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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 16 2020 (IPS)

Announcing an independent evaluation of the global Covid-19 response on 9th July, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked why it has been “difficult for humans to unite and fight a common enemy that is killing people indiscriminately?”.

Anis Chowdhury

He warned: “The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself. Rather, it is the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels… we cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world”, highlighting inter-governmental conflicts over the pandemic and its containment.

Solidarity desperately needed
With more than 600,000 acknowledged deaths, almost 13 million are believed to have been infected by Covid-19 in mid-July. In less than half a year, every country had been affected by the pandemic, designated by the WHO as a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) on 30th January.

Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious Lancet medical journal, has urged the United Nations to convene an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to make “appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures”.

A “meeting under the auspices of the UN is the only means available to construct a global response to this pandemic”. Wondering “why such a global gathering has not yet taken place”, he pleaded, “It must take place. And soon”.

Covid-19 has been devastating, not only because of its heavy toll on human life, but also because of its adverse impacts on livelihoods, especially for much of the ‘precariat’, particularly in the most vulnerable developing countries.

The pandemic’s indirect impacts are not well understood as national health systems, already undermined by years of under-investment and creeping privatization, struggle to cope.

Other preventable deaths are rising as less people get medical attention due to loss of livelihoods and health coverage. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has estimated an additional 1·44 million deaths from the three killer diseases.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Horton warns, “Global health has entered a period of rapid reversal…Yet no plan is in place, or even being proposed, to address this global regression in human health”. For him, “this pandemic deserves historically unrivalled global political leadership. And yet all we have is silence”. He asks, “How have we fallen so low?”.

WHO “left out to dry”
Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and co-chair of the independent review, lamented that the WHO has been undermined by lack of support from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the G20, observing, “toxic geopolitics have stopped it doing anything useful at all”.

On 7th July, the United States gave the required one year’s notice to the UN that it would withdraw from the WHO. With the world’s largest economy, US withdrawal will greatly weaken WHO finances when it is needed more than ever.

The US has not provided meaningful world leadership in recent years, but has instead increasingly undermined the multilateral order it was the primary architect of. Yet, the current campaign against the WHO is unprecedented, and is widely believed to be connected to political, economic and diplomatic mobilization to check China’s rise.

In the current context, US withdrawal is expected to greatly undermine multilateral cooperation more broadly. sides endangering the lives and health of billions worldwide, it will undermine multilateralism more generally, not only in the UN system, but even at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

WHO could have done better
Undoubtedly, the WHO’s role in the pandemic could have been better, although how so depends on one’s perspective. Despite resource constraints and member-imposed regulations and protocols, it has done well, designating the outbreak a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC) on 30th January.

Then, there were only 7,818 confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission, mostly in China, and 82 cases in 18 countries outside China. The WHO advised all countries to “be ready to contain any introduction of the virus and its spread through active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing, and prevention”.

Yet, mistakes were undoubtedly made, e.g., discouraging the use of face masks, ostensibly to ensure adequate protective personal equipment for medical personnel and other ‘frontline workers’.

But there is no conclusive evidence, except for uncorroborated claims by the anti-China Japanese and Taiwanese authorities, greatly amplified by the media in India, Australia and the US, of the WHO being controlled by and biased towards China.

Refusing to prepare
The first WHO fact-finding mission to China emphasized the success of prompt, early precautionary measures, including testing, tracing, isolation and treatment. Contagion could still have been contained by adopting WHO recommended measures.

Yet, except for a handful of East Asian countries and Kerala state, in southwest India, much of the rest of the world, including most who could afford more adequate precautionary measures, did little to contain the contagion until they had little choice but to impose ‘stay in shelter’ lockdown measures.

When the WHO declared Covid-19 a “pandemic” on 11th March, there were over 118,000 confirmed cases and 4,291 deaths in 114 countries, with more than 90% of cases in four countries: China, Iran, Italy and South Korea.

By then, new infections were already declining rapidly in China and South Korea, while 81 countries reported no cases, and 57 had ten cases or less. Yet, inaction persisted, even justified in terms of developing ‘herd immunity’.

To be sure, many rich countries had been weakening the WHO for decades before the Covid-19 pandemic. Reliable long-term mandatory funding had fallen from 62% of its budget in 1970-71 to 18% in 2017.

As Stewart Patrick noted, “much of the blame can be laid at the feet of member states, which have saddled the WHO with an ever-expanding mission set reflecting their individual priorities, while providing it with a modest operating budget… smaller than that of some big city U.S. hospitals.

“Compounding these difficulties, national governments have repeatedly proved resistant to accepting WHO guidance or fulfilling their international legal obligations during declared public health emergencies”.

Security Council must act
In 2014, the UNSC responded promptly to the Ebola crisis, declaring the virus a threat to peace and security, thus ‘legally obliging’ Member States to do whatever they can to check the threat.

Despite its much greater morbidity and mortality impacts worldwide, the UNSC took half a year to back the UN Secretary-General’s global ceasefire appeal following the Covid-19 outbreak.

Covid-19 is arguably the greatest threat to peace and security since the Second World War. Now that the UNSC is finally acting, only seven of the 15-member Council can convene UN Member States for an emergency UNGA special session to do the right thing.

The post Covid-19 Cannot Be Defeated by a Divided World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

While men are more likely to die from COVID-19, women are facing the full blow of the socio-economic fallout from the ongoing pandemic as well as seeing a reversal in equality gains made over the last two decades, says an all-women panel of international thought leaders, who met virtually during a discussion convened by IPS.

“The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women and Girls” took place on Tuesday, Jul. 14, with the aim to bring to the fore the dangers of neglecting gender dimensions in COVID-19 response and recovery plans.

The panel included gender and development experts with a wide range of expertise:

• Catherine Bertini, a distinguished fellow of global food and agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, professor emeritus at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP);
• Yasmine Sherif, the director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crisis established by the World Humanitarian Summit. Sherif, a lawyer specialising in in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, has 30 years of experience with the U.N. and international NGOs;
• Saima Wazed Hossain, advisor to the director-general of World Health Organisation on mental health and autism, the chairperson of the Bangladesh National Advisory Committee for Autism and Neurodevelopment Disorders as well as the chairperson for the Shuchona Foundation;
• Josefina Stubbs, senior manager multilateral relations in Enel Green Power, Italy and former assistant secretary-general and vice president strategy and knowledge at U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and
• Susan Papp, the managing director of policy and advocacy at Women Deliver and an award-winning advocate and policy expert.

Women eat last

“In COVID-19, the disproportionate impact to women and girls is magnified many times over because of their roles as caregivers, as mothers, as cooks. And ultimately as the people who are holding families together,” Bertini said during the discussion.

She noted that in 1995 she had given a speech titled “Women eat last”, saying that she was told by WFP deputy executive director Amir Abudalla that a recent report on the Rohingya and food assistance had the same conclusion; “Women eat last.”

“What have we been doing for 25 years if this is still a tagline for what is happening in the world, especially for women in crisis?” she asked.

• The State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week stated at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year because of COVID-19.
• While experts are still gathering data on the current crisis, recent past studies show that women are more affected by food insecurity than men, often allocating food to others before themselves, just as Bertini had noted back in 1995. 

Increased gender-based violence and income inequality

Papp, from Women Deliver, said the pandemic was compounding inequalities across the board.

“It is revealing fractures in our systems that are becoming too big to ignore,” Papp told IPS after the webinar.

“The pandemic is showing us how women are facing heightened levels of gender-based violence (GBV). It is also showing us how insufficient our social protection systems are with respect to sick leave, parental leave, child care, health care, and unemployment subsides,” Papp said.

Sherif, of Education Cannot Wait, said that the closure of schools and other educational settings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has deprived young girls of a protective environment.

“The risks of all forms of violence that girls and young women face outside of emergencies are multiplied in humanitarian contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly becoming a protection crisis with surging levels of violence against women and girls, including child marriages,” Sherif told IPS before the webinar.

“Social isolation measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have increased the risk of intimate partner violence and other forms of GBV as girls and young women are confined with abusers,” she added.

During the panel discussion, Stubbs said that not only will COVID-19 roll back progress made for women and girls in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) over the last two decades in areas such as health, education, employment, micro-, small and medium enterprises, social protection and social cohesion, but that it will be harder to regain those losses. 

“But we are seeing in the case of Latin America is that indeed the pandemic is exacerbating [the existing] economic inequality. It has made care work at home much more burdensome for women, 45 percent who live as single-headed households, and of course the issue of gender violence,” she said, explaining that more than 35 percent of Latin Americans live in and under poverty.

• In May, the International Labour Organisation noted “of the 740 million women working in the informal economy, 42 percent are found in high-risk sectors”, noting that despite global lockdowns women continued to work, “putting their health in peril as hand washing, self-isolation and wearing masks or other personal protective equipment are not realistic options”. 

As women experience a greater caregiving burden compared to men, they are at even greater risk of getting infected with the contagious disease. Further, women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers, and the pressure could impact negatively on their mental health.

Sherif decried the impact of COVID-19 on education as the most vulnerable, poor children are less likely to return to school after a crisis. She said that many girls, especially adolescents, may never return to school.

• A U.N. Population Fund report released this month stated an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the pandemic. It also stated, that delays in female genital mutilation (FGM) programmes could result in an increase of two million FGM cases over the next decade that would otherwise have been averted.
• A Kenya government health survey has revealed that an estimated 4,000 school-going adolescents have fallen pregnant during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Access to sexual and reproductive health has been significantly curtailed by the pandemic, with experts calling for a prioritisation of maternal and child health for women in crisis.

Papp said that as stresses to health and economic systems were compounded due to COVID-19 response and recovery, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) cannot take a back seat and that conservative voices should not be allowed to diminish women’s rights.

Women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers. In the absence of gender sensitive, gender responsive measures to the ongoing global crisis women and girls will emerge from the pandemic even further behind than they were pre-COVID-19. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Education is key

But in looking for solutions, Sherif said education should never be under-prioritised in a crisis and financial contributions were needed to provide for continuing education.

“And when you look at countries affected by conflict and crisis, with half of the population being women, the only way to arise out of that crisis once and for all, and the only way, if you really want to empower women or any human being, is a good education,” she told panelists, making note that it needed to be quality education that went beyond primary school.

“That is the only way to liberate a woman from the yoke of oppression,” Sherif said.

Hashtags to curb GBV

Stubbs said that even though GBV is exacerbated during a crisis, a number of civil society organisations in Latin America were working very hard and using innovative models to protect women during the lockdowns. Hashtags have also had an impact.

“The use of technology has been absolutely essential. There is wide connectivity around Latin America and some hashtags in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia have made an enormous difference. Because women cannot go out, or because their cases cannot be followed, because the judiciary system is closed, … but social media has played a very important role,” she explained to panelists and viewers.

Referring to the phrase, ‘Building Back Better,’ Stubbs said this needed to include women, “making sure that women where not left even further behind than where we were before the crisis hit”.

“Bringing women into the economic reconstruction of their countries in a model that is more inclusive is going to be absolutely essential for sustainable development,” she said, adding that women’s small and medium enterprises needed to get more access to credit, technical assistance, than they had previously and that the working rights of women in the informal industry needed to be respected.

The former IFAD assistant secretary-general also said that women will play a fundamental role in producing food that is distributed in countries.

“Yet, women again do no have enough access to land, they do not have access to technological packages, the do not have access to credit. In the new “Building Back Better” we need to make sure that some have access to those [instruments], because their contribution to food security at home, and for the whole country will be absolutely fundamental,” she said.

Policies and practices for protection

Wazed Hossain, who is also the daughter of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told IPS that women’s contribution to the economy cannot be under-estimated and that their protection during this crisis must be a priority.

She made reference to the ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh and emphasised that women’s participation pushed the country to become a leading producer in the world.

“To reduce their vulnerabilities, there needs to be policies and practices in place that help to protect their physical, financial, and mental well-being. As with many other sectors, COVID-19 has highlighted the shortcomings in our policies and practices, but it is also an opportunity to look at the measures that need to be in place to ensure the various rights and protections workers deserve,” she told IPS before the webinar.

Wazed Hossain explained to viewers and panelists  that Bangladesh had seen a truly significant impact in keeping women at the centre of the country’s economic and social activities.

“In the last two decades the system that has been in place, the priorities that has been given to girls’ education, girls’ healthcare, all of that has come in tremendous use during this crisis,” she explained. 

She said when it came to health care, community-based health centres were kept active during the lockdown.

“That was one of the first decisions. Again, it is a woman making that decision,” she said referring to the prime minister. Other priorities for the country during the lockdown also included, “food security for the women, food security for the children, ensuring that relief funds went directly to women”.

Schools also play a role in the emergency food response. When asked how to apply a gender lens to this, Bertini said that in the context of ‘Building Back Better’ for women, responses needed to be more inclusive and more women were needed in leadership, “If schools aren’t back in place, one of the things we have to absolutely be sure we do, is feed children…one thing the community can do is be sure there is an opportunity to feed children.”

She said when schools reopened, the existence of feeding schemes could bring girls back to school.

Experts have further emphasised that a gender lens will guarantee that the needs and realities of everyone confronted by the virus are reflected in established responses.

Sherif cautioned, “Without a gender lens, 50 percent of the world population affected by the pandemic could be left behind.”

In opening the webinar, IPS senior vice president Farhana Haque Rahman acknowledged the “enormous wealth of experience and knowledge” of panel participants, stating that viewers wanted to hear about “concrete actions that will accelerate positive change for women and children”.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

Related Articles

• Q&A: Child Marriage, FGM and Harmful Practices on Women’s Bodies to Increase Because of COVID-19
• Q&A: Understanding COVID-19’s Impact on Food Security and Nutrition

The post IPS Webinar: Gender Equality Crucial in ‘Building Back Better’ Post-COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The project to repair and install new fog traps in the Peña Blanca Agricultural Community will be completed by the end of 2020. With funding from UNDP, the initiative will include infrastructure to receive visitors in this community in Coquimbo, the region that forms the southern border of Chile's Atacama Desert. CREDIT: Fundación Un Alto en el Desierto

By Orlando Milesi
OVALLE, Chile, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

“The harvested water has helped us at critical times and the fog nets have also brought us visibility. Today we produce beer here and many tourists come,” says Daniel Rojas, president of the Peña Blanca Agricultural Community in Chile.

Located in the south of the Coquimbo region, 300 km north of Santiago, Peña Blanca is suffering a brutal drought and faces the threat of becoming part of the Atacama Desert by 2050, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) warned two years ago.

¨In Peña Blanca until 2000, water ran off the surface, and the villagers had dikes to take turns to use the water,” Nicolás Schneider, a geographer with the “Un Alto en el Desierto” (A Stop in the Desert) Foundation, the NGO behind the installation of fog harvesters in the region, told IPS.

The official record of rainfall in the municipality of Ovalle, in the basin of the Limarí River, the main river in Coquimbo, indicates an annual average of just 102.6 millimetres in the last 30 years.

But in 2018 the average fell to 38.1 mm, and in 2019 to just 8.5 mm. In June, three non-consecutive days of rain were greeted with joy because they totaled more rainfall than in all of 2019.

Coquimbo is home to 771,085 people, 148,867 of whom live in rural areas. It is the southern border of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on earth which has the most intense solar radiation on the planet. It encompasses six northern regions in this long, narrow country that stretches between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean and has a population of 18.7 million people.

“I am a livestock breeder and I also organise events for delegations that visit the fog nets in Cerro Grande,” Claudia Rojas, who at 53 is making the shift from livestock raising to a tourism microenterprise, told IPS.

“I was born and raised in Peña Blanca and I wouldn’t change it for any other place. Now I have only a few goats (20) and sheep (60). I had up to 200 goats but I have been reducing the herd because there is not enough natural pasture,” she said.

“I hope to continue receiving delegations when the pandemic is over. I serve them cheese, roasted kid (young goat) and local products. At my house or in the reserve,” she said.

What Claudia loves the most are the visits by hundreds of schoolchildren “who are happy to see nature.”

“From up above they can see the (Andes) mountain range and on the other side the sea. The main characteristic here is the fog. And they are amazed when the fog reaches the hill and they see how the water is harvested,” she said.

The Agricultural Community of Peña Blanca, made up of 85 families, has 6,587 hectares, 100 of which constitute the Cerro Grande Ecological Reserve, where the fog harvesters were installed 15 years ago. Back then, many locals could not imagine the impact and benefits the nets would have.

“They have made us well-known and that has brought the community resources for other projects,” said its president, Daniel Rojas, 60 (no relation to Claudia or other sources with the same surname, which is common in the area).

Hundreds of primary school students in Chile attend workshops and talks on the environment at the facilities of the Cerro Grande Ecological Reserve in Peña Blanca. University students also come to work on their theses, and researchers visit, interested in replicating water harvesting through fog traps in other locations in Chile. CREDIT: Fundación Un Alto en el Desierto

In Chile, the “agricultural community” is a legal figure for the collective property and usufruct of the land, in which the community members are given portions of land to use while another part is collectively managed.

“We have harvested a significant amount of water that has helped us in difficult times. At first to irrigate the vegetation and reforest with native species, and then to water the animals. We built a drinking trough, piping the water two km downhill.”

“Later, a 10,000-litre tank was made to collect water for people living nearby, to use when the tanker truck does not come,” he said.

Eight years ago, Peña Blanca beer began to be brewed, made with fog water, which is softer. Its light (Scottish) and dark (Brown) versions competed at the 2015 ExpoMilan and won the audience award.

Mario Alucema, 59, also born and raised in Peña Blanca, works in the artisanal brewery.

“Our beer made with 100 percent fog water is popular and successful. It has drawn attention to our farming community. I work (in the brewery) every (southern hemisphere) summer and receive 30 tourists a days, from Argentina, Brazil and other countries,” he told IPS proudly.

The plant produces 2,500 litres a week, and production is set to increase because the plant will be expanded.

“When these young entrepreneurs showed up I said to myself: ‘Who’s going to come all this way for the beer?’ We’re a long way from the Pan-American Highway. Then I thought, ‘Who’s going to drink this beer?’ And third, I thought it was money laundering. But everything was the other way around. Today, in the midst of this global pandemic, they’re still coming for the beer,” he said.

Daniel Ogalde, 47, who is also from Peña Blanca, has been the park ranger since March. He is dedicated to the maintenance, irrigation and replanting of native species in the ecological reserve.

“My idea is to be here for a long time. Because of the coronavirus, visits are suspended, but in August we plan to restart them,” he told IPS, adding that the reserve “is a source of pride for the community and everyone is concerned about its care and maintenance.”

Guido Rojas, 58, lives in Peña Blanca but works at the nearby lookout point at the Talinay Wind Park, owned by the ENEL Green Power company. “Harvesting water helps us because there have been many dry years,” he said.

The experience “has been maintained by the support of the community and the people who live here,” he added.

A qualitative leap has been made since July. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has granted 40,000 dollars to renovate and build fog nets, install lookouts, paths, signage and toilets. The programme ends on Dec. 31.

Since it was created in 2006, the reserve has had 24 fog-catchers, with a total of 216 square metres of double-layer 35 percent Raschel mesh.

“The expansion consists of the repair of 12 and the construction of 16 new fog nets. We will have 28 totaling 252 square metres, to harvest water,” said Un Alto en el Desierto’s Schneider.

Now 1,537 litres of water will be harvested per day, he explained.

In a calendar year, half of the fog water is harvested in September, October and November, when 20 litres/day are harvested per square metre, more than three times the average.

Fog traps were, in fact, an invention of Chilean physicist Carlos Espinosa, who donated the patent in the 1980s to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), making it possible for them to be used in different countries.

Fog catchers consist of fine mesh nets known as Raschel set up on foggy slopes to catch suspended drops of water, which gather and merge, running from small gutters into collection tanks.

The new systems have a design called “comunero” and created by Schneider and Daniel and Guido Rojas.

They are individual structures of nine square metres each that have several advantages: they are cheaper, easier to transport and to maintain and if any one suffers a flaw the others continue harvesting water.

They are expected to remain fully operational until 2028.

The first fog-catching project in Chile was in the mining town of El Tofo, in a region north of Coquimbo. But it was abandoned in the 1990s. In Coquimbo, there are other facilities for harvesting fog water, for individual and collective use. But none are as well-known as Peña Blanca’s.

In Alto Patache, near Iquique, in the far north of Chile, there are fog traps that harvest seven litres a day per square metre, but the project is for scientific research. Meanwhile, in Chañaral, a municipality in the Atacama region, there are fog catchers whose water is bottled and also used for aloe vera production.

According to Schneider, the fog catchers “can be replicated along the entire coastal strip between Papudo (centre) and Arica (far north), which is more than 2,000 km” of this South American country’s 6,435-km coastline.

“They are really useful for isolated areas, fishing coves and scattered populations neglected by public spending. And they are very important for combating desertification because so much water can be harvested in springtime, to use in the hot summers,” he said.

The problem standing in the way of expanding the use of fog traps, according to Rojas, the community president, is the lack of government funding for this technology and its implementation.

“We have a lot of coves that are only supplied by tanker trucks. Perhaps fog traps are not the total solution, but they can help a lot when water is scarce,” as is the case in northern Chile, he argued.

The post Fog Traps Save Chilean Farming Community from Severe Drought appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An eight-month-old boy with pneumonia is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By External Source
Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

In March, 10,000 NHS staff signed a letter to UK prime minister Boris Johnson demanding better protection against COVID-19. Nurses and doctors wanted to treat patients without fear of infecting them and to minimise their own risk of falling ill. But they lacked the proper protective equipment.

The problem they described was rooted in changes made long before the arrival of the coronavirus. The NHS’s reduced capacity for dealing with the pandemic – including a lack of PPE – has been the result of years of allowing financial considerations to dictate the quality of care. Back in 2017, the government rejected advice that the NHS should stockpile protective equipment in case of a potential influenza pandemic. The reason? An economic assessment found it would be too expensive.

The US’s private healthcare system epitomises the failure of letting the market govern care services. The country spends 17% of its GDP – or US$3.6 trillion (£2.8 billion) – on health, more than any other nation. Despite this, almost 30 million Americans (9% of the entire US population) remain uninsured because their employer does not offer health benefits or they cannot afford their own insurance

Such failings are representative of the long-running trend, beginning in the 1980s, of letting the logic of the market dictate how health and social care systems are run, both in Britain and abroad. It has left many systems without the capacity to withstand a crisis of the scale we’re currently seeing.

In turn, the pandemic has seen whistleblowers in health and social care disclosing systemic failures to protect staff and patients. The marketisation of health and social care, we suggest, has increased the need for these whistleblowers to protect the common good – and we need to support them better.

 

The results of market logic

The US’s private healthcare system epitomises the failure of letting the market govern care services. The country spends 17% of its GDP – or US$3.6 trillion (£2.8 billion) – on health, more than any other nation. Despite this, almost 30 million Americans (9% of the entire US population) remain uninsured because their employer does not offer health benefits or they cannot afford their own insurance. These are mostly working-age adults in families with low incomes.

The inaccessibility of health services to those who need them has contributed to the US having the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities in the world (together with one of the highest death rates per 1 million population). Yet, even while the pandemic spreads, some of its poorest hospitals and other healthcare institutions have had to put much-needed staff on leave. Having to compete in a ruthless market environment, they cannot afford to pay them.

The pandemic has also exposed failings in care homes. Prompted by the rising costs of elderly care and users’ expectations for personalised services, both the UK and Sweden introduced a market-based system of care in the 1980s. The idea was that encouraging competition among multiple providers would deliver more cost-effective and responsive services and empower consumers by letting them choose among them.

Large for-profit businesses with no prior experience of delivering such services were encouraged into the market. In the intervening years, research has clearly shown the deficiencies of these changes. Both sociological and economic analyses debunk claims that the market delivers high-quality care services efficiently.

In order to reduce costs, both British and Swedish organisations have come to rely on short-term staff with rudimentary training. During Sweden’s COVID-19 outbreak, a lack of continuity and skills stemming from using short-term staff has contributed significantly to the high death toll in care homes, exacerbated by the relaxed approach to social restrictions that was adopted by the government.
Sweden’s care homes account for half of the country’s COVID-19 deaths.

In the UK, care homes account for half of all excess deaths. Higher rates of infection among residents have been linked to these institutions relying on temporary workers and not offering sick pay to staff (incentivising them to work even if ill).

 

The need for whistleblowers

Health professionals’ disclosures have become a societal safety valve. Over 100 UK carers have called a whistleblowing helpline to report safety concerns during the pandemic.

Whistleblowers’ disclosures are invaluable for showing us the necessity of reform, and also the specifics of what must be done. The Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust scandal – which saw up to 1,200 patients die as a result of substandard care – was made known by a whistleblower. So too the infamous failings in paediatric heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary in the 1990s.

However, whistleblowing is typically a last resort, requiring significant moral courage. The sector can be hostile to doctors and nurses who disclose wrongdoing. Because of this, we need stronger systems for making disclosures and effective protection for whistleblowers forced to go outside their organisation to speak up. Offering whistleblower protection that covers all employees at an organisation is also key.

But first and foremost, we should bring health and social institutions back to their rightful purpose. This work should start by putting to rest, once and for all, discredited market-driven ideologies and prioritising providing good quality care.

Marianna Fotaki, Network Fellow, Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University and Professor of Business Ethics, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick and Kate Kenny, Professor in Business and Society, National University of Ireland Galway

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

The post Coronavirus Shows the Dangers of Letting Market Forces Govern Health and Social Care appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Jul 15 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The NDC Partnership is a global initiative to accelerate climate and development action — ensuring countries have the support and tools they need to achieve ambitious climate and sustainable development targets as fast and effectively as possible.

The post Putting Young People at the Heart of Their Climate Plans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN Staff Coordinating Council in Geneva

By Prisca Chaoui
GENEVA, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

Two years have passed since the introduction of the illegal pay cuts imposed on staff in the Professional category– and above– working for the UN in Geneva, following a cost of living survey conducted by the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) in 2016.

For this second anniversary, the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT), whose jurisdiction covers staff working in the UN secretariat, issued its judgement declaring the cuts legal.

This was contrary to the ILOAT (Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization) judgement of 2019 that led to the restoration of the salaries that were prevailing before the introduction of the cuts for staff working in the agencies, namely WIPO, ILO, WHO, ITU and IOM.

This means that for a work of equal value, staff working for the Secretariat, in a duty station that is among the most expensive ones in the world, are paid less than their peers in the agencies.

The irony is that the UN preaches for very noble principles, one of them being the “equal pay for equal work” for the outside world, but it is obviously failing in implementing them for its own staff.

In 2019, the General Assembly declared 18 September, “International Equal Pay Day”, but it seems the UN is exempted from guaranteeing it to its own staff. The question is why?

The answer is simple: the pay cuts have initially been introduced as a cost-saving measure, based on what was inadvertently recognized by one of the ICSC commissioners in 2017. The mere fact that the UN secretariat never budgeted the retroactive payment of salaries in case the judgement was in favour of staff, says it all.

The UNDT, whose judges are appointed by the General Assembly, is supposed to be independent and to ensure justice for the involved parties. However, it failed to prove its independence in the pay cut file.

In the past, the UNAT, which is the appeal tribunal, was accused of politicization but in this particular case, the UNDT followed suit.

Indeed, the words of one of the top administrative law lawyers who represented some of the applicants are very revealing: “I can only state my deepest disagreement on what the judgement says regarding the ICSC and the overall process that led to these cuts.

The judge seems to become suddenly deaf and blind on any real criticism concerning the past and interprets in a very tendentious manner the diverse opinions, all this with the aim of proving that the applicant is wrong in its submission”.

It is important to recall that the first hearing regarding the Geneva pay cut case took place in October 2018. Based on the code of conduct of the judges, the judgement should have been issued three months later.

The early issuance of the judgement would have made sense for a case that was submitted by over 800 staff, which is totally unprecedented since the establishment of the tribunal in 2009.

But, instead of issuing its judgement early on time, the UNDT tried to gain time in order to dismiss all the arguments used by ILOAT to declare the cuts illegal. The late issuance of the judgement was perceived by staff as a denial of justice, as “justice delayed simply means justice denied.”

Apart from breaching the sacred principle of equal pay for equal work, this judgement announces the end of the common system which was initially put in place to secure equal treatment to all international civil servants, in order to avoid any undue competition between the different organizations that constitute the UN system.

What is troubling in this situation is that it might repeat itself in other locations leading to a complete fragmented system whereby each organization decides on the salaries and benefits that would be paid to staff, which in turn put into question the future of the ICSC that is supposed to be a technical body but is turning into a mere political one.

The “one UN” that is dear to both Member states and staff is becoming a delusion, even for administrative matters.

UN staff in Geneva are under shock since the announcement of the results of this legal battle that was their only remaining hope, as all their past attempts to make the Secretary General correct this unfortunate situation failed to bear any concrete result.

“Guterres doesn’t seem to care about his staff as he pretends it, he lost their trust”, says a staff member. Another one says: “I used to believe that the UN walks the talk but this was the past. This situation is a blatant breach of fundamental labour rights, which is unacceptable for an organization such as the UN ”.

Staff in Geneva feel abandoned by a Secretary General, whose main objective is to be re-elected, regardless of how his own staff are treated, which is a real pity.

Staff feel demotivated to see that their employer cares about everything except about them, giving them the impression that they are goods that can be easily traded off.

What’s next? In normal times, this situation should have warranted an industrial action such as an open strike to oblige the organization to find a solution that would save the common system from agonizing.

However, the Covid-19 impact on the organization and its finances, as well as the deliberate attacks against multilateralism by certain international players make it difficult for staff to opt for such a move.

If it weren’t out of belief in the organization and its mandate, many staff would have let the lack of motivation and trust in the UN as employer take hold of them.

Would the coming years bring more bad surprises for staff? Will Guterres be able to defend his own staff or will he choose to remain silent, regardless of what happens to them?

Will UN jobs still be attractive for young generations who are seeking for a reliable and trustworthy employer?

These are legitimate questions that each and everyone is entitled to ask but who has the answer? I guess only time will be able to bring answers.

 

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Excerpt:

Prisca Chaoui is Executive Secretary of the Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG)

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Improving the genetic quality of seeds in Somalia. Credit: Mustafa Saeed /FAO

By Juan Carlos García y Cebolla
ROME, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some lesser-known realities, or some we had not wanted to think about, and exposed its consequences for the right of people to feed themselves in dignity.

In distant places, from the United States to Germany, the United Kingdom or Spain, contagion hotspots among workers in meat processing plants have been reported. In Florida, Ontario or Catalonia, outbreaks have been associated with the harvesting of fruits and vegetables, which also requires temporary labour.

What the pandemic highlights is not a new issue, but the consequence of that deeply rooted idea over the last two centuries that food should be cheap, instead of adequate and accessible to all

In many of these cases, what we find are unfair socioeconomic conditions -although not necessarily illegal ones. The reduction of food prices is frequently achieved through migrant labour, which due to its circumstances finds working and living conditions that increase the risk of contagion (overcrowding or lack of hygiene services). 

It is not that the pandemic causes the poor working conditions and lower wages than are necessary for a decent life, it is simply shedding light on what happens in normal periods. In times of the pandemic, the cost of these “savings” increases: besides the suffering of workers, there is a high cost to the entire population, as local lockdowns and fears of infections due to outbreaks have shown.

What the pandemic highlights is not a new issue, but the consequence of that deeply rooted idea over the last two centuries that food should be cheap, instead of adequate and accessible to all.

At first glance, it seems reasonable that the lower the food prices are, the more accessible food becomes for the population. But keeping down the price of food at any cost is a risk, as the market may not be willing to pay the cost of unwanted damage to people’s health, their living conditions and nature.

Some practices that in the short run allow for the production of food’s raw materials at low prices, by replacing forests with industrial palm plantations or with other types of intensive monocultures that degrade soils, are destructive to the environment. 

Juan Carlos García y Cebolla. Credit: FAO

The impact can also be seen in millions of small farmers, herders and fisherfolk who suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition despite producing 80% of the world’s food. We also find that child labour forms part of the equation that lowers the prices of products such as cocoa.

This can be partially addressed through social policies, such as income transfers to ensure access to food for vulnerable groups, or school policies supported by income transfers to fight against child labour. But these policies have limitations if they are not accompanied by greater awareness on the part of citizens and a change in their behaviour as consumers. Certain alternatives that combine rules and market dynamics can help to avoid some of these negative effects and modify consumers´ preferences, as well as economic and food policies.

In recent decades, certification systems have proved to be useful tools. However, some systems should strengthen their coherence and take into consideration food sustainability. For example, some food denominations or geographical indications are identified with ecological and responsible production models, even when in reality, a part may be produced under unfair labour and social conditions. 

We cannot remain as impassive witnesses. We must face these kinds of challenges. At the international level, there are multiple governance mechanisms for food and global security with this mandate. A clear exponent is the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the only platform of the United Nations System in which States, civil society and the private sector participate.

Food systems and the effects of COVID-19 will be discussed at the next CFS sessions, which will be held in October. This could be a good opportunity for multiple stakeholders to make progress in responding to these problems from a human rights approach and perspective. 

 

The post Cheap or Adequate and Accessible to Everyone? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Juan Carlos García y Cebolla is Leader of the Right to Food Team of the Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division of the FAO

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Food markets were closed as many countries across the globe went into a lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The reduced access to high-value foods and higher food prices for nutritious foods has led to a risk of declining dietary quality globally. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

While it is too early to assess the full impact of the global COVID-19 lockdowns, at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year — 690 million people were classified as hungry in 2019 — as the pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems. 

This is according to the State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week.

The report also noted “the nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio-economic impacts of COVID-19”.

Experts say that during the pandemic a myriad of factors, including reduced access to high-value foods, higher food prices (especially for nutritious, perishable foods) and the higher consumption of ultra-processed foods, has led to a risk of declining dietary quality globally.

“Understanding who is the most affected by the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic is essential to build momentum for action, to guide decision-making and to engage and empower the vulnerable as agents,” Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN), told IPS.

“This requires robust tracking and investments in monitoring systems and predictive analysis. Data has to be easy to access, interpret and used by policymakers and other relevant stakeholders, to enable evidence-based decisions.”

Dembska further echoed a message from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, an alliance of philanthropic foundations working together and with others to transform global food systems, stating the importance of shifting away from a “feed the world” or “productivist” narrative, “based on assumptions that we need to ‘double food production by 2050’ and focused on providing food and calories.” 

“A new narrative needs to be adopted, aiming at nourishing a growing global population and focusing on the quality of food, so that it contributes to human and planetary health,” she added. 

At the launch of the report, Dr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. (FAO), highlighted the need for low-cost production.

“We have to produce food with low cost of raw materials, that’s where we need innovation,” he said. The report had noted that healthy diets are at least five times more expensive than diets that meet dietary energy needs, with the former remaining unaffordable to an estimated 3 billion people.

“We have to encourage people, especially small farmers, to produce more and better, [and] to shorten supply chains. If you can shorten the supply chain, it’s better for the environment and there’s also less dependence.”

The report noted that the world was not on track to achieve zero hunger by 2030 and malnutrition among children remained a challenge and needed to be prioritised. The report’s key messages stated that countries needed to mainstream nutrition in their agricultural policies, noting also that nutrition-sensitive social protection policies would be required to provide healthy diets to vulnerable populations.

IPS spoke with Dembska and Dr. Marta Antonelli, head of research at BCFN. Excerpts of the interview follow. Some of the answers have been paraphrased for clarity purposes. 

Dr. Marta Antonelli, head of research at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN). Courtesy: BCFN

Inter Press Service (IPS): How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected food sustainability measures around the world? 

Marta Antonelli (MA): The measures to control or mitigate the pandemic have affected food supply chains, with slower harvests and disruptions (both production and processes) due to the lack of seasonal labour force, especially for high-value supply chains; higher price volatility, which may adversely impact low-income and countries dependent on food imports; potentially reduced pools of capital for smallholders which provide about 80 percent of the food supply in Asia and Africa; higher food losses due to trade disruptions, blockages to transport routes and lockdowns; risks for the life and livelihoods of all workers. 

As the pandemic evolves, the impacts on food security and nutrition have also been observed. For example, reduced access to high-value foods, such as fruits and vegetables; higher food prices, especially for nutritious (perishable) foods; reduced food affordability and accessibility, with particularly adverse impacts on low-income households; higher consumption of ultra-processed foods, as access to healthy food becomes more difficult; increased household food waste due to food hoarding during lockdowns. 

IPS: The report states: “the number of people affected by hunger in the world continues to increase slowly. This trend started in 2014 and extends to 2019”. How is global hunger linked to food sustainability? 

MA: Transforming food systems encompasses changes across all the three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic, environmental. There is evidence that the quality of diet worsens with increasing levels of food insecurity. Low-income- and lower-middle-income countries rely heavily on staples like cereals, roots, tubers and plantains, which represent the largest share of food available (over 60 percent in some cases), and often fruit and vegetables are not enough to meet the requirement of a minimum intake of 400g/day. 

A sustainable food system ensures access and affordability of nutritious food at all times, thus preventing hunger, while at the same time preserving and stewarding the natural resource base. 

Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at the Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN). Courtesy: BCFN

IPS: At the State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report launch, Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, said one of the reasons behind low-birth rate is “sub-optimal diets for mothers and many of the mothers are adolescents”.

How is food sustainability important to the issue of maternal diets and health? 

Katarzyna Dembska (KD): Women represent 43 percent of the total agricultural labour force worldwide, with shares close to 50 percent in some regions of Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. However, despite their crucial role in guaranteeing food security in their household and community, they suffer from important disadvantages and inequalities, from lack to land rights, to reduced access to credit or inputs, unpaid work, insecure employment and exclusion from decision making and political representation.

Within households, food insecurity may not be evenly distributed, with studies finding that women are more affected by food insecurity than men, mainly due to the fact that women are responsible for caregiving and food provisioning in their households, often allocating food to others before themselves.

In addressing women’s inequalities, it is essential to move towards a food policy that addresses right to food issues beyond food production support, food aid and export bans prevention, that guarantees adequate  nutrition, especially to the marginalised, whose main issues are access and inequality, that has broad political and social support, and is easily implemented.   

IPS: How will COVID-19 affect food sustainability concerns for women and children specifically? 

KD: The societal disruptions and economic shocks arising from COVID-19 control and mitigation measures have been severe, particularly for vulnerable groups. 

The Global Nutrition Report states that today, 613.2 million adolescent girls and women aged 15 to 49 years suffer from anemia; 20.5 million newborns (14.6 percent) have a low birth weight; stunting still affects 149.0 million (21.9 percent) children under five years of age, and wasting affects 49.5 million (7.3 percent) children under five years of age.

All these numbers could grow rapidly due to COVID-19 restriction measures and social and economic aftermath. As of late May, 368 million school children were missing out on daily school meals on which they depend, and estimates predict the pandemic could push about 49 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, and every percentage point drop in global GDP is expected to result in an additional 0.7 million stunted children.

IPS: The report states that having enough to eat is important, but what people eat also needs to be nutritious. Addressing the issue of affordability is crucial to address hunger and malnutrition. What are currently some of the key concerns about accessibility and affordability to nutritious food? 

KD: Those who are food insecure usually spend most of their income on food. The effects of the pandemic on the economy has reduced their ability to purchase food, so there is a risk in a decline in dietary quality, not only resulting from compromised employment, but also from the revocation of schemes such as school feeding programmes, and shocks on the demand and supply sides resulting in the breakdown of food markets.

MA: Affordability is a key aspect of food security and a key determinant of food access, which depends not only food cost but also on the disposable income spent on food. 

Among the major impacts of COVID-19 on food systems, we should mention rising food costs, especially in urban centres that are home to over half of the world population, as rural supply was unable to reach properly urban demand.

Increased food prices have a direct impact on the quality of diets, preventing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, but also dairy, meat and fish due to the failure in reaching wholesale and retail markets, with loss of income for those operating in the food sector, especially for smallholder farmers and small-scale producers, and led to disruptions in production. FAO has crucially pointed out that the cost of the diet increases incrementally as the diet quality increases, a key issue that needs to be tackled worldwide as healthy diets are not affordable for three billion people in the world.

 

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Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD). Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ethiopia.

By Ricard González
TUNIS, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the idea that water would drive the wars of the future took hold among analysts and the media. Three decades later and that grim prospect has, fortunately, not yet materialised, and international cooperation, despite its ups and downs, is the norm in the management of transboundary waters.

But the world may never have been as close to a ‘war over water’ as it is now, following the escalation in the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has reached its final stage. The Ethiopian authorities intend to start filling the dam’s reservoir in the coming days, before finalising an agreement with Egypt, which has inflamed tensions.

The disputes between Cairo and Addis Ababa over water from the Nile began a decade ago when the announcement was made of the plans to build a huge dam, one of the largest in Africa and the world, covering an area of 1,800 km2 and with a capacity of 74 billion cubic metres.

The world may never have been as close to a ‘war over water’ as it is now, following the escalation in the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has reached its final stage

The main purpose of the dam is to generate electricity, a project that the Ethiopian government considers essential for the development of the country, which is in the full throes of economic and demographic growth. The GERD could even enable it to become an energy hub and to export electricity to its neighbours. Egypt, meanwhile, fears a considerable reduction in the flow of the Nile, which accounts for more than 90 per cent of the desert country’s water resources.

“The Ethiopian government is following a policy of fait accompli. It seems their aim is to prolong the negotiations while they keep building the dam, to avoid any restrictions on their management of the project,” says Nader Noureddin, a professor specialising in water resources at Cairo University.

These suspicions have been reinforced since Ethiopia reneged on the agreement reached between the three countries in February, after months of negotiations in Washington under the mediation of the United States and the World Bank.

“The negotiations have progressed a lot, and there are only a few points of contention between both countries now. There is no indication that Ethiopia is not negotiating in good faith. I think it wants a deal, to avoid pressure from the international community, which it needs if it wants to develop,” says Alfonso Medinilla, a researcher for the ECDPM think tank, specialising in Africa.

The three parties (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) resumed their negotiations in early June, this time with the US, the European Union and South Africa as observers. Egypt is trying to step up the international pressure on Ethiopia by involving the United Nations Security Council.

In 2015, the leaders of the three countries signed a Declaration of Principles that was to serve as a framework for resolving the dispute. The document, however, was very vague, and each side interpreted it differently. One of the main stumbling blocks has been the length of the process of filling the reservoir (Ethiopia wanted three years, Egypt ten), but a consensus seems to be emerging around a period of between five and seven years.

More challenging is the issue of the mechanism for resolving future conflicts over the dam’s management, and above all, the minimum flow that Egypt should receive in the event of one or several years of drought. This last point is crucial in the context of climate change.

“Studies show that the deviation describing inter-annual variability of total Nile flow could increase by 50 per cent, but that extreme events such as drought and floods will become more recurrent,” writes Ana Elisa Cascao in the chapter on the GERD in the book Natural Resource Conflicts and Sustainable Development.

 

Development ‘at any cost’ or ‘fair and sustainable’ development

“This conflict is very complicated because it is not only about the GERD but also has historical roots that one needs to know about to understand it,” explains Medinilla.

Egypt’s demands are based on agreements reached during the British colonial era and updated in 1959 in a bilateral treaty signed with Sudan. By virtue of the treaty, 55,500 cubic metres correspond to Egypt and 18,500 to Sudan, which means, between the two of them, they control around 90 per cent of the Nile’s flow.

The other nine Nile Basin states (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania) consider these quotas to be unfair, and in 2010 six of them signed what is known as the Entebbe Agreement, which seeks to redefine the distribution of the water from the world’s longest river, the fruit of the confluence, near Khartoum (Sudan), of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The GERD is located on the Blue Nile.

“Egypt cannot live with a substantial reduction in Nile water. Its economy and water consumption depends on it,” says Noureddin, pointing out that each Egyptian has an average of just over 500 cubic metres of water a year, half of the threshold set by the United Nations for a country to be considered under water stress.

According to the professor, the water should be distributed on the basis of need and the existence of alternative water sources: “Ethiopia has nine rivers, several big lakes and abundant rains. In total, its annual water resources amount to 122 billion cubic metres, while Egypt has only 62 billion, 55.5 of which come from the Nile.”

Agriculture now accounts for 12 per cent of GDP and employs 24 per cent of the workforce in Egypt, where the first great human civilization could not have arisen in the desert without the waters of the powerful river.

“More than 65 million people live [in Ethiopia] without access to electricity. The river’s potential is huge. Ethiopia has long been known for its humanitarian crises and famine. This has to change and [we must] lift people out of abject poverty,” says Zerihun Abebe, a member of the Ethiopian negotiating team.

Ethiopia’s GDP per capita is around US$780 (€780), four times lower than in Egypt. For Ethiopians, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a matter of national pride.

Given the difficulties raising the €4.5 billion (around US$4.9 billion) to cover the cost of the project through international funding, on account of its controversial nature, the Ethiopian government has covered much of the cost through ‘patriotic’ bonds purchased by its own citizens.

According to some experts, the politicisation of the conflict and the fact that it has inflamed nationalist sentiment in both countries is, precisely, one of the main obstacles to a negotiated settlement.

“Egyptians and the rest of the world know too well how we conduct war whenever it comes,” Birhanu Jula, Ethiopia’s deputy chief of staff, recently declared in response to the drums of war being beaten in certain circles in Cairo. The limited trade between Egypt and Ethiopia also makes it difficult to find imaginative solutions, as it does not allow for negotiations to be expanded to include compensation mechanisms at other levels.

“The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water,” said President Anwar Sadat in 1979, after signing the Camp David Accords with Israel. The countdown to avoiding this scenario is coming to an end, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, is left with very little room for manoeuvre during this election year.

“I think the deadline to reach an agreement is three more months. After that, we could see the first water war in history,” warns Noureddin. Although the two countries do not share a border, a war could be waged through a proxy, be it another state or a militia. The skirmishes recently seen on the border between Ethiopia and Sudan are not, perhaps, coincidental.

 

This story was originally published by Equal Times

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Angelina Jolie with Syrian refugees. Credit: UNHCR / Laban Mattei

By External Source
NEW YORK, Jul 14 2020 (IPS-Partners)

We must not leave young refugees by the wayside, urged UNESCO, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Education Cannot Wait as they urged more support in favour of young refugees’ education during an online debate today, moderated by UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie, on how best to provide them with improved learning during and after the pandemic.

“Mobilizing for refugees is extremely urgent at a time when they are particularly vulnerable to the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, as she opened the meeting. “The Covid-19 crisis is jeopardizing everything we have done for the education of refugees and migrants, their integration and chances of self-realization. We must strengthen our action in favour of the most vulnerable in order to guarantee them this fundamental right.”

“The Global Compact on Refugees rests on an important foundation: responding to crises of forced displacement needs to bring together governments, civil society, networks like Education Cannot Wait, businesses like Vodaphone and above all, refugees,” said the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

“ECW sees that all too often, refugee children and youth – among the most vulnerable people in the world – are left out of COVID-19 responses. It is important that ECW’s responses reach those left furthest behind. For this reason, we dedicated our newest round of education in emergency funding for COVID-19 to support refugee children and youth, especially girls,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We are also looking at distance learning to open up access to education for forcibly displaced children and youth.”

The roundtable was attended by young refugee students and graduates, the ministers of Education of Cameroon, Kenya and Pakistan, and representatives of the Global Coalition for Education established under the auspices of UNESCO. The debate was moderated by the United Nations Special Envoy, actor Angelina Jolie, a displaced persons’ advocate of long standing.

Introducing the discussion, Canada’s Minister of International Development, Karina Gould, said, “As the world is still dealing with the devastating impacts from the pandemic, we must ensure that displaced and refugee youth can continue to learn. Every child deserves a quality education in an environment that is safe and inclusive.”

Concluding the meeting, the United Kingdom’s Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Sugg, stressed that “Education must be prioritized in the global recovery from coronavirus. This epidemic is not just a health crisis, it is an education crisis, especially for refugee children. Without school and an education, they will be unable to rebuild their lives and achieve their full potential.”

Speakers warned that the pandemic risked jeopardizing the progress made in education in recent years, especially for young girls, at least 20% of whom are at risk of not resuming the studies they had to interrupt during school closures, according to a UNHCR estimate. However, a number of governments are planning to include refugees in post-pandemic response measures, such as distance education, in line with their commitments under the Global Compact on Refugees.

The event was co-sponsored by Canada, the United Kingdom and the global Education Cannot Wait fund, which channelled its second COVID emergency allocation to refugees.

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As the Turkish President signed a decree last week converting the ancient Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque, the UN cultural agency (UNESCO) said it "deeply regrets the decision" made "without prior discussion." It also called on Turkey to abide by its “legal commitments and obligations” in accordance with its status as a museum, on the World Heritage List. Credit: UN News/Jing Zhang

By Ian Williams
NEW YORK, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

President Erdogan’s “reconversion” of the Hagia Sophia, into a mosque is a very Trumpian move, making a populist gesture to his base evoking shared misconceptions of history, reckless of its actual diplomatic and economic cost.

The late Roman mother church of Orthodoxy was turned into a mosque by the Ottomans when they took the city in 1453, and then converted to a museum by Kamel Ataturk, the secularist founder of Modern Turkey.

It is highly unlikely that there is any Muslim left alive who ever worshipped in the building, restored with taxpayer’s and tourist cash over most of a century.

The move by Erdogan-appointed courts also violates UNESCO conventions on World Heritage Sites, which include the whole area around Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi palace and associated mosques.

It is a godsend to Greek nationalists, since ironically its conflation of nationalism and religion puts it on a level with Greece, which, after a century is still stalling on building an official mosque in Athens.

He expediently evokes Al Aqsa, but provides a precedent for a similarly loaded Israeli court to “hand back” Al Aqsa to those who want to repossess the site of Herold’s temple.

As a combined blunder and illegality, it overturns a wise decision by Kamal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state. And, in fact, most of the region and indeed the world, has a habit of viewing the past through the “patriotic” prism of modern day nationalism with imaginatively reconstructed histories.

When Erdogan began, he showed signs of an ecumenical reaching out to Christians, Kurds and other minorities, but those days are long gone and he has been throwing away advantages, not least the real restrictions on the Orthodox Church to which the de-museification of Hagia Sophia is just a tweak.

If he were less tunnel-visioned, he could make Istanbul a pilgrimage center, a world capital that with its potential attraction to both Orthodox Christians and Muslims. would make Rome or Mecca look like one-ring Circus.

Following World War I, Kemal Ataturk’s republican government showed itself blind not only to the city’s aesthetic grandeur but also to its sacred history. As Erdogan and his party know, Ataturk and his colleagues were no particular friends of Islam and had no sentimental attachment to the Ottomans they had overthrown, who had been dangerously cosmopolitan, encompassing far too many ethnic identities to be truly “Turkish,” in the new ethnonationalist mode.

Even as a mosque, the Hagia Sophia had kept its Greek name, “Holy Wisdom.” Astute Islamic architects – far from demolishing it like Modi’s Hindu nationalists, added minarets and made it the very model of the Ottoman Mosque.

Mehmet the conqueror of Constantinople did not see himself as replacing its glories, but more inheriting them. For the Ottomans, he took the title Kayser i Rum, Caesar of Rome, and many of their Greek-speaking subjects became partners of the sultans in running the empire.

Modern nationalist mouth-frothing notwithstanding, the people of “Constantinople” regarded themselves as Romans, not Greeks and called their city Stam Polis – the city – from which the Turks made Istanbul!

After Ataturk demoted it from imperial capital to provincial town, whatever it was called, they city went into economic decline. Its Greek population, although exempt from the unethical population exchanges between Greece and Turkey shrank and most of those remaining were driven out in a politically inspired pogrom in the 1950s—not because they were Christians but because they were considered a fifth column for Greeks nationalists who still cherished the idea of retaking the city. Nevertheless, a small remnant survived. They still call themselves Romans, “Rumi.”

Chief among the remaining Romans is His All Holiness, Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, who in the eyes of the world’s Orthodox is, if not infallible, first among equals and certainly merits a twenty-one mass salute or whatever the equivalent for patriarchs, along with the pope.

However, Ataturk’s secularist and nationalist successors regarded him as merely the head of the church in Turkey. They insist that the patriarch be a Turkish citizen, but for fifty years have kept closed the only seminary that trained priests in Turkey. Hidden in a corner in the Phanariot district, poor Bartholomew cannot assemble the pilgrims the way the pope can in Saint Peter’s Square.

This is unenlightened policy. and just plain bad for business. The great religions may have had their hearts in Mecca and Jerusalem, but their heads were in Istanbul and Rome. Istanbul combines both. It is the original ecumenical pilgrimage place, offering you patriarchate and caliphate in one, churches and mosques to die for, and relics galore.

Ataturk’s followers were equally ambivalent about the glories of the sultans’ Topkapi Palace where the sultans, doubling up as caliphs, amassed the Amanat—“the Sacred Trusts.” Still on display is a collection of the Prophet’s facial hairs, head hairs, and even the fragment of one of his teeth.

This is the sort of thing that the devout are willing to pay to see. Topkapi is a reminder of a time when Istanbul was to Islam what Rome is to Catholicism. Similarly, the patriarchate is testimony that the city still hosts the head of hundreds of millions of Orthodox.

There are allegedly sixty hairs of the Prophet’s beard in the collection, although only one was on display last time I looked. That number may seem excessive, if not so much as Voltaire’s suggestion of building a fleet with wood from the Cross and floating it on the Virgin’s milk, but ancient accounts report Muhammad giving away his beard and hair clippings in his latter days, which would surely have been cherished by his followers.

Indeed, in contrast, some of the more dubious relics in the Topkapi were inherited from the Christians, such as the skull fragment, arm, and hand of St. John the Baptist. The provenance of Moses’s staff, Joseph’s turban, and Abraham’s cooking pot, not to mention King David’s sword, all seem to lack the chain of evidence of the more directly Islamic relics such as the hairs and the Prophet’s “honored standard” that the caliphs used to rally the faithful in arms.

Some of these relics were brought to Istanbul from Mecca to protect them from the Wahabi upsurge, with its disdain for tombs, relics, and such quasi-idolatrous habits of Turkic Muslims. The relics are displayed as museum pieces, aids to study rather than agents of sanctity, and most of the foreign\ tourists arriving seem to be in search of secular history.

They spend as much if not more of their time gawking at the sundry bejeweled tchotchkes of the sultans as they do at the relics. They show the same lack of reverence as the echoing tour parties trotting at the double through the Hagia Sophia, which has been for decades in a dusty state of perpetual repair and renewal: more scaffolding than mosaics.

Küçük Ayasofya, the little Hagia Sophia, the former church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. Its dome was a forerunner and template for the big one. It gives a better impression of the original church than its larger descendant.

Its marble walls survived, and around its interior frieze the original Greek inscription to the emperor Justinian and empress Theodora survives intact after fifteen hundred years. Its serenity and dignity is far more likely to evoke the city’s glory days than its quasi-fossilized successor further up the hill.

Istanbul is ready to step up to its destiny. But not enough people know about it. All it lacks is a strong marketing campaign with the appropriate state sponsorship to give the Vatican a run for the tourist purse. The vision is clear; all that is needed is the implementation.

This city could be the crossroads between Islam and the West. The history of the caliphate, the Islamic relics and the Ecumenical Patriarch, the churches and mosques, if given the chance, could begin to pull in the pious punters from across the globe.

It may seem odd for a secularist like myself to advocate it, but many people who could not sprint across the road to save their lives have waved their pom-poms for the economic benefits of staging the Olympics.

More seriously, though, it must surely be a good stereotype buster to remind people of the centuries of coexistence of Christianity and Islam in Istanbul during a period when the Inquisition burnt brightly in the West and the Orthodox emperors hosted mosques within the walls even before the “Fall of Constantinople.”

If the new administrators of the Hagia Sophia show similar reverence for history as those looking after the Küçük Ayasofya, the little Hagia Sophia, down the hill from the big one, the reckless decision could be ameliorated. Its dome was a forerunner and template for the big one. It gives a better impression of the original church than its larger descendant.

Its marble walls survived, and around its interior frieze the original Greek inscription to the emperor Justinian and empress Theodora survives intact after fifteen hundred years. Its serenity and dignity is far more likely to evoke the city’s glory days than its quasi-fossilized successor further up the hill.

But a gesture from Erdogan to the Rumi and patriarchal office and seminary would go even further to build bridges to the Orthodox world. Erdogan does not do sensitive but if he wants his missile supply assured, he could remember Putin’s espousal of Orthodoxy!

* Ian Williams is also a senior analyst who has written for newspapers and magazines around the world, including the Australian, The Independent, New York Observer, The Financial Times and The Guardian.

 

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Excerpt:

Ian Williams* is President of the Foreign Press Association in New York, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA) and author of UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War.

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Ndiabou Niang was able to get access to prenatal care after her town’s mayor decided to finance the health membership of nearly 300 women and children. Courtesy: Réseau Siggil Jigéen

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

Pregnant with her second child, 30-year-old Ndiabou Niang was enduring pelvic pain, but couldn’t afford to access prenatal care in Diabe Salla, a village on the outskirts of the small town of Thilogne in north-east Senegal. Her husband was unemployed and her earnings of under CFAF 10,000 (17 USD) from selling seasonal fruits in the local market were insufficient to make ends meet.

During her last prenatal visit, she was prescribed some tests, an ultrasound and medicines that would cost CFAF 39,000 (USD 67). An astronomical amount for her meagre income. So she didn’t follow through with the treatment, opting to suffer in silence instead.

Many pregnant rural women, living below the poverty line, don’t follow through on their prescriptions and delay their prenatal visits till they are in their third trimester, which puts them at greater risk of pregnancy-related complications.

Senegal has integrated the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into its national policies and plans, but socio-economic, cultural and religious norms and attitudes impede women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights, especially in remote and rural areas. The challenges include early marriage, unmet contraceptive needs, early pregnancy, unsafe abortions and female genital mutilation.

The country’s version of Universal Health Coverage is Maladie Universelle (CMU) rests on mutual health organisations (MHOs) that provide health insurance wherein each person contributes a yearly enrolment fee that is matched by the government. The annual member contribution to the mutual health insurance is CFAF 3,500 (USD 6).

People in remote and rural areas choose not to join the mutual health insurance because Health Posts, local facilities that dot the country, have limited drugs and treatment options. Consultations at these posts cost CFAF 1,000 (USD 1.70), but they are not equipped to provide advanced obstetric care – like caesarean sections or blood transfusions. So the distances from local health posts to a district or regional hospital, poor road infrastructure, and cost and shortage of ambulances are some of the other challenges rural women face in accessing healthcare.

Aware of this, Réseau Siggil Jigéen (RSJ), an NGO that aims to promote and protect women’s rights in Senegal, through the IntraHealth International-led Neema project, a consortium of seven health organisations working to extend sexual and reproductive health services to last-mile recipients, began extensive advocacy to mobilise the community and local authorities to promote MHO membership.

After several sustained advocacy meetings, the mayor of Thilogne decided to finance the MHO membership for nearly 300 women and children. Niang, was one of them.

“It helped me to get X-rays, prescription drugs and have a caesarian delivery at the Regional Hospital Center of Ourossogui. The cost was CFAF 75,000 (USD 129), but as a MHO member, I only had to pay CFAF 15,000 (USD 25). I am now committed to do everything for my own health and my children’s health, who are 3 months and 18 months old,” she told the local RSJ member. She is also making her family and friends aware of the benefits and urging them to join the MHO.

RSJ and IntraHealth International have been working together for a decade to reposition family planning in Senegal and in the sub-region.

“Together, we introduced the fight against gender-based violence and early pregnancies in schools, and we help health workers improve care in their communities. Now we’re advocating to local governments to mobilise more domestic resources, which make reproductive health services accessible for pregnant women and teenagers who otherwise couldn’t afford them,” IntraHealth International’s Senegal Country Director Dr Babacar Gueye told IPS.

Several other mayors have also followed suit and made financial commitments to reduce maternal and infant mortality in their communities.

In Senegal, a Least Developed Country with 16.7 million people and a fertility rate of 4.5 per woman (2020):

• maternal mortality ratio remains high at 315 deaths per 100,000 live births (2017);
• 74 percent births were attended by skilled health personnel during 2014-2019;
• and only seven percent of girls and women could make a decision on sexual and reproductive health and rights during 2007-2018 period, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) World Population Dashboard Senegal.
• (Data to be read in context with technical notes and sources in the link above)

“Senegal can only embark on the path of development when young people and women are in good health, educated, well trained and equipped to seize development opportunities. Creating these conditions is a social, economic and political necessity,” UNFPA’s assistant representative in Senegal, Moussa Faye, told IPS.

Fifteen years after Senegal passed the 2005 Reproductive Health Law, the decrees to implement it have still not been ratified. The Deliver for Good Senegal campaign’s advocacy objective for 2020 is to get the decree on Family Planning enacted. It is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver, a global advocacy organisation that champions gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women.

The Deliver for Good Senegal campaign’s steering committee, convened by RSJ and Energy 4 Impact, is working with other civil society organisations and ministers to roll out a roadmap to push the competent authority to sign the decree.

“The campaign is advocating at national and local level to reduce maternal and child mortality rates and mobilise financial resources to strengthen the access of women and young people to family planning services and information, whatever their purchasing power and their geographical location. The implementing decree on family planning would qualitatively strengthen the health of mothers and children and help Senegal achieve the SDGs related to women’s health and rights,” Fatou Ndiaye Turpin, executive director of RSJ and co-leader of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, told IPS.

An implementing decree is also needed to describe the modus operandi to allow non-medical workers to provide a wide range of family planning services to vulnerable rural, disadvantaged urban, poor and young people, in particular through community-based distribution.

To ensure women in disadvantaged areas have access to family planning services, there is a growing emphasis on primary health care. For example, the community-based health worker programme, the Bajenu Gox Initiative (which means paternal aunt or godmother in Wolof) to train women to be leaders in reproductive health. Local bajenu gox are enlisted by the government to provide support to women during prenatal, delivery and postpartum periods, and advice on caring for children under five years old in areas where trained medical professionals are not available. 

While family planning policies have been progressive, Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit’s Director, Marie Ba told IPS, “One needs to balance this progress with the prevalent socio-cultural barriers, misconceptions and misinformation around contraception, reproductive rights and health, relatively high unmet contraceptive needs, inequality in terms of gender and social norms, especially in rural areas. For example, only 20 percent of married women aged 15 to 19 report making decisions alone or jointly with their husbands regarding their own health care.”

Many women still need to get permission from their husband or mothers-in-law to use a contraceptive and many young girls are unsure whether they are allowed to use contraceptives before they turn 18. According to UNFPA, the contraceptive prevalence rate for all women aged between 15 and 49 using any method of birth control was 22 percent (2020); and and 16 percent of all women aged between 15 and 49 had their need for family planning unmet (2020). 

Family planning options – birth control pills, implants, intrauterine devices, easy-to-use self-injectable contraception – are now becoming more readily available in regional health posts.

“However, three challenges remain. Stockouts at national and regional level – the stockout rate for injectables varies between 25 and 45 percent in key cities; the same is true for implants, where stockouts can reach 80 percent in the public sector. Secondly, problems with the supply of products to service delivery points. Thirdly, product quality control which remains variable and insufficient,” Turpin told IPS.

Child marriage is still prevalent. As many as 29 percent girls were married by age 18, according to UNFPA. It exposes girls to harmful consequences – sexual and psychological abuse and violence; early pregnancy, which has the risk of medical complications and even death.

Abortion is illegal in Senegal except when three doctors agree that the procedure is required to save a mother’s life.  It is also prohibited in cases of rape or incest. These strict abortion laws have forced many young women to resort to unsafe, illegal abortion services, which often put their health and lives at risk. The adolescent birth rate for girls aged 15 to 19 years was 78 per 1,000 births, according to UNFPA. 

“Abortion is the fifth-leading cause of maternal death in Senegal. It strongly influences maternal mortality with eight percent of maternal deaths linked to unsafe abortions and 50 percent of the reasons for emergency admission to referral maternities,” Turpin told IPS.

The COVID-19 restrictions have led to closure of many reproductive health and family planning services, disruption in supply chains of contraceptives, which are posing a significant risk to women and girls’ health.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)

The recent explosion of private finance has nursed the hope, dream or illusion that it can be mobilized for the public good, e.g., to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, associated with Agenda 2030. However, such hopes ignore how changes in financial investing have deeply transformed corporations, national economies and prospects for the world economy and social progress.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Private finance boom
Private capital has exploded with financial deregulation from the late 20th century. Global finance increased 53% from 2000 to 2010, reaching some US$600 trillion (ten times annual world output), and was projected to reach US$900 trillion by the end of this year.

In its 2018 annual report, Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) – an investor initiative in partnership with UN offices – estimated that investors with over US$80 trillion in combined assets had committed to integrate ‘environmental, social and governance’ (ESG) criteria into their investment decisions.

According to the IMF, between US$3 trillion and US$31 trillion in assets are managed by ESG funds, depending on the definition used. It also notes problems in evaluating ESG criteria, such as reducing emissions or raising labour standards, and hence fears ‘greenwashing’ financial investments with false claims of ESG compliance.

From active to passive investing
From 2006 to 2018, almost US$3,200 billion left actively managed equity funds globally, while over US$3,100 billion has gone into equity index funds, constituting “an unprecedented money mass-migration from active to passive funds”. The shift has given index providers considerable private authority and influence in global capital markets.

Mutual index funds have been available since the late 1970s, while the first exchange traded funds (ETFs) were launched in the early 1990s. The growth of passive or index funds has greatly accelerated in the decade since the global financial crisis (GFC).

Anis Chowdhury

Attracted by the much lower fees charged, passive funds had US$11.4 trillion globally by November 2019, five times more than in 2007. Jan Fichtner, Eelke Heemskerk and Johannes Petry discuss some implications of this money mass-migration to index funds for corporate governance, market competition and investment flows.

Wall Street’s new titans
Consequently, corporate ownership is increasingly concentrated and largely held by the ‘big three’ passive asset managers: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, already the largest owners of US corporations. In 2019, actively managed US funds were overtaken by passive funds. Some estimate that index funds will have over half the US capital market by 2024.

Describing passive investors as the true “titans of Wall Street”, Jill Fisch, Assaf Hamdani and Steven Solomon fear that passive investing’s rise raises new concerns about conflicts of interest due to ownership concentration and common ownership of rival firms, thus undermining competition.

In traditional investment funds, managers decide how and where to invest, e.g., which shares to buy. Instead of depending on fund managers, passive funds track selected constructed indices. This is increasingly done algorithmically, instead of reflecting or responding to price and other movements.

Index providers set standards
When investors invest via index funds, their decisions are effectively shaped by the indices the passive funds track. The three most influential index providers are the MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International), the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) Russell and the S&P (Standard and Poor) Dow Jones.

The main emerging markets indices have tremendous influence, particularly the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which includes large and medium-sized companies in 26 countries, including China, India and Mexico. Thus, MSCI effectively sets criteria for countries aspiring to qualify as emerging markets, requiring financial authorities to ensure free access to and exit from national stock markets for foreign investors.

Deciding what to include in indices is not just an objective or technical matter, but inherently political and subjectively discretionary, typically benefiting some over others. Setting criteria for inclusion thus endows index providers with the authority and power to greatly influence regulation and policies.

Indices influence capital flows
In the past, index providers only supplied information to financial markets. But with passive funds, index providers have considerably more authority in markets. With trillions of dollars invested worldwide, capital has been reallocated by index providers’ decisions, as innocuous as they may seem.

These often influence international capital flows much more than economic fundamentals. Massive portfolio investments typically flow into the financial markets of countries chosen for inclusion.

When China was added to key emerging market indices in 2018, reportedly after heavy lobbying, it was expected to attract portfolio capital inflows of up to US$400 billion.

Adding Saudi Arabia to the benchmark MSCI emerging markets index in 2018 was expected to bring up to US$40 billion into its stock market. This did not materialize, perhaps due to the Jamal Khashoggi murder scandal, treated by financial markets as a ‘reputational risk’.

Thus, the big three’s indices greatly influence global investment flows. Meanwhile, investors may unwittingly acquire controversial or problematic investments, either by investing in index funds, or by choosing options heavily invested in such funds.

Divesting for progress?
Clearly, the three biggest passive fund managers and three major index providers greatly influence portfolio investment choices, while the world remains largely oblivious of their biases, influence and impacts, wishfully hoping for the best possible outcomes.

BlackRock, the world’s largest investor, with US$7 trillion in funds under its management, gained approving attention by announcing divestment of its actively managed funds from firms making more than a quarter of their revenue from coal.

But, as most BlackRock funds passively track indices, these continue to invest in coal until such stocks are removed from the indices. Moreover, its CEO has made clear that it will continue to invest in controversial assets, including coal.

Following BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have also announced they will increase their ESG funds. But ESG criteria are defined, interpreted and acted upon by the index providers, who use different, often problematic and non-transparent methods and data.

UN ‘blue-washing’?
ESG-rating firms disagree about which companies qualify, producing different sets of ostensibly ESG compliant stocks. Meanwhile, the IMF has not found any consistent differences in rates of return between the investment portfolios of ESG funds compared to conventional ones.

In August 2019, Vanguard dropped 29 stocks, noting they had been ‘erroneously’ classified as ESG by FTSE Russell. The rejected stocks included a gun manufacturer, a private prison operator, a restaurant and a pharmaceutical company.

Neither Vanguard nor FTSE Russell explained how and why the ‘error’ had happened, or the criteria involved. Most ESG indices include ‘industry leaders’ in almost all, including the most controversial sectors, only excluding the very worst offenders, which are quite subjectively, if not arbitrarily determined.

The Economist has noted, “Tobacco and alcohol companies feature near the top of many ESG rankings. And many funds marketed on their green credentials invest in Big Oil…the scoring systems sometimes measure the wrong things and rely on patchy, out-of-date figures. Only half the 1,700-odd companies in the MSCI world index reveal their carbon emissions”.

Unless there are more meaningful and effective means to ensure that private finance equitably and appropriately serves public needs, indiscriminate UN endorsement of ostensible efforts to mobilise private finance for sustainable development runs the serious risk of legitimising a massive fraudulent exercise in financial ‘blue-washing’, referring to the colour of the UN flag.

 

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Iêda de Oliveira sits at the wheel of one of the buses manufactured by the company she heads, Eletra, a pioneer in electric and hybrid buses in Brazil. She regrets that Brazil, due to a lack of adequate public policies, has lost the foreign market for buses and part of the domestic market to China, after having been a major exporter of buses to Latin America and other regions. CREDIT: Courtesy of Eletra

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

Electric transport, still limited in Latin America despite its urban benefits, could expand during the post-pandemic economic recovery, says Adalberto Maluf, president of the Brazilian Association of Electric Vehicles (ABVE).

If there are major investments in the necessary reactivation of the economy, they should form part of “a transition towards a green economy, in an agenda for the future,” as some European countries have already decided, said Maluf, who is also director in Brazil of the Chinese company BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of 100 percent electric vehicles.

“The transition to electric mobility powered by clean energy is beginning to generate growing interest among governments, and also among citizens,” notes the report “Electric Mobility 2019: Status and Opportunities for Regional Collaboration in Latin America and the Caribbean,” released in Spanish on Jul. 2 by UN Environment.

This is reflected in “the emergence of different civil society groups dedicated to this sector and made up of enthusiasts, early adopters and entrepreneurs,” according to the report, which points to a bigger push in public transport in the 20 countries studied.

In a region that has rapidly urbanised, with 80 percent of the population living in urban areas, and where the number of large cities has climbed, electric vehicles are improving the environment, transportation, quality of life and collective health, in addition to opening up new economic possibilities and generating jobs and technological innovations.

Transportation is responsible for 22 percent of the region’s emissions of short-lived climate pollutants and 15 percent of greenhouse gases, according to the report by the regional office of the agency also known as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The electrification of 100 percent of urban transport would prevent 180,117 deaths from 2019 to 2050 in Mexico City, 207,672 in Buenos Aires and 13,003 in Santiago, by eliminating the gases and particulate matter emitted by conventional vehicles, the report estimates.

The efficiency of electricity, far superior to that of fossil fuels in vehicles, offers a great economic advantage in the medium term.

A bus manufactured by BYD, a Chinese company founded in 1995 that soon became a powerhouse in the production of rechargeable batteries, electric buses and cars and solar panels. In Brazil, the firm set up shop in the city of Campinas, 100 kilometres from São Paulo. Its production is focused on clean energy and transport. CREDIT: Courtesy of BYD Brazil

The electric vehicle is more expensive because of the battery, which can cost nearly half of the total for a bus that can run 200 kilometers without recharging, said Iêda de Oliveira, executive director of Eletra, an electric bus company founded in 1988 in São Bernardo do Campo, near the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo.

The price difference, she told IPS from that city by phone, is recovered in a few years from savings in energy and maintenance, since electric motors have fewer parts and wear out less.

The economic advantages are accentuated in countries that, like Chile, depend on imported oil and therefore suffer the effects of international price swings and exchange rate fluctuations.

Chile stands out in the electrification of its urban transport. Santiago’s Metropolitan Mobility Network had 386 electric buses by the end of 2019. There will be almost 800 by the end of 2020. BYD (Build Your Dreams) is the largest supplier of electric buses in Chile, Maluf told IPS by telephone from São Paulo.

Furthermore, Chile has set a goal to electrify its entire public transport fleet and 40 percent of private transport by 2050, as part of the National Electromobility Strategy approved in 2016.

Colombia also stands out, with 483 electric buses in operation or on order in Bogotá and another 90 in the cities of Cali and Medellín as of late 2019. The national goal for 2030 is to have 600,000 electric vehicles of all types, according to the UNEP report.

Costa Rica and Panama are other countries in the region that have adopted national electric mobility plans. Argentina, Mexico and Paraguay are in the process of hammering out their own strategies.

The Dual Bus is an innovation developed by the Brazilian company Eletra, which has the advantage of adding more flexibility to the electric bus, which can operate in two configurations: as a hybrid or trolleybus (with electricity supplied by overhead wires) and hybrid or pure electric (battery). In the hybrid, the electricity is generated internally by a diesel engine. CREDIT: Courtesy of Eletra

Brazil, which could lead this process even as a manufacturer of electric vehicles, “lags behind” in electrification, said Maluf, adding that “BYD sold 1045 buses in Latin America in 2019, only four percent of which went to Brazil.”

“Chile is a case in point; it was already a major importer of conventional buses from the Brazilian industry,” said Oliveira, who leads ABVE’s Heavy Vehicle Group, in addition to heading Eletra. “Because of its shortsightedness, Brazil lost the Latin American market to China.

“We need a public policy on electric transport, which is not only an environmental but also an economic question, because Brazil could be a leader, given our large fleet, our national spare parts industry, and our national technology,” she said.

Clear goals, available financing, more favourable taxation that takes into account environmental, social and health benefits, incentives for local battery production and the expansion of recharging infrastructure should form part of this policy, Oliveira said.

Relying on imported batteries proved to be a trap. Suddenly they became outrageously expensive due to the 35 percent devaluation of the Brazilian currency, the real, this year, she pointed out.

In her view, the race for higher-capacity batteries is not the only path to take. Another option is to create more charging stations and use smaller batteries. “Expanding the infrastructure and using smaller batteries makes more sense, if you can charge them more often,” Oliveira said.

Adalberto Maluf, president of the Brazilian Association of Electric Vehicles and director of marketing and sustainability at BYD Brazil, a subsidiary of the Chinese company that is the world’s largest producer of electric buses and one of the largest makers of solar batteries and panels, hopes that public environmental and health awareness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will drive the electrification of transportation, especially urban transport. CREDIT: Courtesy of Adalberto Maluf

Maluf asserted that claiming there are not enough charging stations to argue against increasing the number of electric vehicles in Brazil is no longer justified. There are at least two electric vehicle routes, one on the country’s busiest highway between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and there are scattered charging stations elsewhere.

In addition, batteries can be charged quickly today, in half an hour, and in just 15 minutes 70 percent of capacity can be reached, he said.

Unfamiliarity with technology is the main factor curbing the spread of electromobility, Maluf said.

There is also resistance and political pressure from entrenched interests in the transportation industry, such as the traditional automotive industry, ethanol producers, fuel distributors and urban bus companies.

Nevertheless, electrification is progressing in different areas. Electric motorcycles, bicycles and scooters are mushrooming in cities that are adapting to new modalities.

Cargo transport is also gradually adhering to the new trend. The “retrofitting” of trucks to replace diesel engines with electric motors is Eletra’s new booming business.

In Brazil, hybrid electric vehicles predominate.

The UN Environment report recognises only 2045 electric vehicles registered in Brazil up to October 2019. But it only counts plug-in electric vehicles and excludes hybrids that run on an internal combustion engine and an electric motor that uses energy stored in batteries, which account for more than 90 percent of the electrified fleet.

ABVE statistics count a total of 30,092 electric vehicles registered from 2012 to June 2020. The number of vehicles registered rose threefold in 2019 from the previous year, to 11,858. Hybrids represented 95.4 percent of the total in 2018.

A diversity of options is the best route, given local needs and advantages, Oliveira argued. Adding a small battery to a trolleybus, for example, gives it flexibility that reduces the operating cost, she said.

New business models also promote solutions. Car-sharing, rental vehicles, electric generators, and associating energy distributors to urban transport are a few alternatives.

The Chilean model that separates the owner of the buses from their operators is interesting, as it attracts investment funds for the purchase of vehicles on a large scale, at lower costs, and facilitates solutions to conflicts, Maluf said.

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By Poul M. Thomsen
Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

Europe, like the rest of the world, faces an extended crisis. An element of social distancing—mandatory or voluntary—will be with us for as long as this pandemic persists. This, coupled with continued supply chain disruptions and other problems, is prolonging an already difficult situation. Based on updated IMF projections released last month, we now expect real GDP in the EU to contract by 9.3 percent in 2020 and then grow by 5.7 percent in 2021, returning to its 2019 level only in 2022. If an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID 19 is found, the recovery could be faster—but the opposite would hold true if there are large new waves of infection.

Some European countries will face a tougher recovery path than others. Several went into the crisis with entrenched product and labor market rigidities holding back their growth potential. Others depend on industries that are tightly integrated into cross-border supply chains, leaving them deeply vulnerable to disruptions of such links. In several large euro area countries, slow growth has coexisted with high public debt and limited fiscal space, constraining the ability to cushion shocks. Inescapably, sharply divergent initial conditions are likely to result in a highly uneven recovery across Europe.

Europe’s high-debt countries will bear the brunt of the social impact. For decades, several of these countries have seen their public debt burdens ratchet up in times of trouble and stabilize—but not fall—in good times. The stepwise pattern of rising debt speaks to a weak record of addressing structural deficiencies, whether due to institutional rigidity or insufficient political will. Results have included high unemployment and emigration, especially among the youth, and a trend toward less-progressive taxation—but pensions have largely been protected. COVID 19—a disease that calls for protection of the elderly but leaves the young shouldering much of the cost—complicates an already difficult demographic situation.

Fiscal policies for a transforming Europe

Against such backdrops, policies—especially national fiscal policies—need to start being repositioned for a longer crisis. At the outset of the pandemic, lockdowns were a vital tool to save lives. To help economic capacity survive a short but extreme disruption and allow activity to promptly bounce back afterwards, fiscal policies were eased sharply. Months later, fiscal support remains as vital as at the onset. But, as dislocations persist, resources will become stretched. Now is the time, therefore, to think ahead and reassess how best to use limited fiscal space without unduly burdening future taxpayers. The longer the slump, the greater will be the need to carefully target support for firms and households in the high-debt countries.

Policymakers must also recognize that the post-crisis economy may look very different from the economy of 2019. It is becoming clear that we are in the throes of—and that we need—permanent change. COVID 19 has reminded us that nature still reigns supreme, that environmental degradation must stop, and that investing in resilience is good policy. Moreover, prudence requires us to consider that this pandemic could last several years, and may well be followed by future pandemics. Europe must strive for a new, greener economy, one that can operate efficiently even with prolonged social distancing. It may take many years to complete, but transformation needs to be nurtured starting now. We cannot just return to the way things were before.

Change is already underway, with winners and losers. Digitalization has emerged as a key bulwark of resilience, yet also as a divide. Across Europe and beyond, countless employees are adapting to remote work, students to remote learning, doctors and patients to telemedicine, and firms to internet-based sales and door-to-door delivery. Countless others, however, are shut out. Many contact-intensive activities—hospitality, travel, and more—could take years to recover. Some outputs—take coal-fired power or carbon-emitting vehicles—may slip into terminal decline. Again, some countries will be hit harder than others, and inequalities could grow both across and within national borders. We may not yet be able to fully envision the new normal, but the transition has begun.

Public funds must be used to steer the needed resource reallocation while protecting the most vulnerable. In labor and product markets, the focus should be on flexibility, including by ensuring that short-time work schemes that tie workers to their employers are kept temporary. In the corporate sector, support programs must embed incentives that encourage uptake by firms with strong business plans and discourage uptake by firms on a path to failure. As liquidity needs become solvency needs, state aid may need to include equity injections—various European initiatives are already moving this way. Clarity on carbon pricing will also be important to set the stage for a climate-friendly recovery of private investment. Finally, public investment can and should take the lead, focusing on greening, digitalization, and other aspects of resilience.

Given divergent national conditions, there is a strong case for joint EU fiscal action. Supporting the recovery will continue to require substantial fiscal resources. By focusing EU funds on countries hardest hit by the pandemic or with less fiscal space, lower income levels, and greater environmental damage, the “Next Generation EU” package stands to improve outcomes for the single market as a whole. To do so, however, it is vital that it serve as a catalyst and not a substitute for structural reforms and prudent fiscal policies. With fundamental limits to the size of any joint EU assistance, the responsibility for ensuring that debt burdens are sustainable will remain squarely at the national level. Even with low borrowing costs, all countries will need to partner upfront stimulus provision with credible medium-term policy plans.

Preserving financial stability and the supply of credit

Through the acute crisis phase and beyond, monetary policy will need to remain strongly accommodative. With crisis-related demand shortfalls further weakening the inflation outlook, central banks must continue to deliver substantial stimulus and ensure that financial markets remain liquid. In practice, this means policy rates must remain at extraordinarily low levels for now, supported by net asset purchases that implicitly look to bond spreads and issuance volumes. Once the period of stress has passed, however, there will be a need for introspection—reflecting on the many years of missed inflation objectives, on how to properly demarcate monetary policy from fiscal policy, on the global decline in equilibrium real interest rates as savings outpace investment, on the choice of monetary instruments, and more. The European Central Bank’s strategic review remains as essential as ever.

Finally, another key priority in the coming period will be to ensure an uninterrupted supply of bank credit to the economy. History has taught us that, when efficient savings allocation breaks down, crises tend to last longer. For now, most European banks have the capital and liquidity they need to expand credit. But, as this crisis wears on, there will be many defaults, and these could erode bank buffers and lending capacity. Potentially, therefore, one feedback loop of this crisis may simply be time: the longer the pandemic, the greater the credit disruption, and the slower the post-pandemic recovery. It is vital that supervisors prepare banks for the coming test. Robust lending standards must be upheld, losses provisioned for fully and transparently, and restructurings of bad assets pursued actively to preserve value. In some cases, bank recapitalization may prove necessary.

A calibrated policy mix

With many difficult challenges lying in wait, managing this vast crisis will call for an increasingly calibrated approach going forward. The initial emphasis on opening the fiscal and monetary floodgates had its place. As time passes, however, policymakers must reflect also on longer-term considerations. Even as low borrowing costs soften some of the tradeoffs, responsible policymaking will still need to weigh immediate imperatives against future burdens on young taxpayers and new generations. Difficult reforms must be pursued with renewed determination.

The overarching policy goals are not one, but two: to save lives now, and to ensure that Europe emerges with a greener and safer economy for the long run, one where future generations can thrive equitably.

This article is from International Monetary Fund

 

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In Senegal, although gender parity has been achieved in favour of girls in primary education, the dropout rate at secondary school among female learners is high and few older girls remain at school and complete their education. Credit: Mikaila Issa/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

When Fatima* became pregnant in the middle of the school year and dropped out, she was disowned by her parents. Hers is a story that could have ended as another statistic of dropout rates among female learners in Senegal.

But Fatoumata Fall, a member of the Siggil Jiguen Network, an NGO that promotes and protects women’s rights in Senegal, heard about Fatima’s story from health officers at the Keur Massar Health Post. She approached municipal authorities for assistance.

Moustapha Mbengue, the mayor of the Keur Massar Municipality, offered moral and financial support for Fatima, enabling her to receive prenatal care. And the combined efforts of Fall and Mbengue also convinced Fatima’s parents to welcome their daughter back home. Mbengue also undertook to assist Fatima in continuing with her studies after childbirth.

It was a happy ending for Fatima.

Though many other girls in the West African nation face different realities.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), although gender parity has been achieved in favour of girls in primary education, where for every 100 boys enrolled, there are about 104 girls, the dropout rate at secondary school among female learners is high.

“Dropping out of school is significantly common not only in the transition from primary to secondary but also within secondary education,” observed UNESCO in its 2011/12 Global Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education fact sheet.

Alongside economic challenges, UNESCO mentions teenage pregnancy and early marriage as some of the reasons why girls do not remain at school and complete their education.

Fatou Gueye Seck, from the Coalition of Organisations in Energy for the Defence of Public Education (COSYDEP Senegal), told IPS the 2016 Multidimensional Review attributes the limited access to education for women and girls to early marriage, among other reasons.

Quoting a 2017 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, Seck said 25 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 were married in 2014, compared to 4.6 percent of boys in the same age group.

• According to the U.N.Population Fund’s (UNFPA) report, “Against My Will: State of World Population 2020”, states the adolescent birth rate of girls aged 15 to 19 is 78 per 1,000 births.

“In Senegal, the gender index is still against girls,” Seck told IPS.

As a result, said Seck, the scale of illiteracy, especially among women in rural Senegal, is also symptomatic of the poor access to education. According to UNESCO, Senegal’s literacy rate for the population aged 15 years and above is 64.81 percent for males and 39.8 percent for females.

“This phenomenon remains very recurrent among women in rural areas where only 25.9 percent of them are literate,” Seck said.

Seck said a 2014 regional analysis of the phenomenon shows that the regions of Ziguinchor (62.3 percent) and Dakar (61.9 percent) have the best literacy rates. In contrast, the regions of Matam (24.9 percent), Tambacounda (26.6 percent), Diourbel (29.8 percent) and Kolda (33.1 percent) stand out with the lowest rates.

Quoting an OECD report, Seck said since 2016, enrolments in Functional Literacy Centres, which give dropouts a second chance at learning, have fallen by more than half. The number of learners – 92.5 percent of whom were women – dropped from 34,373 to 15,435.

The OECD attributed this underperformance to the inadequacy of the overall amount of funding towards the National Ministry of Education, Illiterate Youth and Adult Basic Education, which is below 1 percent of public spending on national education.

“In this regard, the 2007 Bamako conference [African Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy] on the financing of non-formal education recommended that States increase this ratio to 3 percent,” said Seck.

Seck is also the president of the education theme of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, an evidence-based advocacy and communication platform that promotes the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women.

Powered by Women Deliver and various partners, part of the campaign’s activities are to help the country achieve Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals – access to quality education for all. The campaign is calling for the increased funding for school-based reproductive health education to keep young people in school. 

According to Seck, since the launch of the Deliver for Good campaign, the authorities of targeted municipalities have been successful in addressing issues related to education and sexual and reproductive health.

“As an example, [Mbengue] has been proclaimed ‘Mayor Champion of Education’ by his peers. In fact, the mayor made a commitment to increase the budget allocated for the reproductive health of adolescents and young people and declared himself a spokesperson for this cause to his fellow deputies of the National Assembly,” she said.

Seck stressed the important role of women in the family and in society, in general, adding that the more educated she is, the more crucial her place is in the economic and social development of the community. She said a society in which the percentage of educated women is high has more opportunities to access knowledge, economic, health and cultural assets than one made up mainly of illiterate women.

“Within the family, the role of the mother in the educational success of children in the family has been the subject of numerous studies, which have shown that children whose mother has a certain level of education are more likely to have successful studies than those whose mother is illiterate,” she said. 

She said Senegal’s 10-year Education and Training Programme, which put in place an important strategy and resources for achieving parity within the deadlines of the Education For All goal, are beginning to pay off.

“Indicators have started to evolve in favour of girls even if the gains must be maintained in view of the cases of early pregnancies which constitute a real obstacle to the development of girls,” Seck said.

 

*Not her real name

 

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Leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha in the Ciudad Barrios prison in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, in 2012. Credit: Tomás Andréu/IPS

By External Source
GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

After decades of harrowing gang crime, homicides have plunged in El Salvador on the watch of the new president, Nayib Bukele. Faced with the growth of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs, previous governments resorted to “iron fist” policies to crush them, only to find these fuelled a backlash.

Since his 2019 election, President Bukele, a self-styled outsider, has won huge public support by presiding over a 60 per cent fall in murders. Yet prospects that this achievement will endure are in doubt. The collapsing homicide rate may stem not only from the government’s public security policies, but also from the gangs’ own decision to curb bloodshed, possibly due to a fragile non-aggression deal with authorities.

Bukele still enjoys remarkable popularity and has the capital to make progress on these fronts. Some of his policies thus far provide a good base for an approach that sustainably reduces the horrific bloodshed of El Salvador’s recent past. But short-term political calculations and an unnecessarily combative stance toward rivals risk distracting him and undercutting such an approach

In addition, Bukele’s confrontational style, which has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, risks entangling his security reforms in political battles. Broadly backed efforts to support affected communities, assist members wishing to leave gangs and encourage local peacebuilding are more likely to end definitively El Salvador’s cycle of violence.

The Bukele administration argues that the plummeting murder rate – with daily killings now standing at their lowest rate since the end of the country’s civil war (1980-1992) – represents the crowning achievement of a new security strategy. In theory, the government’s Territorial Control Plan couples robust law enforcement with violence prevention schemes.

It has reinforced joint police and military patrols in 22 municipalities suffering high rates of crime, while toughening confinement measures in jails in a bid to sever communications between inmates and the outside world. At the same time, the government’s goal of building dozens of “cubes” – glass-walled recreational and education centres – represents the flagship effort to brighten the lives of young people growing up under gang dominion and prevent recruitment into their ranks.

The precise reasons for the nationwide drop in homicides are hard to pin down. Statistical studies show that the Territorial Control Plan is most likely not the sole cause; specific local falls in murder rates do not correspond precisely to those areas where the plan has been implemented. Instead, in large part, gangs appear to have themselves decided to scale back their use of lethal violence.

Unassailable control over communities, declining gang rivalry and increasingly autonomous gang leadership outside jails may explain this decision more than the Territorial Control Plan. Yet other government policies might have played a role: numerous analysts and local activists ascribe the gangs’ move to an informal understanding between them and the authorities, who have allegedly ordered security forces to dial back their clashes with these groups.

A sudden killing spree attributed to MS-13 in April illustrated just how precarious the gangs’ commitment to reducing violence can be. Bukele’s reaction to the attacks, which left over 80 dead in a five-day span, reaffirmed his inclination to adopt punitive measures to force gangs into submission.

Images shared around the world from inside El Salvador’s high-security jails revealed inmates huddled together or forced into shared cells without any access to daylight. Although murder rates have since fallen again, the risk remains that gangs, now short of extortion income due to lockdown measures and indignant at the government’s crackdown, will once again resort to extreme violence.

 

Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, addresses the UN General Assembly’s seventy-fourth session – 26 September 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

Bukele’s political struggles reinforce the danger that improvements in security will be knocked off course. Some of the president’s moves to subdue his opponents and concentrate power in his hands, including the military occupation of the opposition-held Legislative Assembly in February and repeated fights over the legality of measures adopted during the COVID-19 emergency, have sparked outcry, particularly from foreign powers and civil society organisations.

His shows of strength toward the two parties that held a stranglehold on power in El Salvador for 27 years, as well as toward state and judicial institutions, serve his goal of winning a parliamentary majority in 2021. But by turning public security and health policy into a stick with which to beat his adversaries, the president could deprive his reforms of the wide political support they need to be effective and sustainable. Should violence resurge, he might also be tempted to resort to coercive policing in a bid for quick results, despite ample evidence from the tenure of previous governments that such measures usually backfire.

At a time when the national lockdown is starting to taper off, the government should strive to use its high levels of support to ensure that violence reduction becomes a lasting achievement. It should build on its existing programs and officials’ extensive networks of local contacts to ensure the needs of violence-affected communities are defined and addressed so as to prevent recruitment of vulnerable young people into gangs.

Callous new prison rules should be scaled back, or at least combined with a far greater effort to design rehabilitation schemes for jailed gang members. Security forces, for their part, should continue where possible to reduce their clashes with gangs and young people living in poor communities, and instead focus resources on capturing and prosecuting the most dangerous offenders.

Most importantly, the government could be in a unique position within the next year to decide whether or not to re-engage the gangs in dialogue. The failure of the gang truce in 2012-2013, which prompted an unprecedented spike in homicides after it fell apart, shows the risks of negotiating with hardened criminal outfits before a hostile public.

Should the gangs keep murder rates at current lows, however, and cooperate with authorities in ensuring health and humanitarian access to communities throughout the pandemic, then the government could seek to open talks. These might aim at establishing a process designed to address the deep-seated grievances that fuel El Salvador’s gang-related violence in exchange for members handing over their weapons.

Local initiatives to bring peace and development to marginalised communities could stand at the heart of these efforts. They could help build the trust required to embark on a national dialogue, which in turn should look to promote reforms that can eventually lead to the gangs’ disarmament and peaceful reintegration into society.

Bukele still enjoys remarkable popularity and has the capital to make progress on these fronts. Some of his policies thus far provide a good base for an approach that sustainably reduces the horrific bloodshed of El Salvador’s recent past. But short-term political calculations and an unnecessarily combative stance toward rivals risk distracting him and undercutting such an approach. Foreign donors and domestic political forces should urge him not to waste a rare opportunity to calm El Salvador’s troubled streets.

 

This article is an executive summary, the full original report produced by the Crisis Group can be found here: Miracle or Mirage? Gangs and Plunging Violence in El Salvador 

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By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

A young and dynamic digital platform, named Fuzia, has attracted millions of women social media followers and 100,000 active global users with its eclectic mix of content. The platform showcases women’s talent and provides a support network.

Riya Sinha, 19 has been an activist for women since her early teens. Credit: Fuzia

Fuzia (https://www.fuzia.com/) was the brainchild of 19-year-old Riya Sinha and co-founder and director Shraddha Varma, 31. They developed their signature brand, “Happiness is Fuzia”, from their shared experiences of discriminatory practices that women and girls experience throughout the world.

“As I have worked on Fuzia, I think my background played a big part in forming my vision for Fuzia. From a young age, I have had the privilege to be able to travel to India and all around the world, experiencing different cultures and types of people. It helped me to create an awareness of my privilege and how life differed in many parts of the world,” Sinha said in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).

The sisterhood is rooted in the fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which aims to end all forms of discrimination, violence, harmful practices for women. Fuzia seeks to achieve the goal in which enabling technology, especially information and communication, is used to promote women empowerment.

What makes this community different is its belief in yet-to-become-successful women. The founders translate this belief by giving them a platform to showcase their talents. Young photographers, artists, creative and opinion writers, bloggers, and crafters log on and place their bright and distinctive works on the Fuzia website. The website is a conduit to robust debates on significant issues like Black Lives Matter with moving artistic tributes to, for example, a nurse in the time of Covid-19 competing for the audiences’ attention.

Fuziaite of the Week celebrates the most compelling content of that week. Recently, that honor went to a 59-year-old teacher and writer who blogs about her life experiences on the site. She, like many, finds this platform allows her distinctive and exciting voice to shine in a world where it could typically be blurred out.

Shraddha Verma, 31 sees Fuzia as an inclusive platform where women can interact in a non-judgmental and safe space. Credit: Fuzia

Fuzia has been a lifeline for many during the COVID-19 pandemic supporting, empowering, and voicing concerns over domestic violence, coping mechanisms, work-from-home dos and dont’s, and depression and anxiety management. The website and social media platform focused on mental health, physical well-being, and freedom of expression.

Fuzia also fosters women empowerment in the form of job hunting, linking up applicants with proper channels. It arranges periodic competitions, writing and art contests, technology workshops and forums, and live talks from women leaders. It gives women of color a step-up on their career tracks. One success story, Humaira Ferdous from Bangladesh, told IPS about how publishing her work on Fuzia led to her employment within the organization.

“I believe that the more you praise and celebrate life, the more there is in life to celebrate. Fuzia helped me celebrate life to the fullest. I work here as a Graphic Designer now, but it feels like only yesterday when I couldn’t even think of being on this pedestal,” Ferdous says.

Sinha, who has been an activist since her early teens, says she could notice the sexism and inequalities that women faced in their communities where their free will and even thought processes are governed and guarded. Women and young girls from many South Asian countries at times feel suffocated and have no scope to express their voices, she says.

As young entrepreneurs, both Sinha and Varma sought out a solution. They came up with a concept that harnessed the accessibility of the internet, social media, and smartphones and connected the dots with technology.

Surveys show that 90% of teens aged 13-17 use social media. About 75% report having at least one active social media profile, and 51% report visiting a social media site at least daily. Two-thirds of teens have their own mobile devices with internet capabilities. Nowadays, for most countries, even from remote areas, getting access to the internet and social media is considered standard practice.

These women now have an online platform that is inherently inclusive and welcoming. On Fuzia, anyone can post her views, opinion, creative works, and voices safely and securely. The platform allows women to express themselves freely to a global audience in a judgment-free zone. The users are mainly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and much of its content represents women of South Asian descent.

Fuzia maintains an active presence over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, website, and more with subcategories and pages. Initially, in the first year, they gathered more than 1 million supporters, and since then, growth traffic has increased by up to 35-45% each month.

There are no age brackets or geographical location barriers in Fuzia. Anyone can become a user and get their voices heard. Here the users come from various professions, age brackets, and backgrounds. Each contributes, engages, and helps each other as a friend and fellow user. A massive chain of skillful contributors, professionals, and industry movers and shakers are included in an engaging and unified platform. Fuzia empowers women daily by blurring social classes and status—it’s a platform where everyone is a friend and a sister within a massive network.

The authentic and remarkable way Fuzia stands in solidarity with women is key to its success. It provides work-life balance write-ups, has workshops for job readiness in which the values of mutual respect, work ethic, and environmental consciousness are emphasized.

Other platforms include mental health workshops, book clubs, and new releases of books and movies, discussions on current political and global issues, including societal norms, and much more.

Fuzia also has extended its wings to helping and uplifting people regardless of their color and gender. The website supports the LGBTQ community and provides a safe space for them to voice their concerns and seek help. It welcomes people with different gender identities, including male, female, transgender, gender-neutral, non-binary, agender, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender, and all, none or a combination of these.

Varma says Fuzia aims to challenge the mindset which forces women into subservient roles and mentions, “I have been brought up in a society where I have noticed a lot of stereotypical mindsets about a woman- how a woman should be, or what she should do. Societal and cultural restrictions have always led to women taking a backseat in everything, and in general, they have lacked the deserved opportunities. And, I think that Fuzia can help by empowering women to share their stories and stand together, giving them confidence in their voice and skill, and help in economic, social, and political liberation and understanding.”

It can be expected that this platform will spark a change in the young people’s mindsets as it is vital to bring people together on a common platform where they could realize their true potential, where they could start believing in themselves, and where they’re accepted.

 

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Securing the future of India’s fisheries both during COVID-19 and beyond, requires a deep dive into understanding their past, present, and possible future. | Picture courtesy: Arjun Swaminathan

By Mahima Jaini
NEW DELHI, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

Fisheries and aquaculture are an important source of food production, nutritional security, employment, and income in India. The fisheries sector is a direct source of livelihoods for more than 20 million fishers and fish farmers; contributes INR 1.75 trillion annually to the gross value added to India’s economy; and is a major export earner, with fish being one of the most important agricultural commodities to be exported from India.

COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown has left India’s fisheries in the lurch. However, India is not alone. Severe economic losses to fisheries have been reported across the world, and in all cases, the damage has been greatest for export-driven fisheries with complex supply chains. The virus may have been the trigger, but India’s barrel was already loaded with decades of well-intentioned but ill-fated policies, unregulated growth, and market instabilities. Securing the future of India’s fisheries both during COVID-19 and beyond, requires a deep dive into understanding their past, present, and possible future.

 

The past: Overcapacity of Indian fisheries

In 2011, labour-intensive trawl fisheries dominated more than half of India’s marine capture fish production, and it is likely that they continue to do so today. First introduced to India in the 1950s, trawling is a form of mechanised fishing that involves actively dragging a net through the water or on the seafloor, efficiently and indiscriminately catching everything in its path. Bumper catches, combined with government subsidies, fuel tax rebates, and growing competition lured a large proportion of India’s traditional fishers into motorising their traditional fleets. Between 1980 and 2014, the number of mechanised boats also grew from a mere 9,000 to more than 72,000.

COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown has left India’s fisheries in the lurch. However, India is not alone. Severe economic losses to fisheries have been reported across the world, and in all cases, the damage has been greatest for export-driven fisheries with complex supply chains

Prior to 1976, there were no marine spatial regulations, such as the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Territorial Waters, and other maritime zones. This meant that mechanised fishing boats could efficiently exploit nearshore waters, leading to a decline in catch that was evident for mackerel, bombay duck, ribbonfish, and non-penaeid prawns as early as the 1980s. However, the per boat decline in catch was easy to ignore, as technological advances improved the overall ability to find, catch, and preserve greater quantities of fish, which continued to bring in ever-increasing revenues and export earnings.

With declining target stocks, fishing operations started catching a greater proportion of ‘bycatch’ or non-target species. Today, trawler catches can consist of anywhere between 50-90 percent of bycatch, which includes other seafood items, as well as non-edible species or ‘trash fish‘, which are bought by fish meal and fish oil (FMFO) companies. FMFO products, rich in dead marine biodiversity, are supplied to aquaculture and poultry farms, and at times even make it into the diets of our pets.

In the wake of all this development lay India’s traditional fishing practices and associated local ecological knowledge systems. As a result of a decline in target species and rising conflicts with traditional fishers, in 1988, Kerala became the first state to impose an annual seasonal ban on mechanised fishing within its territorial waters. Soon, others followed suit and by 2001 all of India’s coastal states had a seasonal fishing ban in place. In 2015, the centre established a uniform annual fishing ban (61 days) on all mechanised and motorised vessels operating in India’s EEZ.

The ban helps protect fish stocks and relieves pressure off the marine environment. It also creates a social safeguard, by reducing competition for traditional fishers and protecting marginalised fish workers from over-exploitation.

 

The present: COVID-19 and the monsoon ban

From the wastage of 10,000 metric tons of freshly caught seafood to the stranding of more than 15,000 migrant fish workers, the global pandemic has taken away the livelihoods of the millions of people involved in India’s fish production. On April 10th, 2020—two-thirds of the way through the first lockdown—the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) finally exempted fisheries and aquaculture from lockdown restrictions. But it was a little too late; irreparable damage had already been done.

Reopened fisheries faced disrupted commodity chains, a significant lack of consumer demand, and a rising fear of being infected by COVID-19. Migrant fishers—who make up a large part of India’s mechanised fishing workforce—were in no condition to go fishing. They had been stranded for weeks in deplorable conditions, on boats or at crowded fishing harbours, and they only wished to go home.

While the annual mechanised fishing ban began on the east coast on April 15th, 2020, the remaining permitted fisheries still struggled to re-establish themselves. States such as Kerala and Maharashtra made innovative strides in bringing seafood back on the table, but the majority of fishing operations continue to lie suspended in the unending lockdown limbo.

On May 25th, just days after Cyclone Amphan created havoc on the east coast, the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairy (MFAHD) issued an order, opening east coast fisheries on June 1st (ahead of the regular June 15th start date) and modifying the west coast ban start date from June 1st to June 15th. This reduction in the annual fishing ban from 61 days to 47 days was claimed to be in lieu of the lost fishing days, but it most likely also helped absolve the government from any responsibilites related to financial compensation.

This amendment to the annual fishing ban is only for 2020, but it does little to solve current problems. The lifting of restrictions on mechanised and motorised fishing has exacerbated the struggles of India’s small-scale (non-mechanised) fishers and migrant workers—the most vulnerable sections of India’s diverse fishing population.

Not only has this increased competition and unnecessarily risked fishers’ lives during rough seas in order to supply to non-existent markets, it has also increased the likelihood of indebted fisher migrants being forced into bonded labour. These unfavourable developments have undermined the ban, the decades of negotiations that led to its extraordinary achievements, as well as the protection it offers to India’s dwindling marine resources.

 

The future: Self-sufficiency and sustainability

COVID-19 has made it clear that business as usual is no longer an option. It is a wake-up call to put people and the environment first. Fisheries are the only commercialised source of wild-caught protein, and they deserve our care and respect. For India, the current focus needs to be on the safety and well-being of fishers, the movement of fisher migrants back to home states, and financial and food relief support to fisher communities.

This lockdown is also an opportune time-out to reflect and revise the National Fisheries Policy Draft 2020 and the proposed 20,500 crore investment in marine fisheries, inland fisheries, and aquaculture. The new scheme does little to help fishers directly, mainly supports the wealthier and more powerful actors within the sector, and lacks provisions to improve the social capital of India’s fishing communities through education, healthcare, and environmental protection.

While the draft’s mention of hygienic fish handling and e-marketing strategies is a welcome plan for a post-COVID-19 world, the push to modernise our coastal villages, with new ‘state of the art’ harbours, landing centres, and fish markets will do little good without parallel improvements in India’s fisheries monitoring and management capacities.

The scheme also focuses on increasing inland and culture fish production, proposes the infusion of new technologies, and plans to promote fisheries development in new areas (including Ladakh!) for the “productive utilisation of waste land and water”. Setting aside the ethical, social, and ecological implications of what one considers as waste land or water, aquaculture operations often come with a long list of risks (for example, invasive species, water pollution, and disease).

One can draw parallels with the limited consideration here to the policies that promoted the mechanisation (and consequent exploitation) of India’s marine fisheries in the 1950s. COVID-19 is a game changer, and mere ‘growth’ and ‘productivity’ may no longer be reliable estimates of progress. A reimagining that emphasises health and well-being for humans and the environment is required.

Focusing on local and sustainable small-scale fisheries (SSF) would be one such option. SSFs tend to be more species-selective, support a lower catch volume, and use traditional fishing techniques that are COVID-19 safe as they involve fewer people, often land on beaches, and support a smaller consumer base. The world over, only those fishing businesses that supply locally or have short and simple commodity chains are surviving this new era. Supporting local demand rather than investing in foreign export-based fisheries will be a step in the right direction.

 

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

The post India’s Fisheries: Past, Present, and Future appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Kisa Scholars receive their own planners at the conclusion of their “Creating a Timetable” lesson. Credit: AfricAid

By Jessica Love
DENVER, Colorado, Jul 13 2020 (IPS)

It’s no secret that under pandemic lockdown for so many months, young people around the world have coped in tremendous ways. They have found new outlets for learning and creative channels for developing and using their skills.

Young people like Mary, who kept her school subjects fresh through a group study via WhatsApp; Florence, who filled her time with an online professional development course to help improve her resume and elevator pitch; and Gift, a young girl who taught herself to make ice cream via YouTube and now aspires to open her own business someday.

Young people are adaptable, resilient.

But those are learned skills, and not every young person has an opportunity to learn them. In Tanzania, it is common for girls to grow up being told that they are weak, unimportant, and destined to remain in the domestic sphere as mothers and wives.

Only 39 percent of girls in Tanzania are lucky enough to attend school. Those who do face significant financial, cultural, and environmental challenges that can undermine their ability to make the most of their secondary school opportunity, resulting too often in dropout.

If you grow up thinking you are weak and unimportant, those thoughts stay with you. We believe what we are told. Which is why “soft” skills, such as resilience, inner strength, confidence, internal motivation, and leadership are so essential – especially for a young woman. If a girl is taught to understand her worth, her potential, and given the skills and tools to pursue her dreams, she is unstoppable.

Soft skills are often not taught in the classroom, but they do need to be taught. In Tanzania, AfricAid supports a locally-led mentorship program for secondary school girls run by GLAMI (Girls Livelihood and Mentorship Initiative).

By pairing girls with university-educated Tanzanian women who once faced the same challenges as the girls they mentor, GLAMI bridges the gap between academics and a girl’s ability to live the future she chooses for herself. In her mentor, a girl sees her own possibility.

GLAMI Mentor Chonge takes a selfie with a group of Binti Shupavu Scholars after class one day. Credit: AfricAid

GLAMI’s four-year program for girls in lower secondary school is called Binti Shupavu, which translates to “courageous daughter” in Swahili. The program teaches study skills, personal leadership, health, and self-confidence with the goal of increasing graduation rates among vulnerable girls – which it does, by a remarkable 98 percent, compared to 69 percent national

For older students, the Kisa Project, which means “story” in Sawhili, is a leadership course that prepares young women in their last two years of secondary school to attend university and create positive social change in her community.

Only 3 percent of Tanzanian girls go on to tertiary education, but 97 percent of Kisa scholars do. Alumnae from both programs are more likely to complete school and advance their education, and less likely to become pregnant or be married at an early age. Graduates go on to start their own businesses and hold leadership positions in their communities.

Both programs build resilience, which has been shown to be a key factor in helping girls overcome challenges, leading to better emotional wellbeing and better outcomes later in life.

Resilience is what allows these scholars to bounce back from the myriad challenges they face – especially in times of COVID-19 – and to learn from these obstacles and become better prepared for future challenges.

Hard skills are important, too. Which is why GLAMI also provides girls with programming that helps them learn financial literacy, study skills, and time-management. Girls need resilience, confidence, and self-belief in addition to these practical skills if they are to succeed and become changemakers in their communities.

As UNESCO-UNEVOC leads the world in celebrating World Youth Skills Day on July 15, and highlighting the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship, let’s also highlight the need to give all of young people – especially girls – all of the skills they need to truly succeed.

Every girl has the potential to be a leader and every girl deserves to feel confident within and outside of the classroom. But first, she needs the right skills. And a mentor to show the way.

*Africaid works in close partnership with sister organization, GLAMI (Girls Livelihood and Mentorship Initiative), AfricAid also supports mentorship opportunities that help secondary school girls in Tanzania complete their education, develop into confident leaders, and transform their own lives and their communities

The post On World Youth Skills Day, Don’t Forget the Importance of Soft Skills appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The international community will be commemorating World Youth Skills Day on July 15.

 
Jessica Love is Executive Director, AfricAid*, which works to improve the standing of women in society through robust, locally-led mentorship initiatives that cultivate confidence, improve academic and health outcomes, and promote socially-responsible leadership skills.

The post On World Youth Skills Day, Don’t Forget the Importance of Soft Skills appeared first on Inter Press Service.