Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

News and Views from the Global South

Updated: 3 days 4 hours ago

To Build Back Better from the Pandemic, We Must Overhaul the Way We Deal with Development Finance

Fri, 06/25/2021 - 17:09

Patricia Scotland

By Patricia Scotland
LONDON, Jun 25 2021 (IPS)

Over the past 18 months, the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic have transformed our lives and prompted a period of deep reflection as a global community. In some sense, we are only now starting to understand our vulnerabilities, and in particular, how deeply exposed and interconnected we are as people, communities and as countries.

At the same time, the pandemic has been a stark eye opener on our capacity to deal with the risks and shocks, at both individual and country level. The experience has shown us our vulnerability, and comparatively, our resilience is only partly determined by our income or economic status.

For small states in particular, the focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a figure which sums up the economic strength or income of a country, can never fully reflect the potential impact of external shocks outside the control of any government. A country’s high income, for example, does not negate its vulnerability to climate disasters, which can reverse years of development gains overnight.

In other words, measures such as GDP, or other equally narrowly focused economic statistics only provide us part of the picture. We need much more nuanced and comprehensive measurements and indicators to assess our full risk factors, and more precisely, our susceptibility to harm.

This has been regrettably demonstrated by the ongoing pandemic, during which as someone recently noted, ‘while we are all in the same storm, we’re not all in the same boat.’

GDP was settled upon as the simple and translatable measure of economic progress over 75 years ago, with the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions.

It has certainly been a useful measure, yet most economists and experts today would agree that it is not the best measure of a nation, whether in terms of its economic progress, its sustainability or its potential. Put frankly GDP is too blunt a tool to serve as the only measure of success and progress, especially in these times of rapidly accelerating economic, social and environmental change.

We face a much more complex world than we did decades ago, a world which is also much better understood, and more thoroughly analysed any point in our history. And we need to update the tools we use to tackle this new world in a way that is fit for purpose. Big data, analytics, and Artificial Intelligence permeate every aspect of many of our lives. And yet, when it comes to development finance, we still rely singularly on an incomplete GDP figure to assess what type of funding countries should get, and how much.

This is why the debate has been building around new ways to assess less-developed and at-risk countries, and how they can be best supported by international financial institutions. It is also why the Commonwealth alongside many organisations, including the UN, has started to consider other more nuanced and constructive ways of assessing nation states and vulnerabilities.

The Commonwealth has approached this debate objectively, not to be swayed by one interest or group but to use rigorous analysis to lead an open discussion about how best to target support the poorest and most vulnerable nations in the world.

With over a third of the world’s sovereign nations as members, including 32 small states, and approximately 2.4 billion people living in the Commonwealth, we have a duty to address and advise on these issues, and to find consensus on a way forward.

In this vein, I am immensely proud of the work done by my team to produce the Commonwealth’s Universal Vulnerability Index for consideration by Commonwealth member countries. This Index, which weights country’s vulnerability against their built up and policy-related resilience, will give policymakers and financial institutions a sound tool by which to assess who is most in need of support.

And if adopted, we are convinced that the Index will transform the way we invest and deliver finance to developing countries.

One thing is clear. As we emerge from this crisis, we cannot return the business as usual. In order to respond effectively as an international community to the interlinked global crises confronting us today, we must overhaul the way we think about development finance, particularly in the post COVID world. We need to move beyond the thin analysis that GDP and per capita income provides us and to come up with a new way of determining the type of support vulnerable countries could receive. It is crucial that we do better, and we indeed can, through a tool such as the Universal Vulnerability Index.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

Excerpt:

The author is Commonwealth Secretary General

Categories: Africa

Weaponizing Science in Global Food Policy

Fri, 06/25/2021 - 12:10

By Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles
SANTA CRUZ, California, Jun 25 2021 (IPS)

In July, the United Nations will convene “Science Days”, a high-profile event in preparation for the UN Food Systems Summit later this year. Over the course of two days, the world will be treated to a parade of Zoom sessions aimed at “highlighting the centrality of science, technology and innovation for food systems transformation.”

Maywa Montenegro

Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

Scientists are also contesting a summit because of its selective embrace of science, as seen in a boycott letter signed by nearly 300 academics, from Brazil to Italy to Japan.

Through the Summit, “science” has been weaponized by powerful actors not only to promote a technology-driven approach to food systems, but also to fragment global food security governance and create institutions more amenable to the demands of agribusiness.

Recipe for Elite Global Governance

The UNFSS was announced in 2019 by the UN Secretary General as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The announcement came just after the UN signed a strategic partnership with the World Economic Forum. It also elicited outcry from social movements when Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, was chosen to lead the forum — a powerful signal of UNFSS allegiances.

The “multi-stakeholder” structure of the summit has raised concerns from observers who recognize the privatization of multilateral public governance it presages. While Kalibata describes the UNFSS as an inclusive “peoples’ summit,” more than 500 smallholder and peasant organizations signed a letter criticizing the summit’s multi-stakeholder platforms: “Instead of drawing from the innovative governance experiences that the UN system has to offer, the UN-WEF partnership is helping to establishing “stakeholder capitalism” as a governance model for the entire planet.”

Matthew Canfield

Through one lens, multistakeholderism looks like a set of “inclusive” practices: the summit has five Action Tracks (e.g. “Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All” and “Boosting Nature Positive Production at Sufficient Scale”), an endless number of “dialogues,” and an elaborate online forum where anyone can participate.

However, this profusion of spaces obscures the fact that the UNFSS has no built-in structures of accountability. This is particularly troublesome because, as UN special rapporteurs have observed, the summit’s process was pre-determined by a small set of actors: “The private sector, organizations serving the private sector (notably the World Economic Forum), scientists, and economists initiated the process. The table was set with their perspectives, knowledge, interests and biases.”

The scientific ideas shaping those parameters, then, should invite our curiosity and concern. What kinds of science are included — and excluded? What are the implications for the future of global food system governance?

Defining Science as Investment-Friendly Innovation

A new Scientific Group of the UNFSS, created to support a “science- and evidence-based summit,” provides some clues. In theory, the Scientific Group works to “ensure the robustness, breadth and independence of the science that underpins the summit and its outcomes.” In practice, the Group’s practices impoverish the scientific base on which the summit is meant to make policies.

Unlike existing global science advisory panels where experts are nominated through an inclusive and democratic process, the Scientific Group is handpicking experts amenable to “game-changing” solutions — access to gene-edited seeds, digital and data-driven technologies, and global commodity markets.

Alastair Iles

As a result, key areas of expertise, such as agroecology, Indigenous knowledge, and human rights are being excluded while industry and investor-friendly viewpoints are promoted as visionary.

While the Scientific Group appears at first to be diverse in terms of disciplines and geographies, it in fact reflects a set of overlapping, elite networks. Partners include well-worn institutional champions of the Green Revolution (the CGIAR), the central nervous system for “free trade” policy globally (the World Trade Organization), and a powerful consortium of wealthy nation-states (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), among others.

By drawing on these networks, the Scientific Group is serving as a gatekeeper for determining the meaning and boundaries of “science.” An analysis of its publications reveals critical flaws stemming from the Scientific Group’s narrow approach to scientific expertise. These include:

for Bill Gates

Science can and should play a role in global food governance. But far from the current UNFSS model, science can support in all its complexity and breadth, alongside many other expertises with equal rights to shape the future of food.

Maywa Montenegro works as an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, specializing in politics of knowledge, biotechnology, and agroecology.

Matthew Canfield is an assistant professor of Law and Society & Law and Development at Leiden Law School specializing in human rights and global food governance.

Alastair Iles works as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, researching agroecology policies and sustainability transitions.

Categories: Africa

“The Creation of a Palestinian State Is Inescapable”

Fri, 06/25/2021 - 10:59

A building damaged by an Israeli air strike amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence in Gaza City. Only a political solution will end the “senseless and costly cycles of violence” between Israelis and Palestinians, UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said in a briefing to the UN Security Council in May. Credit: UNRWA/Mohamed Hinnawi

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jun 25 2021 (IPS)

Every Israeli will sooner than later realize that the creation of a Palestinian state is the only way by which Israel can protect its democracy, independence, national security and national Jewish identity. Denying Palestinian statehood defies Israel’s existence as we know it.

Righting the Wrong

The continuing international consensus that supports the establishment of a Palestinian state only strengthens the Palestinians’ resolve to never abandon their quest for a state of their own.

Having held on to this position for more than seven decades, they still have no reason to accept anything less, regardless of the vast changes on the ground. They will continue to wait and engage in sporadic violence and mini wars, as we have seen time and again, regardless of the heavy toll in human lives and destruction.

However, besides the consistent international consensus in support of a Palestinian state, Israel also has a moral and practical obligation for its own sake to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution.

Israel’s very existence is based in morality—the West felt the moral responsibility to support the creation of the state because of what happened to the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust—and its continuing existence as a free and independent country depends on its moral standing both as a democratic state and as a Jewish nation.

Discrimination of the Jews

The Jews were discriminated against, persecuted, and segregated, and millions perished during World War II simply because of their religious identity.

Their horrifying historic experience makes it morally unacceptable to subjugate other people, especially the Palestinians with whom they coexist and will have to continue to coexist indefinitely, and yet Israelis treat them with derision and contempt the way the Jews were treated for centuries in foreign lands.

Thus, maintaining the occupation in any form defies what the Jews worldwide stood for and sacrificed for millennia. True, the Palestinians have made many mistakes and to this day some Palestinians groups remain vociferous in their threats against Israel.

These threats, however, have never amounted to being existential, and right-wing Israeli parties have over the years deliberately exaggerated the potency of such threats to justify the occupation and the often-draconian policies against the Palestinians.

Given the fact, however, that since 1967 new irreversible developments (such as the building of new and expansion of existing settlements and intermixing of populations) occurred, the two-state solution appears now to many Israeli and Palestinian observers as either unrealistic or undesirable, or both.

They no longer believe that a two-state solution is possible, especially given the inter-dispersement of Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, and Israel’s unwillingness to relinquish much of the occupied territories.

These facts are leading the believers of the one-state solution to argue that it is the only practical alternative.

One state is not an option

Such an alternative will never be accepted by the Israelis at large, as that would compromise the state’s Jewish national identity and its democracy by virtue of the fact that the nearly 3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the 1.6 million Israeli Arabs will constitute roughly 45 percent of the total combined population of Jewish and Arab Israelis and Palestinians.

If we were to include the Palestinians in Gaza, the total number of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs will be near that of Israeli Jews.

Although the Jewish fertility rate has now surpassed that of the Arabs for the first time, with an average of 3.1 per Jewish woman versus 3 per Israeli-Arab woman, that does not change by much the demographic time bomb.

In fact, even without the Palestinians in Gaza, a minority of nearly 50 percent makes it impossible to maintain the Jewish national character of Israel without violating the Palestinians’ human and political rights.

Under such circumstances, if free and fair elections are held, it is unlikely that an Israeli coalition government could be formed without the participation of the Arab parties, as we have already seen.

To prevent that from happening, Israel would have to apply military laws to govern the Palestinians, along the line of what is in place today in the West Bank.

This would make Israel an apartheid state, which would be unacceptable not only to the international community but to many Israelis who believe that Israel has a moral obligation to treat all citizens equally before the law.

For these reasons, no Israeli government has considered the creation of one state by annexing the entire West Bank with its Palestinian population to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Occupation defies Israel’s existence

Instead, Israel chose continued occupation with creeping annexation of land, and in so doing it maintained control over the territories and built settlements, governing the Palestinians under military law yet applying Israeli laws to the settlers.

Although many Israelis maintain that the current status of Israeli occupation of the West Bank is sustainable and may well be a way of life for decades to come, over three-quarters of the Israeli Jewish population (76.7 percent) supports the Abraham Accords, which required Israel to stop further annexation of any Palestinian territory.

Most Israelis recognize that further annexation will damage any chances at making peace with the Palestinians and freeze further normalization of relations with other Arab states.

Every Israeli who opposes the establishment of an independent Palestinian state should ask themselves if there would be a circumstance under which the Palestinians would abandon their aspiration for statehood.

The answer is clear—that simply would not happen.

Why on earth would they give up their right to a state of their own? What force—Israeli or foreign—could compel them to do so? What kind of political or economic pressure will coerce them to submit to the harsh Israeli occupation and resign themselves to unending humiliation and despair?

After 72 years of Palestinian resistance and the extent of suffering they have endured, nothing will dissolve the Palestinians’ determination to realize what they aspire for, to govern themselves in a free and independent state.

In fact, continued occupation defies the very reasons behind the establishment of Israel, which was intended to be a haven for the Jews where they could live in peace and security.

The notion that occupying the West Bank will make Israel more secure has been shown after 53 years to be nothing but an illusion, as Israel has never felt completely secure yet has also never faced a legitimate existential threat that it could not meet with ease.

However, as the Palestinians, moderate and extremists alike, continue to challenge the occupation, they ensure that Israel will always feel insecure and spend billions of dollars on its security.

Some Israelis find comfort in the fact that several Arab states have normalized relations with Israel before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ended, which was a precondition to normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab state under the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.

Since then, however, many Arab states have grown weary of the Palestinians’ repeated missed opportunities to reach an agreement with Israel and no longer want to be held hostage to their intransigence.

Pressure through normalization

There are already clear signs that this normalization process has put some pressure on the Palestinians to moderate their position and be more realistic about the concessions they need to make to reach an agreement with Israel.

This kind of pressure, however, will not alter their principal demand for statehood, and every Arab state that normalized relations with Israel—the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan—made it clear that they are against the occupation and view the two-state solution as the only practical option.

In the final analysis, both sides know that there is no way out of coexistence by virtue of their proximity, the inter-dispersement of their respective populations, the significance of Jerusalem for both sides, national security, the widespread of the settlements, and extensive common interests.

This leaves us with one conclusion: the only realistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that can ensure the democratic integrity, independence, and Jewish national identity of Israel and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The new Israeli government must remember that the establishment of a Palestinian state is inescapable. Israel must accept this inevitability, or become ever more a pariah state rejected by its friends and reviled and constantly threatened by its enemies.

Categories: Africa

Southeast Asia and Food Price Inflation: Double Whammy

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 21:04

Across the world, climate change and Covid-19 disruptions have led to rising food prices in the past year. Southeast Asian countries, which have not been immune to such challenges, need to build resilience in their food security policies.

By Paul Teng
Jun 24 2021 (IPS)

In 2020, Southeast Asian countries were already facing varied challenges that affected the region’s food supplies and prices. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic later in the year exacerbated the region’s food insecurity and poverty. Southeast Asian countries need to take a hard look at food security, even as the double challenges — climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic — continue to fester.

Paul Teng

Southeast Asia is not alone when it comes to the challenges posed to food security. Indeed, most of the world has been grappling with increased food prices in the past year. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s latest report of the benchmark Food Price Index — which tracks the prices of meat, dairy, cereals, vegetable oils and sugar — rose for the 12th consecutive month in May 2021 to 127.1, its highest level in nearly ten years.

One of the drivers for the price increases is vegetable oil, notably palm oil, whose prices have been increasing since the fourth quarter of 2020. But global cereal prices also shown a significant rise in the past months. Dry weather and production disruptions due to Covid-19 coupled with high global demand led to the depletion of palm oil inventories, resulting in a classical demand surge-supply slump situation. This has inevitably driven up up prices. Biodiesel demand also increased the demand for soybean oil.

Southeast Asian countries were only just recovering in 2020 from the effects of the African swine fever which killed millions of hogs, and from large areas of crops devastated by the Fall Army Worm (which started in the Americas and proceeded to afflict sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian sub-continent, China and Southeast Asia). In the same period, countries across Southeast Asia implemented measures to curb the Covid-19 pandemic. Movement controls disrupted food supply chains, increased losses of agricultural produce on farms, and increased food waste. The net result is that food insecurity and poverty have increased in many Southeast Asian countries in the past year.

Beyond the impact of the pandemic, climate-related phenomena have affected agriculture in food producing economies of Southeast Asia and in the countries which conduct food trade with the region. The ongoing drought in parts of western and mid-western United States, important agricultural areas, have impacted harvestable crop areas and potentially will lower crop yields. As the US is an important exporter of wheat, soybeans and maize to Southeast Asia, there is real danger that price inflation of basic food commodities will increase further.

According to the FAO, 10 per cent of Southeast Asia‘s population of 650 million suffers from food insecurity. So any increase in food prices will drive more people to hunger and reduced food intake. But the situation in Southeast Asia cannot be viewed in isolation from countries that are large food importers. Demand in China, one of the world’s biggest food importers, has been strong as the country has recovered from the pandemic earlier and faster than the rest of the world. Different parts of China have suffered from drought in the south and floods in the east. Much agricultural production occurs in the vicinity of the rivers and their flood plains, and even a small decline in production could inevitably lead to a large absolute increase in food demand due to China’s large population size. In past years, when China had gone shopping for food in the international markets, Southeast Asian countries have had to compete for the limited amounts available, especially in staples like rice.

Southeast Asia’s growing middle class has concurrently increased demands for wheat products and animal protein, both of which cannot be met by the production of animal feed crops like soybean and maize in the region or Asia as a whole. The FAO, in its analyses, has attributed part of the food price increases to supply-side issues such as harvest delays and reduced crop yields in exporting countries like Brazil.

It would appear that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over in Southeast Asia, with the resurgences of 2nd and 3rd waves of infection. Natural calamities linked to climate change are further anticipated to negatively affect food production in many of the food exporting countries. For the region, the typhoon (cyclone) season of 2021 is only just beginning. This will put a strain on the ability of the region to grow enough food. Furthermore, reductions and disruptions in food supply chains leading to price spikes appear likely to continue in 2021 and beyond. Asian countries are also likely to implement tighter biosecurity measures such as improved animal health requirements and increased surveillance as part of strategies to prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases. To avoid the chaos created during the 2007-2008 food crisis, openness in reporting outbreaks and transparency in data sharing will be key to avoid panic buying.

In the near future, the effects of climate change are likely to increase rather than decrease, and together with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, will potentially create a ‘perfect storm’ for food supplies and prices. So ‘preparedness’ as a policy will be important for ASEAN to build resilience in its food security.

This article was first published by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute as a commentary in Fulcrum.” With a link back to the original article — https://fulcrum.sg/southeast-asia-and-food-price-inflation-double-whammy/

Professor Paul Teng is an Associate Senior Fellow in the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak institute. He is also Dean and Managing Director of NIE International, Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

Excerpt:

Categories: Africa

New global index seeks to transform how developing nations are supported

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 15:20

By External Source
Jun 24 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland has spoken today urging the international community to make crucial changes to how it delivers finance to developing nations, proposing a new system that moves beyond the use of GDP as the sole criteria for receiving certain types of support.

At a virtual media briefing, the Commonwealth Secretariat presented a ground-breaking study that assesses how vulnerable or resilient developing countries are to economic, socio-political and environmental shocks, such as climate change, which could influence how much international finance they can access.

The proposed Universal Vulnerability Index (UVI) has been shared with Commonwealth member countries for their review in ongoing consultations. If endorsed globally, the Index could transform the way development finance is delivered to developing nations.

Speaking ahead of the event the Secretary-General said:

“We must do better and act smarter when it comes to the support the international community gives to more vulnerable countries. If we are to rise above the current interlinked global crises we face, we need to muster all our resources in the most effective way.

“In an age of big data, complex analysis and artificial intelligence we cannot rely on decades-old systems and 18th century concepts to guide us but must fundamentally overhaul the way we think about development finance.

“We need to move beyond the thin analysis that GDP and per capita income provide us in determining of the type of support vulnerable countries should receive, towards a more realistic, nuanced and comprehensive understanding of what drives vulnerability and resilience. We cannot return to business as usual.”

‘Realistic’ multidimensional approach

Developed by experts at the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development, the UVI uses widely available data to generate single composite scores for vulnerability for 138 developing countries. The Index takes into account factors such as climate change, exposure to natural disasters or economic shocks, internal violence as well as governance.

Key to the study is the distinction it makes between ‘structural’ factors that are beyond the control of the state, such as a country’s geographic location and size, and ‘non-structural’ ones that are more dependent on the will of governments, such as policy performance.

According to these indicators the poorest nations in the world – those classified as Least Developed Countries – are the most vulnerable group, along with Small Island Developing States at the frontline of the climate crisis. Specifically, the report finds that the highest levels of vulnerability occur in Africa, closely followed by the Pacific and Caribbean regions.

The study has been presented to the Commonwealth’s governing board and is undergoing further consultation with member states. It will feed into international discussions around vulnerability, resilience and the efforts of small states to make a “green recovery” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notes to Editors

• The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 independent and equal sovereign states. Our combined population is 2.4 billion, of which more than 60 per cent is aged 29 or under.
• The Commonwealth spans the globe and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. Thirty-two of our members are small states, many of which are island nations.
• The Commonwealth Secretariat supports member countries to build democratic and inclusive institutions, strengthen governance and promote justice and human rights. Our work helps to grow economies and boost trade, deliver national resilience, empower young people, and address threats such as climate change, debt and inequality.
• Member countries are supported by a network of more than 80 intergovernmental, civil society, cultural and professional organisations.

Media Contacts

Rena Gashumba
Communications Adviser, Commonwealth Secretariat
+447483919968, r.gashumba@commonwealth.int

Josephine Latu-Sanft
Senior Communications Officer, Commonwealth Secretariat
+44 7587657269, j.latu-sanft@commonwealth.int

Website thecommonwealth.org
Join the conversation Tweets by @commonwealthsec

Categories: Africa

Ivanancy Vunikura: Navigating the Waves of Change

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 12:45

By External Source
SUVA, Fiji, Jun 24 2021 (IPS-Partners)

In April 2021, the Pacific Community (SPC) coordinated the 14th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women and the 7th Meeting of the Pacific Ministers for Women, hosted by the Government of French Polynesia. The conference brought together decision-makers, development partners, research institutions and civil society organisations. Following this landmark event, SPC will continue to publish portraits of inspiring gender champions who are at the heart of Pacific development programmes.

One woman who isn’t afraid to engage herself in these ocean spaces is Ivanancy Vunikura, an ocean defender and sailor.

Ivanancy is one of the few women in the world who can claim that she has sailed the vast Pacific ocean on a traditional Vaka.

She started her sailing career with the Uto Ni Yalo, a Fiji-based association whose role is to promote sustainable, reciprocal relationship with nature by encouraging solutions for a healthy ocean – and gathering trash on the remote islands it visits. In 2011, traditional boats from Uto Ni Yalo sailed from the South Pacific to the USA, creating history and reclaiming the ocean.

This sail led her to work for the Okeanos Foundation where she currently advocates for sustainable sea transportation and the revival of traditional sailing in the Pacific.

Her sailing journey hasn’t always been smooth. Ivanancy had to fight storms, rough seas, and sometimes adverse cultural beliefs.

“I remember visiting a community where it was a taboo for women to sail with men, so we had to ask for permission from the chief upon arrival’, she recalls.

“We were granted permission, but it was hard to work with men from the community who joined our sailing cruise, since they were not used to share the Vaka with women. However, this didn’t deter me, and eventually, we all managed to work together.”

Ivanancy said that, because of their education, many women in the Pacific think they are not worthy enough, and not brave enough to stand up and have their voices heard. But winds are now changing, and Ivanancy believes that “Women also have a place at the helm of the Pacific Vaka”.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

Categories: Africa

Latin America Vastly Underspends on Green Post-Pandemic Recovery

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 12:37

Two drill rigs at the Vaca Muerta oil field in Loma Campana, in southern Argentina. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fermín Koop
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 24 2021 (IPS)

Latin America is investing too little in a green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 2.2% of the region’s stimulus funds spent on environmentally sustainable projects last year, according to a new platform developed by Oxford University and the UN.

Last year, the 33 countries of the region allocated US$318 billion to fiscal and stimulus measures to alleviate the economic impacts of the pandemic, of which only $46 billion qualifies as green, according to the platform. The percentage is significantly lower than the 19% it calculates as the global average.

“The region has reached an economic crossroads. Either governments continue to support the old, dying industries of the past or invest in sustainable industries that can drive future prosperity,” said Brian O’Callaghan of Oxford University. “The new economic opportunities for the region are monumental.”

The region has reached an economic crossroads. Either governments continue to support the old, dying industries of the past or invest in sustainable industries that can drive future prosperity,
Brian O'Callaghan, Oxford University

Analysis of more than 1,100 policies shows that 77% of Latin America’s pandemic recovery budget was allocated to short-term rescue measures to address urgent needs and save lives. Only 16.1% went towards long-term recovery plans.

On average, the region allocated US$490 per capita to pandemic recovery, while in other developing economies the figure averages $650. Only six countries spent more than 0.1% of their GDP on recovery plans. They were Chile (14.9%), Bolivia (10.5%) and Brazil (9.26%).

Guy Edwards, a researcher on the geopolitics of climate change and Latin America, said the region is at risk of being left behind if it doesn’t change direction. He called for a review of spending plans and the careful elimination of fossil fuel subsidies to reduce the negative impact on fiscal accounts, emissions and deadly air pollution.

“Working with countries to align their recovery plans with the Paris Agreement will be a vital first step,” he said, adding; “This requires supporting countries to prioritise investments and policies to protect nature and boost renewable energy and clean public transport, which can create jobs, reduce inequality and tackle the root causes of migration.”

Latin America: An economy in recession

Latin America’s GDP fell by 7.7% last year and will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, according to the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). As elsewhere in the world, countries have been urged to seize the crisis as an opportunity to initiate a green recovery.

However, achieving this has proven difficult for Latin America. In addition to responding to the demands of the pandemic, governments in the region have to cope with high levels of sovereign debt to private creditors, multilateral agencies and, in some cases, China.

“The response to the pandemic is leading to increased debt, which limits our ability to direct investments towards environmental sustainability. However, putting climate action as a driver of recovery has never been more important,” said Andrea Meza, Costa Rica’s environment and energy minister.

The region has accounted for nearly a third of all global deaths from Covid-19, despite being home to 8% of the world’s population, UNEP said. The situation has pushed environmental and climate policies down the list of government priorities in most countries.

The new Oxford University platform, which for now uses preliminary data, revealed that most pandemic recovery funds have been spent on infrastructure for fossil energy sources and unsustainable port and airport infrastructure, leading to increased carbon emissions.

Argentina, Mexico and Brazil focused their post-pandemic spending on these polluting sectors, providing increased subsidies to fossil fuel companies and boosting new projects. Chile, Jamaica and Colombia, meanwhile, stood out for their efforts in electric transport and renewable energy.

“We seek to develop short-term measures but with a long-term vision, promoting the circular economy and new businesses associated with natural capital,” said Daniel Gómez Gaviria, deputy director of Colombia’s National Planning Department. “Government revenues are concentrated in fossil fuels and minerals, so we need to diversify.”

A green recovery

Boosting a green recovery in Latin America not only makes sense in environmental terms but also in economic terms, thanks to the numerous benefits and jobs that could be generated.

The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 2°C by the end of the century. To achieve this, greenhouse gas emissions must peak as soon as possible and then fall to zero by 2050.

The transition to net emissions is technically possible in Latin America, according to a report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through carbon-free electricity production, electrification of industry and transport, and enhanced energy efficiency.

“There is still an opportunity for governments in the region to pursue smart and environmentally sustainable investments. The benefits of that kind of spending are really very good,” O’Callaghan said. “A green recovery can reduce inequality and lead to sustainable economies.”

The region would save up to US$621 billion annually if the energy and transport sectors achieved emissions neutrality by 2050, while generating 7.7 million new jobs, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Most countries’ climate commitments submitted so far fall short of meeting Paris Agreement targets. Latin America is no exception, according to ECLAC. To reverse this, new, more ambitious commitments are expected in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in November.

Latin America accounts for 5% of global emissions, mostly from the energy sector, agriculture and land-use change. But the proportion is increasing as countries continue to develop fossil fuels and fail to embark on an energy transition.

Costa Rica remains the only country in Latin America to have officially presented, and started to implement, a long-term decarbonisation strategy, which includes the energy sector. Other countries such as Chile and Argentina are working on it and could present their respective plans this year.

Edwards said: “The design of long-term decarbonisation plans, working closely with all stakeholders, can help to guide the recovery and support governments to select sustainable infrastructure projects to help people and get economies aligned with the Paris goals and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

Categories: Africa

Global Herd Immunity Remains Out of Reach Because of Inequitable Vaccine Distribution – 99% of People in Poor Countries Are Unvaccinated

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 10:37

Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa

By External Source
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 24 2021 (IPS)

In the race between infection and injection, injection has lost. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population had been fully vaccinated, nearly all of them in rich countries.

Only 0.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.

I am a scholar of global health who specializes in health care inequities. Using a data set on vaccine distribution compiled by the Global Health Innovation Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer at Duke University in the United States, I analyzed what the global vaccine access gap means for the world.

A global health crisis

Supply is not the main reason some countries are able to vaccinate their populations while others experience severe disease outbreaks – distribution is.

Overall, countries representing just one-seventh of the world’s population had reserved more than half of all vaccines available by June 2021. That has made it very difficult for the remaining countries to procure doses

Many rich countries pursued a strategy of overbuying COVID-19 vaccine doses in advance. My analyses demonstrate that the U.S., for example, has procured 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses, or 3.7 doses per person. Canada has ordered 381 million doses; every Canadian could be vaccinated five times over with the two doses needed.

Overall, countries representing just one-seventh of the world’s population had reserved more than half of all vaccines available by June 2021. That has made it very difficult for the remaining countries to procure doses, either directly or through COVAX, the global initiative created to enable low- to middle-income countries equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Benin, for example, has obtained about 203,000 doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine – enough to fully vaccinate 1% of its population. Honduras, relying mainly on AstraZeneca, has procured approximately 1.4 million doses. That will fully vaccinate 7% of its population. In these “vaccine deserts,” even front-line health workers aren’t yet inoculated.

Haiti has received about 461,500 COVID-19 vaccine doses by donations and is grappling with a serious outbreak.

Even COVAX’s goal – for lower-income countries to “receive enough doses to vaccinate up to 20% of their population” – would not get COVID-19 transmission under control in those places.

The cost of not cooperating

Last year, researchers at Northeastern University modeled two vaccine rollout strategies. Their numerical simulations found that 61% of deaths worldwide would have been averted if countries cooperated to implement an equitable global vaccine distribution plan, compared with only 33% if high-income countries got the vaccines first.

Put briefly, when countries cooperate, COVID-19 deaths drop by approximately in half.

Vaccine access is inequitable within countries, too – especially in countries where severe inequality already exists.

In Latin America, for example, a disproportionate number of the tiny minority of people who’ve been vaccinated are elites: political leaders, business tycoons and those with the means to travel abroad to get vaccinated. This entrenches wider health and social inequities.

The result, for now, is two separate and unequal societies in which only the wealthy are protected from a devastating disease that continues to ravage those who are not able to access the vaccine.

A repeat of AIDS missteps?

This is a familiar story from the HIV era.

In the 1990s, the development of effective antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS saved millions of lives in high-income countries. However, about 90% of the global poor who were living with HIV had no access to these lifesaving drugs.

Concerned about undercutting their markets in high-income countries, the pharmaceutical companies that produced antiretrovirals, such as Burroughs Wellcome, adopted internationally consistent prices. Azidothymidine, the first drug to fight HIV, cost about US$8,000 a year – over $19,000 in today’s dollars.

That effectively placed effective HIV/AIDS drugs out of reach for people in poor nations – including countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the epidemic’s epicenter. By the year 2000, 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV, and AIDS was the region’s leading cause of death.

The crisis over inequitable access to AIDS treatment began dominating international news headlines, and the rich world’s obligation to respond became too great to ignore.

“History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources that we can bring to bear in the fight against HIV/AIDS,” said South African President Nelson Mandela in 2004.

Pharmaceutical companies began donating antiretrovirals to countries in need and allowing local businesses to manufacture generic versions, providing bulk, low-cost access for highly affected poor countries. New global institutions like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria were created to finance health programs in poor countries.

Pressured by grassroots activism, the United States and other high-income countries also spent billions of dollars to research, develop and distribute affordable HIV treatments worldwide.

A dose of global cooperation

It took over a decade after the development of antiretrovirals, and millions of unnecessary deaths, for rich countries to make those lifesaving medicines universally available.

Fifteen months into the current pandemic, wealthy, highly vaccinated countries are starting to assume some responsibility for boosting global vaccination rates.

Leaders of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, European Union and Japan recently pledged to donate a total of 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to poorer countries.

It is not yet clear how their plan to “vaccinate the world” by the end of 2022 will be implemented and whether recipient countries will receive enough doses to fully vaccinate enough people to control viral spread. And the late 2022 goal will not save people in the developing world who are dying of COVID-19 in record numbers now, from Brazil to India.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic shows that ending the coronavirus pandemic will require, first, prioritizing access to COVID-19 vaccines on the global political agenda. Then wealthy nations will need to work with other countries to build their vaccine manufacturing infrastructure, scaling up production worldwide.

Finally, poorer countries need more money to fund their public health systems and purchase vaccines. Wealthy countries and groups like the G-7 can provide that funding.

These actions benefit rich countries, too. As long as the world has unvaccinated populations, COVID-19 will continue to spread and mutate. Additional variants will emerge.

As a May 2021 UNICEF statement put it: “In our interdependent world no one is safe until everyone is safe.”

Maria De Jesus, Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the Center on Health, Risk, and Society, American University School of International Service

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

Categories: Africa

COVID-19 as Instigator of Bigotry, Chauvinism and Megalomania

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 09:43

Antoine-Jean Gros: Napoleon Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 24 2021 (IPS)

By the end of April 2019, a government campaign to vaccinate more than 40 million children under five against polio in Pakistan was suspended after a series of attacks on health workers and police. On 23 April, a police officer protecting polio workers was gunned down in Bannu, the same day a polio worker was in Lahore seriously wounded by a father “protecting his child from vaccination”, these incidents were followed by the murder of another police and a health worker under his protection. Health workers were also seriously wounded in the districts of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries where polio remains, in all other nations of the world vaccination campaigns have eliminated the disease. In April this year, three female polio vaccine providers were killed in Afghanistan.

It is Islamist militants, urged on by fanatic preachers, who oppose polio vaccination, claiming it is part of a “Western conspiracy” to sterilise Muslim children. As in all religions, we find in Islam fanatics who erroneously claim that their holy scriptures demand them to carry out odd and even abominable acts, like killing health workers trying to protect their human fellow beings.

Since it does not explicitly mention medical treatment, the Quran cannot be used for anti-vaccination propaganda. However, several hadiths (collections of words and actions by Prophet Muhammad) mention the Prophet’s views on healthcare and none of them can be interpreted as being opposed to vaccination. The most commonly quoted utterance of the Prophet concerning medicine comes from hadiths collected by Sunan Abī Dāwūd (d. 889 CE): “Make use of medical treatment, for God has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely death.”

Contemporary Muslim scholars, like the members of The International Islamic Fiqh Seminar have established that “the use of the current vaccines against COVID-19 is permissible in Islam, and their use becomes obligatory upon everyone, if the authorities oblige to do so, thus Muslims are obliged to be respectful and obedient to the instructions of their authorities, especially with regard to issues related to the public interest, particularly the protection of life.”

The senseless murders of health workers indicate an unfortunate connection between healthcare, religion and politics, which create absurd convictions that bring misery and death to others. A tragic development also evidenced by misguided, populist politics connected with COVID-19, which instead of “believers and infidels” have emphasized a concept that may be described as “the West and the rest”. A view that certainly is different from the one of religious fanatics killing vaccinators, but which nevertheless indicate how beliefs may distort reality

Even a wealthy and fairly well organized country like Sweden has been affected by chauvinism connected with COVID-19. Measures to mitigate COVID-19 have been connected with nationalism when homage was paid to a “uniquely Swedish” approach to COVID-contagion. Public veneration of the influential State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell went during the heights of the pandemic far beyond common trust and for many he became an idol, widely admired for his recommendations to keep schools, restaurants and shops open, while assuring his fellow citizens that wearing of face masks was unnecessary. Journalists and trendsetters, who otherwise would cringe at any sign of nationalism, praised Tegnell as an incarnation of Sweden’s soul and stamina and his office was flooded with flowers sent in from grateful citizens. All this played into the hands of chauvinist politicians who exploited nationalistic feelings to convey their xenophobic messages.

Signs of similar trends are appearing all over the world. The United Kingdom and the U.S. have, at least initially, applied different strategic responses than most of their European allies and it was not uncommon to hear references to these measures as being based on a conception that Anglo-Saxon cultures are “exceptional” and even superior. In Japan, Bushido, the Way of the Warrior, is used as an overarching term for codes, practices, philosophies and principles of the samurai culture and has by Japanese nationalists been referred to as an admirable aspect of their “unique” society. Self-congratulating media declared that the “bushido spirit” contributed to Japan’s resilience to COVID-19, just as South Korea’s successful efforts to combat the disease has been referred to a more recent, but similar national trait – Ssauarbi.

In Italy the rapidly growing political party The Brothers of Italy, as well as The Northern League, are repeatedly associating the COVID-19 crisis with immigration, accusing the Italian government of applying a double standard in favour of immigrants, while penalizing Italian businesses and freedom of movement. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has hailed the Brothers of Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni as a role model for European Conservatives, expressing hopes for a future collaboration to “defend Italians against migration flows and protect traditional family and Christian culture.”

Among his compatriots Orbán has, like many other populist leaders, depicted himself as the sole leader capable of battling COVID-19, enticing public opinion to support him in his efforts to defend “Hungarian values”. On the 30th of March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament voted in favour of creating a state of emergency granting Orbán to rule by decree, implementing prison sentences “for spreading fake news” and sanctions for leaving quarantine. Two and a half months later the state of emergency ended. However, the same day a new law was passed removing the requirement of parliamentary approval for future “medical” states of emergencies, allowing Orbán’s government to declare them by decree.

Orbán, and other populist leaders, like Brazil’s Jair Bolsanero and India’s Narendra Modi, trust that their charisma and popularity among certain sections of society allow them to appear as role models and champions while confronting COVID-19. An illusion that might prove to be dangerous, both for them and their fervent supporters.

Lulled into complacency by declining infection rates, Modi acted as if he had won the battle against COVID-19. A delusion which combined with hopes for winning the next general elections gave rise to a series of critical mistakes. Instead of focusing on concerted measures to vaccinate all citizens and provide sufficient supplies to the health care system, Modi turned his attention to winning state elections and permitted massive political rallies without ensuring any COVID protocols. At the same time he continued trying to satisfy his Hindu base, for example by allowing the Kumbh Mela to take place. This is a Hindu major pilgrimage and festival celebrated in a cycle of approximately 12 years, when millions gather at the four main river-bank sacred sites; Allahabad (Prayagraj), Hardiwar, Nashik and Ujjain. This year, most pilgrims defied protective masks and social distancing. Furthermore, religious leanings have induced Modi to concentrate his messages to Hindu believers and his party has not shied away from blaming Muslims for spreading COVID-19.

Modi exposes a tendency to disregard science and advice from experts, while surrounding himself with religiously motivated people. The Indian Prime Minister has approved of the creation of a Ministry of Ayush to promote alternative medicines, such as ayurveda, naturopathy and homeopathy and his government has called for more research into the medicinal properties of milk, dung, and urine from indigenous Indian cows. Several members of Modi’s government have in their official capacities been promoting false, and even harmful remedies. One example among many is Surendra Sing, member of Uttar Pradesh’s Legislative Assembly and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Last month, Surendra claimed that consuming gaumutra (cow urine) every morning on an empty stomach would “guarantee” protection from the novel variant of the coronavirus, which now is spreading fast across the subcontinent.

The reckless behaviour of leaders like Orbán, Bolsanero and Modi is appalling, in particular since it is combined with extreme narcissism and assurances that the unique values of their nations will save the lives of their inhabitants.

A leader’s task cannot be to stir up animosities and foment political objectives that benefit him/herself. Instead they ought to use their powers to support those who need help, mitigate catastrophes, and assure that forward-looking measures are in place to avoid them. For the well-being of all citizens, political leaders cannot be allowed to disregard the responsibilities imposed upon them and which they have sworn to accomplish. True leadership is a commitment that means putting the best interests of everyone first and forget about personal benefits.

The International Islamic Fiqh Seminar https://www.iifa-aifi.org/en/11120.html

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

Excerpt:

A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Categories: Africa

A Time for Systemic Solutions in Latin America & the Caribbean

Thu, 06/24/2021 - 08:43

A woman in the Dominican Republic receives food from a government soup kitchen set up to help fight hunger triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, UN agencies warn against rising hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Credit: WFP/Karolyn Ureña

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
NEW YORK, Jun 24 2021 (IPS)

The first wave of COVID-19 never ended in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Since the region became a hotspot for the pandemic in June 2020, successive waves have continued to build upon the first.

Despite being home to just 8% of the world’s population, the region has suffered 20% of total confirmed COVID-19 cases and 32% of total confirmed COVID-19 deaths. The relentless spread of the virus has brought with it not only the tragic loss of so many lives, but also devastating economic and social damages.

Poverty and hunger are once again on the rise in the region and growth prospects are bleak. With limited access to vaccines in many countries, hopes for a return to “normal” remain distant.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

What went so wrong? With adequate warning of the spreading virus, many countries in the region responded swiftly at the onset with strict containment measures.

Unfortunately, in LAC it was not only the response to the pandemic that mattered – but fundamentally, the “pre-existing conditions” that characterized the region prior to the pandemic’s arrival.

These pre-existing conditions, or structural weaknesses, made countries in the region more vulnerable to the multiple and interconnected crises associated with COVID-19.

UNDP’s recently launched Regional Human Development Report, “Trapped: High Inequality and Low Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean”, looks at two of these conditions: high-inequality and low-productivity.

It explores how underlying factors related to ineffective governance work to propel these outcomes in a mutually reinforcing vicious cycle (a “trap”). In particular, it highlights how the concentration of power in the hands of “the few” works to distort public policies in ways that both perpetuate existing patterns of inequality and hold back productivity growth in the region.

Exiting this trap will only happen if countries take bold action to embrace systemic solutions that consider the complexity of the dynamics between governance, inequality, and productivity. For years, countries in the region have invested in various solutions to address these challenges.

Community kitchen serves hot lunches for Peruvians. Credit: WFP/Guillermo Galdos

However, many of these responses were short-term, designed to separately address different symptoms of a much deeper problem. This has left countries with a large set of fragmented and costly policies that segment the labor market, provide erratic risk protection to households, do not redistribute income sufficiently towards lower-income groups, and bias the allocation of resources in ways that punish productivity and stable growth.

The region cannot afford to stay stuck on this path.

While the pandemic has accelerated the urgency of this challenge, citizens were already demanding change before we knew what COVID-19 was. As citizens poured onto the streets of LAC in late 2019, it became eminently clear that “business as usual” was not working for “the many.”

LAC countries made important development progress over the past thirty years, but the events of more recent years have revealed just how fragile that progress was. We celebrated a temporary reduction of inequality in the 1990s and early 2000s, but it was both insufficient and unsustainable—largely propelled by a commodity boom, targeted cash transfers, and a compression of the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers.

While many countries achieved middle-income status, they have been unable to consolidate themselves as middle-class societies. Millions have been left behind as opportunities have fallen short of people’s aspirations for their own lives and their expectations of their governments.

What we have learned is that there is no single “silver bullet” policy that can change this. The region already has many “good” policies in place. The challenge we face now is a structural one.

It requires rethinking the foundations of our systems from a longer-term perspective and considering the interconnected ways in which these issues work to reinforce one another in positive or negative directions.

While there are many potential entry points, the potential for universal social protection systems that ensure that everybody is protected, that income is redistributed towards those in need, that the policies deployed to achieve these aims provide incentives to firms and workers to increase productivity, and that the sources of revenue are sustainable, is particularly important.

This requires a principle of universality understood in three complementary dimensions: (i) All the population exposed to a given risk needs to be covered through the same program; (ii) The source of financing should be the same for each program, based on the type of risk covered; and (iii) When programs provide in kind benefits, quality should be the same for all.

A social protection system built around these universal principles offers the region a route to increasing spending in social protection while strengthening the foundations of long-term growth, and a path to enhance social inclusion.

Moving in this direction could represent “a third moment” in the history of social protection in the region. The first moment occurred over 75 years ago, when countries began the construction of their social protection systems; and the second moment occurred in the early 1990s, as countries emerged from the “lost-decade” of the 1980s.

It is possible that the current moment of crisis associated with COVID-19 may open the required political space for this third moment to take place, as countries contemplate substantial changes to their social protection and taxation systems in their efforts to contain social damage, restore fiscal balances, and resume growth.

Excerpt:

The writer is Assistant Administrator and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, UN Development Program (UNDP)

Categories: Africa

130 Countries Promise to Protect and Invest in Health Care Workers

Wed, 06/23/2021 - 10:32

Members of a Community Health Nursing Team in Roseau, Dominica According to the World Health Organisation at least 115,000 health and care workers globally may have lost their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 2021 (IPS)

One hundred and thirty countries have signed a statement recognising the efforts of health care workers, first responders and essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic – “one of the greatest global challenges in the history of the United Nations”.

The statement affirms their support for the World Health Organisation’s declaration of 2021 as the International Year of Health and Care Workers.

On Tuesday, the nations launched their statement before the UN General Assembly.

“Our appreciation for health and care workers cannot begin and end with the pandemic,” said Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly.

“Each and every day, millions of nurses, midwives, doctors, researchers, emergency medical technicians and more, provide us with the support needed to live healthier lives. Whether in prevention or treatment, the entirety of our healthcare system is built upon the shoulders of the women and men who work tirelessly to provide us with relief in our times of need,” he said.

The joint statement was proposed by the permanent missions of Brazil, Georgia, Japan, the Republic of South Africa, Thailand and Turkey.

“We recognise the efforts made by health workers in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, through measures to protect the health, safety and well-being of people and express our support to all continuous work emphasising the importance of providing all health and care workers with the necessary protection and support,” it stated.

It also calls on signatories to ensure that health and care workforces are fully protected and equipped to deliver health care at all times. It singled out workers at the forefront of the pandemic response and states that they must be offered priority access to vaccination against COVID-19.

One of the country’s that ensured these workers were prioritised in vaccine access was Saint Lucia.

“Our vaccination plan was set it out in a phased approach and in the first phase, we were looking at the persons who were at highest risk like our health care workers, our first responders, our essential care workers, elderly homes and our elderly caregivers, alongside people over 65 and those with chronic diseases,” the country’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar-George told IPS.

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, Belmar-George says the country’s health and care workers’ commitment on the frontlines is unwavering.

“We remain focused as our public health teams and stakeholders strive to keep everyone safe,” she said.

Like health teams across the globe, those in Saint Lucia have embarked on vaccination drives. For the country’s health and care workers, a successful vaccination campaign is key to reopening the country’s tourism-dependent economy. The most recent statistics from the Caribbean Public Health Agency show that 27.6 percent of those eligible for the COVID-19 shot have been vaccinated.

“For us in Saint Lucia our 3 main risks for community spread are the tourists coming in, our returning nationals and the illegal entry from neighbouring Martinique. It’s extremely important for us to try to get 70 percent of our population vaccinated. That’s the goal we are working towards as we try to open up,” Belmar-George told IPS. “We are dedicated to our vaccination drive and embarking on targeted interventions. We are working.”

Director-General of the World Health Organisation Dr. Tedros Adhanom told Tuesday’s General Assembly that according to the organisation’s estimates, at least 115,000 health and care workers may have lost their lives during the pandemic.

“The health and care workforce has been at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic and far too many have felt the brunt of its impact. Infections among health and care workers have been widespread and many have suffered from anxiety, fatigue and occupation burnout,” he said.

With its theme “Protect. Invest. Together,” he warned that it is time to ensure that these essential workers are adequately compensated for their work, that they have access to continuing education, career advancement opportunities and safe working conditions.

The statement urges countries to prioritise investment in resilient health infrastructure and health systems in their COVID-19 recovery plans and ensure that this aligns with the 2030 Agenda for good health and wellbeing.

It further states that member countries are “deeply concerned” that the world’s health and care workers are experiencing anxiety, distress, occupational burnout, stigma, physical and psychological violence.

It expressed unease over a shortage of health and care professionals in many developing countries, a situation that threatens health systems.

With a challenge to draft a global health and care worker compact to protect those who protected the world during COVID-19, it hopes to recognise the courage, care and commitment of health and care workers across the globe and guarantee that their contribution to society is always appreciated.

Excerpt:

The countries signed a statement in support of the 2021 International Year of Health and Care Workers. The statement was launched at an informal meeting of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

Categories: Africa

Water Harvesting Strengthens Food Security in Central America

Wed, 06/23/2021 - 10:01

Angélica María Posada, a teacher and school principal in the village of El Guarumal, in eastern El Salvador, poses with primary school students in front of the school where they use purified water collected from rainfall, as part of a project promoted by FAO and Mexican cooperation funds. The initiative is being implemented in the countries of the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SENSEMBRA, El Salvador , Jun 23 2021 (IPS)

At the school in El Guarumal, a remote village in eastern El Salvador, the children no longer have to walk several kilometers along winding paths to fetch water from wells; they now “harvest” it from the rain that falls on the roofs of their classrooms.

“The water is not only for the children and us teachers, but for the whole community,” school principal Angelica Maria Posada told IPS, sitting with some of her young students at the foot of the tank that supplies them with purified water.

The village is located in the municipality of Sensembra, in the eastern department of Morazán, where it forms part of the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, a semi-arid belt that covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to some 11 million people, mostly engaged in subsistence agriculture.

In the Corridor, 1,600 kilometers long, water is always scarce and food production is a challenge, with more than five million people at risk of food insecurity.

In El Guarumal, a dozen peasant families have dug ponds or small reservoirs and use the rainwater collected to irrigate their home gardens and raise tilapia fish as a way to combat drought and produce food."We are all very proud of this initiative, because we are the only school in the country that has a (rainwater harvesting) system like this.” -- Angélica María Posada

This effort, called the Rainwater Harvesting System (RHS), has not only been made in El Salvador.

Similar initiatives have been promoted in five other Central American countries as part of the Mesoamerica Hunger Free programme, implemented since 2015 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and financed by the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid).

The aim of the RHS was to create the conditions for poor, rural communities in the Dry Corridor to strengthen food security by harvesting water to irrigate their crops and raise fish.

In Guatemala, work has been done to strengthen an ancestral agroforestry system inherited from the Chortí people, called Koxur Rum, which conserves more moisture in the soil and thus improves the production of corn and beans, staples of the Central American diet.

José Evelio Chicas, a teacher at the school in the village of El Guarumal, in El Salvador’s eastern department of Morazán, supervises the PVC pipes that carry rainwater collected from the school’s roof to an underground tank, from where it is pumped to a filtering and purification station. The initiative is part of a water harvesting project in the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“The best structure for conserving water is the soil, and that is where we have to work,” Baltazar Moscoso, national coordinator of Mesoamerica Hunger Free, told IPS by telephone from Guatemala City.

Healthy schools in El Salvador

The principal of the El Guarumal school, where 47 girls, 32 boys and several adolescents study, said that since the water collection and purification system has been in place, gastrointestinal ailments have been significantly reduced.

“The children no longer complain about stomachaches, like they used to,” said Posada, 47, a divorced mother of three children: two girls and one boy.

She added, “The water is 100 percent safe.”

Before it is purified, the rainwater that falls on the tin roof is collected by gutters and channeled into an underground tank with a capacity of 105,000 litres.

Farmer Cristino Martínez feeds the tilapia he raises in the pond dug next to his house in the village of El Guarumal in eastern El Salvador. A dozen ponds like this one were created in the village to help poor rural families produce food in the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

It is then pumped to a station where it is filtered and purified, before flowing into the tank which supplies students, teachers and the community.

The school reopened for in-person classes in March, following the shutdown declared by the government in 2020 to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are all very proud of this initiative, because we are the only school in the country that has a system like this,” added the principal.

There are 40 families living in El Guarumal, but a total of 150 families benefit from the system installed in the town, because people from other communities also come to get water.

A similar system was installed in 2017 in Cerrito Colorado, a village in the municipality of San Isidro, Choluteca department in southern Honduras, which benefits 80 families, including those from the neighbouring communities of Jicarito and Obrajito.

Rainwater is filtered and purified in a room adjacent to the classrooms of the school in the village of El Guarumal, in the eastern department of Morazán, El Salvador. Gastrointestinal ailments were reduced with the implementation of this project executed by FAO and financed by Mexican cooperation funds. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Vegetable gardens and tilapias boost food security

About 20 minutes from the school in El Guarumal, following a narrow dirt road that winds along the mountainside, you reach the house of Cristino Martínez, who grows tomatoes and raises tilapia in the pond dug next to his home.

The ponds are pits dug in the ground and lined with a polyethylene geomembrane, a waterproof synthetic material. They hold up to 25,000 litres of rainwater.

“The pond has served me well, I have used it for both the tilapia and watering tomatoes, beans and chayote (Sechium edule),” Martínez told IPS, standing at the edge of the pond, while tossing food to the fish.

The cost of the school’s water harvesting system and the 12 ponds totaled 77,000 dollars.

Martínez has not bothered to keep a precise record of how many tilapias he raises, because he does not sell them, he said. The fish feed his large family of 13: he and his wife and their 11 children (seven girls and four boys).

And from time to time he receives guests in his adobe house.

“My sisters come from San Salvador and tell me: ‘Cristino, we want to eat some tilapia,’ and my daughters throw the nets and start catching fish,” said the 50-year-old farmer.

Cristino Martínez and one of his daughters show the tilapia they have just caught in the family pond they have dug in the backyard of their home in the village of El Guarumal in the eastern department of Morazán, El Salvador. The large peasant family raises fish for their own consumption and not for sale. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

According to FAO estimates, the ponds can provide about 500 fishes two to three times a year.

The ponds are built on the highest part of each farm, and the drip irrigation system uses gravity to water the crops or orchards planted on the slopes.

Tomatoes are Martínez’s main crop. He has 100 seedlings planted, and manages to produce good harvests, marketing his produce in the local community.

“The pond helps me in the summer to water the vegetables I grow downhill,” another beneficiary of the programme, Santos Henríquez, also a native of El Guarumal, told IPS.

Henríquez’s 1.5-hectare plot is one of the most diversified: in addition to tilapias, corn and a type of bean locally called “ejote”, he grows cucumbers, chili peppers, tomatoes, cabbage and various types of fruit, such as mangoes, oranges and lemons.

“We grow a little bit of everything,” Henríquez, 48, said proudly. He sells the surplus produce in the village or at Sensembra.

However, some beneficiary families have underutilised the ponds. They were initially enthusiastic about the effort, but began to let things slide when the project ended in 2018.

A farmer proudly displays some of the tomatoes he has grown in the region known as Mancomunidad Copán Chortí in eastern Guatemala, which includes the municipalities of Camotán, Jocotán, Olopa and San Juan Ermita, in the department of Chiquimula. Water harvesting initiatives have been implemented in the area to improve agricultural production in this region, which is part of the so-called Central American Dry Corridor. The initiative is supported by FAO and Mexican cooperation funds. CREDIT: FAO Guatemala

An ageold Chorti technique in Guatemala

In Guatemala, meanwhile, some villages and communities are betting on an agroforestry technique from their ancestral culture: Koxur Rum, which means “wet land” in the language of the Chortí indigenous people, who also live in parts of El Salvador and Honduras.

The system allows corn and bean crops to retain more moisture with the rains by combining them with furrows of shrubs or trees such as madre de cacao or quickstick (Gliricidia sepium), a tree species that helps fix nitrogen in the soil.

By pruning the trees regularly, leaves and crop stubble cover and protect the soil, thereby better retaining moisture and nutrients.

“Quickstick sprouts quickly and gives abundant foliage to incorporate into the soil,” farmer Rigoberto Suchite told IPS in a telephone interview from the village of Minas Abajo, in the municipality of San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula department in eastern Guatemala, also located in the Central American Dry Corridor.

Suchite said the system was revived in his region in 2000, but with the FAO and Amexcid project, it has become more technical.

As part of the programme, some 150 families have received two 1,500-litre tanks and a drip irrigation system, he added.

“Now we are expanding it even more because it has given us good results, it has improved the soil and boosted production,” said Suchite, 55.

In the dry season, farmers collect water from nearby springs in tanks and, using gravity, irrigate their home gardens.

“Many families are managing to have a surplus of vegetables and with the sales, they buy other necessary food,” Suchite said.

The programme is scheduled to end in Guatemala in 2021, and local communities must assume the lessons learned in order to move forward.

Rainwater Harvesting Improves Lives in El Salvador

Categories: Africa

Maldives’ General Assembly Presidency Renews Hope for Small Island Developing States

Wed, 06/23/2021 - 08:56

Taking Stock, Looking Forward. Credit UNESCO

By Ahmed Sareer
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia , Jun 23 2021 (IPS)

Earlier this month, Abdulla Shahid, the Maldives’ foreign minister, was elected President of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which commences in September.

This is the sixth time a candidate from a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) has been elected to steer the work of the UN’s highest policy-making organ during its 76-year history:

Rudy Insanally of Guyana became the first president of the General Assembly elected from the UN-SIDS category in 1993; followed by Saint Lucia’s Julian Hunte in 2003; Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain in 2006; and the late John William Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda in 2013, while Peter Thomson of Fiji, took the helm during the GA’s 71st session in 2016.

https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/list-sids

It may seem surprising that such small nations have so frequently been named to this high position—the aggregate population of all SIDS is only 65 million, less than one percent of the global population—but the UN’s 38 SIDS constitute one fifth of the international organization’s total voting membership.

This position gives SIDS outsized power as a voting bloc, which they have wielded to great effect, perhaps most significantly when it comes to climate change, which as we will see has benefited the entire global community.

Abdulla Shahid. Credit: United Nations

Far from representing a monolithic group, SIDS hail from every region of the world and are home to dozens of languages and a wide variety of social and economic characteristics. Some, like Guyana and Belize, are not even islands, but they all share unique social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities (like size, remoteness, and limited resources base) that the UN has recognized a distinct group of developing countries since 1992.

They are also highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, like extreme weather, sea level rise, and biodiversity loss, making them natural allies in the fight to cut the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the crisis.

In fact, in 1989, the Maldives hosted one of the first international conferences on sea level rise, a consequential event in the international climate change fight and the inspiration for the creation of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which has been credited to establish the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and winning the inclusion of the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature goal in the Paris climate accord in 2015, the latter during the Maldives chairmanship of the group.

SIDS have also shown critical leadership in the creation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In 2014, SIDS helped lead the negotiations, ultimately creating what is known as the SAMOA Pathway, a blueprint to ensure priorities of SIDS were reflected in the final 17 SDGs.

Before that, John William Ashe skillfully set the stage for the SDGs by working with larger countries to create a process for the SDGs that truly had global buy in.

All along, SIDS main argument that the specific challenges they face need to be given special consideration, and today a number of the SDGs do just that, including sustainable management of fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism. Such recognition was further solidified in 2015 as part of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda adopted at the UN Conference on Financing for Development and again that year in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Catherine Haswell, the UN Resident Coordinator in the Maldives (left) meets a group of local women. May 2021. Credit: UN Maldives/Nasheeth Thoha

Unsurprisingly, another theme that has emerged in SIDS international diplomacy over the years is ocean conservation. In December 2017, under Peter Thomson’s leadership, the General Assembly decided to convene negotiations towards an international legally binding instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, what is known as the high seas.

Thomson was also instrumental in developing the UN Ocean Conference that sets out to conserve and sustainably use ocean resources.

SIDS’ important endeavors during the General Assembly not only showcase the value of their contributions there, but of the GA itself, a place where all 193 UN countries, large and small, can elevate their concerns.

During the campaign for the post competing with Zalmai Rassoul, the candidate from Afghanistan, the Maldives’ Shahid launched “a presidency of hope”, noting that his priorities during the year-long presidency are to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and rebuild economies better and greener.

“The General Assembly can boost efforts towards greater climate action” and “renew momentum” on issues of energy, biological diversity, sustainable fisheries, desertification and the oceans – that are at the heart of SIDS’ concerns.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, while welcoming the new President-elect Shahid commended his “selection of hope as the central theme in his vision statement” and noted that, “coming from a small island developing state, Mr. Shahid will bring unique insights to the 76th session of the General Assembly, as we prepare for COP26 in Glasgow in November.”

Shahid’s election, as with the SIDS leaders before him, not only offers new hope for islands, but the whole international community. At this precarious moment in history, it is truer than ever that by promoting the interests of SIDS, what we are really doing is protecting the future of mankind.

Ahmed Sareer was the Ambassador/ Permanent Representative of the Maldives to the United Nations from 2012 to 2017 and chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States from 2015 to 2017. He is presently serving at the General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) based in Jeddah.

Categories: Africa

Digital Media on the Frontline: Supporting the Ones who Support the Rest

Tue, 06/22/2021 - 18:13

Workers during the pandemic, both frontline and those who worked from home reported high levels of stress. Credit: John Alvin Merin / Unsplash

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

For Dr Farzana Khan, a frontline worker and a second-generation immigrant from Pakistan living in California, social media helped her connect and realign herself during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Khan has not seen her family for more than six months, she said in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).

“I was working extra hours and saw death up close. It was nerve-wracking to see my patients at this stage. It has been over six months that I have not seen my family,” she says, recalling the impact of the disease on herself and the community she serves. “The only solace I had was to talk with my mother, who is 67, and with my nieces over Facetime.”

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the way we work, engage, and communicate. The crisis put communication at the front of all priorities and has made it imperative to have real-time information available. For most organisations – online or offline – efforts to keep people informed and engaged became the new “must-haves”.

Shraddha Varma, the co-founder of online platform Fuzia and a resident of Maharashtra, India, where the COVID-19 pandemic hit hardest, says the impact on frontline workers was the worst.

“The situation was already bad as we were recovering from the first wave of the coronavirus, but (then) it went out of control during the second wave. It had catastrophic effects on the world, especially with frontline workers,” Varma said. “They had to act as shields to keep us safe. Moreover, they faced isolation, stress and had to cope up with all the chaos surrounding them.”

Discussing how Fuzia, a global platform aimed at connecting humans in a non-judgmental space, supported frontline workers, Shraddha says the platform made a point of standing beside those who risked their lives each day.

“Fuzia was able to assist women frontline workers all over the world with creating events, information sessions, live connections, and we served them with a space to speak, learn and even vent. We wanted to have their backs and be there as a platform where they can engage and have some comfort.”

Khan says the isolation from family and community was devastating but being connected helped.

“I also used to speak with other doctors and learn about the latest updates on a few social media platform groups. Seeing people all around the world sharing their stories during the pandemic, I could connect and realign myself.”

A recent study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) dealt with both frontline worker stress and the additional burden employees often felt working from home and splitting their roles between work and family.

Sarita Das found some solace in creativity on the Fuzia platform (handout Fuzia)

Frontline workers were most concerned about “increased workloads, longer working hours, and reduced rest periods”.

In addition, the study found “they may be worried about getting infected at work and passing the virus to family, friends, and others at work, in particular, if appropriate protective measures are not in place.”

For those working from home, there was a desperate need for support. The ILO study found that 41 percent of people who worked from home “considered themselves highly stressed, compared to 25 percent of those who worked on-site.”

Fuzia wasn’t alone in recognising the needs of workers, and big tech companies like Amazon and Facebook prioritised assisting and informing the frontline workers with updated news, data, safety protocols, vaccination information, and more.

For non-profit charitable organisations, Facebook launched Workplace for Good, helping organisations like Save the Children, It Gets Better, War Child and others. It also helped small to large organisations stay connected with their employees.

Amazon invested in supporting employees, customers, and communities during the pandemic, from enhancing safety measures to increasing paid time-off and helped to ensure that their employees and their communities have access to COVID-19 vaccinations and testing.

Amazon provided more than $2.5 billion in bonuses and incentives for teams globally in 2020 and established a $25 million relief fund for partners such as delivery drivers and seasonal associates facing financial hardship or quarantine.

Fuzia also recognised that many had lost jobs and collaborated with Wishes and Blessings, an NGO raising funds for their COVID relief project operating in seven states in India. The initiative was aimed at serving three meals a day to thousands of homeless and daily wage earners and providing nutritional aid to about 4000 at-risk families affected by the lockdown. The project was active in Assam, Delhi, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.

The shift to the virtual world or work resulted in burnout among employees. An article published last year in Microsoft Stories Asia documented the increased burnout as workers struggled to find a work-life balance.

The decrease in work and personal life boundaries added stress. On average, close to one-third of workers in the Asia Pacific cited increased rates of burnout. Surveying over 6,000 information and frontline workers across eight countries globally, including Australia, Japan, India, and Singapore, the study found that Singapore and India were the top two countries where workers complained of burnout.

Sarita Das, a Fuzia user, says the site helped her during the pandemic.

“Communicating with other Fuziaites really helped me get out of my head. There was so much bad news circulating online that it increased my anxiety levels,” she said, finding the creative element in the site most soothing.

“I found a way to relieve my stress and joined the Fuzia Talent events. I found painting a much better distraction than browsing online. It requires focus, stops you from obsessively checking the news and gives you a sense of accomplishment as you paint your own creation.”

This article is a sponsored feature.

Categories: Africa

The Importance of Being Listed: Why Politics Threaten the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict

Tue, 06/22/2021 - 08:40

The al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls after it was struck by missiles fired by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, Hodeidah, 9 November 2015. Credit: Amnesty International

By Matthew Wells
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

Frontline workers who document and respond to violations against children have faced a particularly challenging last year, from the impact of Covid-19 on operations and child protection to the record levels of displacement worldwide to the ever-worsening threats from militaries and non-state armed groups.

Beyond the public eye, there’s another challenge that devastates morale and undermines the protection of children in armed conflict: the politicization of a key UN process for holding accountable those responsible for grave violations.

In 2005, the UN Security Council established a Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) to document grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict. It was a landmark achievement.

The documentation feeds into an annual report from the UN Secretary-General with an annexed list of perpetrators; it is meant to form the backbone of UN-led accountability efforts for militaries and armed groups alike, and to help prevent further violations against children.

The Security Council will discuss this year’s report on 28 June.

The report comes as conflict’s devastating impact on children – and the repercussions of inaction – has yet again been made apparent. At least 65 children were killed and a further 540 injured during the Israeli military’s bombardments in Gaza in May, according to UNICEF.

The Israeli military has never been among the report’s listed parties, despite years in which its incidents of killing and maiming were among the highest verified.

Meanwhile in Myanmar, the security forces have killed at least 58 children since the 1 February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPPB).

Last year, despite the MRM’s verification of more than 200 instances of the Myanmar military’s recruitment or use of children, the Secretary-General de-listed them for that violation, while continuing to list them for other violations, including killing and maiming.

This year saw the military re-listed for recruitment and use – the right result, as they never should have been removed in the first place, but more a reflection of the changed geopolitics post-coup than of a major surge in such abusive practices.

To be effective, the criteria for listing and de-listing perpetrators must be applied consistently. Instead, politics and power dynamics in the Security Council and Secretary-General’s office have at times replaced objectivity.

Earlier this year, a group of eminent experts published an independent review of listing decisions between 2010 and 2020. It found at least eight parties who were not listed despite verified responsibility for killing and maiming more than 100 children in a year.

Militaries are less likely to be listed than non-state armed groups even for similar numbers of verified violations, as the experts and civil society groups have noted, with discrepancies even in the same country situation. And de-listing decisions have flouted criteria established in 2010, which require a party to end such violations before removal from the list.

For example, in 2016, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces were initially listed for grave violations against children during the war in Yemen but were quickly removed by then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He publicly called out Saudi Arabia and others for effectively blackmailing the UN by threatening to pull funding from UN programmes.

The coalition forces were then listed for grave violations from 2017 to 2019, before UN Secretary-General António Guterres again de-listed them in 2020. They remain off the list this year, despite the MRM verifying their responsibility for 194 incidents of killing or maiming children.

Two children walk home from school in the neighbourhood of Dara’iya, Raqqa. January 21, 2019. Credit: Andrea DiCenzo/Panos via Amnesty International

A former UNICEF staffer put it succinctly in an interview with Amnesty International: “No-one wants to be the [Secretary-General] who lost a massive amount of money.”

Amnesty International recently carried out interviews with over 110 experts, including frontline actors reporting into the MRM in eight different conflict-affected countries. Their experiences further reveal the politicization’s sobering impact, with implications for which incidents even make it into the Secretary-General’s report.

When individuals and organizations feel their reports are ignored or that militaries and armed groups remain unlisted despite ample documentation, it understandably reduces their continued willingness to report to the MRM. In Myanmar, for example, several people said they felt defeated when the military was de-listed last year and wondered what their difficult documentation efforts had been for.

In Iraq, a humanitarian worker said they, as a group, resigned because of the politics around the process, noting that survivors, witnesses, and those involved in the documentation would put themselves at risk to provide information, only to see a politicized outcome.

Such concerns, recurrent among those we interviewed, are particularly damning as they come from people working at great risk to respond to violations. The MRM has achieved much in 15 years – documenting conflicts’ impact on children and putting pressure on perpetrators – precisely because of these frontline workers’ efforts.

The growing pressure from influential leaders and states undermines their work and the credibility of accountability efforts meant to respond to and prevent grave violations against children.

Among the frontline workers we spoke with across eight conflict situations, roughly half were national staff and more than two-thirds were women. This raises further questions about the power dynamics behind ignoring the findings of their reports.

Secretary-General Guterres has just been given another five-year term; he must become bolder and more courageous in prioritizing human rights and calling out perpetrators, including on children and armed conflict.

Together with the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, he should commit publicly to applying the same standard irrespective of perpetrator or context – producing a complete list based on evidence and objective criteria, something he has failed to do again this year.

Next year, he must follow the criteria laid out in 2010; the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Israeli military, among others, will again prove a key test.

For their part, UN member states must demand a credible list. Why have teams on the ground put themselves in danger to document violations that get ignored?

Frontline workers need confidence that their work is part of a credible accountability process. To fulfill its potential, the Secretary-General’s report must follow the evidence, not a politics of power that shields certain perpetrators from scrutiny. Anything else makes a mockery of the system and undermines the protection of children.

Excerpt:

The writer is Amnesty International's Crisis Response Deputy Director – Thematic Issues

Categories: Africa

Three Million in Three Years: Jamaica’s Tree-Planting to Tackle Climate Change

Tue, 06/22/2021 - 07:06

By the time he is finished, Dr. Satyanarayana Parvataneni expects he will be responsible for planting over 200,000 tree seedlings in Jamaica. It is an effort driven by a desire to preserve the planet for the next generation, as well as the one of the largest contributions to date to a national effort to plant […]

Categories: Africa

Boldly Finance Recovery to Build Forward Better

Tue, 06/22/2021 - 06:31

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 22 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has become a “developing country pandemic”, retreating from the North’s mass vaccination. With developing countries heavily handicapped, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of a “dangerous [new] divergence”.

Anis Chowdhury

Renewed North-South divide
The Economist believes death rates in developing countries are much higher than officially reported – 12 times more in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and 35 times greater in low-income countries (LICs)!

Rich countries’ ‘vaccine nationalism’ and protection of patent monopolies have only made things worse. After “passing round the begging bowl”, recent G7 promises by the world’s largest rich countries – including a billion vaccine doses – are “too little, too late”, as emerging details confirm.

Rich countries’ aid cuts during the pandemic have only rubbed salt into an open wound. Without meaningful debt relief by lenders, developing countries are falling further behind once again.

Borrow domestically
Now, developing countries must mobilise funds domestically for relief and recovery as foreign exchange is only needed to finance imports. Central bank governors have long agreed that “the scope for relying more on domestic markets, and less on international markets, is considerable”.

Government bonds issued for domestic borrowing are widely considered safe savings instruments. They thus also support and develop domestic capital markets, although limited incomes and savings ensured thin markets in most developing countries.

Hence, governments have to borrow from central banks to meet their financing needs. As government debt is denominated in the domestic currency, repayment is manageable. With borrowing from central banks contributing to a country’s money supply, governments can borrow as needed.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Central banks lend
Central bank financing of government borrowing for development expenditure is nothing new. It was widespread until restrained in recent decades by pressure from donors, financial markets and institutions, including the IMF and World Bank.

Instead, the new policy advice has promoted ‘central bank independence’, ‘inflation targeting’, ‘debt limits’, ‘balanced budgets’ and prohibiting direct borrowing from central banks.

After the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, rich countries pursued ‘unconventional’ monetary policies, with central banks buying government and corporate bonds. But few developing country governments have resorted to borrowing from central banks.

Even talk of such policies evokes fears of ‘runaway inflation’, unsustainable ‘debt build-up’, balance of payments crises and ‘crowding out’ the private sector. These concerns have limited such borrowing, unnecessarily constraining government spending.

Inflation bogeyman
Undoubtedly, ‘hyper-inflation’ – exceeding 35% to 40%, usually due to rare events such as war or state collapse – has adversely affected growth historically. But Indonesia and South Korea both grew at 7-8% annually for over two decades with double-digit inflation rates exceeding 10%.

Government spending is not the only alleged cause of inflation. Inflation may also be attributed to shortages, e.g., the pandemic has disrupted much production and supply.

Inflation is typically unavoidable in fast-growing economies experiencing rapid structural change as some sectors expand faster than others, with some even contracting.

Such inflation is likely to decline as economic imbalances, frictions and disruptions ease. Inflation, it should be remembered, is double-edged, also reducing debt burdens while encouraging spending, rather than saving.

Crowding-out or in?
Government spending is needed to keep economies ticking, especially as contemporary recessions are partly due to government policies to contain the pandemic. State inaction would only worsen mass unemployment, bankruptcies, etc.

When a government spends, the central bank credits the commercial bank accounts of recipients. Thus, expansionary fiscal policy augments private banks’ cash reserves.

This, in turn, increases market liquidity unless the authorities offset or ‘sterilise’ such effects, e.g., by selling government or central bank or short-term securities, or associated derivatives such as ‘re-purchase’ agreements.

Then, instead of pushing up interest rates, the central bank discount rate declines, exerting downward pressure on retail interest rates. Hence, claims that government spending ‘crowds out’ private investments tend to exaggerate.

And if a government borrows for infrastructure investment or skill development, overall productivity increases, and business costs decline. Hence, debt-financed infrastructure and public social investment would crowd-in, rather than crowd-out private investment.

Public expenditure can thus break the vicious circle of reduced spending and greater uncertainty. Also, government spending on healthcare, education, housing, infrastructure and the environment enhances sustainable development.

Balance of payments fears
Expansionary fiscal measures, thus financed by domestic borrowing, are said to worsen balance of payments problems in several ways. First, higher interest rates attract more capital inflows, causing the exchange rate to appreciate, making the country less export competitive.

Second, higher domestic demand implies more imports for both consumption and production. Third, rising inflationary pressures make domestic products more expensive and imports more attractive.

But such arguments against domestic debt-financed fiscal expansion contradict crowding-out claims. If such government expenditure reduces private spending, then excess demand will shrink, reducing inflation and balance of payments problems.

Governments can also use countervailing measures, such as restricting luxury imports and managing capital flows, to maintain a competitive exchange rate and promote exports.

Fighting windmills of the mind
Debt-GDP thresholds recommended by ‘international finance’ are not based on optimality or financial stability criteria. An IMF study emphasised that the so-called ‘debt limit’ “is not an absolute and immutable barrier … Nor should the limit be interpreted as being the optimal level of public debt”.

The 60% limit for developed countries was arbitrarily set. Presented as the upper bound for European Community countries, it was actually only the average debt-ratio for some powerful members, but not Italy and others!

The IMF’s 40% debt-GDP ratio limit for developing and emerging market economies is only for external, not domestic debt, and certainly not for total government debt, as often implied.

The Fund has acknowledged, “it bears emphasizing that a debt ratio above 40 percent of GDP by no means necessarily implies a crisis – indeed … there is an 80 percent probability of not having a crisis (even when the debt ratio exceeds 40 percent of GDP)”.

In fact, debt is deemed sustainable as long as national economic growth is greater than the interest rate. For international finance, debt sustainability concerns focus on external debt, typically denominated in foreign currencies.

Governments can more easily ‘roll over’ domestic currency debt, although interest costs may be higher. But borrowing in domestic currency should not enable fiscal irresponsibility.

Hence, the key challenge is to ensure the most effective and productive use of such borrowed funds. Pragmatism requires considering capacities, capabilities and checks against abuse and wastage.

Build forward better
Instead of ‘building back’ the unsustainable and unfair status quo ante before the pandemic, developing country governments should now selectively target government expenditure to ‘build forward better’, emphasising measures to achieve sustainable development.

Borrowing to finance recovery and reform should incorporate desirable changes, e.g., working in new ways, creating new activities, accelerating digitalisation, revitalising neglected sectors and enhancing sustainability.

Developing country governments must use appropriate measures to finance recovery programmes to fully realise the transformative potential of pandemic-induced recessions to build more resilient and inclusive economies.

All this requires policy and fiscal space. To progress, governments must reject the received policy wisdom that has kept them enthralled for decades.

Categories: Africa

Sowing Water: A Cuban Farm’s Bid for Sustainability

Mon, 06/21/2021 - 23:33

Water sowing includes the construction of low ditches and dikes that slow down the speed at which rainfall runs off the land, stimulate its infiltration into the soil and channel it into ponds for later recovery. The technique gives farmer José Antonio Casimiro, at his Finca del Medio farm in Siguaney, Taguasco municipality in central Cuba abundant water all year round. CREDIT Courtesy of Finca del Medio/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Jun 21 2021 (IPS)

Cuban farmer José Antonio Casimiro found in the ageold technique of sowing water an opportunity to meet his farm’s water needs and mitigate the increasingly visible effects of climate change.

For 28 years, Casimiro and his family have been applying sustainable management methods on their 10-hectare farm called Finca del Medio, located in the center of the long narrow island of Cuba, which is just over 1,200 km long from west to east.

In 1993, when Casimiro and his wife, Mileidy Rodríguez, decided to settle permanently with their children on their grandparents’ family farm, the place was rundown, with severely eroded soils on rough terrain and without fences."We have adapted the technique to our situation and possibilities. We place as many barriers as possible to retain the water and make it run as little as possible on the surface, so that it seeps into the ground where we want it to.” -- José Antonio Casimiro

With the aid of tools born of popular inventiveness, and sheer determination, the family is now self-sufficient in rice, beans, different types of tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 kinds of fruit.

The new generations of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family have also become involved in food production and have managed to turn the farm into a model for agroecology and permaculture, as well as for education and the teaching of good agricultural and environmental practices.

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the family farm was visited by tourists taking guided tours where they could interact with the crops and animals, swim in the reservoir, sample organic foods and learn about how a local farm is run.

One of the techniques applied has been water sowing, used for hundreds of years in communities in southern Spain and South America’s Andes mountains, in order to reduce rainfall runoff into rivers and seas and preserve part of it for human, agricultural and livestock activities.

“We have adapted the technique to our situation and possibilities. We place as many barriers as possible to retain the water and make it run as little as possible on the surface, so that it seeps into the ground where we want it to,” Casimiro explained to IPS via WhatsApp from the Finca del Medio near the town of Siguaney, Taguasco municipality, province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 km east of Havana.
The strategy includes the construction of low ditches and dikes that slow the rate at which water drains into the ground, stimulate its infiltration into the subsoil and channel it into ponds for later recovery.

According to Casimiro, in recent weeks “some 200 mm of rain fell and the water has still not left the farm. We have a small reservoir with a capacity of 54,000 cubic meters of water and containment barriers that accumulate thousands of cubic meters more that infiltrate slowly into the ground. “

He said the infiltrated water does not only benefit his farm.

“A farmer on a neighbouring farm has not had to haul water from distant sources since we started using this technique. His well now has water all year round,” Casimiro said.

A woman operates a hand pump to draw water for household chores in the Martha Abreu Basic Production Unit community in the central province of Cienfuegos. Projected increased dry periods in Cuba, due to the climate crisis, calls for stimulating initiatives for greater harvesting of rainfall, as well as encouraging the saving and reuse of water. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

At Finca del Medio, part of the rainwater is collected mainly for domestic use, such as washing and cleaning. Using pumping systems powered by solar panels, wind systems and hydraulic rams, the liquid is pumped from the pond to higher elevations.

“We have more than 100,000 litres of water in tanks, ponds and other places, which is channeled using gravity,” the farmer said.

Casimiro believes it would be feasible to stimulate initiatives for harvesting more rainwater, as well as to encourage water saving and reuse.

Living with the climate crisis

Climate change is not a minor issue for this country located on the largest island in the Caribbean, whose elongated, narrow shape gives rise to short, low-flow rivers dependent on rainfall, which is more abundant in the May to October wet season, and during the passage of tropical cyclones.

From 2014 to 2017, the country faced the worst drought in 115 years, affecting 70 percent of the national territory.

With average annual rainfall of 1,330 mm, several studies predict that Cuba’s climate will tend towards less precipitation, higher temperatures and more intense droughts, and that by 2100 water availability could be reduced by more than 35 percent.

“Drought is one of the climatic extremes we face today and it creates a complex situation that requires science, monitoring, innovation and evaluation,” said Science, Technology and Environment Minister Elba Rosa Pérez during a televised appearance in April 2020.

Several of Cuba’s 15 provinces show insufficient rainfall levels, despite being in the middle of the rainy season.

From December to April the rainfall level was only 54 percent of the normal average, which qualifies as a “severely dry” period, explained Antonio Rodríguez, president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, on television on May 13.

Filled to around 25 percent of capacity, the dams in the most critical situation are located in the capital, where 2.2 million of the country’s 11.2 million inhabitants live, said the official.

View of a turbine used to pump drinking water in the town of Cauto Cristo, in the eastern province of Granma. In recent years, Cuba has promoted investments to expand and modernise its water infrastructure, with emphasis on more than a dozen water transfers, engineering works considered strategic to divert water over long distances and support agricultural development plans. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We should take better advantage of rainwater. It is very good water for washing, scrubbing and cleaning. I remember that in my childhood many houses had gutters on the roofs to collect rainwater, store it in tanks and use it later. That has been lost,” Asunción Batista, an older resident of the city of Holguín, 685 km east of Havana, told IPS.

The challenge of making better use of water

The island has a storage capacity of more than nine billion cubic meters, distributed in more than 240 reservoirs that together with a network of treatment plants guarantee access to drinking water for more than 95 percent of the population, and supply industries and agriculture.

In recent years, with the support of international cooperation funds, the government has sought to expand and modernise the country’s water infrastructure.

There are more than a dozen water transfers, strategic engineering works to control possible floods and divert water over long distances to support agricultural production, in addition to supplying water to communities and tourist resorts.

However, 42 percent of piped water is still lost due to leaks in the aging pipelines, official data shows.

“An agrarian policy that stimulates and incentivises the sowing of water by farmers could be positive for the country and for families in rural and semi-rural areas,” Casimiro said.

He stressed that “farmers are aware of the effects of climate change, but the cost of what needs to be done to prepare for it is often beyond their reach. The educational level is also low,” the farmer added.

A strategy that provides some inputs and encourages a culture of rainwater harvesting, as well as more rational use, could increase water availability in areas where access to water could be affected in the not so distant future.

The Cuban government has focused on the local level as one of the fundamental aspects of its Development Plan until 2030, while it considers food production a matter of national security.

Since 2017, Law No.124 on Terrestrial Waters has been guiding the integrated, sustainable management of water.

In addition, the country has also committed to meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the sixth of which involves access to clean water and sanitation for the entire population by 2030.

Categories: Africa

Canada Must Acknowledge its Problematic Bill 21

Mon, 06/21/2021 - 19:15

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 21 2021 (IPS)

The June 5th attack on the Muslim family in London, Ontaria, has left many in Canada in a state of shock. A driver intentionally struck the Afzaal family while they were out for a stroll, killing four, because of their Islamic faith. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the killing, “a terrorist attack and a brazen act of violence.”

Amira Elghawaby

Police in London, Ontario said the suspect, 20-year-old Nathaneil Veltman, a resident of London, has been arrested after the incident, and has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and terrorism charges as well. ”There is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate,” Detective Superintendent Paul Waight of the London police department said.

A GoFundMe account has been set up on behalf of the Afzaal family which has raised almost $950,644, where the donations, according to the page, will be used as “sadaqa-jariya” – “an important concept within Islam, it is a gift that not only benefits others in this life but also benefits us and our loved ones in the next.”

A petition by a high school student in London is calling on the federal government to take action on Islamophobia and to create a ‘National Day Against Islamophobia’, and more than 19,000 people have signed the petition on change.org. “The multitudes of contributions that have been made by Canadian Muslims to better the lives of Canadians every day. This is why I believe that June 6th should serve as both a day to remember, as well as a day to celebrate and learn about Canadian Muslim contributions and culture,” the petition stated.

The attack on the Afzaal family has now revived conversations about hate crime in Canada, as the country’s criminal code doesn’t explicitly define hate crime, instead there are a few sections that touch on hate. Advocates across the country are also renewing calls for the federal government to review Quebec’s controversial Bill 21 – which prohibits certain public service workers from wearing religious symbols at work, and has disproportionately affected Muslim women those who wear religious headgears.

“When we found out that the police had evidence that this was hate motivated, it was a huge shock. Obviously the initial shock of losing this beautiful family in this way, but to know that it was because someone hated Muslims, it was anti-Muslim hate was also deeply shocking,” Amira Elghawaby, human rights advocate and founding board member of the Anti-hate Network told me in an interview.

“There is this rise of hate groups, white supremacist groups that are against immigration, that are against diversity and against communities of colour, and they have been organizing and pushing their narrative online. While we don’t know what evidence police have in this latest tragedy, what we know is that it was motivated by hate, and we know there is a climate in which some people are able to find in which these types of dehumanisation is occurring,” Amira said.

Earlier this year, a Canadian court largely upheld Quebec law barring civil servants in positions of “authority” from wearing religious symbols at work. Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard said that under “Canada’s constitution, Quebec had the right to restrict the religious symbols donned by government employees.” But it was ruled that this same ban could not be applied to English schools because of protections offered to minority language education rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Quebec, which is a predominantly French-speaking province in Canada, passed the Quebec Laicity Act, a law which was passed in 2019 that bans public teachers, police officers and government lawyers, among other civil servants, from wearing religious symbols at work. This law commonly referred to as Bill 21, was put in place to bolster state secularism, while it doesnt mention any one religion, it particularly affects Muslim women who wear the Hijab and has been referred to “among a paoply of state-backed measures that stigmatise Muslims.”

“There is no direct link to Bill 21 in Quebec to this young 20-year-old man in London, Ontario who made the decision to drive into this family and kill them, but what we can say is that hate is on a continuum and in the middle of that continuum, you have biased state policies, you have discriminations in workplaces, there are other ways in which Islamophobia, racism, anti-semitism and anti-asian racism, the list is long, manifests in the society.

“When you start to say that certain people don’t have the same rights as other people to participate in the society, then that is on that continuum of hate, because it is essentially dehumanizing and delegitimizing citizens from the society,” Amira said.

With hate crime on the rise in Canada, authorities need to be more rigorous in ensuring such laws which send out discriminatory signals – what behaviours are considered acceptable and what aren’t should be thought through with caution.

“Secularism should never have been about what the state can legislate what people can or cannot wear, secularism is about the state which itself is neutral, in its laws and the ways in which it applies and services to its population, but people would be free in a democracy to express their religious expression as they want or don’t want, that’s their freedom and that’s what democracy is all about.

“So when we say that Bill 21 is harmful, it creates the idea that something is wrong with someone who wears a hijab, kippah or a turban, there is something wrong with them, that they are not fit to hold positions of authority, that’s problematic and sends a very negative signal,” Amira said.

Canada needs to take concrete action against anti-Muslim hatred, and tackle the growing Islamophobia which has already seen a 9 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in 2019. The recent attack was the worst against Canadian Muslims since a man gunned down six members of a Quebec City mosque in 2017. Muslim women in Quebec have also reported an uptick in harassment and violence, which they have linked to the “passage of and heated discourse around Bill 21”. It is high time Canada acknowledges this problematic law which continues to send dangerous messages across the country.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

Categories: Africa

‘What Will Happen to My Child?’

Mon, 06/21/2021 - 13:32

By Shuprova Tasneem
Jun 21 2021 (IPS-Partners)

I first met six-year-old Amina in the Kutupalong refugee camp in 2019. I couldn’t help noticing the forlorn image of life in the camps she depicted—a child alone in a corner, playing with a pair of matchboxes instead of a toy. Later, Amina’s mother told me that she was hiding under the bed when the Myanmar military surrounded their household in Rakhine. She watched them kill her father and grandfather, and lay hidden while they gang-raped her mother. She hadn’t said a word to anyone outside of her family since then.

Amina’s mother also spoke of how lost she felt now that her parents and husband were dead. She lamented, “What will happen to my child?” During visits to the refugee camps, I have heard this refrain over and over again from Rohingya parents—”what will happen to my child?”

I started with this story because right after the 2017 refugee exodus from Myanmar—the result of military operations termed as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the then UN human rights chief—there was a lot more interest in Bangladesh regarding the human faces of the Rohingya who fled here. The stories of brutal murders, rapes and villages being burned en masse stirred something in the hearts of a nation prone to feel empathy towards persecuted populations. However, after four years of hosting close to a million refugees and feeling the strain on our local resources, that empathy has fast changed into refugee fatigue, and often downright aggression.

If mainstream and social media is anything to go by, we are no longer interested in hearing the stories of religious and racial persecution of this minority. Instead, we have fallen into the habit of speaking in sweeping generalisations only. In such a huge and diverse population, the stories of courage and agency—the Rohingya social workers teaching women about birth control, the elders passing on their language to the young, the youth volunteers engaging in community service—these stories are of no interest either. The words of the day, when it comes to refugees, are “crime”, “drugs” and, of course, “repatriation”.

The final buzzword is one thing that we can all agree on at least—despite what many may think, most Rohingya refugees have no desire to spend their whole lives confined in camps, however improved their conditions may be. A common accusation that you often hear against refugees in Bangladesh is that they are living a life of “comfort” and they would much rather live here for “free” than go back home. These voices have become even louder in the wake of Bhashan Char, where the resettled refugees have better accommodation and facilities (although the recent deaths of three Rohingya children amidst an outbreak of diarrhoea on the island shows that all is not as well as it seems).

While there are definitely marginalised pockets of our own citizens who would consider a daily ration of rice and lentils and a plastic tarpaulin over their heads a luxury, I can guarantee that the people who are repeating these xenophobic tropes are not one of them. And this perception of refugees as free-loaders completely erases their identities and personal histories. Do we really believe the Rohingya people would choose to live out the rest of their lives fenced in with barbed wire, without livelihoods, education and freedom of movement, a stone’s throw from their homeland, simply for the sake of “free” shelter and rations?

There is no question that Bangladesh has acted magnanimously when it comes to hosting refugees. And at almost every event hosted in the refugee camps, such as the ones organised on Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day every year, this gratitude towards the Bangladeshi authorities has been expressed by the Rohingya. Which makes it all the more depressing that when legitimate questions are asked about their current status—such as the right to education of over 450,000 Rohingya children in the camps who are being denied access to basic accredited education—our general reaction has been to shrug our shoulders and say “not our problem”.

Time and again, Bangladesh has said that it cannot solely take responsibility for the Rohingya refugees, and the authorities are justified in saying so. But by failing to uphold their cause and create legitimate platforms where refugee voices can be amplified, we have made an error of judgment—because from the looks of it, the rest of the world, instead of stepping up in our place, have also washed their hands of the “refugee problem”.

At the latest G7 meeting, global leaders met to discuss the pandemic, climate change and security issues—there was hardly a mention of the world’s 26.4 million refugees (UNHCR estimate from mid-2020). Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that British foreign aid cuts of 42 percent will leave around 70,000 people without health services and 100,000 without water in Cox’s Bazar, affecting not only refugees but host communities as well. Aid for Rohingya refugees has been dwindling by the year, with the latest Joint Response Plan receiving only 35 percent of the USD 943 million needed for 2021. Again, these funds are allocated not just to meet the needs of nearly a million refugees, but for almost half a million vulnerable Bangladeshis in Cox’s Bazar as well.

Would things have been different if we had pushed a different narrative—if, say, instead of saying the Rohingya must return and the rest is not our concern, we had spoken up for a comprehensive solution that involved humane camp conditions, and donor investment in refugee training and education for third-country settlement, alongside dignified and safe repatriation to Myanmar? Could we have used our moral authority as the country with the largest Rohingya refugee population to remind other countries of their responsibilities, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia—who, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, are guilty of taking in the least refugees despite having the best means? Bangladesh’s presence in the region is no longer a minor one, as can be seen from the financial assistance we recently sent to Sri Lanka and the medical aid gifted to Nepal and India. So could we not have demonstrated that same leadership and diplomatic authority in denouncing the military coup in Myanmar and pushing other countries to do the same?

Earlier this month, ASEAN representatives met with the junta chief but failed to come up with a solution to the crisis in Myanmar or even condemn the military’s illegal takeover. At around the same time, Myanmar’s shadow civilian government made a landmark announcement, pledging to amend the country’s constitution and grant citizenship to the Rohingya if it regains power from the military. Which of these parties do our long-run interests coincide with? We need to carefully consider this while mulling our future diplomatic strategy concerning refugees.

The solution to the refugee crisis is not an easy one, but it will become even more difficult if Bangladesh and other refugee-hosting countries fail to play a leading role in engaging the international community and ensuring that donor support for the Rohingya does not continue to dwindle. And in order to play this role, we need to end the demonisation of refugees and see them for who they are—not free-loaders, not criminals, but a vast and diverse population struggling to survive and build a better life for future generations after being driven out of their native land.

To mark this year’s World Refugee Day, Save the Children has released a report revealing that more than 700,000 Rohingya children across Asia are being denied their most basic rights. On this day, let us remember that we as a nation are well-aware of the fact that people can live through the most desperate situations, but what they cannot live without is hope. The Rohingya refugees are not here to snatch the bread out of the mouths of ordinary Bangladeshis, but for the most humane of reasons, as the question that is oft-repeated in the camps show—”what will happen to my child?”

Shuprova Tasneem is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. Her Twitter handle is @shuprovatasneem.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Categories: Africa

Pages

THIS IS THE NEW BETA VERSION OF EUROPA VARIETAS NEWS CENTER - under construction
the old site is here
Copy & Drop - Can`t find your favourite site? Send us the RSS or URL to the following address: info(@)europavarietas(dot)org.

You are here

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Pages