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Women with tree seedlings. Sunka Shea Women’s Cooperative is a women-led cooperative that is setting an example for sustainable commodity production through their shea butter production cooperative. © A Rocha International. The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is commemorated annually on August 9. Credit: Sunkpa Shea Women's Cooperative

By Jamison Ervin
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 2022 (IPS)

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, commemorated annually on August 9, is a day to celebrate the many contributions of the 476 million Indigenous peoples worldwide.

As the world grapples with a planetary crisis of both biodiversity loss and climate change, scientists and policy makers are racing to find viable solutions. Increasingly, they are recognizing that the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples could well provide cost-effective nature-based solutions.

For example, the authors of a recent national environmental assessment in Australia have for the first time recognized the importance of Indigenous knowledge in avoiding catastrophic fires; a new federal program in Canada provides funding for Indigenous coastal guardians, in recognition of their unique knowledge; and Indigenous knowledge of tiger behavior is helping avoid human-wildlife conflicts in Nepal.

This is a radical departure from the past, when the knowledge and efforts of Indigenous peoples has traditionally been marginalized or discredited.

The emerging recognition of the importance of Indigenous knowledge of the natural world is part of a broader dawning awareness that there are cracks in our global capitalist system – cracks that if allowed to continue to grow, pose an existential threat to humanity.

The front page headline from the Financial Times in 2019, “Capitalism. Time for a Reset,” summarizes what is needed – a profound transformation in the global status quo on how we protect, restore and manage natural resources, and a reset on our relationship with Indigenous peoples, especially women and youth.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first Equator Prize, a UNDP-led partner initiative that recognizes Indigenous peoples and local communities from around the world who use sustainable nature-based solutions to achieve their local development needs.

Joining 264 winners from the past, among this year’s ten winners, selected from a pool of over 500 nominations from 109 countries, are several examples that illustrate the social and economic transformations needed to put Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous women, at the forefront of a new pact with nature.

At the forefront of restoration knowledge

The Associação Rede de Sementes do Xingu from Brazil brings together women from 25 Indigenous and agricultural communities to collect and commercialize over 220 different species of native seeds for large-scale ecological reforestation of the Amazon and the Cerrado.

In doing so, they have generated more than $700,000 in local incomes, financially empowering Indigenous women throughout the region. The organization also partners with local research institutions to exchange and blend local and technical knowledge, practices, and research to combat industrial agriculture and mass deforestation, seed by seed.

Restoration is a social and ecological imperative; the latest Global Land Outlook found that as much as 40% of the world’s lands are degraded. And while the global community has pledged to restore a billion hectares of degraded land by 2030, it is through the knowledge and action of community members such as those from the Associação Rede de Sementes do Xingu that can help make these pledges a reality.

The Organización de Mujeres Indígenas Unidas por la Biodiversidad de Panamá is an Indigenous, women-led organization in Panama uses Indigenous knowledge of conservation techniques to protect jaguars, while preserving both their territory and their culture.

The recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems found that more than a million species are at risk of extinction, and large predators such as jaguars are especially vulnerable to disruptions in habitat connectivity, particularly in a place such as Panama, which serves as a narrow connectivity corridor between continents.

The Indigenous knowledge and actions of OMIUBP play an essential and outsized role in safeguarding the future of jaguars in the Americas.

At the forefront of sustainable supply chains

The Sunkpa Shea Women’s Cooperative of Ghana, an Indigenous, women-led cooperative, is setting an example for sustainable commodity production through their shea butter production cooperative. The cooperative has redefined production practices in the region by developing a Community Resource Management Area that includes zones of for production areas, no-take zones and limited-use areas.

Their management plan also includes ecosystem restoration with Indigenous food forests, as well as traditional fire management practices that mitigate wildfire risk in this drought-prone region of Ghana. By integrating their organic production into international supply chains, they are improving the lives of 800 women, while safeguarding biodiversity and eliminating deforestation.

While hundreds of companies have pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains, few have achieved this goal. It is through progressive groups such as the Sunkpa Shea Women’s Cooperative of Ghana that we see true progress.

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, commemorated annually on August 9, with the theme of the role of Indigenous women in the preservation of traditional knowledge, is a timely reminder of the profound transformations we need now, and the need to foster the vital role of women in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge at the core of Indigenous identity, culture, and heritage.

This year’s Equator Prize winners are an inspiration that these transformations are already underway, and that effective women-led solutions to our planetary crises are at hand.

Learn more about the winners on the Equator Initiative’s website, and join us for a celebration on November 30 at the virtual Nature for Life Hub.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Manager, UNDP’s Global Programme on Nature for Development

A group of alleged gang members is presented to the media by police authorities in El Salvador on Jul. 20 as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the war against gangs waged in this Central American country under a state of emergency. But families of detainees and human rights organizations warn that in many cases they have no links to criminal organizations. CREDIT: National Civil Police

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

The body of Walter Sandoval shows a number of dark bruises on his arms and knees, as well as lacerations on his left eye and on his head – signs that he suffered some kind of violence before dying in a Salvadoran prison, accused of being a gang member.

The evidence of the beating is clear in photographs that Walter’s father, Saúl Sandoval, showed to IPS.

Walter, 32, was one of those who died in Salvadoran prisons after being detained by the authorities in the massive raids that the government of Nayib Bukele launched at the end of March, under the protection of the decreed state of emergency and the administration’s fight against organized crime and gangs.

The young man, a farmer, died on Apr. 3, in the parking lot of the hospital in Sonsonate, a city in the west of the country where he was transferred, already dying according to the family, from the police station in Ahuachapán, a city in the department of the same name in western El Salvador.

He had been transferred to the police station after his Mar. 30 arrest in the Jardines neighborhood of the municipality of El Refugio, also in the department of Ahuachapán.

“They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station,” his father told IPS.

He added that his son had been hanging out with friends, getting drunk. A few minutes later, a police patrol picked him up on charges of being a gang member, which the family vehemently told IPS was not true.

“He never received medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot,” the father added."They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station. He didn't receive medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot." -- Saúl Sandoval

He says the only explanation he has for why the police detained Walter is because “they wanted to get the day’s quota.” What he meant is that police officers are apparently supposed to arrest a specific number of gang members in exchange for benefits in their assigned workload.

Deaths like Walter’s, if the participation of police is confirmed, are the most violent and arbitrary expression of the human rights violations committed since the government began its plan of massive raids, in what it describes as an all-out war on gangs.

Since late March, the Salvadoran government has maintained a state of emergency that suspended several constitutional guarantees, in response to a sharp rise in homicides committed by gang members between Mar. 25 and 27.

In those three days, at least 87 people were killed by gang members, in a kind of revenge against the government for allegedly breaking an obscure under-the-table agreement with the gangs to keep homicide rates low.

The state of emergency has been in place since Mar. 27, extended each month by the legislature, which is largely dominated by the ruling New Ideas party. Since then, violent deaths have dropped to an average of three a day.

Among the constitutional rights suspended are the rights of association and assembly, although the government said it only applies to criminal groups that are meeting to organize crimes. It also restricts the right to defense and extends the period in which a person may be detained and brought before the courts, which is currently three days.

The government can also wiretap the communications of “terrorist groups”, meaning gangs, although it could already do so under ordinary laws.

After the state of emergency was declared, homicides dropped again to around two or three a day, and there are even days when none are reported.

But some 48,000 people have been arrested and remanded in custody, accused by the authorities of belonging to criminal gangs. And the number is growing day by day.

However, the families of detainees and human rights organizations complain that among those captured are people who had no links to the gangs, known as “maras” in El Salvador, which make up an army of a combined total of around 70,000 members.

On Jun. 2, rights watchdog Amnesty International stated in an official communiqué that “Under the current state of emergency, the Salvadoran authorities have committed massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment, and at least 18 people have died in state custody.”

But President Bukele, far from being receptive to criticism, dismisses and stigmatizes the work of human rights groups, referring to their representatives as “criminals” and “freeloaders” who are more interested in defending the rights of gang members than those of their victims.

Walter Sandoval is one of the young men who have died with signs of torture in El Salvador’s prisons under the state of emergency in force in the country since the end of March. The police captured him without any evidence linking him to gangs, said the young man’s family – part of a pattern that has been documented by human rights organizations. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Sandoval family

Silent deaths and torture

The local human rights organization Cristosal has documented nearly 2,500 cases of arrests which, according to the families, have been arbitrary, with no basis for their loved ones to have been detained under the state of emergency.

The organization has also monitored press reports and social networks and has carried out its own research to establish that, as of Jul. 28, some 65 people had died while detained in the country’s prisons or in police cells as part of the massive police raids.

Some of the deceased showed obvious signs of beatings and physical violence, as was the case with Walter and other cases that have been widely reported in the media.

The official reports of these deaths received by family members are vague and confusing, such as that of Julio César Mendoza Ramírez, 25, who died in a hospital in San Salvador, the country’s capital, on Jul. 15.

The official report stated that he had died of pulmonary edema, i.e., his lungs filled with fluid, but also stated that the case was “being studied.”

Suspicions that the deceased were victims of beatings and torture during their imprisonment are not ruled out by their relatives or by human rights organizations.

“The cause of death given to the relatives in the hospital sometimes differs from the legal medical examination, and that leads one to think that something is going on,” lawyer Zaira Navas, of Cristosal, told IPS.

She added: “There are also families who say they were told it was cardiac arrest, but the victims have bruises on their bodies, which is not compatible (with the official version).”

And in the face of doubts and accusations that beatings and torture are taking place under the watchful eye of the State, the authorities simply remain silent and do not carry out autopsies, for example, which would reveal what really happened.

Navas remarked that, even within the state of emergency, “the detentions are arbitrary” because the procedure followed is not legally justified and many people are detained simply because of telephone complaints from neighbors – with which other human rights defenders coincide.

Another problem is that among these 2,500 complaints by families, about 30 percent involve detainees who have chronic diseases or disabilities or were receiving medical or surgical treatment, according to Cristosal’s reports.

The prison staff do not allow family members of the sick detainees to bring their medication, although in a few rare cases they have authorized it.

“We have seen deaths because it is presumed that they have been tortured, beaten, etc., but there have also been deaths of people who have not been given the medication they need to take,” Henri Fino, executive director of the Foundation for Studies on the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.

Regarding the dubious role played by the government’s Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), in charge of conducting the forensic examinations to inform families about the cause of deaths, Fino said that in his opinion it has no credibility.

Especially, he added, now that members of the so-called Military Health Battalion have been stationed since Jul. 4 at several IML offices, presumably to assist in various tasks, including forensic exams, given the shortage of staff.

“What collaboration can they (the military) provide, if they are not experts, and the only reason they are in the IML is to exercise oversight?” Fino said.

Media war

Some of the people who have died in jails or prisons, who were arrested under the state of emergency, were described by the local media as victims of arbitrary, illegal detentions, in contrast with Bukele’s propaganda war claiming that all the detainees are, in fact, gang members.

The press has highlighted the case of Elvin Josué Sánchez, 21, who died on Apr. 18 at the Izalco Prison located near the town of the same name in the department of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.

The media have referred to him as the “young musician”, because he had been learning to play the saxophone, and they have described him as a decent person who was a member of an evangelical church in the area.

But according to neighbors, Sánchez was well-known as an active gang member in his native El Carrizal, in the municipality of Santa Maria Ostuma, in the central department of La Paz.

“They saw him well-armed on farms in the area, along with other gang members, and he told the owners not to show up there anymore, or they would kill them,” a resident of that municipality, who asked not to be identified, told IPS.

Contradictions like this have strengthened local support for Bukele’s insinuations that the independent media are in favor of gang members and against the government’s actions to eradicate violence in the country.

In fact, opinion polls show that a majority of the population of 6.7 million support the president’s measures to crack down on the maras.

But even though Sánchez was recognized by neighbors as a gang member, his arrest should have been carried out following proper procedures and protocols, based on reliable information proving his affiliation to a criminal organization.

This is something the police do not usually do in these massive raids where it is impossible for them to have the evidence needed on each of the nearly 48,000 detainees.

Nor did the fact that he had been a gang member merit him being beaten to death, since his human rights should have been respected, said those interviewed by IPS.

Despite increasing public awareness of (and regulations on) plastic pollution, the global plastic crisis is only getting worse. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS.

By External Source
Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

This spring, I taught a new undergraduate course in environmental sociology. Most of my students took the course because they were curious to see what their desire to live more sustainably had to do with sociology.

By the third week – after a deep dive into the troubling connections between fossil capitalism (the dependence of capitalism on fossil fuels), waste colonialism (the unjust international trade and disposal of hazardous waste between countries) and environmental injustice – a few students said glumly that they had thought the course would be more optimistic.

The negotiations will be challenging, however, given businesses’ vested interests in keeping regulations focused on waste rather than production. Now, it’s urgent that we push back against greenwashing and work towards a global mandate for limiting unsustainable plastics growth

During the fourth week, we explored the well-documented history of climate denial and deception among fossil fuel companies, as well as the related “deceit and denial” tactics of the tobacco, lead and chemical industries. “Do you think it’s really true?” one student asked me imploringly. “Do you think that businesses are really that unsustainable and will never change?”

I hesitated. I wanted my students to consider complex environmental problems from a critical sociological perspective, but I didn’t want to lead them down a pessimistic path. “Well,” I admitted, “I did just write a book about the plastics industry with the subtitle ‘how corporations are fuelling the ecological crisis and what we can do about it’”.

It’s hard to avoid pessimism when you witness firsthand the obstinacy of socially and environmentally damaging industries. Early in 2019, I attended a plastics industry conference in the wake of the marine plastic crisis, prompted by public outrage over viral images of marine wildlife choking on plastic. The crisis prompted a swift response from plastic-related corporations, who attempted to frame the problem in terms of littering and waste rather than overproduction. “We need to get the image of plastic in the oceans out of the public’s mind,” exclaimed a corporate executive at the conference. “We need to make plastic fantastic again.”

Since the dramatic rise of plastic production across the world after the second world war, petrochemical and plastics companies have fought to expand and protect their markets through creating demand for plastic products, denying toxic risks and shifting blame for pollution onto consumers. And despite increasing public awareness of (and regulations on) plastic pollution, the global plastic crisis is only getting worse.

My new book, Plastic Unlimited, sheds light on the corporate roots of this crisis. In it, I address the concept of the “corporate playbook” used by big oil, big tobacco, and, more recently, big plastic.

 

Playbook tactics

The corporate playbook often contains a common repertoire of strategies used by controversial industries to conceal or cast doubt on the harmful effects of their products. Champions of these strategies have been dubbed “merchants of doubt” and accused of offences from downplaying the health risks of smoking to funding climate change denial.

As researcher David Michaels wrote in his exposé Doubt is Their Product, “the manipulation of science by the plastics industry was at least as flagrant and as self-serving as any other industry” he had researched – including the tobacco industry. Michaels was referring to the vinyl chloride scandals of the 1960s and 1970s, when leading chemical companies conspired to hide evidence about the toxic health effects of the vinyl chloride monomer on workers in chemical plants.

Big industry’s track record continues today. It has denied the toxic hazards of myriad petrochemicals and plastic products, funded climate misinformation campaigns, misled the public about the effectiveness of recycling, and lobbied to thwart and delay environmental regulations. During the pandemic, it also lobbied to promote single-use plastic bags as the “sanitary choice”.

Leading corporations also use offensive tactics, including directing attention to their role as so-called innovators in green tech. Take the circular economy, for example. It sounds like a great idea to try to eliminate waste by shifting from a linear “take-make-waste” economy to one in which existing materials are reused for as long as possible. But, crucially, no global or national policy visions of a circular economy for plastics go so far as to call for limiting plastic production altogether.

In fact, the plastics industry promotes the weakest form of the circular economy – recycling – which means plastic production can keep going, despite the reality that most items going into a recycling bin will end up being burned or dumped.

What’s more, recycling uses a lot of energy. Chemical recycling, for instance, involves returning plastics to their original molecular states to be used again. Although it’s promoted as a solution to the plastic crisis, it’s a toxic, carbon-intensive process that’s effectively the same as incineration.

Here’s some good news: in March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi agreed on a mandate for a new global treaty to address the crisis. This was a landmark achievement towards creating legally binding measures to prevent toxic plastic pollution.

Many scientists, activists and organisations insist that any resulting treaty must include a cap on plastic production. The negotiations will be challenging, however, given businesses’ vested interests in keeping regulations focused on waste rather than production. Now, it’s urgent that we push back against greenwashing and work towards a global mandate for limiting unsustainable plastics growth.

Alice Mah, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick

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

Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC) are using artificial intelligence to help eradicate Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD). The disease threatens the livelihoods of farmers and impacts food security. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

A group of scientists involved in finding solutions to minimize the impact of a devastating banana virus in Burundi have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool for monitoring the disease.

United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) research shows that the Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD), caused by the Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV), is endemic in many banana-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The virus was first reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the 1950s and has become invasive and spread into 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The disease has been reported in Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, DRC, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia. The latest findings, however, show that BBTD is currently a major threat to banana cultivation and a threat to over 100 million people for whom the banana is a staple food.

The AI development team, led jointly by Dr Guy Blomme and his colleague Dr Michael Gomez Selvaraj from the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC), tested the detection of banana plants and their major diseases through aerial images and machine learning methods.

This project aimed to develop an AI-based banana disease and pest detection system using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) to support banana farmers.

A graphic shows the impact of Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD). Credit: Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC)

While farmers struggle to defend their crops from pests, scientists from ABC have created an easy-to-use tool to detect banana pests and diseases.

The tool, which has proven to provide a 90 percent success in detection in some countries, such as the DRC and Uganda, is an important step towards creating a satellite-powered, globally connected network to control disease and pest outbreaks, say the researchers.

During the testing phase, in collaboration with a team from the national agricultural research organization of Burundi – ISABU, two sites where the banana bunchy top disease is endemic in Cibitoke Province were compared with an area free of the disease in Gitega Province (Central).

Cibitoke Province is BBTD endemic and lies in a frontier zone bordering Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Performance and validation metrics were also computed to measure the accuracy of different models in automated disease detection methods by applying state-of-the-art deep learning techniques to detect visible banana disease and pest symptoms on different parts of the plant.

Researchers set out the reasons detecting disease in bananas is so vital.

“In East and Central Africa, it is a substantial dietary component, accounting for over 50% of daily total food intake in parts of Uganda and Rwanda.”

Bananas are also the dominant crop in Burundi. The surface area under cultivation is estimated at 200,000 to 300,000 ha, representing 20 to 30% of the agricultural land.

Data from Burundi’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock indicate food security and nutrition continue to worsen, with 21 percent of the population food insecure. They say this could be exacerbated by various plant diseases such as BBTD.

While banana is crucial to people’s food security and livelihoods, experts also argue that BBTD could potentially have a devastating economic and social impact on the continent.

“Based on the fact that when BBTD comes in, it is initially a very cryptic disease and does not display spectacular symptoms,” Bonaventure Omondi, a CGIAR researcher who collaborated on this project and who works on related banana diseases and seed systems projects, told IPS in an interview. While it was crucial to stop the disease early, it was also challenging, which is why the AI solution was vital.

Agriculture experts say that the East African Highlands is the zone of secondary diversity of a type of bananas called the AAA-EA types. These bananas are genetically close to the dessert banana types but have been selected for use as beer, cooking, and dessert bananas.

Banana cultivation in Burundi is grouped into three different categories. Banana for beer/wine in which juice is extracted and fermented accounts for around 77 percent of the national production by volume. Fourteen percent of bananas are grown for cooking, and finally, about five percent are dessert bananas which are ripened and directly consumed.

With recent advances in machine learning, researchers were convinced that new disease diagnosis based on automated image recognition was technically feasible.

“Minimizing the effects of disease threats and keeping a matrix mixed landscaped of banana and non-banana canopy is a key step in managing a large number of diseases and pests,” Omondi said.

As an example of how this emerging technology works, researchers focus on data sets depicted on banana crops with disease symptoms and established algorithms to help identify plantations where the disease is present.

Prosper Ntirampeba, a banana grower from Cibitoke Province in north-western Burundi, told IPS that he harvested fewer bunches of bananas in the latest season because of BBTD that spread through his farmlands.

“We have been forced to uproot infected plants since this disease reached our main production area. This resulted in a huge extra cost burden,” he said.

In another case, with the detection of BBTD, agricultural officials under instruction from researchers advised farmers to remove all infected ‘mats’ where several hectares of diseased plants had been destroyed. This is the key to eliminating the disease in Busoni, a remote rural village in Northern Burundi.

Although some farmers often resist uprooting their banana plants, Ntirampeba said it was vital to eliminating the disease.

“The disease is likely threatening livelihoods of most farmers who are dependent on the crop,” he told IPS.

Currently, other novel disease surveillance methods are also being developed by ABC researchers in Burundi, including drone-based surveillance to determine local disease risk and delimit recovery areas.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: HarvestPlus

By Victor Ekeleme and Kalejaiye Olatundun
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

In Nigeria, women play key roles in food and nutrition security through their contributions to agricultural production, their influence on how to allocate household income, and their efforts to ensure proper nutrition for all household members.

However, malnutrition remains widespread among rural women and children in Nigeria, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic and amid the current global food crisis.

To help meet this challenge and empower farming women to improve nutrition, the CGIAR’s HarvestPlus program is deepening its longstanding partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Agricultural Development Program (ADP)—specifically, through the ADP’s Women in Agriculture (WIA) Extension Program.

(CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources).

The WIA platform has proven to be a sustainable and effective mechanism for women to reach out to other women with agricultural information and technologies. Notably, the WIA approach helps break through religious and cultural barriers that may prevent some women from gaining access to life-improving knowledge and resources.

HarvestPlus is strengthening the knowledge and capacity of about 500 WIA women officers in several states on the promotion of healthy feeding practices, nutrition, and promotion of biofortified crops and foods.

The officers will then be able to include biofortification messages and trainings as part of their activities with women in the communities where they work, with the aim of motivating women farmers and their families to produce, process, distribute, and consume biofortified crops and foods.

WIA training in Imo state

At trainings in Imo state, located in South East Nigeria, 32 WIA officers were selected from different senatorial districts and local government areas to learn how to create awareness about biofortification, and how to process some newly developed biofortified crop-based foods, especially snacks, complimentary foods and traditional meals.

Elsie Emecheta leads the WIA Imo state chapter. She is an advocate for fostering the success and security of smallholder farmers. Within the last few years, she has helped strengthen collective influence to shape policy debates on issues that affect women and girls; she has also supported the national mission to end hunger and malnutrition by raising awareness through nutrition health talks and training.

She has highlighted deficiencies in vitamins, minerals, and other micro-nutrients, which are widely prevalent across the country and have led to the decline in the physical and mental development of children, and ill health among adults, especially women and lactating mothers. Emecheta also has campaigned to integrate gender issues in agricultural policies and programs.

Emecheta was pleased that the training was expanding her team’s knowledge of biofortified crop and food production and processing. “Hidden hunger is a big problem. In today’s Nigeria, it has been confirmed through research that malnutrition is the main cause of maternal and child illness. We are here to learn more about biofortification and how to develop finished products from these nutrient-enriched crops,” she said.

Emecheta added: “Following this [training], we will be involved in enlightening women in rural areas. We are hoping that the officers will be inspired to mainstream biofortified crops and foods in their messaging and training with women. We believe they will be well-equipped to implement this knowledge in their various zones and communities.”

WIA trainings attract diverse group

The training for WIA officers also drew women agri-preneurs and influencers, representatives of rural cooperatives, and from some NGOs engaged in gender and livelihood programs. Emecheta was happy the event has raised awareness about the critical role of women in agriculture and how direct support for female business owners will play a role in ensuring a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food system in the South East of Nigeria.

“As part of the training, the women will be exposed to the technologies for producing products such as snacks, complementary foods, and traditional household meals from biofortified cassava, and maize. We have introduced them to processing the products for business and home consumption. We have about 32 women undergoing the training,” said Emecheta.

Emecheta and her group have developed a new-found entrepreneurial spirit, spurring women to invest in biofortified cassava and maize cultivation. She is very confident that the opportunities afforded by the HarvestPlus initiative in Imo state will help the participants establish themselves as positive influencers of other women, successful biofortified crop farmers, processors, and marketers.

Olatundun Kalejaiye, Nutrition and Post-Harvest Officer at HarvestPlus, was excited to be part of the efforts to ensure women can make better nutrition choices while also improving their income generation abilities as this will lead to inclusive economic growth for women in Imo state.

For her, building a food-secure future starts when one woman is empowered to know that she doesn’t need to be wealthy before her family can be well nourished. What women need is the right knowledge of nutrition and how to choose their foods, how to combine them and how to prepare them.

If one woman is nutrition smart, she can influence her daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces, grandchildren, and on and on, from generation to generation.

Said Kalejaiye: “We have women who have come for this training without an idea of what biofortification is all about. This is an opportunity to educate and sensitize them and create the needed awareness about the potential for women and children in the communities where they live.”

The HarvestPlus program of the CGIAR focuses on helping to realize the potential of agricultural development by delivering gender-equitable health and nutritional benefits to nutrition-vulnerable populations.

HarvestPlus currently works with Nigerian partners to promote vitamin A-biofortified cassava, maize, and orange sweet potato. By the end of 2021, 1.8 million smallholder farming families were growing vitamin A cassava and 1.6 million were growing vitamin A maize.

Women are priority participants in all aspect of HarvestPlus’ work.

Victor Ekeleme is a Corporate Communications Professional based in Lagos, Nigeria and Olatundun Kalejaiye is Agriculture4Nutrition Expert, Gender Promoter, Member – Nutrition Society UK

To learn more, visit the HarvestPlus website, or contact us.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Aug 4 2022 (IPS)

The largest ever settlement in Canadian legal history, 40 billion Canadian dollars, occurred in 2022, but it didn’t come from a court – it followed a decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In 2016 the Tribunal affirmed a complaint that the Government of Canada’s child welfare system discriminated against First Nations children. (First Nations are one of three groups of Indigenous people in Canada).

When I heard about that amount and subsequently how the government was negotiating the details of that settlement, I was astounded. Although I’ve had an interest in and reported regularly about human rights in the past three decades, my most intense experience has been here in Nepal, where for a couple of years I worked at the United Nations human rights office.

Nepal’s Human Rights Commission has a long history of having its recommendations virtually ignored by the government of the day. In fact, since 2000, only 12% of the NHRC’s 810 recommendations have been fully implemented. So when I compared the situation in Nepal to the tribunal’s decision and aftermath in Canada, my first question was ‘how’? How could the human rights situation in the two countries be so different that one government was compelled to pay out $40 billion for discrimination while another could virtually ignore recommendations?

First, I have to confess that my understanding of the human rights framework in Canada and Nepal was lacking. As today’s guest, Professor Anne Levesque from the University of Ottawa, explains, Canada, like Nepal, has a federal human rights commission (as well as commissions in its provinces). But Canada also has the tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that hears complaints and can issue orders. Nepal however, lacks a human rights body that has legal teeth.

But is that the whole story, or are there other reasons why the Government of Canada must – and does – pay up when it loses a human rights case while the Government of Nepal basically files away the NHRC’s recommendations for some later date? Nepal, by the way, is not a human rights pariah. It is serving its second consecutive term on the UN Human Rights Council and the NHRC has been given an ‘A’ rating by an independent organization for conforming to international standards.

 

Resources

As a lawyer who’s helped fight for the rights of First Nations children, here’s what you need to know about the $40 billion child welfare agreements – article by Anne Levesque

Ruling of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal

Public advocacy for the First Nations Child Welfare complaint

 

Pictured at her home in Harare, 91-year-old Idah Hanyani, better known as Gogo Chihara, a staunch opposition supporter in Zimbabwe, dons a yellow T-shirt adorned with the portrait of the country’s top opposition leader Nelson Chamisa whom she has vowed to back as she fights for political change in this Southern African nation. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS.

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 4 2022 (IPS)

Idah Hanyani, popularly known as Gogo Chihera, has backed the opposition since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.

Born in Wedza, a district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland East province, the 91-year-old first supported United African National Council (UANC).

At home in Glenview, Harare’s high-density suburb, Hanyani told IPS she has featured at opposition rallies for years. During her interview, she was reclining on her brownish leather sofa donated to her by the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) president Nelson Chamisa.

She said she has never missed a single major opposition rally since she waded into opposition politics following this Southern African nation’s independence four decades ago.

“I’m not new to opposition politics. I supported the opposition UANC led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa before he (Muzorewa) handed me to Morgan Tsvangirai when the MDC was formed in 1999. Muzorewa announced that a new political party had been formed before he personally handed me to Tsvangirai to back his party at its formation, which I have supported until Tsvangirai died in 2018,” Hanyani told IPS.

A mother of four, three of whom have died, Hanyani said she has eleven grandchildren. The country’s economic crisis has not spared her family, so they cannot support her.

“This is why I have told them to register to vote in the coming 2023 elections, and most of them have heeded my advice,” said Hanyani.

Hanyani said only Olga, one of her grandchildren based in the United Kingdom, is supporting her.

Her husband died in 2004.

Hanyani said she has become popular all over the country, featuring at opposition CCC rallies, backing the opposition through thick and thin as one of the country’s senior citizens who have thirsted for political change in the face of Zimbabwe’s deteriorating economy.

On February 20 this year, she (Hanyani) was part of a sea of supporters that thronged Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfields poor income suburb where her party, CCC had a rally addressed by the party’s leader Nelson Chamisa ahead of the March 26 by-elections.

In March this year, Gogo Chihera was also featured at the CCC rally in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.

“At every CCC rally I attend, I sit next to my son, the President, Chamisa and the chairperson of the party,” she said, balancing her chin on her hands that held her walking stick.

Hanyani said she knows she has become a sensation in the opposition CCC, even occupying the high table at every major opposition rally.

For her, the opposition rallies have become a great source of joy.

“At every CCC rally, I feel overjoyed, like I am being possessed like I am being filled by some strange supernatural powers. At rallies where I go, people scream when they see me walking and, at times, dancing with the support of my walking stick. People shout – Chihera, come on, Chihera, come!” she said.

Not spared by Zimbabwe’s worsening economic hardships, Hanyani said the opposition CCC president Chamisa had stepped in to directly supply her with food parcels every month.

Not only that, but her outstanding support for Chamisa has seen her receiving a gift of sofas from the youthful 44-year-old leader earlier this year.

“Chamisa buys me food every month. With just a phone call to him, Chamisa can send someone with food to me. Just last month, Chamisa bought me these leather sofas. He is a leader motivated by love. I love that boy; he is a great leader,” said Gogo Chihera.

Hanyani’s support for Zimbabwe’s youngest opposition leader has become undying.

“I love Chamisa’s leadership dear. He has love and mercy like Jesus. Come what may, I love Chamisa until I die. I don’t fear anything or anybody else. I support Chamisa with all my heart, with all my mind. I can even stand out now in the street or climb a tree and announce how much I support Chamisa without any fear,” she told IPS.

But even as she backs Chamisa and the opposition CCC, her mistrust for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, which manages polls here, has shrivelled her hope for transparent elections.

“I personally don’t and can’t trust ZEC because Zanu-PF, at every election, sends its thugs to chase Chamisa’s election agents at polling stations in order to stuff ballot boxes with fake votes in favour of the ruling party,” she said.

In a country where political intolerance stands rather on the high side, Hanyani also said: “I don’t like Zanu-PF people”.

“I don’t like people who support Zanu-PF even in my eyes, my mind and my heart. They don’t dare come here because they back our suffering,” said Hanyani.

She said she does not fear being attacked owing to her political affiliation, claiming that “Zanu-PF supporters are afraid of me. They know I speak my mind freely without fear in their face.”

She said Zimbabwe’s First Lady Auxilia Mnangagwa embraced her three years ago when she visited her area.

“Auxilia Mnangagwa in 2019, when she came here leading some clean-up campaign, hugged me before she knew I was in the opposition. When she later knew I was an opposition supporter, she handed me her cap, a white one which I still have kept. I don’t know why she gave it to me. Whether or not that was a way of saying to me come to Zanu-PF, I don’t know,” said Hanyani.

Hanyani claimed that she has many friends who have secretly told her that they back Chamisa behind the scenes because they fear being terrorised by ruling party supporters.

“My friends come secretly telling me that they are with me in supporting Chamisa because they are afraid of violent Zanu-PF supporters. I am a bishop of change here in my area, and everybody here knows me. I know people want change now,” she said.

The aged Hanyani claimed that even some Zanu-PF supporters in her area were confiding in her about their secret support for Chamisa’s opposition CCC.

She said they (Zanu-PF supporters) claimed they only supported their party during the day and switched to the opposition CCC by night, fearing being brutalised.

During Zimbabwe’s Independence Day celebrations this year, Hanyani instead castigated the celebrations.

“I am pained by this year’s independence celebrations because many people, even with this independence, are suffering. I hate Mnangagwa. Mugabe was 100 percent better than him.”

Taking to the popular opposition slogan of the day, Hanyani said, “Mukomana ngaapinde hake” —- loosely translated to mean “let the young man enter”, referring to letting Chamisa take the reins of power.

Ecstatic about the impending Zimbabwe elections next year, Hanyani said: “If ever Chamisa is declared winner in 2023, even the birds of heaven will come down rejoicing, the angels of Jesus Christ.”

“I will be the happiest person alive then. Come elections next year,” she said.

Hanyani, at 85 after the 2018 elections, made news headlines when, with many other opposition activists, she stormed the Constitutional Court to tell President Mnangagwa’s lawyers that she wanted the vote “they had stolen” back.

This happened following the disputed 2018 presidential elections, which Mnangagwa won after a Constitutional Court ruling.

On the day of her IPS interview, Hanyani claimed she had only had tea and plain bread in the morning, claiming she was starving.

Nevertheless, as she parted ways with IPS, she broke into song and dance, praising Chamisa.

“Chamisa, Chamisa, why do you do that? Beware of enemies in the country; Chamisa; Chamisa; your enemies are plentiful in the country; do you see the enemies?” sang the elderly Hanyani.

Ironically, Chamisa has survived a litany of assassination attempts.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Antonio Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 4 2022 (IPS)

The war in Ukraine continues to have a devastating impact on the people of that country. Civilians are dying in the most tragic circumstances every day. Millions of lives have been destroyed or put on hold.

This war is senseless, and we must all do everything in our power to bring it to an end through a negotiated solution in line with the UN Charter and international law.

We are doing all we can to reduce suffering and save lives in Ukraine and the region, through our humanitarian operations. And Martin Griffiths will be able to soon brief you on those developments.

But the war is also having a huge and multi-dimensional impact far beyond Ukraine, through a threefold crisis of access to food, energy and finance.

Household budgets everywhere are feeling the pinch from high food, transport and energy prices, fueled by climate breakdown and war.

This threatens a starvation crisis for the poorest households, and severe cutbacks for those on average incomes.

Many developing countries are drowning in debt, without access to finance, and struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and could go over the brink.

We are already seeing the warning signs of a wave of economic, social and political upheaval that would leave no country untouched.

That is the reason why I set up the Global Crisis Response Group: to find coordinated global solutions to this triple crisis, recognizing its three elements – food, energy and finance – that are deeply interconnected.

The GCRG has presented detailed recommendations on food and finance. I believe we are making some progress, namely on food.

Today’s report looks at the energy crisis, with a wide array of recommendations.

Simply put, it aims to achieve the energy equivalent of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, by managing this energy crisis while safeguarding the Paris Agreement and our climate goals.

I would like to highlight four of the recommendations of the report.

First, it is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the backs of the poorest people and communities and at a massive cost to the climate.

The combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year are close to $100 billion.

I urge all governments to tax these excessive profits and use the funds to support the most vulnerable people through these difficult times.

And I urge people everywhere to send a clear message to the fossil fuel industry and their financiers that this grotesque greed is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people, while destroying our only common home, the planet.

Second, all countries – and especially developed countries – must manage energy demand. Conserving energy, promoting public transport and nature-based solutions are essential components of that.

Third, we need to accelerate the transition to renewables, which in most cases are cheaper than fossil fuels.

Earlier this year, I outlined a 5-point plan to spark the renewables revolution.

Storage technologies including batteries should become public goods.

Governments must scale up and diversify supply chains for raw materials and renewable energy technologies.

They should eliminate red tape around the energy transition, and shift fossil fuel subsidies to support vulnerable households and boost renewable energy investments.

Governments must support the people, communities and sectors most affected, with social protection schemes and alternative jobs and livelihoods.

Fourth, private and multilateral finance for the green energy transition must be scaled up.

Renewable energy investments need to increase by factor of seven to meet the net zero goal, according to the International Energy Agency.

Multilateral development banks need to take more risks, help countries set up the right regulatory frameworks and modernize their power grids, and mobilize private finance at scale.

I urge shareholders in those banks to exercise their rights and make sure they are fit for purpose.

Today’s report expands on these ideas, and Rebeca Grynspan will elaborate on them in a moment.
 
Every country is part of this energy crisis, and all countries are paying attention to what others are doing. There is no place for hypocrisy.

Developing countries don’t lack reasons to invest in renewables. Many of them are living with the severe impacts of the climate crisis, including storms, wildfires, floods and droughts.

What they lack are concrete, workable options. Meanwhile, developed countries are urging them to invest in renewables, without providing enough social, technical or financial support.

And some of those same developed countries are introducing universal subsidies at gas stations, while others are reopening coal plants. It is difficult to justify such steps even on a temporary basis.
 
If they are pursued, such policies must be strictly time-bound and targeted, to ease the burden on the energy-poor and the most vulnerable, during the fastest possible transition to renewables.

Footnote: Launching the third brief of the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres thanked the GCRG Task Team, coordinated by Rebeca Grynspan, and the Energy Workstream, for making this report possible.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his address to the UN press corps while launching the third brief by the Global Crisis Response Group on Energy.

Venezuelan migrant Manuela Molina (not her real name) was promised a decent job in Trinidad, but minutes after her arrival she was forced into a van and taken to a secret location. Credit: IOM Port of Spain

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Aug 3 2022 (IPS)

Human beings have proved to be capable of producing innumerable practical inventions while much too often making the worst use of them. Take the case, per example, of how criminal groups heavily rely on digital platforms to trap and enslave their victims also for extracting and selling their organs.

Yes, technology now dominates most of human activities and, surprisingly enough, it is now presented as the perfect life-saving solution for the smallest and poorest households worldwide. Simply, it has replaced the precious human knowledge, which has been acquired over thousands of years.

And technology is now utilised by the world’s biggest ‘warlords’ to bomb unarmed civilians with drones, also carrying nuclear heads.

Meanwhile, internet and digital platforms are used by criminal gangs to recruit, exploit and control the victims of their human trafficking lucrative business. Among other crimes, victims of trafficking are also targeted for “organ harvesting.”

No wonder then that the 2022 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons (30 July) has focused on the use and abuse of technology as a tool that can both enable and impede human trafficking.

 

What’s behind human trafficking?

“Conflicts, forced displacement, climate change, inequality and poverty, have left tens of millions of people around the world destitute, isolated and vulnerable,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres ahead of World Day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has separated children and young people in general from their friends and peers, pushing them into spending more time alone and online, said Guterres.

“Human traffickers are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, using sophisticated technology to identify, track, control and exploit victims.”

 

Slave markets, also in refugee camps

Obviously, given the clandestinity of these inhuman operations–and the negligent complicity of official authorities–, the number of victims is practically impossible to calculate.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the number of “detected” trafficked persons amounts to over 150,000. Other estimates talk about as many as one million.

More than 60% of known human trafficking victims over the last 15 years have been women and girls, most of them trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Meanwhile, the criminal gangs’ operations have been extended everywhere, even in refugee camps.

In the article: Slave Markets Open 24/7: Refugee Babies, Boys, Girls, Women, Men…, IPS reported that, in addition to slave selling and buying deals in public squares, as reported time ago in ‘liberated’ Libya, a widespread exploitation of men, women, and children has been carried out for years at refugee camps worldwide.

One of them is a Malawi refugee camp, where such inhumane practice has been reported by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Malawian Police Service.

“I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution,” said UNODC’s Maxwell Matewere.

The camp is also being used as a hub for the processing of victims of human trafficking. Traffickers recruit victims in their home country under false pretences, arrange for them to cross the border into Malawi and enter the camp.

Many other refugee camps, as it is the case of the Za’atari camp in Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are located once they had to flee the 11-years long devastating war on their country, are also suspected of being stage for human trafficking. And the list goes on.

 

The Dark Web

Often using the so-called “dark web”, online platforms allow criminals to recruit people with false promises, informs the UN, adding that technology anonymously allows dangerous and degrading content that fuels human trafficking, including the sexual exploitation of children.

On this, the UNODC explains that as the world continues to transform digitally, internet technologies are increasingly being used for the facilitation of trafficking in persons.

With the rise of new technologies, some traffickers have adapted their modus operandi for cyberspace by integrating technology and taking advantage of digital platforms to advertise, recruit and exploit victims.

 

Recruited through social media

Everyday, digital platforms are used by traffickers to advertise deceptive job offers and to market exploitative services to potential paying customers, explains UNODC.

“Victims are recruited through social media, with traffickers taking advantage of publicly available personal information and the anonymity of online spaces to contact victims.”

Patterns of exploitation have been transformed by digital platforms, as webcams and live streams have created new forms of exploitation and reduced the need for transportation and transfer of victims.

 

Trafficking in armed conflicts

A group of UN-appointed independent human rights experts, known as Special Rapporteurs, has recently underscored that the international community must “strengthen prevention and accountability for trafficking in persons in conflict situations”.

Women and girls, particularly those who are displaced, are disproportionately affected by trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced and child marriage, forced labour and domestic servitude, they warned.

“These risks of exploitation, occurring in times of crisis, are not new. They are linked to and stem from existing, structural inequalities, often based on intersectional identities, gender-based discrimination and violence, racism, poverty and weaknesses in child protection systems,” the experts said.

 

Structural inequalities

According to the independent human rights experts, refugees, migrants, internally displaced and Stateless persons are particularly at risk of attacks and abductions that lead to trafficking.

And the dangers are increased by continued restrictions on protection and assistance, limited resettlement and family reunification, inadequate labour safeguards and restrictive migration policies.

“Such structural inequalities are exacerbated in the periods before, during and after conflicts, and disproportionately affect children”, they added.

 

Targeting schools

Despite links between armed group activities and human trafficking – particularly targeting children – accountability “remains low and prevention is weak,” the UN Special Rapporteurs underlined.

Child trafficking – with schools often targeted – is linked to the grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict, including recruitment and use, abductions and sexual violence, they said.

“Sexual violence against children persists, and often leads to trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and forced marriage, as well as forced labour and domestic servitude”.

 

Organ harvesting

The independent human rights experts also highlighted that in conflict situations, organ harvesting trafficking is another concern, along with law enforcement’s inability to regulate and control armed groups and other traffickers’ finances – domestically and across borders.

“We have seen what can be achieved through coordinated action and a political will to prevent trafficking in conflict situations,” said the group of Special Rapporteurs, advocating for international protection, family reunification and expanded resettlement and planned relocation opportunities.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country’s situation. The positions are honorary, and the experts are not paid for their work.

 

Protection services ‘severely lacking’

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on 29 July warned that protection services for refugees and migrants making perilous journeys from the Sahel and Horn of Africa towards North Africa and Europe, including survivors of human trafficking, are “severely lacking”.

“Some victims are left to die in the desert, others suffer repeated sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and many forms of physical and psychological abuse.”

All the above is just another tragic evidence of how big is the ‘dark web’ of the world’s so-called decision-makers.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte (on screens) of the Philippines addresses the UN General Assembly’s 76th session last year. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Barry Mirkin
DAVAO CITY, Philippines, Aug 3 2022 (IPS)

With the national election and transfer of power in the Philippines from outgoing President Duterte to incoming President Marcos Jr. in July 2022, it seems an appropriate time to briefly take stock of the country’s current demographic situation, as well as recent related developments.

According to the biennial global estimates and projections of world population issued by the United Nations Population Division in 2022, the Philippines population climbed to 114 million by mid-2021.

A global milestone will be achieved in November 2022, when world population is expected to breach the 8 billion mark. Population projections foresee that by 2050, the rise in world population will be concentrated in eight countries, one of which is the Philippines.

The country’s total fertility continues its gradual decline, falling to 2.5 births per woman in 2021. Some staggering statistics for the Philippines reveal that from the years 2004 to 2020, 36 in every 1,000 Filipino girls aged 15 to 19 years had already given birth.

A UNFPA staff member walks to a damaged health centre in General Santos on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Credit: UNFPA Philippines

Furthermore, during that period, one-half of all births were unintended. In comparison, world fertility is estimated at 2.3 births per woman and 1.5 births per woman in South-East Asia, of which the Philippines is part.

Abortion remains illegal in the Philippines, despite the over one million illegal and unsafe procedures estimated to be carried out annually. Anyone undergoing or performing an abortion risks up to six years in prison. It is the only country in the world, other than the Vatican where abortion remains illegal under any grounds.

While the Philippines is a global outlier concerning its stance on abortion, it should be noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down Roe versus Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States and thus creating a firestorm of protests.

As a consequence, a number of state governments are seeking to severely restrict abortion access.

In one of the few recent legislative successes regarding population, the Philippine Parliament in 2021 raised the legal age of sexual consent from 12 years, the lowest in Asia to 16 years. Nevertheless, the law contains a “Romeo and Juliet exemption” to protect younger lovers.

Other Parliamentary developments have proven to be unsuccessful. For example, in a country wrought with conservative values and a powerful Church, divorce continues to be illegal, except for the minority Muslim population (eight per cent of the total population), despite a number of attempts over the years to legalize divorce.

Annulment, an option to divorce can take up to four years, may only be granted on narrow legal grounds and at great financial expense. A Civil Partnership Bill has recently been introduced in Parliament, as a means of affording some legal protections to gay couples in a country that forbids same-sex couples from marrying. The bill, however, faces stiff Parliamentary opposition.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there were a record number of repatriated overseas Filipinos (OFWs), some 792,000 in 2020, due to COVID-related lockdowns and restrictions.

Under this program administered by the Philippine government, Filpinos work abroad on fixed-term contracts, usually in the oil-exporting countries of the Arab Region and generally for periods of one to two years, but with the possibility of renewal.

On a more positive note, the Filipino diaspora, i.e., those living and working abroad in 2021, estimated at between 10 to 12 million, remitted US$ 37 billion to the Philippines, a 5 per cent increase from the previous year.

The Philippines benefitted directly from the job creation and wage gains in the United States, which accounted for almost 40 per cent of remittance receipts. Other major remittance sources were Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

The top four global remittance recipients are India, Mexico, China and the Philippines, The United States has been the major source of global remittance outflows, amounting to US$ 75 billion in 2021.

Despite the ravages of the global COVID pandemic, remittances have proven to be highly resilient, as well as a major contributor to Philippine economic growth. According to World Bank projections, despite the ravages and uncertainty of the Ukraine crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, remittance flows to low and middle-income countries are expected to grow by four per cent in 2022.

Always a source of nurses for other nations, the significant exodus of nurses from the Philippines, amid the coronavirus pandemic has climbed, as 25 per cent more Filipino nurses migrated to the United States during the first nine months of 2021 than during the same period in 2020.

Based on the recent increases in COVID cases in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, the departure of Filipino nurses is likely to continue and grow.

Given the country’s current demographic trends and future population projections, combined with the various failed legislative initiatives, the Philippines is unlikely to experience major demographic changes, at least in the near term.

In other words, same old, same old.

Barry Mirkin is former chief of the Population Policy Section of the United Nations Population Division.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Young people take part in a pro-democracy demonstration in Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2022 (IPS)

A spike in state-sanctioned executions worldwide – including in Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and more recently Myanmar – has triggered strong condemnations from the United Nations and several civil rights and human rights organizations.

As Covid-19 restrictions that had previously delayed judicial processes were steadily lifted in many parts of the world, says Amnesty International (AI), judges last year handed down at least 2,052 death sentences in 56 countries—a close to 40% increase over 2020—with big spikes seen in several countries including Bangladesh (at least 181, from at least 113), India (144, from 77) and Pakistan (at least 129, from at least 49).

Other countries enforcing the death penalty, according to AI, include Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Belarus, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), China, North Korea, Viet Nam and Yemen.

In military regimes, such as Myanmar, the armed forces play a triple role: judge, jury and hangman.

Dr Simon Adams, President of the Center for Victims of Torture, the world’s biggest organization that works with torture survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS the recent execution of four pro-democracy activists by Myanmar’s military junta represents a sickening return to the “politics of the hangman’s noose”.

Arbitrary detention and torture have also been committed on an industrial scale, he said.

The military regime has detained over 14,000 people and sentenced more than 100 to death since the (February 2021) coup. While many governments around the world have condemned the recent hangings, it is going to take more than words to end atrocities in Myanmar, he pointed out.

“People are crying out for targeted sanctions on the Generals, for an arms embargo, and for Myanmar’s torturers and executioners to be held accountable under international law”, said Dr Adams, who also helped initiate the case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where The Gambia is trying to hold Myanmar accountable for the genocide against the Rohingya.

The London-based Amnesty International (AI) said last May that 2021 “saw a worrying rise in executions and death sentences as some of the world’s most prolific executioners returned to business as usual and courts were unshackled from Covid-19 restrictions.”

Iran accounted for the biggest portion of this rise, executing at least 314 people (up from at least 246 in 2020), its highest execution total since 2017.

This was due in part to a marked increase in drug-related executions—a flagrant violation of international law which prohibits use of the death penalty for crimes other than those involving intentional killing, said AI.

Antony J. Blinken, US Secretary of State, said last week the United States condemns in the strongest terms the Burma military regime’s executions of pro-democracy activists and elected leaders Ko Jimmy, Phyo Zeya Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw for the exercise of their fundamental freedoms.

“These reprehensible acts of violence further exemplify the regime’s complete disregard for human rights and the rule of law.’

Since the February 2021 coup, he pointed out, the regime has perpetuated violence against its own people, killing more than 2,100, displacing more than 700,000, and detaining thousands of innocent people, including members of civil society and journalists.

The regime’s sham trials and these executions are blatant attempts to extinguish democracy; these actions will never suppress the spirit of the brave people of Burma, (Myanmar), he added.

“The United States joins the people of Burma in their pursuit of freedom and democracy and calls on the regime to respect the democratic aspirations of the people who have shown they do not want to live one more day under the tyranny of military rule,” Blinken declared.

Condemning the execution of the four democracy activists by the military regime in Myanmar, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said last week: “I am dismayed that despite appeals from across the world, the military conducted these executions with no regard for human rights. This cruel and regressive step is an extension of the military’s ongoing repressive campaign against its own people.”

“These executions – the first in Myanmar in decades – are cruel violations of the rights to life, liberty and security of a person, and fair trial guarantees. For the military to widen its killing will only deepen its entanglement in the crisis it has itself created,” she warned.

The High Commissioner also called for the immediate release of all political prisoners and others arbitrarily detained, and urged the country to reinstate its de-facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as a step towards eventual abolition.

Meanwhile, in a statement released August 2, Liz Throssell, a Spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva said : “We deplore the hanging today of two men in Singapore and are deeply troubled by the planned execution of two others on 5 August.

The two, a Malaysian and a Singaporean, were hanged at Changi Prison this morning after they were convicted in May 2015 of drug trafficking and their appeals subsequently rejected.

Two other men, Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee and his co-accused Ong Seow Ping, are currently expected to be executed on Friday after Bin Shapiee’s family was notified of his fate on 29 July.

They were both convicted in 2018 of possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking and their sentences upheld on appeal. In the past, co-accused persons have almost always been executed on the same day.

“We urge the Singapore authorities to halt all scheduled executions, including those of Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee and Ong Seow Ping. We also call on the Government of Singapore to end the use of mandatory death sentences for drug offences, commute all death sentences to a sentence of imprisonment and immediately put in place a moratorium on all executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty”, the statement said.

“The death penalty is inconsistent with the right to life and the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and there is growing consensus for its universal abolition. More than 170 States have so far abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice,” she noted.

Agnes Callamard, AI Secretary-General, said that “China, North Korea and Viet Nam continued to shroud their use of the death penalty behind layers of secrecy, but, as ever, the little we saw is cause for great alarm.”
⁠
The known number of women executed also rose from nine to 14, while the Iranian authorities continued their abhorrent assault on children’s rights by executing three people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, contrary to their obligations under international law.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia more than doubled its number of executions, a grim trend that continued in 2022 with the execution of 81 people in a single day in March, according to AI

As well as the rise in executions seen in Saudi Arabia (65, from 27 in 2020), significant increases on 2020 were seen in Somalia (at least 21, from at least 11) South Sudan (at least 9, from at least 2) and Yemen (at least 14, from at least 5). Belarus (at least 1), Japan (3) and UAE (at least 1) also carried out executions, having not done so in 2020.

Significant increases in death sentences compared to 2020 were recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (at least 81, from at least 20), Egypt (at least 356, from at least 264), Iraq (at least 91, from at least 27), Myanmar (at least 86, from at least 1), Viet Nam (at least 119 from at least 54), and Yemen (at least 298, from at least 269), AI said.

In several countries in 2021, AI said, the death penalty was deployed as an instrument of state repression against minorities and protestors, with governments showing an utter disregard for safeguards and restrictions on the death penalty established under international human rights law and standards.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Aerial view of San Crisanto and its preserved mangrove, in the state of Yucatan, in southeastern Mexico. In addition to trapping and storing CO2, mangroves control coastal erosion, protect against hurricanes and clean water. However, in Yucatan, as in other similar ecosystems, they face threats from increasing urbanization, mass tourism and the effects of the climate crisis. Credit: Juan Pablo Ampudia / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Two extremes of coastal development can be found side-by-side in the small community of San Crisanto, in the municipality of Sinanché in Mexico’s southeastern Yucatán state.

On one side is the mangrove forest that the community has conserved since 1995. It protects the settlement from coastal erosion, supports local fisheries and provides jobs in ecotourism. And, as of 2022, it is generating income from carbon credits.

On the other side, two large housing developments are taking shape. Such building work in the coastal zone is one of the biggest threats to mangrove ecosystems in Mexico and worldwide. But in San Crisanto, the forest is safe — for now.

“Fortunately, the mangroves are well,” says to IPS José Loria, president of the community-based San Crisanto Foundation, which oversees efforts to protect and restore them. “We’re working. Thanks to this, there is a better perspective regarding their environmental services.”

But elsewhere in Mexico threats to mangroves are rising. Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounds government-funded efforts to restore the coastal forests, and it is unclear whether the mangroves can cope with rising sea levels the global warming is creating.

 

 

Loss and restoration

Only three countries — Indonesia, Australia and Brazil — have a greater area of mangroves than Mexico, which had 905 086 hectares of these forests in 2020.

These fragile ecosystems have a dual role to play in the fight against the climate crisis. On one hand, they absorb and store vast amounts of carbon. On the other, they protect coastlines from storms and rising seas.

But they are under threat from the construction of aquaculture farms, infrastructure, and tourist development. Regulations intended to protect mangroves and wetlands haven’t stopped their devastation.

Mangrove deforestation affects three states in particular, according to Mexico’s Mangrove Monitoring System. In the northern territory of Sinaloa, it totaled 5 258 hectares between 2015 and 2020, in Baja California Sur it amounted to 1 068 and in the northern state of Nayarit, 247 hectares.

As well as deforestation, large areas of mangroves are being degraded by human activities. While the total area of degraded mangroves fell from 18 332 hectares in 2015 to 9 680 hectares in 2020, it increased in the states of Baja California Sur and Chiapas, in the south.

Replanting lost mangrove forests is one of the aims of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, which was launched in 2019, but so far no mangrove restoration projects in Mexico have been registered on the UN’s database.

But many mangrove restoration projects are in fact taking place. Between 2006 and 2020, for example, Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (Conafor) approved 74 mangrove planting projects to compensate for deforestation elsewhere. These projects took place in 13 states, covered 11 479 hectares and cost 200 million dollars, according to Conafor data. Nayarit state has hosted 21 initiatives and the southeastern state of Veracruz, 18.

In addition to these deforestation-compensation projects, Conafor funded 11 mangrove restoration initiatives in 2021. Together, they planted 1,34 million mangrove seeds on 1 048 hectares, and cost 2,52 million dollars.

 

Mangrove logging in Puerto Morelos, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, in the Yucatán Peninsula, a forbidden activity by the environmental laws. In Mexico, mangroves face threats from urbanization, tourism development and the installation of aquaculture farms. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Information vacuum

Claudia Teutli, a mangrove researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the state-run National Polytechnic Institute, critiques some aspects of policies towards mangroves.

“We don’t know the success of the projects, due to how the restoration has been done,” she told IPS. “It has been done mostly for offsets requirements [for environmental damage]. There wasn’t a goal of recovering the ecosystem.”

Teutli says the government’s monitoring system is out of date, and that restoration requires better strategies and knowledge of restoration sites.

“There is a confusion between restoration and reforestation,” she says. “We don’t know what was done and how. Success is more than the number of planted trees.”

Joanna Acosta, a professor of conservation biology at the state-run Autonomous University of Carmen in the southeastern state of Campeche, agrees.

“We don’t know where restoration has worked or where it has failed,” she says. “The governmental cartography doesn’t clarify if the mangroves are restored or not. We have to introduce transparency strategies, because there shouldn’t be intervention in areas already under restoration.”

The scale of the challenge is huge — Acosta estimates that Mexico has at least 235 000 hectares of mangroves that are not covered by conservation or management programs. She says that acknowledgement of the value of mangroves should work in favor of the design of public policies.

“Mangroves are the most resilient to the climate crisis, that’s why they should be protected,” she says. “It’s important to protect them due to their capacity for capturing and storing carbon, and because their degradation releases carbon dioxide.”

 

Inside San Crisanto’s large coastal mangrove swamp, in the southeastern state of Yucatán, which survives thanks to the local community’s efforts. Mexican policies for mangrove protection haven’t yielded clear results, as there is a lack of follow-up for monitoring and evaluation of the governmental support programs. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Resisting rising seas?

The community in San Crisanto is capitalizing on this. It has begun selling carbon offsets based on the carbon its 850 hectares of mangrove forest stores.

San Crisanto is an ejido — an area of land owned by the state but held and managed communally by local people. Its mangroves also generate revenue from Conafor’s Environmental Services Payment Program. This year, the program is paying the ejido 53 dollars for each of 340 hectares of mangroves.

The ejido suggests the creation of a national mangrove network and a national coastal resources system.

“There should be some work for building the organization,” says Loria. “We are the starting point for correcting environmental processes and generating resilience.”

But despite San Crisanto’s successes, Loria acknowledges problems such as coastal erosion. This raises the questions of how Mexico’s mangroves will tolerate rising seas as the planet warms.

Some researchers say rising sea levels will outpace the rate at which mangroves accumulate sediment in the next 30 years if warming continues at its current rate. This would drown the mangroves. Other scientists, working in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, say mangrove forests will vary in their ability to cope with rising seas.

Teutli is upbeat, saying that as the sea level rises, mangrove sediments will accumulate, keeping the trees above the water level.

“[Mangroves] are adapting to flooding,” she says. “Before we thought they didn’t tolerate it. Tropicalization is coming and it is going to help the mangroves.”

This article is part of a two-story series that was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Edward Mukiibi first worked the fields as punishment. Now he is a firm believer that the slow food movement can save the planet. He was recently named as the President of Slow Food International. Credit: Slow Food International

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Edward Mukiibi was forced to do agriculture at school as punishment for misbehaviour.

Instead of hating the punishment, he loved it, especially when he realised farming was the future of good food, health and wealth.

Mukiibi is a farmer and social entrepreneur from Uganda on a mission to prove that sustainable farming is the foundation of all fortune and a solution to overcoming hunger, unemployment, and biodiversity loss. He is an advocate for food production based on using local resources,   knowledge and traditions to promote diverse farming systems.

Mukiibi is a member of Slow Food International, a global movement advocating for local food production and traditional cooking.

In July 2022, Mukiibi (36) was named as the new President of Slow Food International at its 8th International Congress in Pollenzo, Italy.

“I feel good and happy about this appointment and also happy on behalf of Slow Food, which is a strong international food movement that has become more established not only in the founding continent of Europe but across the world, which is why it was now possible for the network for finding more able and enthusiastic leaders like me,” Mukiibi told IPS during an online interview.

Founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini, Slow Food International works to cultivate a worldwide network of local communities and activists who defend cultural and biological diversity. They promote food education and the transfer of traditional knowledge and skills.

Convinced of the untapped potential of farming and the need to make agriculture attractive for the youth, Mukiibi founded the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC). The project works with students and communities to cultivate a positive attitude in young people towards agriculture and locally produced food.

Citing that 70 percent of the population in Africa is below the age of 40, Mukiibi said Africa has a large young generation that can be involved in agriculture. Mukiibi deplored the practice in schools where farming was used as a punishment in the same manner prisons have young offenders working on large-scale farms to provide labour as part of corporal punishment.

“This prevents many young people from loving agriculture and food production,” said Mukiibi. “I am a victim of this kind of practice. When I was in school, I always wanted to change this by working with schools in a participatory way and introducing children to farming in a more interest-oriented manner.”

Mukiibi has also championed the development of Slow Food Gardens, a global project that has created thousands of green spaces to preserve African food biodiversity and help communities access nutritious food. Mukiibi has created gardens in more than 1000 schools in Uganda.

“Slow Food gives you a 360-degree view of food systems because it covers everything that transforms the way we grow, eat, market, process and save food,” said Mukiibi, explaining that slow food is a movement and philosophy about clean, good and fair food.

Interview excerpts:

The slow food movement promotes biodiversity on the land and our plates. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

IPS: What is slow food? Is it the opposite of fast food?

Edward Mukiibi: The concept of slow food carries more of a responsibility than just literal meaning and the direct opposite of fast food. It carries more sense when combined with our philosophy of good, clean, and fair food for everyone. The concept means being responsible in everything we do when it comes to food, agriculture, and the planet. In being responsible for your food choices, you need to eat food and produce food that is good for the environment and good for the culture and the traditions of the people that safeguard it.

Another aspect of slow food is fairness. We need to ensure fairness when it comes to transactions. Openness and transparency when it comes to negotiations and working deals between the producers and consumers but also a declaration of information and the true identity of the producers of the food we eat. Sometimes people are not fair, especially big food chains, when they sell food produced by small-scale producers but brand it as their own production. We also need to ensure justice for smallholder farmers, justice for indigenous people and justice for the environment.

Slow Food is also a movement of actors and activists. We are a movement that involves everyone who thinks we need to urgently slow down climate change and the destruction food production is bringing to this planet. We need to slow down on policies that are against environmental equilibrium.

IPS: Is clean, good and fair food achievable, and are slow fooders meeting this goal?

Historically there have been a lot of ruthless, careless food production activities and cruel ways of production to the environment and to the people who are going to eat the food. A good, clean, and fair food system exists and is achievable. With all the challenges we are seeing, the conflicts, climate crisis and food insecurity created by the global food system can be reversed if everyone understands the concept of slow food, whose goal is to solve global challenges using local actions and activities done by the local communities.

We have many examples. So many communities in 160 countries are taking positive actions to regenerate the planet … It is not too late to regenerate the planet and rethink how food is produced, how food is handled and how food is consumed.

IPS: Climate change is impacting our food production. How do you see the Slow Food movement addressing this?

EM: Slow Food is promoting regenerative approaches to food production, including promoting agri-ecology, building traditional farming systems based on agroforestry, and preserving and protecting local food biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.

We are not only talking about climate change by going out to conferences. We are taking action through the thousands of communities taking practical work to promote agroecology, permaculture and traditional farming systems. In Africa, we count 3 500 agro-ecological gardens that have been created and managed in schools.

IPS: You mention Slow food in biodiversity protection. How and why?

EM: We have the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity because we are concerned about the rate at which we are losing biodiversity not only in the field but also biodiversity on our plates which makes our nutrition and diets dependent on a few highly controlled products.

We are working with cooks to bring back biodiversity on the plate. It is not enough to talk. We have to bring back what we are losing on the table and open the discussion from the dinner table about the wealth we are losing.

Slow Food has worked to create community value chains in different communities to protect food products at the risk of extinction. It means sharing knowledge about these products and that the community sits together to devise ways to protect and promote these food products.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Farmer Mayra Rojas says that the Chinese-type fixed-dome biodigester built in back of her home in Carambola, in the municipality of Candelaria in western Cuba, has become part of her daily life and a key factor in improving her family's quality of life. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Standing in front of a blue flame on her stove, getting ready to brew coffee, Mayra Rojas says the biodigester built in the backyard of her home in western Cuba has become a key part of her daily life and a pillar of her family’s well-being.

“Biogas is a blessing,” says Rojas, a farmer who lives in the rural community of Carambola, in the municipality of Candelaria, located about 80 kilometers from Havana in the western province of Artemisa.

A pioneer in the use of this form of renewable energy in her town, she explains that with biogas “I spend less time cooking and pay less for electricity,” while the savings have enabled the gradual upgrade of her old wooden house to a more solid cinderblock structure.

In addition, “it doesn’t blacken the pots, like when I used firewood. And now I get my nails done and they last, as does my hair after I wash it,” says the environmental activist who raises awareness about caring for nature among elementary school children, in an interview with IPS at her farm.

She also specifies that greater support from her husband and two children in household chores, cleaning the yard and taking care of the animals on the family farm, “and greater awareness of environmental care,” are other benefits brought about by the use of this alternative energy.

In fact, it was her husband, Edegni Puche, who built the biodigester, for which the family put up part of the cost, while receiving contributions from the municipal government and the local pig farm company.

At the back of the house are the pigsties where they raise pigs, as well as fruit and ornamental trees, while on an adjoining lot Rojas is setting up an organoponic garden, where she will grow different vegetables.

As she pours the freshly brewed coffee, she says that “before, when the pens were cleaned, the manure, urine and waste from the pigs’ food accumulated in the open air, in a corner of the yard. It stank and there were a lot of flies.”

But in 2011 she learned about the potential of biodigesters, where organic matter is decomposed anaerobically by bacteria, but in a closed, non-polluting environment that provides gas as an energy resource.

Training workshops and advice from specialists from the Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (Cubasolar) and the Movement of Biogas Users (MUB) encouraged people to build biodigesters, Rojas said.

Founded in 1983, MUB brings together some 3,000 farmers who use the technology in this Caribbean island nation of 11.1 million inhabitants.

An incentive to expand biogas in Cuba was provided by the international Biomas-Cuba project, which began in 2009 and is due to finish this year, focused on helping to understand the importance of renewable energy sources in rural environments, the role of biodigesters on farms and in waste treatment systems on pig farms, among other objectives.

With funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude), the initiative is coordinated by the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station, a research center attached to the University of Matanzas in western Cuba, and involves related institutions in several of the country’s 15 provinces.

Mayra Rojas, her husband Edegni Puche and the couple’s youngest son stand in the backyard of their home. Family support for household chores, cleaning the yard and caring for the family’s animales, along with increased awareness of environmental care are other benefits that the biodigester has brought to the life of this rural Cuban woman. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Methane, from enemy to ally

Experts agree that the proper management of biological methane resulting from the decomposition of agricultural waste and livestock manure can generate value and be a cost-effective solution to prevent water and soil contamination.

As a potent greenhouse gas, methane has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, according to studies.

Therefore, its extraction and use as energy, especially in rural and peri-urban environments, can be a solution for reducing electricity consumption and for helping to combat climate change.

More than 90 percent of Cuba’s electricity generation is obtained by burning fossil fuels in aging thermoelectric plants and diesel and fuel oil engines, which pollute the air and contribute to global warming.

There are an estimated 5,000 biodigesters in Cuba, in a nation where a significant percentage of the 3.9 million homes use electricity as the main energy source for cooking and heating water for bathing.

“We have to make people more aware that the biodigester not only protects the environment and provides energy, but also brings savings, because the manure that is not used is money that is thrown away,” says Rojas.

It also provides biol and biosol, liquid effluent and sludge, respectively – end products of biogas technology that are rich in nutrients, ideal for fertilizing and restoring soils, “as well as watering and keeping plants green,” says Rojas as she proudly shows the varieties of orchids in her leafy yard.

Her biodigester has also proven its usefulness to the community, because when there are blackouts due to tropical cyclones that frequently affect the island, “neighbors have come to heat up water and cook their food,” she adds.

 

Mayra Rojas turns on biogas on her small stove to brew coffee in her home in the rural community of Carambola, in the municipality of Candelaria, in the western Cuban province of Artemisa. She says that with this clean energy source she spends less time cooking and saves electricity. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Obstacles

Rojas says that a major impediment to the spread of biodigesters in local communities and the country is the island’s economy, whose three-decade crisis was aggravated by the COVID pandemic and the tightening of the U.S. embargo.

The decapitalization of the main industries and financial problems are major factors in the low levels of production of cement, steel bars, sand and other elements used to make biodigesters, which are also necessary to reduce the high housing deficit and fix the portion of homes that are in poor condition.

The availability of manure is another stumbling block with a deficient pig and cattle herd, which will have to wait for the most recent government measures aimed at stimulating their growth and balancing it with domestic demand for meat to take effect.

“I received the support of the municipal government, the local pig company, plus the technical advice from Cubasolar” to build the six-cubic-meter Chinese-type fixed dome biodigester, explains Rojas. “But not all families have enough animals or can afford to build one.”

Perhaps that is why in Carambola it is only possible to find five biodigesters in a community of about 120 homes and 400 local residents, she added.

“Building a biodigester has become too expensive,” acknowledged Lázaro Vázquez, coordinator of Cubasolar in San Cristóbal, a municipality adjacent to Candelaria, who provided advice for the construction of the one on the Rojas farm, which is considered small-scale (up to 24 cubic meters per day).

Although costs depend on factors such as the size, type and thickness of the material, and even the characteristics of the site, specialists estimate that the average minimum cost for the construction of a small-scale biodigester cooker for household use is around 1,000 dollars, in a country with an average monthly salary of about 160 dollars at the official exchange rate.

Vázquez told IPS that low-interest loans should be made available, because “it will always be more economical to make biodigesters using domestic products.”

He pointed out that in Cuba “there is potential” to expand the network of biodigesters, which could reach 20,000 units, at least small-scale ones, according to conservative estimates by experts.

Two pigs stand in a pen built next to the biodigester in the backyard of the home of farmer Mayra Rojas. Experts agree that proper management of the biomethane resulting from the decomposition of agricultural waste and livestock manure can generate value and be a profitable solution to prevent water and soil contamination in Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Biogas, circular economy and local development

During a Jul. 21 session of Cuba’s single-chamber parliament, economic stimulus measures were announced, including an aim to increase the production and use of biofuels and biogas.

“Although it can be used in transportation…the main benefit of the biodigester is environmental and the efficiency of biogas lies in its final use,” José Antonio Guardado, a member of Cubasolar’s National Board of Directors and coordinator of MUB, explained to IPS.

In this regard, Guardado reflected that the direct use of biogas for cooking is much more efficient than if it is transformed into electrical energy or used to power a vehicle.

The head of MUB recommended “understanding the value of biogas technology in a comprehensive manner, taking advantage of all of its end products. This includes the supply of basic nutrients for soil fertilization that has a direct impact on food production.”

This would contribute to the closing of cycles of the circular economy, based on the principles of reduce, recycle, reuse, which promotes the use of green energies and diversification of production to achieve resilience.

“Evidently this final product, from biogas technology, will only be achievable locally, with the participation of all the actors of the Cuban economy, and social inclusion,” Guardado said.

Ministerial Order 395, issued in 2021 by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, stipulated that each of Cuba’s 168 municipalities must have a biogas development program and strategy, and must coordinate their management and implementation with their respective provinces.

The appointment of a government official to head the commission, to prioritize the allocation of materials to build biodigesters, seems to confirm the authorities’ decision to promote sustainable energy development from the local level.

A child looks after his younger sibling in Myanmar. Myanmar’s military junta is responsible for shocking violence against children caught up in the bloody aftermath of last February’s coup, a top independent Human Rights Council-appointed investigator said in June 2022. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reported that landmines and unexploded ordnance have maimed or killed children in many regions of the country, with the highest casualty rate in Shan State in northeast Myanmar. Credit: World Bank/Tom Cheatham

By Jan Servaes
BRUSSELS, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Myanmar has been embroiled in violence and civil unrest since the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February 2021. The initially widespread peaceful protests were crushed with deadly force by the military and police.

The nonviolent opposition has since turned into armed resistance and the country has slipped into what some UN experts characterize as civil war. More than 1 million people are displaced by the violence, according to the UN.

In the first six months after the Myanmar military coup, civilians have been killed, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, forcibly displaced and persecuted, as documented in a detailed report by Fortify Rights and the Schell Center for International Human Rights at the Yale Law School. The report argues that these acts amount to crimes against humanity.

Execution by Hanging

The executions of four political prisoners by the illegal military junta in Myanmar have also briefly disturbed some Western media and governments. Even the UN Security Council, including China and Russia, condemned the executions.

The G-7 also followed. They said the executions reflect “contempt” for the Myanmar people’s desire for democracy. These executions of four political prisoners, despite international appeals, set Myanmar back decades, it is said.

The brutal and inhumane nature of the military junta was reaffirmed when the families asked to collect the bodies after the hanging, the junta stated that they were not required by law to release the bodies.

“These horrific acts by a ruthless junta that has shown no qualms about waging war against the Myanmar people to bolster its power. The world community, and all ASEAN members in particular, should view these cold-blooded killings as yet another wake-up call about the true nature of the terror regime that Myanmar’s military is trying to impose on the country,” said Eva Sundari, former member of the Indonesian House of Representatives and board member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR).

Through spokesman General Zaw Min Tun, the junta boasted in its response about the junta’s justice system, claiming that the four detainees enjoyed “full rights” and were “allowed to defend themselves in court”.

The question is what this means for the rest of the world — including India, China, Russia and ASEAN — and their involvement with the junta? The seriousness of the situation is compounded by the fact that the Myanmar regime plans to execute 41 additional political prisoners, and given the current situation, Myanmar’s military regime has nothing to lose in the proceedings.

“When the principles of civilized societies are challenged, it is not only an act of resistance to the principles in question, but also a demonstration of contempt for civilization itself,” said Youk Chhang, a survivor of the killing fields of the war under the Khmer Rouge, in the authoritative The Diplomat.

Landmines

Amnesty International has accused Myanmar’s military of committing widespread atrocities in Kayah, in the eastern part of the country. These war crimes are probably crimes against humanity. “The use of landmines by the Myanmar military is abhorrent and cruel.

At a time when the world has overwhelmingly banned these inherently arbitrary weapons, the military has placed them in people’s gardens, homes and even stairwells, as well as around churches,” said Matt Wells, Amnesty International’s deputy director of Crisis Response, in a statement.

Amnesty’s report states that landmines have been deployed in at least 20 villages in Kayah. Earlier this month, the Karenni Human Rights Group also accused military forces of planting landmines in villages and settlements in Kayah state. Villagers whose livelihoods depend on working their fields live in perpetual fear due to the presence of these landmines.

Earlier, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, reported that landmines and unexploded ordnance have maimed or killed children in many regions of the country, with the highest casualty rate in Shan State in northeast Myanmar.

Beyond the immediate danger, planting landmines could prevent people fleeing violence from returning to their homes and fields, Amnesty International noted. “The military appears to be systematically laying landmines near where it is stationed and in areas from which it is withdrawing.”

Thailand

The Thai government appears increasingly complicit in the deadly reign of terror by the Myanmar junta. On June 30, a plane from Myanmar, identified as a Russian-made MiG-29, violated Thai airspace during a bombing raid in eastern Myanmar. The jet raid led to the evacuation of homes and classrooms in the Phop Phra district in Thailand’s Tak province.

Videos taken from Thai territory and shared on social media show Myanmar jets shelling and bombing villages in Karen state, where deadly fighting rages between junta forces and armies controlled by the ethnic Karen National Union and the anti-coup People’s Defense Forces (PDF). In response, the Thai Air Force dispatched two of its own fighter jets and the Thai embassy in Yangon has reportedly issued a diplomatic warning to the junta.

Commenting on the incident, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said in his typical nonchalant and authoritarian manner that the invasion of Thai sovereignty was “no problem”. The Thai government obviously wants to downplay and cover up the scale of the atrocities and humanitarian disasters unfolding in Myanmar.

Just a day before the Myanmar plane caused Thai schoolchildren to flee in panic, a Royal Thai Army delegation in Naypyidaw was shaking hands and exchanging gifts with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the genocidal junta. While Thai authorities appear to be promoting ‘business as usual’ with Min Aung Hlaing’s criminal regime, the people of Myanmar and border communities in both countries are paying the price.

The desperate situation for the citizens of Myanmar has been exacerbated by the actions of the Thai authorities. Forced to live in the shadows, unable to gain legal status and faced with dwindling aid and resources, Myanmar refugees in Thailand have reported extortion and arbitrary arrest and detention.

Thai foreign policy towards Myanmar has arguably moved from deliberate blindness to complicity in mass atrocities at this point, https://thediplomat.com/2022/07/thailands-myanmar-policy-is-costing-communities-on-both-sides-of-the-border/ said.

Judgment of the ICC in The Hague

On Friday, July 22, the International Court of Justice ruled definitively that The Gambia has jurisdiction to continue its case against Myanmar for the genocide of the Rohingya. This is the first time a Genocide Convention case has been accepted from a country with no direct connection to the alleged crimes – resulting in a vote against by Chinese judge Xue Hanqin.

She agreed with the junta’s second objection which stated that “the applicant must have some territorial, national or other form of connection with the alleged acts”.

All 16 judges unanimously rejected three of Myanmar’s objections. It is worth noting that while Myanmar is now represented by a junta-led legal team, the objections in question are the same as those filed under the National League for Democracy government in 2020.

So now that the matter has been given the green light, it will probably take a few more years before real progress can be made.

A ‘murder regime’

Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing has made Myanmar a murder republic, claims David Scott Mathieson in The Irrawaddy: “The execution of four dissidents was not necessary to know that the regime of the coup leader Supreme General Min Aung Hlaing now falls into the same category as the Iraq of Saddam Hussein or a Latin American dictatorship in the 1980s.

That should have been clear since the day of the coup, given his decade-long massacre during the so-called ‘transition.’ But Min Aung Hlaing’s Myanmar is a new category of repressive military junta: a murder republic.” He hopes that “Min Aung Hlaing and his clique will eventually face trial.

Ideally, it should be more humanistic than how the killers of the SAC (the junta) have treated the people of Myanmar. Stand against a wall in front of a firing squad. That is what tyrants should be afraid of.”

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries. He is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change
https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8

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Students in a BRAC primary school decorate the classroom with their own artwork. Credit: BRAC, Bangladesh

By Jaideep Prabhu
CAMBRIDGE, UK, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

The world needs tens of millions of new teachers by 2030, according to UNESCO – an order of magnitude that requires “frugal innovation.” I’ve studied frugal innovation for more than a decade, and it holds a vital key to this global challenge. A model created by BRAC in Bangladesh deserves special attention in this worldwide pursuit.

Frugal innovation is not innovation on the cheap. Rather it’s innovation that is designed from the outset to be affordable, scalable – and better performing than traditional models. That’s why it’s so important to achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

That goal requires that education be both universally available and able to meet quality standards. It must, therefore, be affordable, or it won’t be scalable globally.

I co-authored an early book on frugal innovation in emerging markets 10 years ago, titled Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth. It focuses on the private sector in emerging markets like India, China, and Bangladesh. Its thesis is that in such markets, innovation – the creation of new products and services – needs to be very different from innovation in the West, where it is synonymous with high technology, typically expensive and highly structured, and often elitist. In contrast, we argued that to reach large numbers of people on low incomes in informal economies of emerging markets, firms need products and services that are affordable and an approach that is frugal, flexible, and inclusive.

At that time, I was introduced for the first time to the founder of BRAC, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, and many other inspiring people at BRAC. From them I learned that the ideas we had written about in 2012 had been discovered and perfected by BRAC over four decades, and not for private profit but for social impact instead.

When BRAC started its work in education in 1985, poverty was widespread in Bangladesh. Forty percent of Bangladesh’s primary-aged children were not in school, and only 30 percent went on to complete primary education.

At that time, like elsewhere in the world, delivering education at scale in Bangladesh prioritized developing new infrastructure: building schools and hiring credentialed teachers to meet the demand. But building new schools in every community was impossible, and highly trained teachers were scarce.

Many children could not arrange to travel the distance to school because it was too far or unsafe – or they were needed at home during harvests. Children in ethnic minority groups faced additional obstacles, as did those with disabilities. Most teachers were men, which made parents unwilling to send young girls to school.

The key to BRAC’s approach to providing education at scale was not new infrastructure, but a new mindset. Indeed, the hallmarks of the BRAC approach were more or less exactly those we had written about in our book Jugaad Innovation: it was all about being frugal, flexible and inclusive. It was all about lateral thinking and working backwards from a deep understanding of the problem as faced by the people in the communities being served. And it was all about empowering those communities to be part of the solution.

BRAC’s eventual solution was ingenious. Instead of requiring students to go to distant schools, with all the related burdens and costs, BRAC brought schools to the students.

Instead of building expensive school infrastructure, BRAC took already existing infrastructure. It stitched together an extensive system of rented one-room schools in almost every community.

Instead of taking urban trained teachers, it trained local women to teach grades one through five, with up to 30 children maximum per classroom, instead of 50 to 60. Training non-formal women teachers from within the communities made scaling possible.

The outcomes were impressive. Almost 100 percent of students completed fifth grade, and BRAC students consistently did better than public school students on government tests. At its peak, this network consisted of 64,000 schools, and it has graduated 14 million students, mostly at the pre-primary and primary levels.

That is frugal innovation at its best: affordable, scalable, and better. It is community-based and locally led.

It is transformational on many levels: the number of children educated; the number of girls educated; the number of communities with schools; the number of women trained as teachers; the pipeline of students prepared for ongoing education.

Making significant progress toward achieving SDG 4 will require that kind of frugal innovation. BRAC is pointing the way.

The author is the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Business and Enterprise at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge in England.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Colonial-style currency board arrangements have enabled continuing imperialist exploitation decades after the end of formal colonial rule. Such neo-colonial monetary systems persist despite modest reforms.

In 2019, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio accused France of using currency arrangements to “exploit” its former African colonies, “impoverishing Africa” and causing refugees to “leave and then die in the sea or arrive on our coasts”.

Anis Chowdhury

Neo-colonial CFA
As France ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement on 26 December 1945, it established the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone, enabling France to update pre-war colonial monetary arrangements.

The ostensible intent of the ‘Franc of the French Colonies of Africa’ (FCFA) was to cushion France’s colonies from the drastic French franc (FF) devaluation required to peg its value to the US dollar, as agreed at Bretton Woods.

Then French finance minister René Pleven claimed, “In a show of her generosity and selflessness, metropolitan France, wishing not to impose on her faraway daughters the consequences of her own poverty, is setting different exchange rates for their currency”.

In December 1958, the CFA franc became the ‘Franc of the Communauté Financière Africaine’ (still FCFA). In 1960, President Charles de Gaulle made CFA membership a pre-condition for decolonization in French West and Central Africa.

In recent years, the CFA has involved 14 mainly Francophone sub-Saharan African countries in two currency unions, both using the FCFA: the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC).

UEMOA comprises Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, while CEMAC includes Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

France’s ‘incontestable advantages’
As de Gaulle’s finance minister, (later President) Valéry Giscard d’Estaing correctly complained about the US dollar’s “exorbitant privilege”. But he seemed blissfully ignorant of the French Socio-Economic Council’s 1970 report on the CFA’s “incontestable advantages for France”.

First, France could pay for imports from CFA countries with its own currency, saving foreign exchange for other international obligations. This became especially advantageous when the FF was weak and unstable.

Second, the French Treasury often paid negative real interest rates for CFA reserves. Thus, CFA countries have been paying it to hold their foreign reserves! Investment income accruing is deployed as French aid to CFA countries in the form of loans to be repaid with interest!

But CFA countries themselves cannot use their own reserves as collateral for credit as they are held by the French Treasury. Thus, during the global financial crisis, they had to borrow, mainly from France, at commercial rates.

Third, by supplying FCFA at the fixed rate, seigniorage – the difference between the cost of issuing currency and its face value – effectively accrued to France and the European Central Bank.

For every euro so deposited, the FCFA equivalent is issued and made available to the depositing country. When France joined the euro in 1999, one euro fetched 6.55957 FFs, or 655.957 FCFA.

Fourth, French companies operating in the CFA have been able to freely repatriate funds without incurring any foreign exchange risk.

CFA economies have thus effectively ceded monetary sovereignty to the French Treasury. Unsurprisingly, France’s monetary control has served its own, not CFA members’ economic interests.

CFA elites, French patrons
The CFA not only benefits France, but also elites in CFA countries. Their appetite for faux French lifestyles explains their preference for overvalued exchange rates.

The CFA also facilitates financial outflows, no matter how illicitly acquired, as long as they do not challenge the neo-colonial status quo. For decades, all manner of French governments have consistently backed these elites, often supporting despotic rule.

When its interests in Africa have been threatened, France has unilaterally deployed combat troops and superior armaments, always insisting on its ‘legitimate’ right to do so.

France is alleged to be behind military coups and even assassinations of prominent personalities critical of its interests, policies and stratagems. On 13 January 1963, only two days after issuing its own currency, Togo President Sylvanus Olympio was killed in a coup.

In 1968, six years after withdrawing Mali from the CFA, its independence leader and first President, Modibo Keita was ousted in a coup after trying to develop its economy along more independent and progressive lines.

Plus ça change, plus la même chose
When the CFA was first created in 1945, the colonies deposited 100% of their foreign exchange reserves in a special French Treasury ‘operating account’. This requirement was reduced to 65% from 1973 to 2005, and then to 50%, plus an additional 20% for daily foreign currency transactions or “financial liabilities”.

Thus, CFA states are still deprived of most of their foreign exchange earnings, retaining only 30%! Meanwhile, Banque de France holds 90% of CFA gold reserves, making it the world’s fourth largest holder of gold reserves.

The FCFA arrangement was supposed to end for UEMOA countries from 20 May 2020. However, the proposed West African ‘eco’ currency is still not yet in circulation, while the transfer of euro reserves from the French Treasury to the West African Central Bank has yet to happen.

While only six former French colonies in Central Africa formally remain in the CFA, the reform is less than meets the eye. France remains UEMOA’s ‘financial guarantor’, appointing an ‘independent’ member to its central bank board.

After its creation, FCFA parity was fixed at 50 to one FF. On 12 January 1994, the FCFA was devalued by half, as demanded by the International Monetary Fund and supported by France, following commodity price slumps and related foreign exchange problems.

The devaluation shocked CFA economies as the FCFA’s value fell by 50% overnight! This pushed up the prices of imported goods, especially food, while increasing the FF’s purchasing power.

Meanwhile, eight FF devaluations between 1948 and 1986 against the dollar and gold have also meant great losses to the value of CFA reserves. The claim that CFA countries have benefitted from anchoring the FCFA to a supposedly stable FF has been undermined by its 70% cumulative devaluation over this period!

No sovereignty, no development
Socialist Party President François Mitterrand was no less neo-colonial. He warned France would become irrelevant in the 21st century without controlling Africa.

In 2008, ex-President Jacques Chirac reportedly said, “We have to be honest and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent. Without Africa, France will slide down [to] the rank of a Third World power.”

Claiming to be from a different generation, President Emmanuel Macron promised to end neo-colonial arrangements. Yet, at the 2017 G20 Summit, he patronizingly declared Africa’s problem “civilizational”.

Such neo-colonial condescension refuses to acknowledge France’s continued exploitation of its West and Central African colonies. Clearly, CFA currency arrangements have limited their economic policy space and progress.

Colonial style exploitation has thus continued in Africa long after decolonization. Unsurprisingly, Chad President Idriss Deby declared, “we must have the courage to say there is a cord preventing development in Africa that must be severed”.

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A man is tested for HIV at a health centre in Odienné, Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: UNICEF/Frank Dejongh

By Suki Beavers
MONTREAL, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

This week, the global HIV response community is gathering in Montreal to address the crisis of stalling progress that is putting millions of people in danger.

Delegates here are clear on two things: first, the world is not on track to end AIDS, second, the world can still get on track and end AIDS as a public health crisis by 2030, but only if leaders are bold. This includes removing laws which are perpetuating the pandemic.

Punitive and criminalizing approaches to law have been catastrophic for the AIDS response. They need urgently to be repealed.

When people are targeted by punitive laws, they fear the government, and many hide from it. And this lack of trust spills quickly over into responding to a pandemic: a government that proposes to lock a person up one day is unlikely to be trusted when it sends them to an HIV test the next. When people fear public shaming, many try not to be seen. Too often, this means people miss out on HIV prevention, treatment, and care.

The evidence is clear: punitive laws that push people into the shadows are continuing to drive HIV.

In countries that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual activity, the evidence is clear that the risk of acquiring HIV is higher, access to HIV testing is lower and populations remain hidden, underground.

We know that men who have sex with men living in countries where they are not criminalized are half as likely to be living with HIV compared to countries where they are criminalized, and eight times less likely to be living with HIV compared to countries with extreme forms of criminalization.

Gay men and other men who have sex with men are three times more likely to know their HIV status if they live in a country that does not criminalize same-sex sexual behaviour. Population size estimates for gay men and other men who have sex with men are also more likely to be implausibly low where such criminal laws exist.

So too, laws which criminalize gender identity, HIV status, drug use, and sex work, discourage and obstruct people from accessing vital health services: the costs of these laws remaining on statute books would include millions of lives lost and the perpetuation of the AIDS pandemic.

The laws described above that criminalize same-sex sexual conduct have also been utilized to target trans people in many countries, alongside laws prohibiting cross-dressing or “impersonating the opposite sex” as well as petty offence laws.

The use of these criminal laws perpetuates transphobia, discrimination, hate crimes, police abuse, torture, ill-treatment and family and community violence. It obstructs trans people from access to HIV prevention, treatment and care.

In 36% of countries with available data, more than 10% of transgender people reported avoiding healthcare in the last 12 months due to stigma and discrimination. Studies show that transgender people who have experienced stigma in health care settings are three times more likely to avoid health care than transgender people who have not experienced stigma.

Criminalization of HIV non-disclosure, exposure or transmission undermines effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support because fear of prosecution discourages people from seeking testing and treatment, and deters people living with HIV – and those most at risk of HIV infection – from talking openly to their medical providers, disclosing their HIV status or accessing available treatment services.

Criminalization of drug possession for personal use propels new HIV cases. The presence of criminal laws and associated enforcement has been associated with higher rates of needle sharing, increased HIV risk behaviours, reduced access to HIV services and increased prevalence of HIV.

Where sex work is criminalized, HIV rates are seven times higher than in countries where it is partially legalized. In jurisdictions with enabling legal environments, prevalence of HIV among sex workers is similar to the rest of the population, indicating it is not involvement in sex work that creates HIV risk, but the lack of an environment that enables sex workers to protect their health and wellbeing.

Criminal laws prevent sex workers from being able to screen clients, negotiate condom use, or access the protection of law enforcement if they are in danger of, or experience, physical and sexual violence. Fear of stigma or arrest can also prevent sex workers from being able to access HIV services on an equal basis with others.

Studies have long shown that decriminalization of sex work could avert between 33-46% of new HIV infections among sex workers and their partners.

The criminal law is one of the harshest tools that governments wield, and one of the most blunt. Punitive approaches are harm where help is needed. They ferment stigma, fear and hatred and are perpetuating a health disaster.

We have powerful reasons to hope, however, that with a strong push, punitive approaches to HIV can end.

We have the high-level political declaration agreed last year at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AIDS. One of the critical commitments that countries made was to reform laws that create barriers to accessing HIV services or increase stigma and discrimination, in order to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

We have support available on how to most effectively reform laws so they support rather than undermine the HIV response. The Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate all forms of HIV Related Stigma and Discrimination, is bringing together governments, civil society and the United Nations, to exchange learning on what works.

One key lesson is that for law reform to have maximum success, changes should be shaped by the communities most affected, from the start through to implementation.

We are seeing that law reform is not only possible, it is happening across all continents. In recent years sparked, by court judgements and law reform efforts, punitive laws are continuing to disappear.

Last year the Bhutanese Parliament passed a reform which ended the criminalization of same sex relationships, Botswana’s Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that decriminalized same-sex relationships, and Angola began implementing their new criminal code which no longer criminalizes same-sex relationships.

This year already both Belgium and Victoria, Australia have removed laws criminalizing sex work, and Zimbabwe has decriminalized HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission.

We have the evidence of what works. It is no coincidence that the government of New South Wales, Australia, a jurisdiction that does not criminalize sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV status, or sex work, recently announced it is on track to eliminate new HIV infections by 2025.

Decriminalization is happening, but it is too slow. In 2022, of the countries reporting to UNAIDS: 14% criminalize gender expression, 36% criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations, 62% criminalize HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission, 90% criminalize possession of drugs for personal use and all reporting countries criminalize some aspect of sex work.

In 2021, 70% of new HIV infections were among groups who are affected by these laws. Eastern Europe and central Asia, Middle East and North Africa and Latin America have all seen increases in annual HIV infections over several years.

In Asia and the Pacific UNAIDS data now shows new HIV infections are rising where they had been falling. Without movement on societal enablers, and on criminal laws in particular, we will struggle to reverse this trend, let alone end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

We can end AIDS, but to do so we must end the punitive laws perpetuating the pandemic. Now.

Suki Beavers is UNAIDS Director of the Equality and Rights for All Global Practice.

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Excerpt:

The 24th International AIDS Conference is taking place in Montreal, July 29 to August 2.

Farmers in Bangladesh would welcome an early warning system that does not rely on smartphones. Authorities and devising an SMS service after devastating floods killed many people and destroyed harvests. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Aug 1 2022 (IPS)

Ziaur Rahman, a farmer of Pakuar Char under Sariakandi Upazila in Bogura, cultivated jute on a newly emerged river island (char) in the Brahmaputra River, but this year’s flood washed away his crop.

“Flood is very common in the char areas during the monsoon. Despite that, I sowed jute seeds on the char. This year, the flood hit our locality too early, damaging my jute field,” he said.

Ziaur said his jute field was almost mature and could have been harvested within a couple of weeks, but the sudden deluge damaged it.

“I did not get flood forecast in time, and that was why I failed to harvest jutes, incurring a heavy loss this year,” he said.

Like Zillur, many farmers lost their crops to the devastating flood that swept Bangladesh’s northeast and northwestern regions in June this year.

According to Bangladesh Agriculture Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque, floods damaged Aus (a type of rice) paddies of around 56,000 hectares across the country this year.

The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) under Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) issues daily flood bulletins and warnings, but the people living in remote and vulnerable areas hardly benefit because they do not have the proper technology.

Under the digital flood forecasting and warning system introduced in 2021, the FFWC issues flood warnings to the people living in flood-prone areas through ‘Google push notifications’ three days to three hours before a flood hits.

To receive flood warnings, people need an android mobile phone. The notifications are sent to these devices through a Google alert between three days and three hours before the onset of a flood, depending on the system’s predictive capacity.

BWDB, in collaboration with tech-giant Google and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, developed the system, which is now functional in the 55 districts of the country.

Sarder Udoy Raihan, an FFWC sub-divisional engineer, said the BWBD has available data on floods and sends those to Google.

Google improved flood mapping using its topographical data and sends ‘push flood notifications’ to those living in flood-prone areas.

While this system has been helpful, many people living in remote chars and flood-prone areas do not have access to smartphones and the internet, so they don’t receive digital flood warnings.

BWDB has decided to launch a toll-free SMS service containing flood-related messages and information, said officials at BWDB.

The BWDB, a2i, Google, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have already started a collaboration to reach the flood warnings and information at the doorsteps of the people living in the country’s flood-prone areas through toll-free mobile SMS service. This will enable them to take measures to protect their properties before a flood hits.

FFWC executive engineer Arifuzzaman Bhuyan said talks continue with the stakeholders concerned, including Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), to introduce the SMS service.

“Introduction of the SMS flood alert service depends on the BTRC as there is an issue of cost involvement,” he said, hoping that the BWDB would be able to launch the SMS service in the next season.

Once the toll-free SMS service is introduced, mobile phone users living in flood zones will be identified using their cellphone tower ping, and SMS will be sent to them containing information on the rise or fall of river water level, severity of flood and details of the nearest shelter.

Raihan said it would be possible to send around 36 million SMS per year through mobile phone operators if flood warnings could be sent to people through SMS.

Sardar Mohammad Shah-Newaz, a former director of Flood Division at Dhaka-based think tank, Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), said if the flood forecast were not appropriately disseminated to those living in flood-prone areas, it wouldn’t help.

“Almost all people of the country use mobile phones. If the flood warnings could reach the people living in flood-prone zones through toll-free mobile SMS, they would be able to take precautionary measures to save their properties and minimise their loss and damage to this end,” he said.

Suggesting automation of the flood forecasting system in Bangladesh, Shah-Newaz said the BWDB could introduce the SMS service, and it should launch the service as soon as possible.

Deluge is a common phenomenon in Bangladesh. During every monsoon, flood hits different parts of the country, causing a huge loss of lives and assets.

Due to heavy precipitation upstream in India’s northeast states, Bangladesh experienced devastating floods in its northwestern districts and Sylhet division, leaving millions of people stranded and triggering a humanitarian crisis.

According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the death toll from this year’s floods has reached 123 in the country. The total deaths were recorded from May 17 to July 17 in 2022.

Of the total deceased, 69 people died in Sylhet, while 41 in Mymensingh, 12 in Rangpur and one in Dhaka.

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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder of BRAC and “one of the unsung heroes of modern times,” according to Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, authorized his own biography before dying of brain cancer in 2019. Author Scott MacMillan wrote Hope Over Fate based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Abed and his friends, family and co-workers. Credit: courtesy of BRAC

By Scott MacMillan
Redding Conn, USA, Aug 1 2022 (IPS)

About seven years ago, I started working on a project with Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder of BRAC. It was originally supposed to be a memoir: the story of Abed, the mild-mannered accountant who would rid the world of poverty, as told by the man himself. I was privileged to be Abed’s speechwriter for the last several years of his life, and I would sit for hours listening to stories from his remarkable life: of his boyhood in British India, his love life in London in the 1960s, his three marriages, and how, in 1972, with a few thousand pounds from the sale of his flat in Camden, he launched a small nonprofit organization to aid refugees, originally called the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee. Many people would go on to call BRAC, which Abed led until his death in 2019, the world’s most effective anti-poverty organization.

That seemed like a story worth telling in full, and after some coaxing, Abed gave me permission to begin ghostwriting his autobiography. He was an exceptionally private person, however, and cringed at anything with a whiff of self-promotion. “You have me pontificating!” he once scolded me after an early draft of one speech.

I was about halfway done with his memoir when he told me to stop. The story, as I had written it, did not feel right coming from him. He much preferred to let BRAC’s work speak for itself—which may explain why so few people outside his native Bangladesh knew who he was or the magnitude of what he had accomplished.

Abed eventually came around to the idea that his story needed to be told by someone, even if it would not ultimately be him. He asked that I use the material I had gathered to write the book myself, in my own words—which I did, even knowing that many of those words would fall short of the task. The book, Hope Over Fate: Fazle Hasan Abed and the Science of Ending Global Poverty, is released today by Rowman & Littlefield.

An accountant’s story

Abed told stories, but he was not a good storyteller in the typical sense. He did not sprinkle his speeches with anecdotes of the “ordinary” people he had met, as politicians sometimes do. He was an accountant, and for him, numbers told stories.

So here is the story he would tell of his native Bangladesh—no names or faces, just a chorus of statistics. At the moment of its independence in 1971, Bangladesh was the world’s second-poorest country, with a per capita GDP of less than $100, a nation of sixty-six million living on a patch of flood-prone land the size of Iowa. One in four children died before their fifth birthday. As late as 1990, the country still had one of the highest maternal mortality rates, at 574 per 100,000.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in his later years, visiting a BRAC school. Credit: courtesy of BRAC

In the 1990s, however, things began to change, rapidly and almost miraculously. Quality of life improved at a historically unprecedented rate. By 2013, under-five mortality had plummeted to just 40 per 1,000 live birthdays; maternal mortality had dropped similarly. These and other changes constituted “some of the biggest gains in the basic condition of people’s lives ever seen anywhere,” according to The Economist.

People standing up for themselves

What happened? Abed’s work had much to do with it. BRAC trained and mobilized people, giving them a sense of self-worth that many had never felt before. They began standing up for themselves against landlords, corrupt government officials, and imams opposed to women’s rights. Often, he found what people really needed was hope—a sense that, with a modicum of outside help, their fate could be in their own hands.

His methods were varied and novel. Incentive-based training gave health information to mothers so they could save their own children’s lives. Women took small loans from BRAC to buy cows and handlooms, the first time they had owned anything of substance. Since they had nowhere to sell the milk and fabric they produced, Abed built up the dairy and textile industries by launching enterprises that bought the women’s goods. These enterprises, owned by BRAC, turned out to be profitable, so he plowed the money back into the poverty programs. Abed also launched fifty thousand schools, plus a commercial bank and a university. BRAC now likely reaches more than one hundred million people in about a dozen countries in Africa and Asia. No other nonprofit or social enterprise has reached such scale.

Yet Abed was no ascetic, self-abnegating Gandhi. He left the office at a reasonable hour and enjoyed coming home to the comforts of domestic life, to the sound of family and the warm smell of spices from the kitchen. Twice a widower, he told me of his loneliness between his marriages, and how, despite his preoccupation with work, he found it hard to return to an empty house.

The science of hope

How, then, did he do it? Remarkably, Abed would sometimes say that BRAC had done relatively little to help Bangladesh rise from the ranks of one of the poorest nations on earth. It merely created the enabling conditions: it was the poor themselves, especially women, who worked tirelessly, once those conditions were in place, to change the conditions of their lives.

I suspect this is why he thought his own story did not deserve so much attention, especially compared to the millions of women who had long labored on the fringes of society, who would one day, in his words, “be their own actors in history, and write their own stories of triumph over adversity.”

So this is the biography of a man, yes, but it is also the biography of an idea—the idea that hope itself has the power to overcome poverty. Near the end of his life, Abed spoke of “the science of hope”—the study and practice of giving people a sense of control over their own lives. “For too long, people thought poverty was something ordained by a higher power, as immutable as the sun and the moon,” he wrote in 2018. His life’s mission was to put that myth to rest, which is why the story of Abed is the story of the triumph of hope over fate.

Scott MacMillan is the author of the Hope Over Fate: Fazle Hasan Abed and the Science of Ending Global Poverty (Rowman & Littlefield), from which this is adapted.
This excerpt is adapted by permission of the publisher. The book is available now from major retailers.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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