Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Woman gives birth to healthy baby in …., Democratic Republic of the Congo, facilitated by the delivery that day of emergency reproductive health kits. Credit: UNFPA

By Anand Grover and Ximena Casas
May 12 2020 (IPS)

“When I was 13… I got pregnant from my older brother… He raped me starting when I was 11,” a girl from Guatemala told one of us in 2015. She was one of the 2 million girls under 15 worldwide who give birth each year, often due to sexual violence.

The Covid-19 pandemic is putting girls like her at even greater risk. While lockdowns reduce the spread of Covid-19, they also drive a global spike in reported violence in the home, and leaving some women and girls isolated with abusers, leading to increased unwanted pregnancies.

The pandemic is putting enormous pressure on health systems around the world as governments work to contain the virus and treat sick people. But governments also need to sustain other essential services, which according to the World Health Organization include sexual and reproductive health services.

The right to non-discriminatory access to women’s health services is part of the right to health under international law and domestic law in most countries. Governments need to find ways to protect this right, even in the pandemic

Overloaded hospitals, travel bans, lockdowns and border closures are making access to those services increasingly difficult. Poor and marginalized women and girls, including those with disabilities, especially risk losing access to needed services. And some governments’ responses are making matters worse by discriminating against women and girls who need them.

The pandemic is exposing and exacerbating existing inequalities. More than 5 million families in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean already spent more than 40 percent of their annual non-food household expenditures on maternal health services before the pandemic. With poor families hardest hit by the pandemic’s economic consequences, they are likely to find it even harder to get quality maternal health care.

Governments need to make sure that people can get these services, regardless of ability to pay, and that pregnant women not only get pre-natal and birth care and have the right to make decisions about their labor and delivery plan.

But they also need to protect everyone’s choice about whether to become pregnant or continue a pregnancy. The International Planned Parenthood Federation reports that the pandemic has forced them to close thousands of family planning facilities—either due to government orders or social distancing needs— Colombia, El Salvador, Pakistan, Germany, Ghana, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have each had to close at least 100 such facilities.

Directors for Marie Stopes, an organization that provides contraception and safe abortion services in many countries, in Uganda and Zimbabwe said they have waited in vain for supplies to arrive. “We’re expecting a huge shortage of contraceptives in African countries,” one said. In Venezuela, thousands of women who previously travelled to neighboring Colombia to obtain contraceptive supplies are now blocked by border closings. Manufacturers warn of a global condom shortage because manufacturers are locked down to halt the spread of the virus. The shortages of contraceptive supplies increase the risk of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and the need for abortion.

Anti-choice politicians and organizations are capitalizing on the pandemic by urging governments to prohibit abortion care during the crisis. In the United States, 11 states have tried to limit access to abortion. Poland’s Parliament is considering regressive legislation to eliminate legal access to abortion in some cases and to criminalize sexuality education.

Abortion cannot be delayed, and denying access violates human rights.

The right to non-discriminatory access to women’s health services is part of the right to health under international law and domestic law in most countries. Governments need to find ways to protect this right, even in the pandemic.

Denying these services will undermine women’s ability to recover from the pandemic. And increased pregnancies or unsafe abortions could increase pressure on already overburdened health systems.

The pandemic is reshaping our world, but it is also an opportunity to reshape reproductive health services. This might include expanded use of telemedicine, and making information available online. Expanding access to medical abortion at home, as England, Scotland and Wales have done, can help. In communities with limited access to technology, governments should ensure that health providers have the equipment and resources they need to safely reach patients.

Governments should monitor supply chains closely and seek solutions if contraceptive shortages arise, including redistributing available supplies across localities and even countries. They should ensure access to contraceptive information and services, including emergency contraception and abortion care.

Governments should put protecting sexual and reproductive rights up front in their response to Covid-19. These services are essential to women and girls—and their families– surviving and remaining healthy and are needed more than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Anand Grover is the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and Ximena Casas is a women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

 

The post Protecting Women’s Reproductive Health During the Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A woman works on a community vegetable garden in Bulawayo. For a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’ second city of some 700,000 people, has experienced a shortage of vegetables this year, with major producers citing a range of challenges from poor rains to the inability to access to bank loans to finance their operations. But this shortage has created a market gap that Zimbabwe smallholders — some 1.5 million people according to government figures — have an opportunity to fill. 

“Smallholder farmers are the highest producers of diverse food crops, some estimate that they supply over 80 percent of what many of us [in the whole country] are even currently consuming,” Nelson Mudzingwa, the National Coordinator of the Zimbabwe Small Holder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF), the local chapter of the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF), told IPS.

• ESAFF is a network of grassroots small scale farmers’ organisations working in 15 countries across the region.

Smallholder farmers have long been feeding this Southern African nation by producing the bulk of the country’s maize staple, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme — where late former President Robert Mugabe’s government urged black Zimbabweans to take ownership of white-owned farms in 2000 — is generally considered a failure that resulted in the country, which was once considered the breadbasket of Africa, becoming a net food importer. 

• Last December, the World Food Programme of the United Nations warned that Zimbabwe was facing its worst hunger crisis in a decade. Some 7.7 million people — half the population — were food insecure.

But for a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. This shift in the food production matrix has only increased since the country announced the COVID-19 lockdown on Mar. 31, which is meant to end this Sunday. 

According to the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), Zimbabwe’s lockdown has crippled the movement of agro-products, further increasing shortages from larger farms across the country.

“Smallholder farmers have continued to supply the urban markets that are open daily, which is a clear testimony of what smallholder farmers are able to produce despite very limited support,” Mudzingwa told IPS.

From the backyard the supplies Bulawayo vegetable market…

From a small plot at her home in Bulawayo’s medium-density suburb of Kingsdale, Geraldine Mushore grows all sorts of greens: from peas to tomatoes to onions and lettuce. This has become her hustle, she said, at a time many Zimbabweans are seeking ways to escape grinding poverty.

Mushore set up her thriving 900-square-metre green garden less than two years ago but wishes she had started it sooner.

“It started as a small experiment to see what I could grow, if I was up to it. But now it is my full-time occupation,” she told IPS.

Mushore sells her produce in bulk to vendors in Bulawayo’s bustling downtown vegetable market and also to local supermarkets.

“The business just grew itself, I suppose. The borehole has been a boon especially now when larger farms are failing to meet the demand for greens as many rely on rainfall or have boreholes that are no longer pumping any water,” Mushore told IPS. She added that while she had been doing well previoulsy, since the lockdown her business has been thriving.

…to the reclaimed plot that’s thriving

In Ntabazinduna, a hamlet 30 km from Bulawayo, Joseph Ntuli has a thriving vegetable garden on some 2,000 square metres of his 18-acre plot.

While the plot is dominated in large part by thorny bushes, Ntuli has cleared the portion of land to grow cabbages, tomatoes, peas and carrots.

Demand for fresh produce has grown this year on the back of economic hardships that has seen families abandoning preferred protein-rich diets such as meat, fish and chicken in favour of vegetables that cost less.

• In an update covering April to September, FEWS NET said that Zimbabwe’s food needs have escalated this year after farming activities were affected by drought, with 8 million people requiring food assistance. 

“We used to be overshadowed by bigger farms who produced much of the vegetables in this part of the country but we see now they are struggling which has put even more pressure on us to supply vegetable markets and feed our people,” Ntuli told IPS.

He said that while previously he would sometimes have to watch his produce rot because he had no customers, now he sells at least 20 crates of tomatoes a day, and has since had to hire extra help. 

“I am supplying the Bulawayo market and people there say other vegetables are actually coming other parts of the country far away because there is a shortage from our own local producers,” he said.

Demand may soon outstrip supply

As smallholders farmers across the country start growing more produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.

“Smallholder farmers have been up to the task to feed the country although they have fallen short in terms of meeting demand.

“The demand, especially for the upper end of the market such as supermarkets, [and before the lockdown] hotels and restaurants, has largely been met by imports of horticultural produce. The smallholder farmers on the other hand, have largely met the demands for the medium to lower end of the market largely through such localised outlets,” said Ali Said, chief of the food and livelihood support programme at the Food And Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. in Zimbabwe.

“Smallholder farmers are also a major supplier of such institutions like boarding schools and hospitals in their localities. If current bottlenecks to horticultural production by smallholder farmers are addressed, they can produce enough to meet demand,” he told IPS.

Mudzingwa agrees.

“Massive food production needs capital resources, which smallholder farmers should have access to without stringent conditions,” Mudzingwa told IPS.

Intervention from government and private investors needed

Last year, Zimbabwe established the Zimbabwe Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion project (ZIM-SHEP), with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

According to the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural resettlement, smallholder farmers are the country’s major horticulture producers and ZIM-SHEP is designed to assist these farmers with specialised skills and also help with access to markets.

Self-taught farmers such as Mushowe have already shown the contribution of smallholders in meeting local needs, despite the lack of access to agri-finance.

“I wouldn’t mind having more space to expand vegetable production but I am also aware that expanding will require more resources which I cannot afford at the moment,” Mushowe said.

Despite the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) supporting Zimbabwe through the Smallholder Irrigation Support Programme, where communities are provided with irrigation systems with particular interest in horticulture, such support is yet to reach Ntabazinduna farmers such as Ntuli.

“We would certainly welcome any form of support. We have already proven to ourselves how much we are contributing towards feeding such a big city like Bulawayo. Obviously we can do more, but for now this is what we can do,” Ntuli told IPS.

FAO’s Said said smallholder horticulture production can grow with proper interventions from both government and private investors as they have already proven their capability to meet localised needs.

“Climate change and the accompanying reduced rainfall and dry spells has dealt a huge blow to horticultural production, most of which rely either on surface and underground water. The water sources have become unreliable and no longer able to sustain crop production throughout the year as in the past. There is thus need to ensure availability of reliable water through drilling of boreholes and well as construction of dams and weirs where feasible,” Said told IPS via email.

For now, smallholder farmers like Ntuli and Mushore are doing what they can with their limited resources to keep their local communities fed.

Related Articles

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• COVID-19 – How Eswatini’s Garden Farmers are Keeping the Vegetable Supply Flowing

The post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

As small scale farmers step up growing more horticulture produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.

The post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ian Goldin
Oxford University, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 is the most significant event since the Second World War. It changes everything.

It brings great sadness to many of us as we lose loved ones, as we see people losing their jobs, and as we see people around the world suffering immensely.

But it also provides an opportunity for a reset and new start for humanity. It teaches us how closely we are all interwoven together, how a problem in one part of the world is a problem for all of us.

It gives us time to pause and reflect about our individual lives, allowing us to reset and reprioritise. And it provides an opportunity for businesses and politicians to reset too. Even isolationist politicians must now understand that we can only thrive as humanity if everyone thrives.

We can only prosper if the world is prospering. And we can only be healthy if people everywhere are healthy.

Covid-19 provides a call for action. Not only to address the medical and associated economic emergency, but to ensure that we will never see a pandemic which could be even more dreadful than this one.

If we can learn to stop pandemics, we would have learnt to cooperate to stop the other great threats that we face, like climate change, antibiotic resistance, cascading financial crises, and cyber and other systemic risks.

We need to learn from history.

The First World War was followed by austerity and nationalist attacks on those who were blamed for the conflict. What followed was the Great Depression, rise of fascism and an even worse world war.

@ian_goldin

However, at the height of the Second World War visionary leaders created the framework for a harmonious world. The Bretton Woods Institutions for reconstruction and economic development, the Marshall Plan, the rise of the United Nations with its manifesto to unite ‘we the people’. The 1942 Beveridge Commission in the UK which called for the creation of the social welfare state.

The aim was to honour the youth that had died in the trenches and to overcome the suffering to provide a vision of a better future.

No wall high enough

The pandemic has risen from what I’ve called in my book of this title, The Butterfly Defect of globalization.

The interconnectedness of complex systems means that what happens elsewhere, increasingly shapes our lives. In the 2014 book I predicted that a pandemic would lead to the next financial crisis, even worse than the one of 2008.

The fact that we are now interconnected makes it imperative that we manage systemic risks, and that we care more about what happens elsewhere.

There is no wall high enough to keep out the great threats that face us in our future, and not least pandemics and climate change.

But what high walls do keep out is the ideas of how to change things, is the sharing of experiences of common humanity, the technologies, the people, the investment, the potential for tourism and exports, and the ability to cooperate.

This is essential because these threats require that we work together. If we bunker down we will see escalating threats.

Pandemics are unusual in that they are the only threat that faces us that can come from any country. This one happened to come from China. But it could equally have come from any country in the Americas, Africa, Europe or elsewhere in Asia.

As technology is evolving, with new capabilities to sequence pandemics and spray viruses from drones, the risk is rising rapidly in richer countries, so both rich and poor countries are a potential source.

As pandemics can come from anywhere stopping pandemics requires global cooperation. For most of the other global threats that we face like climate change, cascading financial crises or antibiotic resistance, a very smaller set of actors account for a very big share of the problem.

Radical ideas become reality

Covid-19 has highlighted the urgency of managing global risks. It also has shown us that these spill over to every aspect of our lives, and are devastating for economies.

Radical economic remedies are being implemented that were previously unacceptable. Being guaranteed an income was regarded as a radical idea six weeks ago and is now adopted many European governments.

The idea that governments would bail out any company and give them a lifeline was unacceptable six weeks ago, and now has been enacted. The levels of debt and deficits that governments are taking on, were regarded as heresy six weeks ago.

We know from the mortality statistics, that young people are far less likely to die from COVID-19 than elderly people. And yet young people are sacrificing their social lives, their jobs, their education, their prospects to protect the lives of older people.

We owe the youth a brighter future. We owe them the promise that this will be the last pandemic of this nature. We owe them the promise that we will address climate change, that we will create jobs, employment and better prospects for them. For this, we are likely to see not only a bigger role for government, but higher levels of taxes.

The pandemic has revealed the extent of health inequality.

The data shows stark differences based on income levels. These are being exacerbated as poorer people are less able to work from home and more likely to be made unemployed. They also have less savings.

The pandemic is increasing inequality within countries, and it is widening the gulf between them. Richer countries have more resources, they have more ventilators, they have more doctors, they have more capacity to create a safety net that is strong, to guarantee everyone a basic income and to ensure the survival of firms. This is not an option for African, Latin American and South Asian countries.

Physical distancing is an impossibility when you’re sharing a small home with six other family members, or when you have to go in crowded transport to work to put food on your table.

The medical emergency in being compounded by an economic emergency, putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk of starvation and creating the biggest shock to development in the post war period.

Covid-19 demonstrates the butterfly defect of globalisation is a dire threat to us all. It poses a test for leaders everywhere. It challenges governments, businesses and individuals to behave differently. How we respond to this test will determine not only our individual prospects, but that of humanity.

The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Thinking the Unthinkable first published this article by Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University.
His books The Butterfly Defect and Age of Discovery predicted that pandemics would cause the next economic crisis.

The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Secretary-General António Guterres holds a virtual press conference to promote a report on his call for a global cease-fire during the Covid-19 outbreak, April 3, 2020. A Security Council draft resolution supporting his call was knocked down by the US on May 8, facing a low chance for revival. Credit: LOEY FELIPE/UN PHOTO

By Dali ten Hove, PassBlue*
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2020 (IPS)

After six weeks of negotiations, the United States shot down hopes for a resolution to be approved in the United Nations Security Council on May 8, refusing to back worldwide cease-fires as the US continues to castigate China and the World Health Organization for the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, momentum behind tenuous cease-fires is vanishing, experts say.

The long-awaited moment for the Council to approve a resolution supporting the UN secretary-general’s March 23 call to pause fighting in war zones during the coronavirus crisis may be gone for now.

The resolution had come close to getting through, it seemed, by Thursday night, May 7, according to some diplomats. France and Tunisia had circulated a redraft of the resolution, obtained by PassBlue, with compromise language about the WHO.

The new formulation expressed support for “all relevant entities of the United Nations system, including specialized health agencies,” in obvious reference to the WHO without naming it. The organization is the UN’s only specialized health agency.

France brandished its diplomatic skills as a permanent Council member to get the draft put under silence procedure — a span of time allowing parties to object — until 2 P.M. Friday, Eastern Daylight Time.

Hopes were high among most Council members that the resolution would see the light of day by the deadline, especially because on Friday the Council was holding an enormous meeting, albeit online, with an array of high-level government officials to commemorate the end of World War II in Europe.

The latest draft resolution — it has gone through numerous iterations — had overcome many obstacles laid by the US and China. Estonia was the first Council member to submit a draft resolution on the pandemic in early March but was swatted down mainly by China for including human-rights references, one diplomat said.

Then, a French-led draft was circulated, focusing on the global cease-fire; it was eventually merged with one led by Tunisia. That version, with more changes, was the one put under silence procedure late last week.

Around noon on Friday, May 8, silence was broken, even though several diplomats told PassBlue that senior US officials had shown signs the night before that the US was on board. But on Friday, Russia also said it needed more time to consider the draft; as one diplomat put it, Russia woke up and had to insert itself into the process.

In rejecting the draft, the US State Department said that the Security Council should either proceed with a resolution limited to support for a cease-fire or a broadened resolution “that fully addresses the need for renewed member state commitment to transparency and accountability in the context of Covid-19.”

Back on March 23, as the world came to grips with the gravity of the spreading coronavirus, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to warring parties to observe cease-fires to help fight the coronavirus by ensuring that humanitarian aid supplies could get through conflict zones. “The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly,” he said. “That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire.”

Widely viewed at first as noble but impractical, the appeal nonetheless received the backing of governments, civil society and armed groups globally. “I was surprised by the initial success of the call,” said Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, a think tank in New York.

He said he “was inclined to view it a little skeptically in late March, but a significant number of armed groups did respond positively. I think Guterres may have had a greater impact than he first expected.”

The UN says 16 conflict parties in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia have declared unilateral pauses in fighting since Guterres’s appeal. This has notably included a cease-fire by Saudi Arabia in its war with the Houthi insurgents in Yemen.

Nevertheless, the Houthis have not agreed to a pause, and the Saudis have been bombing Yemen during an extended cease-fire they agreed to weeks ago.

According to the Yemen Data Project, the Saudi-led coalition has carried out at least 83 air raids with up to 356 individual strikes from April 9 to April 30, the most recent information available.

Despite the early success of Guterres’s appeal, the Security Council has so far not endorsed it and remains virtually silent on Covid-19, except for issuing “press elements” — the weakest formal response the Council can offer publicly — when it met in a closed virtual session on April 9.

The statement that emerged from that meeting said that the Council members “expressed their support for all efforts of the Secretary-General concerning the potential impact of COVID-19 pandemic to conflict-affected countries and recalled the need for unity and solidarity with all those affected.”

“I’m afraid that momentum is now dissipating,” Gowan said about Guterres’s appeal, as several other cease-fires declared in its wake have since broken down, including one announced in Colombia by the ELN militia, or, in English, the National Liberation Army.

“I think that a Security Council resolution supporting the call in late March or early April would have been very positive,” Gowan added. “Sadly, the Council has waited too long.”

The US, a veto-wielding member, has strongly objected to any expression of support for the WHO in all versions of the Council draft resolution.

The draft by France and Tunisia backing the cease-fire appeal, circulated on April 21, said in notes, “compromise related to the language on WHO to be decided at the end of the negotiation.”

China had insisted on a clause commending the organization for its efforts against the pandemic, while the US, which has suspended its funding of it, refused to agree to a reference to the agency.

The Trump administration also pressed for addressing the origins of the new coronavirus to embarrass China, demanding that it be named the “Wuhan virus” in reference to the Chinese province where Covid-19 is believed to have originated.

The call for countries’ obligations to be transparent was also a demand by the US, directly challenging China. Other requirements — including lifting sanctions, by Russia and others, and exemptions of combat pertaining to counterterrorism, by the US and Russia — were also overcome, according to diplomats.

The Trump administration’s denunciations of China and the WHO are widely viewed as distractions from its own sluggish response to Covid-19, as recent polling in the US finds that more Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.

China’s posturing in favor of the WHO may in turn be meant to embarrass the US, Gowan said, and compensate for China’s mishandling of the coronavirus when it emerged.

“The relationship between Washington and Beijing has grown worse and worse recently,” said Jeremy Greenstock, a former British ambassador to the UN, who spoke with PassBlue from Oxfordshire, England. “It’s pathetic, really, that they are scrapping like this when they need to be cooperating.”

At a press conference on April 30, Guterres expressed disappointment about Security Council infighting in the middle of a deadly pandemic. “The relation between the major powers in the world today is very dysfunctional,” he said. “It is obvious that there is a lack of leadership.”

As Gowan said: “What’s depressing about this is that basically everyone would sign onto the cease-fire. It’s being held hostage by this WHO issue, which is sort of pathetic.”

*PassBlue is an independent, women-led journalism site that is considered the most influential media source covering the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the UN. As a nonprofit news site, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and 100+ individuals and a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dali ten Hove is the researcher on the memoirs of former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World," to be published in 2021. He is a general director of the United Nations Association of the Netherlands and a former trustee of the UNA-UK. He has a master's in international relations from Oxford University.

The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A health worker in Kasubi Food Market, measuring the temperature of people accessing the market. After washing their hands with water and soap, everyone is screened to check the temperature, and an isolation tent is set aside to manage suspected coronavirus cases, Kasubi Food Market, Kampala City, Uganda. Covid-19 response. April 2020. Credit: WaterAid / James Kiyimba

By John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe
LONDON, May 12 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic underscores the profound fragility and unsustainability of today’s world. It exposes the chronic underinvestment in human health and well-being and the consequences of a relentless exploitation of biodiversity and the natural environment.

Despite the pledge by 193 governments in adopting the historic Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and the accelerating climate crisis threaten to undermine the progress made and to increase global poverty levels for the first time in decades. Global leadership—governmental and corporate—has been found seriously wanting.

At least half of the world’s population do not have access to essential health services. Three billion people lack basic handwashing facilities, over a billion people live in dense, slum conditions and are therefore unable to practise physical distancing, and 40% of health care facilities globally lack hand hygiene at points of care (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2019).

The virus and resulting lockdowns threaten the livelihoods of 1.6 billion workers, and a few months ago 11,000 scientists declared clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth faces a climate emergency. These combined social, economic and environmental crises show the need to make real progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and inspire new, collective action towards a more just, equitable and sustainable global order.

Central to this agenda is finance. Yet even before widely-instituted lockdowns and the resulting economic recession, financing to achieve the SDGs was woefully insufficient.

WaterAid’s research on financing universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan (SDG 6 targets 1 and 2) indicates shortfalls multiple times that of current levels of financing.

Other studies show that this is common across other SDGs, with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network identifying a US$400 billion annual funding gap to deliver the SDGs in Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs).

No single country or individual can resolve these issues in isolation. National efforts by LIDCs to mobilise increased domestic resources to tackle the pandemic and invest in the SDGs must be backed by a global, coordinated and comprehensive response far exceeding the support provided to date.

Last week, the UN Secretary-General launched a framework focused on mitigating the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic through a “human-centred, innovative and coordinated stimulus package reaching double-digit percentage points of the world’s gross domestic product”.

This is very welcome, but crucially it must be built on equitable, affordable and sustainable foundations—rather than a mountain of new debt and subsequent austerity which followed the 2008 financial crisis.

Financing this unprecedented global stimulus requires a comprehensive package of fundamental reform—long advocated by civil society and movements for economic justice—comprising debt relief, taxation, international aid, reserves, and subsidies.

This structural transformation should be urgently instituted both as part of immediate response to COVID-19 and as permanent redirections and safeguards on international economic and financial systems.

Debt relief from the IMF and World Bank and G20 is a positive start, providing temporary fiscal space, including for public spending deprioritised in the face of crushing debt service commitments.

But as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam, Christian Aid and others have advocated, widespread unconditional cancellation of public and private debt is what is really needed, overseen by an independent sovereign debt workout mechanism under the aegis of the United Nations.

Zambia’s US$1.5 billion external debt servicing requirement in 2020—now only partially alleviated—compares with budgets for health of US$215 million and for water, sanitation and hygiene of US$91 million (2019).

Debt cancellation is just one example of the transformation required in financial relationships between high-income countries and LIDCs to enable governments to address COVID-19, effectively target public goods and services, realise human rights (including the right to development) for all, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and achieve the SDGs.

Global structures of taxation also require a wide-ranging overhaul. Church leaders in the UK recently highlighted how US$8 trillion sits in off-shore tax havens, with developing countries deprived of up to US$400 billion every year in tax avoidance and evasion.

In similar vein, the IMF has previously revealed that almost 40% of Foreign Direct Investment is completely artificial: it consists of financial investment passing through empty corporate shells with no real activity. Ending these practices, and ensuring democratic oversight of corporate profit, is crucial to ensure that governments – and their people – benefit from revenues earned in their countries.

Further, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and implementing carbon taxes can both end incentives that deepen the climate emergency and release new funds for sustainable development. As the IMF has recently recognised, this is especially crucial in stemming the immediate tide of COVID-19 and greening the economic recovery. The organisation would do well to make reporting on these issues a core and mandatory part of its Article IV surveillance.

While the IMF has taken some steps to free up liquidity for health and stimulus spending to address COVID-19, the UN Secretary-General, UNCTAD and others have called for a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights to bolster developing countries’ foreign exchange reserves, stimulate economies and release funds for spending on health and public services.

Mobilising the full financial power of the IMF in support of its member countries—in an initiative which is affordable for LIDCs—would be a welcome repeat of action taken in 2009. This would also represent a return to the initial post-war vision of the Bretton Woods institutions as instruments of multilateral response to crisis and underdevelopment.

In tandem, a widescale fulfilment of Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments – meeting and exceeding the longstanding target of 0.7% of GNI – is required. A handful of countries have fulfilled this commitment: now is the time for other high-income countries to join them—going above 0.7% in a “Race for the Top”.

COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of even the most powerful countries and companies: as former UK PM Gordon Brown points out, in today’s interconnected world they are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

But the hit to donor countries’ economies should not be used as an excuse to shirk global responsibility or turn away from multilateralism: like the climate crisis, COVID-19 illustrates that even when immediate effects are localised, the implications are global. The EU and others have launched an important initiative in pledging support for the WHO’s COVID response.

It can only be a first step, however: €7.4 billion, like the US$2 billion sought by the World Food Programme to address acute hunger impacts, is in stark contrast to the trillions being found for national rescue plans by OECD economies.

Only a major influx of funding–overseen through principles of transparency and accountability and the participation of civil society–can enable the concerted political action and system strengthening required to end the pandemic, deliver the Paris Climate Agreement and achieve the universal promise of the SDGs.

Private finance has a key role to play, but currently investment and lending decisions are not sufficiently aligned with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, and affordability for LIDCs remains a major concern. Over a year ago, we called for a new public finance target for high-income countries, to ensure their climate finance commitments were genuinely additional to the fifty-year-old promises on aid.

This global plan for renewal and sustainability is now more pressing than ever, to enable governments to finance their development priorities and achieve their sustainable development agreements, including universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene and the transition to a zero-carbon global economy.

Scientists estimate we have ten years to restore the world to a sustainable pathway and avoid the compounded and catastrophic effects of climate change. Addressing the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 while turning towards climate justice will require no less than a complete transformation of the current financial system and global economy.

Almost eighty years ago during World War II the British economist William Beveridge provided the intellectual foundation for the UK’s National Health Service, which now forms the backbone to the country’s response to the pandemic. In launching his seminal report, he said that “a revolutionary time in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”. We would do well to heed his words today.

The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe are members of WaterAid’s policy team from UK, US and Southern Africa offices.

The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Street checkpoint in Wuhan, China. Credit: UNV

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 2020 (IPS)

Although Wuhan local authorities undoubtedly ostracized local medical whistle-blowers, notably Dr Li Wenliang, who suspected a new virus was responsible for flu-like infections in Wuhan in late 2019, official responses were apparently not delayed, and possibly even expedited, as the novel character of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19 infections, was not immediately self-evident.

On 12 January this year, China publicly shared the genetic sequence for Covid-19 with the world. On 11 February, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the newly discovered virus causing Covid-19 the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”.

From praise to conspiracy
US President Donald Trump went from praising China for its transparent handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in January, after securing a deal ending escalating trade tensions, to accusing China of lack of transparency in March.

Anis Chowdhury

As he ratcheted up his criticisms of China’s handling of the virus outbreak, POTUS threatened China on 18 April with consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the pandemic.

Trump has also accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of being ‘China-centric’, suspending its funding at a time of exceptional need. Even the mainstream media has joined such attacks on ‘soft targets’, such as UN multilateral or inter-governmental organizations, constrained by their governance from robustly defending themselves.

Initially, President Trump had downplayed the pandemic threat, promising “it will all work out well” and insisting “it was totally under control”. Then, after grossly mismanaging the US epidemic, the Trump administration switched to a blame game, becoming ever shriller in his rhetoric as his approval ratings continued to slip from an initial all-time high.

Trump has insisted on terming Covid-19 a “Chinese virus”, and has tried to persuade allies to join him in blaming China for the pandemic. He has since ‘upped the ante’, by insisting the outbreak — which China could have stopped, but refused to, according to him — as worse than the Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attacks.

Japan, Taiwan and others seeking to mobilize against China’s ascendance have joined the anti-China, anti-WHO alliance. With US elections less than half a year away, the epidemic’s politicization is undermining the desperately needed multilateral cooperation needed to address the pandemic and its many ramifications.

Conspiracy theories
While some kooks still claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax, there are more biological warfare ‘conspiracy theories’, of varying degrees of plausibility, going around, with some actively promoted by politicians, even governments.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

A coronavirus, referring to the European crown-like physical form or features of a virus, was first found in chickens in 1937, and has featured in various different contexts since, with coronaviruses first identified in humans in 1965.

The internationally very influential right-wing media (e.g., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, especially Fox TV) and some influential public intellectuals continue to feed various versions of the China conspiracy theory although Western intelligence agencies have found no evidence of China either deliberately or accidentally releasing the deadly virus.

The scientific evidence thus far is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutated naturally, resulting in at least three distinct strains, and could not have been ‘manufactured’ in a Chinese, US or other laboratory. Yet, conspiracy theories persist, with those blaming China of the worst getting the most publicity in a US election year.

Meanwhile, the supposedly ‘centrist’ mainstream Western media have also contributed by publishing various more plausible stories invoking ‘circumstantial evidence’ to blame China for causing the global pandemic, and worse, of a deliberate ‘cover-up’.

Imperialist apologist’s conspiracy theory
Celebrated UK imperialist apologist historian Niall Ferguson, now at the Hoover Institution, cites the venerable New York Times (NYT) for the now oft-repeated claim that China unleashed seven million potentially Covid-19 infected, and therefore infectious, Wuhan residents on the rest of the world for most of January before imposing a lockdown.

Long the hub of Chinese industry, Wuhan is a city into which millions from the rest of Hubei and the two neighbouring provinces commute – not unlike the millions travelling daily into and out of New York City (NYC) from NY state, New Jersey and Connecticut.

But despite the heavier international traffic from NYC airports, no credible source would accuse NYC’s daily commuters of all travelling to the rest of the world in any particular month, even before a major holiday comparable to the lunar new year.

Flights of fantasy
Ferguson even claimed that although China cancelled all flights from Wuhan to other Chinese cities on 23 January, regular direct flights from Wuhan to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco continued through January, and in some cases, into February.

Although such flights were undoubtedly scheduled and advertised, all direct international flights from Wuhan were cancelled, and those from other cities via Wuhan were redirected to bypass China’s Covid-19 epicentre.

Daniel Bell, a Canadian professor, who had strongly criticized China’s authorities for grossly mishandling the epidemic at the start, challenged Ferguson’s implication that China deliberately allowed, if not encouraged, contagion beyond China, particularly to the West.

When asked for the basis for his claim, Ferguson sent Bell a link to a NYT story, which did not corroborate Ferguson’s claim that direct commercial flights from Wuhan to the US continued after 23 January, and well into February.

Similarly, other source links sent by Ferguson to Bell turned out to be ‘economical with the truth’, inaccurate or wrongly interpreted. Simply put, very little of the ostensible evidence Ferguson invoked actually supported his own allegations.

‘Heads, I’m right, tails, you’re wrong’
Ferguson eventually conceded that he had wrongly alleged that regular flights abroad left Wuhan after 23 January, but retaliated by questioning Bell’s other scholarship, including his recent book on China, and insisting that China should have cancelled all international flights in an updated blog.

Ferguson also challenges official data from China, citing the authorities’ revision of its data as new information becomes available – as one hopes others do as well, especially as the world struggles to understand and address new phenomena.

It should be amusing to see Ferguson’s considerable skills deployed for his next analytical contortion as he addresses new evidence, e.g., that a Paris hospital patient was already infected with Covid-19 in December despite no history of travel to China or contact with any known infected person.

Perhaps Ferguson will uncover communist Chinese bats from Wuhan infiltrating Parisian escargot markets.

The post ‘Passing the Buck’ Becomes Reckless ‘Conspiracy Blame Game’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By C R Abrar
May 11 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A spectre is haunting the conscientious citizens of Bangladesh—the spectre of the Digital Security Act, 2018 (DSA). By now the law has become synonymous with curtailment of freedom of expression and repression. The recent developments of involuntary disappearance, re-appearance and subsequent detention of several commentators and social activists have raised the alarm if indeed we as a nation are shying away from upholding one of the cardinal principles of the Muktijuddher Chetona (the spirit of the Liberation War) to freely express our views.

A few recent cases will corroborate the above statement. On May 6, businessman Mushtaq Ahmed and cartoonist Ahammed Kabir Kishore were sent to jail and Dhaka Stock Exchange director Minhaz Mannan Emon and Rastra Chinta organiser Didarul Islam Bhuiyan were shown arrested a day after they had reportedly been picked up in a case filed under the DSA allegedly for spreading “rumours”. Five persons based in Sweden and Germany and six more unnamed persons have been named for “tarnishing'” the image of the father of the nation, “hurting” the spirit of the Liberation War, and “spreading rumours” about COVID-19, army and other security forces among others, on social media.

Cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, began profiling “life in the time of corona” while Mushtaq started spreading anti-state propaganda, the complaint noted. It was further claimed that authorities had detected “anti-state chatting” in the WhatsApp and Messenger exchanges of Mushtaq, Minhaz and Didarul. The original complaint was annexed with 60 pages of screenshots and a compact disc as evidence, and a 2-page list of articles seized and details of their Facebook profiles, including the URLs.

The government move came at a time when citizens were reeling from the bizarre developments centring the involuntary disappearance of journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol (March 10), his re-appearance in the border town of Benapole (after 53 days) and subsequent placement in detention. The authorities’ attempt to present Kajol as an absconder from justice failed to gain traction. The CCTV footage of some people surrounding his motorbike just prior to his disappearance, the initial refusal of two police stations to register the family’s attempt to file a case, the lack of progress in investigation, improperly detaining him under Section 54 of Criminal Procedure Code to secure time to frame other, publicly humiliating him by handcuffing his hands behind his back (a practice reserved for those accused of violent crimes such as rape, murder, terrorism and the like) and “law enforcement agencies’ overdrive to keep him in prison” at a time when courts are dysfunctional, all point to the fact that Kajol has been deprived of due process of law and may perhaps be a victim for freely expressing his views on matters of public interest.

Detaining individuals on charges of “spreading rumours”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting spirit of Liberation War” for an unstipulated period in a situation when they cannot seek protection of higher judiciary amounts to arbitrary action. It may be recalled that initially Kajol had been detained under Section 54, violating the guidelines framed by the High Court and upheld by the Appellate Division. As the hearing of the government’s review petition is still pending those guidelines continue to remain in force. Therefore continued detention of Kajol under Section 54 appears to be in breach of the law.

It is a matter of the courts to decide whether charges brought against the above accused for “spreading rumour”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting” a sentiment are tenable or not. In most instances of involuntary disappearances, including the ones above, does not the denial of law enforcement agencies of any knowledge of whereabouts of victims amount to making a false statement? Evidence is replete that in a number of cases victims are shown as under arrest if and when they are produced before the court, some weeks and even months after they were reportedly disappeared. Should not the errant members of law enforcement agencies be held accountable for such gross misconduct?

These recent actions of law enforcement agencies have triggered widespread protests. Rights groups documenting the excesses committed by state agencies have noted that following the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been an increase in instances of involuntary disappearance, extra-judicial killing and human rights violations. In most cases the actions were justified on ground of tackling rumours. The feeling is pervasive among rights activists that COVID-19 may have come as a boon to that section in the administration that is disposed to remain unaccountable and non-transparent, and thus quash dissent and public scrutiny.

The country is going through a testing time. It is the need of the hour to face the COVID-19 challenge in unison. The gradual rise in the infection curve with no sign of receding and the worsening conditions of the masses reinforce the fear that we are yet to chart out appropriate course of action. Framing a suitable response necessitates discussion and debate among all stakeholders and that entails tolerance of diverse views and free flow of information. The watchdog role of civil society only ensures transparency and accountability of the public functionaries and also of non-government initiatives engaged in humanitarian assistance. Those in the administration should not only welcome citizens’ engagement but create enabling conditions to facilitate the process. At the very least, it entails state’s unfettered pledge to uphold the fundamental rights of the citizens guaranteed by the constitution. All responses to COVID-19 must therefore be “evidence-based, legal, necessary to protect public health, non-discriminatory, time-bound and proportionate”.

In order to do away with the prevailing dreary and fatalist frame of mind of the people it is incumbent on the authorities to immediately release those detained under the DSA, make every effort to recover those who became victims of involuntary disappearance, and not proceed any further with the frivolous cases of defamation. Scrapping the DSA and instituting a credible commission of enquiry with adequate authority to look into the cases of involuntary disappearance and extra-judicial killings will go a long way to re-establishing citizens’ trust in the state.

As the custodian of the constitution, the Supreme Court may consider taking immediate measures to ensure people can seek its protection without any hindrance and (in the interim, until such a system is put in place) advise the executive branch to strictly uphold fundamental rights of the people guaranteed by the constitution and act in accordance with the law, and only in accordance with the law.

CR Abrar is an academic.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Africa is grappling with managing diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis as health systems that are unable to cope with both this and the coronavirus pandemic. Sleeping under a net and taking antimalarial pills helps prevent malaria. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 11 2020 (IPS)

Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.

“Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big trouble because they are quite close to COVID-19 symptoms, will you go to the hospital when it is said we should not go there?” Yap Boum II, the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, told IPS.

“Hospitals are struggling because they do not have the good facilities and equipment; it will be hard to take in a patient with malaria because people are scared. As a result the management of malaria is affected by COVID-19,” Boum, who is also a Professor of Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology in Uganda, said, pointing out that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were also being ignored.

In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that four times as many people could die from malaria than coronavirus.

“With COVID-19 spreading, we are worried about its impacts on health systems in Africa and that this may impact negatively on the delivery of routine services, which include malaria control. The bans on movement will affect the health workers getting to health facilities and their safety from exposure,” Akpaka Kalu, team leader of the Tropical and Vector-borne Disease Programme at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.

The WHO has urged member countries not to forget malaria prevention programmes as they race to contain the COVID-19 spread. Without maintaining prevention programmes, i.e. should all insecticide-treated net campaigns be suspended and if access to effective antimalarial medicines is reduced because of lockdowns, malaria deaths could double to 769,000 in sub-Saharan Africa this year.  At the same time the agency has predicted that some 190,000 people could die of COVID-19.

According to the WHO, as of today, May 11, Africa has recorded over 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 2,283 deaths in 53 affected countries in the region.

• Though preventable and treatable, Africa is battling to eliminate malaria despite a decline in cases over the last four years.
• The continent has the highest malaria burden in the world, accounting for 93 percent of all cases of the disease.
• Malaria is one of the top ten leading causes of death in Africa, killing more 400 000 people annually.

Poorly equipped and understaffed national health services in many countries in Africa could compromise efforts to eliminate the malaria scourge, noted Kalu.

Africa must cope with COVID-19 without forgetting malaria

Mamadou Coulibaly, head of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali, concurred that the pandemic was straining health systems in developing countries. He urged malaria-endemic countries not to disrupt prevention and treatment programmes.

“To avoid this catastrophic scenario, countries must tailor their interventions to this challenging time, guaranteeing prompt diagnostic testing, treatment, access and use of insecticide-treated nets,” Coulibaly, who is also the principal investigator of Target Malaria in Mali, told IPS. 

Mali is one of the top 10 African countries with the high incidence of malaria.

Malaria needs more national money

Kalu stressed that domestic financing for malaria was needed. He commended the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other private sector partnerships that have provided funds for malaria. But he pointed out that this was neither ideal nor sustainable unless national governments contributed a lion’s share to malaria control.

• There is a $2 billion annual funding gap when it comes to malaria prevention, which should be closed to sufficiently protect people in malaria affected countries, according to the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, a global private sector initiative established in 1998. The partnership has sourced funding and equipment for malaria prone countries, providing mosquito nets, rapid diagnostic tests and antimalarials.

More action, less talk

While pleased with progress made towards eliminating malaria in Africa since 2008 when the Abuja Declaration on Health investment was signed, Kalu said Africa could do better.

• In 2001 African governments drew up the Abuja Declaration to invest 15 percent of the national budgets in improving health care services.

• Nearly 20 years later, a handful of countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Liberia and Burundi have invested in building their health systems, according to 2016 WHO assessment report on public health financing for health in Africa. Many African countries have reduced their spending in health as a percentage of total public expenditure than they did in the early 2000s.

• For every $100 that goes into an African nation’s state coffers, on average $16 was allocated to health. Of this amount  only $10 was spent, with less than $4 going to the right health services.

“For the first time in our lifetime, the human being and the world is realising that the most important thing we have is our health,” said Boum, questioning why African governments have all not prioritised health spending despite the Abuja Declaration.

“With our borders closed we are all being taken care of in the poor health system that we have built,” Boum, told IPS. “There is no more flying to India, London or the United States. We are all in the same boat because we have not invested what we were supposed to invest and I hope beyond the pandemic, we will make health care a just cause and even manage to go beyond the 15 percent health investment agreed upon.”

With the current level of investment in health systems, the WHO fears Africa will not achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG3 on ensuring healthy lives and wellbeing for all and ending malaria by 2030.

“We do not want a situation where we are protecting people from COVID-19 and they die of malaria and other diseases,” Kalu told IPS.

“We are not asking governments to put money in malaria alone but in national health systems. COVID-19 is showing that Africa needs facilities and equipment which it does not currently have to effectively deal with the pandemic.”

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• Why Rich Countries must Protect Developing Nations from Coronavirus Pandemic

The post Africa’s Health Dilemma: Protecting People from COVID-19 While Four Times as Many Could Die of Malaria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Oxfam America

By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, May 11 2020 (IPS)

NGOs, at the international, national – and most of all local – level are on the frontlines every day.

I just heard from Oxfam staff in Bangladesh, that when asked whether they were scared to continue our response with the Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar, they replied: “They are now my relatives. I care about them — and this is the time they need us most.’”

These people – and those that they and others are supporting around the globe – are at the heart of this crisis and response.

As we talk about global figures and strategies, we must remember we are talking about parents who must decide whether they should stay home and practice social distancing or go to work to earn and buy food so their children won’t go hungry; women who constitute 70% of the workers in the health and social sector globally; people with disabilities and their carers; those who are already far from home or caught in conflict; people who don’t know what information to believe and follow, as rumours swirl.

Looking more broadly, we see that the COVID-19 crisis is exposing our broken and unprepared system, and it is also testing our values as a global community. COVID-19 is adding new and exacerbating existing threats of conflict, displacement, gender-based violence, climate change, hunger and inequality, and too many are being forced to respond without the proper resources – simple things like clean water, soap, health care and shelter. We must be creative and nimble to adapt our response in this new reality.

Most vulnerable communities

We know too well that when crisis hits, women, gender diverse persons, people with disabilities and their carers, the elderly, the poor, and the displaced suffer the worst impacts as existing gender, racial, economic and political inequalities are exposed.

Abby Maxman

These communities need to be at the center of our response, and we, as the international community, must listen to their needs, concerns and solutions.

Access

As we continue to ramp up our response, we must have access to the communities most in need. Likewise, COVID-19 cannot be used as an excuse to stop those greatest in need from accessing humanitarian aid.

Border closures are squeezing relief supply and procurement chains; Lockdowns and quarantines are blocking relief operations; And travel restrictions for aid workers have been put in place, disrupting their ability to work in emergency response programs.

Authorities should absolutely take precautions to keep communities safe, but we need to work at all levels to also ensure life-saving aid can still get through and people’s rights are upheld.

Local and national NGOs are on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, and communities’ access to the essential services and lifesaving assistance they provide must be protected. We also know that with effective community engagement, we can gain better and more effective access to communities.

Humanitarian NGOs and partners are adapting our approaches to continue vital humanitarian support while fulfilling our obligation to “do no harm.”

This adaptive approach, and our experience of ‘safe programming,’ shifting to remote management where possible; and scaling back some operations where necessary—will all be crucial as COVID-19 restrictions continue to amplify protection concerns and risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Funding

To mount an effective response, we must draw on our collective experience, but this crisis also offers an opportunity to change the way we work, including setting up new funding mechanisms to allow our system to leverage the complementary roles we all play in a humanitarian response.

Overall, NGOs urgently need funding that is flexible, adaptive, and aligned with Grand Bargain commitments. Our work is well underway, but more is needed to get resources to the frontlines.

We need to better resource country based pooled funds, which are crucial for national and local NGOs. Now more than ever, donors must support flexible mechanisms to increase funding flows to NGO partners.

Next Steps

In closing, the international community needs to come together to battle this pandemic in an inclusive and a responsive way that puts communities at the heart of solutions. Even while we respond in our own communities, we must see and act beyond borders if we are ever to fully control this pandemic.

The planning and response to COVID-19 need to be directly inclusive of local and national NGOs, women’s rights organizations, and refugee-led organizations leaders. We must address this new threat, while still responding to other pressing needs for a holistic response.
This means continuing our response to the looming hunger crisis, maintaining access to humanitarian aid, and supporting existing services including sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services.

We need to ensure humanitarian access is protected to reach the most vulnerable.

And funding needs to be quickly mobilized through multiple channels to reach NGOs and must be flexible both between needs and countries.

This much is clear: We cannot address this crisis for some and not others. We cannot do it alone. The virus can affect anyone but disproportionately affects the most marginalized. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that our global response includes everyone.

We owe it to those dedicated staff and their honorary “relatives” in Cox’s Bazar, and all those like them around the globe, to get this right.

This article was adapted from Abby Maxman’s comments as the NGO representative at the UN’s Launch of the Updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan on May 7, 2020.

 

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Excerpt:

Abby Maxman is President & CEO of Oxfam America

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on President Ashraf Ghani during a visit to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to show solidarity with the Afghan people. Photo UNAMA / Fardin Waezi/June 2017

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 11 2020 (IPS)

The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on 08 May 2020.

With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.

But the world is still at war. Proxy wars or localised conflicts are wreaking havoc on human development and humanity in virtually every corner of the world. By the end of 2018, wars, violence and persecution have driven record numbers of over 70 million people from their homes worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This is the largest ever displacement of humanity, post the 2nd world war.

Never has the appeal by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres been more pertinent: “The world is in pieces; we need world peace.”

The United States signed a historic deal with Afghanistan that outlines a timetable and exit plan for American troops, setting the stage for the potential end to nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan. The UN Secretary General welcomed the US-Taliban peace agreement. The United States won the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council on March 10, 2020 to this ambitious peace deal.

The implementation of the peace agreement will need leadership, courage and resolve and there will be spoilers who will attempt to upend the peace process. The road to peace will be characterized by violence, set-backs and numerous false starts, but it will need diplomacy, determination and drive to keep the peace process on track.

Hubris must not prolong the agony of this appalling war.

The war has cost over $2 trillion and killed more than 2,400 American soldiers and 38,000 Afghan civilians. As per various reports casualties among Afghan security forces are estimated to have reached around 40,000 between 2007 and 2017.

Wars are appalling. As a combat veteran, I have witnessed first-hand how armed conflicts have transformed some of our finest soldiers into shells of the people I once knew. Combat is savage, it is brutal, it is reckless, it diminishes us as human beings and jeopardizes our humanity.

General William Sherman once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. War is hell.”

There are no winners in Afghanistan, but let’s consider the consequences on all the women and men who fought in it.

Today, research backs up what soldiers have described for decades, and what was once called shell shock or combat fatigue. We have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.

U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. Sgt. Derec Pierson/U.S. Department of Defense

For a long time, many of the grim statistics about war centred on fatalities and did not include the conflicts’ deep mental wounds. Today we have a better understanding of the kind of moral and psychological toll wars take on soldiers, their families, and communities.

The United States is a leader in the understanding of psychological and emotional damage to soldiers and has taken some steps to address their mental health. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left between 11% and 20% of military personnel suffering from PTSD. As many as 375,000 US veterans have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2017, mostly caused by explosions.

But suicides in the US armed forces have continued to rise in recent years, reaching record levels in 2018 when there were 25 deaths per 100,000 service members. Former defence secretary Leon Panetta once said that the “epidemic” of military suicide was “one of the most frustrating problems” he had faced.

More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.

Homelessness among veterans is pervasive, and soldiers still struggle to access benefits and healthcare if they suffer from mental health issues rather than from physical wounds. At any given time in the US, more than 40,000 veterans are homeless, constituting around 9% of all homeless adults in the country.

In the United Kingdom, spurred by a dozen suicides among Afghan war veterans in just two months, the government expedited new mental health programs to help deal with former military members’ PTSD and addiction.

What does this now mean for the Afghan security forces? They and their families do not have the same support structures.

All this ‘hell’, but to what end? Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. Since 2004 alone, more than 1.8 million Afghans have become internally displaced. Afghanistan’s human development and progress has been set back by decades. Women and children have suffered the most and countless are emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.

While we like to see soldiers as stoic and heroic, we must open our eyes to the fact that wars scar minds as well as bodies, often in ways medical science cannot yet comprehend.

Just like the world is desperately seeking a cure to end the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 275,000 people so far and leaving a trail of human, economic and social misery, the world too must find a way to end wars, or else we may be defeated as a civilization.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on Twitter @sidchat1

This opinion piece was originally published in Forbes Africa.

 

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A Rohingya woman crosses the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near the village of Anzuman Para in Palong Khali. Credit: UNHCR/Roger Arnold

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, May 11 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 mayhem carries on in most countries, the role of mothers, daughters, and female caregivers have been affected the most. Besides looking after the household and home schooling children, they are also working on the front lines, actively or passively caring for their respective communities.

Globally, women make up the majority of workers in the health and social welfare sectors. Nearly one in three women work in agriculture and women do three times as much unpaid care-work at home as men. Two such women shared their stories with the IPS about giving back to their communities in their own adaptive ways.

Ferdousee Hossain, 24, is a retired teacher, mother of two and grandmother of three. She runs a few unnamed charities and two schools for rural villagers. In her late 60s now, she never thought she would face a situation like COVID-19 where she would be constrained and isolated. She feels alone, not being able to see her family and especially the children in schools.

During the month of Ramadan, in most Muslim countries, charity work reaches its peak and donations are gathered that sustain funds for the entire year. For her charity network, where she works hands-on, it has been very challenging to coordinate, but she has adapted to still serve where it has hit the most.

Thanks to Ferdousee, seven families of 45 members and an orphanage of 52 children under the age of 15 are surviving in the district of Barisal in Bangladesh, all whilst practicing social distancing for the last two months.

In her own words to IPS Ferdousee says, “I have put unlimited internet data on our cell phones and I call each family every day, delivering and coordinating relief work so they can survive. Since I am in the capital Dhaka, I use video calls to personally see the situation in the villages and verify with the appointed team member. Yesterday a girl needed $60 (5000 takas) for immediate medicine and treatment for someone who is battling cancer. An 18-month-old child needed powdered milk and emergency care.

“We have kept separate funds for such sudden needs. I have formed a chain of ‘relay-ers’ and our team distributes food and daily supplies after verifying with other members. I have to pay out-of-pocket for the team who are working on the front lines but in the current situation it is the least I can do”, she adds.

According to Ferdousee, It is difficult to send cash because it can be stolen. “We have faced fraud too, where people fake names and collect money sent by phone. So, we make sure that no cash is distributed. These people live under the poverty line, and on a regular day, they may earn less than $7 supporting a household of four.”

With COVID-19 lockdown in effect street sellers, small businesses, hawker stalls, rickshaw pullers and domestic help are all without work. Many chose to go back to their villages to save themselves from starvation. Local aid organizations have stepped up, but many are still going hungry without any work and do not know where aid is available.

Mobina Khatun is a Rohingya woman volunteer with UN Women. 
Credit: UN Women/Pappu Mia

“We ask around and get information from authentic sources and then get supplies delivered at their door,“ says Hossain, adding, “one of the village schools I run had 250 children. Now most have gone to stay at their home. Among them, 52 children are orphans and live in the adjacent orphanage. So, we are making sure they have food and safety and a routine is in place. Only 2 teachers who live on the premises go to get groceries always maintaining social distancing. Donations have been generated from North America and Canada and I am hoping to source more.”

From the Khulna District, Ruksana Akhter, a doctor and mother of three said she has been a healthcare worker for more than 15 years. When the news of COVID-19 broke, they had to make tough decisions as a family.

Ruksana stated to IPS “Every night I come home, I get scared for my own life and for my children. I wait outside and my older daughter sprays me down. We have ten thousand plus cases reported so far in Bangladesh and it might spread more. I work in the maternity ward and serve on the front lines. We have been supplied PPE but measures are still inadequate.”

“I am the only adult in the house and my daughter is just 17. I worry what will happen if I get infected? Their father is working in the Coronavirus cell and is serving patients day and night. He has left the house to keep us protected and is staying at the hospital quarters. It has been more than two months that I have not seen him.”

Rukhsana said “it is a relief to know that people are surviving but every time the phone rings at night a shiver runs down my spine and I take a deep breath before answering the phone. We are health care personnel and the country depends on our services.”

“It is challenging and mentally taxing for us,” she continued. “One of my friends died, and another colleague who is a doctor herself is now battling Coronavirus. As a mother, I have to keep mentally stable and come back to my children, smiling. As a wife, I have to support my husband over the phone to keep him motivated. We talk at times when he gets a chance, but I can feel his desperation.”

Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes. Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work is key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By 2030, The United Nations has planned to progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average. It can be concluded that if women, especially in developing countries, are facilitated with better support it will create a ripple effect of growth.

The post Women Taking Charge during COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rani Tanveer, who was wrongly accused of killing her husband and spent 19 years in prison, is taking the Pakistan to court seeking compensation. Courtesy: BBC

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, May 8 2020 (IPS)

A former Pakistani child bride, who was wrongly accused of killing her husband at 13 and subsequently spent almost two decades in prison, is making history by being the first victim of a miscarriage of justice to seek compensation from the state, say legal human rights experts.  

This March, Rani Tanveer, who was released in 2017 after spending 19 years in prison, filed a petition seeking compensation.

Her lawyer has termed the petition nothing short of “iconic”.

“It would be the first time a victim is asking the state to compensate her for the miscarriage of justice meted to her,” Michelle Shahid, Tanveer’s lawyer from the legal advocacy group, Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), told IPS over the phone from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. “I’ve come across numerous cases of wrongful convictions as a lawyer but rarely do these cases lead to accountability,” she added.

“One hopes her case begins a journey towards reform and restoring the public’s confidence in the judicial system,” Lahore-based lawyer and the country representative for Human Rights Watch, Saroop Ijaz, told IPS.

• Tanveer, her parents and brother were arrested in 1998 after her husband’s body had been discovered buried on his residence. The family had reportedly been the last to see him alive. Tanveer’s mother was released after 6 months, but her father and brother both died of tuberculosis after 11 and 15 years in jail respectively. 
• Tanveer was sentenced in 2001 and, even though she was not allocated state counsel, she attempted to file numerous appeals through the prison superintendent. These were, however, not filed.
• But in 2014 her case was taken up by legal aid organisation AGHS Legal Aid Cell and three years later her conviction was overturned.

Now she is seeking compensation. 

“Rani’s is a typical case that highlights the plight of those who suffer silently behind bars through no fault of their own, only to be exonerated years later, if at all,” said Shahid. She said that a negligent  and lackadaisical attitude could be found among the police, prosecutors, jail officials and even judges.

One of the reasons for this was because Pakistan does not have a “settled definition” of what constitutes a “miscarriage of justice”.

“Pakistan does not have precedent for payment of compensation/damages,” Ijaz told IPS over phone. “It has to start somewhere; I hope that it is this case,” he said. He added that Pakistan’s criminal justice system was “dysfunctional” and that people spent decades in prison to be acquitted later without so much as an apology from the state. He also made reference to “harrowing examples” where people were executed while their legal appeals were still pending.

Although Pakistan ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2010, which in Article 14(6) clearly states that a person wrongfully punished for a criminal offence must be compensated, there is no such mechanism in place in Pakistan’s legal system for such redressal.

Last year, said Shahid, FFR in collaboration with its partner in the UK, Reprieve, released a report, that analysed the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s capital jurisprudence between 2010-2018.

“The study found that in 310 capital cases heard by the apex court between those years, 39 percent lead to acquittals. This means nearly two in every five prisoners sentenced to death in the study were wrongfully convicted and may have been innocent of the crime for which they were convicted and sentenced to death,” she said.

The study revealed “systemic flaws” in Pakistan’s criminal justice system which result in “tragic and often irreversible injustice”, Shahid said.

A  2020 report published by the Ministry of Human Rights, found there were 389 convicted women across Pakistan’s prisons while 755 women are currently undergoing trial. 

“Pakistan’s criminal justice system is in urgent need of reform and we are hoping that the court recognises that Rani is not alone in her struggle; countless innocent persons continue to be wrongfully convicted. This petition is an opportunity for the government to atone for its mistake and ensure that the state machinery collectively upholds its obligations towards citizens in the administration of justice,” said Shahid. 

However, Tanveer did not have a specific figure in mind in terms of compensation. “I have no clue how much I should demand,” she told IPS over the phone from Midranjha, a village in Sargodha district in the Punjab province.

But she did hope the compensation would be enough to buy things for her home like “a pair of charpais [woven rope bed], blanket and linen, an iron, a fan, a washing machine and a stove” — all the things her mother and brother would have given her as “dowry” when she re-married last year but could not because of their financial circumstances.

But now, in the midst of Pakistan’s current coronavirus lockdown, Tanveer thinks she was better off in the prison where she received three square meals and did not have to worry about anyone.

“I am a burden on my [second] husband,” she said. Two months ago when the lockdown began, she and her husband, like millions of others, lost their jobs as day labourers.

With no work or money, she said they had little choice but to move back to her husband’s village and live with her in-laws. “This coronay [COVID-19] has made my life miserable” as she has to bear the continuous jibes and scorn for her past life from her in-laws. 

“I also flare up at the slightest of provocation,” she confessed, adding: “No one understands me; sometimes I don’t even understand myself. Once the words are out of my mouth, I always feel guilty, but it’s too late,” she lamented.

Having been forced to live among strangers at the tender age of 16 may have affected her, Tanveer admitted.

But her husband, insisted she was not as bad as she made herself out to be.

“I keep telling her not to worry about the world or what my family says to her, as I am by her side; I love her smile and I think she is beautiful inside out,” he told IPS.

“Her past does not matter to me; she’s made me a better person and will now make my place a home.”

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Marcia Julio Vilanculos, pictured here in this dated photo with her baby, was one of the participants of a digital literacy training course at Ideario innovation hub, Maputo, Mozambique a few years ago. Only 6.8 percent of all Mozambican women, with or without owning a cellphone, use the internet. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2020 (IPS)

The digital divide has become more pronounced than ever amid the global coronavirus lockdown, but experts are concerned that in the current circumstances this divide, where over 46 percent of the world’s population remain without technology or internet access, could grow wider — particularly among women.  

“There were already deep divides in access to technologies including the internet and medical technologies, before COVID-19 began to spread,” Astra Bonini, Senior Sustainable Development Officer at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), told IPS. “The digital divide has been closing, but over 46 percent of people are still without access and among women, the rate is lower with over half of all women offline.” 

Exposing an already existing problem

The glaring lack of access to technology and the internet is only building on pre-existing inequalities between communities on matters of income, wealth, access to healthcare, electricity and clean water, living and working conditions, access to social protection and quality education, Bonini pointed out. 

How people are able to cope with the crisis depends heavily on the community they belong to, and where they stand with regards to the factors stated above. In essence, it begs the question: given social distancing is a key measure to contain the virus, and online access is the main way to stay connected, which communities have the tools to survive this pandemic? 

“With the need for high capacity healthcare systems and a nearly overnight transition to internet-based services, including remote learning and telemedicine, inequalities in access to technologies will leave people out and inhibit the options they have for getting healthcare and medical treatment, as well as for accessing distance learning and online information about reducing exposure to COVID-19,” Bonini told IPS. 

And the divide is not just being exposed when it comes to educational access. Other issues such as access to medical technologies, including ventilators and protective equipment are also “very unequal across geographies,” Bonini said.

Bonini was one of the speakers at the “Strengthening Science and Technology and Addressing Inequalities” webinar organised by UN DESA on Wednesday, May 6. Also featured were Maria Francesca Spatolisano, Shantanu Mukherjee, Deniz Susar, Marta Roig of UN DESA, as well as Fabrizio Hochschild-Drummond, the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the U.N.’s 75th Anniversary. 

The topic of discussion was how science and technology can be implemented to address the current pandemic.  

In an interview with IPS, Susar, governance and public administration officer at UN DESA, pointed out that an estimate 3.6 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people remain offline today, with the majority of them in underdeveloped countries. 

“Connecting them to the internet is not an easy job; it is not also a task only for governments, but the private sector,” he told IPS. “Cooperation is needed.” 

Only 30 percent of low-income countries are able to provide digital training access for their students, which is a testament to the experts Bonini pointed out. 

A recent launch of the “Learning Passport” initiative brought this issue further to light. While it was launched to make classrooms accessible for students stuck at home, the platform’s creators were not able to outline how to provide access to this facility for those without digital access. 

Bonini stressed the importance of expanding household internet coverage for families and students to have access to online classes and/or online learning opportunities, as well as for them to have access to health-related information. 

“There is an urgency to expand affordable internet access and to invest in STEM education to improve digital equity efforts,” Susar added. “There are many different initiatives around the world. More needs to be done.”

Collaboration between different actors of society

Both Susar and Bonini reiterated the importance of the private sector as well as for different actors in society to come together for a solution to address this gap.

“In general, policy makers can ensure everyone can have access by removing barriers,” Susar told IPS. “This can be tax incentives and or other subsidies. The private sector can do its part in the same way by providing affordable access and various options for different income groups.”

He added that partnerships between public and private entities can be effective in ensuring this, while academia and civil society can play an crucial role “in capacity building especially for vulnerable groups in acquiring digital skills”.

Bonini agreed and highlighted the importance of actions from all sectors as well. “Governments can lead the response, but the private-sector, civil society and individuals all have to be on board to make policies work,” she said.

While these relationships are being established and conversations are starting, Bonini suggested a more timely way to address this gap could be through outreach using radio, television or other means that are more likely already available in low-income households. 

“We need to understand people’s needs, we need to find resources needed to achieve these needs,” said Susar. “The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to work together with other stakeholders to provide access. We can only hope that these partnerships can continue in the post-COVID19 world.”

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This is an opportunity for civil society to highlight the plight of migrant labourers that existed even before the pandemic.. Picture courtesy: Anand Sinha

By Nikhil Dey
RAJASMAND, RAJASTHAN, India, May 8 2020 (IPS)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown us something that most of us haven’t seen in our lifetimes: Large numbers of people unable to have two meals a day. 

The tragedy is that the government has enough and more foodgrains to feed people during this time; the real issue is of distribution—both in terms of broken supply chains, as well as the insistence of the government to limit distribution to beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), ie, priority ration card holders. This approach is flawed because the NFSA has many exclusions, with some of the poorest of the poor, nomadic or Adivasi communities, and the urban poor being left out. Moreover, ration cards are of no use to migrant workers stuck outside their home state.

How much attention we pay to the millions who have been worst affected by COVID-19 and the lockdown will determine whether or not we come out of this crisis

There are similar issues of exclusion in other services as well, such as livelihoods and healthcare. This is where civil society must step in—to put pressure on the government to universalise these services.

We, at the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and through many networks, have been petitioning the government to distribute foodgrains to everyone, and we need to apply this kind of pressure at a larger scale. We’ve seen this work in the past, in the case of programmes such as NFSA (that focuses on food security) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)—both these were a result of consultative processes between the government and civil society. In fact, these rights-based legislations are providing us with the framework for public service delivery during this crisis, and they need to be effectively enhanced.

Therefore, if the government does not listen, we have to make them listen. I believe the people of this country know how to engage with the government—even when we disagree with our leaders, or they don’t listen to us. We live in a constitutional democracy, and the mantle therefore lies with citizens and civil society organisations to put pressure on the government, and to recreate society on the principles of equality, respect, and solidarity. In the short term, this means that we need to build a national movement to ensure that everyone gets access to food, livelihood, and healthcare.

But how can we do this, given the urgency of the situation and the restrictions that have come with it? What is our role in this massive national exercise to ensure that every citizen of the country has food to eat, quality health services, and livelihood opportunities? I believe there is plenty we can do.

 

Build a network of civil society

Civil society will have to build a network that cuts across the country. We will need to map the different organisations and groups providing relief in every district, block, and down to every village. We can do this because we have volunteers and workers—from field staff of nonprofits to government school teachers—all over the country, and we know whom we can contact for any information or assistance at any place.

The strength of civil society lies in knowing and being the small, decentralised units that have taken responsibility for their entire area—identifying the number of people in the area, the relief needed, the gaps in government relief, the challenges on the ground, and so on. By bringing them together and forming a network, we can enable these units to call upon each other for assistance, such as procuring material or rebuilding supply chains. Most importantly, the network can have a voice at the national-level that says everyone is entitled to benefits, even if they are not ration card holders or active workers under NREGA.

 

Stand in solidarity with those delivering essential services

COVID-19 is a high-risk disease, and we need to be very careful; but we cannot simply lock ourselves in our homes, because then those who are most vulnerable will not survive. Essential services absolutely have to continue. We have to build systems and mechanisms for safe delivery of services, and public servants have to be motivated, and given economic and moral support. Even though this has to be primarily done by the government, civil society organisations have a huge role to play as well.

For instance, we need to stand in solidarity with those who are currently delivering these services—frontline health workers, sanitation workers, people running ration shops and kirana stores, those making home deliveries of goods, and so on. We have to understand their problems and put pressure on the government to support them. The Delhi government recently announced insurance of INR 1 crore for frontline workers. That is the kind of security we should demand for every individual delivering services in this period. We have to build a movement around them.

These essential jobs could also be the answer to protecting the livelihoods of the poor during this time, by creating a fallback public works programme, unprecedented in scale. Civil society can demonstrate this model to the government. We need to chart the vital services required today, such as delivering rations and caregiving, and show to the government how people can be employed in these roles. This will not only help communities affected by the pandemic, but the mechanism of doing so might help others in turn.

 

Continue social movements in innovative ways

We might not be able to organise rallies or protests during the lockdown, but social movements must not stop finding ways to mobilise public opinion. When the lockdown first happened, we filed a case in the Supreme Court to say that all active workers under NREGA should be given wages for all 21 days. The case is being heard via video conferencing. So, we have to explore all options that help put pressure on the government.

We can engage with the state, send press notes, exchange information within our networks of civil society organisations, and document what’s happening on the ground. This way, we can raise issues at the state- and national-level. There are restrictions everywhere, but we cannot stop. We have to be innovative.

Civil society leaders and activists must also continue writing for newspapers and alternative media to highlight the situation of the most vulnerable, and do it in a more organised way, by taking the unheard voices and disseminating them using our networks. These must not just be confined to stories of suffering, but include positive stories and creative practices as well—of people working together despite socio-economic differences. Civil society can also help advocate that best practices in one state be replicated in others.

This is an opportunity for civil society to highlight the plight of migrant labourers that existed even before the pandemic—their work and living conditions, the insecurity of work, and the fact that they have no real social support from the state. We’ve heard people say that they didn’t realise that the migrant workforce is the backbone of our economy. Therefore, in addition to looking after their welfare and security, we must recognise their contribution, and build respect for them and their work—not as a favour, but as a means to empower them.

Many civil society organisations have been working with domestic workers, industrial workers, mine workers, street vendors, or other informal sector workers, but we haven’t managed to get them together and build them into the potent, powerful force that they could be. Perhaps now is the time for us to do that.

This is also an opportunity for civil society to counter the communal narrative that took over the country a few weeks ago. By taking the lead in organising multifaith relief efforts and highlighting positive stories of unity across religious lines, we have to show that the only way to overcome this crisis is by working together. We need to demonstrate compassion and care at this time, and shift the focus of politics to those values.

 

Work with the government

The role of civil society does not stop at putting pressure on the government. There are many areas that the government is unable to reach; we have to reach there. We have to use our transparency and accountability mechanisms to monitor the government’s work and make sure state resources are well-used. We also need to proactively find the gaps, and help fill those gaps.

The government structure is working well in some areas and not working in others. In some of those places, the government is itself asking for our help. Given the enormity of the intervention required, the government cannot do it on its own, and civil society cannot replace the vast role of the government in facing this crisis. While civil society organisations can take responsibility for one area and fully ensure the well-being of the people there, we must also work with local governments, help people access relief measures down to every rural and urban ward, and fill the gaps in the government’s response. Panchayats and local self-governments also have a very big role to play in this effort.

Apart from this, each one of us needs to think hard of the ways in which we can contribute. As individuals, we can immediately start looking at those around us—in our villages and our localities. Some of us can provide economic resources to plug the government’s gaps; others can take up the job of distribution. Individuals can also devote their time and join campaigns. There needs to be a concerted campaign for instance, to use the excessive foodgrain stocks to universalise the PDS, at least for the next few months. We also need to support the demand for an enhanced employment guarantee programme for rural and urban areas. We don’t realise how powerful the middle-class, English-speaking elite in India is; if they raise their voice enough, we will see improved situations around us.

And lastly, let us not forget democracy at this time—the right to speak, the right to challenge, the right to argue—because today, the only thing millions of poor people have is a voice. We need to amplify that voice to ensure that the most vulnerable get the most support, and those who are affluent only get something if it helps the most vulnerable. How much attention we pay to the millions who have been worst affected by COVID-19 and the lockdown will determine whether or not we come out of this crisis.

The article is based on Nikhil’s online discussion with the team members of Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, Azim Premji University, and Azim Premji Foundation.

Nikhil Dey was one of the founding members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS).

 

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

The post The Role of Civil Society in Times of Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Dr. Azza Karam and Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali
NEW YORK, May 8 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 has spread to many nations around the world, and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In the global south, the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the available medical and health resources, triggered economic shocks, and caused social upheavals and insecurity in many countries and localities.

While the pandemic has caused huge numbers of infections and deaths in the global north, the consequences in the poorer nations in the global south is acute.

Serious challenges arising from responses from authorities to contain the pandemic ranging from hard to soft lockdowns, curfews, limitations in movements, and social distancing, are causing strains in communities.

From fragile economies to ill- equipped health facilities and underfunded health programs, to the almost non-existent social security measures that would ordinarily cushion large segments of pupations from falling further into poverty, the impact on many communities in the global south will be grave.

While COVID-19 has not had a devastating impact on Africa as it has elsewhere, according to official statistics, we fear that this may change.

On the health side, health experts are already warning that the pandemic could yet exact a much heavier death toll in the region if it overwhelms local health services – as has happened in the United States and United Kingdom.

There are also concerns that the relatively weak health systems and patchy testing may be enabling COVID-19 to spread through Sub-Saharan Africa, without a means of registering any of this data.

The official figures to date locate much of the pandemic’s regional burden in places like South Africa, which has reported nearly 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and recently deployed hundreds of Cuban doctors to help fight its impact, and more than 1,800 confirmed cases in Cameroon, which has launched nationwide testing in April.

Two countries in the region, Lesotho and Comoros, have yet to officially report any cases, let alone Covid related deaths. According to a director of the African Center for Disease Control, the collapse of global cooperation has marginalised Africa in the diagnostics market, and its lack of hospitals combined with a high prevalence of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition could lead to relatively high COVID-19 mortality rates.

Food security is another major issue. Speaking of concerns in Nigeria, Sister Agatha Chikelue, Executive Director of the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation and Coordinator of Religious for Peace’s interfaith Women’s Network, noted that people are afraid of dying of “Hovid” – the hunger caused as a result of loss of livelihoods from the lockdown.

Religious leaders join COVID-19 fight in Africa. Credit: United Nations

Small wonder, therefore, that Nigeria is one of the countries already struggling to consider reopening some of their businesses, in spite of dire warnings.

According to a UN report, Africa is home to more than half of the 135 million who suffer acutely from food insecurity, which means there are serious concerns about famines and the potential for a significant death toll.

In other words, we are speaking of very real fears that the Covid crises may cause famine in combination with the drought, which will have dire consequences on the conflict-affected countries in the continent.

John Letzing, Digital Editor of Strategic Intelligence at the World Economic Forum, lists some of the dynamics facing the continent as reported on by a number of different sources. Notably,

Some Africans may be suffering indirectly from the impact of COVID-19 while
abroad – in early April, images and video emerged of Africans in Guangzhou,
China, being subjected to passport seizures and arbitrary quarantine,
according to this report. (The Diplomat). Africa has undergone an incredible
journey to make routine immunization possible, though immunization
coverage in sub-Saharan Africa has stalled at 72%. Now, COVID-19 presents
a further threat to progress, according to this analysis. (New African)

Despite the heralding of the coronavirus, there are those who argue that Africa’s governments did little to prepare themselves, their systems, or their people. Other commentators note that many countries have made plans to ease coronavirus-related measures.

There is some speculation that lessons learned from incidents like the 2014 Ebola outbreak will contribute to some countries’ capacities to weather the storm.

The fact is, that one of the key containment measures—social distancing—will be impossible in the crowded markets, high-density informal settlements and dwellings shared by more than one family. Another oft repeated advise is that of frequent handwashing in clean water. But what happens when clean water to drink, is in very short supply for many households across the sub-Saharan African continent?

Moreover, it is inconceivable that governments will, on their own, be able to meet the needs of all their citizens in this COVID pandemic. Many were already struggling to do so even before the pandemic struck.

Besides offering spiritual guidance and support, which is increasingly needed in times of fear and uncertainty, faith communities and organizations in Africa as elsewhere, have, over the years, supplemented governments’ efforts to provide education, health, nutritional and other developmental needs to their communities.

They also have been in the forefront of peacebuilding initiatives, and in advocating for rights-based approaches to development, protection of, and ending violence against children and minorities.

With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging communities and creating fear and despondency, faith-based and faith-inspired organizations are already providing and augmenting critical services in health care provision – including but not limited to palliative care – and as part of the supply chains (for food, medicines, spiritual relief) reaching the heart of communities.

Religious organisations are also key to disseminating accurate news about the impacts and effects of the pandemic, rendering more critical their services as communicators and advisers on behavioral changes needed to keep communities safe.

Those of us engaged in working with religious actors speak of 84% of the world’s people claiming an affiliation to a faith tradition. This applies to all the world, and the sub-Saharan African subcontinent is no stranger to religiosity and belief as normal in everyday lives.

In times of fear, most believers will turn to faith, and this means that religious institutions, religious leaders and religious NGOs are playing a key role including psycho-social healing of COVID-19 traumas.

The fact is, however, that not all faith actors play the same role. And even when most play a positive role in helping communities and governments to cope, this does not mean all do. We know that some faith leaders are adamant that congregating for religious worship is a means of healing, because “God will spare us”.

These messages are hardly helpful when science and life and death experience indicate that social distancing is not only advisable, but downright necessary.

While the UN Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire to all conflicts has been echoed by many religious leaders around the world, the question remains whether actors involved in extremist groups using religion as their raison d’etre will contemplate heeding such calls.

In fact, COVID-19 lockdowns may even be opportunities to ramp up violence, as government security services are otherwise engaged. This begs two important questions we have yet to find answers for:

To what extent will those religious institutions involved in providing for the daily spiritual, psycho-social, humanitarian care for their communities, and already overwhelmed in reconfiguring the very nature of religious worship, find the wherewithal to engage with the ‘radical fringes’ in African contexts already deeply divided by conflicts?

And what impact will COVID-19 have on the very same armed groups still insistent on playing out their conflicts? Already, some of those who still carry weapons, are working to serve some of their community needs – providing food, water and even money to households having to do without.

And as they serve their communities’ needs, the extremist groups have also ramped up attacks. In March and April, armed attacks in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 37 %, adding significant strain on the already overstrained resources, currently re-directed to COVID-related emergencies.

Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, Secretary General of the Center for Sustainable Conflict Resolution, and Convener for the GNRC (Global Network of Religions for Children) Horn of Africa Working Group on religious-based extremism, is not surprised that the extremist groups have fully seized the confusion and despondency that COVID-19 has thrust into already fragile communities.

These stretch from the Sahel in West Africa, the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa’s Cabo Delgado in Mozambique

Will COVID-19 offer an opportunity for a different trajectory for some of those groups? As these groups continue to plant bombs, kill and maim, what will become of armed insurgency in the name of religion, when COVID-19 hits hard in Africa?

The post Religion & its Discontents: Considerations Around COVID-19 & Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Azza Karam is the Secretary General of Religions for Peace International and Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam; Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali is the Secretary General of the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The post Religion & its Discontents: Considerations Around COVID-19 & Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
May 7 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in April, many Americans were shocked by the extent that black Americans were being disproportionately impacted: higher infection rates, more deaths and greater job loss.

But many black Americans were not surprised.

This is not new. The same dynamic has been going on at times of crisis for decades and generations.

As a labor economist and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under the Clinton administration, I know that history has shown that black Americans consistently bear the brunt of recessions and natural disasters.

 

Economic history repeating itself

Prior to this pandemic, the worst economic downturns in post-World War II America were the 1981-82 recession and the Great Recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis. During those downturns, the jobless rate of black Americans peaked at 20.2% and 14.8% respectively, according to my calculations. From each downturn’s onset, it took 16 and 18 months to hit those levels.

Black Americans have historically borne the brunt of economic downturns, so they will need a disproportionate share of resources to create and sustain their resiliency, including policies that improve opportunity, lessen overall inequality and fight discrimination

This pandemic has eclipsed those figures in just one month. My estimate – based on the historic link between the unemployment rate and initial claims, and April’s data – has the black American unemployment rate already exceeding 20%, compared to a white unemployment rate of 13%.

Black Americans have higher likelihoods of losing their jobs because those jobs are concentrated in the hardest-hit sectors of the economy, such as hotels, restaurants, bars and other food services, and department stores.

Many who have kept their jobs face higher risks of infection because they work in “high touch” jobs such as transit workers and grocery clerks.

Further, because they tend to live in more densely populated communities, they also have a harder time practicing physical distancing.

This, along with the long-standing chronic health challenges of many black Americans, puts them at greater risks of infection, illness and death.

 

Fewer resources

Only when the public protested did they finally pass legislation that targeted additional resources to the neediest hospitals. It took until the second installment of the Paycheck Protection Program for many minority and women-owned businesses to get access to funds.

Black Americans also tend to have access to fewer resources, making it harder for them to be more resilient when faced with a challenge like a pandemic, recession or natural disaster.

This has been their experience during past economic recessions, but even during “normal” times, it is harder for black Americans to compete on a level playing field.

Lower wealth and smaller savings form part of a patchwork of long-standing structural barriers that mean that in times of economic hardship, black Americans tend to get hit hardest.

Fewer education opportunities, lower rates of work experience, discrimination in hiring and pay and having to live further away from where jobs are located all contribute to higher unemployment rates, lower earnings, greater part-time employment and more underemployment.

So too does the high rates of incarceration. Economists have found that when the incarcerated population is factored in, black Americans are in no better an economic position than they were back in 1950.

As a result of these barriers to well-paying, sustainable jobs, the budgets of black American families tend to be more vulnerable to economic shocks.

 

A false economy?

The figures also undercut pre-coronavirus claims by the Trump administration that in terms of jobs, black Americans have never had it so good.

Although the headline unemployment rate suggests black Americans over the last three years have experienced their best economy ever, when carefully examined this is not true. My analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the share of black high school graduates that were employed just before the coronavirus crisis took hold is still well below its pre-Great Recession level. This is also true for black college graduates.

And it has taken over 10 years for the incomes of black Americans to return to its pre-Great Recession level. This all factors in to why the economic hit of the pandemic has been so hard for black Americans.

Trump likes to compare the economy during his tenure to President Obama’s economy, but such analysis doesn’t make sense. Trump inherited a strong economy, while President Obama inherited an economy that was reeling from the Great Recession. Trump should compare the economy under his administration to the first three years of President Bill Clinton’s second term, another peak in the economy’s expansion.

Under this comparison, the Trump economy looks less favorable for black Americans. Although the unemployment rate is lower, a comparison of the employment-population ratios – a measure that includes people not looking for work and is generally favored as a snapshot of labor market conditions – reveals that black Americans did better during the Clinton administration.

But when compared to past recessions, so too were many other Americans unprepared – even before the current crisis around 40% of American households could not pay an unexpected bill of US$400.

Globalization and technological change have weakened institutions such as unions. The Trump administration has undermined policies put in place to help create safe and fair workplaces.

Meanwhile, tax cuts that favor corporations and wealthy individuals and actions such as stock buybacks have further muted the impact of economic growth on Main Street.

The bottom line I see is that the U.S.‘s failure to maintain its investments in human priorities such as education, unemployment insurance, housing and community services, and health and recreation services, is threatening the ability of all Americans to bounce back from economic adversity.

 

Restoring resilience

So what next? As a member of the New Jersey commission advising the governor on how and when to reopen, I’m looking at immediate economic concerns. But a long-term federal plan will reach more people.

Instead of another rehash of what typically happens, I think many black Americans – along with many Americans of all backgrounds – want a new and different response to addressing racial inequality. Polling from before the current crisis found that a majority of people acknowledge that being black hurts a person’s chance of getting ahead.

Black Americans have historically borne the brunt of economic downturns, so they will need a disproportionate share of resources to create and sustain their resiliency, including policies that improve opportunity, lessen overall inequality and fight discrimination.

I suspect that many will say the country can’t afford that kind of investment. Past surveys have indicated a lack of general support for increased federal spending on needy Americans and it is not known if COVID-19 will have changed minds.

But I believe we can’t afford not to invest in better, sustainable communities. Failing to do so will condemn those left vulnerable – both black, and nonblack Americans alike – to suffer from future economic shocks.

 

William M. Rodgers III, Professor of Public Policy and Chief Economist, Rutgers University

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

 

The post Black Americans are Bearing the Brunt of Coronavirus Recession – This Should Come as no Surprise appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An animal market in Indonesia. Credit: TRAFFIC

By Steven Broad
CAMBRIDGE, UK, May 7 2020 (IPS)

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is raging worldwide, causing human mortality and socio-economic disruption on a massive scale and it appears highly likely that profound impacts will continue for many years to come.

Although the precise origins of the disease remain unproven, there are strong indications of a wild animal source and a direct link to wildlife trade in China.

Even if evidence points elsewhere in future, the magnitude of the current outbreak places under an intense spotlight concerns raised by zoonotic disease experts over many decades about human health risks linked to wild animal trade in the increasingly inter-connected global economy.

As calls for new health-focused restrictions on wildlife trade have increased in volume in response to the current pandemic, some countries have taken immediate action. Building on immediate emergency restrictions placed on wildlife markets in January 2020, China is implementing a long-term prohibition on trade and consumption of wild animals for food as a public health protection measure.

Viet Nam is also considering new health-focused market restrictions and Gabon has introduced new species-specific trade restrictions. Looking ahead, there is a critical need to improve understanding of what sort of interventions might make the biggest difference in reducing risks of zoonotic disease emergence.

However, it is also important to work out how such actions might best complement, rather than conflict with, the range of existing conservation-focused wildlife trade regulation and management measures that are already struggling to contain over-exploitation of nature by people.

Zoonotic disease risks have not been wholly ignored before now. Many countries have live animal quarantine requirements and other rules governing the cross-border movement of meat, fish and other animal products.

Similarly, production, trade and use of live animals and products are subject to animal and human health regulations within domestic markets of most countries. However, such measures are typically designed primarily to address trade and consumption of domesticated species, the volume and value of which vastly exceed wild animal business.

As a result, the provisions of such regulations are seldom tailored to the specific dynamics and risks of the trade in wild animals.

Design of new interventions should be based on evidence-based assessment of disease-related vulnerabilities in current wild animal trade chains. Based on study of past cases, experts point to heightened risks of zoonotic disease spillover in places where large numbers of stressed live animals of different species (wild or domesticated) and people are in close proximity, such as transport hubs, holding facilities and markets.

However, there remains considerable uncertainty about differentiation of risk levels between different wild animal species (or species groups) and about the likelihood of transmission from different wild animal parts and products.

Credit: TRAFFIC

There is a wide range of options for future intervention based on assessment of such risks. Prohibitions on trade and consumption of certain species or products could be warranted. This would likely require new or modified national legislation in many countries, as most current restrictions are explicitly justified by conservation threat levels and jurisdiction is often limited to import/export controls only.

Such measures would of course face the same challenges that undermine existing wildlife trade laws: enforcement is inconsistent, often under-resourced, undermined by criminality and corruption, and given insufficient priority by governments. Risky trade may simply continue through illicit markets.

It is possible that the greatest benefit might come from changes in management practices for holding, trade and processing wild animals in trade. These might include regulatory or voluntary private sector measures aimed to improve animal husbandry, increase separation between species in trade, enhance sanitation at holding facilities and improve personal protection for workers.

These measures may again require modification of existing animal and human health legislation, but there is considerable practical experience from the domesticated animal sector that could be applied to this challenge.

Despite the clear imperative for action provided by the tragic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be critical to ensure that remedial restrictions on wildlife commerce are tailored to achieve specific risk reduction goals and designed to take into account potential negative impacts on social equity, livelihoods, and indirect conservation impacts.

Such measures also need to be set in the context of other zoonotic disease pathways and risk factors that need careful attention, such as land-use change, domestic livestock management practices and other human/wildlife interactions.

It is also vital that amidst the urgent need to reduce zoonotic disease threats from wildlife trade, the ongoing drive to address over-exploitation threats to wildlife does not lose momentum. It is of course possible that new health-focused restrictions on wild animal trade and increased scrutiny of wildlife commerce more generally owing to its likely connection with the pandemic may reinforce conservation-focused action.

However, trade in what may be identified as higher risk sectors, such as that of live wild mammals and birds, makes up a small proportion of the global wildlife trade. The greatest over-exploitation threats are faced by marine species and the biggest wildlife trade flows are of timber and other wild plant products.

There is additional cause for concern that socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may be driving new trends in wildlife trade patterns that need careful attention. Past disease outbreaks linked to wild meat trade have led to increased demands for marine fish and there is already evidence of greater attention to wild plant-based medicinal treatments and tonics.

Although some illegal wildlife trade flows may now be suppressed by transport interruptions and retail market closures, there is every likelihood that criminal syndicates will move fast to rebuild illicit businesses and exploit diversion of government enforcement resources to other priorities.

A new focus on human health risks linked to wildlife trade practices is certainly warranted as a component of wider thought and action on the relationship between people and nature as the COVID-19 epidemic persists.

The response should be targeted, appropriate to the task and its design grounded in experience gained from past wildlife trade interventions. In the same way that human and environmental health are intimately connected, it is essential that new health-focused wildlife trade interventions are considered in concert with those already focused on conservation gain.

The “super-year for biodiversity” may have been delayed, but the imperative for conservation action remains.

An abridged version of the article appeared in the April issue of the TRAFFIC Bulletin, available for download at: https://www.traffic.org/site/assets/files/12779/bulletin-32_1-final-web.pdf

The post COVID-19 & Human Health Risks Linked to Wildlife Trade Practices appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Steven Broad is Executive Director, TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network

The post COVID-19 & Human Health Risks Linked to Wildlife Trade Practices appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

By Franciscka Lucien and Joel Curtain
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti and BOSTON, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a historic opportunity to help stabilize a world reeling from COVID-19. Doing so will require the institutions to change course and aggressively support poor countries’ ability to invest broadly in the government services their populations need.

The pandemic is exposing the consequences of four decades of reduced public spending in the Global South, much of it mandated by the World Bank and the IMF (often called “International Financial Institutions” or “IFIs”). Those consequences were already painfully apparent to people in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere, who were massively protesting the loss of public services until the pandemic kept them home.

Starting in the 1970s, the IFIs imposed loan conditions via “structural adjustment programs” that forced sharp cuts in government spending in developing countries and constrained their ability to tax, to regulate business and to protect workers. These programs forced significant reductions in public health, education, agricultural support and other important social and economic programs.

Structural adjustment also transferred power from national governments, which are accountable to their citizens, to corporations and IFIs. These entities were empowered to make decisions affecting people’s lives without those impacted having any say. This transfer of power accelerated when the 1980s credit crisis made countries desperate for loans, especially because the IMF’s seal of approval was a prerequisite to loans by other creditors.

Haiti accepted structural adjustment in return for financial help during its democratic transition in the mid-1990s. The conditions forced the government to eliminate half of its civil servants, privatize public services, and slash tariffs that had protected farmers.

Twenty-five years later, foreign actors have increasing access to Haiti’s economy, but Haitians have limited access to healthcare and other basic services. Spending on public health went from 16.6% of the national budget in 2004 to 4.4% in 2017, and there are currently an estimated 124 ICU beds and 70 ventilators for 11 million people. The shriveled health and sanitation budgets had catastrophic consequences in 2010, when cholera-contaminated sewage leaking from a UN military base spawned the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, with over 800,000 sick and 10,000 killed. After seeing their country ravaged by a disease that can be stopped with clean water and adequate sanitation, Haitians are bracing for the worst from COVID-19.

Although the IFIs have abandoned “structural adjustment” as a term, Global South governments are still recovering from the programs’ effects, and the IFIs continue to impose loan conditions that limit spending for government services. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to repair this damage with support that enables countries to invest in resilient systems that can respond to a range of crises, and deliver basic government services like healthcare and education.

Seizing this opportunity requires returning power to people, and their governments. The IMF took a small step in the right direction April 13 by deferring debt payments for Haiti and 24 other countries. Debt relief for low- and middle-income countries, coupled with a massive allocation of the IMF’s reserve currency ― Special Drawing Rights ― would provide governments a more appropriate level of financial flexibility. On April 17, the World Bank announced a new Trust Fund to help countries prepare for disease outbreaks.

The IMF’s Managing Director, economists and many governments have backed these common-sense measures. The US government has not, which raises the issue of power within the IFIs. Voting power at both IFIs is skewed profoundly in favor of wealthy countries, with low- and middle- income counties having only 40% of the vote despite representing around 85% of the global population. This power imbalance is both a symptom and a cause of rising global inequality.

The US has one of every six votes in the two IFIs. A bill filed last week would direct those votes to support Global South governments’ investments in the public education, healthcare and other services their citizens need, without imposing inappropriate conditions. The bill, called the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act., was sponsored by Representatives Jesús García (IL-04), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Mark Takano (CA-41). The rest of Congress should rise to the challenge COVID-19 is presenting and pass the bill.

The post Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

The post Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNFPA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The world’s poorer nations, reeling under an unrelenting attack on their fragile economies by the COVID-19 pandemic, have suffered an equally deadly body blow: being buried under heavy debt burdens.

Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, said last week that in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health.

Ethiopia alone, he said, spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. “We spend 47 percent of our merchandise export revenue on debt servicing”, he wrote in an oped piece in the New York Times.

According to the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign, some of the countries battling debt burdens include Lebanon, which spends about 41% of its revenue on debt service; El Salvador, which spends 38% of its revenues on debt service; and South Sudan, which spends 29%.

And these are not necessarily the most highly-indebted poor countries in the world — Sri Lanka pays 48% of its revenue in debt service, and Angola 43%.

On April 15, the Group of 20 countries (G20) offered temporary relief to some of the world’s lowest-income countries by suspending debt repayments until the end of the year.

But, regrettably, their best offer fell far short of expectations.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a “debt standstill” across all developing countries affected by debt vulnerabilities. This includes external public and commercial debt.

“The private sector’s voluntary and well-coordinated engagement in debt relief discussions is crucial”, he adds.

In 2020, “we expect to lose the equivalent of more than 300 million jobs; a decline in global trade between 13 and 32 per cent; remittance flows to low‐ and middle‐income countries to drop by around 20 per cent; and foreign direct investment to decline by 35 per cent,” the United Nations warned last week.

Clemence Landers, a Policy Fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), told IPS the G20 bilateral debt suspension is a good start, but it’s only a temporary stopgap measure.

In the months ahead, she pointed out, it will be clear that some countries need deeper and more permanent relief.

“The global community should use this time to establish the broad contours of an orderly debt relief process that distributes the burden equitably between all bilateral and commercial creditors”.

In parallel, argued Landers, the international financial institutions should find ways to deploy financing packages above levels that they have already announced to ensure that net flows to countries are robust. But an effective and orderly process is far from a given.

“It will largely hinge on the G20’s ability to provide an ambitious plan and maintain strong political pressure to achieve a coordinated approach,” she declared.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director United Nations University– World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), told IPS the recent announcement by the governments of the G20 countries of a debt moratorium for the poorest countries is a welcome initiative as it allows these countries to allocate the funds that would have gone to service external debt to deal with the immediate needs of the pandemic.

According to Jubilee Debt Campaign, the suspension covers debt payments by 77 countries to G20 and other governments, from 1 May to the end of 2020, estimated to be $12 billion.

The payments will not be cancelled but come due to be paid between 2022 and 2024, along with interest accrued in the meantime. There will be a review by the G20 before the end of 2020 as to whether further action will be taken.

The G20 announcement also calls on private creditors to similarly suspend debt payments, and calls on multilateral creditors to explore options for doing so.

The G20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (EU).

The Ethiopian Prime Minister said at the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end of 2020 but rather until well after the pandemic is truly over.

“It should involve not just debt suspension but debt cancellation. Global creditors need to waive both official bilateral and commercial debt for low-income countries,” he declared.

Richard Ponzio, Senior Fellow and Director of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 Program, told IPS the G20 Finance Ministers wisely agreed on a ‘time-bound suspension of debt service payments’, between now and the end of the year, for 77 of the world’s poorest countries.

“Now it’s time for private creditors, who are owed USD $3 billion (or a quarter of total debt), to step up and participate in this initiative,” he noted.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect countries in different ways, once they begin to transition from the current emergency to a full recovery phase, the G20 should revisit the need to sustain this policy, in 2021 and 2022, on a country-by-country basis, with the goal of helping all countries adversely affected by the pandemic to get back-up on their feet, Ponzio declared.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director at the Oakland Institute, a leading US-based policy think tank, told IPS the Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a crisis of untold proportions – the disastrous impact of which is being felt by the poorest and poor nations.

According to the World Bank itself, COVID has pushed about 40-60 million people into extreme poverty, with best estimate being 49 million.

Bank’s projections suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa will be the region hit hardest in terms of increased extreme poverty, she said.

“At such a time, an inclusive bailout requires that united global response should ensure a just recovery and transition to a better future for those most in need.”

She pointed out that Central African Republic has just three ventilators, Sierra Leone has 13, Liberia has three, South Sudan has four.

Mittal said developing countries should be boosting healthcare systems to defend against the virus and protecting their economies and the poor, instead of using precious resources to pay off external debt, which anyway never benefitted the communities.

“These loans were often generated for so called “development” projects which have failed to bring development to the countries or populations that were intended to benefit”.

At this time, she argued, it is pertinent to cancel bilateral, multilateral and private debt for this year and instead, emergency additional finance should be provided. This time also calls for real negotiations around debt cancellation.

Above all, it is important to ensure removal of loan leverage to open up markets and force reforms such as the opening of land markets in Ukraine. Loan programs intended to control economies and natural resources have to stop, said Mittal.

Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign said the G20 offer is a first step in dealing with the magnitude of the coronavirus debt crisis, but much more needs to be done.

The G20 deal keeps vital money in countries for now, but today’s suspension will soon become tomorrow’s debt crisis unless payments are cancelled in full.

“We urgently need a UN-led process to cancel external debt owed to all creditors, for all countries in crisis,” said Clifton.

“The suspension of debt payments to private creditors is only voluntary. The UK and New York can make sure it happens by introducing emergency legislation to prevent any lender suing a country for stopping debt payments during the current crisis”.

Otherwise, she argued, “the real beneficiaries of today’s deal could be rich speculators who keep being paid thanks to debt suspensions by other lenders.”

Meanwhile, several Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, have taken a severe beating primarily because of a sharp fall in migrant earnings resulting from the closure of industries and construction work in the Middle East and Gulf nations due to COVID-19.

According to the New York Times, millions of Indians who work in the Arab world — particularly in the oil-rich countries of the Gulf — have lost their jobs in recent weeks as Arab economies have contracted under lockdown.

“We have been getting distress calls from the Gulf,” said Mahesh Kumar, a spokesman for India’s foreign ministry.

The Times said Indian media have reported more than 150,000 Indians in the United Arab Emirates requesting to be evacuated — and that several large naval warships have already been dispatched to the UAE and the Maldives.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post World’s Poor Hit by Double Jeopardy: a Deadly Virus & a Devastating Debt Burden appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Quechua indigenous farmers from the town of Huasao, in the Andes highlands of Peru, cut insect repellent plants in front of Juana Gallegos' house, while others prepare the biol mixture, a liquid organic fertiliser that they use on their vegetable crops. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
HUASAO, Peru, May 6 2020 (IPS)

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and Pascuala Ninantay is carrying two large containers of water in her wheelbarrow to prepare with neighbouring women farmers 200 litres of organic fertiliser, which will then be distributed to fertilise their crops, in this town in the Andes highlands of Peru.

“We grow healthy, nutritious food without chemicals,” she tells IPS, describing the sustainable agriculture she practices in Huasao, a town of about 1,500 people in Quispicanchi province, 3,300 metres above sea level, in the department of Cuzco in south-central Peru.

It will take them four hours to prepare the “biol”, a liquid fertiliser composed of natural inputs contributed by the local farmers as part of a collective work tradition of the Quechua indigenous people, to which most of the inhabitants of Huasao and neighbouring highlands villages in the area belong.

“Between all of us we bring the different ingredients, but we were short on water so I went to the spring to fill my ‘galoneras’ (multi-gallon containers),” explains Ninantay.

The women, gathered at the home of Juana Gallegos, work in community. While some gather insect repellent plants like nettles and muña (Minthostachys mollis, an Andes highlands plant), others prepare the huge plastic drum where they will make the mixture that includes ash and fresh cattle dung.

They keep working until the container is filled with 200 litres of the fertiliser which, after two months of fermentation in the sealed drum, will be distributed among them equally.

Making organic fertiliser is one of the agro-ecological practices that Ninantay and 15 of her neighbours have adopted to produce food that is both beneficial to health and adapted to climate change.

They are just a few of the almost 700,000 women who, according to official figures, are engaged in agricultural activities in Peru, and who play a key role in the food security and sovereignty of their communities, despite the fact that they do so under unequal conditions because they have less access to land, water management and credit than men.

That is the view of Elena Villanueva, a sociologist with the Flora Tristán Centre for Peruvian Women, a non-governmental organisation that for the past two years has been promoting women’s rights and technical training among small-scale women farmers in Huasao and six other areas of the region, with support from two institutions in Spain’s Basque Country: the Basque Development Cooperation agency and the non-governmental Mugen Gainetik.

“During this time we have seen how much power the 80 women we have supported have gained as a result of their awareness of their rights and their use of agro-ecological techniques. In a context of marked machismo (sexism), they are gaining recognition for their work, which was previously invisible,” she told IPS.

A group of women farmers are ready to head out to the plots they farm on the community lands outside of Huasao, a rural town in Peru’s Andes highlands department of Cuzco. They are wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, because they depend on their production for food and income from the sale of the surplus, to cover their household expenses. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

This group of women farmers is convinced of the need for nutritious food that does not harm people’s health or nature, and they are happy to do their small part to make that happen.

“We want to have a variety of food constantly available, but taking care of our soil, water, plants, trees and air,” says Ninantay.

“We no longer use chemicals,” says Gallegos. “Thanks to the training we have received, we understood how the soil and our crops had become so dependent on those substances, we thought that only by using them would we have a good yield. But no, with our own fertilisers we grow lettuce, tomatoes, chard, artichokes, radishes and all our big, beautiful, tasty vegetables. Everything is organic.”

Once they were producing their fresh produce using agro-ecological techniques, the women decided to also begin growing their staple crops of potatoes and corn organically. “I see that the plants are happier and the leaves are greener now that I fertilise them naturally,” says Ninantay.

Villanueva says these decisions on what to plant and how to do it contribute to new forms of agricultural production that meet the food needs of the women and their families while also contributing to the sustainable development of their communities.

“With agro-ecology they enrich their knowledge about the resistance of crops to climate change, they carry out integrated management of pests and diseases, and they have tools to improve their production planning,” she explains.

And even more important, “this process raises their self-esteem and strengthens their sense of being productive citizens because they are aware that they are taking care of biodiversity, diversifying their crops and increasing their yields,” she adds.

Thanks to this, these peasant women are obtaining surpluses that they now market.

Three times a week, Ninantay and the other women set up their stall in Huasao’s main square where they sell their products to the local population and to tourists who come in search of local healers, famous for their fortune telling and cures, which draw on traditional rituals and ceremonies.

The agro-ecological women farmers set up their stall three times a week in the main square of the rural municipality of Huasao to sell lettuce, tomatoes, Chinese onions, radish and other fresh produce. They are now marketing their wares in compliance with the health regulations put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic, for which they have received training from the municipal authorities. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

Coronavirus alters local dynamics

However, the measures implemented by the central government on Mar. 15 to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced trade, by not allowing outsiders to visit Huasao, known locally as “the village of the witchdoctors” because of its healers.

But the work in the fields has not stopped; on the contrary, the women are working harder than ever.

“We used to have the income of my husband who worked in the city, but because of the state of emergency he can no longer leave,” says Ninantay. “My fellow women farmers are in the same boat, so we continue to harvest and sell in the square and what we earn goes to buying medicines, masks, bleach and other things for the home.”

Initially, she says, the husbands didn’t want their wives to participate in the project and stay overnight away from home to attend the training workshops. But after they saw the money they were saving on food and the income the women were earning, “they now recognise that our work is important.”

Their husbands, like most Huasao men, do not work in the fields. They work in construction or services in the city of Cuzco, about 20 km away, or migrate seasonally to mining regions in search of a better income.

So the community lands, where each family has usufruct rights on three-hectare plots, were left in the hands of women, even though the title is usually held by the men. With the opportunity offered by the Flora Tristán project, they have increased their harvests and are no longer merely subsistence farmers but earn an income as well.

Despite the pandemic, the women obtained permission from the authorities and received training on the care and prevention measures to be followed in order to market their products under conditions that are safe for them and their customers.

Their stall at the open-air market in the town’s main square is already known for offering healthy food, and on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays they run out of vegetables and other products they offer. They also sell their wares in other fairs and markets.

Their stall in the municipal market is also seen as an alternative to return to more natural foods in the face of the increasing change in eating patterns in rural areas.

“Many people don’t want to eat quinoa or ‘oca’ (Oxalis tuberosa, an Andean tuber), they prefer noodles or rice,” says Ninantay. “Children fill up on sweets and junk food and they are not getting good nutrition, and that’s not right. We have to educate people about healthy eating if we want strong new generations.”

She stresses the importance of people understanding that nature, “Mother Earth”, must be respected.

“We have to recover the wisdom of our ancestors, of our grandmothers, to take care of everything that we need to live,” she warns. “If we do not do this, our grandchildren and their children will not have water to drink, seeds to plant, or food to eat.”

Flora Tristán’s Villanueva announced that the 80 women farmers in the programme would participate in initiatives for the recovery of agricultural and water harvesting practices based on forestation and infiltration ditches, using native trees known as chachacomas (Escallonia resinosa) and queñuas (Polylepis).

The women hope that their experience and knowledge will be extended on a large scale, because although they share with their families, neighbours and relatives what they are learning, they believe that the authorities should help expand these practices.

“We would like not only Huasao, but all of Cuzco to be an agro-ecological region, so that we can help nature and guarantee healthy food for the families of the countryside and the city,” says Gallegos, convinced that if they could do it, everyone can.

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