were only two or three who [exclusively] formula fed,” Gallus said.

“The rest of them all ‘combo fed,’ where they gave a little bit of formula and primarily breastfed, because that is their culture. But they often felt that until their milk was established…they wanted to be able to give the baby some form of nutrient.”

Does it really matter if a newborn gets just a few bottles of formula? While the milk of women who exclusively formula feed will eventually come in — “it’s just a better supply” if one exclusively breastfeeds, said Virtua Mt. Holly Lactation Consultant Shirley Donato, RN, acknowledging that “it’s helping the baby to learn how to breastfeed and things like that.”

The new moms “came in knowing about formula…I don’t know if they educated them on the base about their choices and to make sure they had formula if they were formula feeding, but they came in knowing that formula was an option,” Lamborne said. “They had formula on the base,” Gallus concurred.

There are recommended practices for the introduction of infant formula into humanitarian settings, said Hannah Tappis, DrPH, MPH, a senior technical adviser at Jhpiego, an affiliate of John Hopkins University, whose expertise focuses on maternal health in crisis situations.

“The best thing you can do for a lot of places is give cash — not to send your old things or to, you know, go to Costco and stock up on formula,” Tappis said. “The best thing to do is to donate to organizations that if that’s what they need they’ll purchase [it].”

But donating formula “in a more global context” is not recommended, she said. “And you know, that doesn’t mean small charities or church charities aren’t doing it. But certainly the big organizations wouldn’t accept it, and it would be generally discouraged.”

At least before the women left the army base, Virtua medical personnel tried to create an atmosphere most conducive to breastfeeding. “One of the things that we always do here is we do ‘skin to skin’ as soon as the baby is born, so we put the baby actually on the chest and the breast,” Gallus said. Virtua also facilitates full-time rooming in with the babies to facilitate bonding; there is no nursery per se where the babies are lined up by bassinets.

In the meantime, Freshta, who was nearing the end of her pregnancy during a reporter’s visit, gave birth to a healthy baby boy on April 6. Although she had had a C-section, according to Stephenson, she was ready to return home after just two nights in the hospital. She chose to breastfeed him.

Lori Silberman Brauner is an award-winning journalist, editor and freelance writer who most recently served as deputy managing editor at the New Jersey Jewish News. She received a B.A. in political science from Muhlenberg College; an M.A. in international affairs from Drew University; and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is a fellow in the International Center for Journalists’ Global Nutrition and Food Security program.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

Curbing capital flight from developing countries is long overdue. New sanctions against Russian oligarchs show this can be done with the requisite political will. Recent research also shows how to more effectively stop capital flight.

Capital flight
Capital flight is widespread, with resource-rich countries more vulnerable. ‘Mis-invoicing’ exports and embezzling export earnings of state-owned mineral companies have been central to such wealth appropriation.

Capital flight is enabled, not only by national conditions, but also by transnational facilitators. Internationally, capital flight is aided by institutions and professional enablers such as bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants.

Capital should flow to investments yielding the most returns. But economic theory suggests making more depends on appropriating what economists call ‘rents’. These rents may be secured by many means, legal or otherwise.

Developing countries – especially resource-rich economies – are generally more susceptible to abuse. Wealth buys power and influence, enabling further accumulation. Thus, in the real world, natural resource endowments become a curse – not a blessing.

Since the 1990s, the IMF’s sixth Article of Association – authorizing national capital controls – has been ‘flexibly reinterpreted’ by management and staff. Instead of protecting national economies, they have eased transborder capital flows – and flight.

To add insult to injury, advocates falsely claim that more capital will thus flow into, rather than out of developing countries. After all, conventional economic theory insists capital flows from ‘capital-rich’ to ‘capital-poor’ countries.

The reality of capital flowing ‘upstream’ – to rich countries – underscores how mainstream economic textbooks mislead. Clearly, the real world is very different from the one that such economists believe should exist.

Enabling illicit outflows
Unsurprisingly, the wealthy – especially the ‘crooked’ – want to keep their assets abroad – beyond the reach of national authorities, and rivals. As such wealth has often been acquired illicitly, owners want to protect themselves from investigation, prosecution and expropriation.

Capital flight is enabled by transnational financial networks with considerable influence. These involve global banks and financial institutions, auditors and accounting firms, tax lawyers and consulting firms for hire. Along with corporate executives and government officials, they facilitate capital flight, sharing in the spoils.

With both states and markets at their disposal, transnational financial networks successfully overcome national constraints. Prerogatives of national sovereignty are also abused to obscure their transactions and operations from surveillance.

Capital flight is enabled, even incentivized by national environments allowing the wealthy to surreptitiously sneak financial assets offshore. Instead of helping developing countries protect their meagre assets, international financial institutions have facilitated, even worsened the haemorrhage.

Elites influence the law and its enforcement, typically by employing enabling professionals and friendly legislators. After all, laws and governments are neither impartial nor efficient, constantly reshaped by influence, often connected to wealth. Hence, some illicit activities and wealth may be unlawful while others may not be.

National legal jurisdictions have been changed to ease cross-border flows. Rules, norms and practices have been changed to hide wealth transfers from national and international authorities, rules and regulations. Hence, natural resource endowments especially enable capital flight.

Such outflows may even be triply illicit – in terms of mode of acquisition, concealment from tax authorities, and transfer across borders. But not all illicitly transferred flight capital is illicitly acquired. Conversely, illicitly obtained wealth – ‘laundered’ before being transferred abroad legally – is not deemed capital flight.

Some capital flight involves legally acquired wealth illicitly transferred abroad. This may be reported as trade-related payments on the current account – not involving capital account transfers. They may thus bypass, or even contravene capital controls and foreign exchange regulations.

They strive to evade detection, prosecution, litigation, fines, charges and taxes by various revenue authorities. Illicit foreign exchange outflows secretly transferred abroad and not recorded in official national accounts may not be deemed illegal.

Hence, the volume and significance of capital flight estimates tend to be understated. Capital flight is easier from most developing economies – which have become more open in the last four decades with economic liberalization, often demanded by structural adjustment programmes.

Why stop capital flight?
Transnational corruption – across national borders – undermines governance and national resource mobilization needed to enhance productive investments. But many advocates of opening capital accounts justify capital flight by blaming it on allegedly predatory or incompetent governments.

The international financial system features enabling capital flight often also facilitate tax avoidance and evasion by the wealthy. Thus, capital flight doubly undermines domestic resource mobilization by leaching both investible and government resources.

Transborder capital flows avoid or minimize taxes paid, while hiding beneficiaries’ identities and wealth in secretive offshore tax havens. Government finances are also directly hit when externally borrowed funds, or state-owned enterprises and natural resources are embezzled.

Worse, government or public foreign debt has often been abused to directly finance capital flight. Meanwhile, illicit offshore flight capital goes untaxed. This shifts the tax burden to the middle class and domestic businesses unable to sneak their assets abroad, or to otherwise avoid revenue authorities.

Many developing countries continue to suffer significant resource outflows, largely due to illicit capital flight. On the trail of capital flight from Africa: The Takers and the Enablers – edited by Leonce Ndikumana and James Boyce – studies this blight in sub-Saharan Africa. The world has much to learn from their forensic analysis.

The volume estimates haemorrhage from African countries since 1970 at US$2 trillion! Of this, almost 30% has been lost in the 21st century. Adding interest, cumulative offshore assets were US$2.4 trillion by 2018 – more than thrice Africa’s external debt!

The West’s piecemeal approach to sanctions targeting individuals is recognized as costly, time-consuming and ineffectual. Instead, the editors recommend a pre-emptive, across-the-board effort to undermine transnational networks enabling illicit financial flows. This should begin with closing financial system loopholes.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Crossing the Rio Cobre, at a crossing at Tulloch, St Catherine. Water from the Rio Cobre is diverted to the artificial recharge system at Innswood. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
Kingston, Jamaica, Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

It will take billions of dollars and many years to fix a growing problem that has placed Jamaica into the unlikely bracket of being among the world’s most water-scarce countries due to the unavailability of potable water.

The worsening water crisis of the Kingston and St Andrew (KMA) metropolis results in rationing for months in some years. The lock-offs are exacerbated by droughts, broken pumps and the crumbling pipelines making up the water distribution system. At the same time, in the aquifers below the capital city, more than 104.3 million cubic meters of water, or about 60 percent of the available resource, remained unusable due to pollution.

A 2020 study, Groundwater Availability and Security in the Kingston Basin, found that high levels of nitrates in the city’s main aquifer were making the water unusable for domestic purposes. The study conducted by researchers at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus’ Departments of Chemistry and Geology and Geography, pointed to the contamination by effluent from the septic and absorption pits that litter the city’s landscape and saline intrusion from over-pumping as the cause of the pollution.

Lead researcher Arpita Mandal told IPS via email that the two-year study, which started in 2018, showed no “significant change” in the levels of chloride and nitrates during the period, noting: “The historic data is patchy, but the chloride and nitrate levels have always shown high above the permissible limits”.

The report concluded that there is an urgent need to address the continued contamination of the Kingston Basin, but Debbie-Ann Gordon Smith, the lead chemist in the study, noted that the cleaning process would be extremely lengthy and costly.

According to the study, many of the wells across KSA were decommissioned because between 50 and 80 per cent of the effluent from absorption pits and septic tanks goes directly into the ground. The report said the same was true for many Caribbean Islands, including Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Grenada.

Noting the concerns for the quality and quantity of water in the aquifers of the KSA, the managing director of the Water Resources Authority (WRA) Peter Clarke pointed to the existence of several working wells in use by companies that treat the water to potable standards for industrial use.

He said that while the contamination from “200 years of pit latrines” (in KSA) continues to cause concern, “the hardscaping of car parks and roofs” means there is less water available to recharge the aquifer. Therefore, to preserve the continued viability of the aquifer, the WRA, Jamaica’s water management and regulatory body, is preparing to put a moratorium on new wells.

Clarke is confident that the island has enough water and reserves of the precious liquid for decades to come. He noted, however, that in Jamaica’s case, it is the distribution and access that makes water a scarce commodity in some areas.
“It is where the people are, where water is distributed, and access to the water that is important,” he said.

In 2015 the state-owned domestic distribution agency, the National Water Commission (NWC), announced an extensive 15 million US dollar programme to refurbish Kingston’s ageing distribution network. The programme included decontamination and recovery of old wells, decommissioning old sewage plants, and rehabilitation of water storage facilities.

In the process, the water company mended 40,000 leaks, which back then were reportedly costing the city 50 percent of the potable water it produced. They also replaced the ageing pipelines installed before the country’s independence in 1962. The programme continues with the replacement and installation of hundreds of miles and pipelines.

Clarke explained that Jamaica’s groundwater supply is three to four times greater than that which runs to the sea via the island’s 120 rivers and their networks of streams and provides 85 per cent of potable needs. Jamaica uses roughly 25 per cent of its available groundwater resources and 11 per cent of its accessible surface water.

To satisfy the growing demand in the KMA, Clarke said, the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation is considering a new treatment plant in St Catherine among its planned and existing solutions. In 2016, an artificial groundwater recharge system was built at the cost of just over 1 billion Jamaican dollars or 133 million US dollars, on 68 acres (27.5 hectares) of what was once cane-lands in Innswood, St Catherine, to replenish the wells that supply the most populated areas of the metropolis and surrounding areas.

The system currently injects an extra five million gallons of potable water per day to replenish abstractions from the supply wells. The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development announced last month that it is considering similar systems to store excess water for use in times of drought and to reduce evaporation from surface systems like reservoirs and dams in other water-stressed areas of the island,

Both Gordon Smith and Mandal agree that Kingston’s water shortage is worsened by climate variations, increased urbanisation, and the inadequate management of existing resources. In the last few years, a construction boom in the KMA has transformed the KMA, placing increased pressure on the available water supply.

The UWI’s Climate Research Group has warned of increased temperature and extremes in rainfall and droughts. Based on the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Group warned Caribbean governments to brace for more prolonged and more intense droughts and higher temperatures that will impact, among other things, food production and water supplies.

In the case of the KSA, the NWC has continued to build and upgrade the city’s sewage treatment capacity in the areas affected to end sewage and wastewater contamination of the aquifer. Hopefully, the aquifer will naturally flush itself when the work is complete.

“Jamaica is not short of water,” Clark said. “It’s a distribution issue”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Members of the “We are half; we want parity without harassment!” campaign stand outside Congress in Peru in 2018, in a demonstration advocating laws such as the one passed in 2020 on parity in political participation or the 2021 law that combats harassment and violence against women politicians. Spokesperson Elizabeth Herrera holds one side of the poster on the far right in the top row. CREDIT: Courtesy of the campaign

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Women entering the political arena in Peru face multiple obstacles due to gender discrimination that hinders their equal participation, which can even reach the extreme of political harassment and bullying, in an attempt to force them out of the public sphere.

“Women elected officials at the regional or municipal level only last one four-year term,” Elizabeth Herrera, spokeswoman for the “We are half, we want parity without harassment!“ campaign, told IPS in an interview. “After that, they’re not interested anymore, they feel that the system has expelled them.”

The campaign is a civil society initiative promoted by feminist organizations such as the Manuela Ramos Movement and the Flora Tristán Center in alliance with the National Network of Women Authorities (Renama), which has been a driving force for important advances for women’s political participation without discrimination, such as the Parity and Alternation Law, in force since July 2020.

Herrera, a 36-year-old political scientist, said women in politics face a number of hurdles. “They don’t give you the floor, they slander you, they attack you on social networks, there is physical and even sexual violence, which leads you to say, I don’t want to be here anymore, what’s the point,” she said.

A report by the National Jury of Elections – the country’s electoral authority – found that 47 percent of women experienced political harassment in Peru’s presidential and legislative elections in 2021, while in the last regional and municipal elections, in 2018, the percentage was 69.6 percent.

The harassment and bullying come from both within the same party and from other parties. “If you are a female authority, the adversaries seek to expel you from the decision-making spaces, they do not want to see us there, as historically we have not been present; they tell us that it is not for us,” Herrera said.

She added that many fellow party members also harass their women colleagues, to prevent them from competing for positions in the organization or for candidacies.

“We have seen cases in which documents are hidden from them, they are insulted, and this comes on top of the online harassment through the social networks, which is brutal,” she said.

She mentioned the case of a woman authority in the Puno region, in Peru’s southern Andes highlands, who feels terrible guilt because she believes that her son took his own life due to the systematic harassment against her.

The pressure suffered by the women is so great that the campaign must request their authorization to make their cases public. “Not all of them want to speak out because of the intimidation and harassment from the members of their own parties,” she said.

Peruvian women make up half of the population and the electorate but are underrepresented politically and in elected office. Meanwhile, those who decide to participate in politics endure a combination of discrimination and harassment aimed at driving them out of politics. The photo shows protesters in Lima holding a national flag, demanding greater female participation. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A model for drafting regional legislation

In 2017, the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) provided a model draft law on political violence against women in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

It described such violence as “any action, conduct or omission, carried out directly or through third parties that, based on gender, causes harm or suffering to a woman or to various women, which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women of their political rights.”

It stated that the violence can be physical, sexual, psychological, moral, economic or symbolic.

The proposal raised the urgent need for governments to act on the problem, since eliminating violence against women in political life is a condition for democracy and governance in the region.

Previously, the hemispheric declaration on Violence and Political Harassment against Women, adopted in 2015, had made it clear that achieving political parity required not only electoral quotas but also guaranteeing conditions for women to exercise their right to equal participation.

Strides made in Peru

In Peru, women’s rights organizations helped pushed through the first laws on gender quotas for electoral lists, which were passed in 1997, while progress was made towards the new law on parity and alternation approved in 2020.

The 2020 law contributed to the fact that in the 2021 congressional elections, women gained 35 percent of the seats in the single chamber legislature: 47 out of 130.

In the next municipal and regional elections, on Oct. 9, the law is expected to increase the scant presence of women, who despite making up half of the population and the electorate, are represented in a much smaller proportion.

There are two statistics that graphically reflect the discrimination and inequality suffered by women in politics: in the previous regional and municipal elections, in 2018, only one percent of mayors elected were women, and no female governors were elected in the 24 departments into which this Andean country of 33.5 million inhabitants is divided.

Rocio Pereyra hopes to become mayor of Pueblo Libre, a municipality on the outskirts of Lima. Showing the symbol of female power, she poses in front of the former home of Manuela Saenz, a libertarian woman who contributed to the cause of Peruvian independence and broke down gender stereotypes. “She is an inspiration to me,” says the pre-candidate for mayor in Peru’s October municipal and regional elections. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A case in point

Rocio Pereyra, 33, is a pre-candidate for mayor for Pueblo Libre, one of the 43 municipalities that make up the metropolitan area of Lima. She will participate in the internal elections of her party, the center-left coalition Juntos por el Perú (Together for Peru), to try to win the candidacy in the October elections.

“I am leading a team that wants to bring about major changes in the district, that seeks the integral development and welfare of the local residents,” she told IPS.

In an interview in the district’s central square – where historical national independence figures such as Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín and Manuela Sáenz once converged – Pereyra stated that the low participation of women in politics has several causes, but all of them are related to discrimination and gender violence.

“We face a series of limitations that prevent us from considering ourselves one hundred percent autonomous. If you are facing violence at home or abuse from your partner, or if you do not have economic independence, it will be much more difficult for you to access spaces for political participation,” she said.

In the public sphere, Pereyra said, women are not yet recognized as equals, and are told: this is not your place, go home, do the housework, stay in the private sphere.

She said that an attempt is made to drive them out of politics by means of harassment, bullying, discrediting, invalidating their opinion and their professional, labor and political careers. “And these situations are experienced by many women when they exercise their oversight function and denounce acts of corruption,” she added.

“The message they want to send us is clear: That we better not participate in politics, because they can even mess with your family, with your children,” Pereyra said.

“Obviously women will feel even more vulnerable and will feel that they must protect their homes. So that reinforces the gender role that has been socially assigned to us. It is very pernicious,” she said.

Pereyra herself has often experienced discrimination.

“On one occasion a journalist in the district insinuated that I was involved in politics because I had a romantic relationship with a candidate,” she cited as an example.

And recently, she said, “within my own party as a pre-candidate, my interlocutor never looked at me when I spoke, but at a male colleague. Even though I was the leader, he did not speak to me.”

“Gestures can also be violent. I felt so impotent and I wanted to leave, but I said to myself, no! I’m staying and I will demonstrate my political capacity, with my actions,” Pereyra said.

“Closed. This party doesn’t care about women,” reads a banner held by a group of women demonstrators in the Peruvian capital in front of the headquarters of one of the political parties that violates the laws on gender parity in political participation. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

A new law should help

Law 31155, which prevents and punishes harassment against women in political life, has been in force since April 2021, promoted by the “We Are Half” campaign and which includes the tenets laid out by the CIM.

Herrera, the campaign spokeswoman, said that within this framework, political organizations are required to establish standards for how to address and punish these cases. “It is up to us now to monitor compliance,” she added.

In Pereyra’s view, the country will not change by decree and she argues that laws are not enough, and that what is needed is a cultural change based on education that contributes to generating gender equality and non-discrimination, and eradicates “machismo” and sexism from the political sphere.

As for the performance of women authorities or congresswomen, she raised the need for a feminist agenda.

“We do not go into politics to be an ornament or to echo what men say, but to bring up issues that affect us. The basis of democracy is equality and freedom, and this will not be possible if our rights are restricted. Our presence and feminist agenda will contribute to deepening democracy and to bringing to life the promise of a truly fair and egalitarian country,” she said.

The regional office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) highlighted in a publication in March that the unequal distribution of power in politics undermines the effectiveness of governance in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It pointed out that despite the advances in legislation, only 19 of the 46 countries and territories in the region achieved gender parity at some point in the last 20 years, while only five achieved it at the ministerial level, two in national parliaments and one in municipalities.

The worldwide degradation, fragmentation, and destruction of ecosystems are accelerating and generating serious consequences for flora, fauna and human well-being. Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Since the first Earth Day observed on 22 April 1970, world conditions have worsened greatly across three critically interrelated global dimensions that portend a disastrous future for life on planet Earth.

First, CLIMATE CHANGE is certainly the most worrisome threat to human security. The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that climate change is a threat to the well-being of humans and the planet.

Global warming is resulting in unstable life-threatening changes in the planet’s climate and living conditions. Those cataclysmic changes are the consequence of human populations-caused atmospheric carbon pollution primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the response of world leaders to climate change has largely been the Climate Change Shuffle: deny, delay, and then do little. In brief, the international community of nations is witnessing the abdication of leadership by the major countries of the world.

Some have concluded that the world is in the midst of a human-caused extinction event. Many of the impacts of global warming are undeniable and are now considered as simply irreversible.

The ten warmest years on record have happened since 2005. In addition, 2020 was the second warmest year on record, being just 0.02 degrees Celsius less than the warmest year in 2016.

The 2020 world surface temperature averaged across land and ocean was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the 20th century average of 13.90 Celsius. Also, the 2020 average was 1.19 Celsius warmer the pre-industrial period of 1880-1990 of 13.69 Celsius (Figure 1).

 

Source: Climate.gov.

 

The goal to limit global warming to well below the Paris Agreement rise of 2 degrees Celsius, or preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels is considered a losing battle.

In addition to the lack of global leadership, cooperation and enforceable objectives with explicit timetables, world leaders continue to sell out to wealthy interests and corporations that push for promised techno-fixes.

Second, WORLD POPULATION, which grew at record high rates during the 20th century, continues to grow and is greatly impacting all living organisms and natural resources on the planet.

Between 1920 and 2020, the population of the world quadrupled, increasing from 1.9 billion to 7.8 billion people. Moreover, since the first Earth Day fifty-two years ago, the human population on the planet has more than doubled, growing from 3.7 billion to nearly 8 billion today and is expected to add another 2 billion people by 2070 (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Despite planet Earth reaching 8,000,000,000 human beings, countries continue to resist population stabilization and reductions. Many government officials, economic advisors, businesses, mainstream media, and others frequently lament population slowdowns and call for more demographic growth, particularly through increased birth rates.

Environmental degradation coupled with climate change is increasingly fueling mass human migration. Growing numbers of men, women and children are moving domestically and internationally to escape difficult living conditions

In addition, human migration is at record levels and greatly impacting nations worldwide. The global number of immigrants has reached a high of around 281 million, with more than 84 million people displaced from their homes and more than 30 million refugees. In addition, millions of men, women, and children continue to attempt illegal migration.

Today’s enormous human mobility has resulted in the Great Migration Clash. The Clash is a worldwide struggle between those who desperately want out of their countries and those who vehemently want to keep others out of their countries.

More than a billion people, largely in poor and violence ridden countries, would like to move permanently to another country. At the same time, no less than a billion people, mainly in wealthy developed countries, say fewer immigrants should be allowed to enter.

Immigration is a top concern of voters in most migrant-receiving countries, with many concerned about the effects of immigration on their society and culture. Most migrant-destination countries are turning to border walls, barriers and patrols, repatriating those unlawfully resident, resisting accepting refugees and denying most asylum claims.

In addition, as the demand for migrants is a small fraction of the supply of people wishing to migrate, illegal immigration continues to be a major global challenge. The increased migration, particularly illegal migration, is contributing to the rise of right-wing populist and nativist parties.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has also spread to include refugees and asylum seekers. Many country policies to stem illegal immigration are undermining the established international rights and protections granted to refugees and asylum seekers.

Third, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION is also critically altering conditions for all living organisms across the planet. The worldwide degradation, fragmentation, and destruction of ecosystems are accelerating and generating serious consequences for flora, fauna and human well-being.

The worsening conditions across land, sea, and air have been brought about by the unsustainable numbers of humans and their ongoing damaging behavior. The extraction of oil, gas, coal, and water, the logging, mining, fishing hunting, and the ever-increasing needs and demands of 8,000,000,000 humans have ruined large areas of planet Earth.

The degradation of environment includes reduced biodiversity, deforestation, depletion of natural resources, deteriorating ecosystems, and pollution. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the planet has experienced a catastrophic decline in global wildlife populations and the natural environment is continuing to be destroyed by humans at an unprecedented rate.

During the past five decades, for example, the world experienced an average 68 percent drop in monitored vertebrate species, i.e., mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. In addition, the decline in monitored vertebrate species over the past half century varied considerably by major region from a low of 24 percent in Europe and Central Asia to a high of 94 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean (Figure 3).

 

Source: World Wildlife Fund, based on 20,811 populations of 4,392 species (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish).

 

Biodiversity loss has largely been the result of habitat destruction due to unsustainable agriculture and logging, the continuing ruin of grasslands, forests, and wetlands, and the overexploitation of fish, mammals and natural resources. In the coming years the biggest driver of further biodiversity loss is expected to be human-induced climate change.

In addition, environmental degradation coupled with climate change is increasingly fueling mass human migration. Growing numbers of men, women and children are moving domestically and internationally to escape difficult living conditions. Those changing conditions include prolonged drought, excessive heat, rising sea levels, large-scale flooding, extreme wildfires, dying coral reefs, violent storms, and weather-produced disasters.

What needs to be done today to address climate change, world population, and environmental degradation, are not secrets, unknowns, or recent discoveries.

Over the past decades, scientists, environmental organizations, international agencies, intergovernmental panels, and many others have repeatedly warned world leaders about climate change, world population and environmental degradation. In addition, they have clearly spelled out the immediate steps required to address those critical issues.

Briefly, among those steps are: (1) adoption of energy efficiency and conservation practices and the replacement of fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables; (2) reduction of emissions of short-lived climate pollutants; (3) protection and restoration of the planet’s ecosystems; (4) shift from consumption of animal products to diets of mostly plant-based foods; (5) transition from emphasis on GDP growth toward sustaining ecosystems; and (6) the stabilization of world population, and ideally a gradual reduction, within a framework ensuring social integrity.

Unfortunately, based on the behavior of countries today and their expected actions in the future with respect to climate change, world population, and environmental degradation, objective observers are increasingly arriving at an unavoidable conclusion. Namely, it will be highly unlikely to avoid a disastrous future for life on planet Earth.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Transgender refugees from Ukraine have met various challenges including access to hormone medicine since fleeing the war torn country. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Soon after Russia invaded her country, Anastasiia Yeva Domani found herself forced to abandon the regime of vital medicines she was taking.

The transgender activist could no longer get hold of the hormone medicines she needed to regularly take in Ukraine as supply chains were disrupted and the vast majority of pharmacies were closed.

“I, like many others, had to pause hormone treatment for a while. We had no choice,” she told IPS.

Domani spent two weeks off her treatment before she managed to get hold of medicines from Poland.

Now, her home in Kyiv has become the headquarters of a network she and other members of the transgender support organisation that she heads, Cohort, are running that helps find and then distribute hormones to those who need them across Ukraine.

It is not an easy task, though. For transgender people in Ukraine, both among those who have remained in their homes and those who make up part of the estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people in the country, a shortage of hormone medicines remains a major problem.

“There is a big problem getting hormone drugs. Some can be found in some cities in Ukraine, some abroad, and using the internet, and with the help of various LGBT activists and others all over the country, we have managed to get what we can,” she said.

“We have sent some hormones to people in March, but at the end of April, they are going to need more, and we will have to find them somewhere,” she added.

But having to halt hormone therapy is not the only serious problem transgender people are facing because of the conflict.

Activists say many transgender people, especially transgender women, have problems leaving Ukraine.

At the start of the war, all Ukrainian men aged 18-60 were ordered to stay in the country. As refugees began leaving, reports emerged of transgender women being turned back at the border, often because the gender marked on their identification documents did not match their actual gender, but sometimes simply because border guards who gave them physical examinations declared them to be men and told them they could not leave.

LGBT+ organisations which spoke to IPS confirmed they knew of such cases.

“Some transgender people have made it over the border into Poland, but there are many who have not been able to come over,” said Julia Kata of the Polish TransFuzja Foundation, which helps transgender people.

“They have been stopped because of problems with their ID documents where gender markers have not yet been changed, or they do not have the necessary medical confirmation that they have started transition,” she added.

This has led to some taking drastic action to get out of the country, and migration experts have also pointed to other dangers, such as violence and exploitation, which refugees can be exposed to when taking illegal routes out of countries.

“I know some trans women have resorted to leaving the country illegally, but this is not something we would support,” Domani said, adding how dangerous such attempts could be.

However, even when transgender people do make it out of Ukraine, they, and other members of the LGBT+ community, are facing further challenges as they find themselves in countries where LGBT+ communities have in recent years faced increasing prejudice, stigma, and discrimination.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) produces an annual ranking of the laws and policies impacting the human rights of LGBT+ people in individual European countries. In its most recent edition, many states bordering Ukraine scored very poorly.

Wiktoria Magnuszewska, an activist with the Polish Lex Q LGBT+ advocacy organisation, told IPS: “There is a lot of fear among transgender people who come here. This is connected to the general social atmosphere in Poland towards the LGBT+ community.”

Activists in other countries agree. Viktoria Radvanyi of Budapest Pride in Hungary told international media: “They are fleeing from Ukraine where their rights and dignity are not as respected as in other places in free societies. Then they arrive in countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania where the state doesn’t support LGBTQ equality….”

Some organisations in receiving countries are working to provide help specifically for LGBT+ refugees when they arrive, including finding LGBT+-friendly accommodation, advice, help in dealing with local institutions, psychological support, and helping with access to other healthcare services.

The latter is expected to be of particular importance for transgender people, explained Kata, who said her organisation is co-operating with “trans-inclusive healthcare providers” so that any transgender refugees who need to access Polish healthcare will get appointments with doctors “who view them inclusively”.

She added that one of the main priorities of transgender refugees when they come to Poland, alongside “surviving and finding somewhere to stay”, was how to continue their transition. So far, she said, there had been no reports of any transgender refugees having any problems accessing the hormones they need.

Despite this help, some LGBT+ refugees prefer to move further into Europe rather than stay in countries that do not have a positive attitude toward their community.

“What we are seeing is that some LGBT+ people are leaving because of the situation in society here towards their community,” Justyna Nakielska, an advocacy officer with the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) in Poland.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, Domani says, attitudes to the LGBT+ community seem, for the moment at least, to have changed markedly in recent weeks.

Before the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pledged to fight discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality. There had been advances in legal safeguarding of LGBT+ rights, including a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

But general attitudes in society towards the LGBT+ community were ambivalent at best, and in the ILGA’s latest rankings, Ukraine had an even worse score than most of the other countries on its borders.

But since the outbreak of war the situation has changed, said Domani.

“Since the war started, all Ukrainians think about are the Russian occupiers – they forgot their homophobia, their xenophobia, and all the focus now is on Russia,” she said.

She warned, though, that in areas which Russian forces had managed to fully occupy, there was already great concern over the fate of LGBT+ people, particularly in light of the Kremlin’s stance towards the community in Russia and reports that before the invasion, it had drawn up ‘kill lists’ targeting activists.

“There are no problems with LGBT+ people in Ukraine at the moment – with the exception of those in the Russian-occupied territories. We already know of some trans people who left the Kherson region [in southern Ukraine] on the day the war started because collaborators gave Russian occupiers information about human rights and LGBT+ activists,” Domani warned.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), some $115.4 million are urgently needed to prevent a further deterioration of the food insecurity situation and worsening of the disruption of food supply chains in Ukraine. There is urgency to support Ukrainian farmers in planting vegetables and potatoes during this spring season, and farmers should be allowed and supported to go to their fields and save the winter wheat harvest, the FAO said April 19. Credit: Anatolii Stepanov / FAO

By Eugenio Dacrema
ROME, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

The breakout of the conflict in Ukraine and the following imposition of heavy Western sanctions on Russia are causing sharp price increases in food and energy commodities —of which both Ukraine and Russia represent key exporters — as well as disruptions to global supply chains, impacting the post-pandemic economic recovery.

As a result, the IMF’s 2022 projections for global economic growth have been revised and now follow a downward trajectory, while global consumer price inflation is expected to increase by 6.4% in 2022, the highest rate since 1995.

Emerging markets and developing countries are expected to see the highest average inflation increases, at 7.1 and 11.6% respectively.

The ripple effects of the conflict in Ukraine are reverberating across the global economy against the backdrop of two years of steadily growing food prices, which reached a record high in February 2022, exceeding the previous peak set in February 2011.

The index then rose by a further 12% in March. Macroeconomic conditions deteriorated for most countries worldwide, with debt levels growing increasingly unsustainable for numerous low-income economies.

Eugenio Dacrema

After decreasing steadily over the previous two decades, poverty rates have been growing worldwide since 2020 along with the number of people experiencing food insecurity.

The World Bank estimates the pandemic has led to an additional 97 million extremely poor people compared to pre-pandemic projections. Higher food prices could drive many to require food aid.

A seismic hunger crisis is enveloping the world amidst a time of unprecedented needs. Climate shocks, conflict, COVID-19, and the spiraling costs of food and fuel — compounded by the conflict in Ukraine and its knock-on effects for countries dependent on that region’s supply of wheat (as well as other food) — could drive at least 47 million people across 81 countries to the edge of famine, while the number of severely food insecure people has doubled over the past two years, which currently stands at 276 million, according to the World Food Programme.

Risk factors sparked by the conflict in Ukraine

The ongoing war in Ukraine is likely to affect economies around the world through five main channels, and it is likely to generate major repercussions in numerous countries’ food security and domestic socioeconomic stability in both the short- and medium-term:

• The short-term impact on global food prices: This is given by Russia’s and Ukraine’s roles as major producers of food commodities (primarily cereals and vegetable oils). Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, shipments from the Black Sea have been dramatically reduced, with an immediate impact on countries importing cereals directly through this route, especially MENA (Middle East & North Africa) countries.

Short- and long-term disruptions to Ukrainian agricultural production caused by military operations and disruptions to Russian exports triggered by Western sanctions are also driving the rapid increase of wheat prices internationally, which have gradually climbed by over 30% since February, as well as the prices of other cereals such as maize. In March, the FAO Food Price Index recorded a 33% year-on-year growth. This is likely to reverberate across most countries’ local prices, especially those importing major shares of their food requirements.

• The long-term impact on global food prices: This is given by the conflict’s impact on fertilizers’ international prices. Russia plays a key role as a producer of both fertilizers and of the main raw materials utilized for their production. Western sanctions combined with export limits imposed by Chinese and Russian authorities are causing fertilizer prices to climb to record levels, with the price of urea, a key N fertilizer, trebling over the last year. If sustained, the current price increase is likely to reduce fertilizer usage in most countries, likely affecting yields of coming harvests and therefore the future availability of agricultural commodities on international markets.

• The significant increase of international energy prices: This is mainly due to Russia’s status as a major global oil and gas exporter and the imposition of Western sanctions, which may impair and/or make energy imports from Russia more expensive. This is likely to affect the economies of countries who are net importers of hydrocarbons. Furthermore, higher energy prices are likely to compound on food prices increases, as fuel represents a key agricultural input. On a positive note, however, increasing energy prices are likely to help the recovery of those economies that are net exporters of oil and gas.

• Macroeconomic destabilization of economies closely linked with Russia: The ruble’s rapid depreciation after the introduction of Western sanctions against Russia and the expected significant contraction of the Russian economy are likely to reverberate gravely on countries in Russia’s economic sphere of influence. In particular, this includes Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, who heavily depend on the remittances generated by migrant workers in Russia.

• Finally, decreasing supplies internationally is already causing some producing countries to limit or ban exports to ensure domestic price stability. This currently represents the biggest risk factor for food markets, as a rapid ban-induced drop on the supply side may exponentially boost the pace of price increases and effectively bar import-dependent economies from ensuring a vital flow of food supplies.

Vulnerability factors for middle- and low-income countries

Who are the likely countries to be most affected? Since the current supply drop is affecting the share of global cereals production exchanged internationally – approximately one fourth of the total global production – the countries most likely to be affected are those whose domestic production is gravely insufficient to cover for domestic demand.

Among import-dependent countries, low-income states and/or those experiencing grave macroeconomic imbalances – likely as a result of pandemic-induced economic shocks – are those that may encounter the greatest difficulties in affording imports at current prices. The extent of countries’ exposure to socioeconomic distress from the war in Ukraine will depend on five main factors:

• Direct dependency over imports from the Black Sea basin: countries directly importing significant quantities of cereals from Ukraine and Russia are prone to experiencing growing local food prices and/or shortages. Among them are mostly (but not only) countries of the MENA region, such as Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Some of these countries have already started witnessing cereals shortages and price spikes.

• Availability of pre-existing food stocks: Several countries have been stockpiling food reserves over the past months to buffer the continuous increase of food prices. Such countries may be able to significantly delay the reverberation of international food price increases on their local markets. Their ability to smoothen the price transmission depends on the volume of their stocks relative to their consumption. For Muslim countries, the Ramadan festivities are likely to accelerate the exhaustion of amassed reserves, if available.

• Dependency on food imports: Countries who are net importers of food items, especially cereals, are likely to experience rising prices over the next months, even if they do not import directly from Russia or Ukraine. The stiff rise of international food prices is likely to spill over into local prices at different moments. According to recent research on this topic, increasing international food prices lead to increasing local prices more rapidly in low-income countries – with a 1/2-month average time-lag – while the transmission tends to take more time in middle-income economies (approximately 6 months).

Hence, although at different moments, the increase of international food prices is going to affect all countries dependent on food imports. The World Food Programme (WFP)’s research has highlighted the Sub-Saharan region’s particularly high exposure over the next months, due to the presence of several economies characterized by both import reliance and low-income levels.

• The presence of local buffers to food-price volatility: In some countries, the presence of subsidy programmes on food items and/or temporary measures to tame price increases may delay or avoid altogether transmission of international price increases to local prices. However, in some countries, such measures may become unsustainable if the price increases are particularly pronounced and/or prolonged. Subsidy reduction or removal due to macroeconomic difficulties may result in rapid and sudden increases in local prices. Such a scenario is likely in countries which are already economically instable, e.g., due to accumulation of unsustainable debt loads.

• The presence of pre-existing macroeconomic vulnerabilities: Countries facing macroeconomic difficulties due to diverse factors – such as heavy debt loads, deep current-account deficits, low foreign-exchange reserves, etc. – are likely to be more exposed to negative repercussions caused by increasing food prices. This is the case, for example, of lower-middle income countries that are usually less exposed to food insecurity, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They may face difficulties in financing additional costs for food imports and/or agricultural inputs imports, such as fertilizers. Such additional costs may exacerbate existing macroeconomic fragilities, making potential macroeconomic crises more likely.

As the conflict in Ukraine does not seem to abate anytime soon, its ripple effects are already reverberating across the entire world, especially across those countries that have suffered the most during the pandemic. Particularly worrisome is the situation of those MENA countries already facing pre-existing crises, such as Yemen, Syria, and Sudan.

In Yemen, 16 million people were already facing acute food insecurity before the beginning of the war in Ukraine, while the figures were 12 million and 10 million for Syria and Sudan, respectively. As these countries import large shares of their essential cereals supplies from the Black Sea, they are likely to face an even more dramatic situation over the next months.

Despite its localized nature, this war is already causing victims worldwide through increased hunger and poverty. The WFP is seriously concerned about the world’s most vulnerable people as soaring food prices impact those the UN agency serves as well as millions of families on the edge of hunger, whose incomes have already plummeted with the pandemic.

Eugenio Dacrema is an Early Warning Economic Risk Analyst at the World Food Programme. Previously, he served as an Associate Research Fellow at ISPI’s MENA Centre. He holds a PhD from the University of Trento; he completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pavia; and his master’s degree at the University of Bologna in International Sciences specializing in development economics.

Source: Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Christian Wenaweser
Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

 
Q: Liechtenstein has just initiated a resolution at the United Nations that mandates a meeting of the General Assembly whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council. What’s behind this initiative?

A: The veto initiative is a simple idea, but we think it politically very meaningful. It simply says that every time a veto is cast in the Security Council, there is automatically a meeting convened by the General Assembly to discuss the proposed veto in the Security Council. So, it’s an automatic mandate. It’s not subject to any further intervention or decision.
It’s a mandate that is given to whoever is the president of the General Assembly at that time to be convened within the said timeframe. It’s open-ended with regards to the outcome. It’s completely non-prescriptive. The only thing that is mandatory is the meeting and the discussions themselves.

Could you elaborate on the motivation for this initiative? Why is this happening now?

We’re doing it because we believe in strong multilateralism. We have followed with growing concern the inability of the Security Council to take effective action against threats to international peace and security due to the very deep political divisions among the permanent members in the Council.

We are concerned about the negative impact that this has on the effectiveness of the United Nations. So, if you look at our statements in the last five years or so, we have consistently advocated for a strong role of the General Assembly in matters of international peace and security as mandated by the Charter of the United Nations. This initiative is a meaningful step in that direction.

The reason why we’re doing it now is twofold. First of all, we were close to launching this initiative in March of 2020 when we were hit by the lockdown. This is not the type of thing that we can do online. So, we decided that we need support from close sponsors to push this. The lockdown is over while the pandemic is not, so that’s one of the reasons why we’re doing it now.

The other reason is that we sensed that the wider membership of the United Nations is now particularly attuned to this initiative. Now people have a strong sense that the United Nations needs to innovate itself and find different ways of doing business.

Ambassador Christian Wenaweser has served as the Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations in New York since 2002.

Is there a reason why you do not mention the ‘R’ word in this context?

Yes and no. If you look at the numbers, it’s clear who has vetoed the biggest number of resolutions in recent years. That is the Russian Federation – mostly with regards to Syria. But our initiative is not aimed at Russia or directed against Russia. It’s simply about the veto and the institutional balance. It’s about the role that we believe the General Assembly should play in this organisation.

What are the chances for this resolution being adopted? There was some speculation that it is going to be discussed this week and there’s going to be a vote in the coming days.

The vote is not going to be this week. This week we will have a formal presentation with the membership. We will then look to get a date in the General Assembly soon thereafter. We are getting a strong positive response to this. So, we are very confident that our text will be adopted.

Are you concerned that the initiative – if adopted – could be used as a political tool to put other countries who have veto powers on the spot? Or that countries that are put on the spot in the General Assembly because of a veto then go on to use the debate in the Assembly to generate even more attention for their view than they would have gotten only on the Council?

This is not about putting anyone on the spot. Our resolution does provide that the delegations that vetoed in the Security Council are offered the first slot in the speakers list because we would like to hear from them why they vetoed, and why they think it’s in the interest of the organisation, why they think it’s compatible with the principles of the Charter. That’s an invitation extended to them and, as is the case with any invitation, you can accept it or not.

It’s not about putting anyone on the spot, but about accountability. It’s about being given a voice in what we think are issues over which we have ownership. The Charter of the United Nations says clearly that the Security Council does its work on behalf of the membership.

Are you surprised that your initiative is receiving support from Washington at this point?

Well, the obvious thing to say is you should ask the US ambassador. But I am happy to share my thoughts. The US have stated their reasons very clearly. We think what they are saying is very important as it is coming from a permanent member of the Security Council that has had a mixed history with the United Nations over the years.

This US administration has supported a big step for the Security Council to invoke the Uniting for Peace procedure in connection with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. I think they have just come to realise that for UN to remain relevant, the General Assembly has to move into the centre. For us, that’s an important and hopeful sign. For us, this is a vote on multilateralism. This is not just to vote on a procedural mechanism that gives the General Assembly more power.

Also, if we understand you correctly, it’s not a vote on Russia.

Not for us. Some observers obviously think we are doing this because of what’s going on in Ukraine. That’s not true. But of course, what is going on in Ukraine and the lack of response by the Security Council makes it abundantly clear that what we are doing is the right thing to do. But in fact we’ve been working on this for the last two-and-a-half years.

Unfortunately, sometimes UN initiatives come in with some momentum but then unfortunately nothing is really coming out of it once they are adopted. The Mexican-French initiative to voluntarily restrain the use of the veto in the Council after the blockage of the Council in 2013, for instance, comes to mind. Are you concerned that this could happen once again?

I am not sure I would agree with that assessment. After all, the French-Mexican initiative was never adopted. It was just something that was put on the table.

This will be a General Assembly resolution. This is going to be an intergovernmental mandate that the General Assembly creates for itself. It is going to be there in perpetuity, and it will be implemented automatically. And it is going to make a difference.

This interview was conducted by Michael Bröning and Volker Lehmann.

Source: International Politics and Society published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The author is Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador, in an interview on how his country’s veto initiative could help restore the United Nations’ effectiveness.

Groundnut farm in Torit, South Sudan. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS.

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, USA, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

Around the world, Earth Day 2022 is being celebrated.  The theme this year is “Invest in Our Planet”. To mark the day, activities such as planting trees, protests, marches, cleaning up litter, and conferences will be held to highlight the importance of investing and taking care of our planet.

This is sorely needed as our planet is in its worst shape ever, according to the 2022 and 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and its citizens are facing daunting challenges including food insecurity and  COVID-19.

Other evidence to highlight our unhealth planet included increase in the occurrence of billion dollar weather and climate disasters with dire impacts to humans and other species that live in our planet, land and soil degradation,  and accelerating loss of biodiversity and species including insects.

It is imperative to invest in ensuring that farmers have the tools and knowledge base to mitigate the climate change impacts on agriculture. Such tools include access to financing, and agricultural inputs as well as extension services and capacity building and technology transfer schemes to ensure that farmers can implement science-proven climate smart agricultural practices

Since there is nothing significant to celebrate, just work to do, it is only fair we reflect on what it means to invest in our planet.

And so, I took time to reflect on what this theme means to me, as a person who grew up on a farm in the Kenyan Coast, as a food security advocate and as a female African scientist.

My research aims to find sustainable ways to feed our growing population and uncover novel ways to combat the impacts climate change extremes such flooding, droughts and crop devouring insects have on agricultural crop plants.

First, investing in our planet, means investing in the people living in it and making sure everyone around the world has access to nutritious food. At the moment, over 800 million of people living in our planet are hungry. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, 44 million people in 38 countries are facing famines all because of climate shocks, conflict, and the global pandemic.

Solving hunger for the millions that are impacted, many of whom live in developing countries, means investing in agriculture. Most of the world’s poor, including women, are rural people earning livings from agriculture.

To accelerate progress, it is imperative to invest in ensuring that farmers have the tools and knowledge base to mitigate the climate change impacts on agriculture. Such tools include access to financing, and agricultural inputs as well as extension services and capacity building and technology transfer schemes to ensure that farmers can implement science-proven climate smart agricultural practices.

Climate smart agricultural practices aim to tackle three objectives: sustainably increase agricultural productivity, adapt, and build resilience to climate change and reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions.

These initiatives employ and encourage several strategies including timely planting of improved crop varieties, diversifying crop base, using integrated pest and weed management, and delivering timely seasonal and current weather information to farmers and sharing agricultural innovations.

Second, investing in the planet means investing in empowering women and girls, particularly, women from marginalized communities. Women continue to play multiple roles in our planet including serving in the agricultural workforce as food producers of food.

In many African countries including Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, according to the World Bank, women make up over 40 percent of the agricultural workforce.

Thirdly, investing in our planet means investing in science. Science will continue to bring forth novel solutions to address these challenges and it is imperative that developed and developing countries alike invest and increase the national budgets allocated to science funding, particularly, science that is understanding the changing climate and strategies for increasing climate resilience.

Fourth, investing in our planet means highlighting and nurturing all voices – Black, white, lesbians, gay and queer.

Despite the issue affecting us all, surprisingly, the voices that continue to be heard are consistently white and straight. This must change. We must reiterate the fact that the impacts of our changing climate affect everyone and have no respect for boundaries humanity has created.

We must encourage and highlight activists from all continents and backgrounds. Doing so will reinforce the message that we are in this planet together and collectively, we can act.

Clearly, Our Earth and planet and the people living in it will continue to experience new and harsh realities in part due to the changed climate. We all must strive to reflect and proactively do something. Time is of essence.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

Refugees on the move. Credit: UNHCR/Ivor Pricket

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

Part I of this two-part series focused on the cases of the United Kingdom and Greece. This article will deal with how Hungary has been criminalising organisations that provide humanitarian assistance to migrants, and how Poland ‘arbitrarily’ detains thousands of asylum seekers.

In fact, Hungary, a European Union full member country, has a long record of ‘demonising’ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Asylum-seekers who crossed the Belarus border into Poland, including many forced to do so by Belarusian Border Guards, are now detained in “filthy, overcrowded detention centres where guards subject them to abusive treatment and deny them contact with the outside world,”

Jelena Sesar, Regional Researcher at Amnesty International.

Already back in 2018, another major human rights organisation –Human Rights Watch, reported that, since 2015, the Viktor Orban government has engaged in a virulent campaign against migrants and asylum seekers, including efforts to demonise organisations that provide legal and humanitarian assistance to these groups.

In the case of another European Union’s full member country –Poland, another major human rights organisation Amnesty International, on 11 April 2022 reported that the Polish authorities have arbitrarily detained nearly two thousand asylum-seekers who crossed into the country from Belarus in 2021 [that’s prior to the Ukrainian war].

Also that many of those asylum seekers have been subjected to abuse, including strip searches in unsanitary, overcrowded facilities, and in some cases even forcible sedation and tasering.

 

Degrading treatment

Amnesty International reported about the Polish Authorities violating the rights of asylum-seekers, including strip searches and other degrading treatment, in overcrowded detention centres. Some people were forcibly sedated during their return.

“At the Polish border, they face razor wire fences and repeated pushbacks by border guards sometimes up to 20-30 times.”

Asylum-seekers who crossed the Belarus border into Poland, including many forced to do so by Belarusian Border Guards, are now detained in “filthy, overcrowded detention centres where guards subject them to abusive treatment and deny them contact with the outside world,” said Jelena Sesar, Regional Researcher at Amnesty International.

 

Arbitrary detention, abysmal detention conditions

Polish border guards have systematically rounded up and violently pushed back people crossing from Belarus, sometimes threatening them with guns, according to Amnesty International’s report.

“The vast majority of those who have been fortunate enough to avoid being pushed back to Belarus and to apply for asylum in Poland are forced into automatic detention, without a proper assessment of their individual situation and the impact detention would have on their physical and mental health.”

 

Suicidal thoughts

“They are often held for prolonged and indefinite periods of time in overcrowded centres that offer little privacy and only limited access to sanitary facilities, doctors, psychologists, or legal assistance.”

Almost all of the people Amnesty International interviewed said they were traumatised after fleeing areas of conflict and being trapped for months on the Belarusian-Polish border.

They also suffered from serious psychological problems, including anxiety, insomnia, depression and frequent suicidal thoughts, undoubtedly exacerbated by their unnecessary metres. For most, psychological support was unavailable.

 

Retraumatised inside a military base

Many of the people who Amnesty spoke to had been in Wędrzyn detention centre, which holds up to 600 people. Overcrowding is particularly acute in this facility, where up to 24 men are detained in rooms measuring just eight square metres, Amnesty International reported.

“In 2021, the Polish authorities decreased the minimum required space for foreign detainees from three square metres per person to just two. The Council of Europe minimum standard for personal living space in prisons and detention centres is four square metres per person.”

 

European Guantánamo

People held in Wędrzyn recounted how guards greeted new detainees by saying “welcome to Guantánamo”, reports Amnesty International, adding that many of them were victims of torture in their home countries before enduring harrowing experiences both in Belarus and on the border of Poland.

The detention centre in Wędrzyn is part of an active military base. The facility’s barbed-wire walls — and the persistent sound of armoured vehicles, helicopters and gunfire from military exercises in the area — only serve to re-traumatise them.

 

Deshumanised

“Most days we were woken up by the sounds of tanks and helicopters, followed by gunshots and explosions. This would go on all day, sometimes. When you have nowhere to go, no activities [to] take your mind off it or a space for even a brief respite, this is intolerable,” Khafiz, a Syrian refugee, told Amnesty International.

“After all the torture in prison in Syria, threats to my family, and then months on the road, I think I was finally broken in Wędrzyn.”

The human rights defender organisation also reported that, in Lesznowola Detention Centre, detainees said that guards’ treatment left them feeling dehumanised.

Nearly all those interviewed reported consistently disrespectful and verbally abusive behaviour, racist remarks and other practices that indicated psychological ill-treatment.

Men who Amnesty International interviewed uniformly complained about the manner in which body searches were conducted. When people were transferred from one detention centre to another, they were forced to undergo a strip search at each facility, even though they were in state custody at all times.

 

Violent forcible returns

Amnesty International interviewed several people who were forcibly returned as well as some who avoided return and remain in detention in Poland.

Many said the Polish border guards who conducted the returns coerced them into signing documents in Polish that they suspected included incriminating information in order to justify their returns.

They also said that, in some cases, border guards used excessive force, such as tasers, restrained people with handcuffs, and even sedated those being returned.

Authorities attempted to forcibly return Yezda, a 30-year old Kurdish woman, with her husband and three small children, says Amnesty International. “After being told that the family would be returned to Iraq, Yezda panicked and screamed and pleaded with the guards not to take them.”

 

“I was ready to die in Poland”

She threatened to take her life and became extremely agitated. “I knew I could not go back to Iraq and I was ready to die in Poland. While I was crying like that, two guards restrained me and my husband, tied our hands behind our backs, and a doctor gave us an injection that made us very weak and sleepy.”

Yezda said that she broke her foot as she fought the guards who tried to put her on the plane. Yezda and her family were returned to Warsaw after the airline refused to take them to Iraq. They remain in a camp in Poland for now.

Volunteers and activists have been barred from accessing the border of Poland and Belarus, and some have even faced prosecution for trying to help people cross the border, added Amnesty International.

 

Stranded

“Hundreds of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East and other parts of the world remain stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland. The Polish government must immediately stop push backs. They are illegal no matter how the government tries to justify them.”

 

Cruelty at Europe’s other borders

In its report: Poland: Cruelty not compassion, at Europe’s other borders, Amnesty International explained that the rapid relief effort at the border, exceptional generosity of civil society and willingness of Polish authorities to receive people fleeing from Ukraine contrast starkly with the Polish government’s hostility toward refugees and migrants who have arrived in the country via Belarus since July 2021.

“Hundreds of people who crossed from Belarus have been arbitrarily detained in Poland in appalling conditions and without access to a fair asylum proceeding. Many have been forcibly returned to their countries of origin, some under sedation. In addition, hundreds of people remain stranded inside Belarus and face increasingly desperate conditions.”

By Vani S. Kulkarni
PHILADELPHIA, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

The Karnataka court’s verdict to uphold the hijab ban has intensified the protest in the state. The row has been typically perceived by many as manufactured by the politicians pointing to the culture of politics in the state. While the jury is still out there on this, evidence on how state’s local culture constructs and deconstructs religious identity allows drawing conclusions with some definitiveness. The culture of state’s politics is one side of the coin. Considering its flip side – politics of culture, particularly of the religious cultural identity, is just as relevant.

Vani S. Kulkarni

Few years ago (between 2014-early 2020), as I travelled for many months across various villages and towns of Karnataka observing and interviewing rural and semi-urban community dwellers about their experiences with RSBY health insurance scheme, two stories, both related to value of health insurance, surfaced repeatedly. One was a story of public valuing health insurance for reasons beyond the visible economic and infrastructural ones. The other was a story of fairly uneven degree of value and use of health insurance provision among the public. It is the latter story that provides evidence of the politics of religious culture, and thus provides some context to better understand the Hijab row in the state. A striking pattern of the unevenness, among other forms, was the difference among households in the value and eventual use of health insurance along religious lines, especially between Hindus and Muslims. Both Hindus and Muslim households agreed that the latter, more than the former households, fervently sought the possession of and use the health insurance provision. Such proclivity by Muslim households, however, was not perceived kindly. While the resentment often was not articulated candidly for the fear of backlash in the community, there was certainly an underlying tension. As one Hindu household indicated: “we all know that Muslim households are overusers of any government provisions, including health services, but we rather not talk about it because they are all neighbours and it will cause chaos in the neighborhood.” However, not everyone exercised restraint in expressing their resentment. In fact, the antipathy toward Muslims was very loud in some quarters that simultaneously expressed disapproval for the Hindus’ lukewarm interest as well as sympathy for their fellow Hindu households for not getting a fair share of the government provisions. The remark of one Hindu household summed up such a sentiment: “Hindus means hinda (Kannada word for behind). Muslims means munda (Kannada word for ahead). Muslims are always ahead in the queue to avail the free resources and Hindus have to wait their turn. We get fed-up waiting, and eventually do not use the resources.”

Interestingly, Muslims used the same description of munda and hinda except from a different perspective: “we muslims are munda to make use of government provided resources”, a Muslim household member remarked, “but we are forced to be ahead because Hindus have pushed us hinda (behind) in accessing the higher quality resources.”

While such dissonance with sharing of valued-resources with a group that was religiously distinct was telling, it was around the dress code – wearing of the hijab, burqa and niqab wearing that the binary distinction – hinda and munda, sharpened.

The remark of a Hindu woman summed up such an ethos: “how can we access health insurance when large number of Muslim women in their long hijabs and long burqas are always in the queue ahead of us? The burqas certainly help them to hide their faces but the dress also makes them hypervisible to the hospital staff and that is how they end up being ahead of us using up all the time and space at the hospital. The burqas may hide their faces but they also make us invisible to the doctors and nurses because we get hidden behind their large burqas, and thus get left behind.”

Burqa ban isn’t unique to Karnataka. Many countries in the west have banned these articles of clothing and the justification for the ban globally ranges from concern about national security, integration into the mainstream society and feminist arguments such as, promoting women’s liberation. However, the cultural contexts in which bans operate are certainly unique and need to be explored. In Karnataka, the ban has surfaced in the colleges and in the education sphere at large but, as the evidence on reaction to the availing of health services indicates, the dissonance is much more deep-seated and widespread. While officially the ban is justified on grounds of need for uniformity and wearing of hijab is not seen as necessary to religious practice, such top-down rationale needs to be understood within the context of everyday local, cultural perception that Muslims are a threat to fair share of valued resources, including education and health of the country. Burqa and hijab are identity markers serving as reminders of presence of minorities, and even as the presence of the “other” who are being out of their place if they are spotted accessing valued resources. There exists a cognitive dissonance with the idea, practice and sight of burqa population in spaces where valued resources are available. It is politics of cultural identity of Muslims – the scepticism and sometimes intolerance for them as beneficiaries. The need for uniformity, social integration and women’s liberation as the top-down narrative (culture of politics) while serving as some explanation for the hijab ban, is at best a partial one. It is an intricate interaction on the ground between development and cultural perception of inclusion (or exclusion) of certain populations in the developkment process (politics of culture) that provides important clues to Karnataka’s hijab row. The latter narrative is made significant by its absence. I fear an unintended consequence of the hijab ban maybe deepening the schism between Hindus and Muslims.

Vani S. Kulkarni, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Russia, which held the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council last month, cast its veto on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 22 2022 (IPS)

The five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council (UNSC) – UK, US, France, China and Russia – have exercised their veto powers primarily to protect their own national interests or the interests of their close political and military allies.

But a proposed new resolution before the General Assembly (GA)– entitled “Standing mandate for a General Assembly debate when a veto is cast in the Security Council”—is an attempt to undermine the veto in a move likely to be supported by a majority of the 193 member states.

As of last week, the resolution had 57 co-sponsors—and counting.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters the United States was one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, spearheaded by a core group of Member States led by Liechtenstein.

“This innovative measure would automatically convene a meeting of the General Assembly after a veto has been cast in the Security Council,” she said.

As negotiated in 1945, she pointed out, the UN Charter entrusts in the five Permanent Members of the Security Council the ability to prevent the adoption of a resolution through a veto – a mechanism long the subject of institutional debate.

“The United States takes seriously its privilege of veto power; it is a sober and solemn responsibility that must be respected by those Permanent Members to whom it has been entrusted,” she declared.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a Security Council meeting. Credit: United Nations

When a Permanent Member casts a veto, that member should be prepared to explain why the resolution at issue would not have furthered the maintenance of international peace and security, said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield.

“Unfortunately, not all members of the Security Council share this sentiment. We are particularly concerned by Russia’s shameful pattern of abusing its veto privilege over the past two decades, including its vetoes to kill a UN observer mission in Georgia, block accountability measures and chemical weapons investigations in Syria, prevent the establishment of a criminal tribunal on the downing of flight MH-17 over Ukraine, and protect President Putin from condemnation over his unprovoked and unjust war of choice against Ukraine.”

The General Assembly resolution on the veto, she declared, will be a significant step toward the accountability, transparency, and responsibility of all of the Permanent Members of the Security Council members who wield its power.

https://research.un.org/en/docs/sc/quick

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS the General Assembly Resolution 377, adopted back in 1950, gives the GA the authority to make recommendations for collective action in the event that the Security Council fails to act as required to maintain international security and peace.

He pointed out that the General Assembly has invoked this resolution on four occasions when a widely supported resolution was blocked by a veto: in 1950, in regard to the Korean War; in 1981, regarding Namibia; and in 1980 and 1997, involving resolutions concerning Palestine.

“There is some irony in the United States pushing for a more active role for the General Assembly, given that three of those four cases were in response to a U.S. veto. Indeed, over the past fifty years, Washington has been responsible for far more vetoes than any other Security Council member”.

Of the 72 U.S. vetoes of Security Council resolutions, the United States was the sole negative vote in 63 of them, he said.

Asked about a proposal from an Asian country, back in the late 1970s, calling for a double-veto as more effective, instead of a single veto, Zunes said it “certainly has merit”. “But since it would require amending the UN Charter, it is not only likely that Russia would block it, but probably the United States as well”.

The proposed resolution “decides,” among other things, “that the President of the General Assembly shall convene a formal meeting of the Assembly within ten working days of the casting of a veto by one or more permanent members of the Security Council, to hold a debate on the situation as to which the veto was cast, provided that the General Assembly does not meet in an Emergency Special Session on the same situation.”

James Paul, who authored “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council,” told IPS that ever since the founding of the UN in 1945, the great majority of UN member states have insisted that vetoes in the Security Council hobble action to preserve the peace.

Experts have often pointed out that the veto keeps many important matters outside of Council action entirely.

“Though the five veto-wielding Permanent Members have never agreed to an alteration of their veto powers, smaller countries in the UN General Assembly have sought to weaken the veto, through procedures and actions that delegitimize veto-use and protest against veto-protected aggression and other breaches of the peace by the most powerful governments,” he argued.

A group of like-minded countries, keen on strengthening international peace and legality (and protecting themselves from larger aggressors), has launched the current initiative, building on opposition to the Russian veto of a Council resolution condemning its invasion of Ukraine.

This initiative, he said, would automatically trigger a General Assembly debate anytime the veto is used in the Security Council. In theory, an Assembly debate (even though non-binding) might be a disincentive to veto-use by a Permanent Member. Even if the embarrassment of a debate would not always act as a brake on the arrogance of powerful states, it would be worth implementing

Andreas Bummel, executive director of the Berlin-based Democracy Without Borders, told IPS: “We strongly support Liechtenstein’s initiative that the General Assembly is to meet automatically each time a veto is cast in the Security Council.

This, he said, will force the permanent members of the council to justify their vote to the world community. The political cost of misusing the veto will be raised.

Further the General Assembly routinely will be able to consider its own measures. It’s an important step in the right direction, said Bummel.

“It is highly welcome and noteworthy that the United States is one of the co-sponsors of the proposed resolution. Obviously, they are prepared to explain any future use of the veto in front of the General Assembly and accept its subsidiary responsibility”.

In a next step, he argued, there should be an understanding that permanent members can cast no votes that are not treated as vetoes against resolutions that otherwise have a majority to pass.

“The UN’s whole setup needs to be reviewed though. Everybody knows that it’s anachronistic. Eventually, the permanent members need to be prepared to let go of their veto privilege altogether”.

In an interview with IPS, Paul warned: “We have to remember that Permanent Members have many cards to play. The United States, by far the most powerful actor on the world stage, has tremendous influence over a majority of Council members. It often can block or greatly alter Council action without having to cast a veto”.

That is why its invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, though initially rejected by the Council, was eventually tolerated by the same Council for many years. In the case of repeated US vetoes of Council resolutions on Israel, the US has never paid a heavy political price.

He said many observers point out that great powers like Russia and the United States constantly act in contempt of multilateralism and with scant regard for the UN and international law.

“So. we can well ask how the United Nations can succeed in a world exposed to such cynical use of violence and raw national aggrandizement. There is certainly no easy answer, but it is clear that those who seek to undermine the veto and expand the potential of international law are on the right course”.

“One day, we can hope, we will prevail,” he said..

Meanwhile, a proposal to reform the Security Council has dragged on for more than two decades, with four strong contenders for permanent seats, namely Germany, India, Japan and Brazil.

But if they do eventually succeed in their attempts, they have to put up with what is best described as “second-class citizenship”, because the P5 have given no indications that any new comers to their ranks will be offered veto powers.

Still, African leaders have long insisted they will not accept any permanent memberships in the UNSC, without veto powers.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Elizabeth Cuenca, Jesusa Flores, Flora Huamán and Ángela Oviedo (from left to right) stand in the agroecological garden they tend with 10 other women in Rodrigo Bueno, a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires. In the background loom the high-rises of Puerto Madero, the most modern and sought-after neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 21 2022 (IPS)

The space consists of just 300 square meters full of green where there is an agro-ecological vegetable garden and nursery, which are the work and dream of 14 women. Behind it can be seen the imposing silhouettes of the high rises that are a symbol of the most modern and sought-after part of Argentina’s capital city.

But the Vivera Orgánica (Organic Nursery) forms part of another reality: it is located in a low-income neighborhood which has been transformed in recent years thanks to the work of local residents and to government support.

“We started with the idea of growing some fresh vegetables for our families. And today we are a cooperative that opens its doors to the neighborhood and also sells to people who come from all over the city, and to companies,” Peruvian immigrant Elizabeth Cuenca, who came to Buenos Aires from her country in 2010 and settled in this neighborhood on the banks of the La Plata River, tells IPS.

The Barrio Rodrigo Bueno emerged as a shantytown in the 1980s on flood-prone land in the south of Buenos Aires.

It is just a few blocks from Puerto Madero, an area occupied for decades by abandoned port warehouses, which since the 1990s has been renovated and gentrified, experiencing a real estate boom that has made it the most sought-after by the wealthy in Buenos Aires.

The contrast between the exposed brick houses of Rodrigo Bueno, separated by narrow, often muddy corridors, and the slick glassy 40- or 50-story skyscrapers built between the wide streets of Puerto Madero became a powerful image of inequality in Greater Buenos Aires, a megacity of nearly 15 million inhabitants.

However, today things are completely different in Rodrigo Bueno, named after a popular singer who suffered a tragic death in 2000.

It is one of the four shantytowns in the city (out of a total of about 40, according to official figures) that are in the process of urbanization – or “socio-urban integration”, as the Buenos Aires city government describes the process.

Since 2017, streets have been widened and paved, infrastructure for public service delivery was brought in, and 46 buildings with 612 new apartments were built, which now house nearly half of the neighborhood’s roughly 1,500 families.

Many of the old precarious houses were demolished while others still stand alongside the brand-new apartments, awarded to their new owners with 30-year loans.

“When the urbanization process began to be discussed, we started having skills and trades workshops and there was one on gardening, which was attended by many women who, although we lived in the same neighborhood, did not know each other,” says Cuenca.

“That’s how we learned, we organized ourselves and were able to get a space for the Vivera, which we inaugurated in December 2019. Today we sell vegetables and especially seedlings for people who want to start their own vegetable gardens at home. We don’t earn wages, but we generate an income,” she adds.

The paving of streets is progressing in the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood, which first emerged as a shantytown on the banks of the La Plata River, where previously almost all the houses were accessed through narrow corridors, most of them made of exposed bricks and many of them built by the families themselves. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Bringing home gardens to life – and more

In just over two years, the women of the Vivera Orgánica have achieved some milestones, such as the sale of 7,000 seedlings of different vegetables to the Toyota automobile company, which gave them as gifts to its employees.

They have also sold agroecological vegetables to the swank Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires, which is located in Puerto Madero, and have set up vegetable gardens on land owned by Enel, one of the largest electricity distributors.

But they have also earned respect from the public. “The incredible thing is that the pandemic was a great help for us, because many people who couldn’t leave their homes started to become interested in eating healthier or growing their own food. We received a lot of orders,” says Jesusa Flores, a Bolivian immigrant who is one of the founders of the Vivera.

She was working as a cleaner and caring for the elderly in family homes, when she lost her jobs due to the restrictions on movement aimed at curbing the COVID pandemic.

“La Vivera has been very important for me, because it is near our homes and we can always come here,” says Flores.

The nursery receives no government subsidies and the 14 women earn little money from it, so almost all of them have other jobs. But they are all confident that they have the potential to grow and that the nursery will become their only job in the future.

“During the worst period of the pandemic, we put together 15 boxes a day with 12 seedlings to sell, but we received 60 orders a day. We couldn’t keep up with demand,” says Angela Oviedo from Peru, who is also a member of the group.

Several women prepare the products of the Vivera Orgánica, next to part of a mural painted on the door of the container that serves as the office of their small business in a low-income neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Ministry of Human Development and Habitat of the City of Buenos Aires

The hurdles thrown up by informal employment

The Buenos Aires city government provides technical support for the Vivera Orgánica as part of the neighborhood’s socio-urban integration process.

Low-income sectors in Argentina have been hard-hit since the process of devaluation of the peso began four years ago, accompanied by high inflation, leading to a steep plunge in purchasing power, especially for workers in the informal economy.

In 2020 the crisis was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the economy to shrink by 10 percent. And while almost all of the losses were recovered in 2021, the alarming fact is that most of the jobs that have been created since then are informal.

According to data from the Argentine Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security, in January this year there were 6,034,637 registered workers in the private sector, down from 6,273,972 in January 2018, before the start of the recession.

The Buenos Aires city government’s Ministry of Human Development and Habitat estimates that there are some 500,000 workers in the informal economy in the capital, who have been the hardest hit by inflation, which reached 6.7 percent last March, the highest rate for a single month in Argentina in the last 20 years.

Many analysts warn that poverty, which in the second half of last year fell from 40.6 percent to 37.3 percent according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, will grow again in 2022.

A picture of some of the buildings constructed by the Buenos Aires city government in the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood. A total of 612 new apartments have already been delivered, through 30-year loans, to the families that lived closest to the river and were most exposed to pollution in this poor neighborhood in the Argentine capital. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Assistance in joining the formal sector

“In poor neighborhoods there are many businesses, but the problem is that because of the situation in the informal economy, they face enormous hurdles in order to grow and to be able to connect with the formal market,” explains Belén Barreto, undersecretary for the Development of Human Potential in the government of Buenos Aires.

“One issue has to do with productivity: in general, the entrepreneurs work in their own homes and are not able to scale up significantly. That is why we support the Vivera with technical assistance, so the project can reach production levels enabling it to sell in the city’s formal value chains,” she adds in an interview with IPS.

Barreto says that another obstacle has to do with marketing: entrepreneurs find it difficult to sell their products outside the environment in which they live, despite the growth of on-line sales.

“That is why our focus is on linking these small businesses with companies so that they can become their suppliers in order to earn a more sustainable income and scale up their production through a new market. Last Christmas we held business roundtables and managed to get more companies to buy gifts from the social and popular economy, for a total of 17 million pesos (about 150,000 dollars),” she adds.

Finally, to address the problem of access to credit for informal workers, in 2021 the Buenos Aires city government created the Social Development Fund (Fondes), a public-private fund for the social and popular economy.

The steady growth of the informal economy also prompted the local government to create last year the Registry of Productive Units of the Popular and Social Economy, which allows access to tax benefits and has so far registered some 3,000 self-managed units.

The transformation of the neighborhood has also brought greater opportunities for local residents, who are often victims of discrimination and prejudice.

Cuenca, for example, explains that “we didn’t used to have an address to give when we were looking for a job, and it was very unlikely that we would get called back.”

She sees the Vivera Orgánica as another tool for a more dignified life: “This project is part of the neighborhood and part of us; we now feel that we have different prospects.”