Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Credit: United Nations

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 1 2020 (IPS)

Seventy-five years ago, on July 16, the United States detonated the world’s first nuclear weapons test explosion in the New Mexican desert. Just three weeks later, U.S. Air Force B-29 bombers executed surprise atomic bomb attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing at least 214,000 people by the end of 1945, and injuring untold thousands more who died in the years afterward.

Since then, the world has suffered from a costly and deadly nuclear arms race fueled by more than 2,056 nuclear test explosions by at least eight states, more than half of which (1,030) were conducted by the United States.

But now, as a result of years of sustained citizen pressure and campaigning, congressional leadership, and scientific and diplomatic breakthroughs, nuclear testing is taboo.

The United States has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, when a bipartisan congressional majority mandated a nine-month testing moratorium. In 1996 the United States was the first to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which verifiably prohibits all nuclear test explosions of any yield.

Today, the CTBT has 184 signatories and almost universal support. But it has not formally entered into force due to the failure of the United States, China, and six other holdout states to ratify the pact.

As a result, the door to nuclear testing remains ajar, and now some White House officials and members of the Senate’s Dr. Strangelove Caucus are threatening to blow it wide open.

According to a May 22 article in The Washington Post, senior national security officials discussed the option of a demonstration nuclear blast at a May 15 interagency meeting.

A senior official told the Post that a “rapid test” by the United States could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as the Trump administration tries to pressure Russia and China to engage in talks on a new arms control agreement.

Making matters worse, in a party-line vote last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to authorize $10 million specifically for a nuclear test if ordered so by President Donald Trump.

Such a test could be conducted underground in just a few months at the former Nevada Test Site outside Las Vegas.

The idea of such a demonstration nuclear test blast is beyond reckless. In reality, the first U.S. nuclear test explosion in 28 years would do nothing to rein in Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals or improve the environment for negotiations.

Rather, it would raise tensions and probably trigger an outbreak of nuclear testing by other nuclear actors, leading to an all-out global arms race in which everyone would come out a loser.

Other nuclear-armed countries, such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea would have far more to gain from nuclear testing than would the United States. Over the course of the past 25 years, the U.S. nuclear weapons labs have spent billions to maintain the U.S. arsenal without nuclear explosive testing.

Other nuclear powers would undoubtedly seize the opportunity provided by a U.S. nuclear blast to engage in multiple explosive tests of their own, which could help them perfect new and more dangerous types of warheads.

Moves by the United States to prepare for or to resume nuclear testing would shred its already tattered reputation as a leader on nonproliferation and make a mockery of the State Department’s initiative for a multilateral dialogue to create a better environment for progress on nuclear disarmament. The United States would join North Korea, which is the only country to have conducted nuclear tests in this century, as a nuclear rogue state.

As Dr. Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, said on May 28, “[A]ctions or activities by any country that violate the international norm against nuclear testing, as underpinned by the CTBT, would constitute a grave challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime, as well as to global peace and security more broadly.”

Talk of renewing U.S. nuclear testing would dishonor the victims of the nuclear age. These include the millions of people who have died and suffered from illnesses directly related to the radioactive fallout from tests conducted in the United States, the islands of the Pacific, Australia, China, North Africa, Russia, and Kazakhstan, where the Soviet Union conducted 468 of its 715 nuclear tests.

Tragically, the downwinders affected by the first U.S. nuclear test, code-named “Trinity,” are still not even included in the U.S. Radiation Effects Compensation Act program, which is due to expire in 2022.

Congress must step in and slam the door shut on the idea of resuming nuclear testing, especially if its purpose is to threaten other countries. As Congress finalizes the annual defense authorization and energy appropriations bills, it can and must enact a prohibition on the use of funds for nuclear testing and enact safeguards that require affirmative House and Senate votes on any proposal for testing in the future.

Eventually, the Senate can and must also reconsider and ratify the CTBT itself. As a signatory, the United States is legally bound to comply with CTBT’s prohibition on testing, but has denied itself the benefits that will come with ratification and entry into force of the treaty.

Nuclear weapons test explosions are a dangerous vestige of a bygone era. We must not go back.

The post Nuclear Testing, Never Again appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) and publisher of the organization’s monthly journal, Arms Control Today

The post Nuclear Testing, Never Again appeared first on Inter Press Service.

UN Security Council in session. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2020 (IPS)

The ongoing battle between China and the United States is threatening to paralyze the most powerful body at the United Nations – the 15-member Security Council (UNSC)—which has virtually gone MIA (missing in action) on some of the key politically-sensitive issues of the day.

The Council has scrupulously avoided any resolutions on the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over 500,000 people worldwide, while it has remained silent on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a global cease-fire in war-ravaged countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Summing up the dysfunctional state of the UNSC, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We have not seen a statement (from the Security Council) on COVID 19. (And) we have not seen a statement on the Secretary-General’s call on global ceasefire”.

The warring parties in current conflicts are backed, directly or indirectly, by the five permanent members (P5) of the UNSC: the US, UK, France, Russia and China who are providing either political or military support– or both.

The big powers have a longstanding tradition of protecting their allies and their own national interests while covering up each other’s military sins — mostly on a reciprocal basis.

As the old saying goes, one Asian diplomat remarked, “the underlying principle is: You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.

The Security Council, Dujarric rightly pointed out, has primacy in the UN over issues of peace and security. “A strong statement from that body… a strong unified statement from that body supporting the Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire, I think, would go a long way in, hopefully, making a call for a ceasefire a reality”, he added.

Ian Williams, a veteran journalist who has covered the UN since the 1980s and currently president of the New York Foreign Press Association, told IPS it is past time for the grown-ups in the UN to get together to call out the UN P5, especially the recidivist veto-brandishers like the US, China and Russia.

Even the Trump administration is not impervious to rebuffs, he added.

“I seem to remember when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was going to veto a peacekeeping mission in Haiti over its recognition of Taiwan, until Ambassador Juan Somavia (of Chile) spoke to them on behalf of the LATAM members and warned of the consequences to their reputations. The consequences do not have to be critical – they can be cumulative since even the P5 need support.”

This Secretary General exceeds the quota on diplomacy, said Williams, author of “UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War.”

“Perhaps he should abandon any ambitions for a second term and, while he still has it, use his moral authority as custodian of the Charter to name and shame those who hold up crucial decision for national ego”.

“He has the pulpit: he should try preaching and rallying other members. Better to be a memorable one termer than a footnote two-termer!”, said Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).

The Trump administration broke ranks and blocked consideration of a proposed resolution on COVID19– because it did not specifically single out China by name. If such a resolution came up before the Council, the Chinese would obviously have vetoed it.

At the same time, no Security Council member would dare introduce a resolution supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, criticize the brutal suppression of Uighurs Muslims in China or condemn Israel for threatening to annex Palestinian territory.

As Guterres said during his press conference last week: “The problem is not that multilateralism is not up to the challenges the world faces. The problem is that today’s multilateralism lacks scale, ambition and teeth.”

And some of the instruments that do have teeth, he explained, “show little or no appetite to bite, as has recently been the case with the difficulties faced by the Security Council.”

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS since the founding of the United Nations, one or more of the five permanent members have periodically abused their veto power or threat thereof to block action on important matters.

“Calls for reforming the Security Council, such as requiring a super-majority of some kind rather than a consensus of the P5 have been proposed, but largely ignored, for almost as long,” he said.

Zunes pointed out that the current U.S. administration is particularly extreme in its efforts to thwart the will of international community, however.

For example, he argued, the strongly pro-Israel administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did not oppose a series of UNSC resolutions against Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem.

And the strongly pro-Israel Reagan administration supported the unanimous resolution opposing Syria’s annexation of the Golan Heights, yet the Trump administration is blocking any action in opposition to Israel’s plans of annexing large swathes of the occupied West Bank, declared Zunes

“When the United States is willing to block action on fighting a global pandemic, establishing a global cease fire, or opposing the flagrantly illegal annexation of territories seized by military force, we really are entering a new era of political extremism which is not only weakening the Security Council, but threatening the viability of the of the entire UN system and post-World War II international order,” said Zunes, who also serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Zunes also referred to United Nations Security Council Resolution 252 (1968), 267 (1969), and 298 (1971) on Jerusalem and resolution 497 (1981) on the Golan Heights.

In a statement released June 30, US Ambassador Kelly Craft lambasted China’s gross human rights abuses but stopped short of taking any action in the Security Council.

In a hard-hitting statement she said the world has known about the Chinese Communist Party’s gross and systematic abuses of human rights for decades, but too often turned a blind eye.

“I salute the United Nations special rapporteurs and human rights experts for courageously breaking this silence and standing up for the Chinese people.”

She said the June 26 statement issued by UN rapporteurs and experts reveals the true state of human rights in the People’s Republic of China. It outlines the CCP’s systematic repression of religious and ethnic minorities; the disappearance and detention of lawyers and human rights defenders; and the regime’s use of forced labor.

While the UNSC has taken no action on the proposed annexation of occupied territory by Israel, the outspoken UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet added her voice to the growing international and national calls on the Government of Israel not to proceed with its plans to illegally annex a swathe of occupied Palestinian territory, saying it would have a disastrous impact on human rights of Palestinians and across the region.

“Annexation is illegal. Period,” she said. “Any annexation. Whether it is 30 percent of the West Bank, or 5 percent. I urge Israel to listen to its own former senior officials and generals, as well as to the multitude of voices around the world, warning it not to proceed along this dangerous path.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The post Cover-up at the UN: You Scratch My Back & I’ll Scratch Yours appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A boat rests on the shores of Fiji. Credit: Unsplash / Nicolas Weldingh

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Developing countries of Asia and the Pacific are experiencing unbalanced tolls of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grim milestones in infections and deaths have left countless devastated. Yet, we must look at the economic and social impacts in small island developing States (SIDS), where setbacks are likely to undo years of development gains and push many people back into poverty.

Compared to other developing countries, SIDS in the Asia-Pacific region have done well in containing the spread of the virus. So far, available data indicates relatively few cases of infections, with 15 deaths in total in Maldives, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands. Yet while rapid border closures have contained the human cost of the virus, the economic and social impacts of the pandemic on SIDS will place the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) even farther out of their reach. This is worrying as SIDS in Asia and the Pacific were only on track to reach SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production and as they had in fact regressed in SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, a crucial driver of inclusive development and key to reaching all SDGs.

One reason SIDS’ economies are severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic is their dependence on tourism. Tourism earnings exceed 50 per cent of GDP in Maldives and Palau and comprised 30 per cent of GDP in Samoa and Vanuatu in 2018. Measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, including restricting entrance to countries and halting international travel, will have a profound impact on the development of these economies in 2020 and beyond, with estimates of international tourist arrivals declining globally by 60-80 per cent in 2020. The pandemic has particularly affected the cruise ship industry, which plays an important role in many SIDS.

The severe impact of COVID-19 on these economies is also a result of heavy reliance on fisheries, which represent a main source of SIDS’ marine wealth and bring much-needed public revenues. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis will jeopardize these income streams as a result of a slowdown in fisheries activity. However, it is important to note that the COVID-19 pandemic may also create a small window for stocks to recover if it leads to a global slowdown of the commercial fishing industry.

Despite the tourism and fisheries sectors’ susceptibility to shocks, ESCAP’s latest report, the Asia-Pacific Countries with Special Needs Development Report: Leveraging Ocean Resources for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, emphasizes fisheries and tourism will remain drivers of sustainable development in small island developing States of Asia and the Pacific. They are among the most important sectors in their contribution to output and their importance for livelihoods. In the short term, addressing the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic must take priority, but the long-term global context will usher in an era supportive of tourism development in Asia-Pacific SIDS. This is due to an increasing demand from the emerging middle class of developing Asia and the ageing society in the developed countries on the Pacific Rim.

As part of post COVID-19 recovery, new foundations for sustainable tourism and fisheries in Asia-Pacific SIDS must be built. These sectors must not only have extensive links to local communities and economies, but also be resilient to external shocks. Enhancing economic resilience must focus on building both the necessary physical infrastructure and creating institutional response mechanisms. For example, a ‘green tax’ for tourists can generate revenues for environmental protection. Such fees serve as an additional benefit for local populations and regulate the impact of tourism on SIDS’ fragile natural environment. SIDS may consider innovative financing instruments like blue bonds and and debt for conservation swaps to expand their fiscal space. Open data sharing, and the collection, harmonization and use of fisheries data can be strengthened for integrated and nuanced analysis on the state of fish stocks.

Given the limited capacity of the health-care systems of many Asia-Pacific SIDS, shutting down access to many of these economies was a wise and necessary short-term policy choice. Opening ‘travel bubbles’ with countries where the virus has been brought under control is now important. In the longer term, the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development must take priority. This entails ensuring sustainable use of existing ocean resources and developing sectors that provide productive employment, including specific types of tourism and fisheries. SIDS can do more to embrace the blue economy to foster sustainable development and greater regional cooperation is an important element for creating an enabling framework. Regional cooperation is especially important given the nature of fisheries as a common property resource and the remote locations of most Asia-Pacific SIDS.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a stark reminder of the price of weaknesses in health systems, social protection and public services. It also provides a historic opportunity to advocate for policy decisions that are pro-environment, pro-climate and pro-poor. Progress in our region’s SIDS through sustainable tourism and fisheries are vital components of a global roadmap for an inclusive and sustainable future.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Sustainable Tourism and Fisheries Key to Growth in Post-COVID Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

The post Sustainable Tourism and Fisheries Key to Growth in Post-COVID Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Sakhi sanitary pad is completely natural, comprising pinewood fibre, non-woven cloth, and butter paper. lt composts in eight days. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
PILGAON/GOA, India, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Jayashree Parwar has not traveled much outside of her village of Bicholim in the western coastal Indian state of Goa. But the homemaker-turned-social-entrepreneur has been reaching women in dozens of cities across the country with a hygiene product she makes at home along with women from her community.

Called Sakhi (friend in Hindi), the plastic-free sanitary pad is Goa’s first menstrual hygiene product made with organic materials.

Plastic challenge of sanitary pads

According to a 2018 joint report by Water Aid India and the Menstrual Hygiene Alliance of India, women and girls here use a whopping 12 billion sanitary pads annually. Depending on the materials used in the making of the sanitary pads, they could take up to 800 years to decompose, the report says.

Currently, most sanitary pads have over 90 percent composition plastics — the equivalent of four plastic bags.

• Goa may be one of the smallest states in India but it produces 7,300 tons of plastic waste annually. According to the state-owned Goa Pollution Board, plastic waste management remains a mammoth challenge for the state, which aims to go plastic-free by 2022.
• The huge plastic consumption is largely attributed to the flourishing tourism industry of the state, which has a population of less than two million but receives four times as many tourists each year.
• According to the state-based National Institute of Oceanography — India’s premier ocean research institute that regularly organises beach clean-up drives — most of the plastic garbage on the beaches are dumped locally.

Parwar doesn’t know these statistics very well but is aware of the growing plastic nuisance in her state.

“Wherever you go, there is plastic. You can go to any beach and there are heaps of plastic. A lot of it like cups, bottles, spoons etc are used by tourists and hotels, but we locals also use a lot of plastic, especially the carry bags for shopping,” she tells IPS, before adding that the eco-friendly Sakhi sanitary pads are her own way of mitigating the plastic challenge.

Goa may be one of the smallest states in India but it produces 7,300 tons of plastic waste annually. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“A small step to reduce a big burden”

Parwar’s journey of a thousand pads started in the summer of 2015 in the narrow, tin-roofed hut adjoining her living room that she calls her ‘workshop’.

Three other women from her community joined her. They all share a similar background: none of them have studied beyond high school; they are from a low income group; and they all have dreams of a better life for their family and children.

Their resources were few: a few hundred rupees as their capital and a compressing machine donated by local doctor Subbu Nayak. Nayak also trained them in pad making and connected them with a raw material supplier in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

The process is fairly simple and making a single sanitary pad takes around five minutes, explains Nasreen Sheikh, one of Parwar’s colleagues.

“First we grind the pinewood fibre, then put it into a mould, press it and wrap it in (non-woven) cloth, sticking butter paper on one side and finally we sterilise it,” Sheikh tells IPS.

However, although they had a machine and the skills, a crucial component was still missing. They had no customers.

Fortunately for them, support came from different quarters, including the government’s Urban Development Department. Sumit Singh, an official from the department who leads the Clean India Mission, taught Parwar and her partners how to market themselves online with retailers like Amazon.

Parwar and her colleagues had no prior business experience and limited resources. They naturally saw online marketing as an exciting opportunity.

“We chose to sell on Amazon because none of us have the time or means to go out and market (the sanitary pads) in stores or malls. Besides, online we can have clients even outside of Goa,” Parwar says.

After four years of struggling to build the business and develop a steady customer base, along with numerous failed attempts to secure bank loans to grow their business, the women finally managed to expand beyond the narrow tin shed to a bigger room (their factory) where they now make a thousand pads every month.

“We are only making a 1,000 pads in a month, so it’s a very small step, but I believe every small step counts,” Parwar says.

Jayashree Parwar and her partners have been making plastic-free sanitary pads in Goa, and have sold them to clients in the India’s cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Growing demand for plastic-free

They have received orders from bigger cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. Unlike known brands and corporate manufacturers, Parwar’s group doesn’t have the ability to advertise, but word of mouth, social media and a growing environmental consciousness have helped them, she says.

“We use materials that are completely natural: pinewood fibre, non-woven cloth, butter paper. There is nothing there to cause itching or skin rashes and once you dispose it, this pad will compost in eight days. We have given demonstration in many schools and other organisations. People have tried it and seen how the composting really works,” Alita Pilgaonkar, another member of the group, tells IPS. 

The sanitary pads also decompose in about two weeks.  

Eight sanitary pads cost 40 rupees and bulk pack containing 96 pads costs 700 rupees. They are cheaper than most popular brands but the women say that they manage to make a small profit.

Reusable vs compostable

Could a total shift to plastic-free sanitary pads be a possibility and could it curb the ever-increasing plastic burden?

Ideally, it is possible, but the willpower seems to be currently missing, Kathy Walkling, co-founder of Ecofemme, tells IPS.  Ecofemme is another women-led initiative that makes eco-friendly menstrual hygiene products. Based in Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) on the country’s southern coast, Ecofemme produces and advocates for reusable sanitary pads that are both plastic-free and affordable.

“If government would back these initiatives, this could have a powerful effect to make a mainstream shift,” Walkling tells IPS.

But Eline Bakker Kruijne, an environmental engineer and formerly a programme officer at Netherlands-based international think-tank IRC WASH, tells IPS that no significant changes are possible without changing the current disposal system.

Pointing at the practice of treating discarded menstrual products, whether organic or plastic, as hazardous and burning them, Bakker Kruijne says that single-use pads are of no help as incineration only adds to pollution levels.

“It is all about how these single-use materials break down in the environment and if it requires an industrial process (like incineration), does it really help us?” Bakker Kruijne asks.

Walkling also says that single-use menstrual products, even if compostable, add to the daily waste volume. But public preference is currently tilted heavily towards these single-use pads as people see them as more hygienic than reusables.

However,  both the experts feel that moving away from plastic is a positive step.

“With each person who shifts to a reusable and non polluting product, approx 125 kg of sanitary waste per person over a lifetime of use will be prevented. There are currently approx 355 million menstruating girls and women in India and if each uses 10 pads/month this would generate 42.6 billion pads every year (355million*10pads*12 months).

“Obviously given these numbers, more women switching to re-usable products makes a significant difference,” Walking tells IPS.

Meanwhile, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown that has severely affected India’s economic sector has not left the producers of the Sakhi  sanitary pads unaffected. Their main supplier in Coimbatore, in south India, stopped operations, almost forcing the women out of business. However, they have recently managed to find another supplier in Mumbai.

Sales have also decreased, but Parwar is confident of recovering quickly once the crisis is over. Because, as she says, women’s “periods will not stop”.

Related Articles

• Break the Menstrual Taboo
• Safe Menstrual Practices Important for Progress

The post The Goan Village Women Helping Mitigate Plastic Pollution by Making Eco-friendly Sanitary Pads appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd´s Non-Violence sculpture outside the UN headquarters in New York.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Just as the U.S. is haunted by the 1963 murder of John F. Kennedy, Sweden is troubled by the 1986 murder of its Prime Minister Olof Palme. The American feelings were aired on Bob Dylan´s latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, containing a 16 minutes long song with lines like:

It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
right there in front of everyone’s eyes.
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun,
perfectly executed, skillfully done.I said the soul of a nation been torn away
and it’s beginning to go into a slow decay.

On the evening of the 10th of June this year, a significant part of the Swedish population sat eagerly waiting in front of their TV sets. The Palme Commission was going to reveal the definite results of 34 years of official investigations into the murder of Olof Palme.

He had, in a street corner at the very centre of Stockholm, at short range, been shot dead in front of his wife. He was killed with a single bullet in the back. The Prime Minister had in the afternoon told his body guards they could take the evening off, something he often did when he was not on duty. Olof Palme’s evening had been quite typical for a Swede at the time, even for a high level, controversial politician, with an international fame rivalled only by the music group ABBA. Swedes had grown accustomed to a low level of violent crimes. After a regular day at work, Palme arrived home at 18:30. He ate dinner prepared and served by his wife. At 20:42 the couple caught the subway, three stations later they descended just in time to meet their son Mårten and his fiancé and for Palme to buy tickets for the four of them to watch the Swedish film The Brothers Mozart, which I saw a few years later, thinking it was a pity that Palme had to watch such a bad Fellini-wannabe movie just before he died.

After the movie, Palme and his wife were quietly walking back home when a taxi driver at 23:21 from his car witnessed how Palme’s wife fell to the ground slightly wounded by a bullet, while her husband lay bleeding on the ground. The murderer was running from the crime scene. The driver immediately called the switchboard of his taxi rank, which alerted the police. Within a minute a police patrol car had arrived. An ambulance happened to pass by and stopped while a police ran after the murderer, though he lost him.

When all this happened my wife and I were in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. The evening was going to be the highpoint of the carnival season and we were getting ready for the festivities. The TV was on, but we were not paying it much attention. As I was putting on the fangs which completed my vampire outfit, I glanced at the TV screen, glimpsing a portrait of Olof Palme.

”Something must have happened in Sweden – they have just shown a picture of Palme” I said, and turned up the sound only to find that other news were coming in. ”I don´t suppose it was anything serious”, my wife said. During the evening, I could not stop wondering about the picture of Palme and imagined I had heard the word asesinato. We came back to our flat at three in the morning and I called my father.

”What time is it in Sweden?”
”9 o´clock in the morning. Why? Has anything happened?”
”I saw something about Palme on TV, but didn’t hear anything. It was more than 12 hours ago.”
In faraway Hässleholm my father put the radio on. With a sense of shock I heard him say:
”They’re playing some sort of funeral music. Wait a moment … Olof Palme has been murdered! He is dead. He was shot in a street in Stockholm.”

I was still dressed up as vampire. Everything was absurd. I put on the TV and saw people weeping in the street outside Café Opera, Stockholm’s fanciest restaurant. What had happened?

After I had come back to my teaching job in Sweden five subjects had been set up for that year’s final exams, one of them being ”What Olof Palme and his death mean for me”. Every Swedish teacher at the school had to comment on his/her colleagues´essays and thus I came to read more than 150 student essays. To my suprise I found that every single pupil had chosen to write about Palme’s death. Most surprising was that the thoughts expressed in all essays were more or less the same: ”Sweden is now like every other country in the world. We have lost our innocence. We are not unique any more. Politicians are murdered even here. Swedish society and politics are just as corrupt as in the rest of the world. Palme’s death was the end of our secure welfare state. We live in a changed country.” It was like waking up in an unfamiliar landscape after a good night´s sleep. A vacuum had arisen in the Swedish self-awareness.

A Dutch friend of mine told me: ”When the President of a neat little democracy like Sweden is murdered you will soon witness how all kind of maggots will be creeping out of the corpse.” He was right. During the search for the killer different ”tracks” constantly opened up, each indicating an ”affair”, pointing to strange covert actions, all of them ultimately leading to a dead end.

After the assassination, Hans Holmér, Chief Constable of the Stockholm County Police, took charge of the investigations. He assumed the murder was of a political nature, but not related to the domestic political scene. Under his command, suspicions almost exclusively centred on his personal convictions. Crime scene investigations and witness interviews were fatally flawed. Resources were directed towards investigating radical immigrant groups, notably the Kurdish Liberation Movement PKK. After a raid when numerous Kurdish immigrants with presumed PKK connections were arrested, only to be released due to lack of evidence, Holmér had to resign.

Holmér shared a flat with Ebbe Carlsson, a publisher close to the inner circles of the governing Social Democratic Party. After Holmér had been removed from the Palme investigation, Carlsson was caught smuggling surveillance equipment into Sweden on behalf of Holmér. It turned out that Carlsson had acted with the consent of the Minister of Justice, who was forced to resign and the scandal thickened. Holmér had recruited infamously violent police officers with right-wing leanings, who furthermore had been suspiciously involved with narcotics- and arms dealers in Stockholm’s underworld, some of them had just before Palme’s death been spotted with walkie-talkies close to the murder scene. The Swedish secret police, SÄPO, had been marginalized from the investigations. Accordingly, several international affairs and connections with foreign Secret Service Agencies had not been fully investigated.

Among them was the so-called Bofors Scandal. The Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors had paid USD 9 Million in kickbacks to top Indian politicians. Furthermore, the company had apparently illegally exported sophisticated weaponry to Iran, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates. A year after Palme’s death, a State appointed Weapons Inspector ”fell” bakwards in front of a subway train and killed a few hours after a meeting with the head of the Nobel Industries, one of the co-owners of Bofors. Some illegal weapon deals had allegedly been brokered with the help of the East German secret police, STASI. Two Swedish journalists who had followed this trail had, two years before the inspector’s death, been found drowned in a car just outside Stockholm. None of these deaths was explained, even if the Foreign Minister just over a year after Palme’s death declared that: ”The dirty linen of the arms deals will be washed in the open.”

Speculations spread like wildfire after it was alleged that Bofors had been involved in arms sales to Iran during the infamous Iran-Contra Scandal. A former CIA agent, Dois Gene ”Chip” Tatum, who 1986 – 1992 had been active in several of CIA’s covert actions, was in an interview asked if he knew anything about the murder of Olof Palme. He answered: ”I was informed that the OSG [Operations Sub-Group] was behind and used the ”assets” [professional killers] in South Africa.” According to Tatum the reason for the murder was that agents in charge of the Iran-Contra deal had approached Olof Palme and become alarmed when learning that the Swedish Prime Minister was unaware of Bofors’s illegal activities and declared that he was going to take up the issue within the UN.

The Swedish Social Democrat Government was a known supporter of anti-Apartheid forces and by the end of September 1996 Eugene de Kock, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria stating that Palme had been killed as part of an operation headed by a Secret Service agent, Craig Williamson, who had been in contact with Swedish mercenaries who had served under the South African Apartheid Regime.

None of the above cases have been validated by the Swedish authorities and represent just a few of several ”affairs” that surfaced in connection with Palme’s death. My Dutch friend’s prophecy proved to be correct – an unresolved, political murder would reveal what goes on under the surface of an affluent and ”just” society. My pupils were also right – with the murder of Olof Palme Sweden lost its innocence and its citizens have not recuperated from the shock. After approximately 600 million SEK spent on investigations, a reward of 5 million USD to anyone who can present convincing evidence of whom the killer was, and 130 confessed killers, the Palme murder continues to gnaw on the mind of many Swedes.

What did the Palme Commission reveal on TV? It had been been globally announced that definite facts about the murder were going to be exposed and explained. However, 34 years after Palme’s murder the Commission came up with yet another alleged killer, a loner like so many other earlier suspects. The Commission declared that the alibi of a certain Stig Engström had not been throuroughly investigated and that he was the probable killer. Twenty years after his death, Sweden now got its own Lee Harvey Oswald, though he had not even been arrested during his lifetime, even less officially accused of any crime. The Commission proclaimed the case closed. Not many were content with that conclusion.

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

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post ”Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Indian Army Chief, General M.M. Naravane recently admitted that there is a threat of possible collusion between China and Pakistan against India which could lead to a two-front war. Credit: Indian Defence News

By Simi Mehta
NEW DELHI, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Being the sole candidate from the Asia Pacific region for the non-permanent seat of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), India was elected by 184 votes in the 193-member United Nations’ General Assembly. on June 17, 2020.

For its membership during its two-year term- 2021-22, the priorities for India had been announced much in advance. India has called for a “New Orientation for A Reformed Multilateral System’ (NORMS)”- based United Nations.

The major characteristics for achieving norms include: new opportunities for progress; an effective response to international terrorism; reforming the multilateral system; a comprehensive approach to international peace and security, and; promoting technology with a human touch as a driver of solutions.

Chinese Incursions into the Indian Territory

With India’s non-permanent membership bid confirmed, its tenure begins with major skirmish in its border with the permanent member of the UNSC- People’s Republic of China (PRC), in the Ladakh side at the Galwan valley.

There has been a total of 20 confirmed casualties of the Army from the Indian side, and with indications of several personnel (jawans) held hostage by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Physical confrontation using nailed-rods have been inflicted as a means to torture the Indian jawans.

It needs to be mentioned here that this conflict draws resemblance to the 1962 war with China at the site of the Galwan river in the Ladakh region near the Line of Actual Control between India and China, began when China attacked India’s posts along the Indian border.

Suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese, this war was described as a blatant Chinese communist aggression against India. It must be noted that after 1975, no Indian soldier was killed at the hands of the Chinese troops. This 45-year record of mutual trust witnessed a bloody jolt where 20 Indian soldiers were martyred on June 15-16, 2020.

As India seeks to place NORMS at the UNSC table, any complacency in its approach towards China would only embolden the latter. As it clearly is, India is surrounded by expansionist and terror-harbouring states who are also nuclear powers.

According to the Yearbook 2020 of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India (150) has lesser nuclear warheads than Pakistan (160) and Pakistan and China (320) combined.

With nationalist sentiments raging high in India, the Prime Minister of India has sent a stern message that while India wants peace, it would respond appropriately to any provocation.

With complete resolve, it would do to protect its sovereignty and integrity and would not compromise it in anyway. Certainly, the stakes are high because when Pakistan intruded into India and challenged India’s sovereignty, India launched a ‘surgical strike’ against it as a befitting reply to such attack against it.

Amid the ongoing combat, a virtual meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Foreign Minister of India Wang Yi, was held. India warned China that the unprecedented development and killing of Indian soldiers would have a ‘serious’ impact on the bilateral relations.

While India and PRC have border management agreements, India must realize that such arrangements have not stopped China into making aggressive overtures towards it. The sooner its thuggishness around international rules of law is exposed, the faster it would ensure safety for the heroes in the armed forces.

Non-Permanent Membership of the UNSC: India’s Test to Hold PRC Accountable

As India assumes its Non-Permanent Membership of the UNSC from January 1, 2021, India must seek to avenge the wrongs of China keeping all its options of tour de force open. It would also hold the UNSC presidency for a month in August 2021.

India’s objective to establish a NORMS-based architecture must stand the test of time and prove its mettle to the world that it is fully capable of wielding a veto-powered permanent membership to the UNSC.

While this is the eighth time that India would sit as a non-permanent member in the most powerful agency of the UN, this election has been regarded as being the result of Indian PM’s “vision, and his inspiring global leadership, particularly in the time of COVID-19”, and that the international community would be a testament to the Indian ethos of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family).

Into its 75th year, the UNSC does not represent the changed geopolitical realities. In 1945 when the UN was established, the UN General Assembly had 51 members, and in 2020 the it stands at 193.

However, the permanent membership to the UNSC remains unchanged- it was 5 then, it is 5 now. In other words, it remains unreformed and underrepresented.

India has been a vocal advocate of reforming the composition of the UNSC for over three decades, and being the largest democracy of the world, with formidable economic and military might as well as a responsible nuclear power, following a comprehensive approach to peace and security guided by dialogue and negotiations, mutual respect and commitment to international law, it has continued to demand a non-discriminatory permanent seat in the UNSC.

The UNSC is the pivot of the mechanism of international collective security and international peace. Therefore, it is high time that it should be reformed and expanded in order to enable it to perform its duties enshrined in the UN Charter more proactively.

For this it is imperative that the representation of emerging economies, most prominently India, be the top of the list, which would give the developing and lesser developed countries greater say in the decision-making process of the UNSC.

India’s objectives, mission and vision to promote responsible and inclusive solutions to international peace and security must put the need to reform multilateralism on top of the agenda.

With the commitment towards multilateralism, rule of law and a fair and equitable international system, India would adopt a ‘Five S’ approach to the world from the UNSC seat — samman (respect), samvad (dialogue), sahayog (cooperation), shanti (peace) and samriddhi (prosperity).

Basing all its arguments under these principles, India must call an urgent meeting of the UNSC comprising of all permanent and non-permanent members and collectively hold China accountable for its misadventures (including intrusions into its territory and threatening its sovereignty by induction of Chinese troops, artillery and defence equipment into the areas along the Line of Actual Control around Pangong Lake and the Galwan valley), and also for its attempts to unilaterally change the status quo on the border.

Having the international community of nations support India’s stand would be the first test as it sets to establish the NORMS architecture in the Council.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post India’s Test along the Line of Actual Control appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Simi Mehta is CEO and Editorial Director, Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi. She can be reached at simi@impriindia.org.

The post India’s Test along the Line of Actual Control appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Seventy-five years ago, on 26 June 1945, before the Japanese surrender ending the Second World War, fifty nations gathered at San Francisco’s Opera House to sign the United Nations (UN) Charter.

UN Charter
Nations pledged “to practice tolerance and live together in peace …, and to ensure … that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples”.

Anis Chowdhury

They sought “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, … and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to … promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”.

The Charter’s contents reflected some contradictions inherent in framing an international organization recognizing national sovereignty as its organizing principle, and various other compromises, often influenced by the convening host nation.

Although the conduct of Member States often falls short of the UN’s lofty goals, its Charter was nonetheless a monumental achievement, providing the foundation for a rules-based international order.

San Francisco Conference
Forty-six Allied countries, including the four sponsors – the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China – were originally invited to the San Francisco Conference.

The conference itself invited four other States – the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics, newly-liberated Denmark and Argentina. Poland did not send a representative as its new government was still uncertain.

Of the fifty participating states, only four were African and nine Asian. Latin American countries, independent since the mid-19th century, were present and active in deliberations.

The Conference was not only one of the most significant international gatherings in history, but perhaps the longest ever. The two month long Conference was attended by 3,500 people, including 850 delegates, their advisers, staff and the secretariat, plus more than 2,500 from the media and other observers.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Conference opened on April 25, 1945 with great fanfare, despite the sudden death of its principal architect and presumed host, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on 12 April. The task of carrying on fell to his Vice-President Harry Truman who had become President.

Truman often quoted English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Locksley Hall, carried in his wallet, bewildering colleagues, senators and staffers who doubted his commitment to international peace. Tennyson foresaw that nations, realizing they could destroy one another, might agree to form “the Parliament of Man”, to resolve disputes peacefully.

Clashes and compromises
Many serious differences of opinion triggered crises, even at the preparatory stage. For example, the Soviet Union proposed that all 16 Soviet republics should have UN membership to balance the influence of US allies: the US countered by proposing membership for all its 50 states!

A compromise was struck, allowing membership for the Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine; the Soviet Union then withdrew its opposition to Argentina, which had supported the Axis powers.

The most important deliberations concerned the UN Security Council (UNSC), initially composed of five permanent members (US, UK, USSR, China, France) and six elected members. The P5’s right to veto provoked a long and heated debate.

Others feared that when one of the P5 threatens the peace, the UNSC would be ineffectual. But the P5 collectively insisted that as the main responsibility for maintaining world peace would fall most heavily on them, the veto provision was vital.

Australia proposed that no permanent member should be allowed to veto when involved in a Chapter VII dispute over threats to peace. The US delegation blocked this and a Soviet proposal allowing P5 vetoes on procedural matters, e.g., discussion of disputes in which it may be involved.

While US officials saw the UN General Assembly (UNGA) primarily as a ‘talk shop’, the USSR tried to limit it from discussing sensitive political matters. However, recognizing its importance for legitimacy, the compromise reached permits the UNGA to discuss any issues “within the scope of the Charter”.

Colonialism was not supposed to be discussed at the Conference to avoid alienating the European imperial powers, whom the US needed to isolate the Soviet Union. But the handful of Asian and African countries attending wanted countries still under the colonial yoke to attain freedom and independence as soon as possible.

Although not on the original Conference agenda, after much debate, Chapters XI, XII and XIII provided some norms for colonial administration and pathways for decolonization. Nonetheless, these ambiguous, at best, pronouncements greatly disappointed anti-colonialists around the world.

US hegemonic from outset
Despite some compromises inherent in framing such an agreement, the UN Charter favoured the US. It promised to protect freedom of action and national sovereignty, as desired by the US, but contained no open-ended commitment to preserve other countries’ territorial integrity, like the League of Nations Covenant’s Article 10.

Article 2(7) placated American sovereigntists and nationalists, declaring: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”

The US and the UK also got what they wanted for existing and new regional and plurilateral arrangements, including defence and mutual assistance organizations.

Some US officials were concerned the UN might threaten the Monroe Doctrine privileging the US in the Western hemisphere, while limiting its ability to intervene elsewhere. Some clever drafting of Chapter VIII provided blanket endorsement to regional organizations, also seen as reflecting the principle of subsidiarity.

Article 51 enshrined the principle of “self-defense against armed attack, either individual or collective”. Although not fully appreciated in 1945, such provisions later helped legitimize various US and other post-colonial security pacts in Europe, Asia and the Americas against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Conference participants also considered a proposal for compulsory jurisdiction for a World Court, but the US Secretary of State recognized this would jeopardize Senate ratification. Delegates compromised, agreeing to let countries decide whether to accept the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s jurisdiction.

Unsurprisingly, the US has had an uneasy relationship with the ICJ from the outset, never submitting to its authority, and reacting negatively to Court decisions seen as adverse to the US.

From Truman to Trump
Presiding at the closing ceremony, Truman cautioned that the success of the new world body would depend on collective self-restraint. “We all have to recognize – no matter how great our strength – that we must deny ourselves the license to do as we please. This is the price each nation will have to pay for world peace.”

Truman is probably turning in his grave watching Trump’s jingoist ‘America First’ policy undermine the UN and multilateralism. Are multilateralism and the UN now doomed as Trump belies Tennyson’s hope and leads the US to up-end the Roosevelt-Truman legacy?

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Are We Going from San Francisco? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: shutterstock / getty / the atlantic

By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Jun 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

President Donald Trump has got himself a wall. But it is not the one of his choosing, as one on the Mexican border. It is on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, a high fence that now separates him from his people. But as polls for him keep dipping, and the prognosis for a victory in the upcoming November elections keep worsening, a prediction from an unlikely person should bring him cheer. The source is none other than the Foreign Minister of a country that Trump considers to be in the forefront of his list of foes: Javad Zareef of Iran. I have known Zareef and worked with him as a fellow diplomat for years and would rate him as a person of extraordinary intellect. Speaking at an interview on Instagram with an Iranian journalist Farid Modaressi, Zareef stated that despite all that is happening, Trump’s support base of 30 to 35 percent has not moved , and till that occurs, he still has over 50 percent chances of re-election. Zareef did not elaborate if he himself would prefer such an outcome, calculating that four more years of America with Trump at its helm , might eliminate that nation totally from the global power scene, which for Zareef and Iran, ought to be a consummation devoutly to be wished!

Whether he gets re-elected or not, Trump is already facing an awkward situation of isolation on an international plane, particularly with regard to western peers of allied countries, whom analysts could be forgiven at this point for calling ex-allies. The logical and mathematical problem is an inverse correlation; it is that the more Trump acts to solidify his base domestically, the distance between him and Western leaders increase, as it were, in a geometric progression. The four major issues are as follows: The first is the ratcheting up of the disputes with China and Iran; the second is the withdrawal from the World Health Organization; the third is the withdrawal from security responsibilities all around the world and the fourth is his unseemly predilection for using force, even active-duty military personnel , to “dominate the streets” (as he says ) of America and quell the ongoing protests.

All these would sit nicely with the far- right redneck, working class America which is Trump’s core support base. If he could add to this ‘corporate America’, the evangelicals, and wean away the Southern whites from the Democratic camp (usually known, dating back to the Nixon era, as the “Southern Strategy”) he might have a sufficient segment of the white majority to pull it through. But this would be predicated on his ability to revive the economy. Hence the desperation to ‘open-up’ despite obvious health hazards to all in general, and to the minority, in particular.

To boost nationalism without having to fight a war, raising the level of heat in the dispute with foreign and culturally different nations like Iran and China would be vote-getting in the American context. Though it was an Englishman, Lord Palmerstone in the 19th century who had said “God made a mistake when He made foreigners”, it is most Americans, exhausted with involvements abroad, who actually tend to believe so. Hence the penchant for the return to “fortress America” or back to the “city on a shining hill”. While countries of the old world are often wary of nationalism, the cause of many conflicts, jingoism in America is more easily roused. There, many houses would fly the flag –the Star Spangled Banner-and most Americans would sing the national anthem with fervent enthusiasm, and a hand on the heart.

So, it stood to electoral reason when Trump cancelled US participation from the Joint Comprehensive plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. It left the other partners, apart from the US and Iran-the European Union, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and China -holding the ball vis-à-vis Iran, and very angry. Iran, once a screw-driver’s turn away from acquisition of nuclear-weapon capability started enriching uranium again, but as of now, has been broadly complying with the regulations. Trump’s decision to pull out of the WHO at a time in the perception of others the body was playing an essential role during the Covid-19 pandemic, came as a surprise to the allies. The decision to withdraw US troops from the world’s trouble spots perturbed the others. While not all were pleased with China’s current global role, they were anxious to keep Beijing engaged and Europe was unwilling to break the economic ties. Finally, the upsurge of the “Black life matters” protests, and the force which Trump was employing to quell them upset his partners no end. Europeans tend to put more store by the value of human rights. So, European leaders realized that in their own domestic situations, as Trump grew increasingly unpopular globally and appeared to endorse breaching of human rights, proximity to him was costing them politically and electorally on their own home grounds.

Therefore, when Trump wanted to host a G-7 meeting in Washington in June to rally friends against China and display that he still wielded some global clout, the other members declined to oblige. Angela Merkel of Germany immediately rejected the invitation. Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister said, with ample persuasive logic, that the Germans suspected that it would just be a photo-op in the White House. Trump’s inexplicable desire to invite Vladimir Putin of Russia as a gues, put his friend Boris Johnson of Britain at odds with him. Also, Justin Trudeau of Canada, who took a knee emphasizing with a race-protesters, and delayed a response to a query on Trump by twenty-two seconds,to the amusement of all present. But Trump was not amused. He called off the G-7 meeting and announced his intention to reduce troop-presence in Germany. Scott Morrison of Australia was a rare case of one who remained loyal to Trump, but was cut adrift. He was left to fend for himself in his battle with an assertive Xi Jinping of China, as also with one of his own States, Victoria, which was unwilling to reduce ties with China.

Consequently, Trump was left ploughing a lonely furrow, fenced in at the White house. Some analysts, with regard to him, have raised the specter of ‘Gottendammarung”, which is German for ‘The twilight of the gods’. It is derived from the last of the four cycles of Richard Wagner’s celebrated dramatic rendition of the mythical tale of “The Ring of the Nibelungen”. This opera ends with the palace of the Norse gods, the Valhalla, with all its inmates, consumed in and utterly destroyed by a horrific conflagration, epitomizing the end of a society or regime in violent catastrophe. This could be an exaggerated vision of the conclusion of the Trump era, but the prospects of such a possibility is gaining currency.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier

The post White House Fenced In: Trump, Within, Ploughs a Lonely Furrow appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Devika Agarwal
Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

While COVID-19 has made the headlines every day over the past two months, services for tuberculosis (TB), one of the oldest diseases in the world, have been interrupted due to the lockdown. According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Report 2019, India had an estimated 2.7 million new cases and 440,000 deaths due to TB in 2018—the highest in the world.

Despite such numbers, India has not taken any targeted measures to tackle the spread of TB during the ongoing pandemic.

The WHO has set global targets to reduce new cases of TB by 90 percent and deaths by 95 percent between 2015 and 2035. The Indian government launched the TB Free India campaign with the target of eliminating TB in the country by 2025.

However, it is estimated that the fight against TB faces a setback of five to eight years, globally, due to COVID-19. Specifically for India, a two-month lockdown and a two-month recovery period for restoration of full TB services will result in an additional 510,000 TB cases and 150,000  TB-related deaths, between 2020 and 2025. With a three-month lockdown and ten-month recovery period, the numbers would be 178,000 and 510,000 respectively.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the TB epidemic

The internationally recognised Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) strategy entails the diagnosis of TB through sputum testing and a treatment regimen of six to nine months, using appropriate drugs and observation by a healthcare worker.

The Indian government promises free diagnosis and treatment to all patients. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light several gaps in India’s healthcare system. There is a shortage of functioning sputum testing centres, DOT centres, and other facilities to identify and treat new patients of TB. Healthcare workers are also wary of going on-ground and carrying out tests and diagnoses.

Migrant workers with TB, who are travelling away from their workplaces, are at risk of treatment interruption, which may lead to an even more severe form of TB, called multi-drug-resistant TB. Additionally, due to the stigma attached with the symptoms of COVID-19, people are now afraid to get tested for TB. This is because TB symptoms (such as coughing), are similar to those of COVID-19.

People also fear being taken away from their families and isolated for unspecified durations. This can exacerbate the problem, as undiagnosed patients can infect many more. Not to mention, those with lung injuries due to TB may be prone to more severe outcomes if infected with COVID-19.

In April, the nonprofit TB Alert India’s Delhi branch, which works in some of the most underprivileged communities in Delhi’s slum areas, found out that average TB testing per month had fallen by 80 percent during the lockdown. They recorded only 25 percent of the new TB cases that they did, on average, before the lockdown, and only 15 percent of the new drug resistant TB cases.

According to Khasim Sayyed of TB Alert India, “In India, health-seeking behaviour has completely changed after COVID-19. People think twice before seeking a doctor.” He adds, “We are expecting a very high number of patients across all DOT centres and outpatient departments (OPDs) once the lockdown is lifted, because the patients are afraid to get diagnosed right now. Once things become better, we will witness more and more patients emerging with symptoms.”

 

We need targeted inventions for TB

A combination of strategies will be required to restore normal TB services, with the objective to reduce the accumulated pool of undetected TB patients. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has already asked states and union territories to ensure that the diagnosis and treatment of TB continues unhindered, despite COVID-19. It has directed measures, including doorstep delivery of drugs and providing one month of drugs at a time.

Here are some other steps that can be taken to strengthen both diagnosis and treatment:

 

Diagnosis

• The government should collaborate with nonprofits and use technology to ramp-up active case-finding, contact tracing, and spreading awareness about the symptoms of TB and its precautions.
• Community health workers or local nonprofits should conduct door-to-door sample collection.
• The government should ensure that diagnostic services for TB are maintained. Currently, most labs are being used for COVID-19 testing only.
• For multi-drug resistant TB cases, the government must enable the CB-NAAT (or Genexpert) test, as it diagnoses patients quicker and also shows if a person has resistance to the treatment drug.

 

Treatment

• Healthcare workers and nonprofits should help TB patients adhere to their treatment by using tele-counselling to sensitise their family members about the possible side effects and severe symptoms of TB.
• The government, in collaboration with nonprofits, should run a helpline that can provide important information to TB patients, such as advice on managing severe symptoms or side effects.
• Health practitioners should leverage digital tools to diagnose patients and prescribe first-line treatment (which is the first treatment administered for a disease). Although there are limits to the effectiveness of this approach, it could allow patients to start medication and reduce the risk of spreading the disease.

Additionally, government, nonprofits, and private institutions must also collaborate to strengthen infection control to safeguard healthcare workers from TB, as well as COVID-19, during any intervention.

As more private practitioners turn to digital facilities for diagnosis and consulting, there is a need to design solutions for marginalised communities, who might not have access to digital facilities. The projected numbers for TB highlight the urgency for a better intervention strategy. While the COVID-19 pandemic deserves attention and intervention, the response to it should not come at the cost of another disease.

 

Devika Agarwal has three years of experience in the public health sector in India, working for organisations like TB Alert India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of NCT of Delhi, and the nonprofit Aaroogya, which works on prevention and early detection of breast cancer. She has a bachelors in mass media, with a specialisation in journalism, from Sophia College, Mumbai.

 

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

The post Managing an Epidemic Within a Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Pablo Vieira Samper
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Cast your mind back. Six months ago—it seems like a lifetime—the world’s attention was on Madrid. The United Nations was meeting to take stock of international progress in fighting climate change. Headlines were dominated by young people pointing out—rightly—that governments were still not doing enough. They demanded urgent and ambitious action to cut emissions and help the most vulnerable.

Pablo Vieira Samper

Fast forward to today. A then-unheard-of disease has swept around the world, with a death toll of almost half a million and climbing. Whole societies have shut down. The world faces its deepest recession in a century. And cities across the West have exploded in protest against racial and economic injustice.

At first glance it is hard to imagine a bleaker outlook for the climate action that our young people were demanding. The climate crisis has certainly not abated. Globally, last month was the hottest May ever recorded. The past decade was similarly the hottest in recorded history. This year was supposed to be a deadline for countries to produce more ambitious climate plans (known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs). Instead, governments are reeling in the face of twin economic and healthcare crises. What chance is there for bold climate action?

But there is still cause for hope. As countries plan for economic recovery, governments have a major opportunity to drive investment in more efficient, more resilient and lower-emission infrastructure and unleash win-win outcomes. The International Energy Agency calculates that an ambitious recovery focused on efficient and low-carbon technologies can make 2019 the definitive peak in global emissions, while leaving the global economy 3.5 percent bigger in 2023 than it would be otherwise. If governments seize this opportunity, we can build more sustainable development models and address the climate crisis at the same time.

This is where the NDC Partnership is making a difference. We are a coalition of more than 110 countries and around 70 international institutions working together to drive climate action and sustainable development through national climate plans or NDCs. In line with our commitment to country-driven climate action, we consulted with seventy of our member countries in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the challenges they face. Our assessment highlights cause for concern ranging from shrinking climate budgets to growing national debts. Countries want to shape their economic recovery in line with their national climate priorities, but in many cases they lack the capacity to do so.

Led by our Co-Chairs, the governments of Costa Rica and the Netherlands, the Partnership is unveiling a raft of green recovery measures at a virtual green recovery forum today. In a show of solidarity, dozens of our country and institutional members are committing to place climate plans at the heart of economic recovery.

As part of this commitment, the Partnership is unveiling its deployment of economic advisors to at least thirty developing countries to support governments in designing climate-friendly recoveries. This initiative is backed by a group of leading experts from across our membership so that countries can leverage the latest thinking in smart recovery, from clean energy and transport systems to safer, more resilient agriculture and water infrastructure. Countries and institutions alike will learn from each other’s experiences. Armed with this greater capacity and access to expertise, countries have a real prospect of building back better.

This give me hope. But there is more. In the face of COVID-19 we are reminded of some important facts that have been lost in much recent political debate. It pays to heed expert scientific advice—natural disasters cannot be wished away just because they are politically unpalatable. Effective governments are vital to responding to global crises. Resources can be mobilized at huge scale when the need is clearly understood. And when societies are mobilized, we can make big changes happen fast. Climate change is as big a crisis as humanity has ever faced. But whenever you doubt whether we can rise to that challenge, cast your mind back six months. The global community is primed for a green recovery.

Pablo Vieira Samper, PhD is global director of the NDC Partnership Support Unit. The Partnership is a global coalition of 179 countries and institutions working to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

Source: NDC Partnership

Source: NDC Partnership

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Put Climate at the Heart of COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Aslihan Arslan, Senior Economist, Research and Impact Assessment Division, IFAD and Zoumana Bamba, IITA Country Representative, DR Congo

By Aslihan Arslan and Zoumana Bamba
Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Warnings at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that Africa could be hit by a wave of up to 10 million cases within six months thankfully now seem unfounded, although it is still far too early to be over-confident.

The World Health Organization said on May 22 that the virus appears to be “taking a different pathway” on the continent, with a lower mortality rate and a slower rise in cases than other regions. However, three weeks later WHO warned that the pandemic in Africa was accelerating and noted that it took 98 days to reach 100,000 cases and only 19 days to move to 200,000 cases.

Aslihan Arslan

As of June 23, Africa had recorded over 232,000 confirmed cases and 5,117 deaths, still far fewer compared with Europe and the Americas. Experts are still analyzing how it is with widespread poverty, fragile public health systems and weak infrastructure in many countries that Africa has avoided the worst. Prompt preventative actions by governments and overwhelmingly youthful populations are cited as important factors.

While we must avoid the pitfalls of complacency and trusting sometimes questionable statistics caused in part by a lack of testing, the emerging danger now is that the life and death consequences of the economic fallout from the pandemic will be far more severe than the virus itself.

The African continent is on the verge of sinking into its first recession in 25 years.

Sub-Saharan Africa and India are projected by World Bank analysts to be the two regions hit hardest globally in economic terms. Latest projections estimate that 26-39 million more people, many of them subsistence farmers, will be pushed into extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa this year.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who reacted quickly to impose his country’s lockdown, has warned that some African economies could take “a generation or more” to recover without coordinated intervention.

Agricultural value chains have been badly affected by the impact of lockdowns, and not just food crops are affected. Kenya’s flower industry, for example, has been hit by the closure of markets in developed countries. More than 70,000 farmers have been laid off and it is reported that 50 tons of flowers have had to be dumped each day.

Zoumana Bamba

In the near term all this amounts to the twin threat of reduced incomes and serious food shortages, given that households buy around 50 percent of their food even in rural Africa, caused directly or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of this, devastating swarms of desert locusts in East Africa—the worst outbreak in Kenya in 70 years—combined with a year of drought and flooding have put millions of people in that region at risk of hunger and famine.

This most immediate of dangers to Africa’s food security is compounded by the longer-term trends of the fastest population and urban growth rates in the world. Africa’s urban population is projected to nearly triple between 2018 and 2050.

The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is working with governments and civil society to provide young people with the skills and opportunities they need and to create jobs in the agri-food system in order to safeguard food security, alleviate poverty, and contribute to social and political stability. The challenges are enormous and diverse.

IFAD is increasingly focusing its resources on young people as a priority, as successful rural transformation hinges on their inclusion in the process. It is partnering with the
nonprofit International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and is a key funder of a three-year project in sub-Saharan Africa which provides 80 fellowships for young Africans pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree with the focus on research in promoting youth engagement in agriculture.

Known as CARE – Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence – the program combines mentoring with training in methodology, data analysis, and scientific writing with a view to produce research evidence and recommendations for policymakers. Young and authoritative voices are being brought to the table, increasing youth representation in domestic and policy processes.

Policy briefs produced to date illustrate how researchers, including numerous young female professionals, are challenging common narratives and stereotypes. Yes, migration out of rural areas is a seemingly unstoppable trend but many young people are still engaging in the farm sector and the agri-food system, which require considerable investment.

To highlight a few examples of their recent findings:

■ Adewale Ogunmodede of University of Ibadan in Nigeria analyses the shortcomings of the N-Power Agro Programme aimed at improving rural livelihoods and argues that the top-down approach is failing in attracting young people to agriculture.
■ Research by Akinyi Sassi in Tanzania challenges the stereotyped view that women use ICT less than men to access agricultural market information. She finds that the cost of phone use and reliability of information are critical factors.
■ Cynthia Mkong examines the issue of role models, social status, and previous experience in determining why some students are more likely to choose agriculture as their university major in two universities in Cameroon. She says her findings indicate that agriculture will rise in stature both as a field of study and occupation.
■ Grace Chabi looks at why youth engagement in agriculture continues to decline in Benin despite government initiatives. Among her policy recommendations are a call to remove gender biases from land ownership, credit, and employment practices.

With the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world, Africa’s still overwhelmingly rural communities will continue to grow, even as migration and urbanization increase. Investing in rural jobs and supporting millions of small-scale farming families are of paramount importance, as well as investing in improving connectivity (both physical and digital) in rural areas to support agri-food systems.

IFAD shares the vision of IITA to enhance the perception of and mindset about agri-food systems so that young people will see opportunities there for exciting and profitable businesses as consumers demand more diversity of food products. The CARE project filling those knowledge gaps is already starting to yield the relevant and thorough research needed by African communities to build food security and resilience against future shocks, and achieve rural transformation inclusive of rural youth.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Africa’s Post-pandemic Future Needs to Embrace Youth in Agriculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Aslihan Arslan, Senior Economist, Research and Impact Assessment Division, IFAD and Zoumana Bamba, IITA Country Representative, DR Congo

The post Africa’s Post-pandemic Future Needs to Embrace Youth in Agriculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Irene Omari says that the most pressing problems women in business face includes a lack of credit. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Pauline Akwacha’s popular chain of eateries, famously known as Kakwacha Hangover Hotels and situated at the heart of Kisumu City’s lakeside in Kenya, is facing its most daunting challenge yet. Akwacha and other women in business across this East African nation are bracing themselves for the post-COVID-19 economy. 

Strategically located at the heart of Kisumu’s bustling central business district, business at Kakwacha had always been very good. One could hardly find a seat at the eateries.

“We are known for our fresh, traditional foods, including meat and especially fish. This is the lakeside and fish is a big part of our lives. The meals are very affordable and the portions filling,” she tells IPS.

The first COVID-19 case in this East African nation was confirmed on Mar. 13. Within days the Kakwacha chain, other restaurants and the hospital industry closed as the government issued strict social distancing protocols to curb the spread of the virus.

“Now my doors are closed and am losing a lot of money because I still have to pay rent and do whatever is necessary to cushion my staff,” Akwacha says.

To reopen, Kakwacha will have to follow the strict guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health. Restaurant owners are required to pay from $20 to $40 for each staff member to undergo mandatory COVID-19 testing before reopening.

Still, without cash flow, Akwacha will find it difficult to re-open.

Across the street, Irene Omari, the sole proprietor of one of the biggest branding companies in Kisumu City and its surroundings, has similar concerns about the market post-lockdown. As a woman, she struggled to access loans to start her business.

“It is very difficult to run a business as a woman. In the beginning I could not even access credit because financial institutions did not take me seriously. I had to learn to spend 15 percent of every coin I made, and save 85 percent to plough back into the business. Women do not access loans easily because of strict collateral requirements,” Omari tells IPS.

Omari says that the most pressing problems women in business face, include a lack of credit, patriarchal stereotypes and naysayers who tell women that they cannot succeed — because they are not men.

But she succeeded despite this. Up until the lockdown, her printing and branding business occupied two large floors in a building in the lakeside city. There, she pays $1,500 in rent per month, a considerable sum that shows just how big and strategically-located her business is.

“I brand for hotels, schools, companies, non-governmental organisations and walk-in individual clients. We have something for everyone. Our printing department caters mostly to schools. I have invested heavily in mass production by purchasing machines worth millions [of Kenyan shillings],” Omari tells IPS.

But COVID-19 has also hit the very heart of her business. With schools, hotels and restaurants closed, and as companies face a most uncertain future, business is at an all-time low. 

Omari has diverse business interests and also invested in a trucking business to transport construction materials across the larger Western region. But this industry has also been impacted by the lockdown.

Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to decelerate significantly due to COVID-19. The most recent World Bank Kenya Economic Update predicts economic growth of 1.5 to 1.0 percent in 2020. Growth focus for 2020 was estimated at 5.9 percent pre-COVID. 

While COVID-19 may be the latest addition in a long list of challenges that women in business have had to endure, there are concerns that the pandemic will only widen existing economic gender inequalities.

In 2018, only a paltry 76,804 or 2.8 percent of the country’s formal sector employees earned a monthly salary in excess of 1,000 dollars. Of these employees, 36.5 percent were women, accounting for only one percent of the total formal sector employees, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.  

There are no real-time statistics available yet on the impact COVID-19 has had on women in business.

But dated statistics paint a picture of the difficulties women had have to overcome.

Overall, Kenya has significantly expanded financial access and reduced financial exclusion. The number of people without access to any financial services and products reduced from 17.4 percent in 2016 to 11 percent in 2019. But while financial access gaps between men and women are narrowing, women are still lagging behind, according to the Central Bank of Kenya financial access survey of 2019.

For instance, in 2016, 80.9 percent of women-to-women business partnerships were denied loans by micro-finance institutions, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

As such, more women in business are turning to the informal sector such as table banking or merry-go-round savings and lending groups.

“This is why investing in women and providing much-needed affirmative action support remains necessary and urgent,” Fridah Githuku, the executive director of GROOTS Kenya, tells IPS. GROOTS is a national grassroots movement led by women, which invests in women-led groups for sustainable community transformation. 

So far, this Deliver For Good local partner has invested in nearly 3,500 women-led groups. Deliver For Good is a global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals and is powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver.

In the agricultural sector where, according to World Bank statistics, women run three-quarters of Kenya’s farms, the government says that women’s investments in farming does not match the amount of money they receive in loans.

Currently, women still only account for 25 percent of the total loans issued by the government’s Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC). This, experts say, is an improvement from 11 percent in 2017.  

Githuku points out that previously land title deeds were a non-negotiable requirement for loans with the AFC and prevented women-led enterprises in the agricultural sector from accessing credit.

Today, women do not have to rely on land title deeds and can support their loan applications to the AFC with motor vehicle log books and cash flow statements.

But experts are concerned that these loans might come to naught as COVID-19 continues to disrupt the entire farming chain; from the acquisition of farm inputs as farmers struggle to access seeds and fertiliser, to productivity on farms, and the transportation of produce to the markets.

For now, it is a wait-and-see situation for women in business, including Akwacha and Omari, as Kenyans continue to speculate on whether the economy will fully open up anytime soon. 

Related Articles

• Senegalese Women’s Participation in Energy Sector equals Empowerment
• For Love or Land – The Debate about Kenyan Women’s Rights to Matrimonial Property
• A Gender-equal Ethiopian Parliament can Improve the Lives of all Women

The post COVID-19 Pandemic Could Widen Existing Inequalities for Kenya’s Women in Business appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Local residents of Churia, a village of some 25 families at more than 3,100 meters above sea level in the highlands of the Peruvian department of Ayacucho, are building simple dikes to fill ponds with water to irrigate their crops, water their animals and consume at home. CREDIT: Courtesy of Huñuc Mayu

By Mariela Jara
AYACUCHO, Peru, Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

A communally built small dam at almost 3,500 meters above sea level supplies water to small-scale farmer Cristina Azpur and her two young daughters in Peru’s Andes highlands, where they face water shortages exacerbated by climate change.

“We built the walls of the reservoir with stone and earth and planted ‘queñua’ trees last year in February, to absorb water,” she tells IPS by phone from her hometown of Chungui, population 4,500, located in La Mar, one of the provinces hardest hit by the violence of the Maoist group Shining Path, which triggered a 20-year civil war in the country between 1980 and 2000.

The queñua (Polylepis racemosa) is a tree native to the Andean highlands with a thick trunk that protects it from low temperatures. It is highly absorbent of rainwater and is considered sacred by the Quechua indigenous people.

In Chungui and other Andes highlands municipalities populated by Quechua Indians in the southwestern department of Ayacucho, the native tree species has been the main input for the recovery and preservation of water sources.

Eutropia Medina, president of the board of directors of Huñuc Mayu (which means “meeting of rivers” in Quechua), an NGO that has been working for 15 years to promote the rights of people living in rural communities in the region, one of the country’s poorest, explains how the trees are used.

Women from several Andean highlands communities in Ayacucho, Peru, have played a very active role in harvesting water, including protecting the headwaters of streams. In the picture, a group of women and girls are involved in a community activity in Oronccoy, a village about 3,200 meters above sea level. CREDIT: Courtesy of Huñuc Mayu

“The women and men have planted more than 10,000 queñua trees in the different communities as part of their plan to harvest water,” she tells IPS in Ayacucho, the regional capital. “These are techniques handed down from their ancestors that we have helped revive to boost their agricultural and animal husbandry activities, which are their main livelihood.”

Medina, previously director of the NGO, explains that the acceleration of climate change in recent years, due to the unregulated exploitation of natural resources, has generated an imbalance in highland ecosystems, increasing greenhouse gases and fuelling deglaciation and desertification.

The resultant water shortages have been particularly difficult for women, who are in charge of domestic responsibilities and supplying water, while also working in the fields.

Huñuc Mayu, with the support of the national office of Diakonia, a faith-based Swedish development organisation, has provided training and technical assistance to strengthen water security in these rural Andean highland communities where the main activities are small-scale farming and livestock raising.

The queñua, one of the most cold-resistant trees in the world, is native to the high plains of the Andes, and is culturally valued by the Quechua indigenous people. It is a great climate regulator, controls erosion and stores a large amount of water, which filters into the soil and from there nourishes the springs of the Andean highlands. CREDIT: Esteban Vera/Flickr

This is an area that has recently been repopulated after two decades in which families fled the internal conflict, during which Ayacucho accounted for 40 percent of all victims.

“Huñuc Mayu helped organise the returnees and people who had remained in the communities, and we promoted the planting of fruit trees and connections to markets,”

She explains that “in this process more water and technical forms of irrigation were needed, so through a water fund the communities created projects for the conservation of basins and micro-basins in the area.”

The impact is significant, she points out, because in the past families depended on the rains for their water supply and during the dry season and times of drought they had a very difficult time because they could not irrigate their crops or water their animals.

Denisse Chavez is gender officer at the Peruvian office of Diakonia, a Swedish organisation that promotes rights in vulnerable communities around the world. In Peru it partnered with the NGO Huñuc Mayu to revive ancestral knowledge of the Quechua communities of the Andean highlands and thus strengthen water security for local inhabitants. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Today, things have changed.

Churia, a village of just 25 families at more than 3,100 meters above sea level, in the district of Vinchos, is another community that has promoted solutions to address the water shortage problem.

Oliver Cconislla, 23, lives there with his wife Maximiliana Llacta and their four-year-old son. The family depends on small-scale farming and animal husbandry.A complex, integral and sustainable solution

The NGO Huñuc Mayu is strengthening water security by reviving ancient indigenous techniques for harvesting water from streams in the highlands department of Ayacucho. The work is being carried out in that area to ensure sustainability, because it is where the rivers emerge and where water must be retained to benefit families in the middle and lower basins, the institution's director, Alberto Chacchi, an expert on the subject, tells IPS.

"It's a complex system that not only involves containing water in ponds but also recuperating natural pastures that capture water when it rains and form wetlands and springs, building rustic dikes to contain water in ponds, planting native tree species and conserving the soil," he says.

To illustrate, he mentions Alpaccocha, which was a high-altitude wetland that dried up when there was no rainfall. But since the village of Churia built a dam it has become a pond containing 57,000 cubic meters of water.

The total cost including communal labour has been 20,000 soles - about 5,700 dollars. "A reservoir of that size would have cost the state three million soles (854,000 dollars) because it would use conventional technology that also alters ecosystems and would not be sustainable," he says.

In order for local families to use water from the pond, two pipes with a valve have been placed in the dike, and the valve opens when rainfall is low, letting the water run out as a stream so people can place hoses downhill and use it for sprinkler irrigation. Communal authorities manage the system to ensure equitable distribution.

Each dike also has diversion channels at both ends that allow excess water to flow out once the pond is full, thus keeping moist the wetlands that used to dry out at the end of the rainy season.

“Here we depend on the alpaca, using its meat to feed and nourish the children, making jerky (dried meat, ‘charki’ in Quechua) to store it, and when we have enough food we sell to the market. We spin the wool, weave it and sell it too,” he tells IPS over the phone.

His family has been able to count on grass and drinking water – absolutely vital to their livelihood – for their 50 alpacas and 15 sheep thanks to work by the organised community.

“We have been working to harvest water for three years,” he says. “We’ve built dikes, we’ve been separating off the ponds and planting queñua trees on the slopes of the hill. Last year I was a local authority and we worked hand in hand with Huñuc Mayu.”

Cconislla reports that they dammed six ponds using local materials such as grass, soil and clay – “only materials we found in the ground.” They also fenced off the queñua plantations.

“Now when there is no rain we are no longer sad or worried because we have the ponds. The dam keeps the water from running out, and when it fills up it spills over the banks, creating streams that run down to where the animals drink so they have permanent pasture; that area stays humid even during times of drought,” he says.

In addition to these ecosystem services, trout have been stocked in one of the ponds to provide food for families, especially children. “As a community we manage these resources so that they are maintained over time for the benefit of us and the children who will come,” he states.

Cristina Azpur, 46, has no animals, but she does have crops that need irrigation. She runs the household and the farm with the help of her two daughters, ages 11 and 13, when they are not in school, because she does not have a husband, “since it is better to be alone than in bad company,” she says, laughing.

For her and the other families living in houses scattered around the community of Chungui, the dam ensures that they have the water they need to grow their crops and raise their livestock, she says.

“I am about to plant potatoes, olluco (Ullucus tuberosus, a tuber whose leaves are also eaten), and oca (another tuber). This month of June we have had a small campaign (special planting of some crops between May and July), and we use water from the reservoir to ensure our food supply, which is the most important thing to stay healthy,” she says proudly.

She politely adds that she cannot continue talking because she must help her daughters, who study remotely through programmes broadcast on public television, due to the lockdown in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the neighbouring town of Oronccoy, home to some 60 families and founded in 2016, Natividad Ccoicca, 53, also grows her vegetables with water from a community-built reservoir.

She and her family, who live at an altitude of over 3,300 meters, have been part of an experience that has substantially improved their quality of life.

“It used to be very hard to fetch water,” she tells IPS. “We had to walk long distances and even take the horses to carry the containers that we filled at the springs. Now with the reservoir we have water for the farm, the animals and our own consumption.”

She also explains that because of the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 there is greater demand for water in homes. “Can you imagine how things would be for us without the reservoir? We would have a higher risk of getting sick, that’s for sure,” she says.

Women and men work communally to install hoses and irrigate their crops using a sprinkler system, and also for human consumption, in Oronccoy, a village of 60 families in the Peruvian Andes highlands. CREDIT: Courtesy of Huñuc Mayu

These experiences of harvesting water are part of Huñuc Mayu’s integral proposal for the management of hydrographic basins using Andean techniques in synergy with low-cost conventional technologies to strengthen water security.

Medina highlights the involvement of the communities and the active participation of women, who in the Quechua worldview have a close link with water.

“We see important achievements by the communities themselves and the local people,” she says. “For example, the water supply has expanded in response to the demands of agricultural production and human consumption.”

Medina adds that “women have been active participants in protecting the sources of water and the work involved in raising livestock has been reduced to the benefit of their health. These are major contributions that improve the quality of life of families” in this historically neglected part of Peru.

The post Indigenous Farmers Harvest Water with Small Dams in Peru’s Andes Highlands appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Thousands march through the streets during nationwide unrest following the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, on May 30, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Drake

By Ahrar Ahmad
Jun 29 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The American project was founded on rank hypocrisies. On the one hand, President Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the stirring words in the Declaration of Independence that upheld “these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”, did not free his own slaves (not even Sally Hemings, who bore him six children).

Similarly, the Constitution of the US, celebrated as one of the finest examples of a self-conscious construction of a liberal democratic order, defined Blacks as only three-fifths of a person, not a full human being. Though “slave trade” was abolished by Congress in 1808, a brisk market in slaves continued since it was considered essential to the “Southern life-style” and the mode of production in a plantation economy. Even in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled (Dred Scott v Sanford) that Black people were to be deemed “property”, not “citizens”.

It took a Civil War and three momentous amendments to the constitution (the 13th in 1865, the 14th in 1868, and the 15th in 1870) for slavery to be abolished, for Blacks to be accorded the “due process” protections of citizenship, and for them to receive the right to vote. (Women did not receive that right till the 19th amendment in 1920).

While the abject inhumanity of slavery may have been legally mitigated to some extent, the institutions, practices and values of exclusion, exploitation and devaluation were not. Constitutional guarantees, and Supreme Court decisions, could be cleverly subverted by the states. For example, Black people were denied the right to vote through poll taxes, arbitrary registration requirements, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, white primaries and so on. In 1940, 70 years after they had received the right to vote, only 3 percent of Blacks in the South were registered as voters. Less overt voter suppression efforts continue to this day.

Similarly, discriminatory laws in many Southern states also imposed second-class citizenship on them. There were restrictions on residence, employment, bank loans, travel (they had to sit in the back of the bus) and, till the Court’s decision in Brown (1954), the schools they could attend. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed many of these ostensible barriers, but the shadows remained long, corrosive and cruel.

II

While slavery may have been “the original sin” through which America came into being, its treatment of other minorities was not very tender. The ones who suffered the most immediately and most grievously were the Native Americans. This land which was theirs was taken away from them. Today, most live in reservations which constitute only 4 percent of US land area.

They were also physically decimated. They became collateral damage in the relentless westward expansion of the Europeans based on notions of “manifest destiny”. They were killed through forced marches—e.g. the “trail of tears” between 1830-1850, when almost 60,000 of them were uprooted from their habitats and relocated elsewhere, with almost one-fourth dying on the way. There were massacres—e.g. in Bear River, Idaho, 1863, Oak Run, California, 1864, Sand Creek, Colorado, 1864, Marias, Montana, 1870, Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 1890, and many others. And there were summary executions—e.g. the largest execution in US history was that of Dakota men in Mankato after the Sioux Wars in 1862.

When Columbus “discovered” America, the Native population was between 10-15 million. By the end of the 19th century, thanks to the efforts to civilise and Christianize those “red savages”, it had been reduced to 238,000. Today, it is less than 7m, or about 2 percent of the population.

Smaller minority groups in the US faced similar discrimination. Jews were saddled with the long-standing accusation of being “Christ-killers” and their intellectual and financial skills generated envy and anxiety. They were also considered to be consummate conspirators intent on taking over the world, ironically as bankers and financiers (Henry Ford’s argument), or as Bolshevik revolutionaries (Hitler’s conviction, also echoed in the US).

The Chinese were the only people to be formally denied immigration into the country through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Many Chinese, welcomed earlier as “coolie” labourers to lay the railroad tracks, faced harsh treatment and even violence. The Japanese, restricted through a “gentleman’s agreement” in 1907 from coming into the country any more, were herded into internment camps after Pearl Harbor even though there was not a shred of evidence that anyone had done anything wrong. “Indians”, i.e. those from South Asia, were not considered to be “free Whites” and thus not eligible for citizenship (US v Bhagat Singh Thind, 1923). Asian immigration was completely banned in 1924 and, when the door was slightly opened in 1946, limited by strict quotas of about 100 annually from these three countries.

III

Thus racism was sown right into the fabric of American history, practices and values. The question that is frequently asked is why, while other minority groups subjected to discrimination were able to prosper later, Blacks did not. There is usually a racist subtext to that question to underscore White assumptions about Black laziness, intellectual inferiority, moral weakness, and collective inability to cooperate, organise and develop social capital. That conclusion is both self-serving and untrue.

First, no other group endured the sheer ferocity and persistence of bigotry in the same way that Blacks did. All others (except Native Americans, whose conditions have not improved) had voluntarily come to the country. The Blacks were captured, enslaved and commodified. They were not scrappy immigrants who came to the land of opportunity to pursue the American dream; they were forcibly brought here and left to contend with their American nightmare.

Second, while others also faced stereotypes and prejudice, none encountered the uncouth mockery and the sheer physical violence that were inflicted on the Blacks. Minstrel shows, which caricatured Black people as sub-human beings (played by White folks in blackface), were wildly popular.

But it was the slaps and kicks, the lashes and chains, the nigger hunting licenses and tar-and-featherings, the burning of crosses and the lynchings that were emblematic of the dehumanisation of Black people. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,400 Blacks were lynched. Many of these lynchings became public events which communities enjoyed as spectacle and the celebration of White power.

It is certainly not that Blacks only understood the language of violence. But this was certainly the only language preferred by Whites to speak to them. Those attitudes and tropes remained, manifested in new forms, sometimes hiding behind police badges. This is vigilante justice dispensed and protected by the instruments of the state, and sanctioned by historical practice. Hence we hear about teaching them a lesson, demonstrating overwhelming force, putting them in their place, to “dominate” as President Trump advised the other day, threatening to use the military if needed. It is for this reason too that Philonise Floyd poignantly pointed out, in his testimony to the US Congress, that his brother had been subjected to a modern-day lynching.

Third, there was a psycho-sexual dimension to this relationship that complicated matters even further. While White men had always been fiercely protective of “their women”, their concern and insecurity regarding Black men were particularly pronounced. Even a hint, a look, a word, the slightest of moves that could be construed as expressing Black lust for a White woman, would provoke savage reprisal. This lasted well into the 20th century.

In 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a Black teenager was accused of molesting a white woman, even though she never pressed charges. In the resulting carnage, there were 10-15 White casualties and, by some estimates, up to 300 Black. The entire Black neighbourhood of Greenwood was set on fire, and more than a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed. Not a single person was convicted.

Similarly, in 1955, Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago visiting his aunt in Mississippi, was accused of making a pass at a White woman by whistling at her. The boy was tortured to death, so badly brutalised that his mother could not even recognise her own son. The perpetrators were acquitted by an all-White jury.

One hears the same refrain in Harper Lee’s 1961 classic To Kill a Mocking Bird.

IV

According to the Sentencing Project’s Report to the UN in 2018, Blacks are three times more likely to be searched, twice as likely to be arrested, and receive longer prison sentences for committing the same crime. Thirty-five percent of all executions in the US have been Black; they constitute 34 percent of prison inmates and 42 percent of people on death row.

However, while police brutality and related injustices are obvious, the most overwhelming burden for Blacks is the political disempowerment and economic inequities which they have to bear.

Blacks are approximately 13 percent of the population. But currently, while their presence in the House is roughly equivalent (52 out of 435), they have only three Senators (the highest ever), and no Governors. Of the 189 American Ambassadors, only three are Black, usually in “hardship posts” or less relevant assignments (like Bangladesh?).

According to Valerie Wilson from the Economic Policy Institute, in 2018, a median Black worker only earned about 75 percent of what a White person does (USD 14.92 per hour to USD 19.79), and The Economist reported that in 2019 mean household wealth was USD 138,000 for Blacks, and USD 933,700 for Whites. While more than 72 percent of Whites own homes usually in nice neighbourhoods, only 42 percent of Blacks do so usually in shabbier environments. Unemployment rates are typically twice that of Whites.

Approximately 23 percent of Covid-19 patients are Black, and similar discrepancies are seen in terms of people suffering from blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, asthma, cancer, and other health challenges.

Educational disparities are pronounced. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, while almost 80 percent of Whites graduate from high school, only 62 percent of Blacks do so. While 29 percent of White males and 38 percent of White females graduate from college, only 15 percent of Black males and 22 percent of Black females do the same.

This is not because of innate intellectual differences traditionally used to explain the “achievement gap” (comparative lower scores in reading and math for Black students). As John Valant pointed out, Black performance in standardised tests has much more to do with exclusionary zoning policies that keep Black families from better school districts, mass incarceration practices that remove Black parents from children, and under-resourced Black school districts that impose relatively poor-quality teachers, weak supportive infrastructure and an environment of hopelessness and despair that students are compelled to endure. Expecting these kids to perform at the same level as others is like tying a weight to their legs and hoping that they can be competitive in a marathon.

President Johnson’s effort to “level the playing field” led to some Affirmative Action policies, and the formation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965, to provide historically disadvantaged groups some extra educational and economic opportunities. Some progress has certainly been made. A small Black middle class of professionals has gradually come into existence, some Black entrepreneurs have been notably prosperous, and a few Black performers have gained spectacular success in the entertainment and sports industries (unrelated to affirmative action).

But, on the other hand, many Whites resented these programmes which were gradually challenged, and in some ways gutted, through charges of “reverse discrimination” (Bakke v Board of Regents University of California, 1978). The sentiment was that these policies unfairly violated a merit-based system of rewards, and created an entitlement culture for undeserving Blacks (conveniently forgetting that Whites had gained from it for centuries). Sometimes affirmative action only meant incorporating a few Blacks in various positions to prove an institution’s quantitative adherence to EEOC requirements. It was tokenist, grudging and alienating. Instead of bridging racial divides, they deepened them.

V

Ay, and there is the rub, as Shakespeare would say. The issue of racism is not about a chokehold of a White police officer, but its stranglehold on US society. It is ingrained in the predatory capitalism that the US worships with its emphasis on ugly materialism over human development, selfish individualism over collective welfare, desperate profit-seeking over social responsibility, immoral inequalities over a sharing culture, patriarchal dominance over an inclusive democracy, mindless consumerism over ecological concern, and a phenomenally successful strategy of keeping people, particularly the working class, divided and loathing each other.

It is also true that the races are prisoners of their respective assumptions, perceptions and judgments that lead them to see “the other” in radically distorted terms. Their narratives of history, their engagement with reality, and their judgment of events condemn them to their own rhetorical echo-chambers, making communications difficult. What the Blacks will see and remember will be vastly different from what the Whites will (e.g. Blacks will hear George Floyd crying out for his mother as a casually sadistic White officer chokes him to death, Whites will see the looting). In these conditions, hate becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, when racism is reduced, and isolated, to a simple problem (e.g. police brutality), it will let politicians shake their cynical heads and issue condemnations with platitudes and clichés that will come trippingly to their tongues. It will permit them to tinker with this or that aspect of law enforcement and claim to have “fixed it”. It will encourage the power-elite to seek TV-rich moments such as taking a knee, or carrying a BLM placard, or raising a fist at a funeral memorial—high in symbolism but pitifully, perhaps deliberately, low in accomplishment.

As long as they ignore the larger historical, political and psychological context in which White defensiveness and Black weaknesses are located, one can treat the symptoms and not the virus of racism. The intellectual honesty and moral courage this would require has been absent in the past, and there is neither much evidence, nor much hope, that we will see it anytime soon.

Postscript: Having lived in America for many years, I can personally attest to the fairness and decency of the vast majority of colleagues, students, and general people my wife and I have met, and the genuine graciousness and warmth of many friends that we have been blessed to have. This merely underscores the point that the issue is not individual but institutional, not personal but structural.

(The cases mentioned in the article are all Supreme Court cases.)

Ahrar Ahmad is Director General, Gyantapas Abdur Razzaq Foundation, Dhaka.

Email: ahrar.ahmad@bhsu.edu

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Racism in America: Police Chokehold is Not the Issue appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Online technologies offer more secrecy and anonymity, creating a safe haven to generate, host and consume child sexual abuse material with impunity, says UN expert Maud de Boer-Buquicchio. Credit: United Nations

By Charlotte Munns
LONDON, Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Global upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has left society’s most vulnerable exposed. Instances of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) found online have increased at an alarming rate over past months.

The incidence is higher, the abuse is worse, and the children are younger. Self-regulated social media companies are dragging their heels implementing reform that bolsters the safety of their youngest members.

This recent upturn comes after decades of rapid growth of CSEM material. INTERPOL, a global policing organisation, reported a 10,000% increase in the amount of CSEM on the Internet since 2004.

Since lockdown measures were put in place, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has blocked nearly 9 million attempts by UK internet users to access child sexual abuse websites. The vast majority of victims identified are 7 to 13 years old.

Many instances of abuse originate on social media platforms. Private messaging services, and childrens’ broad access to the Internet have facilitated contact between victims and perpetrators. Each photo published online is evidence of a crime occurring, yet much goes undetected.

At a United Nations briefing in April concerning the effects of the pandemic on children, the European Union representative Walter Stevens noted that the scale of online abuse “continues to expand at an alarming rate.” In some countries, such as Australia, the amount of detected material has doubled in recent months.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought more children home, and increased Internet connectivity as teaching turns virtual, the most vulnerable members of society are being delivered into the hands of abusers.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres said earlier this year, “governments and parents all have a role in keeping children safe,” adding that, “social media companies have a special responsibility to protect the vulnerable.”

Maud de Boer-Burquicchio, former Special Rapporteur on the sale and exploitation of children, criticised tech companies’ intentions, “the respect of childrens’ rights and dignity, if at all, continues to come as an afterthought.”

No company is more central to this discussion than Facebook. According to the New York Times, of the 18.4 million reports of child sexual abuse material last year, 14 million came from Facebook’s platform. The Messaging service facilitates contact between victims and perpetrators, and is where images and video are easily sent and disseminated.

Following suit from most other social media organisations, Facebook’s plans to implement end-to-end encryption into its Messaging service represents a significant step backwards in combating CSEM globally. The measure is responding to users’ calls for greater privacy, yet would prevent anyone, even Facebook, from identifying exploitative messages and media sent in conversations.

Currently, hash technology within a system called PhotoDNA allows for the detection of CSEM across platforms. If end-to-end encryption is introduced, this will no longer be possible.

Andy Burrows, NSPCC Head of Child Safety Online Policy told IPS that this service “will make content moderation virtually impossible and make it easier for offenders to groom children.”

A number of leaders from countries like the United States, UK and Australia have criticised Facebook’s haste to encrypt its platform. They have called for a delay until child safety can be guaranteed.

Susie Hargreaves, Chief Executive of IWF, told IPS, “we are asking Facebook to give assurances that child protection will not be hampered and that children and victims will be protected in some way, and as yet, none of us have seen any of those assurances.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray has expressed his concerns that end-to-end encryption would prevent law enforcement’s ability to track down perpetrators of child sexual exploitation.

In October of 2019, Attorney General William Barr sent a public letter to Zuckerberg echoing this concern, and calling on Facebook to, “embed the safety of the public in system designs,” and “enable law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format.”

Fred Langford, IWF Chief Technical Officer, in an interview with IPS praised the social media company for engaging with the issue of CSEM. Facebook has partnered with other tech companies like Google and Microsoft to discuss embedded protections for children, yet many criticize these measures for providing little real change.

At a meeting last month, shareholders noted the severity of CSEM on Facebook’s platform, stating, “Facebook’s plans to expand end-to-end encryption will make it unable to track CSEM on social media enabling more offenders to evade detection.”

Past measures to protect children on the platform have not been effective enough, they said. Shareholders requested a report be compiled detailing how Facebook would address the issue prior to imposing end-to-end encryption. The Board of Directors voted against.

Without effective measures to protect children while ensuring user privacy, end-to-end encryption will make continuing to detect and prosecute offenders nearly impossible. Many are unsure of Facebook’s measures to deal with that.

“Tech companies have proven time and again that they are failing to make their self-regulated platforms safe for children,” NSPCC’s Any Burrows told IPS. The ongoing pandemic, and Facebook’s sluggish response to concerns for child welfare on its platform may further endanger our most vulnerable.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Safety of Children an Afterthought for Tech Companies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Charlotte Munns, a free-lance writer based in London, has specialized in English Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, New York

The post Safety of Children an Afterthought for Tech Companies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Sudan Partnership Conference, which took place via teleconference, pledged $1.8 billion to support the transitional government as well as facilitating access to loans and partial or total debt relief by some countries. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Nina R

By Reem Abbas
KHARTOUM, Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

This week, when Sudan’s Minister of Energy and Mining Adil Ibrahim addressed the country, stating that households will face power-cuts for up to seven hours a day, people had already been sitting on plastic chairs outside their homes, scouring the internet to purchase battery-operated fans. This Northeast African nation has seen temperature highs of up to 41 degrees Celsius recently.

Ibrahim attributed the power cuts to foreign engineers who had been working to build the country’s energy industry but left because of the COVID-19 crisis. However, the situation is more complicated.

“The government does not have money to buy the gasoline needed for the energy sector, the country does not have foreign currency and the reserve at the central bank of Sudan is very minimal,” an anonymous source at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning told IPS.

Sudan has barely emerged from the 30-year long dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown by a revolution in April 2019. Currently, the transitional government — a civilian and military government — is too broke to finance Sudan’s transition.

The military has controlled Sudan for almost 50 years through dictatorships and it continues to have a tight grip on power.

But yesterday, Jun. 25, the Sudan Partnership Conference, which took place via teleconference, pledged $1.8 billion to support the transitional government as well as facilitating access to loans and partial or total debt relief by some countries.

The conference, hosted by Germany and supported by the Friends of Sudan, brings together the European Union (EU), the United States, the United Kingdom and several Gulf and African countries. Senior figures in the EU, the Sudanese government as well as the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres addressed the conference.

In total, 40 countries and institutions took part in the pledge that Sudan’s Prime Minister Dr. Abdallah Hamdok called “unprecedented”. 

But Shawqi Abdelazim, a veteran journalist in Khartoum, says that the conference was not only about meeting financial targets.

“The conference had political targets and it has put Sudan back on the map and signalled its return to the international community. Many countries asked for Sudan to be removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list which is very important for economic recovery,” Shawqi Abdelazim, who works for Sudanese and German publications, told IPS.

• Sudan remains on the United States’ State Sponsor of Terrorism list.
• As a result, the country cannot access to funding from international financial institutions.

Shawqi Abdelazim added that by working with Sudan, the international community made a decision, “it is either they work with us to save the transitional period or they leave us to face our own fate; to fight off the military leaders or self-isolate in an attempt to re-build our economy with humble means”.

A recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations states that the military generals “control a sprawling network of companies and keep the central bank and the Ministry of Finance on life support to gain political power”.

The civilian wing of the government led by Hamdok needs reassurance as it continues to solidify civilian rule to make way for democratic elections in three years as well as fight the deep state control of the former ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP).

“The conference gave legitimacy to the civilian government, they made it clear that they are supportive,” Mayada Hassanein, an economist in Khartoum, told IPS.

But this does not mean that the financial pledges would keep the civilian government afloat for a long time.

“The amount pledged, $1.8bn is less than what is needed for cash transfers for the ministry of finance program to support families,” said Hassanien.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning had been keen to secure at least $1.9 billion to support its family assistance programme, which aims to allocate $5 per family to support them with the ever-increasing living costs.

The programme was inspired by similar successful programmes in Brazil, but in the Sudanese context, it could have its flaws.

“It is fair to support vulnerable families, but this money is better spent on public services that can protect families from the volatility of the market. There is no point in having money in my pocket if I can’t find medicine or take my children to school,” Mayada Abdelazim, an economist in Khartoum, told IPS.

Sudan has serious medicine shortages and the crisis was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.

Previously there were only ‘partners’ not donors

On the ground, the reality is dire. The transitional government, with all the external and internal support it garnered, was unable to fund the ambitious democratic transition the Sudanese people fought for.

• The country’s foreign debt stands at $62 billion.
• And even though the U.S. ended a 20-year trade embargo against Sudan in 2017, sanctions have not been fully removed.

Things looked promising in the first months after Hamdok was sworn in. In October, the European Union (EU) pledged €466 million in development assistance and various EU countries pledged funds for development and technical support. But this was not enough to help the government stand on its feet.

A report by the European Council on Foreign Relations explained that “international donors blame their reluctance to assist the Sudanese government on its inaction regarding subsidy reform”.

The International Crisis Group says that fuel subsides have damaged Sudan’s economy. They currently take up 40 percent of the country’s annual budget. “As part of the subsidies policy, fuel importers can buy dollars at a price far below market price, leaving room for corruption”.

Local economists paint a similar picture, but the government is cozying up to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“One reason Sudan is unable to get loans is its significant debt, however, the IMF and the World Bank are clear gateway to accessing international funds. The IMF is now in agreement with the government to send technical experts to support with the reforms, but this was not a clear promise to give Sudan money,” Mayada Abdelazim said.

The IMF’s structural adjustment programmes mandate lessening or lifting subsidies all together and in recent months, a familiar process is underway in the country.

“The government has already lifted fuel subsidies by offering commercial fuel (which is another word for unsubsidised) in addition to subsidised fuel. But currently, you can only find fuel at the gas stations that offer unsubsidised fuel, they basically lifted subsidies without entering into a direct confrontation with the public,” said Mayada Abdelazim.

Rising inflation impacts the population

During Al-Bashir’s tenure, Sudanese people endured numerous wars (some of which are only in the process of being resolved), severe economic impoverishment, and the oppression of all dissent and a total deterioration of all aspects of their welfare.

For years, 70 percent of Sudan’s budget was invested in the security and military sector leaving very little for healthcare and education, which were further destroyed through privatisation policies and incessant corruption by the ruling party.

A few weeks ago, the government increased the minimum wage by up to 700 percent to match raising inflation. However, inflation increased from 98.81 to 114.33 percent between April and May.

The new salaries have now become redundant as the prices of basic food items increased from 200 to 300 percent and the Sudanese pound (SDG) continued to plummet, reaching 145 SDG to the U.S. dollar in the black market versus 55 SDG to the dollar.

“Any money you give people will get eaten up as prices increase due to volatility. Business owners do not know how much they would have to pay for rent or stock next month, they have to push up their prices based on expectations,” said Mayada Abdelazim, who has been working on a paper on the partnership conference.

Outside Khartoum, the situation is even worse for ordinary citizens.

Hanan Hassan, a civil servant who lives in Damazin in Blue Nile state, over 500 kms from the capital, Khartoum, told IPS that businesses have taken advantage of the salary raises to increase their prices.

“Transportation costs inside the city went up by 300 percent, food items are increasing on a daily basis which makes it impossible to come up with a monthly budget. Traders are taking advantage of people because there is no monitoring by the authorities and others are arguing that they have to purchase fuel at commercial rates,” said Hassan.

In the meantime, the government has a dilemma, currently it has no money to pay salaries or to import basic food items.

“The Minister is opposed to financing from the Central Bank, but the bank has to print money to finance the remainder of the 2020 government budget,” said the source at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.

Reclaiming what can be reclaimed

In November 2019, the transitional government passed a law establishing the Empowerment Elimination, Anti-Corruption, and Funds Recovery Committee, which is tasked with ridding the country of the legacy of the former regime and reclaiming Sudan’s embezzled resources.

The committee has held numerous press conferences to announce the confiscation of land, companies and financial resources from old regime. All the resources will revert to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, which is supposed to integrate them into the annual budget.

“The government expects that the confiscated land and property would bring in 77 billion SDG in profit,” said the source at the Ministry of Finance.

In May, the committee announced that it now controls $3.5 to $4 billion worth of assets from the former president. This is not yet cash. Observers believe that the government will have a hard time liquidating the assets as the cronies of the former regime are the only ones with the money to buy them back.

In the meantime, there is optimism that the international community will use this conference to make up for the lost opportunities that were pointed out in recent reports indicating that the international community have wasted time and delayed much-needed support to Sudan.

“Sudan’s revolution gave people around the world hope that change can happen, it is our responsibility to support this transitional process,” German Ambassador Ulrich Klöckner told IPS.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs'); Related Articles

• Sudan, Where Illegal Abortions remain Dangerous and Deadly
• Q&A: Global Poverty Expected to Move to Middle Income Developing Nations in Asia
• Coronavirus Leads to Nosedive in Remittances in Latin America

The post Sudan’s Partners Pledge almost $2Bn but Is it Enough? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Q&A: Post COVID-19 Pandemic Let’s Stop the Next Wave of Medicalisation over Mental Health appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the deforestation problems in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By External Source
Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic, suspected of originating in bats and pangolins, has brought the risk of viruses that jump from wildlife to humans into stark focus.

These leaps often happen at the edges of the world’s tropical forests, where deforestation is increasingly bringing people into contact with animals’ natural habitats. Yellow fever, malaria, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ebola – all of these pathogens have spilled over from one species to another at the margins of forests.

As doctors and biologists specializing in infectious diseases, we have studied these and other zoonoses as they spread in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We found that deforestation has been a common theme.

More than half of the world’s tropical deforestation is driven by four commodities: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products. They replace mature, biodiverse tropical forests with monocrop fields and pastures

More than half of the world’s tropical deforestation is driven by four commodities: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products. They replace mature, biodiverse tropical forests with monocrop fields and pastures. As the forest is degraded piecemeal, animals still living in isolated fragments of natural vegetation struggle to exist. When human settlements encroach on these forests, human-wildlife contact can increase, and new opportunistic animals may also migrate in.

The resulting disease spread shows the interconnectedness of natural habitats, the animals that dwell within it, and humans.

 

Yellow fever: Monkeys, humans and hungry mosquitoes

Yellow fever, a viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes, famously halted progress on the Panama Canal in the 1900s and shaped the history of Atlantic coast cities from Philadelphia to Rio de Janeiro. Although a yellow fever vaccine has been available since the 1930s, the disease continues to afflict 200,000 people a year, a third of whom die, mostly in West Africa.

The virus that causes it lives in primates and is spread by mosquitoes that tend to dwell high in the canopy where these primates live.

In the early 1990s, a yellow fever outbreak was reported for the first time in the Kerio Valley in Kenya, where deforestation had fragmented the forest. Between 2016 and 2018, South America saw its largest number of yellow fever cases in decades, resulting in around 2,000 cases, and hundreds of deaths. The impact was severe in the extremely vulnerable Atlantic forest of Brazil – a biodiversity hotspot that has shrunk to 7% of its original forest cover.
Shrinking habitat has been shown to concentrate howler monkeys – one of the main South American yellow fever hosts. A study on primate density in Kenya further demonstrated that forest fragmentation led a greater density of primates, which in turn led to pathogens becoming more prevalent.

Deforestation resulted in patches of forest that both concentrated the primate hosts and favored the mosquitoes that could transmit the virus to humans.

 

Malaria: Humans can also infect wildlife

Just as wildlife pathogens can jump to humans, humans can cross-infect wildlife.

Falciparum malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people yearly, especially in Africa. But in the Atlantic tropical forest of Brazil, we have also found a surprisingly high rate of Plasmodium falciparum (the malaria parasite responsible for severe malaria) circulating in the absence of humans. That raises the possibility that this parasite may be infecting new world monkeys. Elsewhere in the Amazon, monkey species have become naturally infected. In both cases, deforestation could have facilitated cross-infection.

We and other scientists have extensively documented the associations between deforestation and malaria in the Amazon, showing how the malaria-carrying mosquitoes and human malaria cases are strongly linked to deforested habitat.

 

Another type of malaria, Plasmodium knowlesi, known to circulate among monkeys, became a concern to human health over a decade ago in Southeast Asia. Several studies have shown that areas sustaining higher rates of forest loss also had higher rates of human infections, and that the mosquito vectors and monkey hosts spanned a wide range of habitats including disturbed forest.

 

Venezuelan equine encephalitis: Rodents move in

Venezuelan equine encephalitis is another mosquito-borne virus that is estimated to cause tens to hundreds of thousands of humans to develop febrile illnesses every year. Severe infections can lead to encephalitis and even death.

In the Darien province of Panama, we found that two rodent species had particularly high rates of infection with Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, leading us to suspect that these species may be the wildlife hosts.

One of the species, Tome’s spiny rat, has also been implicated in other studies. The other, the short-tailed cane mouse, is also involved in the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as hantavirus and possibly Madariaga virus, an emergent encephalitis virus.

While Tome’s spiny rat is widely found in tropical forests in the Americas, it readily occupies regrowth and forest fragments. The short-tailed cane mouse prefers habitat on the edge of forests and abutting cattle pastures.

As deforestation in this region progresses, these two rodents can occupy forest fragments, cattle pastures and the regrowth that arises when fields lie fallow. Mosquitoes also occupy these areas and can bring the virus to humans and livestock.

 

Ebola: Disease at the forest’s edge

Vector-borne diseases are not the only zoonoses sensitive to deforestation. Ebola was first described in 1976, but outbreaks have become more common. The 2014-2016 outbreak killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa and drew attention to diseases that can spread from wildlife to humans.

The natural transmission cycle of the Ebola virus remains elusive. Bats have been implicated, with possible additional ground-dwelling animals maintaining “silent” transmission between human outbreaks.

While the exact nature of transmission is not yet known, several studies have shown that deforestation and forest fragmentation were associated with outbreaks between 2004 and 2014. In addition to possibly concentrating Ebola wildlife hosts, fragmentation may serve as a corridor for pathogen-carrying animals to spread the virus over large areas, and it may increase human contact with these animals along the forest edge.

 

What about the coronavirus?

While the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak hasn’t been proved, a genetically similar virus has been detected in intermediate horseshoe bats and Sunda pangolins.

The range of the Sunda pangolin – which is critically endangered – overlaps with the intermediate horseshoe bat in the forests of Southeast Asia, where it lives in mature tree hollows. As forest habitat shrinks, could pangolins also experience increased density and susceptibility to pathogens?

In fact, in small urban forest fragments in Malaysia, the Sunda pangolin was detected even though overall mammal diversity was much lower than a comparison tract of contiguous forest. This shows that this animal is able to persist in fragmented forests where it could increase contact with humans or other animals that can harbor potentially zoonotic viruses, such as bats. The Sunda pangolin is poached for its meat, skin and scales and imported illegally from Malaysia and Vietnam into China. A wet market in Wuhan that sells such animals has been suspected as a source of the current pandemic.

 

Preventing zoonotic spillover

There is still a lot that we don’t know about how viruses jump from wildlife to humans and what might drive that contact.

Forest fragments and their associated landscapes encompassing forest edge, agricultural fields and pastures have been a repeated theme in tropical zoonoses. While many species disappear as forests are cleared, others have been able to adapt. Those that adapt may become more concentrated, increasing the rate of infections.

Given the evidence, it is clear humans need to balance the production of food, forest commodities and other goods with the protection of tropical forests. Conservation of wildlife may keep their pathogens in check, preventing zoonotic spillover, and ultimately benefiting humans, too.

Amy Y. Vittor, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Florida; Gabriel Zorello Laporta, Professor of biology and infectious diseases, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, and Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, Professor of Epidemiology, Universidade de São Paulo

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

The post How Deforestation Helps Deadly Viruses Jump from Animals to Humans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Coast guards keep watch in the Thengar Char island in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, on February 2, 2017. Reuters File Photo

By Earl R Miller and John Cotton Richmond
Jun 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In late 2019, we learned of the harrowing plight of Suma Akter, a Bangladeshi woman in Saudi Arabia who secretly recorded and shared on social media her story of abuse and exploitation abroad. In Saudi Arabia, Akter said, her employer beat her and at one point poured hot oil on her hand. Later on, when she fell ill, Akter said her employer sold her to another person for 22,000 riyals (almost Tk 5 lakh).

This is just one form of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a crime; it involves exploiting someone—using them, capitalising on their vulnerabilities—for the purposes of compelled labour or commercial sex by using force, fraud or coercion. It is an appalling crime that takes advantage of often desperate people, hijacking their dreams, and robbing them of their freedom, for profit.

On June 25, the United States Secretary of State released the 2020 global Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, upgrading Bangladesh’s ranking from Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 2. This significant step reflects Bangladesh’s progress in combating human trafficking over the past year, including standing up seven anti-trafficking tribunals and taking action against recruiting agencies exploiting Bangladeshis seeking to work abroad.

We congratulate the government and committed civil society actors who fought tirelessly to pursue accountability for traffickers and freedom for victims. They are Bangladesh’s heroes in the fight against global human trafficking. The Tier 2 ranking means the Bangladesh government is making significant and increasing efforts to meet the minimum standards towards the elimination of trafficking. But there is more work to be done to fully meet these standards, and put an end to this despicable practice.

The United States is proud to work with Bangladesh in its efforts to combat human trafficking. We echo the UN Network on Migration’s June 11 op-ed in encouraging further actions to address TIP, and have four recommendations for Bangladesh to take further action in its fight to secure freedom for victims of human trafficking:

First, employ the seven anti-trafficking tribunals to manage the 5,000+ cases filed under the 2012 anti-trafficking law, and swiftly bring traffickers to justice as detailed in the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. Until the legal stakes for criminals are visibly raised, trafficking remains a low-risk, high-profit endeavour. This must change.

Second, make the Bangladesh response to human trafficking victim-centred by prioritising care for all victims, male and female, young and old. This means Bangladesh will need to allocate more government resources to enhance care for survivors—in conjunction with the robust efforts of the NGO and donor community—and to ensure all victims receive adequate protections and care plans tailored to the medical, psychological, social, legal, and rehabilitation needs necessary to begin the healing process.

Third, strengthen measures to protect individuals seeking safe channels to work abroad. This includes continuing to enforce applicable laws for recruitment agencies, cracking down on businesses that inflate official recruitment fees set in place by government-to-government negotiations, and working to end the payment of these fees by workers and placing the burden on employers to pay these costs. When individuals take out a loan to pay recruitment fees, they become acutely vulnerable to exploitation. This calculus, one that disadvantages employees from the start, needs to change entirely. Employers must do more to build accessible paths for safe migration. We were encouraged by the government’s quick actions to investigate and arrest suspected traffickers following the horrendous killing of 26 Bangladeshis in Libya, and we hope these actions lead to institutional safeguards to ensure tragedies like these never happen again.

Fourth, investigate and prosecute traffickers who are compelling thousands of people to engage in commercial sex acts, including because they were born in a brothel. We call on the government to take immediate measures to carefully investigate reports of sex trafficking in licensed brothels, identify and protect the victims.

All of this is genuinely hard work, and in the midst of the global Covid-19 crisis, the fight has only become more urgent. Traffickers are capitalising on the chaos of the pandemic and we must hold them to account for their crimes. It is time for us all to prioritise the actions necessary to protect freedom. We are committed to our partnership with Bangladesh in the critically important task to abolish human trafficking.

Earl R. Miller is the United States Ambassador to Bangladesh. He is perhaps the only US ambassador in history to have investigated and arrested human traffickers as a former sworn law enforcement officer.

John Cotton Richmond is the United States Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. He has led anti-trafficking NGOs and served as a specialised human trafficking prosecutor before coming to the highest position in the United States federal government dedicated to the fight against trafficking.

The post What still needs to happen to win the fight against human trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A mother and daughter in Kenya. The daughter was a victim of sexual violence. Credit: Tara Carey, Equality Now

By Tsitsi Matekaire
LONDON, Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

In Malawi, Mary* was only 14 years old when she was recruited and trafficked to the city of Blantyre and sold for sex in a bar. A man had arrived in her village looking for girls to work as domestic helpers for families.

He appeared genuine and for Mary – and many girls who are out of school and living in poverty – this seemed a way out and a chance to earn money to support her family. She was living with her grandmother, who had hardly enough to buy food.

When Mary arrived in Blantyre, the promised work never materialized. Instead, the man sold her to a bar owner who in turn sold her for sex to his customers. Isolated and traumatized, Mary was trapped for over three months, and only escaped when the bar owner went away one night.

Although it has now been over two years since his arrest, the case is still pending in court. With no fixed time limit, the legal process has dragged on, leaving Mary waiting indefinitely and stuck in limbo. Meanwhile, the man who recruited her from the village has never been arrested.

Mary would have abandoned her fight for justice long ago had it not been for the support of Equality Now and our partner People Serving Girls at Risk, who have been providing psycho-social assistance to help Mary rebuild her life and navigate the difficult legal process.

This includes covering her transport costs and accompanying her to numerous court hearings that to date have resulted in only postponements, disappointment, and upset.

Worryingly, the many legal obstacles faced by Mary are neither uncommon in sex trafficking cases, nor are they unique to Malawi. Across Africa, traffickers who recruit, abuse, and sexually exploit vulnerable and impoverished women and children are going unpunished because governments and criminal justice systems are failing in their duty to hold perpetrators to account.

Take for instance, the horrific case of German national Bernhard Glaser, who was arrested in Ugandan in February 2019 and charged with multiple counts of sex trafficking and abusing girls aged 10 to 16 who were living at an unlicensed shelter Glaser had established ostensibly to “help” vulnerable children.

The story made international headlines and caused huge public uproar amongst Ugandans who were appalled at how this predator had betrayed the community’s trust and abused his position of power to sexually exploit many girls over a long period of time.

Despite widespread public outrage, more than a year after Glaser’s arrest, the case was still pending, delayed by multiple adjournments, with Glaser yet to even enter his plea. He died from cancer in April 2020, a day after being granted bail.

The girls never got their day in court. Nor has the Ugandan state addressed the issues making them vulnerable to exploitation or provided assistance to help them overcome their ordeal, instead leaving them at risk of further abuse.

Meanwhile, 61-year-old American Christian missionary Gregory Dow has pleaded guilty in a US court to sexually abusing girls in Kenya. Back in 1996, he was convicted in America for assault with intent to commit sexual abuse against a teenager and was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to register as a sex offender.

He later travelled to Kenya and in 2008 established a home for orphaned children where he violated girls in his care.

In 2017, Dow fled back to the United States after Kenyan authorities attempted to arrest him. He was eventually taken into custody after being located by FBI agents and US police.

A statement by the US Department of Justice said: “The defendant purported to be a Christian missionary who cared for these children and asked them to call him “Dad.” But instead of being a father figure, he preyed on their youth and vulnerability.”

Sexual exploitation is both a cause and a consequence of discrimination and the unequal status of women and girls. Adolescent girls are in an especially disadvantaged position, which is underpinned by multiple layers of discrimination directed at them for being young, female, and sexualized by society.

These structural inequalities exist across Africa, as they do in all the regions of the world. High levels of poverty alongside harmful cultural practices make girls particularly susceptible to sexual predators and traffickers, who take advantage of shortcomings in social safety nets, local child protection systems, law enforcement, and judicial processes.

The current pandemic exposes and exacerbates deep-rooted structural inequalities that run along the cultural fault lines of gender, sexuality, race, disability, and class. In the wake of COVID-19, an economic crisis is placing further burdens on underprivileged communities, with many suffering severe financial hardship.

The United Nations has warned human traffickers are becoming increasingly active, targeting impoverished women and children who have lost their income as a consequence of lockdown and social distancing measures introduced to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, school closures have interrupted the education of over 1.5 billion students worldwide, and protection systems have been severely disrupted. Predators are seeking to take advantage of youngsters spending more time unsupervised on the internet.

Across Africa, the expansion of inexpensive, high-speed internet and the growth in smartphone, tablet, and laptop ownership is swelling the number of children who can be targeted in the digital realm. Girls are particularly vulnerable to online grooming, sexual coercion, and sextortion, accounting for 90% of those featured in online child abuse materials.

Coupled with this is a disturbing global surge in demand for child abuse content. The worldwide impact of COVID-19 means people have been spending more time online, fuelling what was already a vast and rapidly expanding form of cybercrime intersecting national boundaries.

Exponential growth in the volume of digital content is making the cybersphere harder to police, and emboldened distributors of child sexual exploitation material are targeting mainstream platforms to reach wider audiences.

It is commendable that numerous African governments, including those in Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, have enacted anti-trafficking and child protection laws that can be used to safeguard children and punish offenders. It is an important step. However, implementation is often very weak. Sex trafficking and sexual exploitation cases are not prioritized.

In many African countries, courts have closed, reduced, or adjusted their operations, making the situation even worse for girls seeking justice. Mounting backlogs of legal cases will further prolong judicial and administrative proceedings.

Without functioning judicial oversight, girls’ access to justice and protection from sexual exploitation will be undermined to an even greater extent.

It is more urgent than ever that the justice system responds to the realities of children whose rights have been violated. States must put in place measures to ensure that girls have access to protection and justice in meaningful ways during and after the pandemic.

Governments need to do more to ensure survivors of sexual exploitation are protected and supported in their recovery. When victims and their families cannot trust the courts to deliver justice, it undermines the power of the law and emboldens offenders to continue exploiting and abusing with impunity.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post African Governments Failing Survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Tsitsi Matekaire is a London-based human rights lawyer and Global Lead for Equality Now’s End Sex Trafficking program

The post African Governments Failing Survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Inter Press Service.