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Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi addresses the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Despite setbacks, he is optimistic that child labour can be abolished. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 16 2022 (IPS)

A mere 35 billion US dollars per annum – equivalent to 10 days of military spending – would ensure all children in all countries benefit from social protection, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi told the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

He said this was a small price to pay considering the catastrophic consequences of the increase in child labour since 2016, after several years of decline in child labour numbers.

An estimated 160 000 million kids are child labourers, and unless there is a drastic reversal, another 9 million are expected to join their ranks.

Satyarthi was among a distinguished group of panellists on setting global priorities for eliminating child labour. The panel included International Labour Organisation(ILO) DG Guy Ryder, South African Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi, James Quincey, CEO of Coca Cola,  Alliance 8.7 chairperson Anousheh Karver and European Union Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen.

The panel discussed child labour in the context of decent work deficits and youth employment. It identified pressing global challenges and priorities for the international community.

Satyarthi said the 35 million US dollars was far from a big ask. Nor was the 22 billion US dollars needed to ensure education for all children. He said this was the equivalent of what people in the US spent on tobacco over six days.

Satyarthi said it was a travesty that the G7, the world’s wealthiest countries, had never debated child labour – something he intends to change.

The panellists attributed the increase in child labour to several factors, including lack of political will, lack of interest from rich countries and embedded cultural and economic factors.

Asked how he remained optimistic in light of the dismal picture of growing child labour rates. Satyarthi told IPS that having been in the trenches for 40 years, he had seen and been happy to see a decline in child labour until 2016 – when the problem began escalating again.

“I strongly believe in freedom of human beings. The world will slowly move towards a more compassionate society, sometimes faster, sometimes slower,” he said.

Satyarthi, together with organisations like the ILO, succeeded in putting the issue of child labour on the international agenda. Through his foundation in collaboration with other NGOs, he got the world to take note of this hidden scourge.

He is convinced that child labour will be eliminated despite the recent setbacks.

“I am hopeful because there was no ILO programme when I started 40 years ago. Child labour was not recognised as a problem, but slowly, it is being realised that it’s wrong and evil – even a crime. So, 40 years isn’t a big tenure in the history of human beings. This scourge has been there for centuries.”

Yet he recognises the need for urgency to roll back the escalation of child labour.

“The next ten years are even more important because now we have the means, we have power, technology, and we know the solution. The only thing we need is a strong political will but also social will,” Satyarthi said. “We have to speed it up and bring back the hope. Bring back the optimism. The issue is a priority, and that’s why we are calling on markets to globalise compassion. There are many things to divide us, but there’s one thing we all agree on: the well-being of our children.”

Satyarthi said to meet the SDG deadline of 2025, he and other Nobel laureates and world leaders are pushing hard to ensure that child labour starts declining again.

“We as a group of Nobel laureates and world leaders are working on two fronts. One is a fair share for children on budgetary allocations and policies,” he said.

The group engaged with governments to ensure that children received a fair share of the budget and resources.

Then they are pushing governments on social protection, which he believes in demystifying.

“We have seen in different countries, social protection – helping through school feeding schemes, employment programmes and conditional grant programmes to ensure that children can go to school, with proven success in bringing down child labour.”

The Nobel laureate knocked on the doors of the leaders of wealthy nations.

“I have been talking to leaders of rich countries to address the problem of post-pandemic economic meltdown. We have to work for social protection for marginalised people in low-income countries and focus on children, education, health, and protection. That is not a big investment compared to what we are going to lose – a whole generation.”

Satyarthi said he was heartened by the response to their efforts to motivate governments and the private sector to join the fight against child labour.

“I have been optimistic to say many of the governments and EU leaders are not only listening – they are talking about it. Yesterday only, I was so happy that President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke very explicitly on this issue, and almost everyone was talking about this issue. But it took several months, several years to get there.”

And Satyarthi is not going to stop soon. With the Laureates and Leaders For Children project, he and fellow laureates are determined the world sits up and finds the will to ensure every child can experience a childhood.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is part of a series of stories published by IPS during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban. 

 

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• Ivorian Cocoa Farmers Are Beating a System To Reduce Child Labour: Here’s How

Excerpt:

"I have been talking to leaders of rich countries to address the problem of post-pandemic economic meltdown. We have to work for social protection for marginalised people in low-income countries and focus on children, education, health, and protection. That is not a big investment compared to what we are going to lose – a whole generation.” - Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi

Lacombe (right), from Haiti, and Ricaela, a Dominican who recently arrived in Chile, pose at the stall where they work for a Chilean entrepreneur at a popular outdoor Sunday market in Arrieta, in Peñalolén, in eastern Santiago. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, May 16 2022 (IPS)

The pressure of the influx of migrants, especially Venezuelans, has reached a critical level in northern Chile, and is felt as far as the capital itself, forcing the government that took office in March to create a special interministerial group this month to propose solutions that respect their human rights.

The first problem is that the number of undocumented migrants is unknown, since in recent years thousands have entered the country unregistered, especially through Colchane, a small town in the Andes highlands in the northeast bordering Bolivia.

Jorgelis, a 23-year-old Venezuelan woman, crossed the border into Chile there last December.

“It was the longest 11 days of my entire life,” she told IPS, her face darkening as she remembered the journey from Caracas to Colchane.

Today she sells fruit at a stand on Santiago’s main avenue, Alameda, on the corner of Santa Lucía street outside the subway station, just five blocks from La Moneda palace, seat of the presidency, where leftist President Gabriel Boric, 36, has been governing since Mar. 11.

Jorgelis’ 33-year-old cousin Engelin arrived two months ago “after a 10-day journey that at one point took us though the middle of the desert.

“I left behind two daughters in Venezuela, 15 and five years old,” she said. “That is a very strong pain in my heart.” And she complained about the cold, pointing out that in tropical Caracas the temperature only drops – and much less than in Chile – in December and January.

Engelin lives in a Haitian camp in the municipality of Maipú, on the west side of Santiago, and sells fruit at a stand outside the Metro República subway stop, also on Alameda avenue.

Dubarly Lorvandal, 23, arrived from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, when he was 18 years old, after studying in high school. He does not have a visa and works at a vegetable stand in an open-air market in Arrieta, in eastern Santiago.

Relaxed entrance policies that were introduced in 2010 and later eliminated turned Chile into a popular destination for Haitians fleeing a cocktail of natural and economic tragedies.

“I worked at the beginning for a month laying cables, but now I’m a papero (potato seller). Everyone loves me at this market,” he says with a smile.

Lacombe also came from Haiti six years ago and works alongside Ricaela, who arrived six months ago from the Dominican Republic. The two undocumented migrants sell vegetables at a stand in the Arrieta market. Lacombe says he is happy.

Jorgelis, Engelin, Dubarly, Lacombe and Ricaela are all part of the long line of at least half a million people waiting to regularize their legal status in Chile, a long narrow country of 19.4 million inhabitants that stretches between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

According to the latest official figures on migration in Chile, from 2020, there were 1,462,103 foreign nationals in the country, including 448,138 migrants from Venezuela, which since 2013 has experienced a massive exodus of more than six million people, a good part of whom are scattered throughout neighboring Latin American countries.

But these statistics do not include migrants who remain undocumented and whose real number the organizations working with immigrants prefer not to divulge.

Venezuelan immigrants Edgar. Engelin and Jorgelis sell fruit at a street stall on Alameda Avenue, near the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

A shaky ship

“Over the last three years, 90 percent of people entering have come through unauthorized crossings,” said Macarena Rodríguez, chair of the board of directors of the Catholic Jesuit Migrant Service.

“Since 2020 the border has been closed, and before that the government required a visa (acquired in their countries of origin) for Haitians and Venezuelans. When you restrict regular entry, irregular entry increases,” Rodríguez, the head of one of the country’s main immigrant-serving organizations, told IPS.

“There is a huge number of people who are not counted, who have no papers and cannot work (legally). And their children have irregular migratory status. And they pay five times more in rent (on average) for precarious housing,” she said, listing some of the problems faced by undocumented migrants.

Luis Eduardo Thayer, who took office in March as director of the National Migration Service, is part of the new Interministerial Commission expanded to include civil organizations, created on May 6 by the government to seek solutions to a growing social problem that has given rise to expressions of xenophobia.

President Boric stated that the solution must include other countries of origin or transit of migrants, although there are no details yet as to what this eventual participation would look like.

The commission seeks to “address with a sense of urgency and responsibility the challenges and opportunities posed by migration in different territories,” said Minister of the Interior and Public Security Izkia Siches.

The new authorities do not want a repeat of the measures taken by the government of Boric’s right-wing predecessor Sebastián Piñera, which loaded dozens of migrants dressed head-to-toe in white sanitary protective gear onto airplanes and deported them. The widely published photos were aimed at dissuading migrants from coming to Chile and at reassuring worried Chileans.

Thayer said the National Migration Service “is a ship that is now in the process of stabilization and we are taking the necessary internal measures so that we can fulfill our mandate.”

“Today we have almost 500,000 pending applications for visas, renewals, definitive stays, refugee applications and naturalizations,” he said.

The head of migration proposed moving towards “a rational migration policy.”

Workers at the Chevery Bakan, a Venezuelan restaurant in the La Reina district in Santiago, Chile that employs nine Venezuelan immigrants, six of whom have visas. “We all do everything, working in the kitchen or serving customers. And I work hard, I haven’t had a vacation for three years,” says Yulkidiz Pernia, the Venezuelan owner. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Pressure cooker

According to Rodríguez, in Chile “today we have a pressure cooker with many people having to take informal jobs or even to rent an identity to sign up for an application and be able to work.

“This situation must be urgently addressed,” she said. “That means recognizing them, identifying them, documenting them, issuing visas, prioritizing the situation of children and pregnant women and thus try to put things in order.”

She also cited “the impact on the communities where these people arrive, where the impression is socially complex. They are described as criminals, generating among the local population the sensation that migration is bad.”

Yulkidiz Pernia, 38, a publicist from Caracas, comes from a different generation of migrants, as she arrived six years ago with her son and got a visa without any problems, “although it took seven months.”

Today she has a restaurant that serves Venezuelan food, Chevery Bakan, which employs nine other Venezuelans, six of whom have legal documents.

“I have not done badly. I miss the rest of my family, uncles and aunts. Several of them have died and we couldn’t be there,” Yulkidiz said. “In Chile I have found a warm welcome. The cases of xenophobia are isolated.”

But the study “Immigrants and Work in Chile”, by the National Center for Migration Studies at the University of Talca, found that 51.1 percent of the migrants surveyed said that being a foreigner has had a negative influence on their labor integration in Chile and 51.4 percent said that at work many people have stereotypes about them and treat them accordingly.

Dubarly, a Haitian immigrant, lives alone, but he gets together with cousins and other Haitian friends to eat because “it’s hard to get home and have to do everything yourself.” At the food market in Santiago, Chile where he works, he is happy because he feels loved and enjoys working as a vendor. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Colchane is no longer Colchane

Colchane, a town with only 1,500 permanent residents, is the gateway for irregular migration from Bolivia, a preferred transit route after arrival through the airports was closed. The town’s mayor, Javier García Choque, fears that the culture of the Aymara indigenous people, the main native group in the area, will disappear due to the exodus of local inhabitants after the massive influx of foreigners.

“Migrants provide data on their identity, but there is no mechanism for verifying whether they are who they say they are,” the mayor said on a visit to Santiago.

According to García Choque “many migrants come with family members, with terminally ill people. They come in search of opportunities. But some people are violent and destroy public spaces or occupy private homes, which has led many to build fences around their yards, which are not typical of Aymara culture.”

“The Aymara people are disappearing, they are vulnerable and we cling to our cultural identity to preserve it. This migratory phenomenon has been disproportionate in quantity and violence,” he said, demanding greater security in his municipality.

“The government’s effort to respect the human rights of migrants is necessary, but it is also important to respect the rights of indigenous peoples,” said the mayor.

Patricia Rojas, of the Venezuelan Association in Chile, admits that migration management under the restrictive law imposed by Piñera “has had a negative impact on peaceful coexistence, especially in the cities and northern regions.

“We all have to make an effort to reverse this, so that the public perception of migration is not the negative one we are currently experiencing, because this will not benefit Chilean society in any way,” she said.

Jaime Tocornal, vicar of the Catholic Social Pastoral in Santiago, told IPS that in Colchane “these poor people arrive hungry and cold, completely disoriented. At an altitude of 3,600 meters they arrive with altitude sickness and hope to cross the border and get to Santiago, only to realize that they still have 1,500 kilometers to go.”

“The situation is dramatic. The landscape is wonderful, like in the rest of the highlands, full of volcanoes and running water up in the mountains. But the water, which might be very beautiful, creates mud that sticks to the shoes of people crossing the streams and they slip and fall when they try to drink the water,” he said.

Twenty-seven people died this year, seven of them between January and March 2022, in their attempt to enter Chile, according to figures from the Chilean office of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Archbishopric of Santiago.

The documentary “Hope Without Borders” says the dead could number in the hundreds in recent years, and “many bodies have been abandoned in different desert or wooded areas crossed by migrants coming from Venezuela to Chile,” often at least partially on foot.

García Choque said that despite the state of emergency decreed by Piñera to bring in the military to control the northern border zone, “the flow of migrants did not cease.”

“It changed the way they came in, but it forced the migrants into situations where it was more complex to rescue them: the coyotes (human traffickers) moved them to remote areas, which put their lives and health at risk,” he said.

The 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is taking place in Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire, from 9 to 20 May 2022. The theme: “Land, Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity.” “We are faced with a crucial choice,” Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told participants: “We can either reap the benefits of land restoration now or continue on the disastrous path that has led us to the triple planetary crisis of climate, biodiversity and pollution”

By Alexander Müller and Jes Weigelt
BERLIN, May 16 2022 (IPS)

The landmark land tenure decision by parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 2019 offers a blueprint for upcoming climate negotiations in Sharm El Sheikh in November.

The ongoing UNCCD COP15 conference in Abidjan (May 9-20) is taking necessary next steps to guide countries on how to embed land rights within national implementation processes.

As the first of the three Rio Conventions (addressing climate, biodiversity and desertification respectively) to explicitly refer to land tenure as a critical enabler for the transition to more sustainable pathways, this meeting could advance the landmark land tenure decision by proposing guidelines to safeguard legitimate land rights, argues Berlin-based think tank TMG Research.

According to the UNCCD’s recently published Global Land Outlook, roughly $44 trillion of economic output (more than half of global GDP) is moderately or highly reliant on natural capital.

Yet this natural resource base is under intense pressure from changing land use patterns and the accelerated impacts of climate change. This already has huge consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable communities, who depend on natural resources for their survival, and even more people will be affected as natural capital dwindles.

Current land restoration efforts, such as the global goal of restoring 1 billion hectares of degraded land or achieving ‘land degradation neutrality’ by 2030, are seen as offering new opportunities to tackle the impacts of climate change while addressing food security needs, creating livelihood opportunities, especially in rural areas, and countering growing land-based conflicts and migration.

But such initiatives need to account for all existing legitimate tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers and pastoralists, women and youth, and other vulnerable groups.

Otherwise, restoration efforts and especially large-scale investments will lead to new conflicts, violating the rights of people and risking the success of the planned measure.

The UNCCD is the first of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ to explicitly recognize the importance of safeguarding all forms of legitimate land tenure – especially for women, youth, Indigenous communities, and smallholder farmers and pastoralists – as a prerequisite for the sustainable management of land and other natural resources.

But with land governance enacted at the national and sub-national levels, how can this progressive decision at the global level translate into a governance environment that promotes good land stewardship by strengthening the land rights of vulnerable groups at the local level?

As noted by the Global Land Outlook, “land is the operative link between biodiversity loss and climate change,” but to deliver on global aspirations, restoration must take place “in the right places and at the right scales.”

We therefore welcome the decision to devote a ministerial roundtable at COP15 to the theme of “Rights, Rewards and Responsibilities – the future of land stewardship” and invite TMG to deliver the keynote address.

The relationship between a decision on principles of good governance at global level and action on the ground must acknowledge that “all land stewardship is local.” This means that “localizing” the global land tenure decision requires analyzing the concrete situation on the ground, respecting people’s rights and strengthening the ability of local communities to protect their rights and become actively involved in restoration processes.

This approach is particularly critical for the implementation of global efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and afforestation for carbon offsetting purposes.

Our work with national partners in four African countries points to how the link between legitimate tenure rights and restoration can be made. National governments must incorporate land rights as a starting point in developing restoration agendas, including their UNCCD targets to achieve land degradation neutrality.

We welcome the strong statements made by many countries at the session and the commitment of multilateral agencies to support countries in more explicitly linking land governance and policies to reverse land degradation, desertification and drought. At its heart, this calls for “changing mindsets towards land tenure,” as FAO’s Maria Helena Semedo noted.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) were designed to do exactly this. Adopted exactly 10 years ago by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the VGGT are “true connectors” of work across the three Rio Conventions, in the words of CFS Vice Chair Gabriel Ferrero de Loma-Osorio.

The UNCCD/FAO Technical Guide on implementing the land tenure decision in the context of the VGGT, which TMG helped develop, explains how to reinforce actions at the sub-national and local levels by building on efforts by communities and civil society organizations.

Our ongoing partnership with four African governments shows how responsible land governance can be meaningfully realized from the ground up.

Explore the Human Rights & Land Navigator, launched at UNCCD’s COP15, on May 12th in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. This tool was developed by TMG Research, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Malawi Human Rights Commission, with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Alexander Müller is Founder & Managing Director, TMG Think Tank for Sustainability, based in Berlin, with a regional office in Nairobi; Jes Weigelt is Head of Programmes, TMG Think Tank for Sustainability

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Lucky Agbavor, a former child labourer from Ghana, shared personal testimony of his life at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour as a former child labourer. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS Children forced into child labour are robbed of their childhoods with dire consequences the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 15 2022 (IPS)

Children’s voices took centre stage at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour, which kicked off in Durban, South Africa, on May 15, 2022. Their voices resonated with the saying: “Nothing about us without us.”

The conference takes place at a time when child labour has increased worldwide since 2016 and amid a looming deadline to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development goal of eliminating child labour by 2025.

An estimated 160 million kids are held in labour bondage, with the prediction of a further nine million more joining their ranks due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis in many parts of the world.

Lucky Agbavor, a former child labourer from Ghana, caused a stir with his testimony of being roped into child labour at the tender age of four when his poverty-stricken mother sent him to live with a relative in a fishing village. While his mother thought he was being educated and cared for, the little boy was forced to work on a boat and almost died. Later he was sent to another relative.

“He took me to carry beams, load it in the forest,” the youth recalled. He managed to go to school, but working and studying were tough. He returned home after failing his basic education certificate in 2012.

“I came back home, and things were very rough,” he said.

But Lucky managed to get through high school by earning money selling ice cream, and today he is proof that anything is possible.

“In between, I put in all the efforts,” he said. Thanks to a Pentecostal Church scholarship, Lucky was able to study BSc in nursing.

“I hope to become one of the renowned nurses in Ghana,” he told the awestruck audience.

Thatho Mhlongo, a Nelson Mandela Parliament ambassador, was unequivocal.

“Child labour is not a rumour; it’s real as it’s happening worldwide. I have personal experience. I have witnessed a very close friend of mine having to work and fend for his family.”

She praised the conference organisers for inviting children and hearing their voices.

Thatho also acknowledged the South African government’s efforts to support children who were affected by the recent floods in KwaZulu Natal, which claimed hundreds of lives and left many people homeless

“Transparency, respect and inclusiveness and children understand the implications of their choices,” she reminded the audience, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, two Nobel Peace Laureates and high-profile delegates from the labour movement.

While the children’s narratives were moving, government, labour, business, and NGOs dealt with the challenges of fighting the scourge of child labour and finding ways to meet the 2025 deadline to end the practice in a world hit by wars, displacement, and the pandemic.

Vice President of Workers Federation and Cosatu leader Bheki Ntshalintshali questioned how when the “world Is three times richer, 74% are denied a social grant.”

“Poverty leaves children vulnerable,” he said.

Ntshalintshali called for a “new social contract” to end child labour, noting that four out of five children were forced to work in the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Jacqueline Mugo, of the Federation of Kenya Employers, acknowledged that it was crucial, though not easy, to reverse the increased child labour trends.

“No doubt it is even more crucial than the previous conferences to succeed and galvanise to end child labour … If we fail to address the root causes, we won’t surely succeed,” she said.

Children forced into child labour are robbed of their childhoods with dire consequences the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour heard. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, who has been fighting child labour in India and elsewhere for 40 years, remained upbeat despite the setbacks.

He noted that while the wealth of the world had increased, yet the plight of the children had worsened.

“I am angry because of the discriminatory world order, and the still age-old racial mindset. We cannot eradicate child labour without eliminating it in Africa. We know what the problem is and what is the solution. What we need is, as Madiba said, (for) concerted action is courage,” Satyarthi said, referring to South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela.

He said it was time to rise above partisan politics, adding that it was possible to reduce child labour once again.

Nosipho Tshabalala facilitated a discussion on child labour where Stefan Löfven, former Prime Minister of Sweden, spoke about the challenges of the labour market and supply chains and how we could use climate transition to create jobs.

Leymah Gbowee, another Nobel laureate, did not pull any punches when it came to Africa’s dismal record of child labour.

She slammed African governments who paid lip service to the goal of eradicating the abuse of children.

“When the cameras are off, suddenly politics come into effect … Africa is responsible; our governments are not blameless,” she said, reminding politicians that “our children are key to any policy, not the politics.”

Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi was also critical, saying: “We pass resolutions, grand plans but no implementation.”

But he also defended SA, saying the country provided safety nets for vulnerable children through grants and free meals a day

ILO DG, Guy Ryder, called for a human-centred approach to end child labour.

“Child labour occurs in middle-income countries … always linked to poverty and inequality. More than two-thirds of the work of children happens alongside their families,” Ryder said.

These children were then excluded from education.

Representative of the UN in the African continent Amina Mohammed, and chair of the UN SDGs, said via a hologram: “Child labour is quite simply wrong. The ILO has a critical role in this work.

She noted that a “lack of education opportunity fuels child labour”.

Saulos Klaus Chilima, Vice President of Malawi, called for urgent action, saying: “We will we get there. We will achieve what we desire to achieve. I believe we can overcome.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his address, commended the ILO for being at the forefront of global efforts to eradicate the practice of child labour.”

“Child labour is an enemy of our children’s development and an enemy of progress. No civilisation, no country and no economy can consider itself to be at the forefront of progress if its success and riches have been built on the backs of children,” he said.

Ramaphosa said South Africa was a signatory to the Convention of Children because “such practices rob children of their childhood”.

He noted that while for many people, child labour “conjures sweatshops … there is a hidden face it is the children in domestic servitude to relatives and families.”

“We call on all social partners to adopt the Durban Call to action to take practical action to end child labour. We must ensure by all countries ILO convention against child labour; universal action to universal social support,” Ramaphosa said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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Child Rights Advocate and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi urged participants at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour, organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Durban, South Africa, to put their efforts to eliminate child labour back on track. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Sania Farooqui
Durban, May 15 2022 (IPS)

The Global Estimate on Child Labour estimates 160 million children are in child labour worldwide – an increase of 8.4 million children in the last four years – with millions more at risk due to the impacts of COVID-19.

The report, jointly released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF in 2021, warned that in sub-Saharan Africa, population growth, recurrent crises, extreme poverty and inadequate social protection measures have led to an additional 16.6 million children in child labour over the past four years. 

One of the key findings in the report included the state of the agriculture sector, which accounts for 70 percent of children in child labour (112 million), followed by 20 percent in services (31.4 million) and 10 percent in industry (16.5 million). The prevalence of child labour in rural areas (14 percent) is close to three times higher than in urban areas (5 percent).

Andrews Tagoe

In an exclusive interview given to IPS News, Andrews Tagoe, Board Member of the Global March Against Child Labour and the Deputy Secretary-General of the General Agricultural Workers Union, says child labour in Africa alone is more than the rest of the world combined. While the majority are in agriculture, other areas are equally very important.

“We have a big challenge at hand and Africa needs a lot of strategies to tackle it right away.

“Addressing child labour is not a benevolent issue, it is the right of the people in rural communities to have their children in school. Child labour free zones have proven and provided solutions. For example, the government of Ghana has adopted this method – a child labour free zone and child labour free community and friendly villages. However, this concept needs more investment to continue making improved participation of communities and structures to address the issue of child labour in the country,” Tagoe says.

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) report shows that the fifteen South African Development Community (SADC) member states lost about $80 billion in 2020 due to lower-than-expected growth, which is equivalent to around $220 for every SADC citizen.

“The analysis estimates that this economic crisis could take more than a decade to reverse, erasing all hope of countries meeting their national development plan targets to reduce poverty and inequality by 2030. The report says that many SADC member governments are still showing considerable commitment to fighting inequality – but still, nowhere near enough to offset the huge inequality produced by the market and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Among the key messages in the African Economic Outlook 2021 report, is that an estimated 51 million people on the continent could fall into poverty. “Today’s non-poor households, maybe tomorrow’s poor households, 50.2 percent of the people in Africa most vulnerable to staying in poverty live in East Africa.”

There is something that we are not doing well, if the number of child labour is so high, we must change our ways, says Tagoe.

“By working together, we have begun to see some way forward, but what we have seen is that in the allocation of resources, either not being sent to the right places or when they are not enough, that still remains a big challenge.”

“We are calling for huge, massive investments in the national plans of the country, we are also calling for a community-based approach – by working with Global March, agricultural unions and their grassroots organizations. It is important to note that it’s not just about the investment, but also about the allocation of the resources, enough money has been invested into fighting child labour, but where does that money go? How is it spent? These are important questions. More money needs to go into strategies that are working and looking into community development. We have been able to develop systems and strategies. We have been able to chart and map friendly villages and labour free zone, which shows what happens when proper investment is done, it creates the potential for child labour free communities and living.

“We want to address child labour in a way that it empowers the parents to take care of their own children, we want to address child labour in a way that it promotes improvement of community leaders, so they can pronounce their communities to be child labour free zones,” says Tagoe.

The ongoing 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Durban, South Africa brings together experts from around the world who are leading the way in tackling child labour to reinvigorate international cooperation and to call for commitments that will genuinely realize freedom for every child.

Speaking during the conference’s opening plenary, Child Rights Advocate and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi urged rich nations to play their role in fighting the increasing global dilemma.

“You cannot blame Africa. It is happening because of the discriminatory world order. It is still the age-old racial discriminatory issue. We cannot end child labour without ending child labour in Africa. I refuse to accept that the world is so poor that it cannot eradicate the problem (of child labour),” Satyarthi said.

Child labour continues to be one of the worst end results of extreme poverty and inequality, children who are trapped in child labour deserve their right to education, health, clean water and sanitation.

“All of us must work together so that the prediction of these harrowing numbers doesn’t come true. We are very ashamed that the numbers are so high in Africa, and we must work hard to bring them down. All promises made to the children must be made to come true,” says Tagoe.

This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

“We want to address child labour in a way that it empowers the parents to take care of their own children, we want to address child labour in a way that it promotes improvement of community leaders, so they can pronounce their communities to be child labour free zones." - Andrew Tagoe, Board Member of the Global March Against Child Labour and the Deputy Secretary-General of the General Agricultural Workers Union

During one of the hearings in Buenos Aires, the court trying a 1924 indigenous massacre in the Chaco heard the testimony of historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, from the University of Buenos Aires, who has been studying indigenous history in Argentina for decades. The expert witness described in detail the conditions in the Napalpí indigenous “reducción” or camp where the massacre took place. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 13 2022 (IPS)

It’s a strange trial, with no defendants. The purpose is not to hand down a conviction, but to bring visibility to an atrocious event that occurred almost a hundred years ago in northern Argentina and was concealed by the State for decades with singular success: the massacre by security forces of hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting labor mistreatment and discrimination.

“We are seeking to heal the wounds and vindicate the memory of the (indigenous) peoples,” explained federal judge Zunilda Niremperger, as she opened the first hearing in Buenos Aires on May 10 in the trial for the truth of the so-called Napalpí Massacre, in which an undetermined number of indigenous people were shot to death on the morning of Jul. 19, 1924.

The trial began on Apr. 19 in the northern province of Chaco, one of the country’s poorest, near the border with Paraguay. But it was moved momentarily to the capital, home to approximately one third of the 45 million inhabitants of this South American country, to give it greater visibility.

In a highly symbolic decision, the venue chosen in Buenos Aires was the Space for Memory and Human Rights, created in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where the most notorious clandestine torture and extermination center operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which kidnapped and murdered as many as 30,000 people for political reasons."What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina. People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people." -- Duilio Ramírez

The hearings in Buenos Aires ended Thursday May 12, and the court will reconvene in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco, on May 19, when the prosecutor’s office and the plaintiffs are to present their arguments before the sentence is handed down at an unspecified date.

“This trial is aimed at bringing out the truth that we need, and that I come to support, in the place where they brought my daughter when they kidnapped her. This shows that genocides are repeated in history,” Vera Vigevani de Jarach, seated in the front row of the courtroom, her head covered by the white scarf that identifies the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, told IPS.

Vera, 94, is Jewish and emigrated with her family to Argentina when she was 11 years old from Italy, due to the racial persecution unleashed by fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1939. In 1976 her only daughter, Franca Jarach, then 18 years old, was forcibly disappeared.

“Truth trials” are not a novelty in Argentina. The term was used to refer to investigations of the crimes committed by the dictatorship, carried out after 1999, when amnesty laws passed after the conviction of the military regime’s top leaders blocked the prosecution of the rest of the perpetrators.

A petition filed by a member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (made up of mothers of victims of forced disappearance) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) led later to an agreement with the Argentine State, which recognized the woman’s right to have the judiciary investigate the fate of her disappeared daughter, even though the amnesty laws made it impossible to punish those responsible.

Eventually, the amnesty laws were repealed, the trials resumed, and defendants were convicted and sent to prison.

Indigenous communities and human rights organizations held an Apr. 19, 2022 demonstration in Resistencia, capital of the Argentine province of Chaco, at the beginning of the trial for the truth about the Napalpí massacre. CREDIT: Chaco Secretariat of Human Rights and Gender

Historic reparations

“My grandmother was a survivor of the massacre and I grew up listening to the stories of labor exploitation in Napalpí and about what happened that day. For us this trial is a historic reparation,” Miguel Iya Gómez, a bilingual multicultural teacher who today presides over the Chaco Aboriginal Institute, a provincial agency whose mission is to improve the living conditions of native communities, told IPS.

The trial is built on the basis of official documents and journalistic coverage of the time and the videotaped testimonies of survivors of the massacre and their descendants, and of researchers of indigenous history in the Chaco.

The Argentine province of Chaco forms part of the ecoregion from which it takes its name: a vast, hot, dry, sparsely forested plain that was largely unsettled during the Spanish Conquest. Only at the end of the 19th century did the modern Argentine State launch military campaigns to subdue the indigenous people in the Chaco and impose its authority there.

Once the Chaco was conquered, many indigenous families were forced to settle in camps called “reducciones”, where they had to carry out agricultural work.

“The ‘reducciones’ operated in the Chaco between 1911 and 1956 and were concentration camps for indigenous people, who were disciplined through work,” said sociologist Marcelo Musante, a member of the Network of Researchers on Genocide and Indigenous Policies in Argentina, which brings together academics from different disciplines, at the hearing.

“When indigenous people entered the ‘reducción’, they were given clothes and farming tools, and this generated a debt that put them under great pressure. And they were not allowed to make purchases outside the stores of the ‘reducción’,” he explained.

David García, a member of the Napalpí Foundation, created in 2006 to gather information about and bring visibility to the 1924 massacre, took part in the trial in Buenos Aires. His organization was one of the driving forces behind the historic trial in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Invaded by cotton

Historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera said it was common for indigenous people in the Chaco to go to work temporarily in sugar mills in the neighboring provinces of Salta and Jujuy, but the scenario changed in the 1920s, when the Argentine government introduced cotton in the Chaco, to tap into the textile industry’s growing global demand.

“Then the criollo (white) settlers, who often had no laborers, demanded the guaranteed availability of indigenous labor to harvest the cotton crop, and in 1924 the government prohibited indigenous people, who refused to work on the cotton plantations, from leaving the Chaco, declaring any who left subversives,” Carrera said.

Anthropologist Lena Dávila Da Rosa said the Jul. 19, 1924 protest involved between 800 and 1000 indigenous people from Napalpí, and some 130 police officers who opened fired on them, with the support of an airplane that dropped candy so the children would go out to look for it and thus reveal the location of the protesters they were tracking down.

“It’s impossible to know exactly how many indigenous people were killed, but there were several hundred victims,” Alejandro Jasinski, a researcher with the Truth and Justice Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, told IPS.

“The official report mentioned four people killed in confrontations among themselves, and there was a judicial investigation that was quickly closed. All that was left were the buried memories of the communities,” he added.

The memories were revived and made public in recent years thanks in large part to the efforts of Juan Chico, an indigenous writer and researcher from the Chaco who died of COVID-19 in 2021.

“Juan started collecting oral accounts almost 20 years ago,” David García, a translator and interpreter of the language of the Qom, one of the main indigenous nations of the Chaco, told IPS. “I worked alongside him to bring the indigenous genocide to light, and in 2006 we founded an NGO that today is the Napalpí Foundation. It was a long struggle to reach this trial.”

Vera Vigevani de Jarach, a member of the human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, attended the hearing in Buenos Aires for the Napalpí indigenous massacre, held in the most notorious clandestine detention and torture center used by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. CREDIT: National Secretariat of Human Rights

Indigenous people in the Chaco today

Of the population of Chaco province, 3.9 percent, or 41,304 people, identified as indigenous in the last national census conducted in Argentina in 2010, which is higher than the national average of 2.4 percent.

Census data reflects the harsh living conditions of indigenous people in the Chaco and the disadvantages they face in relation to the rest of the population. More than 80 percent live in deficient housing while more than 25 percent live in critically overcrowded conditions, with more than three people per room. In addition, more than half of the households cook with firewood or charcoal.

Today, the site of the Napalpí massacre is called Colonia Aborigen Chaco and is a 20,000-hectare plot of land owned by the indigenous community where, according to official data, some 1,300 indigenous people live, from the Qom and Moqoit communities, the most numerous native groups in the Chaco along with the Wichi.

In 2019, mass graves were found there by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, a prestigious organization that emerged in 1984 to identify remains of victims of the military dictatorship and that has worked all over the world.

“What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina,” Duilio Ramírez, a lawyer with the Chaco government’s Human Rights Secretariat, which is acting as plaintiff, told IPS. “People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people.”

“We hope that with the ruling, the Argentine State will take responsibility for what happened and that this will translate into public policies of reparations for the indigenous communities,” he said.

Sylvie Djacbou, Exchanging with indigenous communities and somes civil societies around the Impact of Cameroon growth and employment strategy through structural projects like Agro-industries on Indigenous communities. @inside their sacred forest, Assok/Mintom, South Region Cameroon

By Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
YAOUNDÉ, May 13 2022 (IPS)

Growing up amid under the leafy canopy of the Congo Basin rainforest, the woodland was more than our home. It was our playground, our medicine cabinet, our teacher, our therapist. And it was a source of livelihood with its rich biodiversity and helped shield us from the effects of climate change.

The mounting tension between economic growth and healthy forest life over years has led to the destruction of some of the world’s oldest forests and the resulting poverty of its communities. This massive deforestation has led to the expropriation of indigenous and local communities from their ancestral land without their consent, increased carbon emissions, migration and the disappearance of Indigenous communities’ culture and languages.

The current economic development model in Congo Basin is rooted in massive deforestation: more and more concessions are being granted with large scale land set aside for industrial agriculture such as palm oil and rubber.

The loss of the forest ecosystem - and therefore the spiritual and cultural heritage of the  community - is irreversible. The tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin are being eliminated.

Rather than developing our country, the changes are impoverishing forest communities and leaving the entire region more vulnerable to climate change and diseases.

The Congo Basin rainforest, larger than the US state of Alaska, refers to six Central African countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Central African Republic) and is the world’s second largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon.

Recently, just weeks after International Forest Day on 21st of March, the third part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released showing us that there is still a lot to do on the ground to limit the effect of climate change. And the Congo Basin forest is one of the frontlines in the fight.

This report once again rang the alarm that, if nothing is done, then the world may find itself on a pathway to climate breakdown and extreme poverty.

Later this year, the annual UN climate conferences (COP 27) will take place in Egypt where the world’s leaders will meet to agree on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including its SDG 15 which aims to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”.

We are expecting more action and fewer false promises from Africa’s leaders and for its youth to take the lead scene in holding their leaders accountable.

As we prepare for this event, it is important to think through how we can use that international platform to drive national governments, especially those from Congo Basin, to act with the same speed they took their pledges to address the climate change crisis.

The current economic development model in Congo Basin is rooted in massive deforestation: more and more concessions are being granted with large scale land set aside for industrial agriculture such as palm oil and rubber.

The loss of the forest ecosystem – and therefore the spiritual and cultural heritage of the  community – is irreversible. The tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin are being eliminated.

The impact is not just economic: When forests are cleared, the carbon they store is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. According to the recent Global Forest Watch data, in 2021, 3.75 million hectares of pristine rainforest (an area critical to carbon storage and biodiversity) was lost at a rate of 10 football fields per minute.

Cameroon, for instance, has lost more than 80 thousand hectares of its primary forests in 2021, almost twice area of the primary forest destroyed in 2019. The Democratic Republic of Congo has lost nearly half a million hectares of primary forest in 2021 (Increase of almost 29% compared to 2020). Only to enrich a small portion of selfish elites.

At this rate, there is no way to reverse forest loss by 2030, as pledged by leaders from 141 countries at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Despite that, Cameroon is still granting a company, like Camvert SA, tax exemptions to implement an almost 60,000 hectares palm plantation project. This will result not only in deforestation but also in biodiversity destruction alongside the loss of communities’ livelihoods but also lead communities in the areas in extreme poverty.

One forest community member told me: “Before this company, I was able to collect non timber forest products and sell them. I was also able to find my treatment there when I was ill. Now, there will be no more forest and we are left to ourselves.”

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue

The benefits of these deals, however, do not reach local residents. They are seldom hired when these concessions are developed. My research shows experienced workers in these concessions tend to come from other areas of the country and –  even when local community members are hired – they are paid a pittance.

While companies often brag that they are promoting development by opening up roads, it’s important to note that these roads are used mainly to deliver timber to the market and are not open for communities.

The Congo Basin countries are not immune: The 2022 World Bank report show the country is a long way away from achieving substantial poverty reduction, with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people below the poverty line and remaining stubbornly constant.

In DRC, a recent IGF report showed that more than USD 10 million in forest royalties were not paid to the public treasury between 2014 and 2020.

What’s worse, the climate change that this deforestation is making worse will only deepen poverty. The latest IPCC report  estimates that in the next decade alone, climate change will drive 32-132 million more people into extreme poverty.

Yes, we need development. But at what cost? And who should that development benefit? Protecting forests is a matter of preserving the livelihoods of the local community and reducing poverty. Granting more forest concessions will not make us richer than we are now.

We need alternative development models that embrace indigenous communities’ wellbeing and promote healthy forests. By taking advantage of the indigenous people’s wisdom and knowledge, in forest management there is a possibility to develop while securing communities’ land and contribute in bringing back global warming below the critical level (2°C ).

Achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty in the Congo Basin would involve effectively stopping deforestation and implementing climate policies which ensure social justice and meaningful participation of communities in decision-making.

It is time for the various policy working groups on forest issues in Congo Basin to consider more than their personal economic interests but to take more into consideration the long term need to have healthy forests for healthy life.

 

Excerpt:

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace Africa and a 2022 Aspen New Voices Fellow.

Every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level people. Global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 13 2022 (IPS)

Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.

And please don’t pretend you did not know that 20% of all humans –those who live in the wealthiest countries– waste about 35% of the food they buy, throwing it in the garbage.

Poverty, armed conflicts and corruption are also to be blamed in poor countries for wasting food –although in a much lesser volume–, due to the lack of adequate stocking infrastructure.

Africa as a whole contributes to about two to three per cent of global emissions that cause global warming and climate change. However, the continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heat waves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years

In short, every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP)’s Food Waste Index Report 2021 report.

This amount of wasted food is sufficient to feed the millions of hungry people.

Moreover, global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions, UNEP warns.

Meanwhile, the intensive agriculture industries dump in lands and seas huge amounts of food either because they are “ugly” –therefore not nice enough to be marketable–, or to keep their prices the most highly profitable possible.

 

The triple planetary crisis

Food waste accelerates the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution, according to the world’s environmental body.

Just take the case of a vast continent like Africa –55 countries home to 1.4 billion humans– causes a negligible 2% to 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, however it falls victim to more than 80% of the world’s climate catastrophes.

All the above, and other innumerable consequences, have a common name: inequality.

Inequality is not just about a morality issue: inequality kills one person … every four seconds.

 

From billionaires to trillionaires

Add to all the above the fact that as the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the poor, the world’s 10 richest have multiplied their wealth into trillions.

The numbers are unbelievably staggering: the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from 700 US billion to 1.5 trillion US dollars—at a rate of 15,000 per second or 1.3 billion a day, according to a new study from Oxfam International, IPS journalist Thalif Deen reported.

“These phenomenal changes in fortunes took place during the first two years of a Covid-19 pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall, and over 160 million more people forced into poverty—60 million more than the figures released by the World Bank in 2020.”

 

Grabbed

As this happens, conservative estimates indicate that 811 million human beings are extremely hungry, close to the abyss of famine and death.

These millions live in the poorest regions of the world, those which have enormous natural resources –oil, indispensable minerals for giant technologies, private corporations, fertile soils grabbed by big business, etc– just do not eat.

 

Playing with fire

But there is much more evidence showing how the most vulnerable are left behind in one of the worst health crises in decades: COVID-19 vaccines.

See what the World Health Organization’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 4 May 2022: the best way to save lives, protect health systems and minimise cases of “long COVID” is by vaccinating at least 70% of every country’s population – and 100% of most at-risk groups.

Although more jabs have become available, a lack of political commitment, operational capacity problems, financial constraints, misinformation and disinformation, are limiting vaccine demand, he added while warning that COVID treatment is still often ‘out of reach’ for the poor.

 

Manufacturers’ record profits

While “we’re playing with a fire that continues to burn us”, he said that “manufacturers are posting record profits”.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that “we cannot accept prices that make life-saving treatments available to the rich and out of reach for the poor”.

 

Acute food and water shortages

Back to the staggering impacts of the climate crisis on those who contributed the least to cause it.

In East Africa only, 25 million humans now face acute food and water shortages due to the climate crisis, as already projected a few months ago by the scientific community.

 

The driest conditions

The East African region, and in particular, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, are experiencing the driest conditions and hottest temperatures since satellite record-keeping began, the world’s environmental body reported.

“As a result, as many as 13 million people are currently experiencing acute food and water shortages and a projected 25 million will face a similar fate by mid-2022.”

Scientists are blaming climate change for the current crisis in a part of the world that is least able to cope with.

“Africa as a whole contributes to about two to three per cent of global emissions that cause global warming and climate change.”

“However, the continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heat waves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years.”

 

Things will only get worse

Furthermore, scientists and experts project that things will only get worse for Africa if current trends continue.

According to the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “key development sectors have already experienced widespread loss and damage attributable to anthropogenic climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth.”

“The current drought hitting East Africa has been particularly devastating to small-scale farmers and herders across the Horn who are already vulnerable to climate related shocks.”

“At the moment in the Horn of Africa we are witnessing vulnerable communities being disproportionately affected by climate change who are least able to buffer against its impact,” said Susan Gardner, the Director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division.

 

Famine

In the case of one East African country: Somalia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that the drought emergency has deteriorated to a point where the country is facing the risk of famine.

And that about 4.5 million people are affected, of whom nearly 700,000 people have been displaced from their homes in search of water, food, pasture and livelihoods.

The UN relief web also informs that:

• About 3.5 million people are in acute need of water assistance, including 1.4 million internally displaced people. Water trucking activities are ongoing but are insufficient to meet increasing needs.

• Schools are closing as children are displaced with their families. At least 420,000 (45% girls) out of 1.4 million children whose education has been disrupted are at risk of dropping out of school because of the drought.

• At least 1.8 million people were reached with various forms of assistance in February, but the escalating emergency calls for sustained scaling up of response and flexibility in reprogramming.

 

Unprecedented impacts

Confirming these facts, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for its part reported that The Horn of Africa is in the grip of the worst drought in decades – parching landscapes, heightening food insecurity and causing increasingly widespread displacement.

An estimated 15 million people are severely affected by the drought in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia – approximately 3,5 and 7 million people in each country, respectively.

The unprecedented impacts of multiple failed rainy seasons are threatening to create a humanitarian crisis in a region “already negatively impacted by cumulative shocks, including conflict and insecurity, extreme weather conditions, climate change, desert locusts and the negative socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Now that you have been reminded about some of the multiple, severe impacts of inequality, which, even at different levels, takes place in the rich, industrialised countries… will you take them into account when it comes to voting politicians?

 

A child beneficiary holding a drawing portraying domestic violence, at the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Lilongwe, Malawi which partnered with the ILO/IPEC to support the national action plan aimed at combating child labour. Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, May 13 2022 (IPS)

Children washing clothes in rivers, begging on the streets, hawking, walking for kilometres in search of water and firewood, their tiny hands competing with older, experienced hands to pick coffee or tea, or as child soldiers are familiar sights in Africa and Asia.

Child rights experts at Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation reiterate that tolerance and normalisation of working children, many of whom work in hazardous conditions and circumstances, and apathy has stalled progress towards the elimination of child labour.

Further warnings include more children in labour across the sub-Saharan Africa region than the rest of the world combined. The continent now falls far behind the collective commitment to end all forms of child labour by 2025.

The International Labour Organization estimates more than 160 million children are in child labour globally.

How to achieve the Sustainable Development Target 8.7 and the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour that focuses on its elimination by 2025 will be the subject of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour to be held in Durban, South Africa, from May 15 to 20, 2022.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to open the conference. He will share the stage with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairperson and President of the Republic of Malawi Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, and Argentina President Alberto Ángel Fernández Pérez (virtual).

“There are multiple drivers of child labour in Africa, and many of them are interconnected,” Minoru Ogasawara, Chief Technical Advisor for the Accelerating action for the elimination of child labour in supply chains in Africa (ACCEL Africa) at the International Labour Organization (ILO) tells IPS.

He speaks of the high prevalence of children working in agriculture, closely linked to poverty and family survival strategies.

Rapid population growth, Ogasawara says, has placed significant pressure on public budgets to maintain or increase the level of services required to fight child labour, such as education and social protection.

“Hence the call to substantially increase funding through official development assistance (ODA), national budgets and contributions from the private sector targeting child labour and its root causes,” he observes.

UNICEF says approximately 12 percent of children aged 5 to 14 years are involved in child labour – at the cost of their childhood, education, and future.

Of the 160 million child labourers worldwide, more than half are in sub-Saharan Africa, and 53 million are not in school – amounting to 28 % aged five to 11 and another 35 % aged 12 to 14, according to the most recent child labour global estimates by UNICEF and ILO.

Against this grim backdrop, keynote speakers Nobel Peace Laureates Kailash Satyarthi and Leymah Gbowee and former Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven will address the conference, which is expected to put into perspective how and why children still suffer some of the worst, most severe forms of child labour such as bonded labour, domestic servitude, child soldiers, drug trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Satyarthi has been at the forefront of mobilising global support to this effect.

“I am working in collaboration with a number of other Nobel Laureates and world leaders. We are demanding the setting up of an international social protection mechanism. During the pandemic, we calculated that $53 billion annually could ensure social protection for all children in all low-income countries, as well as pregnant women too,” Satyarthi emphasises.

“Increased social protection, access to free quality education, health care, decent job opportunities for adults, and basic services together create an enabling environment that reduces household vulnerability to child labour,” Ogasawara stresses.

He points to an urgent need to introduce and or rapidly expand social security and other social protection measures suitable for the informal economy, such as cash transfers, school feeding, subsidies for direct education costs, and health care coverage.

The need for a school-to-work transition and to “target children from poor households, increase access to education while reducing the need to combine school with work among children below the minimum working age” should be highlighted.

In the absence of these social protection safety nets, the  International Labour Organization says it is estimated that an additional 9 million children are at risk of child labour by the end of this year and a possible further increase of 46 million child labourers.

In this context, the fifth global conference presents an opportunity to assess progress made towards achieving the goals of SDG Target 8.7, discuss good practices implemented by different actors around the world and identify gaps and urgent measures needed to accelerate the elimination of both child labour and forced labour.

The timing is crucial, says the ILO, as there are only three years left to achieve the goal of the elimination of all child labour by 2025 and only eight years towards the elimination of forced labour by 2030, as established by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 8.7.

The conference will also see the active participation of young survivor-advocates from India and Africa. They will share their first-person accounts and lived experiences in sync with the core theme of the discussion.

The conference will also take place within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid fears and concerns that ending child labour became less significant on the international agenda as the world coped with the impact of the pandemic. This could reverse the many gains accrued in the fight against child labour, forced labour and child trafficking.

This is the first of a series of stories which IPS will be publishing during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour from May 15 to 20, 2022.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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General Assembly Holds Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
 
The abstentions of some developing and emerging countries in the vote on the Ukraine resolution in the UN General Assembly in early March is a warning signal. Among the more than 140 countries that voted for the resolution were primarily those in the Global South where Europe is particularly engaged and which tend to be democracies.

By Martin Schulz
BERLIN, May 13 2022 (IPS)

While the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is shaking up the European security order, other parts of the world are being particularly affected by the war’s ‘side effects’.

The struggle against the economic consequences of the pandemic and the effects of the climate crisis were already posing major challenges for many developing countries. The war in Ukraine is now making the situation even more difficult to manage, and adding new crisis dynamics as well.

As a result of the Russian invasion, for example, the prices of bread, petrol, and fertiliser are rapidly increasing in the countries of the Global South. At the same time, many exporting countries have restricted food exports, so that in many places, food shortages are looming. In view of these developments, the risk of famine is growing, as is the risk of protests that lead to unrest.

In addition, there is concern that donor countries could become less willing and less resourced to support the Global South, due to new commitments related to the war in Ukraine. Yet these are now needed more urgently than ever. We, Europeans, must counter these fears. Support for Ukraine and a strong commitment to the Global South must not be mutually exclusive.

International solidarity and the adherence to a global commitment

Two examples from Africa show why our commitment to the Global South remains important.

First, the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Up to 20 million people are acutely threatened by hunger. At the same time, due to the war in Europe, the prices for food and fertiliser are spiking.

Until now, over one third of east Africa’s grain imports have come from Russia or Ukraine; but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, deliveries have plummeted. The region’s national budgets are massively indebted after two years of pandemic and economic restrictions, and cannot absorb the price increases.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which sources more than half of its grain from Ukraine and Russia, lacks the resources to combat impending famines. The appeals to the international community are becoming more and more desperate.

Martin Schulz

Secondly, in West Africa it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect the civilian population. The climate crisis has already led to increased risks of conflict in the Sahel region, among other places, because pastureland and water sources are shrinking.

The lack of economic prospects, non-existent public services and a lack of security are giving people greater incentives to join violent groups. The region’s military forces often fight against such groups, without regard for the civilian population. Increasingly, Russian weapons and military advisors are also being used.

Locally coordinated support for human security, which is also promoted by German and European development cooperation, and international peacekeeping missions, such as the one in Mali, can make an important contribution to protecting the local civilian population.

The continuation of the MINUSMA mission and Germany’s participation in it have been a subject of debate, especially since the withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. The war in Ukraine now raises the question more strongly as to whether a commitment is still viable when the current threat is so close to home.

However, Germany’s withdrawal from the Sahel region would deprive the civilian population of necessary protection and make it more difficult to provide humanitarian aid. That would be a fatal signal to the local population. It would also hardly constitute convincing evidence of Europe’s willingness to assume more global responsibility in the future.

These two examples illustrate that we should intensify rather than scale back cooperation with the Global South now. Our international solidarity requires that we adhere to our global commitment to comprehensive human security both within and outside Europe.

As the Global North, we have benefited from colonialism and globalisation for centuries while we live at the expense of the countries of the Global South, who are not only suffering the most from the climate crisis, but have also contributed to it the least. It is part of our global responsibility to continue to support these countries right now – especially when they are being acutely affected by the effects of war in Europe.

Being a reliable European partner

Europe’s commitment to this is more broadly based than that of other partners of the Global South. Russia, China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates work almost exclusively with governments – regardless of whether or not they are democratic.

Europe, on the other hand, also cooperates with legislative bodies, the judiciary and civil society. Whether combatting hunger, protecting the civilian population, enforcing human and employee rights in global supply chains, or strengthening democratic scope, civil actors in the Global South count on European support.

This is not to be expected from Russia and China. In most countries in the Global South, a majority of the population wish to realise opportunities that only democracies guarantee. Continuing the common commitment to social and political rights worldwide – without being naive in terms of foreign policy – must therefore be part of the Zeitenwende.

Continuing a strong global engagement is also essential for Europe in geostrategic terms. No other region of the world benefits from the rules-based multilateral order as much as the EU, which has built its prosperity and supply chains on its reliability.

Therefore, the hitherto underestimated deglobalisation that currently poses a threat along exclusive zones of influence constitutes a particular risk, given the special integration of European prosperity into a global division of labour. This is all the more reason for Europe to commit itself to preserving this rules-based order beyond its borders.

To do this, we need partners. However, in order to find them, we will need to make more intensive efforts than in the past. The circle of the EU, the G7, NATO, and the OECD is too small.

We need to make concrete and fair offers to the Global South that will make the EU a more attractive partner than it has been thus far. This is not out of altruism, but a rational approach in mutual interest.

After all, if we want to secure majorities for a rules-based multilateral order in your own interest, we have to be the partner of first choice for the developing countries and for common political projects.

The need for critical assessment

The abstentions of some developing and emerging countries in the vote on the Ukraine resolution in the UN General Assembly in early March is therefore a warning signal. Among the more than 140 countries that voted for the resolution were primarily those in the Global South where Europe is particularly engaged and which tend to be democracies.

However, we should also look to the reasons that led certain countries to abstain, and derive constructive policy approaches from this. For many countries in the Global South, an increasingly multipolar world is also one in which they can reduce dependencies on Europe and the US and diversify partnerships.

For such countries, Russia is increasingly one of these partners – for example as the largest arms exporter to Africa, but also in the area of grain export. A clear positioning vis-à-vis Russia is therefore more difficult in the case of some countries.

Europe should respond to this in a constructive way. Future cooperation should not be based on categories of ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’ for voting behaviour. Instead, the opportunities to jointly shape global challenges should be emphasised.

Countries such as India and South Africa abstained from the vote in the General Assembly, among other reasons, because they assume that we have double standards, for example in the case of fighting the pandemic.

However, these two countries are not the only ones that remain decisive partners for rules-based multilateralism. Therefore, we need to be making more competitive offers to the Global South. For this we need a new framework of cooperation and a better understanding of the other parties’ interests.

Our cooperation must be more strategically positioned than in the past. This will require greater coherence between the various political areas in Europe. Approaches in foreign, development, climate and economic policy must mesh with each other.

Despite the increased demand for defence funding, the extensive humanitarian and development policy commitment must be maintained. In the end, every euro spent on crisis prevention saves many times the expenditure than dealing with the consequences of the crisis would entail. Every euro spent on protecting democracy creates a foundation for political stability.

A critical assessment of one’s own actions is always a prerequisite for a change in policy. In the past we have too often confused short-term security with long-term stability. For example, Europe’s cooperation with African autocrats to control migration to Europe and, supposedly, strengthen regional security was a mistake.

This cost us trust among those who – with growing success – protest against these autocrats and may soon assume government responsibilities. Establishing commercial interests that protect the interests of individual European industries but limit the creation of added value in the Global South makes it easier for other actors to make more attractive offers – for example in the establishment of economic infrastructure.

In a world in which many developing countries are being courted by various potential partners, a fairer EU trade policy takes on geopolitical importance. Through it, we can win the partners we need.

Europe’s advantage remains its capacity for multi-dimensional cooperation with the Global South. There it experiences a high degree of recognition – our partners from politics, civil society and trade unions from São Paulo to Bamako to Dhaka agree on this point.

An increasingly multipolar world needs more international commitment rather than less. This also amounts to one way in which our political approach to the new era must be measured.

Martin Schulz has been Chairman of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung since 14 December 2020. He is a former member of the German Bundestag and the European Parliament, of which he was President from 2012 to 2017. He was party leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 2017 to 2018.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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A cargo of high energy biscuits for Ukrainian refugees is offloaded at an airport in Poland. Amid reports of dwindling food supplies in embattled areas in Ukraine, the World Food Programme (WFP) has begun ramping up operations, warning that the conflict could have consequences beyond the country. Ukraine has long been the “breadbasket” of Europe, but the fighting could disrupt global wheat trade, with knock-on impacts on food prices and overall food security. Credit: WFP/Marco Frattini

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2022 (IPS)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine last February has triggered multiple crises in several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation.

David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation.”

“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before,” Beasley warned during a visit to the Polish-Ukrainian border.

“The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.

Beasley warned that unless the ports are reopened, Ukrainian farmers will have nowhere to store the next harvest in July/August. The result will be mountains of grain going to waste while WFP and the world struggle to deal with an already catastrophic global hunger crisis.

A leading producer of grain, Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters May 3 the United States chaired a Security Council meeting last March focusing on the link between armed conflict and food security.

“Once again, we will bring a spotlight to the conflict as a driver of food insecurity.”

The US, which is holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, has scheduled an open debate on May 19 to examine “the nexus between conflict and food security.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to preside over the meeting in-person.

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.

“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis”.

“And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.

There is a chance that the war will accelerate a transition to more regenerative and local and regional food systems which was needed before the war. But in the meantime, there will be a a lot of suffering. Governments, NGOs, businesses, and other stakeholders will need to take action now to prevent a food crisis, Nierenberg said.

At a press conference in Vienna May 11, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ” I have been in intense contact with the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Turkey, and several other key countries, in order to try to address seriously the problems of food security”.

“But once again, I do not intend to make public any of the initiatives I am having until they produce a result, because if this becomes something to be discussed, globally, I am sure that we will not be able to achieve anything,” he said.

WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.

Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.

“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.

The only silver lining in this terrible situation is that it might lead to people across the continent increasing their reliance on more indigenous crops such as cassava, he noted.

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.

“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.

The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.

“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.

“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Children and adolescents in a Yanomami community in Parima, on the southern border with Brazil, the area where four indigenous people were shot dead and others injured when they confronted military troops last March. CREDIT: Wataniba

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 12 2022 (IPS)

The voracious search for gold in southern Venezuela, practiced by thousands of illegal miners under the protection of various armed groups, represents the greatest threat today to the lives of indigenous peoples, their habitat and their cultures, according to their organizations and human rights defenders.

In this part of the Amazon jungle, “mining, violence, habitat destruction, death from disease and forced migration make up a context that indigenous people are calling a silent genocide,” researcher Aimé Tillet, who has worked in the area for many years, told IPS.

At the other end of the country, along the northwest border with Colombia, indigenous people are fighting for the delimitation of their territories, which has led to clashes and deaths in their attempts to recover ancestral lands, while they are often reduced to destitution.

There are common features of life in border regions that are home to indigenous peoples, such as neglect by the government, which fails to fulfill its duties in health, education, security, provision of food, fuel and transportation, supplies, communications and consultations with native peoples regarding the use of their land and resources.

The government foments mining activity and in 2016 decreed the “Orinoco Mining Arc” on the right bank of the Orinoco river – an area of 111,844 square kilometers, larger than Bulgaria, Cuba or Portugal.

In parallel, it established an armed forces company, Camimpeg, to spearhead the mining of gold, diamonds, coltan and other conventional and rare minerals, in which the country is rich.

Opacity is a stain on the management of military companies by the authorities, according to non-governmental organizations such as Citizen Control for Security and Defense.

The local press has reported on the involvement of military and police units in the region in incidents related to mining activity that have sparked protests by indigenous people and human rights activists, ranging from deaths of native people in altercations to massacres in which “unknown groups” have killed dozens of people.

Artisanal and illegal mining, in hundreds of deforested areas and along rivers contaminated with mercury used to extract gold from ore, are often controlled by criminal gangs that call themselves “syndicates” and that traffic in gold and supplies, as well as in people who work in the mines, who are often subjected to forced labor.

According to human rights groups, for some years now another danger has been Colombian guerrillas, particularly the National Liberation Army (ELN), which is involved in mining and other illegal activities in the southern state of Amazonas, as well as dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which laid down its arms under a 2016 peace deal.

In the Sierra de Perijá mountains, home to three native peoples and part of the northern border between Colombia and Venezuela, the ELN has made inroads into indigenous communities, setting up camps, collecting “vacunas” – taxes or protection payment – from cattle ranchers, overseeing cattle smuggling and recruiting young people as guerrilla fighters.

A map showing the areas that are home to the main indigenous peoples of Venezuela, according to the governmental Simón Bolívar Geographic Institute. The most numerous groups are in the extreme northwest, south and east of the country. CREDIT: IGVSB

Shots in the jungle

On Mar. 20, four Yanomami Indians were shot and killed in the Sierra de Parima mountains that mark the border with Brazil in the extreme south, by Venezuelan Air Force troops after an altercation over the internet signal and a router shared by the military and members of a native community.

The Yanomami, who have lived in the jungles of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil for thousands of years – considered a living testimony to the Neolithic era who only came into contact with the rest of the world a few decades ago – have found mobile telephones a useful means of communication in their widely dispersed communities.

What happened in Parima “cannot be taken as an isolated reaction, but must be seen as the result of an accumulation of tensions and abuses, of a lack of a differentiated treatment based on the right to positive discrimination,” declared Wataniba, an organization supporting the indigenous peoples of Venezuela’s Amazon region, at the time.

“All these tensions that are experienced daily on the borders are a consequence of extractivism, coupled with abuses of power by the military, transculturation and the lack of concrete actions by the State to meet the basic needs of indigenous peoples,” the organization added.

Hundreds of informal and illegal gold mines deforest land, damage the soil, pollute the water with mercury and exploit indigenous and other workers under forms of modern slavery in Venezuela’s Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: RAISG

Undeterrable garimpeiros

In 1989, a decree law by then President Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922-2010, who governed the country from 1974-1979 and 1989-1993) banned for 50 years all mining activity in the state of Amazonas in the extreme south of the country, an area of 178,000 square kilometers of jungle with fragile soils, home to 200,000 inhabitants, more than half of them members of 20 indigenous peoples.

For decades, however, thousands of garimpeiros – the Brazilian name for informal gold prospectors, who originally came from Brazil – have made incursions into Amazonas, and in recent years on a larger scale, using airstrips and a large number of motor pumps, and imposing relations, sometimes involving trade but above all exploitation, with indigenous communities and individuals.

On Jul. 28, 2021, the Kuyujani and Kuduno indigenous organizations, as well as the Tuduma Saka court of justice of the Sanemá ethnic group (Yanomami branch) and their Ye’kuana (Carib) neighbors, denounced the presence of garimpeiros in four communities, in documents delivered to the governmental Ombudsman’s Office.

More than 400 armed garimpeiros, according to the complaint, were working with 30 machines extracting precious minerals in the Upper Orinoco area, forcing men and boys to work in mining, and enslaving and forcing women into prostitution.

The report added that the destruction of the forests has also affected the vegetable gardens of local indigenous communities, which have become dependent on food supplies from the garimpeiros.

Tillet said the incursion of guerrillas and illegal miners in the south also creates hotbeds of inter-ethnic conflict, because some indigenous people and communities desperate to find a means of survival accept the miners, while others (such as the Uwottija or Piaroas of the middle Orinoco) strongly oppose such incursions.

A view of the damage caused by uncontrolled mining in an area of southern Venezuela. CREDIT: SOS Orinoco/RAISG

Modern-day slavery

In the “currutelas” or mining villages, young men and boys work extracting gold-rich sands, while women are employed to cook, sweep, wash and clean the camps, and are exploited sexually.

This situation, seen in the hundreds of mining camps in Amazonas and the southeastern state of Bolívar, which covers some 238,000 square kilometers, is aggravated in the case of indigenous peoples, lawyer Eduardo Trujillo, director of the Andrés Bello Catholic University’s Human Rights Center, which is conducting several studies in the area, told IPS.

“Under the control of armed groups, dynamics of violence are generated, with confrontations and deaths, and conditions of modern-day slavery, where omission translates into acquiescence on the part of the Venezuelan State,” Trujillo added.

In particular, indigenous women recruited to work in the camps “are caught up in a dynamic of violence: their work is not voluntary, sometimes they are not paid, and they are subjected to risks to their health and lives,” he said.

Mining in Venezuela contributes to the figures of the International Labor Organization (ILO), according to which more than 40 million people around the world are victims of modern-day slavery, 152 million are victims of child labor and 25 million are forced laborers.

Autana hill, seen from the banks of the Cuao River, a tributary of the middle Orinoco. The Uwottija people consider it sacred and reject the presence in the area of guerrilla groups from Colombia, associated with illegal mining. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Adios habitat, culture and life

According to the 2011 census, at least 720,000 of Venezuela’s 28 million inhabitants are indigenous, belonging to some 40 native peoples, and close to half a million live in rural indigenous areas, mainly in border regions.

Although the largest indigenous group (60 percent) is the Wayúu, an Arawak-speaking people who live on the Colombian-Venezuelan Guajira peninsula in the north, most of the native peoples are in the south of the country. Some groups have thousands of members but others only a few hundred, and their languages and ancestral knowledge are at risk of dying out.

The environmental organization Provita reports that 380,000 hectares have been deforested south of the Orinoco in the last 20 years, while the area dedicated to mining increased from 18,500 to 55,000 hectares between 2000 and 2020.

Riverbanks and headwaters have been especially affected, many in areas theoretically protected as national parks. Tillet stressed that, in addition to the environmental damage they suffer, these are areas of limited resources for subsistence, for which indigenous communities and miners are now competing.

“Because they depend on mining for an income, indigenous people are forced to abandon their traditional activities of planting, fishing and hunting, their diet deteriorates, malnutrition and diseases such as malaria increase, and they are forced to say goodbye to their land, to move and migrate,” said Tillet.

The researcher said that health services, which are the responsibility of the State, have practically disappeared, and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, while education has collapsed as teachers move away and migrate, with the result that “children who should be in school now work in exploitative conditions in the mines.”

In the document they presented to the Ombudsman’s Office, the Yanomami and Ye’kuana organizations said they were victims of selective killings, contamination of water with mercury, contagion from diseases and, in short, “a silent cultural genocide.”

Children from a Uwottija (Piaroa) community in the middle Orinoco region, where organizations of this native people reject the presence of guerrilla groups from neighboring Colombia, associated with illegal mining. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Territory, an elusive right

The current constitution, adopted in 1999, recognized the right of indigenous peoples to conserve their cultures and possess their ancestral territories, and provided for the expeditious demarcation of these areas – which has only happened for a small part of their territories.

In the case of the state of Amazonas, which is almost entirely the habitat of indigenous people, the demarcation process has been ignored, preventing indigenous peoples from laying claim to their rights, demanding the required consultation processes and consent for the exploitation of their territory, and eventually obtaining benefits from their land.

Tillet said that “demarcation is still a pending issue, for which there is no political will, but the avalanche of mining has relativized its importance, because if protected areas such as national parks or natural monuments are violated by mining, you can imagine that the same thing is true for indigenous territories.”

Examples are the 30,000-square-kilometer Canaima National Park in the southeast, rich in tepuis – steep, flat-topped mountains – and large waterfalls, and the 3,200-square-kilometer Yapacana, in the middle of Amazonas state, where mining is practiced while the authorities turn a blind eye.

On the other hand, in the northwest, the struggle for land of the Yukpa people in the center of the Sierra de Perijá continues, with episodes of violence. Like their neighbors, the Barí of Chibcha origin, and the Wayúu, they are a bi-national people, although with more members of the community on the Venezuelan side than in Colombia.

The crux of the conflict is that throughout the 20th century the indigenous people were pushed into the most inhospitable lands in the mountains, while the plains, on the western shore of Lake Maracaibo, were occupied by cattle ranchers.

Some communities have accepted plots of land – the least fertile areas – granted by the government. But a resistant group of Yukpa, led by chief Sabino Romero until he was murdered in 2013, lays claim to land occupied by cattle ranches, while combating incursions by smugglers and guerrillas in the mountains.

Sabino Romero, a Yukpa chief from the Sierra de Perijá mountains bordering Colombia, was killed in 2013 in the context of his people’s struggle to recover lands occupied by cattle ranchers throughout the 20th century. CREDIT: Homo et Natura Society

“Other members of Sabino’s family and followers of his have been killed over the years and have endured attacks by hired killers and employees of cattle ranchers, and even by the National Guard (militarized police) or the ELN,” Lusbi Portillo, leader of the environmental Homo et Natura Society, told IPS.

Ana María Fernández, a Yukpa activist in the area, said that “we are not only fighting against large landowners, police forces and the National Guard, and the State, which does not allow the demarcation of our lands. We are also attacked by Colombian guerrillas and hired killers contracted by ranchers.”

On the other hand, some Yukpa indigenous people sometimes seize cattle as a way to collect on the damages inflicted on them. Others, less combative, “charge a right of way on what used to be their lands, to earn some money to eat and survive,” said Portillo.

The activist said that one alternative is for the State to fulfill its commitments to compensate cattle ranchers whose farms must be returned to the indigenous people, and to make good on its duty to provide transportation routes for the communities’ agricultural production and health care in the face of the increase in diseases.

Ana María Fernández is an activist from a Yukpa community that is demanding the demarcation of their ancestral territories in the western Sierra de Perijá, where the best lands were occupied by cattle ranches throughout the 20th century. CREDIT: OEPV

Time to migrate

The crisis of the second decade of this century in Venezuela has forced thousands of indigenous people to migrate, as part of the diaspora of six million Venezuelans who have left the country since 2014, overwhelmingly heading to neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries, the United States and Spain.

The largest group is the Warao, a people living in the northeastern Orinoco delta, whose southern zone is affected by mining and logging activities, and who have gone mostly to Brazil, but also to Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Warao “number less than 50,000, and the migration of at least 6,000, more than 10 percent of them, is a decrease in numbers that speaks volumes about the human rights situation of this population. In northern Brazil there are some 5,000, and Brazil already considers them to be a distinct, nomadic indigenous people in its territory,” Tillet commented.

Pablo Tapo, a member of the Baré people and coordinator of the Amazon Indigenous Human Rights Movement, compiled a report according to which more than 4,500 indigenous people from nine ethnic groups in his region crossed the border into Colombia in three years.

In both cities and rural areas, “communities are left on their own because there is no attention or services, in outpatient hospitals there are no doctors, medicines or supplies, and there is no food security,” said Tapo.

In the southwestern plains state of Apure, the armed confrontation that months ago involved Colombian guerrillas and Venezuelan military forced the flight to Colombia of indigenous groups living on the Venezuelan side of the Meta River.

In the extreme southeast, next to Brazil, the Pemón people have suffered from the drop in tourism due to the insecurity associated with mining and the pandemic, which has created an incentive to migrate. And in the northwest, for peoples such as the Wayúu, continuously crossing the border is an ageold practice that has never changed.

At the center of the indigenous people’s plight is mining, particularly the insatiable craving for gold, of which, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this country can produce some 75 tons per year, although actual extraction, both legal and clandestine, is possibly half that.

Authorities in North Waziristan district in Pakistan, vaccinate children against polio. With one case reported, intensified efforts to eradicate the disease are underway. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 12 2022 (IPS)

Pakistan’s North Waziristan district authorities have launched an aggressive vaccination drive after a polio case surfaced after 15 polio-free months in the country.

The disease was detected in a 15-month-old toddler about 15 kilometers away from the Afghanistan border. This area was considered a Taliban militant’s hub until 2014.

The Taliban were against polio vaccinations, but immunization drives restarted after the militants were evicted in 2014.

The boy’s family says he had been vaccinated.

“The boy has been vaccinated in every door-to-door polio vaccination campaign, but even then, he developed the crippling disease. We aren’t opposed to polio drops,” says Naheedullah, the toddler’s uncle. “We are religious people but never defied vaccination.”

However, the authorities dispute the family’s version and say the newly infected child hadn’t received oral polio vaccines (OPV) because his family was among those they call “silent refusals”.

“Silent refusals are those whose families argue that their children below five years have been inoculated, but they remain unvaccinated,” Dr Shamsur Rehman, a health official in the region, told IPS. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18,349 children remain unvaccinated due to refusal by their families during the March 2022 campaign. This is down from 19,874 recorded in December 2021.

Vaccinators also face threats from the defiant parents – and as a result, often record the children as vaccinated to stay safe from reprisals. More than 50 people have been killed, allegedly by militants, since 2012 in various anti-polio drives, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which remained a hotspot of the virus for many years, Pakistan’s oldest newspaper Dawn reported.

Religious scholar Muhammad Sami says polio vaccines aren’t allowed in Islam, and therefore, there is polio vaccine hesitancy. He said his group had “information” that the vaccination was a plot to “render the recipients incapable of producing children and cut down the population of the Muslims.”

However, others in the same area have a different opinion.

“We have been persuading parents to administer OPV to their kids as it is their religious responsibility to protect their offspring from diseases,” says Maulana Sagheer, adding that it was false information that the vaccines caused sterility and infertility.

Zulfiqar Babakhel, spokesperson for Pakistan Polio Programme, told IPS that the detection of this latest case of wild poliovirus wasn’t unexpected.  The Pakistan programme had anticipated this risk and put in place contingency plans to enable a rapid response, he said.

It continues to intensify its efforts to eradicate all remaining residual transmission of any strain of poliovirus.

“The ‘last mile’ has always proven to be the toughest phase of national eradication efforts in all countries. Although challenges remain, the programme is capitalizing on the momentum of recent success and continues to strive for zero-polio. This is the most critical time for the programme,” Babakhel said.

It is important to emphasize that the number of polio cases has been significantly reduced this year due to health workers’ unwavering commitment and communities’ and various stakeholders’ support, he said.

It is the third case of wild polio to be reported globally in 2022. Others were reported from Afghanistan and Malawi.

Pakistan had reported one case last year with onset on January 27, 2021, in Killa Abdullah district, Balochistan province.

Health Secretary Dr Aamir Ashraf told IPS that this was a tragedy for the child and his family. It is also regrettable both for Pakistan and polio eradication efforts worldwide.

“We are disappointed but stay undeterred. The case appeared in Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the poliovirus was detected late last year and where an emergency action plan is already being implemented,” he says.

“The National and Provincial Polio Emergency Operations Centres have deployed teams to conduct a full investigation of the recent case, while emergency immunization campaigns are underway to prevent further spread of the wild poliovirus in Pakistan,” he says.

Repeated immunizations have protected millions of children from polio, allowing almost all countries to become polio-free, besides the two endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The next sub-national Polio vaccination campaign, expected from 23 – 27 May 2022, will target over 24 million under-five children.

The polio programme had identified Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as the area most at risk after wild poliovirus was detected in environmental samples in the last quarter of 2021.

“This validates the programme’s concerns about virus circulation in Southern KP and strengthens our resolve to reach every child with the polio vaccine,” said the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig.

To address the challenges in Southern KP, the Government and global polio partners had already initiated an emergency action plan to address the challenges in this part of the province, he explained.

In 2020, the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa reported 22 cases, while no wild poliovirus cases were recorded in the area last year.

Substantial progress has been made recently, with most areas accessible to implement immunization campaigns, but deep-rooted problems and security concerns remain in a few places. Despite the challenges, the programme’s frontline workers continue to reach children with the life-saving vaccine.

The programme is capitalizing on the momentum gained last year and continues to strive for zero-polio. Parents must continue to vaccinate their children during every immunization round until they reach the age of five.

Pakistan remains one of only two countries globally with circulating wild poliovirus, together with Afghanistan. Polio is a highly infectious virus. Until this last epidemiological block wipes out polio, children worldwide remain at risk of life-long paralysis or fatality by the poliovirus.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, May 12 2022 (IPS)

An entirely unnecessary and all too tangible nightmare continues to scourge Ukraine. Without doubt, one catastrophe after another still awaits. Much of Ukraine’s harvest, of paramount importance to global food supply, is at risk of being lost due to Vladimir Putin’s and the Russian army’s belligerent actions. Last year, Ukraine harvested a record of 106 million tonnes of grain – 25, or even 50 percent of this amount is currently feared to be lost during this year while most experts add that “this is an optimistic forecast.”

This would not be the first time Ukraine, The World’s Breadbasket, suffers from grain shortages and the threat of famine. Considering the current war it might be reminded that famines are “man-made disasters”, equivalent to the Chinese term renhuo, which in January 1962 during a “cadre-meeting” was used by The Communist Party of China’s Vice Chairman, Liu Shaoqi, to describe the disastrous results of China’s Great Leap Forward, which planning and execution he had participated in. Between 1958 and 1962, in a misapplied effort to increase industrial and agricultural production, the Chinese Government became responsible for working, beating and above all starving forty-five million Chinese people to death.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine, Hussein Rahman, told me it is not accurate to blame mass starvation on poor harvests. Hussein is quite knowledgeable. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the Dijon University after researching a high yielding variety of rice. Afterwards he worked for 15 years for the World Food Programme (WFP) and was then posted in Lesotho, Angola, Comoro Islands, Ethiopia, and Yemen. During his last years with the UN, Hussein was during ongoing wars active in Somalia and Iraq, working for The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Hussein was convinced that famines are a political issue. There are no examples of mass starvation affecting democratic societies.

While studying at Dijon University, Hussein was inspired by Amartya Sen’s book Poverty and Famines, in which Sen analysed what he as a nine-year-old boy in 1943 had seen in Bengal – how people succumbing to acute starvation lay dead in the streets. More than three million individuals died from this devastating famine.

Amartya Sen proves that despite crop failures, there was in 1943 an adequate food supply in Bengal, though extensive rice export, panic purchase, hoarding, military food storage and an economic boom caused food prices to rise and it was mainly landless rural workers and the urban proletariat, whose wages had not followed the development, who were unable to obtain enough food. Bengali food production was admittedly lower than it had been the previous year, though more abundant than it had been in the years before that, when no famine had occurred.

Later studies of the Bengal famine have proven Sen right in his conclusion that famines are created by humans and accordingly can be prevented, or at least mitigated. Archival studies have evidenced that Winston Churchill’s war cabinet in remote London had been repeatedly warned that a famine was brewing in India. At an early stage, the British Government was well aware of the fact that an excessive export of rice was likely to lead to a lethal famine, but it nevertheless chose to continue exporting undiminished quantities of rice from its Indian colonies to other parts of the Empire.

London turned a deaf ear when Indians demanded a promised million tonnes of wheat in return for the exported rice. The warlords stood leaning over their maps and with a cigar in his mouth Churchill observed that the reason for the famine was actually that Indians bred like rabbits and jokingly wondered if the rice shortage was so immense – how come that Gandhi was still alive? The War was at the centre of these men’s concerns and in order to prevent the Japanese enemy, who was approaching Bengal from Burma, from obtaining necessary food supplies, huge quantities of rice were brought away from the border areas, while thousands of boats were confiscated.

At the thought of Churchill and his associates leaning over their maps predicting and planning how the War would unfold, Requiem, a poem by Anna Akhmatova comes to mind. Akhmatova, was born in Ukrainian Odessa and had during World War II survived the German siege and starvation of Leningrad, her two husbands had been executed by the Soviet regime and her only son spent more than ten years in Stalin’s Gulag camps. In her poem Akhmatova writes about the immense suffering behind figures, abstract data, figures and statistics. One of the Requiem’s stanzas reads:

I would like to call you all by name,
but the list has been removed
and there’s nowhere else to look.
I have woven you a shroud,
from poor words I overheard.
I will remember you, everywhere.
I will not forget you,
not even among new sorrows.

The chilly attention rulers show to maps and statistics, or during gatherings around computers, does seldom acknowledge the immense human suffering caused by their fateful decisions.

According to Amartya Sen it is the inability of those in power, or even worse – their reluctance to act in the public interest by guaranteeing freedom for food producers, which cause mass starvation. Amartya Sen writes about an urgent need for a ”new human psychology”, by taking into account how

“…politics and psychology affect each other. People can indeed be expected to resist political barbarism if they instinctively react against atrocities. We have to be able to react spontaneously and resist inhumanity whenever it occurs. If this is to happen, the individual and social opportunities for developing and exercising moral imagination have to be expanded.”

Fatal hunger is among the most degrading suffering affecting any human being. Paralysing starvation does not lead to rebellion. People plagued by an all-consuming hunger are forced into an animalistic, instinctive, all-encompassing quest for survival. During a famine, people experience months of indescribable suffering, weakened by hunger pangs that might lead to insanity, paralysis, and eventually death. Due to food shortage, entire social systems break down through a lack of morals, ”decency”, and compassion. Crime, violence, and emotional insensitivity spread throughout the social body, becoming replaced by a ruthless struggle of all against all. A desperate battle for your own survival.

Inside the Gulag and the killing fields of the Stalin era, as well as in the Nazi death camps and German occupied territories, starvation reigned, paired with freezing cold, mistreatment and general vulnerability. Even if not every hunger victim passed through the torment of famish and mistreatment, as if they had become animals, they all suffered from hopelessness, which in addition to physical pain forced them into shame and despair. It is not without reason that cynical rulers might consider hunger to be an effective means of crushing their enemies, bringing reluctant subordinates to their knees by pacifying and paralysing them through hunger and despair. Hunger is a weapon for the powerful and a bottomless shame for the destitute.

In 1928, the Stalinist regime introduced its first Five Year Plan, intended to force peasants to become workers mobilized for massive industrial production, or becoming engaged in a “more efficient, modern agriculture” in the form of kolkhozy (if they were cooperative-run collectives) or sovkhozy (if they were state-run), while people branded as “reactionaries, saboteurs and spies” were purged, exterminated and/or “rendered harmless.” The same thing which happened in China twenty years later.

The estimated figure for Ukrainian deaths during the Holodomor (1932-1933) is 3.3 million, while at the same time 67,297 individuals died of starvation in the labour camps and 241,355 in the settlements to which peoples reluctant to join collectives had been deported together with their families. Thousands died during travels to destinations in distant Siberia, or Kazakhstan.

When we hear about the famines and wars that continue to harass a great part of the world’s population, let us not forget that they are renhuo, man-made. Behind the statistics are suffering individuals – men, women and children – while the guilty ones, leaders watching computers and calculating gains and losses while replacing people with figures, are quite easy to identify and hold accountable for their pernicious actions.

Sources: Applebaum, Anne (2017) Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. London: Penguin Books. Dikötter, Frank (2011) Mao’s Great Famine. London: Bloomsbury.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The World Health Assembly (22-28 May) is expected to discuss the pandemic treaty.Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Nicoletta Dentico
ROME, May 12 2022 (IPS)

In what has been defined a historic consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, on 1st December 2021, the special session of the World Health Assembly agreed to kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, the decision marked “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people”.

The process officially started with the constitution of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), whose task is weaving the texture of the negotiation, based on a treaty working draft, by 1st August 2022. The INB is mandated to submit the outcome of its work for consideration by the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024.

The WHO does not have a consolidated experience in exercising its binding normative power, having used it only twice in seventy-four years. Well before the pandemic, the health agenda negotiated at the WHO had propelled experts and civil society organizations to call for hard rules to replace voluntary regimes, insufficient to address escalating challenges and expanding determinants, which now include trade rules, environment, digitalization.

On the other hand, as illustrated in the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) report on the genesis of the pandemic treaty, there are piercing geopolitical issues that require scrupulous mapping of reality and a questioning attitude, now that the international community is projecting itself towards a pandemic future.

Does the world need a new pandemic treaty?

After months of debates in the WHO Working Group on Pandemic Preparedness and Response (WGPR), there remains a lack of deep contextual evidence on the problems that the new instrument could and should help solve.

There is not even an official definition of what a pandemic is in legal terms. COVID-19 has not been the only pandemic raging the world – global cancer figures are staggering and doomed to grow due to the effects of COVID and climate change.

Other existing pandemics (like antimicrobial resistance) are not exclusively triggered by zoonotic events – most of which are caused by wildlife trading, alongside nature loss, industrialized livestock production and habitat destruction. Shouldn’t binding measures to prevent and respond to such crises address the widespread destruction of ecosystems, instead?

Pandemics are neither a destiny nor a natural phenomenon. The WHO Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response report explains that they are the undesirable result of multiple governance failures, starting from lack of international cooperation.

This unfortunate conjuncture should be understood, yet to date, there is no comprehensive analysis of the reasons why governments did not comply with the existing WHO binding legal framework designed to face health emergencies: the International Health Regulations (IHR), last reviewed in 2005 (after SARS).

IHR obligations should have guided countries to engage in sharing information and cooperating for contrasting SARS-CoV-2 unknown and aggressive contagion. What went wrong? It may be that IHR are prominently skewed towards prevention and detection of pathogens, and limited on response steps to prevent transmissions.

But couldn’t they be seriously revised and updated, as in the past, to include the new contents deriving from COVID-19’s unprecedented lessons instead of a push for a new treaty?

The WHO Emergency Committee and alarm system must be reformed, along with the strengthening of the legal obligations and compliance of cooperation rules: this is the terrain where most IHR violations have occurred.

One Health approaches surely need integrating in the negotiated review, to build a better prevention and response capacity on the harsh lessons of COVID-19. A clear uncompromising priority assigned to sustainably financing universal public health systems and their workforce, as the reliable safeguard for societies when outbreak emerge, must supplant persisting policies skewed to health privatization and financialization, too uncritically promoted by the WHO. Existing IHR provisions need updating and strengthening to this end.

Ultimately, the critical tension between global health security requirements and the management of existing science must be resolved in the interest of public health rather than private profits – COVID-19 makes it very clear that it’s not an easy game.

Meanwhile, things are being made more complicated. Now that the pandemic treaty negotiations are being led by the INB, in parallel to the IHR review led by the US, new layers of diplomatic intricacies are surfacing in terms of content and process overlaps, ushering dwindling expectations.

The lack of a shared vision is matched by the accelerated pace of the INB negotiation, for which governments are not ready – uneasiness emerged in recent European consultations on the treaty elements that were to be provided by 29th April.

Both the WHO and the INB claim to be looking at the precedents of the WHO’s only other treaty as guidepost, the breakthrough Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), while civil society organizations have been instrumental in paving the way to the FCTC and challenging the playbook of the tobacco industry, they now sit at the very margins of the diplomatic process, advocating in the paucity of spaces and restrictions of time allowed in the first round of public hearings.

Thanks to the FCTC’s long negotiations involving broad and consistent civil society participation, the WHO first global health treaty has strict provisions and guidelines on conflicts of interest.

Twenty years later, the fact that macroeconomic forces have been allowed to shape a new political platform for global governance through multistakeholderism, it does not necessarily favor the best scenario for pandemic treaty-making.

The WHO is weakened and under-resourced, while the corporate sectors that have profited from the pandemic in terms of market dominance – pharma companies, big tech, etc. – seemingly support this new negotiation, deemed to institutionalize the super public and private partnerships assembled in 2020 by major philanthropic actors for COVID-19 response.

Governments for their part are still grappling with the pandemic and its turbulent socio-economic effects. Meanwhile, exactly like one century ago, the pandemic tsunami gets tangled with a war of international proportions doomed to transform the world and the international community.

The tang of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is starting to poison Geneva’s health circles. This is not a good foreboding.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Director, Global Health Justice Program, Society for International Development (SID), and Co-chair Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2).

By External Source
May 11 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 

 

In an election season, India’s ruling party has again resorted to the right-wing populist playbook, stirring up divisions for political gain. This time it is the turn of Muslim women, caught in the crossfire of a backlash against both the rights of religious minorities and women’s rights. The controversy over the wearing of the hijab in schools is just the latest chapter in the saga starring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party in their quest to consolidate power. Their attempts will continue, as will civil society resistance and struggles for rights.

One day in late December 2021, Muslim students at an all-female college in the small town of Kundapur, in India’s southern state of Karnataka, were offered an impossible choice: either ditch their hijab, a headscarf they wear as a symbol of their faith, or renounce their right to education. But they refused to comply, and instead protested.

As protests spread and brought counterprotests by Hindu students, a piece of cloth soon became the centre of a storm, where struggles for the rights of women and religious minorities intersect. With both under attack by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing populist government, Muslim women must have seemed the perfect target.

The hijab row

Out of the blue, the authorities of a state-run school in Karnataka ruled that the hijab was in contravention of uniform rules and denied those wearing it entry into classrooms. Other government-run schools followed suit. The state government, in the hands of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed the ban and extended it to the whole state through a directive stating that ‘clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public law and order should not be worn’.

Karnataka is often described as the ‘hotbed’ of the Hindutva ideology supported by many right-wing Hindu groups. Thirteen per cent of its population is Muslim, and although nominally secular, the state has increasingly turned religious mandates into law – the very definition of religious fundamentalism. Among other things, the sale and slaughter of cows have been banned in the state because cows are sacred for Hindus, and an anti-conversion bill has made it more difficult for people to convert to Islam or Christianity and for interfaith couples to marry.

On 31 December, six Muslim girls who were denied entry to their classrooms because they wore the hijab protested outside their school, marking the start of wider protests. The students also filed a writ in the Karnataka High Court and brought their complaint to the National Human Rights Commission.

While the ban was imposed only in Karnataka, rights groups feared it would pave the way for tighter nationwide restrictions. To resist this, protests spread throughout India, and by early February they had reached the capital, New Delhi, and were even echoing abroad, as Turkish rights groups held a demonstration outside the Indian consulate in Istanbul.

As protests spread, counterprotests followed: many right-wing Hindu students, mostly male, marched in saffron shawls, a colour considered a Hindu symbol. A civil society report has described in detail the tactics of Hindutva supremacists to push ‘saffronisation’ into schools and fuel communal violence.

In Karnataka the script was followed to the letter: as Hindutva activists turned up to disrupt protests against the hijab ban, heated arguments and physical harassment ensued. Some cities witnessed incidents of stone-throwing and arson. On 10 February, on the grounds of treating ‘both sides’ equally, the Karnataka high court issued an interim order banning anyone from wearing any covering or religious symbol within classrooms. Muslim students challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

On 15 February the Karnataka government ordered a three-day closure of all high schools and colleges. The next day, city authorities in the state’s capital, Bengaluru, banned protests outside schools for two weeks. On 21 February, the murder of a member of the right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal added fuel to the fire: the 23-year-old man, identified as Harsha, was killed while campaigning against the hijab. Schools were closed again.

On 15 March, the Karnataka high court upheld the ban on the basis of the argument that wearing the hijab was not an essential Islamic principle. With one stroke of the pen it swept away any pretence of secularism, under which no court should be able to decide what is essential to any religion.

Later in March, in another district of Karnataka, teachers were suspended for allowing Muslim students to attend exams wearing the hijab. A few days later, the state government excluded teachers wearing the hijab from exam duty, effectively expanding the ban to teachers.

Schools have been turned into yet another political arena. The backdrop and apparent driving force was a series of state-level elections, including in India’s biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP was looking for a strong showing ahead of upcoming national-level elections. Religious divides are being intensified and instrumentalised for political gain.

Voices from the frontline: Aiman Khan and Agni Das

Aiman Khan and Agni Das are members of the Quill Foundation, an Indian civil society organisation (CSO) engaged in research and advocacy, focused on the human rights issues faced by underprivileged people.

There have been protests on two fronts. The girls who have been directly affected by this restriction are protesting outside their college gates and holding demonstrations in other public spaces. But they are facing intimidation and threats by Hindutva vigilante groups while also being warned that they will be criminally charged for protesting.

In bigger cities, protests are also being organised by human rights CSOs and Muslim groups, and particularly by Muslim women.

Following the Karnataka high court ruling, CSOs have played an important role in raising awareness about the implications of the verdict. Several CSOs rejected the court order while also producing analysis to help the public understand its intricate legal language.

Civil society has been able to respond in a tangible and timely manner, offering unconditional solidarity and support to the schoolgirls affected by the order and experiencing trauma resulting from violence, discrimination and harassment in the aftermath of the high court order. Some CSOs have offered mental health counselling and other services.

Other CSOs have offered litigation support, in two forms: first, by representing individual cases of religious discrimination and providing legal support to those who missed out on exams due to the ban; and second, by petitioning on larger issues before courts of law. There have been several petitions before the Supreme Court of India to challenge the Karnataka high court order.

In short, the civil society response has been key because of its capacity to play a full range of roles to drive change, from the micro to the macro level. An effective civil society is essential for advancing human rights in India, and the international community can play a vital role in reinforcing the work of local CSOs to amplify marginalised voices.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Aiman Khan and Agni Das. Read the full interview here.

The surge of Hindu nationalism

The controversy around the hijab was nothing but an excuse – but an effective one. Straight out of the right-wing populist playbook, this crackdown on the Muslim minority formed part of a wider BJP strategy to consolidate its power. And it was only the most recent link in a long chain of affronts.

Modi’s resounding re-election victory in 2019 gave him the green light to take a decisively autocratic turn and seek to homogenise India as a Hindu state, undermining India’s foundational secular principles and violating the guarantees of religious freedoms enshrined in its constitution.

Although most of the world’s major religions are represented in huge numbers in India, the BJP and its allied paramilitary Hindu nationalist force, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have popularised a vision of Indian nationhood that excludes Muslims, who make up over 14 per cent of the population: a 172 million minority bigger than the population of most countries in the world.

Minority communities are subjected to vilification because they are framed as ‘the other’. The Muslim minority is a specific target of persecution.

AIMAN KHAN AND AGNI DAS

Soon after his re-election, Modi made a definitive move of aggression against Indian Muslims. On 5 August 2019 he unilaterally revoked the constitutional special status of Jammu and Kashmir state, which is around 70 per cent Muslim. The following day, the BJP-dominated parliament passed a law to divide the state into two union territories to be ruled by central government instead of their own state governments. Widespread protests were violently suppressed and a long communications clampdown was imposed.

The next step came in December 2019, when parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which modified the constitutional clause that prevented undocumented migrants from becoming citizens, granting this right to people coming from specific countries who were highly likely to be members of non-Muslim religious minorities.

This law was used in conjunction with the extension of the National Register of Citizens, which excluded from citizenship millions of people who lacked evidence of having been legally in India since at least 1971, but allowed them to apply for asylum under the CAA – unless they were Muslims.

At both national and state levels, BJP governments adopted countless discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities, and specifically Muslims. This stoked hatred and division with increasingly bloody consequences, as seen in early 2020, when violence erupted between Hindu and Muslim communities in New Delhi, leaving dozens dead. The police mostly stood by as mosques and Muslim-owned businesses were targeted and journalists covering the unrest were attacked.

Voices from the frontline: Syeda Hameed

Syeda Hameed is co-founder and board member of the Muslim Women’s Forum, a civil society organisation working for the empowerment, inclusion and education of Muslim women in India.

The decision to ban Muslim students from wearing the hijab in colleges’ premises came as a surprise. Such a ban is strange to our society. Unlike in France, where it has long been under the spotlight, the hijab had until very recently never been prohibited in India.

Karnataka state is known for its diverse society and pluralistic culture, with the two major religious groups, Hindus and Muslims, historically coexisting, along with a wide spectrum of other religious groups.

However, the roots of the Karnataka hijab controversy are quite deep, and are linked to growing Islamophobia. Those in power have ignited a sectarian fuse all over India in every possible way. Right now, Karnataka state also has a right-wing government, which has created fertile ground for strain in Hindu-Muslim relationships.

To them, the hijab ban is just another tool to remain in power. It is tied to current political events, notably the upcoming election. Right-wing politicians fabricate issues that target Muslims, who are depicted as the ‘disruptive other’, to divert people’s attention from dire economic conditions. The hijab ban did the job well, as it captured media attention. Sensational media coverage only added fuel to the fire.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.

The hijab ban is very much part of Muslim marginalisation. Muslims are being driven to a corner and targeted by a right-wing government that demonises them to boost their support and remain in power.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Syeda. Read the full interview here.

Why women?

This time, the target was not just Muslims, but specifically Muslim women. Indian Muslim women are members not only of a minority religious group that has increasingly come under attack but also of a gender that has perennially been subjugated by men both within and outside their religious group, forced to follow male dictates on what to wear and what not to wear – among many other things.

A source of controversy in some western countries, the hijab had never before been a big deal in India – until politicians saw in it an opportunity to stoke division for political gain. But many Indian Muslim women view the hijab as an integral part of their faith. For others, it is a token of negotiation with conservative families, and the very reason they are allowed to go to school in the first place. Either way, they have made a choice that is no longer being respected.

‘Whether it is a bikini, a ghoonghat, a pair of jeans or a hijab, it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear,’ tweeted Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, general secretary of the Indian National Congress, one of India’s opposition political parties.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.
SYEDA HAMEED

This story was originally published by CIVICUS Lens

Excerpt:

Right-wing populist politicians target Muslim women to inflame divisions and win elections

Protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and the environment, and boost economic development. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 11 2022 (IPS)

It is as simple –and as horrifying– as that: both human health and the health of Planet Earth depend on plants. However, plants that make up 80% of the food and 98% of the oxygen, are under growing dangerous threats.

As dangerous as the fact that up to 40% of food crops are lost due to plant pests and diseases every single year, according to the world top food and agriculture organisation.

This is affecting both food security and agriculture, the main source of income for vulnerable rural communities, FAO warns on the occasion of the International Day of Plant Health, marked 12 May 2022.

 

All those pests and diseases

Sustaining plant health promotes food security and nutrition while protecting the environment and biodiversity, and boosting livelihoods and economic growth, in the context of global challenges, particularly climate change

Two main factors, among several others, appear behind the increasing expansion of plant pests and diseases. One is that climate change and human activities are altering ecosystems and damaging biodiversity while creating new niches for pests to thrive.

The other one is that international travel and trade, which has tripled in volume in the last decade, is also spreading pests and diseases.

Such pests and diseases cause massive crop losses and leave millions without enough food.

Desert locust, fall armyworm, fruit flies, banana disease TR4, cassava diseases and wheat rusts are among the most destructive transboundary plant pests and diseases.

The International Day is a key legacy of the International Year of Plant Health, which was marked in 2020-2021.

“The International Day of Plant Health will be an opportunity to highlight the crucial importance of plant health, both in itself and as part of our One Health approach, encompassing human, animal and ecosystem health,” said FAO Deputy Director-General, Beth Bechdol.

“It could not be more vital to make sure that we do everything we can to maximise the food resources our planet can provide.”

 

Excerbertrating world hunger and threats to livelihoods

FAO estimates that the additional damage that plant pests and diseases cause to agriculture exacerbates the existing issue of growing world hunger and threatens rural livelihoods.

Protecting plants from pests and diseases is far more cost effective than dealing with plant health emergencies. “Once established, plant pests and diseases are often impossible to eradicate, and managing them is time consuming and expensive.”

“Sustaining plant health promotes food security and nutrition while protecting the environment and biodiversity, and boosting livelihoods and economic growth, in the context of global challenges, particularly climate change,” said Jingyuan Xia, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.

“Making the general public more aware of the role of plant health and the ways we need to act urgently to curb the risks of plant pests and diseases, as well as understanding how to restrict the spread of invasive pests will make a significant contribution to global food security,” said Osama El-Lissy, Secretary of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC).

“Globalisation, trade and climate change, as well as reduced resilience in production systems due to decades of agricultural intensification, have all played a part.”

 

“It could not be more vital to make sure that we do everything we can to maximise the food resources our planet can provide.” Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Chronic land degradation

As if the above were not enough, the risks to human, plants and environmental health are further exacerbated by the rising effects of land degradation.

On this, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at the end of April 2022 reported that up to 40% of the planet’s land is degraded, which directly affects half of humanity, and threatens roughly half of global Gross Domestic Product (44 trillion US dollars).

If business as usual continues through 2050, the report projects additional degradation of an area almost the size of South America, reports the UNCCD’s Global Land Outlook 2.

On this, says Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD: “Modern agriculture has altered the face of the planet more than any other human activity.”

“We need to urgently rethink our global food systems, which are responsible for 80% of deforestation, 70% of freshwater use, and the single greatest cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.”

 

Future scenarios

The report predicts the outcomes by 2050 and risks involved under three scenarios:

• Business as usual

Continuing current trends in land and natural resource degradation, while demands for food, feed, fibre, and bioenergy continue to rise. Land management practices and climate change continue to cause widespread soil erosion, declining fertility and growth in yields, and the further loss of natural areas due to expanding agriculture.

• By 2050

16 million square kilometres show continued land degradation (the size of South America)

A persistent, long-term decline in vegetative productivity is observed for 12-14% of agricultural, pasture and grazing land, and natural areas – with sub-Saharan Africa worst affected.

An additional 69 gigatonnes of carbon is emitted from 2015 to 2050 due to land use change and soil degradation. This represents 17% of current annual greenhouse gas emissions: soil organic carbon (32 gigatonnes), vegetation (27 gigatonnes), peatland degradation/conversion (10 gigatonnes).

• Restoration

Restoration assumes the restoration of around 5 billion hectares (50 million square kilometres or 35% of the global land area) using measures such as agroforestry, grazing management, and assisted natural regeneration. (Current international pledges: 10 million square kilometres).

 

One dollar to repair, four dollars to damage

Nations’ current pledge to restore 1 billion degraded hectares by 2030 requires 1.6 trillion US dollars this decade – a fraction of annual 700 billion US dollars in fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies, the Global Land Outlook 2 warns.

As food prices soar amid rapid climate and other planetary changes, “crisis footing” needed to conserve, restore and use land sustainably.

“The way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are currently mismanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own.”

“At no other point in modern history has humanity faced such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks and hazards, interacting in a hyper-connected and rapidly changing world. We cannot afford to underestimate the scale and impact of these existential threats.”

Women have been highly impacted by the Ukraine war, and have headed humanitarian efforts in their communities, but are still absent from leadership positions. UN Women and Care called for their meaningful inclusion in planning and decision-making processes. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
New York, May 11 2022 (IPS)

A joint UN Women and CARE report on the gender disparities in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis calls for donors and humanitarian partners to take greater care to promote the voices of women and marginalized communities in the humanitarian effort.

The Rapid Gender Analysis by UN Women and CARE, released on May 4, 2022, revealed the challenges and hardships women and minority groups face in Ukraine. UN Women and CARE officers conducted interviews with over 170 participants to determine how the war impacted their needs and concerns.

The war has affected multiple areas of life, from education and healthcare access to their livelihoods. In the last two months, women have emerged to take on more authority in households and the community, including community and civil society organizations.

Women have been at the forefront of humanitarian efforts, the report reveals. However, they have not been included in leadership or the decision-making process.

The risk is that current humanitarian efforts do not fully address the more complex needs of the affected civilians, such as the disabled, people who have already been displaced before the current crisis, and ethnic minorities, such as the Roma.

Among the report’s key findings, women, men, boys, and girls have different needs that must be considered in the humanitarian response.

However, the current frameworks of humanitarian aid need to improve to address their complex needs better.

Women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups face greater pressure with the compounded and intersectional impact of the crisis that can leave them more vulnerable in conflict or the loss of income.

Even though they are at the forefront of humanitarian efforts in their communities, they are not included in the decision-making process of how humanitarian aid is disseminated to even the most vulnerable groups.

Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said: “It’s critical that the humanitarian response in Ukraine takes into account and addresses the different needs of women and girls, men and boys, including those that are furthest left behind…Women have been playing vital roles in their communities’ humanitarian response. They must also be meaningfully involved in the planning and decision-making processes to make sure that their specific needs are met, especially those related to health, safety, and access to livelihoods.”

A UN Women Media Compact event discussed the findings of the report and media experiences with reporting on the war in Ukraine through the lens of gender. Presenting the report at the event on Tuesday were Felicia Dahlquist, Programme Analyst from UN Women’s Ukraine office, and Siobhan Foran, CARE Gender in Emergencies Coordinator.

The speakers agreed that there was a need for gender-responsive and socially inclusive humanitarian efforts. This response could address the needs across different sectors, from providing shelter and non-food items (NFI) and education to lessening the care burden on mothers at home.

Dahlquist and Foran acknowledged that multiple areas need to be addressed all at once in a crisis. This runs the risk of other factors such as gender and diversity competing for attention.

Another recommendation was to increase communications to ensure accountability to the affected populations. This would mean implementing feedback and complaints mechanisms to ensure effective procedures and diverse communications channels to disseminate information on humanitarian aid to various groups.

A key topic of discussion was the role that media could play in reporting the stories of women, men, and minority groups on the humanitarian front.

The speakers said that the media has the ability, and thus a responsibility to address the ongoing issues that women and minorities deal with, to present the nuance and complexity of their experiences within the context of their intersectional experiences.

The media have the potential to reflect the voices of these communities to the general public but also get the attention of donors and humanitarian agencies to increase their efforts to support women-led organizations.

Even as donors and humanitarian agencies are expected to be pragmatic in their program planning and implementation approach, Dahlquist said it is essential to remember the humanity of the people who need this aid.

The media could play a key role in showcasing that human element, especially among those groups that receive less coverage in the news, such as ethnic minorities and the LGBQTIA+ community.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications is one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries.. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By External Source
May 11 2022 (IPS)

The past 20 years have seen a significant decline in maternal mortality rates from 342 deaths to 211 per 100,000 globally . But every day, more than 800 women around the world die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, up to 42 days after delivery. Most of these deaths are preventable.

For every maternal death, another 20 women suffer serious injuries, infections and disabilities related to pregnancy. Professors Salome Maswime and Lawrence Chauke explain the state of maternal health in South Africa and how it can be improved.

 

How South Africa compares to other countries

In low-income countries the maternal mortality rate in 2017 was 462/100,000 compared to 11/100,000 in high-income countries. In Western Europe rates are as low as five deaths per 100,000 births. Sub-Saharan Africa has 533 deaths per 100,000 births.

The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications was one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries. In West and Central Africa the maternal mortality rate is 674 per 100,000. In South Sudan it is 1,150 and 1,140 in Chad

The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications was one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries.

In West and Central Africa the maternal mortality rate is 674 per 100,000. In South Sudan it is 1,150 and 1,140 in Chad.

South Africa has one of the lowest rates in Africa (113/100,000) but far higher than the UK (7/100,000). The rate in South Africa has declined from 150 deaths per 100,000 births in 1998 to 113 per 100,000 in 2019, according to the South African Demographic and Health Survey and the National Confidential Enquiries for Maternal Deaths.

 

Drivers of maternal mortality in South Africa

The three leading causes of maternal deaths in South Africa are HIV-related infections, obstetric haemorrhage and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Pre-existing medical conditions also account for a high proportion of pregnancy related complications in South Africa. Most deaths are still deemed as preventable.

A significant number of South African women attend at least four antenatal clinics (76%) and deliver in healthcare facilities (96%) under the care of a skilled birth attendant (97%). Ideally these figures should translate into a much lower maternal mortality rate. This means that there are still gaps and more work still needs to be done.

The biggest challenge is still late booking. Only 47% of women booked during the first trimester in 2016. Between 2017-2019, 72% of the women who died had attended antenatal care. But only half had booked before 20 weeks.

Delays in seeking antenatal care have been associated with a higher likelihood of having adverse pregnancy outcomes.

A very high percentage (90%) of South Africans live within 7km of a health facility and 67% live within 2km of a healthcare facility. Despite this proximity women struggle to get timely transport to healthcare facilities. The situation is even worse for rural women due to poor road infrastructure and poor emergency referral systems.

Healthcare facilities offer different levels of care. Most deaths occur in district hospitals in South Africa, where specialist, critical care or efficient emergency medical services may not be readily available. Patients with complications don’t reach higher levels of care in good time.

Even when they have access to higher levels of care women face possible shortage of specialist, medical and nursing personnel in addition to overcrowding.

A report done covering 2017 to 2019 found that 80% of women who died, received substandard care at district hospitals. The figure was 60% for community healthcare centres and regional hospitals. Poor quality of care is therefore a major problem within the country’s healthcare system. The same report identified overcrowding, lack of resources, including shortage of nursing and medical personnel among the key drivers for the poor quality care.

Disrespectful maternal care is an issue too. The abuse in South African maternity services was described as “one of the world’s greatest disgraces” in 2015. It included verbal and physical abuse, non-consensual care, non-confidential care, neglect and abandonment. In some facilities women said they expect to be shouted at, beaten and neglected.

Maternal mortality is an indicator of access to care and quality of care. It is also indirectly linked to socioeconomic factors. Women who have access to education, proper housing and job opportunities are more likely to have good health outcomes compared to those who are not.

Socio-demographic variables such as “race” have also been linked to how women are treated.

The attitudes of the healthcare workers towards patients has an impact on women’s health-seeking behaviour and delivery of care by the healthcare workers (to the extent of delaying and withholding care).

 

What can be done to improve outcomes?

The first step is to meet the need for contraception to avoid unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. In 2012, 215 million women globally were estimated to have an unmet need for contraception.

Health education and promotion at community level would encourage women to attend antenatal clinics and give birth in a health facility in the care of a skilled attendant.

Maternal care should be respectful and dignified.

Efficient transport and emergency medical services are needed so that women receive timely and appropriate care.

Stronger health systems would improve access to high quality obstetric care. Women survive complications of pregnancy and childbirth in functional health systems, with efficient referral systems. There is an urgent need for a responsive healthcare system that takes into consideration population and disease trends.

There is also an urgent need to address the imbalance between demand and supply of healthcare services; improve the social and economic status of women in society as well as the quality of maternal and reproductive healthcare services, to win the battle against maternal deaths.

Salome Maswime, Professor of Global Surgery, University of Cape Town and Lawrence Chauke, Adjunct Professor, University of the Witwatersrand

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

World Bank, Washington DC.
The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, May 11 2022 (IPS)

Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities. Notwithstanding the austerities that would be entailed, a bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accepted as the only way out of the dire economic situation.

Opposition political parties and citizens across the country blame the Rajapaksa government’s widespread corruption and mismanagement for the crisis, and demand that the President and the Parliament resign.

The Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa did so on May 9th, 2022. However, the protesters at Galle Face Green and elsewhere have not been able to put forward an alternative leadership or a viable road map for the future. The country remains mired in confusion, chaos and a highly volatile political impasse.

To understand the complexity of the current crisis, and to prevent us falling back into the same paralyzing debt-cycle, it is necessary to move beyond domestic politics and the relentless news cycles of corporate media and explore some of the commonly overlooked yet basic global economic and geopolitical dimensions.

Debt Crises and Global Inequality

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism.

At the start of 1989, developing nations owed foreign creditors $1.3 trillion US dollars. That is, “just over half their combined gross national products and two thirds more than their export earnings.”

Recently, the effects of the war in the Ukraine and the Covid-19 crisis have worsened the high debt burdens of developing countries. These countries were already struggling to pay accumulated debts stemming from the expansion of capital flows from the high-income countries to lower income countries after the 2008 global financial crisis. Financial liberalization was fostered by powerful global interests, including the IMF, when interest rates dropped in the richer countries.

This facilitated borrowing by developing countries from private international capital markets through International Sovergein Bonds (ISBs), which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Financial liberalization facilitated by the IMF and the developed countries working with the domestic elites of poor countries has created a “hierarchical and asymmetrical international financial architecture.”

As a December 2021 Report published by the Bretton Woods Project points out, this unequal framework creates “macroeconomic imbalances, financial fragilities, and exchange rate instability that can trigger debt and/or currency crises and curb the economic policy autonomy of affected countries to pursue domestic goals.”

The international NGO Debt Jubilee Campaign (soon to be called Debt Justice) has pointed out that 54 countries are now experiencing a debt crisis. According to the World Bank, Sri Lanka owes $15 billion in bonds, mostly dollar-denominated, out of a total of $45 to 50 billion in long-term debt.

The country needs $7 to 8.6 billion to service its debt load in 2022, whereas it had just $1.6 billion in reserves at the end of March 2022. The downgrading of Sri Lanka by rating agencies such as Moody’s added to the difficulty of further borrowing to pay off the debt.

The devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee by 32% since the beginning of the year has made it the ‘world’s worst performing currency,’ exacerbating the plight of the Sri Lankan people.

The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively. Currently, China is Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, owning about 10% of its total foreign debt, followed by Japan which also owns 10%.

Approximately half of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt (55% according to some estimates) is market borrowings through US- and EU-based ISBs. Asset managers BlackRock, Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc., along with Fidelity, T Rowe Price and TIAA are among Sri Lanka’s main ISB creditors. However, the information on the ownership of ISBs – including one worth $1 billion that is maturing on July 25, 2022 – is not publicly revealed.

Sri Lanka is in negotiations with the IMF to restructure and repay its massive debt. IMF structural adjustment will include the familiar privatization, cutbacks of social safety nets and alignment of local economic policy with U.S. and western interests, to the further detriment of local working people’s standard of living and inevitably leading to more wealth disparity and repeat debt crises.

Debt Crisis and Geopolitical Rivalry

Economic crises create opportunities for external powers to expand economic exploitation and geopolitical control. In Sri Lanka’s context, this means India, the US and China.

Sri Lanka’s big neighbor India has extended a $1 billion credit line to provide essential food and medicine. The Sri Lankan government has stated that there are no conditions attached to the Indian loans. However, Sri Lankan analysts believe that agreements have been made giving Indian companies exclusive access to investments on the island.

Sri Lanka is strategically located in the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Over 80% of the global seaborne oil trade is estimated to pass through the choke points of the Indian Ocean. Although bizarrely overlooked by the global media, a Cold War is already in place between China and the Quadrilateral Alliance (United States, Japan, Australia and India) over the control of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka is part of China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the island’s Hambantota Port and Port City. The United States, on the other hand, signed an open-ended Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on August 4, 2017, facilitating military logistic support.

The US is also seeking to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which would effectively turn Sri Lanka into a US military base. While the proposed United States Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact has not been signed due to local protests, the pact’s objective – US control over the land, transportation and communication infrastructure in Sri Lanka – continues unabated.

In this context of Sri Lanka as a tense theater of geopolitical rivalry, the Sri Lankan debt crisis cannot be understood simply as an economic crisis. Could it, in fact, be a ‘staged default’ designed to push Sri Lanka into an IMF bailout which would complete the island’s subservience to the US dominated economic and political agenda?

Alternative Sustainable Approaches

The young ‘Gotta Go Home!’ protesters who demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation seem to be unaware of the global dynamics of the Sri Lankan crisis. Perhaps local and foreign interests guiding the protests may want to keep it that way.

They are certainly not encouraging the protestors to join global calls for much-needed debt cancellation, debt swaps and regulation of capital market borrowing to prevent debt crises occurring in the first place.

However, at least a few Sri Lankan professionals concerned about the implications of an IMF bailout have put forward alternative short and long-term solutions. They recognize that while exploitative colonial and neocolonial policies have turned Sri Lanka into a poor and desperate country, the island is rich with abundant natural resources and human capital.

If the land and ocean and the graphite, ilmenite and the other mineral resources are sustainably utilized, Sri Lanka can be economically self-sufficient and prosperous. There is also much to be learned from Sri Lanka’s pre-colonial history in this regard, not least its hydraulic civilization.

The Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has revealed that there are enough fuel and natural gas deposits in the Mannar Basin to meet the entire country’s needs for 60 years. If the abundant sustainable solar and wind power are also utilized, Sri Lanka can become not only energy self-sufficient, but an exporter of energy as well.

Bioregionalism, economic democracy, and food and energy sovereignty are the only route to a sustainable future for Sri Lanka and other debt-trapped countries, and indeed the world at large. To overcome the dominant forces seeking to monopolize control over the natural environment and humanity, people – especially the young – need to awaken and work in partnership with each other to fight the destructive greed that ensnares and threatens to destroy us.

Asoka Bandarage is Distinguished (Adjunct) Professor at the California, Institute for Integral Studies. She is the author of Colonialism in Sri Lanka (Mouton), The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka (Routledge), Women, Population and Global Crisis (Zed), Sustainability and Well-Being (Palgrave McMilllan) and many other publications on global political-economy and South Asia.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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