Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Credit: Giulio Piscitelli for Emergency

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Oct 12 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Distant and blurred, as if it belongs to the past, the war in Afghanistan has never been so fierce and forgotten. On the 7th of October, the country entered the twentieth year since the United States announced the first airstrikes against the Taliban, adding a new chapter to the endless bleeding of this corner of Asia, where more than four decades without peace have left entire generations hopeless.

‘I believe that the [Afghan] people do not remember why we started this war.’

The voice of Giorgia Novello, medical coordinator of the NGO Emergency in Kabul, bursts onto the screen of the theatre where the documentary A hospital in war – Emergency in Afghanistan was premiered last week in Rome. Filmed and produced by Nico Piro, special correspondent of the Italian Rai 3, it is one of the few recently released first-hand reports on the Afghan war. It recounts both the spiral of violence in which the country is still trapped and the tireless efforts of those trying to ease the pain of a jaded population.

International media attention withdrew from Afghanistan with the US and NATO troops in 2014, dooming to oblivion an already underreported conflict, where, in 2019, civilian casualties have reached an unprecedented level.

Hidden victims of an invisible war, civilians are paying the highest price: injured while playing, driving, going to school, providing livelihoods to their families; wounded by bullets, and landmines; victims of explosions and airstrikes.

‘The biggest lie ever told about contemporary wars is that they are fought by armies on battlefields. Indeed, they are fought among people in the middle of villages and in the hearts of cities. That lie pushes people to think that conflicts, being a matter of warriors and soldiers, leaves only them killed and injured, not civilians, which are instead the main victims’, Piro told us at the sidelines of the premiere in Italy.

Never so fierce

Three young male patients are seen in the ICU after surgery. All the boys were injured in a mine blast. October 1st 2017, Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Mathieu Willcocks for Emergency

The Italian NGO Emergency has operated in Afghanistan since 1999. It runs two hospitals for war victims in Kabul and Lashkar Gah, a network of first aid posts in eleven provinces and a medical-surgical centre in Panjshir. Over the past few years, notably from 2017, the number of patients receiving care at its health facilities has significantly and consistently increased.

‘The majority come from the provinces, but they also come from Kabul where explosions are extremely frequent’, Marco Puntin, Emergency’s program coordinator in Afghanistan, reached in the Afghan capital, told us. Fifteen percent of those treated are women and thirty percent are children. The large majority of the patients, many of which civilians, are treated for bullet injuries — 55 percent — or for wounds caused by foreign bodies — 30 percent.

‘The security situation has deteriorated, especially in [the capital]. Our local staff do not leave home at night, travelling after dark is dangerous. If they can, they avoid running that risk. The same for us, internationals’, Puntin said.

Fighting continues in all the provinces, too. Fifteen percent of the patientes admitted at Emergency hospital in Panjshir – the safest place in Afghanistan – are still victims of war coming from neighbouring areas.

After the agreement signed in February between the United States and the Taliban, something has changed. ‘We noticed a reduction in large-scale attacks, but a severe surge in small explosions’, he said. ‘In Kabul, even if small, there are explosions every single day, no day excluded’.

In September, a new spike of violence throughout the country marked the stalling negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Since Sunday, a Taliban military offensive against Afghan security forces has been underway in the Helmand province. Yesterday Emergency’s Surgical Centre for War Victims in Lashkar-Gah received forty-eight patients with war injuries, four of whom had already died upon arrival. “This morning, a rocket flew into the city, and we immediately received six patients due to the explosion. Today, we have received one person who was dead on arrival and another eleven seriously injured patients have been hospitalised. Six have already been treated and discharged,” Puntin said in a note to the press.

“Whilst in Doha there is talk of peace, the violence here in Afghanistan doesn’t stop. Civilians are already paying the price for this new wave of fighting in Helmand, ” Puntin added.

Finghtings are raging while COVID-19 outbreak continues to challenge the fragile national healthcare system. Between May and June, the spread of the virus forced some hospitals to shut down: ‘That stressed a health system already brought to its knees by forty years of conflict’, Puntin said. Cases are on the rise again, especially along the border with Iran.

Emergency is implementing preventive measures in all its facilities, which include the use of personal protection equipment, the reduction of bed capacity to ensure adequate space between beds and specific protocols to minimise the risk of virus transmission.

However, the pandemic was not perceived as a major threat by the Afghan people: ‘Most of them didn’t believe in COVID very much because they have a greater problem: the war. Their priority is to stay alive in the areas where they live, hit more by war than by coronavirus’, he explained.

Staying alive, surviving. And to survive, ‘the only thing to do is not to think . . . You have to try to live normally if you want to preserve your mental health’, Puntin said.

But Afghans know that every day can be their last.

‘Recently, a friend in Kabul, a well-educated young man, who has a good job and a healthy family, told me something which I hold dear. “When I leave home in the morning, I kiss my kids many and many times because it can be the last time I see them.” This describes very well what living in Afghanistan means today’, Piro told us.

Living hopelessly, dying in silence

Life has changed dramatically since the end of the Isaf mission, according to Piro, who has been covering the conflict since 2006. ‘Conflict-related violence has increased, and criminality is on the rise with robbery and kidnapping on a daily basis’, he said.

Nonetheless, it is not just a matter of violence and criminality.

‘After 2001, people really believed in a new and greater Afghanistan, a new phase of peace and prosperity. Now they are completely hopeless waiting for the worst yet to come’, he added.

Fragile signs of hope are seen in the response of the people: ‘From what we see, from our patients and from our local staff, there aren’t many positive elements. I saw a few. The positive thing is that since a couple of years, rallies for peace are proliferating. People can’t stand it anymore. Forty years of constant war: They can’t stand it anymore’, Puntin stressed.

Peace would not only mean ceasing the Afghan people’s suffering, it could also impact well beyond the country’s borders — according to Piro — stopping opium, heroin and methamphetamine production; weakening the Islamists movements in the bordering ex-soviet republics; halting migrations; downsizing Pakistan’s power in the area and so its impact on the Kashmir tensions, possibly bringing stability and prosperity to that entire sector of Asia.

‘Peace is closer than ever’, Piro said. However, the Italian journalist believes that the Afghan people are not giving peace a chance: allowing the Taliban to return to power could mean a peace ‘potentially worse than war’ for many Afghans, forcing ‘the best part of the country — people who fought for and built freedom of press, women’s right, civil and human rights, democracy’ — to flee the country to avoid retaliation.

In 2018, when the documentary, which will be realised in English, was filmed, Piro was almost the only foreign journalist in Afghanistan during the Parliamentary elections. ‘Since 2014, Afghanistan has been forgotten by the international media. Why? Security, the rising Syria topic, budget cuts and so on. All of those reasons are true, but we have to admit that the media made a big mistake because in leaving Afghanistan behind, we, as reporters, did what the politicians wanted us to do. Forgetting Afghanistan meant giving impunity to politicians and their decision to begin and expand an impossible war’, he said.

In silence, hope is fading as in silence Afghans continue to die.

“In this country, divided on everything … just death seems left to unify everyone ’. The voice from the screen chills the audience, dazed by realizing that the conflict in Afghanistan has never come to an end.

This article was first published by Degrees of Latitude

 

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The issue of women and peacekeeping has been especially crucial during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. But the COVID-19 pandemic has has had a great negative impact on women in Mali in their peace building efforts. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic has affected the safety and sense of community for many women in Mali given the travel restrictions and lockdowns in place, Bassirou Gaye, an assistant researcher for a 2019 report on the role of Mali women in peacekeeping, told IPS this weekend.

“This pandemic has undermined peace building initiatives such as training sessions, exchange meetings, trips to share ideas and good practices among women,” Gaye said. “Barrier measures meant that women could no longer meet in large numbers.”

Gaye spoke with IPS following a roundtable meeting last week where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres discussed, with women leaders from the Central African Republic, Cyprus, Darfur and Mali, the role of women’s leadership in taking forward the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda for the Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative.

He highlighted how the issue of women and peacekeeping has been especially crucial during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.

“In the COVID-19 crisis, it has been women who have had the trust of divided communities to credibly disseminate public health messaging,” Guterres said. “Yet, it is women who are under siege, bearing disproportionate care and economic burdens and facing an alarming surge of violence in the home.”

At the roundtable, representatives from the four countries shared their views: Bintou Founé Samaké, president of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF) and Minister of Women Children and Family Affairs in Mali; Magda Zenon, Cypriot peace and human rights and civil society activist; Lena Ekomo, who leads the network for women’s leadership in the Central African Republic; and Nawal Hassan Osman, a Gender Darfur State’s Advisor in Sudan, and a member of the Darfur Women’s Platform.

At the talk, Osman lauded the women who were on the frontlines of Sudan’s 2019 revolution, “bearing all the acts of the human rights violation and atrocities from the security force of the former regime”.

She added that the current pandemic has also affected rule of law and accountability in cases of conflict-related sexual violence.

Her concerns are similar to the ones voiced by others at the roundtable.

“Day after day, year after year,  we are paying a price because of our own biases and because of discrimination that exists — we need to be able to do better,” Guterres said at the roundtable.

In his call to ensure the implementation of shared commitments about women’s role in peace building, the Secretary-General reiterated the crucial and urgent need to recognise women’s participation.

“Today, women’s participation is a cause, we must make it a norm,” he said. “That is how we will transform international peace and security. That is how we will build a peaceful future.”

Excerpts of the interview with Gaye follow. It has been edited for clarity purposes.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How has COVID-19 pandemic affected women in peacebuilding in Mali?

Bassirou Gaye (BG): COVID-19 has had a great negative impact on women in Mali in their peace building efforts [such as those mentioned above: training sessions, exchange meetings, trips to share ideas and good practices]. These unique conditions which create a safe space for women cannot be replicated via videoconferences.

The health crisis has also affected the economic activities (small businesses) that allow some women to ensure the functioning of their associations through membership fees. It is also important to note that many international structures that support women’s organisations have stopped their activities because of the pandemic.

IPS: In 2012, Mali faced a huge crisis following an Islamist insurgency in the country that led to an exodus of tens of thousands of Malians. Your report discusses at length the 2012 conflict. In what ways has that  informed women’s participation in peace and security efforts?

BG: In my opinion, the 2012 crisis has been a trigger for women to take a greater interest in governance and, more specifically, in peace and security issues despite political and cultural obstacles. They have started to better organise themselves and join forces to develop ideas, projects and initiatives for peace building. Before 2012, there was no such thing. Women’s organisations are now multiplying training and sensitisation activities on issues of conflict, security, peace and reconciliation in favour of women. In addition, many international organisations have multiplied their accompaniment of women in their peace building efforts. For example, they offer funding and capacity building activities to women.

IPS: What role do women currently play in the peace process in Mali?

BG: For several reasons, the place of women is very important in peace building initiatives in Mali. Women are at the heart of the conflict and they are the first victims: forced marriages, sexual violence, forced displacement in refugee camps, restrictions on freedom, imposition of the veil, difficulty in accessing health care, etc. Women can therefore better explain the multiple forms of insecurity than men and make proposals for concrete solutions.

In addition, women are better able to raise awareness and conduct training sessions for the many women who are not familiar with national and international legal and political texts and frameworks relating to women’s rights and their participation in conflict resolution and management.

IPS: What challenges do women in Mali face in peace building efforts in the country?

BG: Malian women face many challenges to their participation in peace building. These

challenges can be categorised on several levels:

• Social challenges: According to Malian customary and religious beliefs, women belong in the home, not in public life. Therefore, they should not be involved in the management of public affairs or in activities outside the home. If a woman, especially if she is married, engages in such activities, her family (her husband, father or brother) must first give their consent, which is often unlikely. Thus, these beliefs confine them to a background role and mean that the use of women’s expertise and potential is generally not systematic. In Mali, many women who work in organisations (associations, think tanks) for peace building, conflict resolution or women’s rights advocacy [tend to have] marital problems with husbands or their families. They are poorly appreciated by society, especially if they spend more time at work.

• There is also a lack of accessible training and information on peace and security issues. Numerous studies show that they are among the least informed segments of society.

• There is also a lack of willingness on the part of political decision-makers to involve women more in the management of political affairs so that they have the opportunity to influence decision-making processes. In December 2015, Law 052 was passed in Mali, establishing a 30 percent quota for women’s appointments to national institutions and legislative bodies. This initiative was welcomed as a victory. However, this law has not been respected by the current government, which includes only 16 percent women.

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COVID-19: UNESCO-- Solutions for Distance Learning
The contribution of voluntary social distancing was larger in advanced economies where people can work from home more easily or can even afford to stop working thanks to personal savings and social security benefits.

By Francesco Grigoli and Damiano Sandri
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 12 2020 (IPS)

One enduring lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that any lasting economic recovery will depend on resolving the health crisis.

Our research in the latest World Economic Outlook shows that government lockdowns—while succeeding in their intended goal of lowering infections—contributed considerably to the recession and had disproportional effects on vulnerable groups, such as women and young people.

But the recession was also largely driven by people voluntarily refraining from social interactions as they feared contracting the virus. Therefore, lifting lockdowns is unlikely to lead to a decisive and sustained economic boost if infections are still elevated, as voluntary social distancing will likely persist.

Yet the analysis finds that a balance can be achieved in protecting public health while preventing a protracted economic decline. Lockdowns impose short-term costs but may lead to a faster economic recovery as they lower infections and thus the extent of voluntary social distancing.

Examining the medium-term effects of lockdowns as well as the robustness of our findings is an important area for future research as the pandemic evolves and more data become available.

The economic and health crisis through the lens of real-time data

We analyze the economic effects of lockdowns and voluntary social distancing using two high-frequency proxies for economic activity: mobility data from Google and job openings posted on the website Indeed.

As illustrated in the top chart below, over the entire sample of 128 countries used in the analysis, lockdowns and voluntary social distancing contributed equally to the drop in mobility during the first 3 months of a country’s epidemic.

The contribution of voluntary social distancing was larger in advanced economies where people can work from home more easily or can even afford to stop working thanks to personal savings and social security benefits.

Conversely, people in low-income countries are often unable to opt for voluntary social distancing as they do not have the financial means to cope with a temporary income loss. The analysis of job posting data provides similar insights, showing that both lockdowns and voluntary social distancing contributed substantially to the drop in labor demand.

The large contribution of voluntary social distancing in reducing mobility and job postings should warn policymakers against lifting lockdowns when infections are still elevated in the hope of jumpstarting economic activity. Addressing the health risks appears to be a pre-condition to allow for a strong and sustained economic recovery.

In this regard, the analysis reveals that lockdowns can substantially reduce infections. The effects are particularly strong if lockdowns are adopted early in a country’s epidemic.

The bottom chart below shows that countries that adopted lockdowns when COVID-19 cases were still low experienced much better epidemiological outcomes relative to countries that intervened when cases were already high. The chapter also documents that lockdowns must be sufficiently strict to curb infections, thus suggesting that stringent and short-lived lockdowns could be preferable to mild and prolonged measures.

The effectiveness of lockdowns in reducing infections, coupled with the finding that infections can considerably harm economic activity because of voluntary social distancing, calls for re-considering the prevailing narrative about lockdowns involving a trade-off between saving lives and supporting the economy.

This characterization of lives vs. livelihoods neglects that effective lockdown measures taken early during an epidemic may lead to a faster economic recovery by containing the virus and reducing voluntary social distancing.

These medium-term gains may offset the short-term costs of lockdowns, possibly even leading to positive overall effects on the economy. More research is warranted on this important aspect as the crisis evolves and more data become available.

The impact of lockdowns on vulnerable groups

The chapter also contributes to the growing evidence that the crisis is having disproportionate effects on more vulnerable groups. Anonymized and aggregated mobility data provided by telecommunications company Vodafone for Italy, Portugal, and Spain, show that stay-at-home orders and the associated school closures led to a larger drop in the mobility of women relative to men.

This effect is largely due to the disproportionate burden that women face in caring for children, which may prevent them from going to work, thus jeopardizing their employment opportunities.

The Vodafone data also reveal that lockdowns tend to impact the mobility of younger people more strongly. The bottom chart below shows that stay-at-home orders led to a sharper decline in the mobility of people aged 18 to 24 and 25 to 44 who tend to have younger children to care for when schools are closed and often have temporary job contracts that are more likely to be terminated during a crisis.

The larger impact on these populations threatens to increase inter-generational inequality.

Targeted policy intervention—such as strengthening unemployment benefits and supporting paid leave for parents—is thus needed to protect more vulnerable people and ensure that the crisis does not lead to a long-lasting widening of inequality.

Source: IMF Blog

*IMF Blog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.

 

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Rhoda Tumusiime, IITA Board Member, Former African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, and Chairperson, HOPE
 
Steven Cole, Senior Scientist and Gender Research Coordinator, IITA

By Rhoda Tumusiime and Steven Cole
IBADAN, Nigeria, Oct 12 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s hopes of feeding a population projected to double by 2050 amidst a worsening climate crisis rest on huge investments in agriculture, including creating the conditions so that women can empower themselves and lead efforts to transform the continent’s farming landscape.

Rhoda Tumusiime

As we celebrate the 2020 International Day of Rural Women, Africa needs to reflect more on the role women play in food and nutrition security, land and water management.

Also, the impact of COVID-19 on women’s capacity to provide food for their families and care for their loved ones underscores the importance of strengthening their capacities by designing gender responsive actions.

We know the world has the technology and resources to eradicate hunger but finding the right policies and the will to implement them often elude us.

Fortunately, young women and men carrying out evidence-based research in sub-Saharan Africa are coming up with some possible answers on how to tackle these pressing issues.

Working with the support and guidance of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), a research-for-development non-profit, these researchers are aiming to facilitate agricultural solutions to hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation in line with IITA’s goals and particularly its gender research strategy.

Bear in mind that over 60% of all employed women in sub-Saharan Africa work in agriculture, and that women produce up to 80% of foodstuffs for household consumption and sale in local markets. But these women farmers are disadvantaged by a range of factors, such as laws, policies, gender-blind development programs, and entrenched norms and power imbalances within and outside their homes and communities.

Fundamental gender constraints clearly shape how women and men are involved in and benefit from agricultural food systems. Manifested as harmful gender norms, attitudes and power relations, they have a particular impact on how young women participate in value chains or have access to resources such as land, as well as their decision-making powers and how money earned from their labor is spent.

Steven Cole

Gender-blind policies and development interventions do not take into account the different roles and diverse needs of men and women, while gender-accommodative policies confirm that gender constraints exist but can propose ways to work around them for the benefit of women.

IITA’s gender research strategy brings to the surface the underlying causes of gender inequalities to inform and guide policies to address these causes with interventions that reduce poverty and increase gender equality in low-income countries with boosts to job opportunities and economic, food and nutrition security.

In the months before the coronavirus surfaced and with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), IITA launched 80 research fellowships for young African scholars, with an emphasis on young female professionals and students aiming to acquire a master’s or doctoral degree. Grantees are offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking.

Known as CARE (Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence), the three-year project aims to build our understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies.

Achieving these development outcomes requires working with multi-stakeholder groups at multiple levels to transform unequal power relations between female and male youth in various social institutions, including in the household, community, market, and the state.

For example, in southern Benin, graduate student Grace Chabi looked at why young agricultural entrepreneurs are predominately male. Among her policy recommendations are a call to remove gender biases from land ownership, credit, and employment practices. Policies should also facilitate female agripreneurship networks and target funding to agribusinesses owned by women.

Research by Akinyi Sassi in Tanzania found how stereotypes can negatively affect women’s intentions to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to access agricultural market information, but that contrary to such stereotyping, female farmers were more strongly influenced than male farmers by their perception of the value of using phones to find such information. Such gender factors can be considered when promoting ICT use.

Cynthia Mkong of Cameroon has examined the issue of role models, social status, and previous experience in determining why some students are more likely to choose agriculture as their university major. Almost a quarter of young women in Cameroon are unemployed, compared with 11% of young men. Building effective policies to improve the education of girls and household income at all levels could reverse declining youth interest in agriculture.

Adedotun Seyingbo examined employment among Nigerian youth and how gender and other issues, including land access, influence how more young people remain in non-farm employment rather than staying in farm jobs.

Also in Nigeria, Oluwaseun Oginni looked at rural-urban migration and found that 43% of youth migrants are female. A better future, educational opportunities, and marriage are among the reasons young women are leaving rural areas.

Adella Ng’atigwa examined how to empower youth to reduce horticulture postharvest losses in Tanzania and found that women have fewer losses as they are more involved in vegetable production and marketing and are more able to handle perishable crops.

All these research projects also illustrate IITA’s gender research strategy using what is known as an ‘intersectional lens’. This means an examination of deep inequities, sometimes violent and systematic, that intersect with each other: such as poverty, racism, sexism, denial of rights and opportunities, and generational differences. In this way the connections between all struggles for justice and equal opportunities are illuminated.

A gender transformative approach adopted by IITA aims to address the root causes of gender inequalities for more sustained and meaningful change for female and male youth. With such changes, Africa, with the world’s youngest and fastest growing population, will be better equipped to handle its future challenges with women at the forefront.

 

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The post Gendering Agriculture so Women Take the Lead in Feeding Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Rhoda Tumusiime, IITA Board Member, Former African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, and Chairperson, HOPE

 
Steven Cole, Senior Scientist and Gender Research Coordinator, IITA

The post Gendering Agriculture so Women Take the Lead in Feeding Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa

By External Source
Oct 11 2020 (IPS)

As the threat of a COVID-19 pandemic emerged earlier this year, many felt a sense of apprehension about what would happen when it reached Africa. Concerns over the combination of overstretched and underfunded health systems and the existing load of infectious and non-infectious diseases often led to it being talked about in apocalyptic terms.

However, it has not turned out quite that way. On September 29th, the world passed the one million reported deaths mark (the true figure will of course be higher). On the same day, the count for Africa was a cumulative total of 35,954.

Africa accounts for 17% of the global population but only 3.5% of the reported global COVID-19 deaths. All deaths are important, we should not discount apparently low numbers, and of course data collected over such a wide range of countries will be of variable quality, but the gap between predictions and what has actually happened is staggering. There has been much discussion on what accounts for this.

We argue that Africa’s much younger population explains a very large part of the apparent difference. Some of the remaining gap is probably due to under reporting of events but there are a number of other plausible explanations. These range from climatic differences, pre-existing immunity, genetic factors and behavioural differences

As leads of the COVID-19 team in the African Academy of Sciences, we have followed the unfolding events and various explanations put forward. The emerging picture is that in many African countries, transmission has been higher but severity and mortality much lower than originally predicted based on experience in China and Europe.

We argue that Africa’s much younger population explains a very large part of the apparent difference. Some of the remaining gap is probably due to under reporting of events but there are a number of other plausible explanations. These range from climatic differences, pre-existing immunity, genetic factors and behavioural differences.

Given the enormous variability in conditions across a continent – with 55 member states – the exact contribution of any one factor in a particular environment is likely to vary. But the bottom line is that what appeared at first to be a mystery looks less puzzling as more and more research evidence emerges.

 

The importance of age

The most obvious factor for the low death rates is the population age structure. Across multiple countries the risk of dying of COVID-19 for those aged 80 years or more is around a hundred times that of people in their twenties.

This can best be appreciated with a specific example. As of September 30th, the UK had reported 41,980 COVID-19 specific deaths while Kenya, by contrast, had reported 691. The population of the UK is around 66 million with a median age of 40 compared with Kenya’s population of 51 million with a median age of 20 years.

Corrected for population size the death toll in Kenya would have been expected to be around 32,000. However if one also corrects for population structure (assumes that the age specific death rates in the UK apply to the population structure of Kenya), we would expect around 5,000 deaths. There is still a big difference between 700 and 5,000; what might account for the remaining gap?

 

Other possible contributors

One possibility is the failure to identify and record deaths.

Kenya, as with most countries, initially had little testing capacity and specific death registration is challenging. However, Kenya quickly built up its testing capacity and the extra attention to finding deaths makes it unlikely that a gap of this size can be fully accounted for by missing information.

There has been no shortage of ideas for other factors that may be contributing.

A recent large multi-country study in Europe reported significant declines in mortality related to higher temperature and humidity. The authors hypothesised that this may be because the mechanisms by which our respiratory tracts clear virus work better in warmer more humid conditions. This means that people may be getting less virus particles into their system.

It should be noted however that a systematic review of global data – while confirming that warm and wet climates seemed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 – indicated that these variables alone could not explain most of the variability in disease transmission. It’s important to remember that there’s considerable weather variability throughout Africa. Not all climates are warm or wet and, if they are, they may not stay that way throughout the year.

Other suggestions include the possibility of pre-existing protective immune responses due either to previous exposure to other pathogens or to BCG vaccination, a vaccine against tuberculosis provided at birth in most African countries. A large analysis – which involved 55 countries, representing 63% of the world’s population – showed significant correlations between increasing BCG coverage at a young age and better outcomes of COVID-19.

Genetic factors may also be important. A recently described haplotype (group of genes) associated with increased risk of severity and present in 30% of south Asian genomes and 8% of Europeans is almost absent in Africa.

The role of these and other factors – such as potential differences in social structures or mobility – are subject to ongoing investigation.

 

More effective response

An important possibility is that public health response of African countries, prepared by previous experiences (such as outbreaks or epidemics) was simply more effective in limiting transmission than in other parts of the world.

However, in Kenya it’s estimated that the epidemic actually peaked in July with around 40% of the population in urban areas having been infected. A similar picture is emerging in other countries. This implies that measures put in place had little effect on viral transmission per se, though it does raise the possibility that herd immunity is now playing a role in limiting further transmission.

At the same time there is another important possibility: the idea that viral load (the number of virus particles transmitted to a person) is a key determinant of severity. It has been suggested that masks reduce viral load and that their widespread wearing may limit the chances of developing severe disease. While WHO recommends mask wearing, uptake has been variable and has been lower in many European countries, compared with many parts of Africa.

So is Africa in the clear? Well, obviously not. There is still plenty of virus around and we do not know what may happen as the interaction between the virus and humans evolves.

However, one thing that does seem clear is that the secondary effects of the pandemic will be Africa’s real COVID-19 challenge. These stem from the severe interruptions of social and economic activities as well as the potentially devastating effects of reduced delivery of services which protect millions of people, including routine vaccination as well as malaria, TB and HIV control programmes.

 

Research agendas

Major implications of the emerging picture include the need to re-evaluate African COVID-19 research agendas. While many of the priorities originally identified may still hold, their relative importance is likely to have changed. The key point is to deal with the problems as they are now rather than as they were imagined to be six months ago.

The same thing applies for public health policy. Of course, basic measures such as hand washing remain essential (regardless of COVID-19) and wearing masks should be continued while there is any level of COVID-19 transmission. However, other measures with broader effects on society, especially restrictions on educational and economic activity, should be under continuous review.

A key point now is to increase surveillance and ensure that flexible responses are driven by high quality real time data.

Kevin Marsh, Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford and Moses Alobo, Programme Manager for Grand Challenges Africa, African Academy of Sciences

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

The post COVID-19: Examining Theories for Africa’s Low Death Rates appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Oct 10 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 declaring October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.

The International Day of the Girl Child focuses attention on the need to address the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights. This year, on the occasion of the International Day of the Girl Child, IPS released the video ‘Building Back Better: Education Cannot Wait’.

 

 

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

Out of global crises spring opportunities for change. In crisis, change is not an option. It is a necessity. And, as Plato famously noted: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is an invention that sprang out of crisis and was borne of necessity.

Yasmine Sherif

Education Cannot Wait was conceived as a direct response to the lack of financial resources and crisis-sensitive approaches needed to address the learning crisis for 75 million vulnerable children and adolescents impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters. Today, three years into its operations, the growing number of already crisis-affected children and youth are now doubly hit by another crisis, COVID-19, while under the threat of being hit again by the global financial crisis.

How many crises can they withstand without succumbing? How many hits can they take without losing hope?

This burning question was at the centre of the UNGA week event: “The Future of Education is Here for Those Left Furthest Behind.” On 17 September 2020, ECW brought together an impressive, diverse line-up of political leaders, policymakers, influencers and youth advocates, who unanimously spoke to the need of scaling up investments in inclusive quality education for those left furthest behind: refugees, internally displaced, girls and children with disabilities – all already affected by brutal conflicts and climate-induced disasters.

Their statements were strong, powerful and driven by determination (see the collection of speaker’s quotes in this month’s Newsletter). This impressive gathering recognized Education Cannot Wait’s innovative design and modus operandi, specifically tailored to reach those left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crises.

Education Cannot Wait translates innovation into action. When a climate-induced disaster hits Mozambique, Nepal or Peru, or when hostilities escalate in Mali, South Sudan or Syria, ECW immediately sets in motion a coordinated response that delivers on the ground within weeks. Where protracted conflicts and forced displacement keep children and adolescents out of school, leaving crisis-affected governments to fend for themselves, multi-year joint programming brings together humanitarian and development actors to jointly respond to the crisis and empower governments to deliver on SDG4 in Afghanistan, Chad and Somalia, and many others.

Between 2017 to 2019, 3.62 million girls and boys previously left behind benefited from Education Cannot Wait’s investments. In Uganda alone, enrollment and access to quality education for refugees rose from 53% to 75%, while girls’ education in ECW investments climbed to 60% in Afghanistan and Nigeria. When schools shut down in April 2020 due to COVID-19, ECW unleashed its emergency reserves and dispersed funding to over 50 grantees across 33 already crisis-affected countries the very same month. When a devastating explosion took place in Beirut in August, ECW moved swiftly and invested in the rehabilitation of damaged schools.

This response to crisis is possible because ECW optimizes other reform efforts geared at innovation and improvement of the multilateral crisis response, such as The New Way of Working, the Grand Bargain and Humanitarian-Development Coherence. It empowers and reinforce existing capacities and coordination structures designed especially for crisis coordination and steers it to prioritize education in the collective response. By doing so, ECW facilitates the multilateral system’s ability to work with greater speed and more sustainability in achieving SDG4 in emergencies and protracted crisis – there, where we find those left furthest behind.

Education Cannot Wait is about systemic change. As a pooled funding mechanism exclusively dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW is designed to leverage financial resources to change the way we deliver inclusive and equitable quality education to those left furthest behind. We know from our growing evidence base that this innovation works.

“Education Cannot Wait is an example of how the United Nations system delivers quality with speed to advance SDG4 leveraging the best from across the UN family. Now is the time to take our work to the next level,” affirmed the UN Deputy-Secretary General, Amina J. Mohammed, in her opening statement at ECW’s most recent High-Level Steering Group, held during the UN General Assembly Week in September.

Working closely with host governments and local communities, UN agencies and civil society are the ones delivering on the ground. When working together through joint programming and coordination, they have the capacity to empower and support governments in crisis to act with speed and deliver at scale to advance SDG4 amidst the largest crisis-affected areas on the globe. Their challenge is not a lack of capacity, coordination or commitment. Their most significant challenge is the lack of funding to allow them to scale up in delivering on SDG4 in crises.

Today, we cannot say that we do not know how to deliver quality education in emergencies or protracted crises. Nor can we continue to ponder what the humanitarian-development nexus might look like in real life, nor assert that in-country host governments, UN agencies and civil society do not coordinate. As ECW’s Annual Results Report of 2019 illustrates, those who work on the emergency frontlines are already doing so – they model cooperation, coordination, speed and quality.

Still, they could do so much more if the required funding was available. To scale up, they need an additional $1.2 billion to reach an additional 5 million children and adolescents. ECW’s immediate ask on their behalf is that of $300 million through 2021.

While the pandemic is pushing the world into a global recession, the need for education funding for those left furthest behind has never been greater. As Baroness Liz Sugg, the United Kingdom’s Minister for Foreign and Development Affairs, stated during the ECW convened event at UNGA: “Every single country around the work is under huge economic pressure at the moment as a result of COVID-19, but that is not a reason for inaction on education and investing in communities ravished by conflict and crises.”

In the same spirit, EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen stated: “We must come together to coordinate further our investments to our purpose of leaving no children behind. ECW mobilizes a collective response to urgent needs in education in emergencies. I am proud that that European Union was part of its inception. We have a once in a generation opportunity to reopen schools better than they were before. Now more than ever, Education Cannot Wait.”

When crisis hits, we invent out of necessity. When an invention works, we scale up. When we scale up that which works, we build back better. Now, we need to fund it at scale.

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

The post Scaling Up SDG4 in Crises appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: WFP

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

With the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations and its affiliated agencies continue to hold a monopoly of one of the world’s most prestigious annual awards.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the WFP as the “world’s first responder on the frontlines of food insecurity.”

In a world of plenty, he pointed out, it is unconscionable that hundreds of millions go to bed each night hungry. Millions more are now on the precipice of famine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The women and men of the WFP brave danger and distance to deliver life-saving sustenance to those devastated by conflict, to people suffering because of disaster, to children and families uncertain about their next meal,” Guterres declared.

He also singled out David Beasley, WFP Executive Director, and the entire staff of the World Food Programme, for advancing the values of the United Nations every day and serving the cause of “we the peoples” as the Organization marks its 75th anniversary year.

In a video statement on social media, Beasley said: “It’s because of the WFP family: they are out there in the most difficult, complex places in the world, where there’s war, conflict, climate extremes – it doesn’t matter. They are out there and they deserve this award …

“This is the first time I’ve been speechless … This is unbelievable. And Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!”, an exhilarated Beasley, a former Governor of the US state of South Carolina (1995-1999), said Friday.

Beginning with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1954 and 1981), the UN recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize also include Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold (1961), the UN children’s agency UNICEF (1965), the International Labour Organization (1969), the UN Peacekeeping Forces (1988), the United Nations & Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2001), the International Atomic Energy Agency (2005), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2013).

The award also went to the predecessor to the United Nations: League of Nations (1938) for its work on aiding refugees, and to Ralph Bunche (1950), Director of the UN Division of Trusteeship, and Acting Mediator in Palestine.

Gernot Laganda, Chief / Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Programmes at WFP told IPS: “As WFP staff, we are humbled and moved by this honor. Many colleagues have spent years – some decades – working to increase food security for hungry people who have had their lives torn apart by conflict, climatic extremes or economic shocks”

He said some of his colleagues have lost their lives in the line of duty.

“Every WFP staff, from Executive Director David Beasley to our local colleagues working in the most difficult conditions in the deep field, sees the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s vote as a recognition that the 690 million hungry people in the world have the right to live an active and healthy life, free from conflict and with safety nets against increasing climate extremes and disasters”.

“This recognition will inspire all of us to work even harder, to save lives and change lives on the pathway to Zero Hunger,” said Laganda, who joined WFP from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), where he managed the world’s largest climate change adaptation program for smallholder farmers.

Dr John Coonrod, Executive Vice President of the Washington-based Hunger Project, told IPS: “An excellent choice”

“In a world where conflict has forced millions to go hungry, the World Food Programme brings relief and dignity. UN agencies like WFP take on the toughest challenges in the world and deserve everyone’s support,” said Dr Coonrod, who is also Coordinator and co-founder of the Movement for Community-led Development.

Danielle Nierenberg, President of the US-based Food Tank, told IPS there are few organizations in the world poised to confront the multiple challenges of the pandemic, the climate crisis, inequality, and food and nutrition insecurity, like the World Food Programme.

“During COVID-19, they have continued to be on the frontlines confronting all of these challenges. Their work has never been more important or necessary.

“I’m grateful that the Nobel Commission decided to make a statement this year commending and organization that has as its mission to nourish the world,” said Nierenberg.

Congratulating WFP, Oxfam International’s interim Executive Director, Chema Vera told IPS it is a timely and urgent recognition to the work that WFP does in fighting the scourge of global hunger.

At a time when more than 135 million people in 55 countries around the world are facing severe to crisis levels of food insecurity, this recognition must also be a clarion call for wider and immediate action.

The UN’s $10.3 billion humanitarian appeal is today barely 40% funded – and within that, the money needed for global food security and nutrition are the most under-funded parts of the entire appeal.

The international community should fully fund the UN appeal now and accompany that with the strongest political action to support the Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire.

“We must break the bond between conflict and hunger and work collectively towards peace,” said Vera.

Laganda of WFP told IPS that “a message that is important from my own role in the organization working on climate and disaster risk reduction programs is that WFP and its partners are facing an uphill battle”.

He pointed out that climate disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity, “and we see a growing interplay between climate and conflict”.

Hunger is on the rise, and there is not enough humanitarian financing to go around to catch up with these growing needs.

“This is why we need to complement our ever-present readiness to respond with longer-term programs which strengthen capacities for risk reduction, prevention and resilience-building, said Laganda, who formerly served as Humanitarian Program Specialist with the Austrian Development Agency and managed climate and environmental programs with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in South Africa and the Asia/Pacific region.

He said not many people are aware of this, but apart from being a cutting-edge operational agency for emergency response, WFP is also an excellent partner for governments who are working to strengthen systems for risk management – from climate information and early warning systems to social protection and climate insurance solutions.

To manage the growing humanitarian impacts of climate change over the next few years and decades, he noted, “we will not only need to prepare for more costly responses to more frequent and intense climate disasters – we also need to frontload investments into forward-looking programs that can help us mitigate and prevent predictable emergencies”.

“The time for such investments is now, and I am hoping that the honor of this year’s Nobel peace prize can increase global visibility for this type of work,” said Laganda.

Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, told IPS “this Peace prize is well deserved given the incredible role played by WFP in bringing essential food relief in war situations such as Yemen, Afghanistan, or Somalia, in often highly dangerous and challenging conditions for its staff”.

This said, global hunger is a problem, he argued, that can’t be solved by delivering food, especially when it is procured in the US, WFP’s primary donor by far, which has for decades prioritized sending in-kind food aid as a way to support its own agriculture, undermining farmers in the Global South as a result.

To address global hunger in a decisive way, rich countries should provide financial assistance and policy space to countries so they can promote their own agriculture and industries. Unfortunately, the reality is that rich nations -also the main food exporters- don’t do that and continue to export their own agricultural products and finance emergency food aid when famines arise, said Mousseau.

The post Nobel Peace Prize to World Food Programme Delivering Life-Saving Sustenance to Millions Worldwide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

US President Donald Trump (right) and Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House July 2020. Credit: Toa Dufour/White House

By Falko Ernst
MEXICO CITY, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

Sporadic but spectacular acts of violence remind the global public of how deeply parts of Mexico have slid into lethal conflict over recent years.

The criminal groups that are the public face of this violence are hardly circumspect about their power. In a video dated 17 July, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation – one of the “five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations” worldwide, according to the U.S. Justice Department – showed off some of its better-equipped and trained foot soldiers and their state-of-the-art weaponry.

If the video seemed intended to broadcast the group’s paramilitary capabilities, that’s because it was. The display of force was a message to the government, a Jalisco Cartel operator told Crisis Group, “to take it easy” after the Mexican courts extradited the group’s leader’s son to the U.S. while freezing a number of its bank accounts. It was a way for the group to remind the authorities that “damage can be inflicted when arrangements aren’t being respected”, he said.

The failure of the “war on drugs” – now a welter of spreading conflicts – is a U.S.-Mexican co-production. Washington should stop pushing Mexico City to throw ever more military force at organised crime. Instead, it should help its southern neighbour find solutions tailored to each locale

Whether or not because of the video, tensions did in fact ease in the aftermath of its release, with the threat of further escalation receding and conditions returning to “normal”. In Mexico, however, normal has come to mean a state of perpetual conflict, which accounts for a large portion of the country’s steady death toll of more than 35,000 homicides per year.

 

Criminal Predation in a Pandemic

Unfortunately, north of the border, there is little public discussion of what is driving these levels of violence in Mexico. Instead, U.S. political dialogue tends to focus on one consequence of the violence – immigration.

President Donald Trump, who is now standing for re-election, first ran for office in 2016 on a mix of fearmongering about ostensible criminals, drug dealers and rapists coming over the Mexican border and promises that he would build a wall to keep them out.

Yet that campaign featured no meaningful discussion about how Mexico’s stubborn rates of lethal conflict are in reality a U.S.-Mexican co-production, fuelled by the very tactics that the U.S. has exported to fight the “war on drugs”. Nor, to date, has the 2020 presidential contest between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Nothing is likely to change for the balance of the election season, but once it is over it will be past time for whoever occupies the Oval Office to face these questions squarely – if nothing else out of self-interest. Having a neighbour affected by conflict and instability entails major consequences for the U.S, with the biggest being Mexico’s growing displacement crisis.

Mexican authorities are simply unable to protect citizens from criminal predation in an increasing number of regions, leading an estimated 1.7 million to abandon their homes due to insecurity in 2018 alone, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Geography and Statistics. Most of those forced to flee resettle within Mexico’s borders, but already in 2020 Mexican nationals have replaced Central Americans as the largest group apprehended while aiming to cross into the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic is only making the situation worse. Having killed approximately 80,000 Mexicans (a figure that could represent significant underreporting), the coronavirus has exacerbated the humanitarian situation and plunged the country into the worst economic crisis ever recorded, with GDP expected to fall by at least 8 per cent in 2020.

It has also seen armed groups try to consolidate their hold on communities, where they have taken on self-appointed roles from quarantine enforcement to distribution of goods and services. As desperation mounts, so will the drive of highly vulnerable people to seek a safer and more prosperous life elsewhere.

Washington and Mexico City can try to manage the flow of people by locking the border down even more tightly, but that is hardly an acceptable solution from a humanitarian perspective. It could also be difficult for both governments to sustain as the scale of the crisis grows and public pressure to address it increases.

 

Policymaking Inertia

Nevertheless, U.S. policymakers have thus far met the prospect of deepening disquiet in Mexico with inertia. They continue to support the militarised “war on drugs” that has been the anchor of bilateral security cooperation.

Recurrent threats by President Trump and other high-level U.S. government officials to sanction Mexico economically if it does not “demonstrate its commitment to dismantle the cartels” push Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to further increase the country’s dependence on the armed forces in public security matters, in spite of campaign promises to do just the opposite.

The problem is that, for the most part, militarisation has proven to be anything but a remedy. Since 2006, when the Mexican government – urged on by Washington – unleashed the military to deliver what it promised would be a swift, definitive blow to organised crime, the situation has by many measures only gotten worse: more than 80,000 Mexicans have been disappeared and annual murders have quadrupled.

The overall number of those who have met a violent death in this period, which is north of 330,000, is more than twice the number of conflict-related fatalities recorded in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded in 2001.

Compounding the problem is pervasive impunity. Fewer than one in ten murders get resolved in the justice system – and the line between state officials and the criminals they are supposed to rein in is not only thin but occasionally non-existent.

To offer just one prominent example, a chief architect of the latest iteration of the war on drugs, former federal Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, is being tried in a U.S. court for alleged collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel. (He denies the charges.)

 

A Series of “Stupid Wars”

The lack of accountability has allowed the armed groups to expand their businesses far beyond the illicit drugs that were once their primary domain. With their predatory “thiefdoms” spreading out over Mexico, groups use territorial control as a means of squeezing revenue out of whatever commodity is locally available, chiefly through extortion.

The story repeats itself across the country. In Guerrero, gold mining has come to supplement heroin smuggling. In Michoacán, limes and avocados are add-ons to methamphetamine. In Chihuahua, illegal logging has come to accompany marijuana cultivation. The expansion of their business portfolio into licit commodities and crops increases the criminals’ power over people and politics – and bolsters their ability to fend off crackdowns.

Blame for this deteriorating situation falls at least in part on the war on drugs’ flawed kingpin strategy, which is based on the belief that arresting or killing criminal leaders makes criminal organisations implode. These groups do indeed die, but their parts live on, very often pitted against one another in countless feuds over parcels of land.

Michoacán is emblematic. This state was dominated by a single criminal organisation until, in 2014, the federal government sent in its troops. With help from other illegal armed groups, the army succeeded in breaking up the once dominant organisation, arresting one of its top leaders and killing the other.

But after authorities failed to follow through with sustained institution- and peacebuilding measures – for example, to free law enforcement from corruption, provide youngsters with ways out of criminal groups and offer local populations licit economic alternatives – armed conflict bounced back.

Today, the number of armed groups operating in the state has risen from one to twenty. Most are splinters of the once dominant group, and none has been able to impose itself fully on the others. The fighting has become perpetual.

Moreover, Michoacán mirrors the nationwide trend. In 2006, there were six criminal conglomerates fighting it out in a handful of regions. In 2019, the number reached 198, according to a Crisis Group analysis of online citizen journalists’ websites called “narco-blogs”.

The result of this hyper-fragmentation of armed conflict has been the birth of a series of “stupid wars that nobody has control over and that don’t end”, as one criminal lieutenant allied with the Jalisco Cartel said. Yet he – and hundreds of others – keep at it, killing, disappearing and displacing enemy operatives and those perceived to have ties to them.

Children and women are no longer excluded as targets. In Guerrero’s highlands, for instance, as part of a string of forced displacements, one armed group has driven hundreds of civilians out of their communities out of suspicion that they could in some fashion be tied socially or economically to its competitor.

A former cocaine trafficker, active until the mid-1990s, reflected upon the changing logic of violence by saying “today’s narcos aren’t even narcos anymore”. He suggested that today’s criminal actors no longer adhere to the informal norms of conduct that his contemporaries once followed.

While trying to gain the upper hand in fights over territories and markets, criminal groups also try to draw state actors onto their side. All too often they are successful, with devastating effects on law enforcement. “Whoever is supported by the state grows”, as the Jalisco Cartel lieutenant summed up the situation.

The alleged collusion between top narco-warrior García Luna and the Sinaloa Cartel is but the tip of the iceberg; similarly troubling arrangements can be found in the government’s lower echelons.

 

One Size Does Not Fit All

Given the overlap between the state and the criminals it is fighting, there are no meaningful enemies or front lines in this war. The war is not winnable. There are, however, clear and feasible steps Mexico can take to mitigate and eventually end its armed conflicts, with support from its partners in Washington.

Most critically, the government should pivot away from a one-size-fits-all approach that treats the use of force as the primary solution to every crisis and ignores who and what drives lethal violence at the local level. In what has become a mosaic of regional conflicts, circumstances matter and have to form the basis for effective policy.

Officials will thus need to understand not just the armed groups that are fighting but also the politicians and businesspeople who are aligned with them and the resources they are all fighting over. They will also need to get a handle on how to make control of these resources less profitable by alerting consumers about goods that come from criminally tainted supply chains, whether gold being purchased in Canada or avocados in the U.S.

Mexico’s government also has to invest more, with the support of the U.S. and other international partners, in social and economic programs that can divert vulnerable young people who might be drawn into the armed groups.

Likewise, it should step up efforts to provide youngsters with ways out of armed groups through demobilisation programs. Transitional justice mechanisms could also help communities come to terms with their fraught pasts and interrupt years-long cycles of revenge killings.

The focus for these efforts should be those regions where conflict is most intense, and that account for the bulk of Mexico’s violent deaths and displacement. Bold policies introduced by past and current administrations have often foundered as a result of indiscriminate application of one reform model to many different settings.

Concentrating resources and efforts on regional intervention plans that have been devised on the basis of close study of local conflict dynamics would be a better way to make progress, even if the gains appear on the surface more limited.

Even with these changes, there will still be a role for the use of force in managing these conflicts, but that role will be different than it is today. Security forces might be used to support the foregoing initiatives and their beneficiaries, who would likely be targets of violent attacks and criminal co-optation.

They might also be deployed to deter brazen criminal aggression against those local populations whom data show to be most vulnerable to displacement and other abuses. But while the state would continue to employ force where needed, it would no longer be the primary and only tool for rooting out insecurity.

Finally, key to the success of any new initiative to staunch lethal violence in Mexico will be a push to clean up the institutions charged with protecting the public from crime, and that for decades have been riddled with collusion and corruption. Various criminal operators have told Crisis Group that “reaching agreements” with police and armed forces commanders is routine.

These understandings depend on security institutions such as the armed forces remaining largely self-governing and impervious to oversight. To develop a more reliable group of officials to carry out the policies described above, the government will need to introduce transparency and accountability mechanisms throughout the security forces and to give them teeth through external watchdogs.

Which brings us back to Washington. To be successful, any solution to Mexico’s conflicts will require backing from the U.S., which would be well advised to rethink, and ultimately overhaul, the militarised approach to law enforcement it has exported to Mexico.

The U.S. government, in championing, designing, financing and, in effect, imposing the war on drugs on its neighbour, hoped it could purge the country of the corrosive social, political and economic impact of the narcotics trade and bring greater stability to the region.

Since the late 1960s, it has invested in this vision, pouring wave after wave of U.S. taxpayer dollars – billions all told – into the effort. But while U.S. resolve was enough to persuade Mexican leaders to go along with this scheme, reliance on iron-fist militarisation has proven a failure.  It is time for Washington to grasp this hard truth and change its course. If it wants to see peace across its southern border, it must support Mexico in moving away from the war footing that has spawned so much conflict.

 

This story was originally published by International Crisis Group, You can find the full report here.

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Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Jemimah Njuki
NAIROBI, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

“We need to build back better.”  This has been the rallying call on the COVID-19 response by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to leaders and communities around the world. It has been echoed in conference rooms and in the numerous Zoom meetings organized to discuss the pandemic. It will be especially important to apply the idea to women working in the agriculture and food sector. 

Women farmers often have lower access to productive resources than men—so in times of crisis, like COVID-19, their farm productivity and food security will likely be hit harder. The pandemic is affecting input availability and use. In a survey by Precision Agriculture for Development in Kenya, 8 in 10 agri-dealers reported a decrease in farmer footfall, and 76% reported lower sales compared to a month earlier.  

Women play a critical role in entrepreneurship in the food sector, from small scale processing to high growth companies that employ thousands of workers. In Sub-Saharan Africa, female entrepreneurs are more prevalent than male entrepreneurs, although their businesses are typically smaller and with less capital and many are in the informal sector.

The current recovery efforts, and support to the agriculture sector have remained gender blind, and when they have focused on women, they have tended to make assumptions about women’s roles in the food system

The Future of Business survey found that female led businesses were 7 percentage points more likely to be closed compared to male-led small businesses. They are also likely to take longer to recover from the impacts of the pandemic due to their lower access to formal credit and reliance on the family network for investment finance. 

A report by UN Women and the UNDP found that a total of 247 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day in 2021. And of this number, 132 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. 

And while there has been extensive discussion of gendered impacts of Covid-19, particularly the care burdens on women, and on building back better after the pandemic, what that looks like for many women engaged in stallholder agriculture is not clear to many. 

The current recovery efforts, and support to the agriculture sector have remained gender blind, and when they have focused on women, they have tended to make assumptions about women’s roles in the food system.  For example, women farmers have been targeted with interventions focused on home gardens and homestead food production and while this is important, it is not enough.

Evidence shows that women play a pivotal role in all three key components of food security: food availability (production), food access (distribution), and food utilization as well as in activities that support agricultural development. 

Leaving them out in the short and long-term recovery process is not an option and any efforts to build back better must focus on and include women.

So, how do we “build back better” for women in the food sectors? Initiatives must include two broad strategies to succeed; increased access to social protection, appropriate seeds, markets and finance; and enhanced and amplified leadership of women. This is how it can be achieved. 

First, governments can increase access to markets for women smallholder farmers by providing short term access to markets through procuring Covid19 food relief and school meal supplies. A study in India showed that public procurement institutions helped the state government implement a timely and sound procurement process during the lockdown, preventing widespread losses in crop income.

In the longer term, developing improved local markets with infrastructure that supports women such as child care facilities, encouraging shorter value chains and crop diversification has been shown to enable women access markets. 

Second, allocation of inputs must target women who are the majority smallholder farmers in the continent. Most governments are allocating funds for inputs, through digital voucher systems. For example, Kenya is spending a 500 million USD loan from the World Bank on inputs through a voucher system that has no specific targets for women despite another program with IFAD showing that targeting women has led to increases in their production. These voucher systems are however likely to leave women out due to their lower access to mobile phones.  

Third, target cash transfers directly to women as a social safety net. Cash transfers targeted at women have potential to help them rebuild their businesses, secure their food security and that of their households. In Nigeria, women who received cash transfers increased investment in their own business activities, were more likely to be involved in their own non-farm businesses and increased their profits.

Fourth, support women entrepreneurs, traders and processors engaged in the food business. Women have however always faced barriers to financial inclusion. Reforming the financial system so that it works for women must be a critical part of building back better.

For example in Zambia, the implementation of a self-check tool for commercial banks to ensure their financial products and services address women’s needs in the same way as those of men led to some banks adjusting their products to better meet the needs of women.

And finally, women who are in smallholder agriculture and agribusiness must be part of building back better. In the political space, countries with female leadership have been very successful in dealing with the pandemic. This leadership has however not cascaded to other sectors. The participation and influence of women is needed in the design, implementation and monitoring of policies and programs for building back better in the sector.  Building back better must be defined by those most affected by the pandemic. 

 

Dr Jemimah Njuki is an Aspen News Voices Fellow and a UN food systems champion. She writes on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

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Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Winnie Byanyima, Audrey Azoulay, Natalia Kanem, Henrietta Fore and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
GENEVA/ PARIS/ NEW YORK, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

The International Day of the Girl Child on 11th October is a call for us to reflect on our responsibilities. Twenty-five years ago, governments adopted the historic Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action.

Seventeen years ago, African governments committed to the Maputo Protocol affirming the rights of women and girls. Adolescent girls are leading change around the world. They are a tremendous engine of progress. They drive economies. They transform communities. Yet many girls born after these agreements were made are still denied their most basic human rights.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the epicentre of the AIDS epidemic, HIV continues to disproportionately impact adolescent girls. Today, five in six newly infected adolescents aged between 15 and 19 in this region are girls.

Over 600 adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa are newly infected every day. AIDS is still the second leading cause of death among young women aged 15-24 in the region. Yet the majority of adolescent girls do not have comprehensive knowledge about prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Now, the COVID-19 crisis threatens to worsen these vulnerabilities. Evidence from past crises – such as the Ebola outbreak in conflict-affected areas of DRC – show that school closures worsen gender inequality since girls are less likely to return to school than boys.

Girls are forced to enter the informal job market or shoulder unpaid care work at home, leading to increased experiences of violence and spikes in adolescent pregnancies and harmful practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation.

As women executive leaders for UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UN Women, we are joining forces to confront the injustices faced by adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa.

Together we are working to advance a package dubbed “Education Plus”: completion of quality secondary education; universal access to comprehensive sexuality education; access to sexual and reproductive health services and education; freedom from sexual and gender-based violence; and school-to-work transitions, economic security and empowerment.

We are championing removal of discriminatory laws and promoting the voice and engagement of young women and adolescent girls as advocates and leaders.

Africa’s adolescent girls and young women themselves have risen to speak out, together, to demand these rights. Here are just some of the things they have been telling us:

“A safe learning environment for girls must be prioritized as a lot of them fall prey to those who are meant to protect them. Girls must be able to learn in an environment that is safe and healthy,” says Brenda of Cameroon

“COVID-19 has exposed our vulnerabilities and the glaring leadership and developmental gaps that exist in my country. It has revealed the need for young people with a heart for service,” says Wanjuhi of Kenya

“Resources to disseminate information must be put in place and the media must also be involved to combat associated taboos,” says Bibiche of DRC

Learning from adolescent girls and young women has reminded us as leaders that legal, cultural, social and economic obstacles are intertwined and need to be taken on together; that at the heart of transforming girls lives is shifting unequal power dynamics; and that they do not seek to be “rescued” but seek to be supported in their own right to participate.

A South African study has shown that HIV prevalence among girls who had finished high school was about half that among girls who had not (8.6% versus 16.9%). Research shows too that including discussions about gender and power dynamics in comprehensive sexuality education makes it five times more effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections.

It is vital too that young women are supported to develop the necessary skills as they transition into adulthood to secure decently paid employment. With our united collaboration and support, this generation can truly be Generation Equality and Generation Unlimited.

It is Africa’s adolescent girls’ and young women’s own activism and organising that will drive progress. Our role as leaders is to unite behind their energy, bringing together governments, communities, civil society, business, and others.

Together we can ensure vital investments and transformational policy shifts are made so that all of Africa’s girls can enjoy all of their rights to education and empowerment. We do this not “for” Africa’s adolescent girls and young women but with them; this generation of feminist leaders is the fighting chance to beat AIDS, achieve gender equality, and secure the human rights of all girls.

 

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Excerpt:

The authors are executive leaders of UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UN Women, respectively.

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Ismaila Badji. Credit: IOM/Amanda Nero.

By Marilena Crosato
DAKAR, Oct 9 2020 (IPS)

Ismaila Badji could not bring himself to leave his house for weeks after returning to Senegal. “I failed twice; at school and on the road,” he said. “What’s wrong with me? I’m still looking for the answer.” After spending time in a Libyan detention centre, Badji returned to where he came from. He did not feel like himself, he lacked motivation and he suffered from stigma from the local community.

It was thanks to two friends who took walks with him in the neighborhood that he was able to overcome these challenges. “That’s how I was able to integrate again within my community.” he recalled.

Badji is one of many young people in West and Central Africa who undertake dangerous journeys to Europe, do not reach their destination and struggle to return and re-establish their lives. For them, peer support is an essential part of the return process.

Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a sense of loss are common reactions among returnees. Psychosocial care is vital for people returning. A supported reintegration process is an essential element of the return journey

Badji joined the International Organization for Migration’s Migrants as Messengers (MaM) programme, which supports a peer-led approach to awareness-raising in communities to help people make informed migration decisions.

He recently started a poultry business and is now an active advocate for safe migration. The programme also seeks to develop strong social networks to improve the health and wellbeing of returned migrants and has brought together more than 260 returnees, MaM Volunteers, across seven countries in West Africa. The volunteers share accurate and balanced information about migration routes and processes and, more recently, about COVID-19.

“During our journey, we gained a lot of experience, we faced lots of things and it is often in moments like this that we measure the importance of solidarity between people… since we returned, when we see people in need, we say to ourselves that it is our duty to help others,” said Diarra Kourouma from Guinea, a MaM volunteer and returnee.

Many young people in West and Central Africa hope to find a better life for themselves and their families and risk their lives by undertaking some of the most dangerous migration journeys every year to Europe. According to IOM data (June 2020), 92 per cent of migrants attempting to reach Europe from West and Central Africa are young men under the age of 30.

Lack of jobs and other opportunities for personal and financial growth and strong pressure from families, drives large numbers of young people to migrate. When they set out, it is with the expectation that they will make it to their destination, find a job, and send money home.

The reality is that many do not reach their desired destination and are stranded, abandoned and sometimes abused and imprisoned. These harrowing experiences, often combined with stigma faced from returning home empty-handed, make reintegration in their communities of origin a challenge.

Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a sense of loss are common reactions among returnees. Psychosocial care is vital for people returning. A supported reintegration process is an essential element of the return journey.

 

Elhadji Mohamed Diallo. Credit: IOM Guinea.

 

“I returned to Guinea completely devastated by everything I had just experienced during my journey. I didn’t want anyone to know my story, no one to know that I am a returnee. I simply wanted to hide in silence,” said Elhadj Mohamed Diallo, a 32-year-old from Guinea.

Diallo is now the president of the OGLMI, a Guinean organization raising awareness about the dangers of irregular migration. He explains how he benefited for his role leading awareness raising activities and the importance of challenging the stigma that migrant returnees face when they go back to their communities of origin.

“It was an opportunity to regain confidence in my abilities, but also to become aware of the role I can play by sharing my story with the Guinean populations; I understood that I could help save lives. And this boosted my energy,” said Diallo. “When we return home, we want more than anything else to fight the stigma we were subjected to. For me, this means contributing to the development of my country.”

MaM Volunteers report that belonging to these peer groups and playing an active role in the community help with the process of re-establishing their lives. People involved in these peer groups have gone on to create civil society associations, start small businesses, pursue studies and work on other initiatives.

Discussions in markets, churches and schools, community theatre, music and dance, collaboration with media are just a few examples of the activities led by the MaM Volunteers to breakdown stigma and social and economic barriers returnees often face.

“When I returned from Libya, I had a hard time being accepted by my family,” said Mariama Conté, a 23-year-old business law student in Guinea and MaM Volunteer.

“In the eyes of my parents, I was just the one who had stolen money from them to leave and fail on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was thanks to my involvement as a volunteer that I managed to reconnect with them. When they saw me engaging in awareness-raising activities, fighting to prevent other young girls to fall into the same trap as me, they understood that I could be useful.”

In the past few months in the seven countries where MaM is being implemented, more than 288 creative, community outreach activities have been carried out to help communities and youth face the COVID-19 pandemic.

This includes videos, songs, billboards, posters, comics strips, radio shows and other community-based activities – all of which has been widely shared across on air, online and by word-of-mouth, reaching more than seven million people this year.

The “Stay Home and Dance” challenge, a series of videos encouraged people to stay home during the pandemic lockdown and addressed issues of social isolation through song and dance. Guinean Volunteers welcomed returning migrants in transit centers and a group of five returnees in Sierra Leone created the song ‘Together We Can Cope’ to build support and solidarity in the pandemic.

“Firstly, I feel proud to be a part of a network that is helping in the fight against COVID-19,” said Abdul Sankoh, a MaM Volunteer from Sierra Leone. “Secondly, the experience has given me a sense of wanting to do more to help other people in time of crisis or emergencies.”

 

Marilena Crosato is Community Engagement Officer, IOM Regional Office for West and Central Africa, mcrosato@iom.int.

 

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There is a deep mistrust not only of institutions and big business, but even of the medical establishment. One of the most worrying symptoms of this mistrust and disillusionment is the No Vax Movement. Credit: Bigstock

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Oct 8 2020 (IPS)

Around the 16th century there was a radical shift in the way humans perceived nature.  New thinking in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics heralded a deeper understanding of the world around us.  Between the 17th and 18th century this new thinking had resulted in spate of technological inventions such as the steam engine, railways, electricity and the telephone.

Humans became masters of the world that surrounded us. Complemented with new institutional and financial innovations such the stock markets, banking and insurance this heralded in an unprecedented period of growth.  

These scientific and technological changes were centred in Europe and subsequently in the USA. They not only transformed the daily life and work of people who lived there, but also led to a new mind-set. Science and Technology were held to be supreme and the custodians of scientific knowledge had a right, if not a duty, to rule the world. 

With the underlying problems in the technology based model of development becoming apparent, many people in the advanced countries were themselves questioning the supremacy of science. Greater environmental awareness has also led to questions about the ethics of high consumption lifestyles
Driven by the need for raw materials and markets, and with the help of ever more powerful military hardware, this new thinking resulted in the domination, colonization and exploitation of much of Asia, Africa and South America.

This world view has been eroding for some time due to various changes.  On the military front, it is clear that apart from nuclear weapons, there is little in western arsenals that would enable them to conquer and hold territory against the wish of the local population – however poor and backward they are. 

The war in Viet Nam gave the French and the USA their first bloody nose after the victory of the Allies in the Second World War. In Afghanistan the USA, with all its aeroplanes, missiles and sophisticated electronic equipment, have not made progress against a bunch of “pyjama-clad fighters wearing canvas sneakers”. In Iraq, the Shock and Awe was a prelude to a quagmire from which the USA is still struggling to extricate itself.

On the economic front the OPEC-led oil crisis of the early 1970s demonstrated the dependence of the west on of a handful of middle-eastern Sheikhs.  More recently, China has been happily absorbing technology from the USA and Europe and using this to propel growth.

China is now the biggest economy in the world, surpassing the USA as well as the EU. It is now using its economic muscle to make inroads into western political and military dominance in much of Asia and Africa, as well as parts of South America. 

On the environmental front, the western countries initially had few qualms about using non-renewable resources in a completely unsustainable manner and to create irreversible air, land and water pollution.  Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, one of the main indicators of increasing environmental degradation, have been rising since the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century.

Accelerating climate change, with greater frequency of extreme weather  events, has highlighted the unsustainability of the current technology and energy intensive development. Biodiversity is dramatically dropping as habitats continue to be destroyed. 

With the underlying problems in the technology based model of development becoming apparent, many people in the advanced countries were themselves questioning the supremacy of science. Greater environmental awareness has also led to questions about the ethics of high consumption lifestyles.

There is a deep mistrust not only of institutions and big business, but even of the medical establishment. One of the most worrying symptoms of this mistrust and disillusionment is the No Vax Movement  –  significant numbers of people are now refusing to use tried and tested vaccines such as that for measles and mumps. 

Now a virus, one 10,000th the size of a grain of sand has wreaked havoc.  It will possibly continue to do so as infection rates will most likely spike in the coming months, as is already happening in several European countries. 

A vaccine will certainly help restore some confidence but with winter rapidly approaching, there is a possibility that many families may be spending Christmas in lockdowns and limited by other social restrictions. 

Maybe COVID marks the end of the epoch of Science. Maybe Science and Technology will no longer be the key to power and to global domination. Maybe global and regional power will be a function of land and demographics – as it was before the Scientific Revolution. Maybe the next centuries will belong to Asia and Africa with their fast growing economies and youthful populations.

 

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and one in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric – both from the University of Amsterdam – as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre). She provided research and editorial support. 

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President Donald Trump at the UN Security Council (UNSC) when the US held the rotating Presidency of the Council. Credit: VOA

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Oct 8 2020 (IPS)

Like many Americans, I have been observing Trump’s rise to power with some perplexity, often asking myself how and why a man of his character became the President of the United States, which is viewed as the most powerful political office in the world.

But out of a sense of fairness, I thought that he should be given a chance, as he may be able to rise to the occasion and prove me and others wrong.

Indeed, for someone who seeks adulation, reverence, admiration of his ‘genius,’ respect, and appreciation of his ‘unlimited talents and expertise’ on just about every subject, I wondered, why would he not use the power of the presidency to earn all that he desperately wants to be recognized for?

After all, despite his character flaws, he made it to the White House. And yet having reached the pinnacle of power, he still wants more, when in fact the presidency, regardless of constitutional constraints, provides him with all the power he needs to effect revolutionary constructive change—if he only willed it.

Over the past four years, I devoted over 50 of my weekly articles and essays to the Trump presidency, in a way chronologizing some of his statements, the issues he tackled, his policy initiatives, his ideological leanings, and certainly his appetite for making false statements, misrepresenting facts, and creating his own alternate reality.

Before long, I realized that this man is simply irredeemable. He has shown that he is plainly unfit to hold the office of the presidency, which carries an awesome power both domestically and internationally. He did not “make America great again;” he tarnished America’s greatness for much of the world to see.

Many psychiatrists and psychologists who have analyzed his behavior, public utterances, and tweets have unanimously concluded that Trump is a psychopath, a pathological liar, uncompassionate, narcissist, greedy, and shallow.

He sees things only in black and white, and never cares to understand the nuances of any issue before him. Here lies Trump’s sickness.

In his world, the presidency is not enough to satisfy his ego and make up for his dismal failures and complete lack of self-confidence. He needs unchecked power—dictatorial power—so that no one can question his actions, motives, or agenda, however skewed or criminal they may be.

Sooner than later, Trump will leave office disgracefully, leaving behind the wreckage of a century, the extent of which none of his predecessors have remotely left in their wake. He stained the office of the presidency, as he brought nothing but shame and disdain to the most prestigious office in the land which is looked upon with awe and admiration around the world.

It will take years, and in some cases decades, to repair the extensive damage he inflicted on our country. We must now attend to healing our deep wounds that tore us apart before we can realize, once again, the American dream.

Since I submitted the manuscript of my book* nearly two months ago, Trump’s behavior has become ever more astonishing. He has consistently delegitimized the elections, sabotaged the postal service in order to interfere with mail-in voting, which millions of Americans are turning to due to the coronavirus pandemic, and openly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election (let alone commit to accepting the result should he lose).

This past week Trump contracted the coronavirus, along with many of those around him, a development that should not be at all surprising given his refusal to engage in social distancing or wear a mask, or any other preventative measures recommended by the CDC.

Recklessness, stubbornness, arrogance and ineptitude have characterized him and his administration since the pandemic began, and there seems to be no bottom to his irresponsibility.

During the first presidential debate, Trump did everything he could to debase such an important part of the election process that allows the American public to hear what the candidates for the highest office in the land have to say.

He interrupted former Vice President Biden nearly 130 times, made scores of misleading statements and said outright lies, and “bragged” about an economy in tatters. He spoke about the coronavirus in the past tense, while new infections and deaths continue to rise daily—over 7 million infected and over 210,000 dead.

To be sure, Trump behaved during the debate just the way Biden characterized him—a clown; unhinged, uncaring, and dismissive with an uncanny hostile demeanor. Millions of viewers just like me cringed in their seats, ashamed to have such a loose cannon, and an ignorant and self-conceited man once again a candidate for the presidency after four years of his disastrous performance.

It is now the responsibility of every American who is eligible to vote, who cares and loves this country, to say NO to Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party. The damage that he and his stooges have inflicted on our democracy and institutions is hard to assess.

If he is given another four years, he will shatter every pillar on which this republic has rested, causing incalculable wounds from which we will not recover for decades.

*The article is an introductory chapter in the just-released book, “Trump—The Wannabe Dictator” by Alon Ben-Meir.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

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Garment workers travel on private buses organized by their factory in Cambodia. Credit: Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch

By Aruna Kashyap
Oct 7 2020 (IPS)

The recent refusal by five international auditing firms to inspect for labor abuses in Xinjiang was the right response to the severe human rights violations there. But this is a moment for the auditing and certifications industry, which assesses the compliance of work sites with human rights and labor rights standards, to rethink its approach to “social audits”—periodic workplace inspections—everywhere.

Xinjiang, the northwestern region of China, is home to minority Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim populations. They have long been subjected to Chinese state repression, but in recent years it has become more extreme. It is extremely dangerous and almost impossible to interview workers about labor conditions  due to pervasive government surveillance. Saying anything at all may be dangerous for workers.

Earlier this year, I spoke to a very experienced auditor who had refused to conduct social audits in Xinjiang over the last few years. “This is all under Chinese monitoring,” he told me. “Every website, every email, everything I read and send is tracked. The control in Xinjiang is so severe… they track your every movement.  There’s also facial recognition in Xinjiang. They capture your face and every activity of yours.”

Over the years, there has been growing criticism of the quality of social audits and their failure to detect human rights abuses and even flag severe fire and building safety concerns, much less sexual or other abuse of the workers by their managers or coworkers

The fact that a few firms have refused to conduct social audits in Xinjiang is an important step. But all firms should do more to publicly acknowledge their limitations in ferreting out labor abuses beyond Xinjiang.

Xinjiang is an example of how hard it is to monitor working conditions in a repressive environment—but it is not the first place in which audits have failed to flag serious rights abuses. Various incidents in the past few years have exposed further problems.

Companies have a responsibility to take steps to ensure that their business operations respect human rights, including labor rights. Many companies largely rely on social audits of businesses that are part of their global supply network—factories, farms, and mines— to produce confidential reports about working conditions.

Companies draw on these confidential audit reports to represent to consumers and shareholders that their operations are complying with human rights and labor rights standards.

Typically, social audits consist of periodic inspections of work sites, once every year or two. Many auditing firms conduct them on a contract-basis for a fee.  Inspectors—or “auditors”—have a herculean task. They have to assess compliance on a range of human rights concerns within just a few days. Auditors do this by going through documents that workplace managers produce, making observations, and interviewing workers.

Worker interviews are usually conducted at the workplace, and that can be a major problem because colleagues and managers know precisely whom an auditor interviewed. Many workers say their managers, whom they fear, coach them ahead of these inspections.

Over the years, there has been growing criticism of the quality of social audits and their failure to detect human rights abuses and even flag severe fire and building safety concerns, much less sexual or other abuse of the workers by their managers or coworkers.

In 2016, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, a nonprofit organization, helped bring a case in Germany against the auditing firm TUV Rheinland following the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,135 factory workers over the firm’s failure to detect the dangerous conditions in the factory.

In 2019, the Clean Clothes Campaign brought a case against Italian auditing firm RINA raising similar concerns, following the 2012 Ali Enterprises factory fire in Pakistan that killed more than 250 workers.

Auditing firms have a responsibility to take a rights-based approach to their business in accordance with United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. They are starting to realize that some human rights issues do not lend themselves to the way they conduct these social audits and are not really addressed.

ELEVATE, a company that conducted over 10,000 such audits in more than 10 countries, said in September 2019 that it “acknowledges that social audits are not designed to capture sensitive labor and human rights violations such as forced labor and harassment.”

ELEVATE conducted a series of Worker Sentiment Surveys, cellphone app-based surveys that suggested that social audits are widely off the mark. In Bangladesh, 30 percent of the workers surveyed said they witnessed or experienced sexual harassment.

But only 0.18 percent of ELEVATE’s social audits reported cases of inhumane treatment (including sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and physical abuse) during the same period. Similarly, in India, 28 percent of workers surveyed reported experiencing sexual harassment while only 0.8 percent of social audits detected inhumane treatment, including sexual harassment.

In 2019, Human Rights Watch wrote about the failure of these audits to detect sexual harassment at work. Yet, many auditing firms still perpetuate the myth that they can detect sexual harassment, or inadvertently misrepresent what social audits can achieve.

For instance, SGS, an auditing firm that conducts social audits meant to uncover human rights abuses, says on its website that its audits: “[R]obustly seek out evidence of unethical behaviour in child labour, freedom of association, compensation and pay, excessive and unfair working hours, forced labour, health and safety regulations, and environmental regulations,” including sexual harassment and discrimination, and that such audits let companies “allow your stakeholders, and communities, to trust your organisation is compliant with the law and international best practices.”

Auditing and certification firms should acknowledge the limitations of social audits and identify a set of human rights risks that do not lend themselves to being detected through them. Just as some firms have done in Xinjiang, they should acknowledge that they cannot adequately audit issues like sexual harassment and discrimination at work.

By publicizing the limitations of their current inspections, auditing firms put brands, retailers, agents, and suppliers on notice. It will force companies to take more effective measures to stop egregious workplace abuses. It will make it harder for companies to pass the buck onto auditing firms and take a box-checking approach to their human rights responsibilities.

Taking these measures would send a strong message that auditing firms will not quietly downplay human rights abuses in global supply chains because their approach is not effective in identifying key problems.

For their part, global brands and retailers should work together to create effective local grievance-based mechanisms in the regions in which they operate.

Developing models for collaborative, credible, and independent grievance-redress that is accessible to workers and local communities should be central to how companies approach human rights in their global supply chains. Continuing to rely on social audits will mark out companies as being out of touch with reality.

 

The post Social Audit Reforms and the Labor Rights Ruse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Aruna Kashyap is senior counsel for business and human rights at Human Rights Watch

The post Social Audit Reforms and the Labor Rights Ruse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Indigenous women join protests for land rights in Asia. Credit: IWGIA

By External Source
CANBERRA, Australia, Oct 7 2020 (IPS)

Can a state built upon the “taking of another people’s lands, lives and power” ever really be just?  Colonialism can’t be reversed, so at a simple level the answer is no.

But in my book, ‘We Are All Here to Stay’, published last week, I argue colonialism need not be a permanent state.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which New Zealand is currently thinking about implementing, shows how and why.

New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States were the only UN members to oppose the declaration when it was adopted in 2007. They were worried about the constraints they thought it would place on state authority, in particular over Indigenous land.

All four have since changed their positions. In 2010, then New Zealand Prime Minister John Key argued:

While the declaration is non-binding, it both affirms accepted rights and establishes future aspirations. My objective is to build better relationships between Māori and the Crown, and I believe that supporting the declaration is a small but significant step in that direction.

 

The state’s right to govern is not absolute

The declaration recognises the state’s right to govern. But it also constrains it by recognising self-determination as a right that belongs to everybody — to Indigenous peoples as much as anybody else.

Self-determination has far-reaching implications for rights to land, language and culture and for government policy in areas such as health, education and economic development.

The declaration’s 46 articles challenge the idea of state sovereignty as an exclusive and absolute right to exercise authority over Indigenous peoples. It parallels New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi by affirming Indigenous peoples’ authority over their own affairs and their right to meaningful influence as citizens of the state.

The fact that 144 UN member states voted for the declaration shows that the international community regards these assumptions as fair and reasonable. The declaration states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.

 

Indigenous people’s right to make their own decisions

The declaration provides different ways of thinking about political authority. The Māori right to make their own decisions, through iwi (tribes) and other independent institutions, and to participate as members of the wider political community implies a distinctive Māori presence in the sovereign state.

The Waitangi Tribunal, which was established in 1975 to hear alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, is a forum for thinking about these questions. In a tribunal report concerning Māori culture and identity, Justice Joe Williams, subsequently the first Māori appointed to the Supreme Court of New Zealand, argued:

Fundamentally, there is a need for a mindset shift away from the pervasive assumption that the Crown is Pākehā [non-Māori], English-speaking, and distinct from Māori rather than representative of them. Increasingly, in the 21st century, the Crown is also Māori. If the nation is to move forward, this reality must be grasped.

From this perspective, the Crown is an inclusive and unifying institution. It is neither the Pākehā political community, nor the dominant party in a bi-cultural treaty partnership.

 

Beyond partnership to independence and authority

In 2019, the state’s solution to allegations of racist and ineffective practices in its child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki was to call for stronger partnerships between Māori and the state.

It is too early to say whether partnership agreements will reduce the numbers of Māori children taken from their families into state care.

But in 2020 independent reports into Oranga Tamariki show measures more robust than partnership may be required to assure Māori of the declaration’s undertaking that:

Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.

Claims to the Waitangi Tribunal, arguing for independent authority in health and education and ensuring that Māori benefit fully from international trade agreements, have had mixed success for the Māori claimants. However, the declaration gives international authority to the arguments made.

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In particular, Indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programs affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programs through their own institutions.

A colonial state may never be just. But as New Zealand considers its implementation of the declaration, the important moral question is whether the declaration can help people to work out what a state will look like if it no longer reflects the colonial insistence on power over others.

Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Associate Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

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

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Oct 7 2020 (IPS)

The 26th of September, the Lebanese prime minister Mustapha Adib stepped down after less than a month on his post. The president, Michael Auon, stated: ”Lebanon will be going to Hell if a new government is not formed soon.” The question is if his nation is not there already. A horrifying image of the state of the nation was provided on the 4th of August when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, stored in a dockside hangar, blew up in an explosion killing more than 190 people, injuring 6,500 and damaging thousands of buildings.

Before a Civil War engulfed the country from 1975 to 1990 Lebanon was called the Switzerland of the East, enjoying a thriving culture, freedom of expression and a diversified economy that included tourism, agriculture and banking. Now, Lebanon suffers from endemic corruption, fifty-five percent of its population live below the poverty line, while more than 30 percent is unemployed. During the past year food prizes increased by 367 percent.

The first and only time I visited Lebanon was in 1978. My friends and I had been on our way to Baghdad, trying to follow the tracks of the Berlin-Baghdad Express. The entire stretch of this legendary railroad was no longer navigable, but we had read that most of the rails and stations were still intact. The railway was built between 1903 and 1940 to connect Berlin with the Persian Gulf. It had been financed by the German Government to gain access to Middle Eastern oil and facilitate provision of goods and supplies to German colonies in Africa and the Pacific. Furthermore, the railway was a strategic move to diminish Russian and British interests in the area. Even if World War I, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, loss of the German colonies and almost innumerable other obstacles delayed its construction, the Nazi regime could in 1940 celebrate the railway´s completion.

We came as far as Aleppo, where the rails turned east toward the Iraqi border, from there we took a bus to Damascus to apply for visas. However, at Iraq´s embassy we were told: ”Why travel to Baghdad? In these days life is complicated there. Go to Beirut instead, you´ll like it there.” A run-down taxi took us the 100 kilometres from Damascus to Beirut. Along the route we were repeatedly stopped at Syrian check points (the Syrian Army had in 1976 intervened in Lebanese internal fighting). When the startlingly young soldiers saw our worried looks they told us in broken English: ”Please, don´t worry. Beirut is fine, you´ll have a good time there.”

For Europeans like us Beirut looked strangely familiar, though destruction and desolation made us feel as if we had ended up in a parallel reality. We walked along The Corniche, the seaside promenade. On our left side were demolished apartment buildings and hotels, remains of the Battle of the Hotels that had raged the year before, characterized by heavy exchanges of rocket and artillery fire from various hotel rooftops and rooms. A postman passed by the ruins, placing letters and packages on the ground in front of them. To our left was the Mediterranean Sea, lined with stumps of palm trees. In front of a ruined hotel was an open-air restaurant with smartly dressed waiters attending an apparently wealthy clientele. Out on the sea, yachts lay anchored and speed boats raced by, towing water-skiers.

Lebanon means ”milky white”, probably in reference to its mountain peaks, which for more than half of the year are graced by snow. These inaccessible highlands are one of the reasons for Lebanon´s uniqueness. For thousands of years they have been a refuge for persecuted minorities. Maronites deriving their name from the Syriac Christian saint Maron had in the highlands been able to maintain their independence and religion. Their territory bordered areas controlled by the close-knit communities of the Druze, who do not identify as neither Muslims, nor Christians. Their scripture, Epistles of Wisdom, includes traits from the entire Middle East area finding their roots far back in age-old traditions. There were also Alawite communities sharing a faith considered to be Shiite, though their theology and rituals differ from mainstream Shia Islam. They do for instance drink wine and believe in reincarnation. In the Bekaa Valley and Southern Lebanon we find mainstream Shia Muslims, while the coast has traditionally been the territory of Sunni Muslim traders.

For thousands of years, refugees have found a haven in Lebanon. During the Armenian genocide in 1915, persecuted Armenians poured in from Turkey, their descendants now amount to approximately 150,000. Palestinian refugees arrived after the proclamation of the Israeli state in 1948 and now constitute approximately 300,000 of Lebanon´s inhabitants. During the recent Syrian crisis, 1.5 million refugees have arrived. With a population of seven million Lebanon is currently home to more refugees per capita than any other country in the world. At the same time the Lebanese diaspora is among the largest in the world. At least 10 million Lebanese live outside their country of origin and of them more than one million have maintained their Lebanese citizenship.

Lebanon is one of the few Middle Eastern nations that has been able to maintain its status as a democracy where free speech and tolerance are honoured, this in spite of more then forty years of constant clashes between its different population groups. On top of these calamities, the nation has during the last century suffered from foreign incursions. France, the U.S., Israel, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya have meddled in Lebanese politics. Armed forces from some of these nations have even invaded parts of the country, trying to take advantage of internal power struggles.

The same pattern was apparent when Germany through the Berlin-Baghdad Express initiative tried to tap the Middle East´s oil wealth, making the Middle East one of the scenes for power games between ”world-leading” nations, a tragedy that since then has continued unabated. Recently it was estimated that Lebanon´s 22,700 km2 offshore area may contain at least 95.9 trillion cubic feet of gas and 865 billion barrels of oil, thus wetting the appetite of not only its neighbours, but that of France and Russia as well, at the same time as powerful nations continue to consider Lebanon as a pawn in their game for world dominance.

Clans and influential families have for centuries dominated Lebanese politics and done so with foreign support. A situation further complicated by the fact that when clan members moved into formerly unknown territories family ties were often weakened, while traditions and religious convictions remained. It became important not where you came from, but whether you considered yourself to be a Druze, Maronite, Shia- or Sunni Muslim, Palestinian or Syrian, Armenian, Alawite, Greek Orthodox, or Catholic Christian. This is mirrored by a political system dictating that Lebanon’s president has to be a Maronite, the speaker of parliament a Shiite, the prime minister a Sunni and the deputy prime minister Greek Orthodox. Parliamentary seats are shared out proportionally among 18 religious groups, while public sector jobs are divided up among sects. Political parties use ministries to dole out jobs to their followers.

An anomaly discernible during the last months political development. Answering to socioeconomic demands, while seeking support from the country´s traditional political elite, the mainly Shiite Amal and Hezbollah parties were in October 2019 instrumental in bringing down the government of Saad Hariri. The president Michael Auon, a Maronite and former brigadier general who had fought pro-Syrian Druze and Palestinian militias, signed a memorandum of understanding with the two parties, making their parliamentary bloc dominant, though their disagreement about who is going to be finance minister is now blocking the formation of a new government.

Amal and Hezbollah supporters share cities and villages, while both parties are supported by Iran´s Shia government and Syria´s Alawite dominated regime. However, slight ideological differences and fierce competition for decision making positions caused a three-year conflict between the two parties, involving bombings, kidnappings and psychological warfare. In 1990, Iran and Syria brokered peace and convinced them to form an alliance.

Lebanon remains entangled in extremely complicated, clan- and family based politics. Some examples; the powerful Druze leader and socialist Kamal Jumblatt, was a supporter of PLO and backed by Syrian politicians who later became his enemies. Jumblatt gave crucial support to the Maronite Camille Chamoun (president 1952-1958), whose son Dany became leader of the Maronite militia, while his brother Dory led a coalition of politicians opposed to Syrian influence over Lebanese politics. After Dory suffered a heart attack in 2012 his son Camille Jr. now shoulders his father´s political commitments. After Kamal Jumblatt´s death, his son Walid became the leader of the Druze fraction of Lebanese politics. A powerful enemy and sometime ally to both the Jumblatt and Chamoun families was the Maronite Bachir Gemayel, a parliamentary power broker, allied to France. Gemayel saw his son Bachir elected President in 1982, only to be assassinated a week before his inauguration. His older brother Amine was elected to replace him.

President Saad Hariri who a year ago was toppled by the Shiite coalition fits well into this complicated pattern of related politicians. Serving as prime minister 2009-2011 and 2016-2019 Saad is the son of Rafik Hariri, a business tycoon who was prime minister 1992-1998 and again 2000-2004. A Sunni Muslim supported by Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and France, Rafik embarked on an aggressive economic policy based on privatization of major companies, foreign direct investments, and tax breaks. After an unprecedented rise, the GDP soon fell drastically, not hindering that Hariri´s personal wealth grew from one billion USD in 1992 to over 16 billion when in 2005 an explosion killed 23 people, including Hariri. On 18 August 2020, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon unanimously found Salim Jamil Ayyash guilty of the assassination. Ayyash, who is at large, is a member of Hezbollah and the verdict is now affecting Hezbollah´s prestige among the Lebanese.

COVID-19 adds fuel to the Lebanese disaster, while talks with IMF over a recovery plan involving a bid for 11 billion USD has stalled over disagreements between Lebanese politicians on assessing losses.

What about the disastrous 4th of August explosion? On the 21st of November 2013, MV Rhosus ported in Beirut. This huge freighter had embarked from Georgia with a cargo of ammonium nitrate destined for a factory in Mozambique, owned by a Portuguese company suspected of providing explosives for the 2004 Madrid train bombings. After inspection by the port authorities Rhosus was found unseaworthy and forbidden to live the port. The owners claimed bankruptcy and following a court order Rhosus´s cargo was sometime in 2014 brought ashore and kept in a sealed hangar. Four years later Rhosus sank just outside Beirut´s port.

The Rhosus tale is complicated, smelling of corruption and arms trafficking. It involves a shady set of actors – Cypriot, Portuguese and Russian businessmen, the Lebanese bank FBME and possibly Lebanese militia.

It is easy to get lost in the labyrinth of Lebanese politics and to avoid this I finish by taking consolation in my Beirut memories – of the postman making his rounds, delivering letters to owners of ruins and how people in spite of the mayhem around them went on with their daily chores and welcomed strangers in their midst. It is something of a miracle that a heartening, thriving mosaic of people and cultures still persists in Lebanon.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

 

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Young people pose questions to Secretary-General António Guterres during a UN75 event with youth at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. António Guterres said despite youth engagement during this period – including in the 2016 peace process in Colombia and in shaping the Global Compact on Refugees two years later – opportunities for them to contribute remain inadequate. “The world cannot afford a lost generation of youth, their lives set back by COVID-19 and their voices stifled by a lack of participation”, he said. “Let us do far more to tap their talents as we tackle the pandemic and chart a recovery that leads to a more peaceful, sustainable and equitable future for all”. Credit: UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferre

By Siobhan O’Neil and Kato Van Broeckhoven
NEW YORK, Oct 7 2020 (IPS)

As governments worldwide struggle to contain COVID-19, recent reports suggesting armed groups like Islamic State are resurging offer a sobering account of the many challenges that the global community now faces.

Indeed, the UN Secretary-General has warned that we must not let armed groups exploit fragilities caused by the pandemic, as “like the virus, terrorism does not respect national borders.”

The COVID-19 pandemic – and resulting economic fallout – has created fresh opportunities for gangs, criminal syndicates, and armed groups to instrumentalize the pandemic and grow their ranks.

From calls to weaponize the virus against police officers, efforts to exacerbate the chaos being caused by the pandemic to conduct deadly attacks, to highlighting their superior public health response, violent groups are taking advantage of the pandemic to consolidate their power.

To date, the policy conversation has been largely about the response of armed groups to COVID-19. It may be even more important, however, to consider whether a poor government response will create greater support for armed groups, especially among youth.

With COVID-19-related closings of schools, businesses and borders, youth may have even fewer opportunities for advancement in societies where there were few to begin with. that could lead to increases in associations with armed groups.

Our research suggests that economic drivers or a lack of social mobility will not be the only meaningful drivers of armed group association. Equally important are the pro-social appeals that allow armed groups to transcend being “the only option” to being perceived to offer young people a positive way forward.

IS’s communication strategy, for example, has largely been characterized by “soft power” appeals towards young people based on positive incentives.

These pro-social appeals can be extremely powerful, particularly with young audiences. For example, they suggest that young people can contribute to something bigger than themselves. As the pandemic makes it difficult to connect with peers, armed groups’ promises of a ready-made community and a “significant life” are likely to be all the more compelling.

Armed groups have proved adept at exploiting generational tensions even before the pandemic broke out: IS cast itself as a “generational revolt” against earlier waves of political Islam and even self-avowed jihadist predecessors. Groups like IS offer a chance for youth to bypass generational hierarchies.

In countries where establishing yourself financially allows you to marry, and thus enter adulthood in the eyes of your community, some armed groups – like Boko Haram – have facilitated marriages that would otherwise be financially impossible for young men in their ranks.

The promise of social mobility may elevate the appeal of certain armed groups once the economic impact of COVID-19 is felt.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare – and exacerbated – the generational divide, but the attention on youth proceeds the current crisis. Much of the discussion around “violent extremism” and “radicalization” in the last fifteen years has focused on youth. As digital natives, there have been concerns about the vulnerability of youth to online recruitment by violent organizations.

This concern, combined with their developmental needs and inclination for risk-taking has led to “a predominantly negative narrative on youth”. This pessimistic view had so permeated conventional wisdom about conflict that the UN Security Council took the unusual step of crafting a resolution aimed at shifting the narrative about youth to recognize their potential to positively contribute to peacebuilding.

But more needs to be done than changing the narrative alone. The international community has taken to reiterating that youth are able to play these roles, but rarely makes space for them do so in its efforts to prevent and respond to conflict.

As calls grow for a new social contract to address inequality, young people must be given a voice in designing and implementing peace processes, conflict prevention efforts and reintegration programming.

Youth are often treated as passive beneficiaries rather than partners in the road to recovery and peace. As governments – national to local – continue to rollout plans to address the pandemic, youth need to be represented in those policy discussions.

We need to ensure that young people are provided a place in society at large as we emerge from this crisis and beyond. Some armed groups appear to be making room – will we?

*Prior to joining UNU, Dr O’Neil was a consultant at the UN Mine Action Service (UNAMS) in Mali and Palestine and worked in US homeland security agencies. Dr O’Neil received obtained her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her full bio can be found here: https://cpr.unu.edu/author/soneil

**Prior to joining UNU, Ms Van Broeckhoven worked on city-level programming aimed at preventing violent extremism in Belgium. She also worked as a consultant for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, the World Bank’s Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, and Columbia University’s Global Policy Initiative. Her full bio can be found here: https://cpr.unu.edu/author/kbroeckhoven.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Siobhan O’Neil* is Project Director at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research on the Managing Exits from Armed Conflict project. She was previously the Project Lead for United Nations University’s Children and Extreme Violence project and the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Project Manager

 
Kato Van Broeckhoven** is a Project Manager at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research on the Managing Exits from Armed Conflict project and previously co-edited Cradled by Conflict with Dr O’Neil.

The post With Armed Groups on the Rise, Youth Engagement is More Important than Ever appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Neftalí Membreño (R), in charge of the machine room, checks the turbine and generator of the mini hydroelectric plant in the village of Potrerillos, Carolina municipality in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel. This small rural community made up of 21 families built a small dam in 2006 that supplies them with electricity at a low cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CAROLINA, El Salvador, Oct 7 2020 (IPS)

The people of Potrerillos, a village located in northeastern El Salvador, worked hard to achieve something that many doubted they could do: harness the waters of the Carolina River to install a community mini hydroelectric plant, which supplies them with cheap energy.

The project got underway in 2005 in this village in the municipality of Carolina, in the eastern department of San Miguel, and the plant began operating in 2006. It benefits 40 families not only in that community but also in the hamlet of Los Lobos, near the neighbouring town of San Antonio del Mosco.

 

 

The work was carried out with the assistance of the Basic Sanitation, Health Education and Alternative Energies (Sabes) association. Financing was provided by the government of the Spanish region of Navarra, and funds for the electromechanical equipment came from the Energy and Environment Alliance with Central America.

The total cost of the project was 120,000 dollars.

The design included an aspect that guarantees environmental sustainability: the water that moves the turbine returns to the river, so its flow is not affected by the mini power plant.

The lives of the inhabitants of Potrerillos, who are mostly subsistence farmers, have improved with the arrival of electricity.

Gone are the days when nights were lit by candles and kerosene lamps, and now the villagers can watch TV, enjoy a cold drink or charge their cell phones at home, without having to go to Carolina.

One important advantage is the cost of the energy: local households pay between two and five dollars a month, compared to a monthly power bill of around 25 dollars in neighbouring villages.

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