Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 1 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has estimated a hefty $466 billion as remittances from migrant workers worldwide in 2017—and perhaps even higher last year.

These remittances, primarily from the US, Western Europe and Gulf nations, go largely to low and middle-income countries, “helping to lift millions of families out of poverty,” says UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

But most of these migrant workers are known to pay a heavy price, toiling mostly under conditions of slave labour: earning low wages, with no pensions or social security, and minimum health care.

As the United Nations commemorated Labour Day on May 1, the plight of migrant workers is one of the issues being pursued by the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency which celebrates its centenary this year promoting social justice worldwide.

In a December 2018 report, the ILO said: “If the right policies are in place, labour migration can help countries respond to shifts in labour supply and demand, stimulate innovation and sustainable development, and transfer and update skills”.

However, a lack of international standards regarding concepts, definitions and methodologies for measuring labour migration data still needs to be addressed, it warned.

But much more daunting is the current state of the migrant labour market which has been riddled with blatant violations of all the norms of an ideal workplace.

Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam, a member of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers, told IPS rising populist nationalism world over is giving rise to rhetoric with unfounded allegations and irrational assessments of the worth of migrant workers to economies of many migrant receiving countries in the world.

Since migrant workers remain voiceless without voting or political rights in many such receiving countries, they are unable to mobilize political opinion to counter assertions against them, he said.

“And migrant workers are now being treated in some countries as commodities for import and export at will, not as humans with rights and responsibilities,” said Ambassador Kariyawasam, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Unless these trends are reversed soon, he warned, not only human worth as a whole will diminish, but it can also lead to unexpected social upheavals affecting economic and social well-being of some communities in both sending and receiving countries of migrant workers.

At a UN press conference April 10, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the ILO Centenary is a time to affirm with conviction that the mandate and standards set by the Organization remain of extraordinary importance and relevance to people everywhere.

He called for a future where labour is not a commodity, where decent work and the contribution of each person are valued, where all benefit from fair, safe and respectful workplaces free from violence and harassment, and in which wealth and prosperity benefit all.

Tara Carey, Senior Content & Media Relations Manager at Equality Now told IPS poverty and poor employment opportunities are a push factor for sex trafficking.

There are many cases in which women and girls in African countries are promised legitimate work and are then trafficked into prostitution. This happens within countries, across borders, and from Africa to places in Europe and the Middle East, she pointed out.

And recently, the police in Nigeria estimated 20,000 women and girls had been sold into sexual slavery in Mali:

“The new trend is that they told them they were taking them to Malaysia and they found themselves in Mali. They told them they would be working in five-star restaurants where they would be paid $700 per month.”

The number of migrants is estimated at over 240 million worldwide. And an increasingly large number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are home to most migrant workers from Asia.

In a background briefing during a high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly in April, the ILO said conditions of work need to be improved for the roughly 300 million working poor – outside of migrant labour — who live on $1.90 a day.

Millions of men, women and children are victims of modern slavery. Too many still work excessively long hours and millions still die of work-related accidents every year.

“Wage growth has not kept pace with productivity growth and the share of national income going to workers has declined. Inequalities remain persistent around the world. Women continue to earn around 20 per cent less than men.”

“Even as growth has lessened inequality between countries, many of our societies are becoming more unequal. Millions of workers remain disenfranchised, deprived of fundamental rights and unable to make their voices heard”, according to the background briefing.

In its 2018 review of Human Rights in the Middle East & North Africa, the London-based Amnesty International (AI) said there were some positive developments at a legislative level in Morocco, Qatar and the UAE with respect to migrant labour and/or domestic workers.

But still migrant workers continued to face exploitation in these and other countries, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Saudi Arabia, in large part due to kafala (sponsorship) systems, which limited their ability to escape abusive working conditions.

In Morocco, the parliament passed a new law on domestic workers, entitling domestic workers to written contracts, maximum working hours, guaranteed days off, paid vacations and a specified minimum wage.

Despite these gains, the new law still offered less protection to domestic workers than the Moroccan Labour Code, which does not refer to domestic workers, AI said.

In Qatar, a new law partially removed the exit permit requirement, allowing the vast majority of migrant workers covered by the Labour Law to leave the country without seeking their employers’ permission.

However, the law retained some exceptions, including the ability of employers to request exit permits for up to 5% of their workforce. Exit permits were still required for employees who fell outside the remit of the Labour Law, including over 174,000 domestic workers in Qatar and all those working in government entities.

In the UAE, the authorities introduced several labour reforms likely to be of particular benefit to migrant workers, including a decision to allow some workers to work for multiple employers, tighter regulation of recruitment processes for domestic workers and a new low-cost insurance policy that protected private sector employees’ workplace benefits in the event of job loss, redundancy or an employer’s bankruptcy, according to AI.

Meanwhile, as the ILO pointed out in a report in May 2017, current sponsorship regimes in the Middle East have been criticized for creating an asymmetrical power relationship between employers and migrant workers – which can make workers vulnerable to forced labour.

Essential to the vulnerability of migrant workers in the Middle East is that their sponsor controls a number of aspects related to their internal labour market mobility – including their entry, renewal of stay, termination of employment, transfer of employment, and, in some cases, exit from the country, the report noted.

Such arrangements place a high responsibility – and often a burden – on employers. To address these concerns, alternative modalities can be pursued which place the role of regulation and protection more clearly with the government.

This report demonstrates that reform to the current sponsorship arrangements that govern temporary labour migration in the Middle East will have wide-ranging benefits – from improving working conditions and better meeting the needs of employers, to boosting the economy and labour market productivity.

Meanwhile, in its ”Century Ratification Campaign”, ILO has invited its 187 member States to ratify at least one international labour Convention in the course of 2019, with a commitment to apply a set of standards governing one aspect of decent work to all men and women, along with one political commitment supporting sustainable development for all.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaks during a press conference in Addis Ababa, in August 2018. Since Abiy's election, conditions for Ethiopia's journalists have improved, but some challenges remain. (AFP/Michael Tewelde)

By Muthoki Mumo
ADDIS ABABA, Apr 30 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – During a trip to Addis Ababa in January, it was impossible to miss the signs that Ethiopian media are enjoying unprecedented freedom. A flurry of new publications were on the streets. At a public forum that CPJ attended, journalists spoke about positive reforms, but also openly criticized their lack of access to the government. At a press conference, journalists from state media and the Oromia Media Network, an outlet previously banned and accused of terrorism, sat side by side.

Mesud Gebeyehu, a lawyer who heads the Consortium of Ethiopian Rights Organizations, an alliance of human rights groups, told CPJ he had been on television “many times” in the past year to speak about human rights, an issue that was previously taboo for the media.

Ethiopia, which was one of the most-censored countries in the world and one of the worst jailers of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, has gone through dramatic reforms under the leadership of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office last April. In 2018–for the first time in 14 years–CPJ recorded no journalists behind bars in its annual census. And the country ended its block of over 260 websites and ban on media outlets forced to work in exile.

“I was fighting for [press freedom], but I did not expect it to happen in such a short time,” said Abel Wabella, a journalist who was detained and charged with terrorism under the previous government.

In May, Ethiopia will host UNESCO’s annual World Press Freedom Day: a reflection, UNESCO said, of the country’s commitment to democratic and media reforms.

Though the Ethiopian press is much freer today than before Abiy took power, CPJ spoke to over a dozen journalists and rights defenders who said that challenges remain, including the risk of attack and arrest, especially in restive regions; attracting advertisers in a market where businesses are wary of being seen to support critical publications; accusations of sowing divisiveness; and a proposed law that could curtail their newly found freedoms.

CPJ also attempted to reach the government for comment on conditions for the press. The Prime Minister’s press secretary, Billene Seyoum, acknowledged receipt but did not respond to CPJ’s emailed questions sent on April 24.

Perhaps most fundamentally, journalists told CPJ they are anxious for the freedoms they are enjoying to be rooted in law, rather than guaranteed only by the good will of the Abiy government.

The reforms “are not legally nor institutionally guaranteed until now. They are so because the leaders on top are willing, but neither their willingness nor their hold on power is permanent,” Befekadu Hailu, a journalist and social activist who edits the Addis Maleda weekly, told CPJ.

A council established under the attorney general’s office is reviewing a raft of laws including those previously used to restrict the press, such as the anti-terror proclamation and the mass media law, according to media reports.

Most of the journalists with whom CPJ spoke with said they were happy with the reform process, which included public consultations. Befekadu said he believes those involved are “independent.” Jawar Mohammed, executive director of the Oromia Media Network, said that those involved could move faster and communicate more frequently and clearly with the public.

However, a proposed law on hate speech is splitting opinion.

The government last year said it would draft the law in response to concern about toxic rhetoric online that some say amounts to incitement to violence or has the potential to exacerbate divisions, largely along ethnic lines, according to reports. The government has previously responded to tension by cutting off access to the internet. CPJ documented two such shutdowns under Abiy’s government, during unrest in Addis Ababa in September and in the Somali region during a crisis in August.

Yared Hailemariam, the executive director of the Swiss-based Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, told CPJ said that the media stand accused of “aggravating” tension. “It is a reflection of the political situation in the country, tension is high,” he said.

Most of those who spoke with CPJ said they felt there was a need for Ethiopian media to grow into “professionalism” and to act more “ethically” and “responsibly” within the newly opened space. But even so, some, like Befekadu, said they feared the hate speech law could have a “chilling effect on freedom of expression.”

“They want to give the government more power to regulate speech. Given the divisiveness in the country, it is understandable. But we need to be careful… we should not allow government to pass legislation which gives them reason to take down content they don’t like,” said Endalk Chala, assistant professor at Hamline University in Minnesota, who has studied Ethiopian media.

A copy of the draft law, viewed by CPJ, includes criminal penalties for hate speech and publishing “false news.” The privately owned Addis Fortune warned in an April 13 article that the draft law would not be a “golden bullet … to contain hate speech” and raised concerns that it harks back to laws Ethiopia previously used to suppress critical speech.

Eskinder Nega, who launched the weekly Ethiopis last year, months after he was freed from almost seven years in prison, said that ideas ought to be allowed to flourish, hate will be “filtered out”. Jawar said it was “dangerous” to invite government regulation of speech, suggesting instead a peer regulatory mechanism for the media.

Jawar and Eskinder are among the prominent media personalities whose work has been criticized for inflaming tensions, according to media reports.

Both strongly refuted these views. Jawar said that a strong political and advocacy position was being conflated with divisive speech. Eskinder said that while he has strong opinions, he has never advocated for violence. In a follow up email exchange on April 26, Eskinder told CPJ that the allegations of divisiveness were part of a “manufactured debate” and based on a misinterpretation of his work.

For the new papers that have mushroomed in Addis Ababa, financial concerns are urgent.

Abel can attest to that– he established the weekly Addis Zeybe in October, only for the paper to go out of print after four editions following financial pressures and distribution challenges.

Abel told CPJ that publications have a hard time attracting advertisers, whom he said can be shy of being associated with critical publications. This was a sentiment echoed by Jawar, who recently established a magazine, Gulale Post.

“Businesses are cautious. This is a popular government so they don’t want to be seen as being anti-government,” said Eskinder.

The government has also not been very open to the media, with Abiy hosting only a couple of press conferences with local journalists since he came to power, according to media reports and two of the journalists with whom CPJ spoke.

Journalists in Ethiopia also still face the risk of attack. CPJ has documented how mobs attacked a crew from the state-run Dire Dawa Mass Media Agency, in Meiso, in the Oromia region in July, in an incident that killed their driver, and how two journalists with the privately owned Mereja TV were briefly detained by police in Legetafo, in the same region, and assaulted by a mob upon their release in March. The regional government made initial promises to investigate, but Mereja TV chief executive Elias Kifle told CPJ in April that authorities had not investigated the crime.

Oromia government spokesperson Admasu Damtew did not answer CPJ’s phone calls or text messages on April 24 and April 27.

“They [have fulfilled] their obligation of respecting human rights, but the Abiy administration also has to protect people, to protect journalists, to protect human rights organizations from being attacked,” Yared, from the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, told CPJ.

The Economist reported last month that reform under Abiy “is not the first blossoming of free media,” pointing to how liberalization in the 1990s was followed by crackdowns in the 2000s. When CPJ asked Befekadu if he thought this current era of freedom would last he said, “I cannot say yes or no. But there is equal chance for the change to regress as it can progress. It needs collective effort of the media, civil society, and government to save it from falling into the vicious cycle.”

[Reporting from Addis Ababa and Nairobi.]

________________________________________
Muthoki Mumo is CPJ’s Sub-Saharan Africa representative. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has a master’s in journalism and globalization from the University of Hamburg.

The post Under Abiy, Ethiopia’s media have more freedom but challenges remain appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Muthoki Mumo is CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative

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Factory workers make sportswear for a U.S. brand at a maquila plant in El Salvador. Credit: Edgar Romero/IPS

By Nisha Varia
NEW YORK, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

I have been working to protect the rights of women workers for 25 years, and whether I speak to domestic workers, election workers, farmers, or activists, their experience of sexual harassment and violence has been a common thread. The other commonality? The almost complete absence of redress in any of those cases, spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States.

This May Day, workers around the world are continuing the fight to be free from sexual violence and harassment. From multiple allegations against MJ Akbar, a veteran journalist and senior politician in India, to pending legislation in Texas, the #MeToo and #Time’sUp movements continue to expose the ubiquity of sexual harassment and drive public debate, scrutiny of workplace protections, and legal reform.

Discriminatory social norms and major legal gaps enable sexual violence and harassment at the workplace. A 2018 World Bank report found that 59 out of 189 economies had no specific legal provisions providing protection from sexual harassment in employment.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) found that when laws do exist, they often exclude categories of workers most exposed to abuse, for example, domestic workers, and have an overly narrow definition of “workplace.”

In other cases, legislation imposes criminal penalties for the worst forms of violence, but neglects preventive measures or remedies for the wide spectrum of abuse that can make a workplace hostile.

Nisha Varia

When the #MeToo hashtag exploded in October 2017, Facebook reported more than 12 million posts, comments, and reactions in 24 hours. Since then, women and girls in countries including France, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom have  come forward with personal stories.

Public attention has primarily focused on allegations against famous figures in politics and the media. But workers, activists, and donors have rallied around supporting workers out of the limelight, especially those in low-wage, women-dominated sectors where power dynamics can be especially distorted, sexual harassment may be rampant, and redress can feel—and be—out of reach.

This mobilization has spurred many businesses and governments to consider or introduce change. There is also an exciting initiative to create international legal standards on workplace violence and harassment.

In June, labor ministers and other government officials from countries around the world, national and international trade unions, and employers’ associations  will convene in Geneva to negotiate and finalize new standards on workplace harassment and violence.

Real change is within reach with the groundswell of public outrage and mobilization, media scrutiny, high-profile champions, potential alliances across diverse movements, and extensive evidence. If harnessed, these elements can translate into new international standards, ratifications, national law reform, implementation campaigns, and pressure on companies to adopt workplace policies to prevent and respond to harassment.

This tripartite process will hopefully conclude with the ILO adopting a “Convention Concerning the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work”— a legally binding international treaty that will be  a powerful norm setter for countries that ratify it and even those that don’t.

The proposed treaty, and an accompanying, non-binding recommendation, would provide clear and specific guidance on the steps governments should take to protect workers from harassment and violence. It will integrate the role of anti-discrimination laws, labor laws, occupational safety and health laws, and other civil laws in protecting workers from sexual violence and harassment.

Civil laws can ensure prevention, monitoring, and remedies, to complement criminal law provisions that impose punishment for severe forms of workplace abuse.

The ILO negotiations are also thrashing out contentious issues that governments, workers, and businesses have grappled with at national and local levels, such as how a workplace is defined, who is a worker, what protection should look like, and how far responsibilities extend.

This includes the rights of workers in the informal sector, and the scope of employers’ responsibility, for example toward job-seekers and current employees  sexually harassed on their commutes. Another discussion has been what type of protections should be extended to domestic violence victims who might be stalked at work by their abuser or need time off to pursue legal redress.

Will yet another international treaty actually make a difference?

Not overnight.

But real change is within reach with the groundswell of public outrage and mobilization, media scrutiny, high-profile champions, potential alliances across diverse movements, and  extensive evidence.

If harnessed, these elements can translate into new international standards, ratifications, national law reform, implementation campaigns, and pressure on companies to adopt workplace policies to prevent and respond to harassment.

This type of change has happened before. Advocacy by domestic workers’ groups and labor unions around the 2011 ILO Domestic Workers Convention bolstered national campaigns and has helped spur reforms in dozens of countries—even among those that have not yet ratified the convention.

This has included new labor laws on domestic work in Argentina, Chile, Qatar, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates, incremental reforms in Bahrain, India, and the United States, and collective bargaining agreements in Italy and Uruguay. While exploitation of domestic workers remains a widespread and entrenched problem, significant and groundbreaking advances have taken place in the past eight years.

This could be the year that longstanding women’s rights and labor rights activism, along with the energy of the #MeToo movement, translates into new rights for workers under international law and a major global push to enforce those rights. The ILO negotiations deserve the same attention and enthusiastic support as the brave survivors of abuse who continue to speak up all over the world.

The post Rewriting the Rules on #MeToo Globally appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nisha Varia is the women’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

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Felicienne Soton is part of a women's group that produces gari (cassawa flour). She and her group in Adjegounle village have greatly benefited from Benin's national CDD project. (Photo: Arne Hoel).

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

Théophile Houssou, a maize farmer from Cotonou, has spent sleepless nights lying awake worrying about the various disasters that could befall any farmer, often wondering, “What if it rains heavily and all my crops are washed away?” or “What if the armyworms invade my farm and eat up all the crops and I’m left with nothing?”

Maize crops in Benin, like in at least 28 other African countries, are being threatened by the Fall Armyworm (FAW), an invasive crop pest that feeds on 80 different crop species. Houssou is thankful to have missed an infestation and gives thanks to “God for the good season, but it was not easy,” he tells IPS.

Maize production in Benin reached a record 1.6 million tons during the 2017-2018 season, compared to 1.2 million tons two years ago, according to the ministry of agriculture’s figures.

In downtown Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital, five men are busy loading pineapples onto a 10-ton truck, while four more heavy vehicles wait to be loaded. The produce will be taken to several countries in the region, including Nigeria, which receives 80 percent of all Benin’s exports. Benin is Africa’s fourth-largest pineapple exporter, producing between 400,000 and 450,000 tons of pineapple annually. Exports to the European Union (EU) increased from 500 tons to 4,000 tons between 2000 and 2014, according to official figures.

Further away, the famous Dantokpa Market is flooded with agricultural products, including red tomatoes, okra, soya beans, mangoes, orange, green pepper, lemon and all sorts of spinaches and fruits. Competition is fierce and the selling price is very low, amid an excellent agricultural season.

Room for improvement
While the agricultural sector here may look lively, it boasts several fault lines.

Despite being mostly a subsistence sector, agriculture contributes about 34 percent to this West African nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Almost 80 percent of Benin’s 11.2 million people earn a living from agriculture, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) says. FAO adds that the country’s farmers face challenges such as include poor infrastructure and flooding, which can wipe out harvests and seed stocks.

In a document titled “Strategic Plan for Agricultural Sector Development (PSDSA) 2025 and National Plan for Agricultural Investments and Food Security and Nutrition (PNIASAN) 2017 -2021”, the Benin government has admitted that the agriculture sector’s revenues and productivity are low, and the labour force is only partially rewarded, making agricultural products less competitive.

“Most farmers have very little use of improved inputs and engage in mining practices that accentuate the degradation of natural resources,” the document states.

“We can do better than this,” Marthe Dossou, a small scale farmer supervising the offloading of thousands of boxes of red tomatoes from a rundown truck, tells IPS. These tomatoes will be exported to Nigeria but Dossou feels that considering the high quality of the harvest, Benin can produce more for export. “If we can be given a helping hand like more resources, including loans, new farming methods and how to master water control techniques,” she says.

Dr Tamo Manuele, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Benin country representative, tells IPS that agricultural innovation “is key to eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition, mainly in rural areas where most of the world’s poorest live.”
“Innovation can, first of all, increase small-scale farmers’ productivity and income, and secondly diversify farmers’ income through value chain development; and lastly create more and better opportunities for the rural poor,” he says.

“Farmers or at least actors in agricultural value chains need support for conservation and processing of agricultural commodities. With e-agriculture, farmers can better manage their production and especially be informed of market opportunities. Innovations such as warrantage system [an inventory credit system where farmers instead of selling their produce use it as collateral to get credit from a bank] and group selling can help solving this problem. NGOs and specialised experts in agriculture have to strengthen and support closely farmers,” Manuele urges.

Headquartered in Ibadan, Nigeria, the IITA has been present in Benin since 1985 and it supports national agricultural research and extension services.

“Research is one of the main links leading to innovation. Many studies have reported that communities living near the research centre are more informed, exposed to the innovations and more supervised by scientists. Therefore, their willingness to adopt innovation is very significant. So IITA-Benin is more present on fields through several on-farm-innovation testing managed by scientists,” Manuele says.

IITA launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015 in Benin. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses. These women make soap from the jatropha tree. Courtesy: International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

Some farmers say they are aware of agricultural technologies, but complain about the lack of promotion of such innovations in the areas where they operate.
Koffi Akpovi Justin, a seasonal farmer, was introduced to the 4R method, where four scientific principles are used to ensure that the soil has the right levels of nutrients for planting.

“Everybody brags about how fertile the African land is…I used to be frustrated and almost gave up on farming because I strongly believed in the natural way of doing things. I would just labour the land, plant seeds (plenty of them) and start the painful process of watering it, and at the end I got mitigated results. But not anymore.”

But Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s expensive fertiliser market, where small scale  farmers make up about 70 percent of the population. Fertiliser use is an expensive exercise, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries are net importers of fertilisers. “If you will use it, use it carefully because not practicing the 4R method could see some of it spill all over the fields and pollute nearby water resources and groundwater. I experienced it many years ago, but now I’m wiser.”

He adds that many farmers who live in remote areas are unable to access information about agricultural innovation. “Many of them, who operate mostly in very remote places, always say ‘We know that these things exist and we would like to use it but where can we find it?’ Maybe the international organisations, like the UN and the IITA, could do more to make sure that as many farmers as possible get access to agricultural innovations to boost food production and fight hunger.”

Monique Soton is one such farmer. She lives in north-western Benin, about 500 km from Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital.

“We operate in remote areas and there our lives are concentrated only about leaving in the morning to work on the land and come back in the evening. There is no radio, no TV, no electricity. We may miss out on important information about new methods of farming or new developments going on in the sector, like if a census were to be held to determine the number of farmers who need financial support. It’s sad,” the tomato farmer tells IPS.

Another major obstacle facing small scale farmers in Benin is also the lack of market. “The only local market I use to sell my products is Dantokpa in Cotonou. Just imagine the distance from our area [about 500 km from Cotonou] to the commercial capital,” Soton says, adding that there aren’t adequate roads or vehicles to get the produce to the marketplace.
“There were many times the rundown vehicle we were using to transport our products broke down in the middle of a no man’s land at night and that’s very scary.”

Agricultural innovation
The IITA has been reaching out to various communities. In Benin it launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses.

“Specifically, it is consolidating the profitability and sustainability of jatropha value chains through a public-private partnership approach that creates jobs for young people, women and men. The project is set up according to the value chain approach including jatropha production, jatropha oil extraction, soap making, grain milling and rural electrification, among others,” Manuele explains.

Since the start of the project some 2,050 producers, including 538 women, have benefitted.

Apart from this jatropha project, the IITA said that it has implemented several other projects that contribute to the food and nutrition security and income improvement of many rural households.

Magic solution?
While innovations in agriculture have proved successful, Dr Jeroen Huising, a soil scientist based in Nigeria, cautions that this is not the ‘magic bullet’ for Benin. “I do not believe in magic solutions and agricultural (innovation) is certainly not magic. The question about the rural poor has little to do with the agricultural innovations. There are economic factors that determine that,” he tells IPS.

“Also, if the ‘innovations’ would increase yield for the smallholder farmers, it would not solve their problems. The production has to do primarily with use of inputs and even then the prices are often too low to make a decent living.”

Soton agrees that economic factors pay a huge role in being a successful smallholder, explaining that “the lack of financial support is a serious problem.”

She says that banks do even consider small holder farmers for loans “because we don’t fulfil not even one of their requirements needed to lend us money. So, we invest our money we get from the tontines [an investment plan] and from selling some of our properties.”

“We have the land but we lack everything from seeds to fertilisers and cash to hire labourers.”

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National Security Advisor John Bolton (R), listens to President Donald Trump during a briefing from senior military leaders, in the Cabinet Room on April 9, 2018. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

Smart U.S. leadership is an essential part of the nuclear risk reduction equation. Unfortunately, after more than two years into President Donald Trump’s term in office, his administration has failed to present a credible strategy to reduce the risks posed by the still enormous U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, which comprise more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Instead, Trump has threatened to accelerate and “win” an arms race with nuclear-armed Russia and China as tensions with both states have grown. Trump has shunned a proposal supported by his own Defense and State departments to engage in strategic stability talks with Moscow.

Trump also has ordered the termination of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty without a viable plan B, and his national security team has dithered for more than a year on beginning talks with Russia to extend the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) before it expires in February 2021.

Now, the president is dropping hints that he wants some sort of grand, new arms control deal with Russia and China. “Between Russia and China and us, we’re all making hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous,” Trump said on April 4 as he hosted Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in the Oval Office.

According to an April 25 report in The Washington Post, Trump formally ordered his team to reach out to Russia and China on options for new arms control agreements. The instructions on Russia apparently call for the pursuit of limits on so-called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, a category of short-range, lower-yield weapons that has never been subject to a formal arms control arrangement.

At first glance, that may sound promising. Bringing other nuclear actors and all types of nuclear weapons into the disarmament process is an important and praiseworthy objective. But this administration has no plan, strategy, or capacity to negotiate such a far-reaching deal. Even if it did, negotiations would likely take years.

China, which is estimated to possess a total of 300 nuclear warheads, has never been party to any agreement that limits the number or types of its nuclear weaponry. Beijing is highly unlikely to engage in any such talks until the United States and Russia significantly cut their far larger arsenals, estimated at 6,500 warheads each.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may be open to broader arms control talks with Trump, but he has a long list of grievances about U.S. policies and weapons systems, particularly the ever-expanding U.S. missile defense architecture. The Trump administration’s 2019 Missile Defense Review report says there can be no limits of any kind on U.S. missile defenses—a nonstarter for Russia.

These realities, combined with the well-documented antipathy of Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, to New START strongly suggest that this new grand-deal gambit does not represent a serious attempt to halt and reverse a global arms race.

It is more likely that Trump and Bolton are scheming to walk away from New START by setting conditions they know to be too difficult to achieve.

With less than two years to go before New START expires, Washington and Moscow need to begin working immediately to reach agreement to extend the treaty by five years. Despite their strained relations, it is in their mutual interest to maintain verifiable caps on their enormous strategic nuclear stockpiles.

Without New START, which limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles, there will be no legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals for the first time in nearly five decades.

Extending New START would provide a necessary foundation and additional time for any follow-on deal with Russia that addresses other issues of mutual concern, including nonstrategic nuclear weapons, intermediate-range weapons, and understandings on the location and capabilities of missile defense systems and advanced conventional-strike weapons that each country is developing.

A treaty extension could help put pressure on China to provide more information about its nuclear weapons and fissile material stockpiles. China also might be more likely to agree to freeze the overall size of its nuclear arsenal or agree to limit a certain class of weapons, such as nuclear-armed cruise missiles, so long as the United States and Russia continue to make progress to reduce their far larger and more capable arsenals.

If in the coming weeks, however, Team Trump suggests China must join New START or that Russia must agree to limits on tactical nuclear weapons as a condition for its extension, that should be recognized as a disingenuous poison pill designed to create a pretext for killing New START.

Before Trump and Bolton try to raise the stakes for nuclear arms control success, they must demonstrate they are committed to working with Russia to extend the most crucial, existing agreement: New START.

The post Trump’s Arms Control Gambit: Serious or a Poison Pill? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director at Arms Control Association

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By Tisaranee Gunasekara
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

We have been here before. This blooded precipice is familiar, this looming abyss. What is unfamiliar, what renders the Easter Sunday massacre most vile and truly nightmarish is the total absence of any knowable rationality.

There is no context to this horror, no back-story; it cannot be framed, politically or historically. Other massacres were presaged; this one fell on an unsuspecting people, a killer-bolt on a clear Sunday morning. It is the most heinous and the most incomprehensible act of violence in our violence-ridden history.

Every massacre of innocents leaves behind a heap of questions. The larger why, the philosophical, existential why might be unanswerable, but the smaller whys almost always are.

Whether it was Black July, the Anuradhapura massacre, or any of the civilian bloodletting that came afterwards, there was a discernible path to the outrage paved with a history of real or imagined wrongs.

Not so this massacre of innocents.

That the massacre is the work of an Islamic terror group is now certain, a conclusion made inescapable by the involvement of several suicide bombers. The attacks on the hotels are barbaric, but part of a comprehensible, global pattern. You want to hurt an economy dependent on tourism; you attack places where tourists congregate, from beaches and ancient ruins to hotels.

Not so the targeting of Catholic churches in Sri Lanka. That is where the utter incomprehension stems from. In Sri Lanka, there has been no history of violent animosity between Muslims and Christians/Catholics. Both communities have been targeted by Sinhala-Buddhists on multiple occasions. They were both victims of majoritarian violence, but never responded in kind.

Had the suicide bombers targeted state institutions, places of entertainment, Buddhist temples or even Hindu kovils, it would have made sense in terms of vengeance for a real or imagined wrong.

Why churches? Why only Catholic churches?

Churches have been targeted by Islamic terrorists elsewhere in the world, including Asia; the Surabaya bombings in Indonesia and the Jolo church attacks in the Philippines are cases in point. But every one of those attacks could be placed within a national politico-historical context. There is no such context here in Sri Lanka.

Attacks by a lone gunman or a lone bomber might have been comprehensible, the work of a clinically deranged man. But an operation of this complexity and magnitude, involving the willing and knowing cooperation of hundreds of people, is unfathomable.
The killers, the human bombs, are believed to be Lankan Muslim men.

For any terror organisation, suicide killers would be a valuable possession, something you don’t expend in vain. A suicide killer must be trained and groomed right up to the moment of murder, handled with meticulous care, kept on the pre-prepared path, shielded from every human emotion. Why use such valuable and not easily replaceable weapons on targeting a community that had not done you or your local co-religionists any harm?

Were the churches targets of opportunity? In Sri Lanka, churches (along with mosques and kovils) are relatively unprotected and vulnerable. But so are many other institutions and structures, both secular and religious. Was it to gain maximum publicity – bombing churches on Easter Sunday? That would have been a credible explanation had the authors rushed to claim responsibility.

** But so far, no organisation has claimed responsibility, another unusual occurrence. Generally, after a successful operation, the claim to own it is a race. Terrorists love publicity. That is how they gain new recruits and new resources.

So here we are, in a hell both familiar and unfamiliar. How not to plunge from this to a worse hell is the hardest challenge ahead, much harder than identifying, apprehending and punishing the guilty.

An Unforgivable Failure

There is one haunting truth about the Easter Sunday massacre – with a little more vigilance, it might have been prevented. A section of the security establishment seems to have known that an Islamic terror group was planning to target Catholic churches. According to reports, they even knew the names and other details of some of the attackers, possibly ten days ahead.

The speed with which the first arrests were made gives credence to these reports. Such speed by our police can be explained only by prior-knowledge. Greater the speed, greater the prior-knowledge. And the speed was great, unprecedentedly so.
That begs two critical questions.

Who knew? Why did those in the know do nothing with their knowledge?

If the known attackers had been arrested, the massacre wouldn’t have happened. And it could have been done under normal law. The Defence Secretary is lying if he claims that the information was vague and the absence of emergency regulations was a handicap.

If the churches were informed about their peril, they could have taken some precautions. That certainly didn’t require emergency regulations.

With either of those two measures, three hundred innocent lives could have been saved.

We, as a nation, need to know why those lives were wantonly sacrificed. The SLPP had predictably accused the government of not supporting the intelligence agencies, of persecuting and discouraging them. That is incorrect. The intelligence agencies are not the victims of this story. They received the information, and opted not to do anything with it. That was a severe dereliction of duty.

President Maithripala Sirisena must shoulder much of the blame. As the Minister of Defence, protecting the people was his responsibility. He failed abysmally. And he has not apologised for that failure. That doesn’t mean the UNP can exculpate itself from all responsibility, all blame.

The ‘we were not told’ excuse cannot hold water since one of the letters warning about impending terror attacks seems to have been circulating in the social media for days. If Minister Harin Fernando’s father knew about the danger, then the Minister, his cabinet and non-cabinet colleagues and his prime minister cannot plead ignorance.

The government’s failure to stop the massacre fits into a general pattern of indifference towards all forms of extremism. One week before the Easter Sunday massacre, on Palm Sunday, a Methodist church in Anuradhapura was attacked, reportedly by a Sinhala-Buddhist mob. The police refused either to apprehend the attackers or to protect the victims. The government didn’t condemn the attack, didn’t order the police to catch the culprits. All it did was to promise the church protection for Easter.

The promise reportedly came from the Prime Minister. There was not a hum from the President. Political leaders on all sides of the divide, including the minister in charge of Christian Affairs, acted blind, deaf, and mute.

Perhaps this blasé attitude of the political class percolated to the intelligence establishment. Perhaps those in the know thought that there was no need to act if the intended target was a church, or some other minority religious establishment. After all, thirteen months have passed since the anti-Muslim riots of Digana. Time enough for the main suspects to be tried in a court of law. Yet no one has been formally charged and every suspect is out on bail.

Had the government honoured its promise to end impunity and ensure justice, had it honoured the promise to combat extremism and promote moderation, the Easter Sunday massacre might have been avoided. This government did not promote extremism, like its predecessor. But it didn’t resist extremism either. It turned itself into a bystander. Three hundred innocent people paid for that cowardice, that indifference, with their lives.

The next vicious spiral

A new fault line has been created in Sri Lanka’s already seriously compromised societal fabric. A new enmity has been birthed. This is not the moment for anodyne slogans about unity and peace. The peril cannot be resisted, if its existence is unacknowledged.

Sri Lanka’s blood-soaked history provides us with ample warning of the dangers ahead.

Will the targeting of Catholics by Islamic terrorists create an endless blood feud between Lankan Catholics and Lankan Muslims? Will the wronged Catholics themselves do wrong by targeting innocent Muslims?

The fear that the Easter Sunday massacre will lead to a round of attacks on Muslim properties and religious establishments has so far not materialised. For this, the government, especially the UNP, deserves the credit. When the first attack on a mosque was reported, immediate action was taken, including the imposition of a curfew. That probably saved the country from another round of bloodletting. But the danger will not be over in a day, or even a year. Only constant vigilance can prevent another tragedy.

Terrorists of all kinds have two targets – one the purported enemy; the other, one’s own community. The authors of the Easter Sunday’s massacre of innocents would have known that they were placing their own innocent coreligionists in peril. They would have known that retaliatory attacks could happen, if not in the immediate aftermath, then someday.

And they wouldn’t have cared. That is a function of extremism. They not only hate their enemies. They don’t care about their own community. The cancer of extremism that is affecting Lankan religions must be combated, perhaps primarily from within.

The first step is to start criticising one’s own extremists. It is only by taking an unequivocal stand against extremists of our own community do we earn the moral right to criticise extremists of other communities.

Sinhalese and Tamils failed to take a stand against their own extremists; each community raged against the other’s tribalism while justifying one’s own. That failure caused both communities incalculable harm, and incalculable self-harm. Black July turned a marginal insurgency into a full scale war. The LTTE’s countless atrocities eventually contributed to its own shameful defeat.

When Sinhala-Buddhists attacked Muslims in Digana in the name of Buddhism, the absolute majority of Buddhist leaders remained mute. The Muslim leaders will hopefully set a different example, not just in the immediate aftermath, but continuously. The task would be long and hard.

Though Lankan Muslims have been the victims of both Sinhala-Buddhist and LTTE violence, the atrocities committed by Muslims elsewhere in the world have rebounded on them unjustly, enveloping them in a miasma of fear and suspicion. Easter Sunday’s massacre will worsen their plight.

There is a danger of Muslims being considered as enemies by all other communities. Extremists within the Sinhala-Buddhist fold will work towards such an outcome. One can almost hear the likes of Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara crowing. Forgotten will be the role played by anti-Muslim violence in fostering Muslim extremism.

But that too would be in accordance with the intent of the attackers. As Moroccan editor Ahmed Benchemsi opined, “…..spreading hate is the terrorists’ job. Hating you is not enough; they also need you to hate them, so the struggle goes unchallenged” (Newsweek – 20.11.2008).

Terrorists revel in hate, and they want that hate to be extended to their racial/religious community as well. They want their crime to become the crime of their entire community, falling even unto unborn children. When such hatred seeps into a national bloodstream, the terrorists achieve their final victory. That happened between Sinhalese and Tamils. It mustn’t happen between Lankan Catholics and Lankan Muslims.

Sadly, hate is easy to cultivate. It can flourish anywhere. All it needs is an inch, a second, a thought, a glance, one unguarded moment. And a destructive atom can always survive, waiting with endless patience until the next time.

So, we stand on a familiar precipice, staring at a familiar abyss. This time, the task of guiding us away from it, towards the plains of moderation and stability belongs to Muslims and Catholics. This is their moment to be what Sinhalese and Tamils were not at comparable moments in their histories.

This is their moment to place their humanity above every other consideration, in a way we, Sinhalese and Tamils, failed to. And it is for us, especially Sinhala-Buddhists, to prevent our own extremists from intervening to sow hate, to prevent healing, to peddle vengeance in the guise of justice.

As Aristotle said, “For the things we have to learn before we do them, we learn by doing them… We become just by just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts…” (Necomachean Ethics). In this moment, grand gestures are necessary; but every little act of ordinary decency and kindness counts. If our leaders, elected and self-appointed, fail to stand against extremism, fail to build an alliance of moderates, perhaps we, the people, who are outraged by Easter Sunday’s massacre of innocents can.

*This analysis was written on April 23, two days following the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka.
** Since then, there have been reports that ISIS has claimed responsibility for inspiring the attacks.

The post Massacre of the Innocents: Whereto from Here? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Tisaranee Gunasekara is a political commentator based in Colombo*

“Unmindful are the walking dead
The known way is an impasse.”
Heraclitus (The Fragments)

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

The World Bank has successfully promoted its ‘Maximizing Finance for Development’ (MFD) strategy by embracing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, internationally endorsed in September 2015.

It has also secured support from the G20 of twenty biggest economies, and effectively pre-empted alternative approaches at the third UN Financing for Development summit in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

As the main ‘show in town’, developing countries will need to address the MFD’s implications by responding pro-actively and collectively to address the new challenges it poses.

Managing new macro-financial challenges
As the MFD agenda privileges foreign investors and portfolio inflows, multilateral development banks (MDBs) should be obliged to clearly show how developing countries will benefit.

Greater vulnerability and other adverse implications of being more closely integrated into fickle global financial markets, which detract from the ostensible advantages of such integration, are now widely acknowledged.

The IMF and other international financial institutions (IFIs) should also advise on the efficacy of various policy instruments, such as macroprudential measures, including capital controls, to ensure central bank control of domestic credit conditions.

Although portfolio flows are generally recognized as pro-cyclical, IFIs reluctantly recommend capital controls, and even then, only after governments have exhausted all other monetary and fiscal policy options.

After experiencing repeated boom-bust cycles in capital flows, many emerging markets have learnt that they must manage such flows if they are to reap some benefits of financial globalization while trying to minimize risks.

Addressing systemic risks
In fact, many concerned economists believe that monetary and fiscal policies cannot adequately address such systemic fragilities, but may inadvertently exacerbate them, e.g., raising interest rates may attract more capital inflows, instead of just stemming outflows.

After effectively eschewing capital controls for decades despite its Article VI provisions, recent IMF advice has been inherently contractionary by raising interest rates and tightening fiscal policy instead of judiciously using ‘smart’ capital controls.

Anis Chowdhury

Development-oriented governments must include those familiar with changing securities and derivatives markets, who will have to work with central banks on regulating cross-border flows and managing systemic vulnerabilities.

It is difficult for development-oriented governments to be pragmatic and agile when they are subject to the dictates of private finance, especially when these appear to be rules-based, anonymous and foreign.

Financial systems are increasingly being reorganized around securities markets dominated by transnational institutional investors who have transformed financial incentives and banking business models.

Many banks have reorganized themselves around securities and derivative markets where short-term profit opportunities are significantly higher than traditional alternatives requiring costly nurturing of long-term, ‘information-intensive’ relations.

Stopping capital outflows from developing countries
International financial liberalization has enabled further capital outflows from most developing countries, depriving them of much needed resources to develop their economies.

The economic fiction that open capital accounts would result in needed net financial flows from ‘capital-rich’ developed economies in the North to ‘capital-poor’ developing countries in the South has been disproved.

Thus, a significant share of the money flowing into global shadow banking (institutional investors, asset managers) comes from developing countries. Such capital outflows are typically due to tax arbitrage and avoidance practices by transnational corporations and wealthy individuals.

There is also considerable capital flight by those who have accumulated wealth by corrupt and other dubious means. The illicit sources of such riches encourage storing such wealth abroad.

Effective cooperation to check and return such ill-gotten gains — often syphoned out using illicit means, such as trade mispricing and other forms of money laundering — can go a long way.

Equitable international tax cooperation would increase financial resources available all round, especially to developing country governments.

Instead, the IMF and others should enable developing country authorities to effectively implement policies to more successfully mobilize domestic financial resources for investment in developing economies.

Ensuring transparent government guarantees and subsidies
The MFD approach seeks to commit fiscal resources to ‘de-risking’ securities and other financial instruments to attract foreign institutional investments.

It is thus re-orienting governments to effectively guarantee profits for private investors from financing ‘development’ projects, effectively reducing public financial resources available for development projects.

To minimize abuses and to protect the public interest, MDBs should instead ensure the transparency and accountability of the framework by making clear the likely fiscal and other, including opportunity costs of de-risking projects.

Public interest agencies, civil society organizations and the media should help governments closely monitor such costs and make the public fully aware of the costs and risks involved.

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By Haider A. Khan
Apr 30 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Sophocles in his tragedy Antigone has the line “evil[folly] appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction”. First came the US unilateral exit from the historical Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA without the consent from our European allies with the resulting division between the US and Europe regarding policies towards Iran. US also restored sanctions against Iran but gave some time for energy-needy allies to import energy from Iran against a deadline. Some like Japan have complied grudgingly with the US orders. Others, particularly China and India have gone on importing Iranian energy.

It seems that US has just dropped the other shoe now by banning those countries still importing Iranian oil from doing so after early May. If anyone does sanctions-breaking business with Iran they will be properly punished, the Trump administration has warmed. Much has been made of the role of dollar-dominated world trading system and financial arrangements through SWIFT etc. What will be the geoeconomic and geopolitical impact? Is there a way to find out through some kind of rigorous model-based analysis?

Indeed there may be a sober reality-based way of looking at the possible economic consequences and draw out the plausible geopolitical scenarios. Recently, I used the best available data from the World Bank, the IMF and other national and international sources about the Iranian economy to do precisely this exercise.. My results pertain both to the overall effects for the Iranian economy, and specific sectors. More importantly, they also give us some rough insights into what the sanctions might mean for the EU and US firms.

In order to assess the impact using this consequentialist logic, I derived several sets of model-based counterfactual results. My work which is ongoing can be seen as a first step in analyzing the impact of US sanctions rigorously. Aggregate consequences for the Iranian, EU and US economies in terms of output and employment losses are estimated from several models for several scenarios. These are sanctions with high and low bites and an in-between scenario. Finally, a more complex economic systems model with explicit banking and financial sectors is used to analyze the financial systems scenarios.

It is clear that Iran will suffer. But so will the US and EU economies. With maximal enforcement, Iranian GDP will decline by several percentage points. EU will lose about half a percentage point and US about two-tenths of a per cent.But some of the model results already at hand should give thoughtful US and EU citizens pause. As a first approximation, my current modeling results show that the alternative financial ararngements will take about six months to kick in and will lead towards the very low loss scenario, especially for Iran.But for EU and the US financial firms, the loss will be considerably more than that inflicted on Iran by the US.

This being the case, what will the US gain geopolitically? According to political analysts, there are two groups in US high level policy making arena. Trump, it is claimed, is a transactions oriented leader and wants Iran to come to the table after suffering losses with a better deal for the US. But the details of how this could happen or what kind of deal the US could expect have not been revealed.

The second group centered around Bolton—according to the geopolitical analysts— wants to draw Iran into a military confrontation if economic sanctions by themselves do not lead to a regime change. Even in my worst case economic scenario for Iran a regime change from sanctions alone does not seem likely. So will the US or its proxies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia then engage in an actual military operation?

The very possibility is worrying. But sober calculations in light of outcomes of interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya do not seem encouraging. There is no prospect of a quick victory against Iran and any lengthy intervention will destabilize the region further. It is also not clear what the Chinese and Russian responses will be.

However, historical evidence shows that wars are not always—at least at the beginning— results of such rational long term calculations. Usually, like the beginning of World War 1 or 2, a small incident leads to a wider conflagaration. If the situation is already fraught and tensions among the big powers are sufficiently high this could happen. One then has to hope that we have not reached that level of tension and in particular the current tensions among the US, China and Russia can be defused through appropriate diplomatic steps. That is our only hope to avert an Antigone-like tragedy in the 21st century.

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By IPS World Desk
ROME, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

Journalists and media outlets worldwide have recently been subject to a subtle wave of vilification. Populist rhetoric and public indifference have begun to threaten the very foundation of our freedom.

Journalists provide the checks and balances fundamental to all democracies, by highlighting government failures or reporting on societal injustice.

But the tone of leadership today has shifted: denunciation of the media as “biased,” and the factual information they report as “fake news,” is forcing citizens into confusion and misinformation.

 

 

This tactic has given authorities the opening to dictate their own narrative and divert attention from corruption and other abuses.

As recently as six months ago, the National Broadcasting Council in Poland fined a leading television station half a million dollars “for promoting illegal activities.” This was after the network’s coverage of anti-government protests.

In Hungary, the ruling Fidesz party has taken matters further: they have consolidated control over private media outlets in the hands of government allies. This has effectively quashed critical reporting and media independence.

In the United States, we have seen a disturbing pattern of authorities disparaging journalists when factually challenged about their narratives. Here, their disdain for ordinary media scrutiny is self- evident – and the repercussions are only just beginning to emerge.

Accordingly, this year’s World Press Freedom Day events in Addis Ababa are of critical importance to the global community of journalists.

The theme of this year’s celebration is apt: Media for Democracy: Journalism and Elections in Times of Disinformation.”

It is focused on illuminating current challenges faced by media in elections, along with media’s potential in supporting peace and reconciliation processes. Furthermore, the UNESCO driven events will also examine the safety of journalists and how to combat disinformation.

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President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Dr. Abiy Ahmed. Credit: Courtesy Ethiopian Embassy, Kenya

By Johan Borgstam, Stefano A. Dejak, Aeneas Chuma and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

Many years of internecine conflict is being replaced by a new narrative of peace along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. Communities that once fought each other are now dreaming of a joint journey towards a better future.

Diverse communities constitute the inhabitants of the border area, a vast swathe with great potential to advance beneficial integration between the two countries. But niggling rivalries and violent conflicts have persisted for years, constraining any meaningful cross-border socio-economic activities.

The conflicts have been driven by a plethora of problems – scarcity of pasture & water, cattle rustling, politics of ethnicity and political/administrative boundary disputes. With such clashes being the dominant motif in the region, leaders from the two countries have become frustrated by adverse impacts on trade, not just along their border but on wider regional integration and development between the two countries.

Kenya and Ethiopia provide a market of about 150 million people. While Ethiopia is known for its agro- based industries such as leather and coffee, Kenya has a relatively advanced manufacturing and tourism sectors, with collaboration between the two capable of developing strong regional value chains.

It is this dormant strength and potential that led the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya, in partnership with IGAD, the European Union and the United Nations, to establish an integrated cross-border initiative (Video) to foster peace and sustainable development around Marsabit County in Kenya and Borana/Dawa Zones of Ethiopia.

While the historic agreement between Ethiopia and Kenya was witnessed by the leaders of the two countries at a high-profiled event in Moyale, a recent peace conference held in Addis Ababa from 17 to 18 April 2018 was a clear sign that the serious business of facing up to the root causes of violent conflict and vulnerabilities is truly on.

The meeting was attended by representatives of national and local governments of Ethiopia and Kenya, IGAD, EU, UN in Kenya and Ethiopia, cross-border peace committees, traditional community leaders and youth & women’s groups. Heart-on-sleeve discussions dominated the two-day meeting, with the resolutions indicating a clear consensus on the respective areas of responsibility towards lasting peace.

President Kenyatta of Kenya and former Prime Minister Desalegn of Ethiopia lay the foundation for the Kenya-Ethiopia cross-border programme in the border town of Moyale on 07 Dec 2015. Credit: @UNDP Kenya

A clear point of convergence was that the challenges facing the communities know no borders, but also that they will not be resolved through solutions of the past. The need for a wider approach to the issues was brought forward, to leverage on non-traditional actors such as the private sector, civil society and academia.

The spirit of the regional conference is in line with UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres’s vision for the Horn of Africa which underscores the importance of prevention, resilience building and reduction of vulnerability.

The priority now is to bring direct benefits to borderland communities. Under the leadership of the national governments and IGAD, the United Nations and the European Union will support concrete initiatives to reinforce stability and realise the economic potential of these areas. Both organizations have committed to support a prosperous, peaceful and secure region, based on mutual values such as human rights, good governance, reduced poverty and peaceful coexistence, the rule of law, that aims at leaving no one behind.

The European Union is spearheading support for cross-border areas in the Horn of Africa through a €68 million programme covering the entire length of the Kenya-Ethiopia border, incorporating south-west Somalia and also supporting the cross-border area between Western Ethiopia and East Sudan. Through providing investment in peace-building, socio-economic development and regional cooperation, the programme aims to transform borderlands into more prosperous and stable areas where communities have a sense of belonging and prospects for a better future.

The bold reforms going on in the UN will see not only the UN family delivering as one but delivering as one across borders. We are already seeing UN country teams that adapt more closely to the priorities and needs of each country, enabling the leveraging of strengths across regions and specialized agencies. This will facilitate the establishing of new architecture adapted to trans-boundary priorities and realities.

One product of that new paradigm is the recent meeting that brought together participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia to develop plans for ending cross-border female genital mutilation (FGM).

President Uhuru Kenyatta talked about turning this region into a “Dubai” of the future. That vision is possible given the winds of goodwill blowing over the region. This is having a transformative shift towards peace for communities along the border and prosperity between the neighboring countries.

Johan Borgstam, the European Union Ambassador to Ethiopia, Stefano A. Dejak, the Ambassador of the European Union to the Republic of Kenya, Aeneas Chuma, UN Resident Coordinator a.i. in Ethiopia & Siddharth Chatterjee, the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

Just before nine o´clock in the morning of April 21st, Christians in Sri Lanka were in their churches peacefully celebrating Easter Sunday, while tourists were waking up in their hotel rooms. Suddenly explosions blasted three churches and three hotels. Among the ruins lay hundreds of wounded people, as well as 253 corpses of men, women and children. They had been killed and maimed because some fellow human beings believed they acted in God´s name and out of promises of an unproven, heavenly bliss if they killed themselves after obliterating people they did not know; sowing death, lifelong suffering and sorrow.

How can anyone be capable of delter, though muding her/himself to believe that s/he deserved the gratitude and reward from an all-loving God after committing such atrocities? Sri Lankan authorities suspect that fanatic groups known as National Thowheeth Jama´ath (NTJ) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen are to be blamed for the mass slaughuch still remains unclear about these groups and their alleged involvement in the atrocities. However, the question remains – are members of such hate-mongering sects psychopaths?

According to medical science, psycophaths suffer from a disorder impeding feelings of guilt or remorse. They are unable to acknowledge the harm and suffering they inflict on other human beings. Psychopaths rationalize their despicable behaviour by blaming others, or by denying all wrongdoing. A psychopath is thus prone to harm both her/himself and others. However, it cannot be assumed that all people affiliated to a fanatical group, political as well as religious, are psychopaths, although their views and behaviour seem to reflect the state of disease. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: ”Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule.” 1

Unconditional surrender to the ideology, rules and regulations of a religious sect, or an overzealous political party, means that an individual gives up some, it not all, of her/his personal willpower, leaving fatal decisions to others. Some leaders of women and men might actually be psychopats in the clinical sense of the word. Hitler and Stalin appear to have been full-fledged psychopats. In the religious sphere we find Jim Jones, who in 1978 committed a mass murder–suicide of 918 of his followers, thus becoming the archetype of a narcissistic maniac spreading insanity among his believers.

After World War II, The Nuremberg Trials determined the guilt of prominent leaders of Nazi Germany, particularly for the planning and execution of massmurder. The proccedings came to pay attention to the relationship between individual – and collective guilt, disentangling the claim of the accused who declared themselves innocent by stating they ”had just followed orders”, or were forced to commit the atrocities. With the intention to codify legal pronciples for future trials of crimes against humanity the Nuremberg Tribunal established a number of Principles of which the fourth stated:

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

This indicates that crimes against humanity are comitted by individulas, women and men, not by any abstract entities. 2 The ability to make conscious choices are by many scientists and philosophers considered to be an ultimate proof of humanity. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explained that true religion has to be based on subjectivity. His target was the Danish State Church, which assumed it was the true and sole representantive of true Christianity. That a religious organization, or any priest in its service, could be convinced they spoke and acted in accordance with the Will of the Lord was according to Kierkegaard contrary to a belief in God´s infinite wisdom. Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but a life to be lived. He assumed that most ”Christians” relied on external proofs of God, like nature and miracles, or the limited explanations of other Christians. On the contrary – to him Christianity meant having a unique, personal relationship with God.

Religion must be based not only on the freedom to choose, but an ability to create choices for oneself. A religious person cannot unconsciously accept choices and rules made by others. According to Kierkegaard an individual comes to full consciousness of her- or himself only after s/he has accepted her/his own shortcomings, doubts and weaknessess. He calls this angest, despair. Angest is the origin of compassion and piety, a prerequisite for freedom to choose. If we unresistingly follow what others tell us to do and thus avoid entering the realms of despair, we are nothing but instinct-driven creatures, devoid of personal, critical thinking. A state of mind Kierkegaard called The Sickness Unto Death.

Kierkegaard would not have considered a murderous fanatic to be religious. Zealots are weak-willed victims of an illusion, which make them identify themselves as integrated parts of an ”in-group”, excluding all others. They are devoid of any belief in an all-powerful, merciful God, whose might is beyond human comprehension. The faith of fanatics does not originate from a feeling of unity with an all-encompassing, righteous entity, but from an entirely human, simplistic view of themselves in terms of ”we and the others”, making them prone to condemn, and even kill and maim those who do not share their twisted beliefs. Kierkegaard and the members of the Nuremberg Tribunal would have condemned them, while considering any claim that they acted in ”the Name of God” as utterly false.

1 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1973) Beyond Good and Evil. p. 79. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics.
2 Heller, Kevin Jon (2011). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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A wind farm in Curacao. Caribbean nations such as Jamaica are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and many are embracing renewable energy. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTON, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

Jamaica and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are embracing renewable energy as part of their plans to become decarbonised in the coming decades.

The Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, has committed the island nation to transitioning to 50 percent renewable energy by 2030.

“I believe that we can do better. Jamaica has sunshine all year round and strong winds in certain parts of the island,” Holness said.

Solar Head of State (SHOS), a nonprofit that helps world leaders become green leaders by installing solar panels on government buildings, has been assisting Jamaica and other Caribbean countries with their renewable energy transition.

James Ellsmoor, the group’s Director and Co-Founder, said they partnered with the Jamaica’s government to install and commission a state-of-the-art solar photovoltaic (PV) array at Jamaica House—the Office of the Prime Minister.

“Following similar installations by the President of the Maldives and Governor-General of Saint Lucia, Jamaica’s prominent adoption of solar, sets an example for other nations around the world that renewable energy can make a global impact,” Ellsmoor told IPS.

“While island nations such as Jamaica are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, this project is a reminder that they are also leading in finding solutions.”

Holness heralded the solar installation on his office as emblematic of the clean energy technologies that must be deployed by Caribbean nations to decarbonise economies, reduce regional fossil fuel use, and combat climate change.

“I have directed the government to increase our target from 30 percent to 50 percent, and our energy company is totally in agreement. So, I believe that by 2030, Jamaica will be producing more than 50 percent of its electricity from renewables.”

The installation of the state-of-the-art solar photovoltaic (PV) array at Jamaica House—the Office of the Prime Minister. Courtesy: Solar Head of State

Peter Ruddock, manager of renewable energy and energy efficiency at the state-owned Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, hailed the prime minister’s decision as a step in the right direction.

“We do have to look at our indigenous sources—the wind, the sun—it shows good leadership for the Office of the Prime Minister to be outfitted with solar panels, which will reduce their consumption,” Ruddock said.

Due to a historic lack of diversification of energy resources, Jamaica has been heavily reliant on imported fossils fuels, resulting in CO2 emissions and high electricity prices that are up to four times higher than the United States.

Caribbean nations are also vulnerable to hurricanes and extreme weather. Renewable energy increases islands’ resilience—stabilising electricity supply in the wake of natural disasters.

“We emit negligible greenhouse gases but when the impact comes we are most impacted,” Una May Gordon, Jamaica’s Director for Climate Change, told IPS.

“The prime minister believes in what we are doing. He believes that renewable energy has a role and a place in the Jamaica energy mix. A commitment has been made for transformation.

“We are building the resilience of the country. We have to transform a number of our production processes and the only way to do that is with renewables,” Gordon added.

SHOS believes the region’s youth can play a vital role in the climate change fight and has also conducted a solar challenge in partnership with Jamaica-based youth groups, which invited young people from across the island to create innovative communications projects to tell their communities about the benefits of renewable energy.

On the heels of a successful programme in Jamaica, SHOS is collaborating with the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) to launch the Guyana Solar Challenge—a national competition in Guyana to engage and educate youth nationwide about the benefits of renewable energy.

“With our partners at CYEN we will run a Solar Challenge in every Caribbean country to educate young people about the benefits of renewable energy for their communities,” Ellsmoor told IPS.

“The economic and environmental conditions for the Caribbean are very specific to the region and often information coming from outside the region does not represent that. Launching this challenge in Guyana is particularly important as the country starts its journey into petroleum, and we want to show that the best opportunity is to invest these new funds into the sustainable development of the economy, and renewable energy is central to that,” he said.

The Guyana Solar Challenge is open to young people between 12 and 26 years of age. Competitors are asked to harness their creative energies (in any form such as a song/video, art installation, performance piece, viral meme, sculpture) towards raising awareness about renewable energy, specifically its potential to deliver long-term economic benefits, reduce harmful environmental impacts, and increase energy security and independence for Guyana. Winning projects will demonstrate creativity and an ability to educate the public about the specific benefits of solar energy for Guyana.

Sandra Britton, Renewable Energy Liaison at Guyana’s Department of Environment said she’s happy that young people are now taking the initiative to share the concept of renewable energy and to promote it as Guyana transitions to a green economy.

“We have developed the Green State Development Strategy, which will be rolled out shortly, and within the strategy it is envisioned that Guyana will try to move towards 100 percent renewable energy by 2040,” Britton said.

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The Mapuche, a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, celebrate their New Year. Indigenous and local communities are on the frontline to protect the land - a vital ecosystem. Credit: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

In light of land degradation and climate change, the protection of the environment is crucial—but the protection of the very people working tirelessly and with much risk to preserve nature should be just as important.

Forests have long been underestimated—they sustain biodiversity, regulate the world’s water and weather cycles, and even provide the air we breathe.

In fact, one third of the climate solution lies within the land-use sector, which includes the protection of forests, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has found.

And it is indigenous and local communities who are on the frontline in protecting this increasingly vital ecosystem.

“Thanks to us the forests are there, thanks to our blood and our fight we still have the Amazon. If we just depended on the economic model, the Amazon would be devastated,” said indigenous Kichwa leader Patricia Gualinga during the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

“Many people think that the problem of indigenous peoples are an isolated one. No—the Amazon is vital for humanity…our struggle is a global problem…destroy the Amazon and the world will be destroyed,” she added.

However, indigenous environmental defenders are facing growing threats as they are pushed off their own lands or are even killed simply for protecting forests.

“Criminalisation and violence against indigenous peoples and human rights defenders is a global crisis…[they] are intended to silence indigenous peoples’ protest,” said Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz.

According to international NGO Global Witness, 207 land defenders were killed in 2017. Most of these deaths took place in just four countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines.

“At the root of this violence is systematic racism and the failure of governments to recognise and respect indigenous land rights,” Tauli-Corpuz said.

Killer Institutions

The Special Rapporteur found that a majority of those killed were defending their lands against extractive private sector projects.

In August 2018, the body of Jorginho Guajajara, the leader of the Guajajara people, was found in the Brazilian Amazon’s Maranhao state. Due to his work in protecting the forests, many suspect illegal loggers as the perpetrators.

After opposing mining activities in his community, Mexican indigenous rights activist Julian Carrillo was shot in October 2018.

“Our territories hold the resources that are so envied by the oil and mining concerns on which the global economic model is based. And in terms of human rights, economy wins out. Because our rights as indigenous peoples are not being respected and they never have been,” Gualinga said.

Such activities are often enabled by governments, and now the rise of populist governments threaten to reverse the little progress that has been achieved.

In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has long attacked indigenous rights and lands, saying that it is a “shame” that the Brazilian army did not exterminate indigenous communities like the United States of America and that indigenous-designated territories are an “obstacle” to agri-business.

Just hours after taking office earlier this year, Bolsonaro transferred the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture ministry and has since proposed to open up the Amazon and other indigenous territories to commercial farming and mining.

“Our fundamental rights is being destroyed by a…fundamentalist who adopted a hate discourse against indigenous people and denies people their territory rights. When they deny that, they are denying their original peoples,” said indigenous activist and national coordinator of Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB) Sonia Guajajara.

Guajajara has joined over 4,000 others in Brasilia for the ‘Free Land’ protest which is expected to be the largest indigenous protest in the South American nation.

“We are not going to go back, we are going to resist. It’s five centuries that we’re still here…we need to help the earth, we are responsible, we have to give hands and go together and say that the fight for mother earth is the mother of all fights,” Guajajara said during a UNPFII event.

In The Name of Conservation

Though a number of countries have recognised the importance of forest and land protection, some conservation policies have resulted in the exclusion and displacement of indigenous communities.

In Kenya, there has been an escalation of violence as the Forest Service has repeatedly evicted and burnt Sengwer homes in the Embobut forest and has even shot several community members.

Tauli-Corpuz found that the Kenya Forest Service is among the recipients of the European Commission-funded climate change project in the area.

Maridiana Deren, an environmental activist based in Kalimantan, Indonesia, was speaking in 2015 about how palm oil companies were destroying indigenous peoples’ ancient way of life. Indigenous environmental defenders are facing growing threats as they are pushed off their own lands or are even killed simply for protecting forests. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

While Indonesia has worked to drastically reduce deforestation, its conservation policies have also been detrimental to the livelihoods and well-being of indigenous communities.

In 1992, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry designated the Mount Salak-Halimun forests into a national park.

Prior to that, the area was indigenous Kasepuhan community land which was used to gather food and other subsistence needs but the group now face harassment and intimidation from the park rangers and struggle to survive.

Despite its protected status, the forests still sees illegal logging and deforestation. 

“The problem we are facing is because of the conflicting laws and also the conservation so far that has been very much dominated by non-indigenous paradigm that has also become the paradigm of the government,” said Secretary-General of Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN), or the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, Rukka Sombolinggi. She noted that indigenous communities have already long been protecting their environment.

According to the Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group, 80 percent of the world’s remaining forest biodiversity are in indigenous peoples’ territories, which only make up approximately 18 percent of the world’s total land.

And it is no coincidence.

Forest Trends found in 2004 that such communities invested between two to four billion dollars per year on resource management and conservation, equal to one-quarter of the amount spent by the conservation community on all public protected areas worldwide.

Forests managed by indigenous peoples are also found to have lower rates of deforestation and more climate benefits.

“When we protect the forests, we are protecting all of us. So when you are protecting indigenous peoples, you are also protecting yourself,” Sombolinggi said.

Providing land rights and titles can thus help in the fight to protect the world’s forests and lands from further degradation.

Bright Spots of Resistance

While indigenous communities customarily own more than 50 percent of the world’s lands, only 10 percent is legally recognised.

Launched by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility is the first and only multi-stakeholder financial mechanism focused on securing land and forest rights for indigenous peoples and local communities.

It provides grants to indigenous organisations to help scale up implementation of land and forest tenure reform policies as well as to map and register their lands.

For instance, the facility helped AMAN title over 1.5 million hectares of land belonging to 200 indigenous communities and achieved recognition of 230,000 hectares in Indonesia in just 24 months.

Sombolinggi also highlighted the need to provide technological support to indigenous peoples.

Already, governments and civil society have taken advantage of today’s technological advances by creating easily accessible monitoring and information services.

The Forest Watcher mobile application, created by the Global Forest Watch, helps monitor, act on, and prevent deforestation and illegal wildlife activities, which often take place away from the public eye.

However, the app gives information in real time to those on the frontline, including rangers and indigenous forest communities. 

But first and foremost, the international community must respect indigenous rights, including by working to protect land defenders and end impunity.

“I have hope that we will be able to stop this criminalisation and to ensure that indigenous people will continue to play their role in protecting the forests not just for themselves, but for the rest of the world,” Tauli-Corpuz said.

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

The United States dropped a political bombshell when President Donald Trump announced his administration would withdraw from the historic Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which the former Obama administration signed in September 2013.

“We are taking our signature back”, said Trump April 26, addressing a meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful gun lobbies in the US.

The US, in effect, joins three other “rogue states” – North Korea, Iran and Syria – who voted against the treaty at the UN General Assembly back in April 2013, along with 23 countries that abstained on the voting, including China, Russia, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and ex-President of the Pugwash, told IPS that President Trump “continues to create mayhem in the field of disarmament by wrecking the legal regime created by the international community at the behest of vested interests in the gun lobby sacrificing the humanitarian norms of the world to which the US has contributed.”

The US, which has increasingly shown virtual contempt for multilateralism, has already scuttled the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, refused to participate in the global migration compact, pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, abandoned the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and revoked the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS President Trump is pandering to the National Rifle Association yet again.

She said his announcement that the United States is “un-signing” the Arms Trade Treaty is yet another example of this administration’s abdication of responsibility in the arms control sphere.

In the fact sheet announcing this decision, the Trump Administration stated, “The ATT is simply not needed for the United States to engage in responsible arms trade.”

“The Trump Administration has not been engaged in responsible arms trade in any way, shape, or form. There is indisputable evidence that Saudi Arabia, for example, consistently violates international human rights and humanitarian law”.

“But the Trump Administration continues to pursue arms sales agreements with the Saudi regime,” said Dr Goldring, who is also a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Duke University Washington DC program.

She pointed out that the United States is the world’s largest arms dealer. It’s long past time for the United States to show leadership on the global arms trade, rather than merely treating arms sales as economic transactions, she added.

The ATT, which was adopted by the United Nations in April 2013 and entered into force in December 2014, was initiated by the UK, a NATO ally of the US.

As of last week, the Treaty has 101 state parties with ratifications, and 45 countries which have signed but not ratified.

Responding to questions at a press briefing April 26, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters that the Arms Trade Treaty is the only global instrument aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the international arms trade.

“It is a landmark achievement in the efforts to ensure responsibility in international arms transfers. This is particularly important in present times, when we witness growing international tensions and renewed interest in expanding and modernizing arsenals,” he added.

Credit: Sarah Myers

Rachel Stohl, Managing Director at the Stimson Center and a consultant who helped draft the text of the treaty, said that President Trump has “once again walked away from America’s leadership role in the world and undermined international efforts to reduce human suffering caused by irresponsible and illegal arms transfers”.

In statement released here, Stohl said “Un-signing the Arms Trade Treaty will undermine international peace and security, increase irresponsible and illegal sales of conventional weapons, and harm the American economy”.

A transparent, responsible arms trade fundamentally serves U.S. national security, promotes U.S. foreign policy objectives, and supports American values.

The ATT facilitates transparency and accountability in a global arms trade worth nearly $90 billion a year, building confidence among governments and ending decades of impunity, she declared.

Dr Goldring said the US government regularly claims to have the strongest global standards for arms transfers. Yet it seeks to abandon the only legally binding treaty that addresses these issues.

“This may seem like a symbolic step, because the Trump Administration had already made clear its lack of support for the treaty,” she added.

But this act has substantive implications as well.

It’s in the US interest to be part of the ATT and to work with other countries to increase their standards for importing and exporting weapons, she noted.

‘Unsigning’ the ATT decreases our leverage with these countries. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is a cynical and unpersuasive policy approach,” said Dr Goldring who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Abby Maxman, President of Oxfam America, said Trump’s decision to un-sign the Arms Trade Treaty “is a reckless, self-inflicted wound that continues to demonstrate the Administration’s desire to turn its back on global norms, standards and US leadership. It is one more misguided step to dismantle the international partnerships that keep us all safe.”

Just last week, the Administration held hostage a UN Security Council resolution to address sexual violence in conflict– until language about the need for sexual & reproductive health services was removed.

And, it’s no coincidence that this comes on the heels of President Trump’s veto of the Yemen War Powers Resolution and continued military support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, said Maxman.

President Trump is sending a clear message to civilians caught in the crossfire: “we don’t care.”

The United States will now lock arms with Iran, North Korea and Syria as non-signatories to this historic treaty whose sole purpose is to protect innocent people from deadly weapons.

“The Arms Trade Treaty was developed and signed by the US and others to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of those who may use them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The treaty has the power to save millions from death, rape, assault and displacement. Each year an estimated 500,000 people are killed as a result of the unregulated and under-regulated arms trade,” said Maxman.

“The Treaty does not infringe on Americans’ right to bear arms or hamper the country’s ability to defend itself or its allies, despite what groups like the NRA, and the Trump Administration may claim.”

Last week’s announcement, he said, “is an empty play to pander to those who resisted this Treaty from the beginning.”

Meanwhile, in a report released April 29, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said total world military expenditure rose to $1,822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 per cent from 2017.

The five biggest spenders in 2018 were the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India and France, which together accounted for 60 per cent of global military spending.

Military spending by the US increased for the first time since 2010, while spending by China grew for the 24th consecutive year. The comprehensive annual update of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database is accessible from at www.sipri.org.

The report also said that US military spending grew—for the first time since 2010—by 4.6 per cent, to reach $649 billion in 2018.

The US remained by far the largest spender in the world, and spent almost as much on its military in 2018 as the next eight largest-spending countries combined.

‘The increase in US spending was driven by the implementation from 2017 of new arms procurement programmes under the Trump administration,’ said Dr Aude Fleurant, the director of the SIPRI AMEX programme.

Link to ATT Secretariat data on ratification:
https://thearmstradetreaty.org/hyper-images/file/List%20of%20ATT%20States%20Parties%20(alphabetical%20order)(10%20April%202019)/List%20of%20ATT%20States%20Parties%20(alphabetical%20order)(10%20April%202019).pdf

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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A group of farmers attend a field day on diversification for improved productivity and nutrition. Experts have recognised the agricultural sector’s special role in mitigating child and maternal under-nutrition in vulnerable groups through the increased availability of diversified diets. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Apr 26 2019 (IPS)

It is slightly after 3pm on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Chipata district, eastern Zambia, and a group of women are gathering for a meeting. It is Elizabeth Tembo’s turn to stand amongst the other mothers like herself and share key lessons on nutrition.

It is a subject she learnt about from a project implemented by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and their partners.

“Through the project, I learnt a lot of improved farming practices for producing high-nutrient crops such as cowpeas and soya beans from which my family has greatly benefited,” Tembo says in an IITA report. “And I am now happy to help other women as well, so that together, we can reduce the high prevalence of malnutrition and stunting among our children in the community,” adds the lactating mother.

The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) project under ‘The Most 1,000 Critical Days Programme,’ was implemented from 2014-2017 by the IITA in collaboration with Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) and funded by Irish Aid, UK Aid Direct and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). It targeted pregnant and lactating mothers with children up to 24 months of age.

“The project focused on promoting production, processing and utilisation of nutrient dense crops, vegetable and, fruit trees such as Soybeans, Cowpeas, Pigeon peas, Beans, Orange maize, Orange fleshed sweet potato and Papayas; and our role was to provide training to community-based trainers on production, processing and utilisation of these promoted crops and vegetables at community level,” Theresa Gondwe, Technology Dissemination Specialist at IITA Southern Africa Research and Administration Hub (SARAH), tells IPS.

In recent times, experts have recognised the agricultural sector’s special role in mitigating child and maternal under-nutrition in vulnerable groups through the increased availability of diversified diets.

“Now, around Africa, governments and communities are adopting innovations that are improving the lives of millions through diversified agricultural production as a pathway to improved diversity in household diets of poor small-scale farmers who produce for their own consumption,” Emmanuel Alamu Oladeji, from IITA SARAH, tells IPS.

The move comes as experts are more and more in agreement that food availability and access alone are not enough without the required nutrition levels.

For its part, IITA played a key role in the 2016 International Year of Pulses, to promote traditional high protein value crops such as cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties.

According to a write-up by IITA, pulses may look small, but they are a big deal as nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fibre content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes.

It is also believed that because of the protein they hold they could assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way. This way more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

And in the advent of climate change, which is already putting massive pressure on food systems, the need to more sustainable approaches in agriculture and integration of diversified diets for better nutrition has gained extra significance.

According to the United Nations, by 2050, population growth and dietary changes will drive food needs up by 60 percent. But as climate change is already putting pressure on food systems and rural livelihoods through drought, floods and hurricanes, ocean acidification and rising sea levels and temperatures, more climate-smart and environmentally friendly approaches are needed.

Adaptation is therefore an indispensable component in the ending hunger equation, especially for smallholder farmers, who are already grappling with climate change vagaries.

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Zambia has a climate change adaptation project for smallholders in south-western Zambia.

“We are supporting smallholder farmers to build climate resilience,” Nachilala Nkombo, WWF Zambia Director, tells IPS. “We are providing direct training on climate-smart approaches to food production and working with government extension systems, as well as a peer network of farmers, to disseminate knowledge amongst farmers.”

Nkombo believes African agricultural policies have to mainstream climate change at all levels to cope with rising populations and the growing pressure on land and food production systems.

“We need a proper balance. We should not just open up new land because the population is growing, but also look for ways to play a role in large-scale reforestation,” observes Nkombo.

Back to the SUN project, Gondwe is convinced of the positive impact of the intervention.

“The project emphasised on diversifying crop production for improved nutrition and there are successful examples in Luapula, Eastern, and Northern Provinces where the project was implemented. And most of the involved farmers in the project areas have seen positive changes in their livelihood,” she says.

Lyness Zimba from Lundazi district in eastern Zambia provides further testimony about what she has learnt.
“I took seriously the weekly lessons given to us by agricultural and health specialists,” says Zimba in an IITA report.

“We were taught a variety of topics such as the importance of feeding our children with nutritious foods, how to cultivate and make use of a variety of high-nutrient crops to get maximum nutritional benefits. The recipes have made it easy for us to prepare nutritious meals for our children; we are no longer the same.”

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The post Improving the Lives of Millions of Mothers and Children appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By H.L.D. Mahindapala
MELBOURNE, Apr 26 2019 (IPS)

The history of terrorism in Sri Lanka reveals a clear pattern. The first to take up arms in the post-Independent era were the misguided Sinhala youth. They were educated youth desperately running in search of a quick solution to establish their classless paradise. Their violence did not take them anywhere.

The Tamil youth were the second to take up arms. Most of their cadres too consisted of educated Tamil youth running in search of a speedy route to establish their mono-ethnic paradise. At the end of a three-decade war they sank to the bottom of the Nandikadal Lagoon.

Now the Muslim youth have bombed their way into the global headlines. They shot into the limelight on the morning of Easter Sunday taking everyone by surprise. Unlike the two preceding terrorist groups the local Muslim terrorists who carried backpacks loaded with explosives seems to be dummies carrying out the orders and agenda of a hidden hand directing them from abroad.

H.L.D. Mahindapala

To begin with they were echoing the imported hate politics fed to them by the extremist local agents running fragmented jihadist cells. Nor have they produced a calculated, well-defined ideology against the state, like the other two terrorist organisations, arguing that it should be destroyed and replaced with their political models.

However, it is known that the preachers in their cells and madrassas have been indoctrinating the youth with violent interpretations of the Koran with the aim of converting Sri Lanka into an Islamic Caliphate. That constitutes a part of the larger agenda of ISIS, without any local content in it.

Running through all three violent movements of the youth is a manufactured ideology tailored to radicalise and convert them into violent politics as the solution to their indoctrinated, imagined and real problems.

The Sinhala youth took to Marxists revolutionary ideology reduced to five lectures. The Tamil youth took to the ideology of the Saivite Jaffna Vellala supremacists to create Eelam – the paradise of mono-ethnic extremism. And the Muslim youth seems to have jumped into a similar ideology believing that they could achieve their Islamic salvation at the end of violence.

If history is any guide then the preceding two violent movements point to a bitter end. Like the other two preceding terrorist groups the Muslim terrorists too are doomed to end up achieving nothing. Besides, the odds are tilted heavily against the Muslim terrorists, both internationally and locally.

They have begun with a big bang which had echoed round the world. That is about all they could achieve: making big noises if they are to continue down this path of violence. Whether they have the capacity to sustain the violence of the Easter Massacre on a mass scale for a prolong period is questionable.

Based more on the historical evidence of the past two youth revolts than on the skimpy details available on the Muslim youth, my conclusion is quite simple: neither the prevailing hostile international climate against every kind of Muslim violence, nor the national ethos of a thriving and conservative Muslim trading community dependent on peace and stability, is conducive for the Muslim youth to sustain their campaign of violence for long.

Besides the wobbly Yahapalanaya Sri Lankan government, which was going softly– softly on rising Muslim radicalisation and violence– has at last woken up to the grim and destabilising realities that had blown their tops off. It is the magnitude of the simultaneous explosions hitting three points of the compass – east, west and the immediate north – that shook the foundations of Sri Lankan establishment

The Easter Sunday blast is likely to change – at least in the short run — the conventional image of the Muslims. They were seen as the more emancipated and liberal Muslims not committed to radical Islam. But after the East Sunday Massacre it is likely that they will be bundled with the rest of the ideologically driven Muslim fanatics abroad committed to irrational violence.

The latest Reuter’s report which reveals the ISIS hand behind the Easter Massacre can only reinforce the image of being ruthless religious fanatics.

Radicalisation takes sense and sensibility out of the minds of the impatient youth looking for instant solutions. And politicised religion is packed with hate. Both are incendiary forces that can drive the impulsive youth into insane fits of violence.

Of course, the initial blast that shook Easter Sunday was massive and impressive. The (1) precision timing that went off like clockwork, (2) the gigantic scale of the blasts hitting targets in east, west and the near north simultaneously,(3) the selected targets of Christian Churches and hotels packed with Western tourists (4) the organisation capacity to piece together the various arms of the military-style operation that exploded on Easter Sunday (5) the blind faith of the suicide bombers that walked the lethal distance to their fatal end and that of 350 other victims, point clearly to hidden brains beyond the borders of the local Muslims.

There is, no doubt, that the suicide bombers were on a political mission. But what was it? Also, terrorist acts are executed to convey a political message. What is the message behind the biggest ever terrorist operation on Sri Lanka soil?

This explosion which hit like a bolt from the blue makes no sense in the Sri Lankan context. Apart from sporadic tensions – some of which have been caused by National Thowheeth Jamaat (NTJ) – the Sinhala-Muslim relations had not stretched to breaking point to provoke an attack of this magnitude.

Mainstream Muslim politics was for co-existence without resorting to extremist violence. Interventions at the highest levels from both sides have succeeded in snuffing out any communal conflagration and containing the violence.

In fact, Muslim leaders have been complaining to the authorities that the NTJ is a serious threat to their lives too. Nor has there been a mass following for Islamic extremism either at the top or at the bottom layers of Muslim society.

As of now Muslim violence has been confined to a minority. But it is a minority that has crept up, sedulously and surreptitiously, to parts of the higher layers of the Muslim hierarchy. If allowed to go unchecked it can become the majority.

The description of this group given by Ruwan Wijewardene, State Minister of Defence, is revealing and alarming, to say the least. He said: “What I can also say about this group of suicide bombers is that most of them were well-educated and come from middle or upper middle class, so they are financially independent and their families are quite stable financially. That is a worrying factor in this. Some of them studied in other countries, they hold degrees and were quite well-educated people.”

This explains the background and the potential threat to the future but not the cause behind the stunning Easter Sunday massacre. Invariably political protests and violence target the state. But the Muslim suicide bombers did not target the state per se.

They went straight to two non-state, non-Sinhala-Buddhist targets: 1. Christian churches packed with Easter Sunday devotees and 2. hotels packed with Western holiday-makers lining up for their Sunday breakfast. Both targets were selected to make global headlines in the Christian West.

Any harm to the Christian worshippers inside churches in one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar and Western holiday-makers would instinctively tug the heart strings and the conscience of the West.

It is the selection of these two targets that do not make sense. Why should local suicide bombers target the Churches and the hotels when their grievances are supposed to be against the Sinhala-Buddhists with whom they have been having some sporadic sparring in recent times?

Besides, none of these two institutions has rubbed against the local Muslims. So why did the strategists behind Operation Easter Massacre target the Churches and the hotels? Isn’t the message coded in these two targets?

It is at this point that Ruwan Wijewardene’s explanation gains credibility. He said that the targets were chosen as retaliation for the massacre of the Muslims at Christchurch by the Australian white-supremacist Brenton Hanson Terrant. But is the local Muslim that concerned about what happened in far-away New Zealand to blow up Churches and hotels? No.

But the vindictive politics of their masters in the failed Islamic State, pursuing anti-American, anti-Christian agenda, are bent on targeting the sacred symbols of the West. Since the Sri Lankan Muslims are committed ideologically to follow the political line laid down by their Islamic masters abroad, they became the latest suicidal messengers of death to the West. They even went as far as imitating their counterparts abroad by videoing their martyrdom, a la the jihadists in the Middle East.

Second, the Easter Massacre was to deliver a political message to Donald Trump. He was boasting that the ISIS is dead. On the morning of Easter Sunday, they told him that they are still alive and kicking. The ideology behind the Easter Massacre is clearly expressed in the two main targets allied to Western interests. It also contains a direct message to Trumpian braggadocio and arrogance.

They picked Sri Lanka because it was fast turning into a base for American expansion in the Indian Ocean. The signals radiated by the bombs have already hit the American radar. They have now cancelled the joint naval exercises scheduled to be held in the east.

Like all terrorists they have picked the most iconic targets for maximum impact in the minds of the West. Targeting them selectively on one of the holiest days of the Christian world delivers an unambiguous political message to the West saying: If we can’t get you in the West we can get you in soft spots prepared by incompetent, complacent and back-biting rulers in the East who, incidentally, are cozying up to the West.

The tattered remnants standing as sad ruins of churches and hotels and the 350 victims debunk the usual fiction spun by some local political pundits who continue to blame the Sinhala-Buddhists. Their spin is to white-wash the Muslim terrorists saying that the suicide bombers were on a mission to get even with the Sinhala-Buddhists for sporadic attacks that had occurred in recent time.

This line of attack on the Sinhala-Buddhist runs against the evidence of the bloody ruins staring in their face. If the Easter Massacre was to teach the Sinhala-Buddhist a lesson why did they attack the Christian Churches and hotels packed with Westerners? This is the most notable facet of the Easter Sunday attack.

The suicide bombers skipped the Sinhala-Buddhists, they skipped the Hindu Tamils and they went straight for the Christians in churches and the Westerners holidaying in hotels.

If the Easter Sunday massacre was to send a clear message to the West then the international and local agents have succeeded beyond their expectations. This initial message is now reverberating globally. It says un-mistakeably that the Jihadist power, packed with religious fanaticism, has found a new base to attack the West. But what is going to be their next step? Will they turn inward and intensify their attacks against the other religionists?

Violence of any sort will not take the Muslim terrorist anywhere. If the other two varieties of terrorism (Sinhala and Tamil youth) failed to win against the state what are the chances of the Muslim variety winning?

The state is sufficiently prepared and experienced now to meet challenges of terrorists having beaten the world’s deadliest terrorist, the LTTE. Most of all, it has the tacit support of the majority of the Muslims in the mainstream.

ISIS and its local agents have had some beginners luck by taking the state by surprise. But the chances of Muslim terrorists becoming a formidable challenge to the state are very remote. Besides, before they take on the state they will have to grab power from the established Muslim hierarchy. They will also have to combat the anti-Muslim counter-terror forces of the West and also India.

The upshot of the Easter Massacre has been to increase and reinforce Islamophobia. Until Easter Sunday the Muslims in the democratic mainstream have been a formidable force negotiating craftily behind the scene, with both main parties, bargaining with the non-violent votes.

But the exploding bombs have devastated their image and reduced the power of bargaining with both major parties. They cannot be seen to be honeymooning, or playing footsy with the Muslims after the backlash of Easter Sunday sweeping the nation. The government, in particular, will have to face the charge of putting Bodu Bala Sena in jail and letting NTJ run amok without any restraint.

The state is now in a favourable political climate to crack down on Muslim extremism with hardly any pressure from international or national interventionists. Besides, the Muslim terrorists can never reach the militarised power of the Tamil Tigers and challenge the state to yield to their demands, whatever they may be. Of the three varieties of terrorism the Muslims will be the weakest, purely on demographic counts.

When the dust settles down, the democratic state of Sri Lanka will rise again triumphantly, hoping that the last remaining Indian Tamil youth will not decide to go the way of the other three failed terrorists

The post Muslim Terrorists Heading Towards a Jihadist Hell Hole appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

H.L.D. Mahindapala is a Sri Lankan journalist who was Editor, Sunday Observer (1990-1994), President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991-1993) and Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1994).

The post Muslim Terrorists Heading Towards a Jihadist Hell Hole appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 26 2019 (IPS)

When US political leaders urged the Trump administration to either reduce or cut off arms supplies to Saudi Arabia – largely as a punishment for its indiscriminate bombings of civilians in the four-year old military conflict in Yemen—President Trump provided a predictable response: “If we don’t sell arms to Saudi Arabia, the Chinese and the Russians will.”

Perhaps in theory it’s plausible, but in practice it’s a long shot primarily because switching weapons systems from Western to Chinese and Russian arms— particularly in the middle of a devastating war– could be a long drawn out process since it involves maintenance, servicing, training, military advice and uninterrupted supplies of spares.

Asked for a response, Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher, Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS: “If, (very hypothetical) the USA and the UK would stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, this would be a major problem for Saudi Arabia, in military and financial terms”.

He pointed out that Saudi Arabia would find it very hard to maintain the US and UK weapons its armed forces largely rely on without the support of the large numbers of US and UK service personnel in the country right now.

The Saudi military might be able to keep the weapons going for a while, but presumably at a much lower operational level.

He said it will not only be very costly for Saudi Arabia to replace the expensive existing equipment — which is supposed to be in service for decades– but it also means that Chinese and Russian weapons will not be as high quality as what Saudis now receive from the USA and Western Europe.

And New York Times roving correspondent Nicholas Kristof says “some Saudis kept trying to suggest to me that if we block weapons sales to Riyadh, the kingdom will turn to Moscow.”

“That’s absurd. It needs our spare parts and, more important, it buys our weapons because they come with an implicit guarantee that we will bail the Saudis out militarily if they get into trouble with Iran.”

In an oped piece, Kristof said the Saudi armed forces can’t even defeat a militia in Yemen. So, how could they stand up to Iran?, he asked.

“That’s why we have leverage over Saudi Arabia, not the other way around.” The next step, he argued, should be a suspension of arms sales until Saudi Arabia ends its war in Yemen, for that war has made the US complicit in mass starvation.

The Times said last year that some US lawmakers worry that American weapons were being used to commit war crimes in Yemen—including the intentional or unintentional bombings of funerals, weddings, factories and other civilian infrastructure—triggering condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups who also accuse the Houthis of violating humanitarian laws of war and peace.

In its World Report 2017, Human Rights Watch said the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has carried out military operations, supported by the United States and United Kingdom, against Houthi forces and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since March 2015.

The coalition has unlawfully attacked homes, markets, hospitals, schools, civilian businesses, and mosques, the report said.

“None of the forces in Yemen’s conflict seem to fear being held to account for violating the laws of war,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “UN members need to press the parties to end the slaughter and the suffering of civilians.”

Besides Saudi Arabia, the original coalition included the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar (until 2017), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan.

In a report released last February, Amnesty International (AI) said the weapons for the coalition, primarily to Saudi Arabia and UAE, have come mostly from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US.

The London-based AI called on all states to stop supplying arms to all parties to the conflict in Yemen “until there is no longer a substantial risk that such equipment would be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

The only four countries that have announced suspending arms transfers to the UAE were Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway, according to AI.

Asked how dependent Saudi Arabia is on US arms, Wezeman told IPS that US is by far the largest arms supplier to Saudi Arabia.

SIPRI estimates that in 2014-18, the USA accounted for 68% of Saudi arms imports followed by the UK at a distant 16 per cent. Several other European countries accounted for most of the rest. China played a small role and Russia had not yet established itself as arms supplier to Saudi Arabia.

Asked about the current state of US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Wezeman said the US supplies all types of weapons to Saudi.

But most important in value of the weapons that have been or are to be delivered are F-15 combat aircraft with a full set of advanced arms and Patriot and THAAD air defence systems.

But the list also includes M1A2 tanks, frigates, reconnaissance planes, light armoured vehicles, communication equipment, and basically anything needed to equip modern armed forces.

What is important is that these weapons come with a service package. Though exact data is scarce, the companies supplying the equipment also supply vital maintenance and repair services, he noted.

Compare with what happened in Iran in 1979, which also was highly dependent on US and UK arms, Tehran had to figure out by itself how to operate the equipment.

Possibly the Iranians were better prepared and trained for that than Saudi Arabia is now, but they struggled to continue to use the US equipment in the war with Iraq and had to resort to importing inferior weapons from China and North Korea.

It is very likely, said Wezeman, that Russia and China will happily step in and offer their weapons. However, it will take time before they can deliver large numbers of weapons and train the Saudi’s on new equipment based on different military doctrines. A full transition will probably take many years.

There are several of other cases where states have shifted between different suppliers, with different levels of success, he pointed out. Warsaw pact countries moved to NATO weapons, over several decades. Venezuela switched from US equipment to Russian and Chinese over a period of roughly a decade.

Citing conservative UN estimates, Ole Solvang, Policy Director at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told IPS some 17,700 civilians have been killed in the fighting in Yemen since 2015.

An estimated 2,310 people have died from cholera according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and 85,000 children under the age of five have died from starvation.

Solvang said more bombs and weapons in Yemen will only mean more suffering and death. “By providing such extensive military and diplomatic support for one side of the conflict, the United States is deepening and prolonging a crisis that has immediate and severe consequences for Yemen— and civilians are paying the price,” he noted.

Described as one of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) and the poorest in the Arab world, Yemen continues to be devastated by a war with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, the results of a study commissioned by the UN Development Program (UNDP), released last week, confirm the worst: the ongoing conflict has reversed Yemen’s human development by 21 years.

The study warns of exponentially growing impacts of conflict on human development. It projects that if the war ends in 2022, development gains will have been set back by 26 years — almost a generation. If it continues through 2030, that setback will increase to four decades.

“The long-term impacts of conflict are vast and place it among the most destructive conflicts since the end of the Cold War,” warns the report; and further deterioration of the situation “will add significantly to prolonged human suffering, retard human development in Yemen, and could further deteriorate regional stability.”

“Human development has not just been interrupted. It has been reversed,” said UNDP Yemen Resident Representative, Auke Lootsma. “Even if there were to be peace tomorrow, it could take decades for Yemen to return to pre-conflict levels of development. This is a big loss for the people of Yemen.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post US & Western Arms in Yemen Conflict Signal Potential War Crime Charges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Apr 25 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The current massive displacement of people worldwide has turned into a politicized crisis of solidarity, with closed border policies and the rise of xenophobic, populist trends. The blocking and harassment of search and rescue ships and of NGOs that legally attempt to pursue their activities compromises all efforts to save the lives of persons in distress in the Mediterranean Sea. States should respect the international legal framework in particular the maritime law and take responsibility for the lives of migrants and refugees.

These were the main conclusions of a debate organized by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue on Migration and Human Solidarity. The event was an opportunity for the Geneva Centre to officially launch its latest publication on the causes and consequences of migration today, including refugees and IDPs, entitled The Unprecedented Rise of People on the Move in the 21st Century. The panel discussion was held on 25 April 2019, at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

All the members of the panel were experts with first-hand experience in the migrant and refugee crisis, and their presentations highlighted concrete problems observed during their work on the ground, in coordinating rescue operations and aid distribution, or documenting and raising awareness of the situation. The panel included Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo, Secretary General of the International Catholic Migration Commission; Mr José Benavente, President of the French Association Pilotes Volontaires; Ms Julie Melichar, Citizen Mobilisation & Communication Officer at SOS Méditerranée; Ms Camille Pagella, journalist at L’Illustré and Mr Adrià Budry Carbó, journalist at Le Temps, joint recipients of the first ACANU (Association of Accredited Correspondents at the United Nations) Prize for Reporting on Human Rights Issues.

Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre, delivered opening remarks and moderated the panel debate.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador Jazairy deplored the tendency of most European States to avoid responsibility for lives lost due to the “Fortress Europe” syndrome. The Director of the Geneva Centre reiterated the need to distinguish between the migration crisis per se, which is caused by a lack of economic opportunities, poverty, as well as the adverse effect of climate change on people’s livelihood, and the refugee crisis, mainly triggered in the past by conflict and war, and increasingly by climate change. He underscored that the push factor of refugee flows is man-made and should be acknowledged as such. He reiterated that migration and displacement had been a constant part of humanity, and that the current migration flows are dubbed “a crisis” particularly by fabricated nationalist narratives.

Furthermore, Ambassador Jazairy noted that the Mediterranean Sea had turned into a liquid graveyard, quoting IOM global statistics revealing that over 3400 migrants and refugees lost their lives in 2018. At least 2’297 of these lives were lost in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Director of the Geneva Centre saluted the rise of civil society organizations willing to step in, to offer protection and to save migrants’ and refugees’ lives. He commended these rescue organisations for their endeavours, despite the criminalisation of their action to save lives, dubbed a “délit de solidarité”.

In his presentation, Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo deplored the growing trend to build legislative and administrative walls and barriers rather than to offer solidarity in the context of today’s displaced populations. In his presentation, he referred to Pope Francis’ Message for the Catholic Church’s 104th observance of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, on 14 January 2018. In his address, Pope Francis highlighted the religious and moral leadership of the Catholic Church in offering “motherly love to every person forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future”. His Holiness also deplored the “collective and arbitrary expulsions of migrants and refugees, (…) particularly where people are returned to countries which cannot guarantee respect for human dignity and fundamental rights.”

Further quoting the words of Pope Francis, Monsignor Vitillo underscored that the problem of statelessness that numerous migrants and refugees faced could be easily tackled through “the adoption of nationality legislation in conformity with the fundamental principles of international law”. Monsignor Vitillo further presented the extensive work of the International Catholic Migration Commission, inspired since its creation in 1951 by Catholic Teaching. He concluded his remarks with a strong call for governments to improve their response to migrants and refugees, noting that “All human beings long for a better and more prosperous life, and the challenge of migration cannot be met with a mind-set of violence and indifference, nor by offering merely partial solutions.” Responding to Ambassador Jazairy’s question on the role of religious leaders in this crisis, he highlighted their pivotal role in countering the toxic narrative surrounding people on the move, and emphasized the importance of political will. In this regard, he spoke of the example of Uganda, a small country that had received 300 000 South Sudanese refugees.

Mr José Benavente, President of the French Association Pilotes Volontaires, deplored in his presentation the fatalities of the migratory routes in the Mediterranean region. He recalled the testimonies of displaced persons who pass through Libya to reach European soil that depict the inhumane conditions and violations of human rights characterizing these passages, including torture, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

Based on his first-hand experience, Mr Benavente offered a detailed description of the often improvised and always dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea in wooden or inflatable boats. He underscored the overloading of boats, the dangers of asphyxiation with fuel vapours, the lack of food and water. Furthermore, he underscored that at the moment when these boats start drifting in high seas, the countdown for the lives of the refugees and migrants on-board starts.

As a pilot, Mr Benavente highlighted the fact that these boats are often difficult to spot at high sea. Oftentimes, he said, rescue ships arrive too late, only to find semi-floating shipwrecks and no survivors. In this regard, Mr Benavente and his partner created the Association Pilotes Volontaires, to respond to the need of quickly identifying persons in distress at sea by aerial means. They fly over a specific portion of international waters off the coast of Libya, where more than 20 000 lives were lost over the past four years.

Mr Benavente highlighted that, in 2018, Pilotes Volontaires in partnership with search and rescue ships identified 45 boats and saved more than 4000 persons. He concluded by underscoring the urgent need of the association for increased financial means and donations in order to pursue the rescue operations. Finally, he called for a concerted effort from the international community to ensure that rescue operations are carried efficiently, rapidly and in the full respect of International Maritime Law, which stipulates that all survivors must be disembarked in a safe port.

Ms Julie Melichar of SOS Méditerranée highlighted the work of SOS Méditerranée, noting that since the launch of their search and rescue operations, the Aquarius ship had welcomed more than 29,532 survivors on board. According to Ms Melichar, the objectives of the organization were threefold: rescue, protect and testify.

Echoing the concerns of previous panellists, Ms Melichar underscored the growing loss of lives at sea as a result of the lack of rescue capacities and of “recurring violations of international and maritime law.” She further deplored the ongoing blocking and harassment of search and rescue NGOs. In this regard, Ms Melichar recalled that at this moment, almost all NGO rescue ships are blocked from leaving European ports, with hundreds of people left to drown at sea, or unlawfully returned and exposed to inhumane conditions.

Furthermore, Ms Melichar recounted her experience during the first standoff of the Aquarius ship in 2018. As with other rescue ships, the Aquarius had fallen victim to political manipulation, stripped of its flag and blocked in various ports in the Mediterranean Sea on several occasions in 2018, until its activities were completely stopped towards the end of last year.

Ms Melichar denounced the actions of the Libyan Search and Rescue Region, created as a result of the Malta Declaration signed in February 2017. She remarked that NGOs had to pursue their role of testifying and condemning these violations of maritime law. With regard to the “délit de solidarité”, she noted that almost all legal investigations brought against humanitarian workers in the context of the crisis had been annulled because of lack of evidence, as NGOs worked in full respect of the legal framework. Finally, she concluded by deploring a “paradoxical situation: civil humanitarian ships, who conduct legal search and rescue operations and respond to the duty to deliver assistance, are being criminalised by States who do not uphold anymore the treaties and conventions that they have ratified.”

Journalists Camille Pagella of L’Illustré and Adria Budry of Le Temps recounted their experience on board the Aquarius ship in 2018, which resulted in the publication of a joint extensive coverage entitled “Piège en haute mer” that won the ACANU Prize for Reporting on Human Rights Issues. The documenting mission of the two journalists occurred in the context of the Italian elections last spring, and against the background of a growing populist trend, with European politicians pledging to block the activities of humanitarian ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Mr Budry described various attempts of the ships of the Libyan Coast Guard to harass and block the rescue actions of the Aquarius.

Similarly, Ms Pagella described a joint effort between the Aquarius and of the Astral ship of the NGO Proactiva Openarms, involving the transfer of over 100 persons in distress, blocked for hours by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome.

The joint presentation highlighted the constant harassment attempts of the Libyan Coast Guard, which is often supported by European States, aimed at blocking the actions of humanitarian ships. They condemned the intimidation practices used by the Libyan Guards, as well as the externalization of the responsibility for the migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea by the surrounding European States. They deplored the inhumane conditions in which migrants and refugees crossed the sea, the insecurity and lack of supplies, which they could witness first hand during their mission. Their poignant testimony reminded the audience that beyond the politicization of the migrants and refugee crisis, there was an ongoing humanitarian crisis that was overshadowed by populist narratives.

Referring to a question from the moderator on media disinformation and toxic narratives, Mr Budry remarked that it was important not to combat it, but to promote a counter-discourse of tolerance and solidarity completed by hard facts and figures. He noted that in the upcoming Spanish elections, the exclusion of the extreme right party Vox had rather benefitted the latter, as they would not be involved in public debates where their toxic discourse could be publicly challenged by others. Ms Pagella also referred to the role of the media of providing an objective, rigorously researched overview of the crisis, insisting on the importance of terminology.

During the Q&A session, Professor Michel Veuthey, Deputy Permanent Observer of the Permanent Delegation of the Sovereign Order of Malta, added that it was important to take preventive measures by ensuring harmonious integration of potential migrants in their countries of origin, and therefore, even more fundamentally, resolve the conflicts which lay at the source of these migratory crises (MENA and Sahel regions).

A representative from the Norwegian NGO Justice and Development referred to the ongoing internal conflict in Libya, observing that the bombing of refugee centres around Tripoli by the army of General Khalifa Haftar was inadmissible. A representative from ICMC brought up the issue of monitoring and addressing the problems of human trafficking inherent in the migrant crisis. Ambassador Jazairy observed that trafficking is a crisis within the broader refugee crisis, but the latter should be addressed in terms of repression of trafficking. Msgr Vitillo added that human trafficking was a broad issue in its own right, but that had little to do with refugees. Ms Melichar said that on rescue ships it is difficult to identify victims of human trafficking, but efforts were made in identifying certain categories of vulnerable persons such as unaccompanied minors, victims of torture and of sexual assault. A member of the audience referred to the situation in Colombia where the latter has increased its national debt so as to help Venezuelan refugees. Msgr Vitillo said that international solidarity versus national priorities was not an “either/or” issue, but a question of appropriate distribution of resources between priorities. Referring to Colombia, he added that in earlier days, Colombian refugees had also benefitted from the hospitality of Venezuelans.

Monsignor Robert J. Vitillo

Mr José Benavente

Ms Camille Pagella and Mr Adrià Budry Carbó

Ms Julie Melichar

The post The Geneva Centre organized a panel debate-book presentation on Migration and Human Solidarity, benefitting from the presence of panellists with first-hand experience in the Mediterranean Sea appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Claimant Eric Dooh shows the crude oil that has damaged the banks of the creek through his village in Ogoniland, Nigeria.

By Hans Wetzels
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

When Ecuadorean diplomat Luis Gallegos first proposed a “Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights,” many countries and environmental activists welcomed the idea with open arms.

Backed by South Africa, Mr. Gallegos urged the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, to immediately begin negotiations to end human rights violations and environmental damage by transnational corporations.

In October 2018, 94 countries drew up a draft text for the binding treaty, which could address the issue of the complex global supply chain that currently makes it difficult to determine who is responsible for environmental damage or human rights violations. It should also give victims access to justice.

For two decades, Mr. Gallegos’s birth place of Ecuador waged a court battle to hold Chevron (formerly Texaco), a US-based multinational, accountable for oil spills and for allegedly dumping 16 billion gallons of toxic waste into waterways and open pits in the country’s Amazon jungle, affecting 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos in the area. The South American country tried without success to seek redress in American, Ecuadorian, Brazilian and Canadian courts.

130 oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta in 2015 were reported by Amnesty International

Chevron in turn dragged Ecuador before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, for violating a 1997 bilateral investment treaty, and was awarded a hefty $112 million. A binding treaty on environmental damage might have prevented this kind of outcome.

Currently, there are voluntary guidelines for international businesses. One such set of guidelines is the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which instruct corporations to respect human rights but leaves en-forcement in the hands of states.

In high-risk sectors such as agriculture, mining and the garment industry, most companies disregard these principles, says Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, a newly established research initiative funded by the Dutch, British and Swiss governments.

Multinationals easily avoid prosecution because no international legal framework exists to hold them accountable, Mr. Gallegos argues. A majority of UN member states and the African Union concur.

Ecuador is not the only country whose citizens or government is trying to keep multinationals in check. In 2016, some 40,000 Nigerian fishermen took Royal Dutch Shell, an oil company, to a British court over oil spillage in the Niger Delta region.

But the court ruled that a conflict with the company’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), could not be adjudicated in the United Kingdom.

Amnesty International reported in 2016 that SPDC’s operations in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region in 2015 alone had resulted in about 130 oil spills.

“There are few places on the planet where the impact of multinational companies on the environment are more visible than in the Niger Delta,” Nigerian diplomat Hashimu Abubakar told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

After several rounds of consultations, the first draft of a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights was finally presented to the Human Rights Council in July 2018, raising hopes of adoption.

“Big multinationals always use their legal and financial firepower at the cost of people who don’t have a lot of resources,” Nigerian activist Esther Kiobel told Africa Renewal.

Ms. Kiobel is the widow of Dr. Barinem Kiobel, a former government official and one of the nine environmental campaigners executed by hanging in 1995 by Nigeria’s military government for protesting against oil pollution in the Niger Delta. She was a plaintiff in a landmark suit against the oil giant Shell.

“A new international treaty might give me the opportunity to get compensation and rehabilitate the name of my late husband,” adds Ms. Kiobel.

After fleeing Nigeria and gaining US citizenship, Ms. Kiobel took Shell before an American federal court in 2002. After years of litigation, the court dismissed the case in 2013, claiming that a conflict between a Nigerian business, the SPDC, and Nigerian claimants cannot be heard in an American court.

Undeterred, Ms. Kiobel has now filed a civil case in a Dutch court. “At this point we’re waiting for the Dutch court to set a date. Instead of facing me in court, they have been trying to prevent this case from even being heard before a judge,” says Ms. Kiobel.

Although the idea of a treaty draws huge international support, bringing EU countries and others in the West on board may be difficult if not impossible. So far, both powerful players in international diplomacy have yet to back the effort.

European diplomats are concerned that binding obligations for international business could harm international trade, documents retrieved in Brussels through a Freedom of Information request reveal.

“We were a little surprised by the vigour of European resistance against this treaty,” says Jane Nalunga of the Uganda-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI).

SEATINI was established in 1996 to lobby policy makers and consult with western NGOs, the UN and other international organisations to push an agenda of sustainable and inclusive development.

“The problem is that African governments… fear that laws on human rights or the environment might chase away international investors,” said Ms. Nalunga.

“In Uganda a foreign company needs to take an environmental assessment. But the outcome is not legally binding. International legislation could make these assessments mandatory on the international level, thus ending the dynamic of African states competing for investment and neglecting their human rights responsibilities.”

The Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights will not immediately lead to the land of milk and honey, argues Lucas Roorda, a policy adviser at the College for Human Rights in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Mr. Roorda wrote a dissertation on the liability of multinational corporations.

“A set of international rules would of course directly impact cases like Kiobel versus Shell,” he says. “But there’s also a lot of wishful thinking around this treaty. International rules can establish better access to justice for activists but wouldn’t solve the power discrepancy between multinationals and poor communities.”

He doubts that a full-fledged human rights court will be realized through international negotiations. “Setting up an international tribunal for human rights abuses costs a lot of money, while rich countries in Europe and the US are opposed to such a tribunal.”

Mr. Roorda prefers a treaty that lays out international norms that member states would then be obliged to legally adopt, adding, “That could actually make it easier to bring a case involving the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell before a Dutch court.”

While Ecuador’s treaty would make rules binding on an international level (through a tribunal, fines or some other mechanism), Mr. Roorda would like member states to adopt international rules agreed upon in the treaty but not create an international court.

The long-term impact of international legislation goes beyond the establishment of a tribunal, explains Ms. Nalunga. “Besides adjusting the direct power imbalance between international investors and the poor communities in which they operate, this treaty could end the discrepancy between trade agreements and human rights.”

Environmental and human rights activists and countries experiencing the impact of the activities of some multinationals may debate the best way to achieve the goal of holding multinationals accountable. What is not debatable is the need to end impunity.

*Africa Renewal is published in English and French by the Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations Department of Global Communications. Its contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or the publication’s.

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Hans Wetzels is a writer for Africa Renewal* published by the United Nations

The post A Treaty to End Corporate Immunity? appeared first on Inter Press Service.