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By Rangita de Silva de Alwis and Melanne Verveer
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2021 (IPS)

The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), rendering it “strange bedfellows” with Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Tonga, and Palau.

Twenty years ago, after Harold Koh*, made a clear foreign policy case for ratification, we develop three more reasons as to why now—during the Biden Administration— the U.S. is at a critical moment to finally ratify the CEDAW.

1) A New Public Reckoning: Advancing our Domestic Policy on Gender and Race Intersectionality

For four decades, Congress failed to rally enough votes to ratify the CEDAW, but today, social justice movements are building new momentum like never before.

At a time of a public reckoning spawned by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #MeToo Movements, the Convention represents an important vehicle to address institutional and structural sexism through an intersectional lens.

As Harold Koh argued in 2002, “a country’s ratification of the CEDAW is one of the surest indicators of the strength of its commitment to internalize the universal norm of gender equality into its domestic laws.”

The potential for the CEDAW to inspire necessary change in the US directly relates to some of the United States’ current policy objectives.

The National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness (2021) illustrates the Administration’s commitment to place women and girls at the center of global recovery. The Rescue Plan recognizes that COVID-19 has exacerbated domestic violence and sexual assault, thereby creating a “shadow pandemic.”

As the Biden Administration looks toward the reauthorization of the Violence against Women Act (VAWA), it must now look to the horizon—to the ratification of the CEDAW. Ratifying the Convention will give the Biden Administration significantly more legitimacy in its effort to end violence against women and would demonstrate the solidarity needed to achieve this goal.

As President Biden himself stated, the renewal of the VAWA “should not be a Democratic or Republican issue—it’s about standing up against the abuse of power and preventing violence.”

Our data analysis of the State Party Reports to the CEDAW Committee from 2016 to 2020 reveals a significant focus by the CEDAW Committee on two issues that are central to the Biden Administration and to the United States’ national security and foreign policy in general: (1) violence against women; and (2) an intersectional focus on gender.

In every Concluding Observation across all five years between 2016 and 2020 (107 countries reported to the CEDAW Committee during this period), the CEDAW Committee mentioned intersectionality and gender-based violence 100 percent of the time.

2) Ratification of the CEDAW is part of the U.S.’s Transformative Power Arsenal: From Soft Power, Smart Power, to Transformative Power

In response to global challenges, CEDAW continues to be one of the standard-setting policy tools to advance gender and intersectional equality and we address this in our analysis of CEDAW’s impact on drafting domestic legislation, national constitutions, judicial decision making and in changing the national conversations and public discourse in countries in the Arab region.

As Ambassador Melanne Verveer, one of the authors, testified before Congress in 2010: “[I]t is true many countries do not live up to that treaty, but we know how effectively that lever is for rights advocates to seize and to use effectively to bring about the kind of consistent application of the principles of the treaty to their own lives.”

3) The Women Peace and Security and its Linkages to CEDAW

The Women, Peace, and Security (“WPS”) agenda is one gender issue that has near total bipartisan support, as demonstrated by over a decade of concerted legislative efforts by both Democrats and Republicans.

We explore how the United States’ strong bipartisan commitment to the WPS agenda and how its global security goals can be advanced by ratifying the CEDAW. From the United Kingdom to Afghanistan, the CEDAW has played a role in strengthening commitments to the WPS agenda.

The United States has emerged as a global leader in WPS, both by spearheading U.N. Security Council Resolutions to condemn sexual violence against women and girls in armed conflict, and by codifying its commitment to pursuing the WPS agenda in domestic law.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice introduced what later became Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008). In proposing this Resolution, Secretary Rice confirmed that sexual violence against women in conflict was an imperative which the U.N. Security Council was charged to address.

A year later, Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1888, introduced by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reaffirmed Secretary Rice’s premise, acknowledged that the CEDAW is inextricably connected to women’s security.

The U.S. needs to leverage the bipartisan support for the WPS agenda to piggyback support for the Convention. After all, global security is in our best national interest.

In 2020, during the 75th Anniversary of the U.N., the CEDAW Concluding Observations for Afghanistan, the Congo, and Zimbabwe had sections dedicated specifically to WPS, providing substantial suggestions for improvement in state action in this issue area.

For instance, the CEDAW Committee observed in detail that “Afghan women are systematically excluded from formal peace negotiations, such as the 2018 Kabul Process and the negotiations that followed the conference held in Geneva in 2018.”

Today as we bear witness to the fall of Afghanistan, history will judge us on how we protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

As we fight the forces of a pandemic, the global and domestic recovery will be measured by whether it created greater gender and racial equity.

Ultimately, the arc of American engagement, both in foreign and domestic policy, must bend toward ratifying the CEDAW. After decades of lawmakers failing to muster the political will for ratification, the demand for change has now reached a fever pitch both nationally and globally.

The Biden administration must rally bipartisan support to ratify the CEDAW as a tool to advancing the human rights of women around the world. In then- Senator Biden’s words in 2002, “Time is a Wasting” for the U.S. ratification of the CEDAW.

This summary is excerpted from the article by Rangita de Silva de Alwis, faculty at Penn Law and Hillary Rodham Clinton Fellow on Gender Equity at GIWPS, Georgetown (2020-2021); and Ambassador Melanne Verveer, the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues. Rangita thanks Dean Theodore Ruger, Dean of Penn Law for his support in writing the paper.

*Footnote: On September 10th, Columbia Law School’s Journal of Transnational Law will convene a High Level Roundtable highlighting “Time Is A-Wasting”: Making the Case for CEDAW Ratification by the United States by Professor Rangita de Silva de Alwis and Ambassador Melanne Verveer to be published in Volume 60 of the Columbia Law School’s Journal of Transnational Law. The goal of the High-Level Roundtable is to raise national attention to elevate the importance of the CEDAW ratification ahead of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Commentators will be led by Harold Hongju Koh– former Dean of Yale Law School, Sterling Professor of Law, former Legal Adviser and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, currently Senior Advisor in the Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. State Department for the Biden Administration and repeat witness before Congress on behalf of the CEDAW.

The Roundtable will be opened with a welcome by Dean Gillian Lester, Dean of Columbia Law School. More information on remote participation in the Roundtable can be found here: Roundtable landing page

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 7 2021 (IPS)

Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the COVID-19 vaccination queue, with most low-income ones not even lining up. Worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery, let alone achieve Agenda 2030.

Anis Chowdhury

Excluding by appropriating
Developing countries now account for more than 85% of global pandemic deaths. By early September, The Economist estimated actual COVID-19 deaths worldwide at 15.2 million, rather than the official 4.6 million.

In six of the ten countries with the highest fatality rates, less than a tenth of their populations were fully vaccinated as of 10 August. In the other four, no more than a third were fully vaccinated.

Now, as rich nations buy up more vaccines for third shots, vaccination inequities are becoming starker. Buying up hundreds of millions of doses, they penalise poorer countries already doubly deprived. Rich countries will likely have about 1.2 billion extra doses by the end of 2021!

More than 5.41 billion vaccine shots have been administered worldwide, with 81% in only ten high and upper middle-income countries. Meanwhile, the poorest countries have only received 0.4%.

In January, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General (DG) warned, “I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries”.

Profits booster
In early July, Pfizer and BioNTech announced plans to get emergency authorisation for booster vaccine doses. Pfizer then met with US officials to press their case, while Moderna applied for approval this month.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Following the Israeli President’s third shot on 30 July, nearly a million boosters have been administered in the US since 12 August despite earlier official hesitation. US President Joe Biden expects to launch a campaign for a further 100 million booster shots on 20 September.

France began administering boosters to people over 65 from September. The UK has announced offering a third dose from late September. Germany, Belgium and other European countries followed suit.

Now, supply will decline further as Pfizer and Moderna sell booster doses. Two new Pfizer-BioNTech facilities have been approved to manufacture boosters in France and Germany.

Meanwhile, Moderna is scaling up booster production in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Almost all the 3.2 billion Pfizer and Moderna doses to be produced this year have already been purchased by the US and Europe.

The WHO DG lambasted this “scandalous inequity” at the World Health Assembly in May. The WHO has repeatedly called for delaying booster provision, arguing that the most vulnerable people worldwide should be vaccinated first.

Pfizer and Moderna have not provided details of their booster prices. An economist has estimated: “Sold at present prices, this would represent roughly a 50% increase in revenue over the longer run”.

Moderna raised its 2021 vaccine sales forecast for its first two doses to US$19.2 billion in May. So, booster sales should add about US$10 billion. Meanwhile, Pfizer raised its own forecast by more than 70% to US$26 billion, with booster sales bringing US$13 billion more.

Profits over science
Rich countries’ practices actually go against most scientific advice. The case for boosters is not scientifically established. Most scientists do not agree that boosters are the best way to deal with new threats. Citing lack of credible data, scientists have opposed boosters in reputable journals, including Nature.

On 6 August, the European Union’s drugs regulator noted not enough evidence to recommend COVID-19 vaccine boosters. A European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control report this month affirmed, “there is no urgent need” for booster shots except for those in frail health.

The WHO noted on 18 August that current evidence does not support the case for booster shots. Scientists described official decisions approving third booster shots as “shocking” and “criminal”. When US authorities approved boosters, two top vaccine officials quit in protest.

Independent research on Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine suggests it provides long-term immunity for years, contrary to the company’s latest claims. Also using mRNA technology, Moderna’s vaccine should have similar longer-term efficacy.

As COVID-19 vaccines are still new, such expectations remain subject to confirmation. As with most vaccines, ‘memory response’ triggers antibody protection when someone vaccinated is infected, even after natural response levels have waned.

Perhaps most worryingly, as big pharmaceutical companies transform their business strategies to generate more profits from boosters, their incentives change. They have less reason to develop vaccines fully immunizing against the COVID-19 virus, or even to ensure that everyone is vaccinated.

Apartheid booster
Supplying boosters reduces vaccines available to others. Supplies to poorer countries have already been greatly reduced by rich countries securing many times more than what their populations need.

Some have even abused COVAX, purportedly designed for equitable distribution to poorer countries. COVAX aimed to deliver a billion vaccine doses in 2021, but had only delivered 217 million by August, according to UNICEF.

Meanwhile, many rich country governments continue to block the request to the World Trade Organization to temporarily suspend COVID-19 related intellectual property rights. This waiver would enable developing countries to affordably produce tests, vaccines, treatments, equipment and other such needs.

Earlier, Big Pharma leaders rejected as “nonsense” WHO’s C-TAP initiative to share technologies and research knowledge to accelerate affordable production of and access to such technologies.

Vaccine equity necessary
There is also a practical reason to seek vaccine equity. We are all safer when everyone is vaccinated. New, more vaccine-resistant variants are emerging, endangering everyone.

Rich countries protecting their own citizens will not prevent new mutants from emerging. New infections risk triggering a resurgence, or worse, with new, more dangerous mutations.

The Delta variant, first reported in India in late 2020, surged in March as few there had been vaccinated. Ironically, the Serum Institute of India has the world’s largest vaccine production capacity by far, but largely underutilised for COVID-19 vaccines.

The IMF warns highly infectious variants could derail economic recovery, cutting global output by US$4.5 trillion by 2025. But the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated the world economy could lose US$2.3 trillion in 2021 alone due to delayed vaccinations, with developing nations losing most.

For the WHO DG, “Vaccine inequity is the world’s biggest obstacle to ending this pandemic and recovering from COVID-19….Economically, epidemiologically and morally, it is in all countries’ best interest to use the latest available data to make lifesaving vaccines available to all”.

 

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Vladimir Popov – Principal Researcher, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.

By Vladimir Popov
BERLIN, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

The main contradiction of the modern era, and indeed of all human history, is not between capitalism and socialism, and not even between authoritarianism and democracy, but between individualism and collectivism, between public and personal interests. Countries that are getting ahead in the economic race allow themselves the luxury of individualism, prioritizing human rights, which ultimately undermines their political and economic power and causes their decline and the rise of more collectivist civilizations. It is literally the story that is as old, as the world itself…

Vladimir Popov

“Asian values”

“Asian values” is the priority of the interests of the community (village, enterprise, nation, world community) over the interests of the individual. As a matter of fact, what is today called “Asian values”, before the 16th century Protestantism, was a universal principle of all mankind — there was no primacy of the interests of the individual over the interests of society before that time.

Collectivist values are often juxtaposed to Western liberal values, which stress the primacy of human rights that cannot be alienated from the individual under any circumstances, even for the sake of achieving the highest public good. John Rawls, political philosopher and an authority on the issue, formulated the principle of precedence of democratic values and human rights: according to him, human rights, including political rights, “are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.” Defenders of “Asian values”, whose roots are often sought in Confucianism, believe that, in principle, the political rights of individuals can be sacrificed for the highest public good, for example, for the sake of achieving sustained high rates of growth and social equality.

Values, of course, is largely a vague and subjective concept. Economists like to operate with something more tangible – objective and measurable categories, but there are those as well. Social harmony is based on low income and wealth inequality, which are perfectly measurable: in China and East Asia today it is lower than in other countries, if only the comparisons are made properly – adjusted for country size and level of development. And “oligarch-intensity” (the ratio of the wealth of billionaires to GDP), which measures inequality at the very top of the property pyramid, is lower in China than in most other countries.

The share of the state in the economy (government consumption as a percentage of GDP, to be precise) is higher than in states with similar characteristics, the number of violations of law and order and criminal penalties (the crime rate, murder rate and incarceration rate) is lower1. There are other measurable objective indicators – lifetime employment and unemployment rate, the ratio of bank credit to the stock market, concentration of control over corporations, etc. There are also differences in subjective preferencesmeasured by the World Value Survey and other polls – the degree of trust in the government, the willingness to defend one’s country, the importance of family ties, and so on2.

But the most important thing, of course, is the mass understanding that the country and society as a whole are more important than any individual, even the most important. For example, the one child policy, practiced in China since the beginning of reforms in 1979 and until recently, is traditionally considered in the West as a violation of the “inalienable” reproductive rights of citizens, but in China it was supported by the overwhelming majority of the population and did not raise questions.

“Ask not what your country can do for you –ask what you can do for your country,” – this famous phrase of John F. Kennedy made a strong impression in the United States and in the West, but not in China. “As if it could be otherwise” – my Chinese friend plainly noticed.

Competition of civilizations

There was a time, when it seemed that the West’s bet on personal freedom and human rights was paying off as the West overtook all other civilizations both economically and militarily. The universal feeling was that “the Rest” could only imitate the West in order to achieve the same success. However, the rise of East Asia in the post-war period, and especially the rise of its central state — China, makes one think that the “end of history” is postponed, and it is too early to end the debate on the competition of civilizations. China (and earlier — other East Asian countries based on Chinese culture — Japan, Korea, Taiwan, ASEAN countries) in the postwar period managed to raise growth rates to 7-10% and maintain these growth rates for several decades. As a result, East Asia in the second half of the 20th century became, in fact, the only large region that managed to narrow the gap in the levels of economic development with the West.

Neither Latin America, nor the Middle East, nor South Asia, nor Africa, nor the former USSR and Eastern Europe have succeeded in doing this. True, in the 1950s and 1970s, the USSR and Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America, narrowed the gap with the West. But then their model of import-substituting development ran into the dead end: Latin America after the debt crisis of the early 1980s experienced a “lost decade”, Eastern Europe in the 1990s had a transformational recession comparable only to the Great Depression of the 1930s. years.

As a matter of fact, only in East Asia there are countries that have been able to transform themselves from developing into developed – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong. There are no other states in the world that have managed to catch up with the West due to high growth rates (and not due to higher prices for resources). The last two cases can be attributed to small scales — these are cities, not countries, but there is no way to denounce thefirst three cases. Especially now, when China is following in the footsteps of these countries with a fifth of the world’s population.

The significance of this growth today is difficult to overestimate, and not only because China is the largest country in the world, but also because for the first time in modern history we are dealing with successful catch-up development based on illiberal, if not anti-liberal principles —on “Asian values ”, collectivist in their essence institutions. After the collapse of the USSR, the Chinese, or rather, East Asian, development model is gaining more and more adherents in developing countries — from Brazil to Fiji. Geopolitics and military potential matter a great deal, of course, but in the end it will be the countries with the highest economic efficiency that will dominate. “’In the last analysis, productivity of labor is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system” (Lenin).

Comparative economic and social dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21 is another proof of the advantages of the collectivist model, if such proof is still needed. In China, Japan, South Korea, there was practically no increase in mortality compared to the previous period (2015-19), and life expectancy did not decrease. Of the Western countries, only Australia, Iceland, New Zealand and Norway showed such a result, while in the United States the mortality rate increased roughly by 25% on an annual basis, life expectancy decreased by one and a half years – from 78.8 in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. This year, 2021, life expectancy in the United States will probably decrease even more, while in China it will increase, so that China canovertake the United States in longevity.

And at the same time, China is leading in economic growth: GDP growth rates in 2020 only slowed down slightly (from 6% in 2019 to 2% in 2020; 8-9% is expected in 2021 to compensate for the previous slowdown), whereas in all other G-20 countries, except for Turkey, there was a drop in production, sometimes significant – from 5 to 10% in 20203.

Forecast

Russia stands between East and West for almost its entire history. The modern Russian socio-economic model is partly liberal, but partly collectivist, especially after overcoming the chaos of the 90s.

Losing in the competition with the Chinese economic and social model in many ways, the West will probably try to create a united front of states, regardless of whether these states are liberal and democratic or not, to contain the rise of China and the proliferation of the collectivist model. It can be assumed that all countries that the West considers today authoritarian, from Venezuela to North Korea, will receive an indulgence for the alleged violations of human rights and democracy if only they join the anti-Chinese coalition. The West will probably try to seduce Russia with the lifting of sanctions and even the possibility of joining the Western club of “civilized countries”.

If Russia and other countries that the West considers authoritarian agree to such a compromise, the rise of China and the spread of the East Asian model may be slowed down, but not stopped. But if Russia ties its fate to China and the new collectivist model, the decline of the West could happen faster than expected.

1 Popov, Vladimir. Why Europe looks so much like China: Big government and low income inequalities. MPRA Paper No. 106326, March 2021.

2 Keun Lee and Vladimir Popov (Eds.) Re-thinking East Asian Model of Economic Development After the Covid-19. – Special Issue of Seoul Journal of Economics, 2020, Vol. 33;

Popov, Vladimir. Which economic model is more competitive? The West and the South after the Covid-19 pandemic. –Seoul Journal of Economics 2020, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 505-538;

Covid-19 pandemic and long-term development trajectories of East Asian and Western economic models. – Pathways to Peace and Security (Пути к миру и безопасности), 2020, №2 (59).

3 Popov, Vladimir. Global health care system after coronavirus: Who has responsibility to protect. MPRA Paper No. 100542, May 2020;

Popov, Vladimir. How to Deal with a Coronavirus Economic Recession? MPRA Paper No. 100485, May 2020.

 

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Excerpt:

Vladimir Popov – Principal Researcher, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.

Flashback: March of Justice, Minsk, Belarus, in September 2020. Credit: Andrew Keymaster / Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

There will soon be no one left to defend human rights or help minorities in Belarus as the country’s third sector moves closer to “complete liquidation”, international rights groups have warned.

Belarus’s authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has stepped up his regime’s crackdown on any potential opposition in recent weeks, ordering the closure of scores of NGOs, claiming they are being run by foreign entities fomenting the destabilisation of the country.

As of mid-August, more than 60 civil society groups had been shuttered, including not just human rights organisations but some promoting women’s rights, helping the disabled, and working with people who have HIV/AIDS.

This comes amid a wider crackdown on independent media and pro-democracy activists which began a year ago after mass protests following Lukashenko’s re-election in a widely disputed election.

Heather McGill, a researcher for Amnesty International, told IPS: “We are close to the liquidation of the third sector. There is hardly anyone left in Belarus to provide help to people that need it. There won’t be any groups left in Belarus to protect anyone, or defend their rights.”

Belarussian civil society has come under increasing pressure over the last year as authorities in the country have moved to repress any possible opposition to the regime.

Not only have many organisations faced sudden police raids and checks, some staff have been arrested or harassed, while demands to fulfil what groups say are impossible administrative obligations have been used to force their closure.

Some groups have moved out of the country and are continuing their work from abroad. However, this limits what services and help they can provide.

“Some groups provide legal services, lawyers, for instance, for people. Those simply won’t be there now,” said McGill.

Groups providing key social services, including help for the elderly or the sick will also be affected.

“Many non-profit organizations did work with the issues that the state did not do and, having lost the services of NGOs, ordinary people, including those from vulnerable groups, will suffer,” Svetlana Zinkevich of the Office for European Expertise and Communications NGO, told the Devex media platform.

Her organisation, which works to build third sector capacity, has been told it must close.
Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and during his rule, Belarus has been repeatedly criticised for human rights abuses and suppression of opposition. He has often been dubbed ‘Europe’s last dictator’.

But the scale of the attacks on the third sector, and wider repression in society of anyone seen to be linked to pro-democracy or anti-regime movements, has shocked seasoned observers of the country. 

Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS: “Belarusian civil society had, despite years of authoritarian autocracy, managed to flourish, expand, and grow quite strong. The scale and scope of the raids, arrests, and moves to close civic organizations in recent months in Belarus is unprecedented in this region.”

There has been an equally shocking crackdown on independent media with most independent news outlets having been forced to close and the few independent journalists still working talking of living in daily fear of arrest.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the country is now the most dangerous place in Europe for journalists, and the Belarussian Association of Journalists (BAJ) says that over the last year almost 500 journalists have been arrested, 29 have been imprisoned, and there have been almost 70 documented incidents of violence against reporters.

Meanwhile, the BAJ, the only independent representative organisation of journalists and media workers in Belarus and one of the country’s most prominent champions of freedom of expression, has been dissolved on the order of the Supreme Court for allegedly not dealing with alleged administrative violations after a Justice Ministry inspection earlier in the year.

One worker in what remains of Belarus’s independent media told IPS: “We have never encountered so many violations of the rights of journalists, especially physical attacks, arrests, and detentions.

“An unprecedented number of journalists are under criminal prosecution, being deemed political prisoners. It is obvious that the authorities are trying to silence the press, constantly increasing the level of pressure, thereby grossly violating the right of their citizens to information, and no one knows when this will end.”

Apart from NGOs and their staff, the dire situation has also forced many ordinary people to leave the country.

Natalia*, a former emergency services worker who was involved in organizing protests last year, told IPS she had fled Belarus after fearing she and her family were about to be arrested.

She said that she was arrested many times, abducted off the street by police, told her three children would be taken from her and put into care unless she stopped organising protests, tortured in police cells, had her leg broken by riot police at a protest before suddenly fleeing with the rest of her family one night after discovering her home had been broken into by security forces.

“I had kept a small bag of clothes packed in case I was detained and held ahead of a trial. It was all I had when I crossed the border. I later found out a warrant for my arrest had been issued,” she said.

Meanwhile, Alexiy*, a former student in Minsk, told IPS how he had left the country earlier this year by trekking through forests across the border into Russia and then travelling on to Western Europe.

He said that what has been happening in Belarus over the last year was “shocking and sad” and that life had become “terrible” in many places, especially the capital Minsk. “There is fear everywhere,” he said.

It is unclear how long the current repression in the country is likely to last. Much of the international community has condemned what they say are the appalling human rights abuses being committed in Belarus, and some countries have imposed tough sanctions on Lukashenko’s regime.

But whether these are having their intended effect is hard to gauge.

Groups like Amnesty International suspect the NGO closures are related to sanctions imposed by Western nations.

It is also thought that the regime is orchestrating flows of thousands of undocumented immigrants towards its borders with EU states in the Baltic region, to potentially provoke an international refugee crisis which it can use as leverage to get the EU to reverse sanctions.

Analysts also believe that the regime’s fate – and that of pro-democracy movements, independent media, and the wider third sector – depends more on financial injections from Russia than external pressure from Western governments.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has approved USD 1.5 billion in loans for Belarus over the last year while Lukashenko is also courting closer economic ties with his traditional ally.

McGill said: “The country can go on without the third sector, and it can go on as it is as long as there is no economic collapse, which is not going to happen while Russia is giving its financial support.”

But others see some hope in the fact that even as it faces liquidation, people working in Belarus’s civil rights groups are refusing to abandon their work entirely.

“The situation is grim. [But] it’s heartening that so many civic groups are still finding ways to carry out this work. It speaks to their commitment and sheer determination,” said Denber.

*Names have been changed for reasons of safety.

 

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By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

2020 was a year of tremendous upheaval. The murder of George Floyd, followed by global Black Lives Matter protests, Covid-19 and the stark light that the pandemic shone on inequality within countries and between the global north and south, protests and brutal repression after elections in Belarus, ongoing demonstrations for climate action led by youth around the world, to name just a few.

Civil society, that is all sectors of our lives that are not family, government or for-profit, played a central role in all of these movements. But are those actions leading to positive results that will change people’s lives for the better?

Today’s guest, Lysa John, Secretary General of CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society groups, responds unequivocally yes. She points to past examples like the campaigns to recognize women’s right to vote and for legal recognition of gay rights.

In these tumultuous times, she argues, what civil society must do better is channel the energy of the movements on the streets into medium and long-term projects to build alternatives to existing structures.

 

Bernth in Damascus

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

Like most of us, I rely on news media to find an explanation to tragedies I watch on TV. Neverthelss, some of my opinions about the Afghan tragedy have furthermore been influenced by talks I once had with my friend Bernth Dagerklint. We had for some years been working as teachers at a high school, though this was not Bernth’s main occupation. Most of the time, he served as an officer during international, armed campaigns supported by the Swedish government. He had been to former Yugoslavia, the West Bank and not the least in Afghanistan, where he since 2003 on several occasions worked as ”instructor” for Afghan officers.

The last time I met Bernth was in 2012, when he was just back after a sojourn in Afghanistan. Five years later, in 2017, an “independent” evaluation stated that the cost for the Swedish operation so far had been approximately 2 billion USD and concluded that the efforts “had not succeeded in contributing to sustainable security, but had a positive impact on the development of the Armed Forces.” When Bernth served in Afghanistan, Swedish forces amounted to 500 men supporting the International Military Task Forces, ISAF. Five Swedes had been killed and it was assumed that Swedish military had killed twenty Afghans.

The original motivation for a Swedish involvement had been solidarity with the US, after the September 11 attacks. It was assumed that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan and being protected by the Talibans. It was first at a later date that the Swedish intervention came to be depicted as a humanitarian operation. It cannot be denied that the Taliban regime staged summary executions, had economic interests in the opium trade, while actively suppressing women’s rights, denying them access to education, social media and decision making. On these grounds the international community’s involvement in Afghanistan’s internal affairs could be justified, though the political game behind the intervention cannot be ignored, as well as the fact that local and international sinister forces benefited from the foreign occupation.

Swedish military strategy was influenced by a set of rules envisioned by the US, for example Field Manual 3-24, which under the leadership of General David Petreus had been compiled by a mixed group of generals, academics, human rights advocates, and journalists. Petreus, who had a PhD from Princeton University, was appreciated by Swedish officers and had in 2010 – 2011 been commander of the US Forces-Afghanistan, USFOR-A, at the same time as Bernth was in the country.

Manual 3-24 advocated a strategy intending “not just to dominate land operations, but to change entire societies.” If security was to be accomplished a persistent presence had to be established, especially in the most threatened neighborhoods. Of critical importance was helping a “controlled country” to increase its governmental capacity, develop employment programs, and improve daily life for its citizens, while separating “reconcilable citizens from irreconcilable enemies.” A strategy that had to be complemented by a relentless pursuit of the enemy, taking back sanctuaries and then hold on to “cleared areas while continue to assist and arm the country’s local security forces.”

According to Bernth, the Manual was a desk product, developed for the military by the military. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve an in-depth “democratization” under the umbrella of an armed intervention. Bernth told me about widespread corruption – for example had the Swedes tried to find where one of their petrol trucks, filled with diesel, had ended up. Bernth was quite sure that Afghan authorities were behind its disappearance. High-ranking community leaders and officers bagged large amounts of the financial and material support that flowed into the country. At the same time, far out in the countryside, poorly paid, unmotivated soldiers were holding out against Taliban forces, who benefited by clandestine support from drug lords, Pakistani officers and Saudi financiers. Afghan soldiers told Bernth that even if the Talibans could be quite as bad, or even worse, than “the foreigners”, they nevertheless came from the same tribes and areas as they.

Conditions prevailing in the Afghan countryside might by a “Westerner” like Bernth be considered as engulfed in superstition, religious intolerance and an outdated worldview. However, Bernth became fascinated by the Afghan countryside. He wrote poems about Sufi poets who once had lived in the country, like his admired Rumi, the dramatic Afghan landscape and its hospitable inhabitants. For Bernth, Afghanistan was far from being exclusively marked by war and Taliban terror – to him it was living history, preserving traces from centuries of unique civilisations.

Through his Afghan interpreters he had tried to convince his Afghan counterparts to express their view of life, not least their religious beliefs. Bernth soon became amazed by the generosity and openness he found. It seemed to him that Afghans generally respected that a stranger demonstrated a genuine interest in their faith. He found himself in a remote world; an ancient clan society where any individual had to rely on other clan members. A high-ranking commander asked him to explain why the world was round and not flat and he often met men who wondered why a curious, spiritually interested man like Bernth did not convert to Islam. It would make him see everything more clearly, understand his place in the world, while learning humility and understanding. Men who at the same time could advocate public executions and women’s submission to patriarchal rule.

It was a myth that poor rural, people are opposed to change. All poor people want to improve their lives. Several of the Afghan religious leaders had been on pilgrimage to Mecca, while other Afghans had as guest workers come to know Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. To them, the religiously intolerant Saudi Kingdom appeared as a marvel of modernism and success, based as it was on a strict application of Islam. Many of them claimed to be Salafists, i.e. eager to follow the rules they assumed had been taught and practiced by the first three generations of Muslims.

Among the Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest population group and the backbone of the Taliban forces, a great deal of influence from Wahhabism can be discerned. The word taliban is derived from the Arabic ṭālib, meaning “student”. The Talibans find their strength among the religious warriors, mujaheddin, who from 1979 fought the Soviet-backed Afghan government. The religiously conservative General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had after a coup 1977 gained power in Pakistan. Fearing that the Soviet Union would invade Baluchistan, he sought help from Saudi Arabia, which by the US was encouraged to support the Afghan insurgents.

Afghan mujahaheddin were recruited in Pakistani refugee camps, where young men were trained in Koranic schools, several supported by Wahabbis loyal to the Saudis. These madrassas built on a 200 years long tradition. Sayyid Ahmad (1786-1831 CE) had in India founded a movement opposed to British colonialism, while fomenting socio-religious reforms. Persecuted by British-Sikh forces, he had established a stronghold in India’s independent tribal belt in the Peshawar Valley, which nowadays is the heartland of the Pakistani Pashtun. Sayyid Ahmad opposed local interpretations and customs, which according to him had corrupted Islam. It is generally assumed that after he had met Wahhabi clerics during a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1821, Sayyid Ahmad began to study Al-Wahhab’s writings and eventually became a puritanical fundamentalist and Jihadist cleric. However, Sayyid Ahmad never considered himself to be a Wahhabist.

Most Wahhabis refuse to be labeled as such, especially since the movemnet’s founder had been averse to the elevation of any individual, including using a person’s name to label an Islamic school. Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703 – 1792 CE) was a religious leader, reformer, scholar and theologian from Najd in central Arabia. He preached a strict adherence to Salafism, proclaiming the necessity of returning to the Quran and Hadith, calling himself and his followers Muwahhidun, Unitarians. Al-Wahhab’s opinions earned him many enemies, particularly since his followers destroyed mosques, tombs and sanctuaries, while attacking opponents to their leader’s interpretation of Islam. Al-Wahhab charted a religio-political pact with Muhammad bin Saud, supporting him in the establishment of the Emirate of Diriyah, thus initiating a still remaining power-sharing arrangement between Wahhabism and the Saud Dynasty. Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the present king of Saudi Arabia, has declared: “I dare anyone to bring a single alphabetical letter from the Sheikh’s books that goes against the book of Allah and the teachings of his prophet, Muhammad.”

Through Zia-ul-Haq, Saudi Arabia supported Wahhabi groups in an effort to limit Shiite influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A policy supported by the US, as part of its opposition to Soviet presence in the area. Saudi Arabia still remains one of the US largest Middle East allies and has for decades acted as a mediator between Washington and Islamabad. This is just one aspect of the complicated international power game behind the Afghan tragedy. At the centre is the Afghan people, being used as pawns in a disaster caused by greed and politics. Bernth died eight years ago, though his opinions are still with me: “Everything in Afghanistan spells disaster. It is much more complicated than the US slogan of ‘winning hearts and minds’. You and I are teachers and to influence our pupils, good or bad, we have to respect and learn from them. Taliban means “pupil” and so far they have seldom been listened to, but have in every conceivable manner been used to serve foreign interests … nothing good will come out of that.”

Sources: Allen, Charles (2009) God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad. New York: Hachette. Joint Chiefs of Staff (2009) The Petraeus Doctrine: The Field Manual on Counterinsurgency Operations. Scotts Valley CA: Create Space.

 

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By Daud Khan
ROME, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

There are several points of similarity between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Viet Nam. The Taliban, like the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, proved to be formidable tacticians and fighters. They managed to contain a far better equipped opponent and mount effective counteroffensives; access sufficient domestic and foreign funding to pay their fighters and support their families; build a formidable intelligence network; and acquire necessary technical capabilities in areas such as repair and maintenance of small arms.

Daud Khan

Both the Vietnamese and the Taliban were experts in the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). In Viet Nam an estimated 10% of US army deaths and almost 20% of injuries were due to booby traps and land mines. In comparison, in Afghanistan nearly half of deaths were due to IEDs. An officer who served in a bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan told me about how the Taliban were as skilled as most conventional armies in handling explosives. According to this person, apparently one of the Taliban’s most skilled operatives was a lady whose work was recognizable for the sophistication of the associated electronics.

Like the Vietnamese, the Taliban also proved to be canny strategists. Their approach during the Doha engagement was very similar to that of the North Vietnamese during the Paris talks – negotiate but give away little; continue to fight on the ground and gain territory; and accompany this by a strong propaganda effort to undermine the morale of the weakest element in the enemy ranks (the South Vietnamese army in the one case; the Afghan National Army in the other).

There are also striking similarities in the images of representative moments of the two wars. US soldiers armed with equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, patrolling villages and hamlets with small children, wide-eyed and ill clad, looking on; scruffy looking Viet Cong or Afghan soldiers armed only with light arms and grenade launchers marching through barren hills or torrid jungles; and, during the last days of the war, the helicopters taking off from Kabul and the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon.

Now that the USA and its allies have left Afghanistan and the Taliban are taking up the reins of Government, it is worth speculating about what kind of regime we are likely to see. Key questions in the coming years will be: how the Taliban would treat their political and military opponents; what systems of administration and justice would they set up; what will be the role of women and how they will be treated; what relations would they have with countries regional players such a Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and Turkey, as well as with the USA; and, above all how will they bring about a prosperous Afghanistan?

The Taliban appear to have learnt from the Vietnamese in the conduct of the war. Maybe they should also learn lessons from Viet Nam about the conduct of the post-war peace.

After the USA pulled out of Viet Nam, the Communist Party took over a poverty-stricken and ravaged country where much infrastructure was destroyed, basic services were missing and the large swathes of the country side were inaccessible due to landmines or the use of Agent Orange – a chemical defoliant that was aerially sprayed to destroy the forests that the Viet Cong were allegedly hiding in. Deep social and economic divisions separated the north and the south of the country. There was also a huge flight of capital, both financial and human, soaring inflation rates and severe debt problems. Not much different from Afghanistan today?

But despite the disastrous starting point, Viet Nam’s development over the last 45 years has been remarkable. During the first decade after the end of the war, economic progress was slow as priority was given to political consolidation with the Communist Party tightening its hold on power and laying the foundations for systems for administration, security, development and fiscal management. There was also a massive focus on education at all levels, from primary to tertiary, with top students being sent abroad for doing Master’s degrees and Doctorates at top universities around the world.

Another achievement of that period was the establishment of high levels of participation, accountability and competence at commune level – the lowest level of Government. I worked in some of the poorest and most remote areas of Viet Nam and the dedication and organizational skills of Government staff even in these areas was striking. Even more striking was the level of people’s involvement – no one had qualms about berating the Commune Chairman and his team for jobs not done, duties overlooked and problems not given due attention.

The building on the political and administrative efforts made in the first decade after unification, attention turned to economic stabilization and development. Reforms introduced in the mid to late 1980s liberalized much of economy and spurred rapid economic growth, transforming what was then one of the world’s poorest nations into a lower middle-income country with GPD per capita approaching US$3,000.

A major factor in making the reforms work was the commitment of Government staff at all levels and the strong ideology that underpinned the development effort. The Communist Party played a key role ensuring that resources and processes were not captured by local elites; that development efforts focused on meeting real needs; that economic growth was by and large equitable with the result that poverty rates, which were well over 70% at one point, fell to around 5%; and that foreign policy and international relations were pragmatic and subservient to the economic needs at the time. A couple of anecdotes would illustrate the commitment and pragmatism of the some of these people.

My work often involved close interaction with senior Government staff. A routine part of this was a certain degree of socialization – a coffee together, a drink after work, or a pleasant dinner – which created a friendly, informal atmosphere where difficult issues could be discussed and hopefully sorted out. But I was puzzled by the fact that while there were plenty of official “banquets” there was never any personal invitations from our counterparts – neither to their houses nor elsewhere. The reasons became clear to me over time. The salaries of even senior Government employees were simply not enough to cover the costs of dinners or other such events.

And after several years, when I was finally invited to the house of one of my counterparts for dinner, I had the privilege – and I use the word privilege deliberately – to see how senior government staff lived, I also understood why they never invited us home. They were simply embarrassed.

My friend picked me up from my hotel on his 90 cc Honda motorcycle; took me to his modest two bedroom flat where he lived with his family of five; and we had a simple and frugal dinner cooked by his wife and mother-in-law. No big cars, no servants, no fancy electronic equipment. And this was a person who had a PhD. from Harvard University; who at the time was a Director in the ministry I was working with; and who went on to become the Governor of a Province and then a full Minister. And he, like many others, despite their low pay and limited privileges, worked incredibly hard, often sleeping in their offices when major policy changes and decisions were being formulated and implemented.

The second anecdote regards attitudes to the past and the future. Another senior Government officer told me about living in Hanoi during the war – the planes screaming overhead night after night, the rush to the bomb shelters, and the sounds of explosions. Her father was a senior officer in the army and was never at home; and every time the phone rang her mother’s hand used to tremble as she picked up the receiver as she braced herself for bad news. She also told me she still had nightmares about their home being bombed or receiving a telephone call to inform them that her father had been killed – and how she would wake up from these nightmares in a cold sweat with the smell of death and destruction in her nostrils.

I asked her how she felt about present day Viet Nam, where US investments were pouring in, various trade delegations were visiting her ministry, and the young people from US and Europe were thronging the cafes and bars of the city. Without batting an eyelid she said: “We have to close the door to the past, and open the door to the future”. This was a phrase I went to hear many time after that.

Is it at all possible that the Taliban will continue to follow in the footsteps of the Vietnamese over the coming years?

If they were to do so, they would have to overcome a series of political and social challenges such as the turning their fighters into a force for peace and security; overcoming tribal differences; limiting the influence of outside organizations such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS who may wish to make Afghanistan a base for global or regional Jihad; handling the more radical groups within their own ranks; promoting education for everyone; and unleashing the power of Afghan women. They will also have to turn their attention to economic issues such as trade, finance and development and this will involve making links with richer countries, with international financial institutions, and with humanitarian and aid agencies and NGOs.

Do the Taliban have the discipline and dedication to address these and other challenges? The Taliban have overcome immense odds to defeat the mightiest army ever present on the planet. They now have to run the country. Good luck to the Afghan people who, after over four decades of war, deserve four decades of peace and progress as happened in Viet Nam.

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan. He has worked extensively in Viet Nam and in Afghanistan.

 

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Women walk among makeshift tents in a camp for internally displaced people in Mazar-e Sharif city in northern Afghanistan. Credit: UNHCR/Edris Lutfi

By Sarala Fernando
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Sep 6 2021 (IPS)

Headlines in the press, live TV and internet coverage of the chaos at Kabul airport following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan has generated an impression around the world of an American foreign policy debacle, belittling the supremacy of American military power.

With even smaller NATO allies like Latvia criticizing the US for lack of prior consultation on the withdrawal will this be a turning point for the Europeans to assume more responsibility for their security and even to fashion a pan-European defence system as suggested by President Macron of France?

Cynics will disagree, given that European allies have for years fought shy of even increasing their financial contributions to NATO, despite constant pressure from the US. However, France has assumed a lead role as a security provider with President Macron making official visits in Africa and Iraq where he said France will continue to support the global fight against terror even where the US has decided to leave.

The real historical turning point, however, is that the US which branded the Taliban as “terrorists” and drove them out of Kabul twenty years ago, are now negotiating with the same Taliban on the basis of shared interests.

In the hurly burly of the chaotic media images, one may fail to see that the US withdrawal and the deadline of August 31 was in fact part of a carefully agreed negotiation process going back to the Trump era (and formally signed as far back as February 2020 between US Ambassador Khalilzad and Taliban chief Baradar), now unfolding into the last stage of implementation in a non-combat humanitarian mission of evacuation/withdrawal.

The tipping point for US security planners had come some years ago when they realized that the elected government in Kabul was unable to give leadership to the Afghan security forces to maintain their control of territory, despite the training and equipping provided by the US to some three hundred thousand Afghan security forces.

What has happened on the ground in the last weeks has legal implications since recognition of a government depends on its ability to control the territory within its accepted borders. The speed at which the regional cities fell to Taliban control in their recent offensive underlines the Taliban’s ability to negotiate power sharing arrangements with the feudal lords controlling those cities and representing various ethnic groups.

As on now, despite widespread media fears, ethnic war has not broken out although there are many reports of human rights violations and individual killings especially from the Hazara ethnic community. Despite the public smirking on the so called US “defeat”, Afghanistan’s great power neighbours like Russia and China have extended support ( ie see reference to “ a soft landing”) in engaging the Taliban in their common interest of a stable Afghanistan which would not give shelter and succor to terrorist groups.

Qatar has become the lead negotiator for the international community and together with Russia, China have kept their embassies open in Afghanistan. Pakistan with its old links to the Taliban has also been a key intermediary between the Taliban and the international community, leaving India isolated and the strategic partnership between India and the US somewhat in limbo.

Initially, US political advisers like Peter Galbraith had suggested that there were positive signs with the Taliban in control, none of the remaining American assets had been attacked and that there was a relative calm in Kabul without any major violence.

Despite the suicide attack on Thursday 26 August claimed by ISIS K, killing some 14 American servicemen and over 100 Afghans crowding the airport gates, the US-Taliban cooperation has continued.

The Taliban have claimed that about 30 of their members were also among the victims and significantly didn’t comment when the US in retaliation launched drone strikes against the alleged ISIS K perpetrators in Afghanistan territory. Some even suggest that the Taliban may have provided the ground intelligence for the strikes.

The US engagement with the Taliban and the attempt to bring it out of the cold, is comparable to the Oslo peace process which sought to bring the PLO and Israel into an agreement. The US withdrawal, dramatic as it has been thanks to the media coverage, is in fact just a step in a process which has involved talks on several tracks with the Taliban over some years now.

With the foreign troop withdrawal completed by August 31, the coming weeks and months will witness perhaps the most important turning point, whether an armed group like the Taliban with its strict Islamic code, can in fact convert to an “inclusive” government with sufficient legitimacy to enable resumption of Western monetary and humanitarian assistance presumably under the supervision of UN and international humanitarian organizations, including the ICRC with extended operations across Afghanistan, still remaining in Kabul.

The Taliban has publicly provided reassurance of changed behavior including more respect for women’s rights to education and work for example. However, removal of international sanctions and recognition of the Taliban government will be the last on the agenda, given the uncertainty over the counter-terrorism dilemma and meeting international human rights standards.

The re-formulation of US foreign policy catering to the domestic agenda to bring American troops home and calling upon allies to meet a greater cost share of foreign base arrangements took a brash “showman” appearance under President Trump.

However, it is President Biden who has taken the hard decision (“the buck stops with me”) on the withdrawal from Afghanistan which became possible after the capture of Osama Bin Laden and destruction of his Al Qaeda network during the Obama Administration.

Domestic calls for investigations also played a part in this decision following the audit of the millions of US dollars spent in that country, mainly through hundreds of American contractors. More scandals will break with hundreds of thousands of pieces of American weaponry transferred to the Afghan army now being flaunted in Taliban hands.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of the global war on terror declared by President George Bush after 9/11 and represents an important turning point for the reformulation of US foreign and national security policy.

Perceptive analysis has suggested that future American global leadership will “prioritize diplomacy, soft-power tools, economic and financial levers, technological advantage, intelligence-gathering and specialised defensive capabilities” (the Guardian) on committing of troops to full scale invasions and occupations.

This has been termed a “smart power” for a new era. This analysis also suggested that under the new strategy, US counter-terrorism policy will look beyond “Islamist terror to the rising domestic threat from far-right extremists”.

For some time now, the US military has been questioning its role in “nation building” activities in distant places like Afghanistan and calling for a return to its traditional role of securing the homeland territory.

So, what is the relevance for countries like Sri Lanka? On the recognition issue, the Foreign Ministry in Colombo has quite correctly remained non-committal given the fast-evolving situation. Opposition leaders, calling for non-recognition of the Taliban, are way off the mark.

Perhaps most important for us is to ponder how a small “terrorist” group once defeated by a pre-eminent superpower could yet sustain itself, regroup and come to power after twenty years, attracting the support of foreign fighters and overcoming local power centres.

There is another point, the Taliban has publicly announced that it will not harbor other terrorist groups in Afghanistan – how genuine this is, has been questioned by many who point to Al Qaeda and Islamic State as being embedded throughout the districts.

Following the bomb attack near Kabul airport claimed by ISIS K, the US took retaliatory action probably based on intelligence provided by the Taliban – a new pattern of pragmatic cooperation on mutual interests to watch, going into the future.

At the domestic level, will the Taliban example embolden local groups in other countries to rely on mobilizing domestic resources for their operations with distant goals in mind, while taking sustenance from foreign ideology?

This is why it is so important to know the intelligence ramifications of the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka and the nexus between the foreign and domestic networks as demanded by the Catholic church on behalf of the victims.

Sarala Fernando, retired from the Foreign Ministry in Sri Lanka as Additional Secretary. Her last Ambassadorial appointment was as Permanent Representative to the UN and International Organizations in Geneva. Her PhD was on India-Sri Lanka relations and she writes on foreign policy, diplomacy and protection of heritage.

 

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By External Source
SUVA, Fiji, Sep 3 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific has been battling the spread of the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetles (CRB) for years and is now challenged by the invasion of a new CRB biotype, the CRB-Guam strain, that has spread to seven Pacific Island countries in just a decade leaving thousands of dead palms in its wake. The Guam strain, together with much more established biotype CRB-S has hampered the success of renovation programmes for mature tall palms as well as newly emergent, high-value coconut product industries (such as virgin oil and coconut water) that offer economic opportunities for communities in the region.

To control the spread of this new strain in the Pacific, The Coconut rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros): A manual for control and management of the pest in Pacific Island countries and territories was compiled and included knowledge from the experience of staff from the Pacific Community (SPC) who have worked to control and manage the pest over the years.

Approximately 600 training manuals on Coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB) control and management have been published and distributed to Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea under the Pacific Awareness and Response to Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (PARC) project implemented by the SPC’s Land Resources Division (LRD).

“The manual draws from extensive literature on CRB, particularly in relation to the Pacific Island countries and Territories (PICTs),” said LRD Director, Karen Mapusua.

“The Pacific Community is guiding the CRB management efforts through the PARC project, working closely with Vanuatu, PNG and Solomon Islands biosecurity. We hope this manual which is aimed at the new generation of scientists, technicians and extension officers will help control such invasive species and promote local agricultural initiatives.”

Mark Ero, Project Manager for PARC said the manual comprehensively captures all the required information about the pest ranging from its bio-ecology, possible high risk spread pathways, surveillance and monitoring procedures. These include delimiting survey procedures, emergency response plan, management options, guidelines for field collection, and tissue preparation for DNA analysis for biotype confirmation.

The manual is divided into three sections. The first section provides a brief review of CRB in the Pacific and an update on its current status. The second provides information on CRB recognition and assessment of the damage it causes, as well as methods for its collection and handling after it has been identified. Relevant contacts are also provided to facilitate access to expert assistance. Methods for further diagnostics are also outlined. Section three covers control actions for CRB region-wide and draws on the experiences of colleagues in the CRB Action Task Force – particularly those working in Guam, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea – on how to control the invasive CRB-G biotype.

SPC’s Pest and Disease Management Advisor Fereti Atumurirava says the emergence of CRB-G as an invasive pest underpins the need for a revision of data and a revitalisation of the CRB Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system to protect coconut and oil palm production.

“All governments and stakeholders in the region now have the tools through this manual to react and proactively liaise with SPC-LRD to provide the necessary guidance in preventing arrival, avoiding further spread within existing sites and containing this pest,” said Atumurirava.

The Pacific Awareness and Response to CRB (PARC) is funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and implemented by SPC. It aims to support control efforts of the CRB infestation in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, including the new CRB Guam strain.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

Flashback: Women journalists in Kabul June 2019. Now they are calling for assistance after the Taliban takeover. Credit: UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)/Fardin Waezi

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

“If I fall into the hands of the Taliban, not only me but my family will be killed,” said AB, 23*, who worked as a broadcast journalist for the past seven years and is a well-known face on the television screen.

Speaking on WhatsApp from her hideout in a city close to the capital Kabul, she said the Taliban came looking for her and were asking about her whereabouts from her neighbours, who, in turn, warned her family.

“The Taliban have started house-to-house search and when they could not find me, left a warning with our neighbours to inform us that they will find me and deal with me accordingly,” said AB. Her life is in double jeopardy – firstly, being a woman writing against the Taliban. Secondly, she belongs to the ethnic Hazara community, whom the new rulers believe are infidels and need to be persecuted.

Her circumstances were confirmed by Kiran Nazish, founder and director of the New York-based Coalition for Women In Journalism (CFWIJ), a worldwide support organisation for female journalists.

“Our sources in Afghanistan have informed the Taliban are carrying out house-to-house searches for people on their hit list,” she said, adding: “Imagine the fear these women are living under in their own country.”

“The Taliban must cease searching the homes of journalists, commit to ending the use of violence against them, and allow them to operate freely and without interference,” said Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Because of the grave danger, AB and her family have been in hiding now for the last several weeks.

Like AB, CD*, 26, editor of a weekly publication and a journalist working for a news agency for the past four years, is hiding with her family after her office was ransacked by the Taliban three weeks ago.
If found, she is sure she “will be stoned to death”.

“The world must help me,” she pleaded. “Please email one of the embassies, such as Canada or the United States, and tell them to get me out.”

Her fear of the Taliban was palpable, and she said she could not talk over the phone as they were monitoring the “telecommunications networks”.

Headlines tell of the targeting of women journalists in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover.

If this continues and they cannot leave their hideouts soon, CD said they might die of “poverty and hunger” even before the Taliban locate them.

“We have no bread to eat at all, and we cannot go out to earn for fear of being discovered,” she said.
The Taliban leadership have said women will have the right to work, seek education and be mobile, but on the condition that it will have to be under Sharia [Islamic law] but have not elaborated what this would entail.

However, they have requested women to stay home as some from the Taliban have not been trained on how to behave with women.

“It’s a very temporary procedure,” defended the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Their proclamation of going soft on women has been met with scepticism by many Afghan women.

“I do not believe them, nor do I trust the Taliban, because they have a bad past,” said CD, adding: “They do not keep their word; women are not safe, and if they go outside, they will be flogged.”

She said she had heard reports of violence on women in other provinces.

“No Afghan woman believes their living condition will be good under the Taliban rule,” CD said. “By silencing the female journalists, the Taliban want to silence the voice of Afghan women.”

She said the Taliban had continued targeting and killing journalists and human rights activists for the last 20 years, even during Ashraf Ghani’s regime. “That is why we are afraid and feel so unsafe,” she emphasised.

“Their [Taliban] interviews are in complete contrast with what they are doing on the ground,” said Kiran.

“Shocking to see the huge effort being put into tracking down people when they [Taliban] should be spending the same in rebuilding the country, putting a government together and finding ways to reassure people that they are safe, especially the Afghan women,” she said in a WhatsApp interview from Vancouver, Canada, where she is currently based. She is working non-stop to help the women journalists find safety.

As soon as Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban, the media outlets had asked all their women employees to stay home and not report for work. “I was told to stay home till further notice,” said AB.

CD said she could not work as her equipment had been looted when her office was ransacked.

According to a 2020 survey by the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), more than 1 700 women were working for media outlets in the three provinces of Kabul, Herat, and Balkh.

Kabul had 108 media outlets with a total of 4 940 employees in 2020. They included 1 080 female employees, of whom 700 were journalists. Of these 700 females, only 100 continue work and just a handful work from home in the other two provinces. Of the 510 women who worked for eight of the biggest media outlets and press groups, only 76 (including 39 journalists) are still working.

“…women journalists are in the process of disappearing from the capital,” states the RSF website.

AB said most of the journalists who are still working belong to the international media and are supported by their organisations.

“Local journalists are denied these privileges,” she pointed out. “As a journalist, I cannot continue to report if there are restrictions placed on me.”

“My dreams and aspirations and wishes have been destroyed. The Taliban not only took my city, but they also took my life too.”

Until recently, the young journalist did not have to cover her head at the office, “loved wearing fashionable clothes and wore make-up,” being born and educated in the “era of democracy”.

Today, she feared she might be resigned to shroud herself in the chadri [blue burqa] when venturing out of her home under the new Taliban regime.

“Stripping public media of prominent women news presenters is an ominous sign that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have no intention of living up their promise of respecting women’s rights, in the media or elsewhere,” The Guardian quoted CPJ’s Butler. “The Taliban should let women news anchors return to work and allow all journalists to work safely and without interference.”

But even before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, it was not easy being a female journalist there, said Kiran.

The CFWIJ has been researching 92-countries documenting the threats women journalists face.
“Of the 92 countries we are documenting, Afghanistan has been among the top three where women journalists (among other vulnerable groups) have continued to face serious attacks and harassment from non-state actors, including the Taliban,” said Kiran talking about the findings of the past three years.

Over the last year and a half, the coalition has relocated many female journalists from different parts of Afghanistan and even out of Afghanistan.

It has doubled its efforts in drumming up support to get several hundred women evacuated out of Afghanistan.

“We have evacuated 90 for now from the several hundred women [including journalists, sportswomen, activists and academics] who requested our support. Still, there are 100 super-urgent ones who we fear are on Taliban’s hit lists and are being hunted.”

*Names withheld for their protection.

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Dr Shafi Bhuiyan with colleagues. He and his colleagues argue that COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

Access to quality healthcare is a basic human right, but for many, especially those in vulnerable communities, the right is not fully realized.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this systemic inequality and gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

While surgical backlogs and delayed appointments may be prominent features of the healthcare crisis, the indirect impacts of Covid-19 must be considered. These include a halt in preventive programs, such as cancer screenings, declining health among Indigenous and aging people and for those with chronic illnesses, as well as worsening mental health among health care workers, to name just a few.

Canada already possesses a significant number of educated, qualified, and experienced Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMDs) who can help fill gaps in the healthcare system. For example, Immigration Refugee Citizenship has reported that over 5,000 physicians came to Canada between 2015 and 2021, and this number does not include ITMDs who immigrated via a different method.

Many ITMDs possess much-needed cultural diversity, linguistic skills, and cross-cultural patient care talents. These can be utilized in the long-term care sector, for chronic disease prevention, and with Indigenous peoples and ethnic-racial groups, especially those residing in remote and rural areas across the country. Although 20% of the Canadian population lives in rural areas, only 8 percent of physicians work cfin these areas. Many ITMDs are well suited to provide quality healthcare for some of these communities.

Canada’s annual immigration intake plan is to welcome more than 400 000 immigrants per year in 2021-23, in keeping with the national plan for population growth. Based on data trends from Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada (IRCC), this will likely include at least 900-1000 physicians each year. The need for diversity among physicians will continue to rise to provide culturally sensitive and quality care for all Canadians. ITMDs can provide culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population.

Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) Calls to Action were created in 2014, most healthcare calls have yet to be addressed. ITMDs can help address the long-standing shortcomings for this communities’ access to equitable healthcare and could contribute to rebuilding trust in the healthcare system.

The underutilization of immigrants’ education and qualifications has been reported to cost Canada $3 billion per year. Supporting the incorporation of internationally educated health professionals into the healthcare system would benefit Canada’s healthcare system and positively impact the economy.

Integration of internationally educated health professionals / ITMDs into the healthcare system requires a national strategy with a multi-stakeholder approach that focuses on scalable solutions. This strategy needs the engagement of governmental policymakers, regulatory bodies, employers, educational and training entities, service delivery agencies, and ITMDs themselves.

Once ITMDs have proven their expertise, they still require a bridging program to integrate their skills and expertise into the healthcare labor force. A recent survey of selected ITMDs who had participated in a career bridging program showed one-third had passed their licensing exams. These exams assess candidate’s clinical knowledge and skills to ensure they are comparable to Canadian medical graduates. Despite this achievement, another hurdle remains, to secure licensure. This is the residency program, which ranges from 3 to 5 years depending on the field of specialty.

The residency application process is complicated, but to describe it simply, medical students apply – via the Canadian Resident Matching Service, or CaRMS – for residency positions at universities across the country in one or more specialties of their choice. Not only are the total number of residency slots limited, but there are caps on the number of slots reserved for internationally trained versus Canadian medical graduates. The available slots for ITMDs are considerably smaller.

With the 2021 residency match results, data clearly illustrates the inequity i.e. a total of 2,852 Canadian medical graduates were matched. On the other hand, 410 internationally trained medical doctors were matched to residency positions. Over 90% of ITMD’s who have passed their qualifying exams cannot secure a residency due to their limited number and inequitable distribution of the residency slots.

An immediate solution is developing and delivering bridging programs, including in-class training and practicum placements, to support ITMDs’ employment in work commensurate with their skills, training, and experience, such as clinical assistant, research associate, and healthcare manager. Incorporating ITMDs into the healthcare system as licensed physicians can be further achieved via Practice Ready Assessments, increased residency opportunities, and increased post-graduate public health education and training.

Developing a clear roadmap will facilitate ITMDs’ integration into the Canadian healthcare system and foster diversity and equity in health research, management, and patient care.
There is a worldwide health crisis. If we cannot save a life despite having a huge pool of foreign-trained physicians ready to serve any time, we are neglecting untapped human resources to the detriment of our health.

The inclusion of ITMDs in the health system will benefit the healthcare system, patients, and the community and have a positive impact on society by reducing wait times and ensuring a better quality of life.

ITMDs are here, ready, willing, and qualified to serve Canadians as we work together to strengthen our healthcare system. There is no better time than NOW! Let’s work together to make healthcare more available and accessible to all Canadians so that no one is left behind.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.  
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Orin M, Krivova A, Fathima S, Walters J, Uzonwanne G, McGuire M, Mohammad A, Alamgir AKM, Radwan E, Tasnim N, Tazrin T, Parungao J, Saad W, Shalaby Y.

 

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Farmer working in a paddy field in Pakistan. Credit: Faseeh Shams / IWMI

By Clara Colton Symmes
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

An intense monsoon season in Pakistan means the country’s food system faces the challenge of both extreme floods and extended droughts.

In an effort to address these challenges through cross-sectoral collaboration, Dr. Mohsin Hafeez, IWMI’s Country Representative for Pakistan and Regional Representative for Central Asia, convened a regional dialogue in advance of the UN Food Systems Summit (which is scheduled to take place at the United Nations, September 23) .

Human actions are at the root of much water scarcity, but these international dialogues are an opportunity for humans to be a part of the solution by working to reconcile our damages through transforming how we approach food systems.

Pakistan ranks 88th out of 107 countries on the Global Hunger Index and extreme weather, intensified by climate change, has made farming a challenging venture there. Much of Pakistan’s food is now imported from overseas.

Dr. Hafeez’s work centers around improving the resiliency and efficiency of Pakistan’s water systems. This includes innovating water capture and storage systems in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, where he is working to introduce nature-based solutions like recharging groundwater with rainfall runoff.

By convening April’s regional dialogue and organizing four provincial dialogues in the time since, Dr. Hafeez provided the collaborative platforms necessary for reaching sustainably-managed water sources in his region. It is only through cross-sectoral dialogues and work that Pakistan will achieve sustainable food systems management.

“There is an urgent need for promoting inter-sectoral cooperation through evidence-based information to ensure water-food-energy security and environmental sustainability for food system transformation in Pakistan,” Dr. Hafeez said.

The pre-summit hosted in Italy was another opportunity to bring together diverse stakeholders in food systems in the leadup to the UNFSS. On the IWMI blog, we will be exploring what country managers in Uzbekistan and Pakistan hope to achieve through the UNFSS process.

A Q&A with Dr Hafeez:

How are water and food systems connected?

Water supply systems are first and fundamental in food systems. In Pakistan more than 90 to 95% of our total water resources is used for irrigating crops. It’s a water system intrinsically linked with the food system.

When there is a water shortage, we see a direct impact on food production because this is an arid environment, and farmers are not able to do agriculture without the artificial applying of water.

What are the most pressing challenges facing food and water systems in your region?

Pakistan is a food insecure country. We don’t even have food to eat, let alone nutritious options. Around 45% of the children have stunted growth. People don’t have enough food to meet their caloric needs. We’re importing all the other major crops in the last 4 to 5 years from overseas.

And the food system is dependent on water. When we don’t have enough water, the farmers are not able to grow anything, which impacts the lives and livelihoods of everyone.

If you’re talking about even the linkages between the water system and food system: the current water storage systems are only able to cope for 30 days of water supply.

Then there is also the issue of water quality. There is a lot of wastewater and effluents that mix directly into the into the water supply system including the canals and water networks. This also impacts the food system, so that what we grow may not have a same nutritious value.

Why is water storage so essential in Pakistan?

80% of annual rainfall happens during the monsoon season, which is around 60 to 90 days between July and September. The remaining nine months we receive only 16-20% of the water supply.

Water systems here are not resilient, so water storage capacity is quite low. And when we face extreme climate shocks like droughts, this stresses the water and food systems. Either we are facing three months of floods, or nine months without enough water.

What would a water secure world look like for Pakistan and what needs to happen in order to achieve that?

We need to make water systems more efficient, and that will only happen if we improve the efficiency of the irrigation system, which would make water more available for the other sectors. We also need to make water systems more resilient.

There has been a lot of focus on building large dams, but they require a lot of capital resources. I believe we should also focus on improving water resilience through nature-based solutions like rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharging at the localized level.

We need local, nature-based solutions and the government of Pakistan is planning to introduce 3000 small ponds across Pakistan so farmers will have more water available.

A holistic approach and reliable database on water resources and their usage across Pakistan is key to achieving food, water, and energy security. We are the fifth most climate-vulnerable country in the world and there is an urgent need for promoting inter-sectoral cooperation through evidence-based information.

We also need groundwater management policy. Even though we have a national water policy and provincial water acts, we don’t have a comprehensive groundwater plan. Ministries, like those for climate change and food security policy, must stop working in silos and collaborate.

The regional dialogue we convened did this. It brought ministries together and made them talk about how each could help the other in the water, food, energy (WEF) nexus.

How were you able to give voice during the dialogue to historically underrepresented groups like smallholder farmers, women, children, and rural communities?

We invited people from various government and private sectors and farmers. But because they were held in English, we faced the challenge of a language barrier. Many rural farmers do not speak English. So, we invited some and did what we could to help them with translators.

Another challenge is that this dialogue was conducted virtually, and many smallholder farmers did not have access to that. So, we had only two or three farmers participate.

But we had many government agencies that are directly involved in the farmers community. They were able to represent the farmers and a group called the Farmer’s Federation was also able to attend.

Woman working in a paddy field. Credit: Faseeh Shams / IWMI

How do events like the regional dialogues and then the larger UNFSS affect water systems in your region? And what would you like to see as a result of the UNFSS?

When people talk about the food systems, they talk about production, the food value chain, and consumption. And they often ignore the importance of water. This is really the first time in 10 years when we’re talking holistically about food in a way that includes every aspect of the system.

At a recent provincial dialogue, part of the Member State Dialogue, we had people working on nutrition, agriculture, the value supply chain, traditional agriculture, water, and policy. It provided a platform where people worked together and thought beyond their own specialty: identifying real issues and how they could be improved in the future together.

Pakistan joined a UNFSS coalition for developing countries facing food insecurity. The Pakistani government is emphasizing the need to build resilient societies and improve food accessibility. There will be actions and pledges made to invest more into food systems areas which have been typically ignored.

What upcoming IWMI projects do you think will affect the kind of food system transformation desired by the UNFSS?

IWMI and International Food Policy Research Institute are designing a CGIAR Initiative to scale up the integrated management of water, energy, food, land, biodiversity, and forests for inclusive, sustainable development in transboundary river basins in the context of a changing climate.

The NEXUS Gains Initiative will be a game changer, but also many other IWMI projects will be helpful in interconnected thinking about improving the food security and water systems.

As IWMI and the other One CGIAR centers work together, we will be able to make change in a more systematic, holistic way that will change the mindset around food systems and ultimately improve the resilience of water supply systems.

What is making you feel hope about the future of food and water systems in Pakistan and Central Asia?

The current government is Pakistan is saying that food security is one of their highest priorities. They have initiated so many social initiatives in that field, including a resource program where they are providing food to vulnerable communities, with a focus on gender and the stunted growth of children.

The government also emphasized a need to understand the challenges in agriculture sector, linking from the basic production system towards the value supply chain, because as I mentioned that 22% of the system level losses are there.

 

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Excerpt:

Clara Colton Symmes, Princeton-in-Asia Fellow, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka
 
In an Interview with Dr Mohsin Hafeez, Country Representative – Pakistan, Regional Representative – Central Asia

COVID-19 vaccines now available to most New Yorkers-- and they are free. Credit: New York City Mayor’s Office

By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

The rigid new restrictions imposed by New York city– currently facing a surge in the deadly Delta corona virus variant– have prompted scores of US companies to impose mandatory vaccinations on all employees, mostly returning to work after temporary lockdowns.

The mandate follows the approval last week of the Pfizer vaccination by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after a prolonged study of its effectiveness.

The leading businesses that have imposed mandatory vaccinations on hundreds and thousands of their employees include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Facebook, Google, Walt Disney, Amtrak, United Airlines, Capital One and McDonalds, along with nearly one million students in schools and Universities in New York city, which currently has a population of over 8.8 million people.

The new mandate comes into force on September 27, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to a New York Times database, more than 56.5 percent of people in the US have received at least one dose of the vaccination while 48.9 percent are fully vaccinated with two shots.

As of July 2021, the US population stands at 333.2 million, the world’s third most populous nation, ranking behind China and India, with over 1.3 billion each.

In New York city alone there have been over 1.0 million cases of Covid-related illnesses and more than 33,700 deaths since the pandemic last year.

Following the FDA approval, US President Joe Biden was more emphatic: “if you’re a business leader, a non-profit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that. Require it”.

The vaccine refusal by millions of Americans is either for political, personal or medical reasons, with some describing mandatory vaccinations as “a violation of civil rights”.

Meanwhile, in a letter released August 13, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the Delta variant “is posing some challenges to our planning, and we will be taking additional precautionary measures to ensure a safe work environment for our personnel and delegates. “

The letter comes ahead of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly—scheduled for September 21– which is usually attended by more than 150 world leaders. But this year, it may be a hybrid version: a mix of mostly video conferencing and few in-person appearances.

The UN will continue to follow all restrictions imposed by New York, the host city for the world body. Conforming to city guidelines, the UN is expected to insist on proof of vaccination to use several of the dining facilities in the Secretariat building and also mandatory in-house mask-wearing.

“In order to align UNHQ’s approach to indoor dining with that of NYC’s guidance, we will soon require proof of vaccination for seated meals at cafeterias and other dining facilities on premises.,” says Guterres.

Further guidance on full return to work is being developed and will be issued in September.

To ensure adequate protection for all colleagues, all UN personnel must wear masks when indoors on premises, a rule which was effective August 13. “We will reassess this requirement as conditions warrant.”

The letter says the most significant driver of COVID19-related risk is vaccination status. Accurate information on the vaccination status of staff is therefore essential to determine risk and appropriate mitigation strategies.

The mandate for vaccinations may be waived where a recognized medical condition prevents vaccination.

Those staff members who will be required to be vaccinated must receive the final dose of a vaccine no later than 19 September 2021.

Any COVID-19 vaccine that is recognized by the WHO, or under routine approved-use by a Member State’s national health authority, is accepted.

We believe the Food Systems Summit could provide a forum for a reset that seeks to find common ground for the increasingly fractious debate over food production in Africa, the authors say. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Jemimah Njuki and Elizabeth Nsimadala
NAIROBI, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

In a few weeks, the United Nations will host the first international Food Systems Summit. The goal is to create a global movement committed to solving the many dietary, economic and environmental problems linked to the way food is produced, sold and consumed today.

Africa, a continent with high rates of poverty and malnutrition that are strongly connected to poorly performing farms—and home to vast tracts of uncultivated but farmable land—will be a stress test for the summit’s aspirations.

Both of us grew up in farming households in Kenya and Uganda and have devoted our professional careers to exploring the wide assortment of challenges and opportunities connected to food production in Africa. We have a deep understanding of the fact that being a farmer in Africa today can be either a blessing or a burden.

Overall, it feels like today there is a perverse logic in which we are being told that African farmers must be penalized for problems originating largely in wealthy countries. So no commercial seeds, even if our farmers want them. No fertilizers, even if they are desperately needed and can be responsibly used—African farmers currently apply less than 20 kilos per hectare, compared to a global average of 136 kilos

Most Africans—including up to 90% of people living in rural communities—still rely on small-scale or “smallholder” crop and livestock production to generate the income they need to support their families.

Their farms—if productive and with good access to markets—can be the blessing that pays for school fees, health care and also food to round out their family’s nutritional needs. Farming is especially important for providing economic opportunities for African women.

But farming is often a burden for many Africans because they lack what they need to succeed—so their farms don’t provide sufficient incomes or even enough food. This burden grows heavier every day as the stresses of climate change and, more recently, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic add new obstacles.

Too many African farmers will head to their fields tomorrow with the same set of limited options they have been saddled with for decades—such as seeds for crop varieties that have become susceptible to a proliferation of plant pests and diseases, meager amounts of inputs and technical support to help them restore dangerously depleted soils, and no mechanization to work their lands or process their crops.

Increasingly, Africa’s agriculture burdens are outnumbering its agriculture blessings.

From our extensive work with African farmers, it’s clear that the Food Systems Summit’s admirable vision will not be achieved on our continent as long as our farmers lack the basic choices available to farmers elsewhere in the world. The same can be said for efforts to recover from the pandemic and adapt to climate change.

But here’s where the situation becomes especially complicated.

Many organizations are advocating for single solutions, restricting the options available for African farmers to choose from, when they should be doing just the opposite. And while we recognize that it is important to protect African farmers and African ecosystems from exploitation, we also must recognize the sovereignty of African farmers and their agency to choose what works best for their farms and their families and for protecting the ecosystems that they depend on.

For example, today, many African farmers save seeds from maize, beans or other crops cultivated in one season for planting in the next. They also may trade seeds with one another through informal markets. But too many of these varieties do not translate into good harvests. They have become susceptible to crop pests and diseases or changing climate conditions.  According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the amount of maize and other cereal crops harvested per acre or hectare in Africa is less than half the global average.

Therefore, there has been a growing effort by a number of African countries to work with their farmers to develop new, improved varieties that—while they are not a cure-all—can better respond to farmer needs and preferences. Yet some still view even commercial seeds—especially if they must be purchased fresh every year—with deep suspicion.

The answer is to help farmers understand the trade-offs and let them choose. But why vilify those who seek to offer the choice?

Overall, it feels like today there is a perverse logic in which we are being told that African farmers must be penalized for problems originating largely in wealthy countries. So no commercial seeds, even if our farmers want them. No fertilizers, even if they are desperately needed and can be responsibly used—African farmers currently apply less than 20 kilos per hectare, compared to a global average of 136 kilos. And no mechanization, even though many African farmers still plough with their cows and hand hoes.

We believe the Food Systems Summit could provide a forum for a reset that seeks to find common ground for the increasingly fractious debate over food production in Africa.

First, we can start with an agreement that we all want the same thing: environmentally sustainable, economically successful farms that deliver better opportunities for rural farming families across the continent and affordable, nutritious diets for all Africans. And we can agree that it’s incredibly important to develop public sector policies that encourage responsible use of agricultural inputs and safeguard farmers from potentially exploitive practices.

But the worst thing we can do right now for African farmers and Africa’s vulnerable food systems and ecosystems is to greatly narrow the menu of solutions available. Instead, let’s look for consensus instead of conflict and consider that there can be many paths to achieving our shared goals.

Dr. Jemimah Njuki is director for Africa at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and an Aspen New Voices Fellow

Elizabeth Nsimadala is president of the Pan Africa farmers Organization (PAFO) and of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF). 

 

 

Golden Monkey (Cercopithecus mitis ssp. kandti) Endangered in IUCN Red List. In Cameroon, 1999 bushmeat was openly on sale along the road as 100-year-old trees were illegally logged and transported. Today large primates face the same fate, even if not so openly. Credit: Steve Morgan / Greenpeace

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

As Arti Prasad rode the Kuala Lumpur Pavilion mall escalator up to the third floor, a pair of luscious lips pouted down at her. Next to the towering and oversized lips, the vibrant red shades of lipstick on the giant screen immediately caught the 36-year-old Indian tourist’s fancy.

Prasad headed straight to the cosmetic outlet and bought all four of the advertised lipsticks. She, like many others, is oblivious to a baby Orangutan’s plight – orphaned when its forest home was burned down to grow the palm oil that went into these beauty products. Primary forest losses mean that only 10% of gorilla habitat will remain in the Congo Basin by 2032.

Deforestation, a significant threat to biodiversity and climate change, is accelerated by global demand for commodities. However, a considerable share of this agro-commodity production is intended for export – driving massive deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems in the global south.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates global forest areas declined by 129 million hectares between 1990-2015, equivalent in size to South Africa.

Data from satellite imagery released on Global Forest Watch in June 2020 recorded 3.75 million hectares of tree cover loss in humid primary forests in the tropics in 2019, an almost 3% increase from 2018 and the third-largest tropical forest loss since 2000. 

Consumption patterns of G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the US) drive an average loss of 3.9 trees per person per year, over 15 years from 2001-2015, says a study published this year in Nature.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will hold the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, from 3-11 September 2021. This premier conservation event will address global deforestation. More importantly, Congress motion 012 – the fight against imported deforestation – was co-sponsored by numerous IUCN Members and voted on and approved before Congress.

The IUCN Congress meets every four years to tackle the most pressing issues impacting people and the planet. This IUCN Congress in Marseille will drive action on nature-based recovery, climate change, and biodiversity for decades to come.

Congress motion 012 calls on countries to stop imported deforestation through several ambitious strategies, including imposing additional taxes on imported products that generate deforestation.
The aim is to recommend that private companies establish concrete action plans to guarantee supplies that did not result in deforestation.

Red-faced spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus) are found in undisturbed primary rainforests, in northern Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Venezuela. Because of its ability to climb and jump, it tends to live in the upper layers of the rainforest trees and forages in the high canopy. With habitat loss and hunting it is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Credit: la Vallee des Singes

The list of imported agricultural products contains, first and foremost, soy, palm oil, cacao, beef and its by-products, rubber, timber, and derived products that do not come from sustainably managed forests. Others include coffee, tea, or even cane sugar, which impact the deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems.

“The most recent IPCC and IPBES reports show that we are now at the point where significant and permanent changes to consumption patterns and legislative regulation can no longer be delayed,” David Williams-Mitchell, Director of Communications, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) told IPS via email. Netherlands-based EAZA, an IUCN member, is one of the co-sponsors of Congress motion 012.

More than 50% of global forest loss and land conversion is attributable to the production of agricultural commodities, and forestry products are driven by consumer demand, as shown by a 2020 WWF study on Switzerland’s overseas footprint for forest-risk commodities.

To end deforestation, companies must eliminate 5 million hectares of conversion from supply chains each year.

“The concept of imported deforestation is still quite new to the public in Europe. For EAZA, the key issue is to establish understanding globally that imported deforestation is one of the root causes of climate change and biodiversity loss,” Williams-Mitchell said.

He cited examples of a hugely expanded meat industry leading to increases in greenhouse gases, carbon sink capacity loss, and biodiversity loss through habitat conversion.

In 2017 alone, the international trade of agricultural products was associated with 1.3 million hectares of tropical deforestation emitting some 740 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – this is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the EU28’s total greenhouse gas emissions that year.

“We need countries all over the world to participate in the fight against imported deforestation. We need to learn to use local resources and establish sustainable sources for exported products, especially without harming the forests,” says Jean-Pascal Guéry of Primate Conservation Trust. This France-based IUCN member also co-sponsors Congress motion 012.

The world’s forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, one-third of the annual CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Forest destruction emits further carbon into the atmosphere, with 4.3–5.5 gigatons of total anthropogenic Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per year, generated annually mainly from deforestation and forest degradation, according to Cameroon-based NGO Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF).

IUCN Member ERuDeF, co-sponsor of Congress motion 012, estimates that half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed since the 1960s. Every second, more than one hectare of tropical forest is destroyed or drastically degraded.

“Deforestation and conversion-free supply chains must protect not only forests, but all the terrestrial natural ecosystems threatened by the expansion of commodity production and trade including savannahs, grasslands, and peatlands among others,” Romain Deveze, WWF Switzerland’s senior manager, sustainable commodities & markets and co-author of the WWF 2020 study told IPS.
“It is vital that people understand that their choices and the frameworks that allow them to make those choices are at the heart of the solution,” Williams-Mitchell concurs.

“As governments, science engagement institutions, schools, and other providers and facilitators of education, we need to act to ensure this level of understanding at all levels of society,” Williams-Mitchell says, explaining why EAZA is sponsoring the motion.

Guéry is critical of some of the efforts to combat deforestation.

“There is awareness (too late, in our opinion) in certain European countries of the deleterious effects of this imported deforestation, and the French initiative to establish a national strategy to combat imported deforestation is commendable, but it lacks ambition and does not set binding and short-term goals,” he said.

“The assessments of companies including distributors, manufacturers, operators, rely too much on self-assessment rather than establishing an independent external certification,” Guéry said.

WWF also mentions that despite more initiatives to halt deforestation, including certification, corporate commitments, and market incentives, the rate of commodity-driven land use doesn’t appear to be declining. This means the negative impacts on local people and nature continue.

A full truck loaded with 60-70 Mukula logs at Katanga Province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2016. Around 8-10 trucks transported out Mukula logs every day. Mukula is a rare and slow-growing hardwood unique to southern and central Africa, illegally logged and traded from Zambia and DRC. Credit: Lu Guang / Greenpeace

In a study earlier this year, Greenpeace said that “certification is a weak tool to address global forest and ecosystem
destruction.”

By certifying their products as ‘sustainable,’ some certification schemes can help guide consumption choices and have a positive impact locally, “but it is (largely) greenwashing destruction of ecosystems and violations of Indigenous and labour rights.”

So, while buyers think they are making the right ethical choice, they might still buy products linked to abuse and destruction.

However, WWF’s Deveze says, “certification and legality are critical to halt deforestation at scale. A hectare of conversion is just equally as harmful to people and nature whether or not it is done legally.”

Ranece Jovial Ndjeudja, Greenpeace Africa’s campaign manager in Cameroon, told IPS in a Zoom interview, “the limitations to the policy effectiveness for the IUCN Congress motion on imported deforestation is increased taxation aimed at deterring forest clearing. This, however, cannot always prevent deforestation.”

“Companies would just increase production to compensate for the tax hikes,” Ndjeudja said, speaking from Yaoundé, where Cameroonians rallied in early August to demand EU stop deforestation for rubber production.
“It is industrial logging and industrial agriculture which is the problem. Are these industrial productions really bringing in a large revenue to the exporting governments? No. If it did, Cameroon and Congo would not be so poor. A small group gets rich. While Cameroon’s natives lose access to food, health, and their culture,” Tal Harris, Greenpeace Africa’s international communications coordinator, told IPS from Dakar, Senegal.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) hosts the second-largest contiguous tract of tropical forests globally, including roughly 60 percent of the Congo Basin rainforest. It is home to plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.

“A government cannot work out of a capital city thousands of miles distant from such extensive forests,” Harris said. “Devolution of power to the local population is necessary.”

Local communities play a vital role in wildlife conservation and environment protection. Comprising less than 5 percent of the world’s population, indigenous communities protect 80 percent of global biodiversity, says ERuDeF.

Cameroon’s Ndjeaudja echoes this. To ensure trees are not cut, there is the need to work with local communities because, for generations, they have been living with forests and have the knowledge of their sustainable management.

“We have a lot to learn from them and must allow indigenous communities to share this knowledge,” he said.

Deveze concluded: “Economic and technical incentives are required to shift producer behaviour. At an international policy level, go for differentiated custom tariffs based on sustainability requirements and due diligence processes. Compensation mechanisms to support farmers in protecting high conservation value areas should be amplified.”

 

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Some half a million Afghans have been internally displaced by violence this year alone. Credit: UNHCR/Edris Lutfi

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

Joe Biden provided a stirring soundbite days ago when he spoke from the White House just after suicide bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans at a Kabul airport: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

But the president’s pledge was a prelude to yet another episode of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

The U.S. quickly followed up on Biden’s vow with a drone strike in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province that the Pentagon said killed two “high-profile” ISIS-K targets.

Speaking to media with standard reassurance, an Army general used artful wording to declare: “We know of zero civilian casualties.” But news reporting told of some civilian deaths. And worse was soon to come.

On Sunday, another American drone attack — this time near the Kabul airport — led to reliable reports that the dead included children. The Washington Post reported on Monday that family members said the U.S. drone strike “killed 10 civilians in Kabul, including several small children.”

According to a neighbor who saw the attack, the newspaper added, “the dead were all from a single extended family who were exiting a car in their modest driveway when the strike hit a nearby vehicle.”

Words that Biden used last Thursday night, vowing revenge, might occur to surviving Afghan relatives and their sympathizers: “We will not forgive. We will not forget.” And maybe even, “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Revenge cycles have no end, and they’ve continued to power endless U.S. warfare — as a kind of perpetual emotion machine — in the name of opposing terrorism. It’s a pattern that has played out countless times in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere for two decades. And it should not be a mystery that U.S. warfare has created still more “enemy” combatants.

But neither the U.S. mass media nor official Washington has much interest in the kind of rational caveat that retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom offered during a C-SPAN interview way back in 2002: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.”

By any other name, the “war on terror” became — for the White House, Pentagon and Congress — a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least eight countries, rarely seen, much less understood.

Whatever the intent, the resulting carnage has often included many civilians. The names and faces of the dead and injured very rarely reach those who sign the orders and appropriate the funds.

Amid his administration’s botch of planning for the pullout, corporate media have been denouncing Biden for his wise decision to finally withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan. No doubt Biden hopes to mollify the laptop warriors of the Washington press corps with drone strikes and other displays of air power.

But the last 20 years have shown that you can’t stop on-the-ground terrorism by terrorizing people from the air. Sooner or later, what goes around comes around.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

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Malaria still kills 400,000 people every year, most of them African children under five years old. RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Kesete Admasu
Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of the tragedy and turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s gratifying to see work continuing in Africa to find new ways of fighting malaria, a very old disease that has been a formidable foe for thousands of years and still kills 400,000 people every year, most of them African children under five years old.

Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and their colleagues at the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé in Burkina Faso and the University of Bamako in Mali published results
from a phase 3 trial that involved the world’s first and only malaria vaccine.

The new evidence from Mali and Burkina Faso shows that RTS,S—which is also being introduced in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a landmark pilot introduction —could be an even more valuable tool than originally expected. And those of us involved in the fight against malaria are certainly eager for good news.

RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Approximately 2.1 million doses of the vaccine have been provided and more than 750,000 children have received their first vaccine dose through the pilot programme where malaria risks occur year-round

Working in areas where malaria surges during the rainy season, the researchers report a dramatic reduction in malaria illness and deaths among young children who received the RTS,S vaccine just before the rains began. They found the vaccine worked as well as the standard prevention practice in these regions, known as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), which involves administering treatment doses of common antimalaria drugs monthly during the rainy season, usually through a door-to-door campaign.

This is an important finding. SMC is a resource-heavy intervention, and in some settings an annual pre-season single dose of a vaccine could be an attractive alternative.

However, the most striking results occurred in the group of some 1700 children who received both interventions—the medications and the vaccine. They experienced a 60% – 70% additional reduction in severe disease and hospitalizations compared to the already impressive stand-alone interventions—the prevention drugs or the RTS,S vaccine—and also more than a 70% reduction in deaths from malaria. Equally important: the combination was found to be safe and well tolerated.

I was one of a group of African Ministers of Health in June 2016 who served on the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and passionately supported the funding for a RTS,S pilot to learn more about its public health potential. These new results are heartening.

RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Approximately 2.1 million doses of the vaccine have been provided and more than 750,000 children have received their first vaccine dose through the pilot programme where malaria risks occur year-round. Results from the pilot programme indicate strong community demand for the malaria vaccine as well as the capacity of childhood vaccination to deliver it. This new study in Burkina Faso and Mali provides additional evidence of RTS,S safety and effectiveness.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, Africa’s fight against malaria was stalling at what the World Health Organization (WHO) called an “unacceptably high level” of deaths. Regaining momentum in the malaria fight will require new tools, especially with existing preventive interventions threatened by emerging insecticide resistance.

New tools to fight malaria are especially needed in countries like Mali and Burkina Faso, located in a region known as the African Sahel—a semi-arid ribbon of land that spans the continent from Senegal to Sudan. There, the danger of malaria flares dramatically with the arrival of the rainy season. Today, six of the ten African countries singled out by the WHO as requiring “high impact” malaria interventions are in the Sahel, where malaria remains a primary cause of childhood death despite substantial reductions in malaria achieved through a combination of SMC and insecticide treated nets (ITNs).

Through the development of the RTS,S vaccine over the last 30 years, scientists have discovered that the protective efficacy of RTS,S is particularly high in the first months following vaccination. This feature prompted researchers to study whether RTS,S could be provided strategically, just before the peak malaria season, to fight seasonal malaria transmission.

Giving the RTS,S malaria vaccine seasonally was found to be safe and effective—and combining SMC with the vaccine was especially powerful—and could expand the options available for fighting malaria.

In October, global advisory bodies for immunization and malaria will convene to review available RTS,S evidence and consider a potential WHO recommendation for wider use of the vaccine across Africa.

If WHO recommends the vaccine for wider use, African governments should be prepared to seize on the life-saving opportunity. They must be ready to make smart and strategic decisions to deploy this vaccine while continuing to promote the use of other proven malaria interventions to maximise impact.

We have seen in COVID-19 what the global health community can accomplish when it comes together to fight a killer disease. It would be a welcome turn of events to see Africa emerge from the pandemic with a new tool to take on the old foe of malaria with renewed vigour to get progress in malaria control back on track.

Dr Kesete Admasu, CEO of Big Win Philanthropy, former CEO of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, and former Minister of Health of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem, KOICA President Lee Mikyung and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (from left) launched a partnership in 2018 that Ms. Lee characterized as “a key foundation and platform for solidarity and collective engagement for gender equality.” The new tripartite agreement-- between UNFPA, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and UN Women—has combined the strengths of the three partners to improve the lives of women and girls and accelerate the achievement of gender equality, as expressed in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. Credit: UNFPA/Tara Milutis

By Hawon Jung
SEOUL, South Korea, Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

A strong movement of feminism is sweeping South Korea. While women feel empowered to stand their ground, the men are retaliating.

When South Korean archer An San won two gold medals in just two days during the recent Tokyo Olympics, the response the 20-year-old received at home was a mixed. Some men were angered and said her medals should be taken away. Why? Because her short hair was a sign that she was a ‘man-hating’ feminist.

As bizarre and surreal as it may sound, the attack on An is a bleak reminder of the deep-rooted gender stereotypes in the economically advanced, yet deeply sexist South Korea – and the enormous pressure on women and girls to look and act ‘feminine’. It’s also another episode of the escalating culture war between the country’s increasingly outspoken feminists – and antifeminists seeking to silence their voices.

Lowest in the ranks

South Korea is the world’s 10th largest economy, a tech giant that is home to Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, and a cultural powerhouse whose K-pop stars like BTS enjoy global followings. But despite all the economic and technological advances, the deep-seated patriarchy and gender discrimination remained little changed.

South Korea is ranked at the 102nd in the world in terms of gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum. The gender pay gap in the country is the widest among the advanced economies of the OECD member nations.

It has consistently ranked as the worst place to be a working woman in the Economist magazine’s Glass Ceiling Index. Women account for 19 per cent of parliamentary seats, almost on par with North Korea.

Hawon Jung

Women are under enormous pressure to look perfect at all times and all costs – as shown in the country’s reputation as the world’s capital of plastic surgery. On the busy streets of Seoul, it’s not difficult to find plastic surgery adverts screaming ‘being pretty is everything!’ and rail-thin K-pop starlets presented as role models for teenage girls and young women. The stars’ extreme diet regimens are widely shared on social media and avidly followed by many.

Typical beauty ideals in South Korea for women include pale yet glowing skin, a youthful ‘babyface’, long and luminous hair, wide eyes, a thin nose, and pin-thin body (nearly 17 per cent of South Korean women in their 20s are underweight, compared to less than 5 per cent for their male counterparts, according to a study in 2019).

The pressure begins early: more than 40 per cent of female elementary school students wear makeup, and the number goes up to over 70 per cent for middle schoolers.

Escape the Corset

But women started to fight back. A powerful wave of feminist movement has taken the country by storm in recent years, allowing many women to speak up against sexual discrimination, assault, and objectification like never before.

Since 2018, women have rallied together to bring down many sexual predators, including a popular presidential contender, in one of the most successful cases of #MeToo in Asia.

Tens of thousands took to the streets for months in 2018 to call for tougher crackdown on the so-called ‘spycam porn’ crimes that secretly film women in public space from workplaces to public toilets and share the footage on the internet.

They successfully campaigned to end the abortion ban. The so-called ‘Escape the Corset’ movement was part of that awakening, meant to defy the pressure to follow the rigid beauty ideals.

Women and girls who joined the campaign cut their hair short, destroyed their makeup, refused to wear tight, revealing, or uncomfortable clothes to instead opt for something more comfortable and practical. Since then, short hair has become something of a political statement among many young feminists.

The wave of awakening, however, has also drawn a strong pushback by men who thought – like many around the world – that the women had gone too far, and many labelled feminists as ‘man haters’ who should be punished.

More than 40 per cent of female elementary school students wear makeup, and the number goes up to over 70 per cent for middle schoolers.

The backlash has reached a fever pitch since May when members of many online forums popular among men started to cry ‘misandry’ over a adds that use an image of a pinching finger, a universal gesture to indicate something small.

Online crusade

In a campaign likened by many as a McCarthyian witch-hunt, they claimed whoever created the image must be feminists and out to ridicule the size of their genitals. Despite having no possibility of any political plot, many of the accused companies and government institutions – including the national police agency and the defense ministry – bent down quickly, apologized for hurting the men’s feelings and removed the images from their posters.

These online mobs even enjoyed political backing; Lee Jun-Seok, a young member of the rightwing People’s Power Party, rose to prominence by amplifying the conspiracy theory over the ‘misandrist’ finger gesture, and eventually became the leader of the party in July.

Feeling supported by a powerful politician and emboldened by groveling apologies from companies and the government, the online mobs moved on to their next target—the star Olympian whose appearance didn’t fit into their ideal of traditional femininity.

‘Why did you cut your hair?’ An was asked on her social media, to which she replied, ‘’coz it’s convenient’. The answer was not enough.

A campaign to extract an apology from An for being a feminist began, with some even demanding that the Korea Archery Association take away the gold medals from the ‘man hater’.

But women fought back again. Lawmakers, activists, entertainers, and thousands of ordinary women rallied behind An, many sharing the photos of their short hair on social media as a show of support.

And as the cyber-bullying targeting An raged on, many women across the country watched as An won yet another gold – becoming the first archer in Olympic history to win three golds at a single Game.

Hawon Jung is a journalist and former Seoul correspondent for the AFP news agency. She is the author of ‘Flowers of Fire,’ a book about South Korea’s #MeToo campaign.

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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Will the Taliban aspire for a seat in the UN General Assembly?. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

When the Taliban captured power back in 1996, one of its first political acts was to hang the ousted Afghan President Mohammed Najibullah in Ariana Square in Kabul.

The newly-installed government played a triple role: judge, jury and hangman, all three rolled into one.

Fast forward to August 15, when the Taliban, in its second coming, assumed power ousting the US-supported government of Ashraf Ghani, a former official of the World Bank, armed with a doctorate in anthropology from one of the most prestigious Ivy League educational institutions: Columbia University.

In a Facebook posting, Ghani said he fled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeking safe haven because he “was going to be hanged” by the Taliban.

If that did happen, the Taliban would have earned the dubious distinction of being the only government in the world to hang two presidents. But mercifully, it did not.

Ghani, however, denied that he had bolted from the presidential palace lugging several suitcases with millions of dollars pilfered from the country’s treasury.

Meanwhile, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, only three countries recognized its legitimacy: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

But now 20 years later, the first four countries most likely to provide legitimacy to a Taliban government may include China and Russia (two permanent members of the Security Council), along with Iran and Pakistan, while others could follow.

At a meeting of the 15-member Security Council on August 30, a resolution condemning the “deplorable” terrorist attack on the Kabul airport, was backed by 13 countries, with two abstentions: China and Russia. But since they didn’t exercise their vetoes, the resolution was adopted 13-2.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs an emergency Security Council meeting on the situation in Afghanistan. “The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan,” he implored. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

Predictably, Taliban has now pledged a new era and a promise to cooperate with the Americans, perhaps as part of a strategy to gain international legitimacy– and eventually a seat in the UN General Assembly, a seat now held by the ousted Ghani government.

Still, its sordid past—including public floggings and executions, enforced disappearances and violations of basic civil liberties—may come back to haunt the Taliban.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS there is no evidence that Taliban version 2.0 will be any different from the original Taliban, despite their attempts to convince the world that this time around they will be more user-friendly.

For decades, he pointed out, the Taliban have been responsible for war crimes, and when they last ruled Afghanistan, they perpetrated crimes against humanity.

Last time they were in government, Taliban forces systematically persecuted the country’s vulnerable Hazara minority and stripped millions of women and girls of their universal human rights. The Taliban have not changed, he argued.

Beyond the glare of TV cameras and press conferences, Taliban fighters are already carrying out summary executions and evidence has already emerged of a recent massacre of Hazara men, said Dr Adams.

As an armed extremist group, as perpetrators of atrocities and as a state power, the Taliban stand in direct opposition to everything that the United Nations stands for.

“They belong in handcuffs, not sitting in the UN General Assembly hall”, he declared.

James M. Dorsey, Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, told IPS there is no doubt that the Taliban will claim Afghanistan’s UN seat once they form a government.

They cannot do so before that. In terms of the International Criminal Court (ICC), there is equally no doubt that the Taliban have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The problem is they are in good company: China, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, just to name a few”.

“Why the Taliban and not also others?, asked Dorsey, author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Asked why the US wants to deal with a Taliban government that is not legally recognized by Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the US has been “engaged with the Taliban for some time diplomatically going back years in efforts, to try to advance a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan”.

“Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not?”.

“If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it,’ said Blinken, leaving the door open for a political relationship with the Taliban government.

He said if a future Taliban government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks “directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with”

“If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah,” he declared.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, who served under five different secretaries-generals, told IPS: “I do not recall (the former) Taliban government seeking recognition or claiming a seat during the 1996 General Assembly session, attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton”.

But he did remember the former Permanent Representative of Afghanistan seeking a U.N. job.

“If the Taliban decides to claim the Afghan seat, the UN’s Credentials Committee will have to review that claim”.

Sanbar said the Taliban delegation would also need U.S. visas to visit New York, which would require the blessings of the Biden administration.

He also pointed that the UAE may not recognize the current Taliban, as it did in 1996, because it is now hosting the ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Sanbar said it will be interesting to watch what happens at the upcoming 76th session of the General Assembly which opens on September 21.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Published by Amazon, the book is mostly a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes– both serious and hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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Members of Africa's Rural Women's Assembly are among the farmer and civil society organizations demanding a shift away from Green Revolution programs in the face of rising hunger. Credit: Rural Women's Assembly

By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

As the United Nations gears up for its Food Systems Summit September 23, the urgent need for structural changes in how we grow, harvest, distribute, and consume food has never been more apparent.

According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) annual hunger report, released July 12, the world experienced a nearly unprecedented one-year rise in severe hunger from 2019 to 2020. The agency’s annual estimate of “undernourishment” showed an increase of up to 25% over 2019 levels, to between 720 and 811 million people.

Sub-Saharan Africa saw as many as 44 million more people suffer severe undernourishment, leaving 30% of the continent’s residents struggling to feed their families. A stunning 66% of the continent faced “moderate or severe food insecurity” in 2020, according to FAO estimates, up from 51% in 2014. That is an increase of 244 million food-insecure people in just six years.

You wouldn’t know it to listen to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which released its 2020 Annual Report the same day the FAO sounded its alarms. After noting the challenges of COVID-19 and climate change, the report gushes about the “evidence of improved productivity, better crop quality, higher incomes, and more months of food from [farmers’] surplus.”

In stark contrast to the well-researched data from the FAO, AGRA’s “evidence” was a sloppy set of hastily compiled data presented with examples carefully chosen to show progress. (See my analysis of AGRA’s report here.)

AGRA seems to be living in a different world from poor, rural Africans, oblivious to the documented shortcomings of its technology-focused approach to agricultural development. AGRA leaders and donors seem unaware that the number of severely undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa has risen nearly 50% since AGRA was founded in 2006.

That is why African farmer, faith, and community organizations are now challenging AGRA’s failing model, calling on donor agencies and foundations to stop funding the 15-year-old initiative.

Business as usual at the Food Systems Summit

The COVID-19 pandemic was of course largely to blame for the steep rise in hunger in 2020, but climate change and conflict also contributed. So did misguided agricultural policies.

It was the sixth straight year of increases in undernourishment, a trend that last year prompted U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierres to call for this year’s Food Systems Summit. The world was clearly not on track to achieve the core Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating severe hunger by 2030.

The summit has been mired in controversy from the outset. Gutierres was widely criticized for his partnership with the World Economic Forum, the corporate elites who gather each year in Davos to discuss the poor world’s problems, sidelining the Rome-based U.N. agencies that generally take the lead on such matters. He compounded the legitimacy crisis by naming AGRA President Agnes Kalibata as Special Envoy to lead the summit.

Major civil society networks and organizations boycotted the summit preparations, which were denounced for favoring technological solutions offered by corporations while failing to put the right to food – and COVID and climate change – at the center of the agenda. U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri recently issued a blistering critique.

The business-as-usual approach of the summit, with its Nairobi-based staff organizing virtual “dialogues” and vetting “game-changing solutions” to food systems failures, seemed deaf to the loud alarms from the FAO. The worst hunger remains in rural areas in developing countries.

Africa’s failing Green Revolution

For the last 15 years, the Green Revolution has been the dominant approach in Africa. AGRA has led the charge from its Nairobi headquarters, with $1 billion in funding, overwhelmingly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but also with support from the Rockefeller Foundation a small number of bilateral donors. African governments have chipped in with waves of subsidies to farmers – as much as $1 billion per year altogether – to purchase what the Green Revolution is selling: commercial seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs.

The Green Revolution’s “theory of change” is as simple as it is flawed: put seeds and fertilizers in the hands of small-scale farmers. They will see their yields double, so too their incomes from the sales of surplus crops. And they will become food secure from the food they grow and can now afford to buy.

The evidence suggests that none of that has come to pass. Adoption rates for the expensive new seeds and fertilizers remain low, even with governments subsidizing farmers’ purchases. Many of those who adopt have not achieved large yield increases, even in favored crops such as maize. Few have seen rising incomes from sales of growing surpluses; some have ended up in debt after a bad harvest. And food insecurity has grown from its already alarming levels.

This is less a theory of change than a proven route to continued hunger.

Fiddling in Nairobi

AGRA is set to unveil what it will no doubt present as a bold new strategy. But AGRA will likely do little more than fiddle with its current strategy, just as it has before. Unchanged is the failing premise that commercial seeds and fertilizers can dramatically reduce hunger and poverty in rural Africa through a productivity revolution.

Emperor Nero famously fiddled while Rome burned. AGRA should stop fiddling in Nairobi while more Africans go hungry. And donors should listen to African civil society leaders and say no when AGRA claims to speak for Africans and asks for millions more dollars for its failing strategy.

Timothy A. Wise is senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food.

 

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