Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Kate Chappell
KINGSTON, Jamaica, May 18 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on January 20 2021

A man walks by a storm drain piled high with plastic bottles and other garbage in Kingston, Jamaica. Credit: Kate Chappell

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jan 20 2021 (IPS) – For decades, every time it rains heavily in Jamaica, a daunting deluge of plastic bottles and bags, styrofoam and other garbage trundles its way down a network of countless gullies and streams. If they don’t get snagged somewhere, they end up in the Kingston Harbour or close to the beaches ringing the tourist-heavy North coast.

This phenomenon is not restricted to Jamaica, occurring regularly across the Caribbean and Latin America. It represents the burden of how the world is failing to cope with so much plastic waste. Its effect on the region, however, is relatively unique and compounded by several realities: budget and infrastructure challenges, geography and the lack an effective waste management strategy. In the past several years, more than a third of Caribbean countries have banned single use plastics, which may have reduced some waste, but the plague remains.

One study found that beaches and coastal areas across the region could contain triple the amount of plastic waste compared to the rest of the world.

According to a paper summarizing waste management in the region, only 54% of single use plastic waste ends up in a sanitary landfill, with much of the remainder landing in storm drains and the ocean.

The disposal of single use plastic in this region and around the world is increasingly coming under the spotlight as countries attempt to tackle global heating and adhere to the Paris Agreement. If countries do not reduce their consumption of single use plastics, emissions from plastics are due to increase threefold by 2050, which would thwart the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, according to the global think tank ODI.

Andrea Clayton is one of four authors of a study on the Latin American and Caribbean region, and she says there are many problems surrounding the use of plastic and its disposal.

“Plastics have been deemed as carcinogenic. There are health implications. And we are an island state with very finite resources, so it’s very important that we put in place sustainable environmental practices,” she says. “We are privileged to experienced sandy beaches and water, but we want that to carry on to the younger generations. We must be preserving island from a sustainable position,” she says. Clayton is a lecturer for sustainable development and Caribbean Maritime University in Kingston, Jamaica.

On a daily basis in the Latin American and Caribbean region, 145,000 tons of waste are disposed of in open dumpsites, including 17,000 tons of plastic. In total, roughly 300,000 tons of plastic is not processed or collected, so it ends up in illegal dumps or waterways.

Part of the root of the problem can be traced to the region’s lack of manufacturing and agricultural capacity, which leads to heavy dependence on the importation of goods, which, of course, means more plastic waste.

In the region, plastic accounts for 35% of marine waste, according to Clayton’s paper, which is called “Policy responses to reduce single-use plastic in the Caribbean”. For one of the most tourism dependent regions in the world, this represents not just a threat to the environment, but to the livelihoods of its residents as well.

“Marine pollution is therefore a particular problem for the Caribbean These states are major contributors to marine pollution but are also more dependent on the environmental quality of the Caribbean Sea, which is the base for the regions ‘sand, sun, and sea’ tourism package. Tourism directly contributes 15.5% of the regions gross domestic product and employs 14% of the labour force,” according to Clayton’s paper.

Credit: Kate Chappell

In Jamaica, there is a lack of a sense of urgency amongst legislators, as well as the existence of alternative ways of disposing of garbage, says Diana McCaulay, director of the Jamaica Environment Trust. “People just don’t have alternatives. We have inculcated certain habits and attitudes that garbage is a state responsibility. If I don’t see a garbage bin within three feet of me, I can throw it on the road,” she says. Unless there is a holistic approach to overhauling the entire system that is accompanied by public education, nothing will change, she adds. “We need proper garbage collection, recycling programs, unless all of those other things go along with education, nothing will change.”

For its part, governments across the region have adopted several tactics, through legislation, policies, public education and incentive programs, to mixed results. “Across the region, we tend to have the legislative approach, and what has happened in most jurisdictions is a top down government policy with very little lead time,” says Clayton. In Jamaica, the bans on plastic bags, straws and Styrofoam were all rolled out to the surprise of a lot of citizens.

McCaulay says some of these policies have had success. Jamaica announced a series of new legislation in Sept. 2018, with a plastic bag ban implemented on Jan. 1, 2019. This has gone relatively well, with most people now toting reusable bags to do their shopping. The ban on the distribution and manufacture of Styrofoam and plastic straws, enacted a year later, however, has been less successful. For food containers, merchants have simply switched to plastic containers that claim to be recyclable, but in actuality are not, McCaulay says. Most business owners, however, have adhered to the plastic straw ban.

One of the main sources of pollution is single use plastic bottles, which account for an average 21% of the trash collected during beach and coastal clean ups in the Caribbean. This problem demands a deposit return scheme, McCaulay says.

In Jamaica, this is being spearheaded by the private sector, but has yet to translate to a widespread effort.

Ollyvia Anderson, director of public relations and corporate communications for the National Environment and Planning Agency in Jamaica, says that overall, citizens were slow to adopt the new regulations due to a lack of knowledge. “We were a little slow out of the blocks in terms of the uptakes,” she says. “For a lot of Jamaicans, they were concerned about the alternatives, and a lot of persons were not aware of alternatives, so we used public educations to bring them up to speed.

We are now seeing conversions where that has occurred with bags and straws. In terms of the foam food containers, we are seeing less and less of those on the market. People are adjusting but hasn’t been without challenges.”

With this in mind, enforcement has been by the government as a tool to encourage behavior change. To date, 41 businesses and individuals have been charged under the National Resources Conservation Act, with 27 of those convicted. The maximum fine is JMD$2 million, which is almost US$14,000.

It’s not enough, says McCaulay. If she were to assign a grade to the government’s efforts, she would give them a ‘D+.’ “It’s the usual lots of rhetoric with a very wide implementation gap.”

 

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A screen shot taken from Prothom Alo's YouTube channel of Bangladeshi journalists protesting the arrest of the paper's correspondent, Rozina Islam, in Dhaka on May 17, 2021.

By External Source
NEW YORK, May 18 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Bangladeshi authorities to immediately release journalist Rozina Islam, withdraw the investigation into her, and to stop arresting journalists under the Official Secrets Act.

Islam, a senior correspondent for the daily newspaper Prothom Alo, was arrested today after the Health Ministry filed a complaint against her under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, according to news reports. She was accused of taking pictures of official documents under sections 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, and under sections 379 and 411 of the penal code, and could face up to 14 years in prison and the death penalty if charged and convicted, according to the laws. Islam is being held at the Shahbagh police station in Dhaka, the capital, Sajjad Sharif, managing editor of Prothom Alo, told CPJ in a phone call.

“We are deeply alarmed that Bangladesh officials detained a journalist and filed a complaint under a draconian colonial-era law that carries ridiculously harsh penalties,” said Aliya Iftikhar, CPJ’s senior Asia researcher. “Bangladesh police and authorities should recognize that Rozina Islam is a journalist whose work is a public service and should immediately drop the case against her and allow her to go free.”

According to the Dhaka Tribune, Islam went to the Health Ministry in Dhaka around 3:30 p.m. today for a meeting with the health services secretary. Islam had been reporting on corruption and mismanagement in the health sector for the past month, Sharif told CPJ.

Islam was initially detained at the Health Ministry, located in Dhaka’s secretariat building—which houses several government offices—for more than five hours before being taken into police custody, Sharif told CPJ. The Dhaka Tribune reported that according to the police complaint, an on-duty police officer saw Islam in the office of Md Saiful Islam Bhuiyan, the personal secretary to the secretary of Health Services Division. Bhuiyan and Additional Secretary Kazi Jebunnesa Begum questioned and searched Islam, and allegedly found files and saw photos of documents on her phone, the Dhaka Tribune reported, citing the police complaint.

Islam denied taking any files from the room, according to the Dhaka Tribune.

According to the news reports, Islam fell ill and fainted during her detention at the secretariat.

Sharif told CPJ that her arrest was likely in retaliation for her reporting on alleged corruption.

The officer in charge of the Shahbagh police station declined to comment when reached by CPJ via phone. Maidul Islam, spokesperson for the Health Ministry, did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via email.

A woman carries supplies through a flooded street in Cap Haïtien, Haiti. After days of continuous rains, parts of Haiti's north suffered serious flooding in 2014, leaving more than a dozen dead and thousands homeless. The Haitian government, with UN support, responded with evacuations, temporary shelters, and food and supplies distributions. Credit: UN/Logan Abassi

By Robert W. Sandford
HAMILTON, Canada, May 18 2021 (IPS)

The year 2020 will forever be notorious for the COVID-19 pandemic but it might also be known by historians for a precipitous rise in second order climate change consequences — a new elephant in the room.

Familiar first order consequences, as documented in the World Meteorological Organization’s most recent State of the Global Climate report in April (at https://bit.ly/3eyrPwU), were the ongoing temperature rise over land and sea, melting sea ice and glaciers, higher sea levels, and changes in precipitation patterns.

Also in 2020, continuing a decade-long trend: widespread drought, heat waves, wildfires, cyclones, and flooding, especially in Africa and Asia but also in South America and the United States.

All these led to the second order consequences: Greater food insecurity and an accelerated explosion in involuntary human migration and displacement worldwide.

Between 2010 and 2019, weather-related events triggered an estimated average annual 23.1 million displacements of people. And almost 10 million displacements largely due to hydrometeorological hazards and disasters were recorded in the first half of 2020.

While most displacements take place within national borders, cross-border movements are also occurring.

UNU-INWEH, marking its 25th anniversary this year, was among the first international agencies to flag environmental degradation as one of the greatest environmental challenges of our times, warning as early as 2007 of mass migrations of people driven from degraded homelands within a single generation (https://bit.ly/3hn03oK).

A prescription for policy reform at every level of government at that time included harmonizing national policies across government ministries, addressing regional transboundary river basin management and, internationally, better integrating the work of global conventions.

While climate-related disasters have driven human migration since time immemorial, what is new is the protracted nature of the many displacement situations triggered by hydrometeorological events — people are unable to return to their former homes, finding themselves without options for integrating locally or settling elsewhere.

More and more climate refugees are becoming permanently displaced.

Mozambique, for example, experienced the one-two punch of cyclones Kenneth and Idai, setting the country’s development back decades. And Mozambique is just one of many places where climate shock after shock created ever larger populations of potentially permanently displaced people.

Many vulnerable people on the move, regardless of reason, end up settling in marginal high-risk areas where they are exposed to weather and climate hazards at a range of scales.

Weather hazards and human mobility inevitably intersect with larger social and political tensions and conflicts, making multi-hazard disaster risk reduction measures harder to orchestrate and proactively implement.

As the WHO made clear, the only way through this is the application of risk-based, all-of-society approaches as outlined in the WHO Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework.

The report also makes clear the compounding effect of climate change on food insecurity, involuntary human migration and the limits of global humanitarian action. And it is at this junction that the elephant in the room starts flattening the furniture.

Nearly 690 million people, or 9% of the world’s population, were under-nourished in 2019, and about 750 million, or nearly 10%, were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity. The number of people classified as living in crisis, emergency and famine conditions has reached almost 135 million people in 55 countries.

In 2020, 50 million people were hit by both climate-related disasters and by COVID-19 pandemic disruptions to the agricultural sector and the food supply chain, elevating levels of food insecurity, malnutrition and under-nourishment

Pandemic-related mobility restrictions and economic downturns have slowed humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people on the move, as well as efforts to support the recovery of persons whose lives were put on hold by earlier shocks.

Humanity in 2020 faced – and continues to face – what amounts to a perfect storm.

And more clouds loom. Hundreds of thousands of viruses in mammals and birds could infect people, potentially making pandemics more frequent, more lethal, more easily spread, and more damaging to the world economy than COVID-19.

Such diseases are linked to altered ecosystems – aquatic and terrestrial – and biodiversity loss. With expanding urbanisation, the draining wetlands and floodplains, converting forests to agricultural fields, etc., the interactions between species from different habitats are increasing, making the leap of zoonotic viruses from animals to humans more likely (http://www.ipbes.net/pandemics).

Arresting unsustainable natural resources development and management practices and reducing risks to prevent pandemics is an estimated 100 times less costly than responding to such pandemics.

People are being subjected to repeated and frequent displacement, leaving little time for recovery from one shock to the next. While this has implications for disaster preparedness and management, it also means we need solutions that foster resilience. Without such solutions soon, becoming a refugee in parts of the world could mean being a permanent refugee, living perpetually with compound risk and vulnerability.

Creating conditions to avert or minimize displacement, enabling people to safely stay where they are as much as possible, or to anticipate and draw on the benefits of dignified migration, requires that we modernize human mobility policies and platforms for cooperation, especially now as countries make decisions that will shape our post-Covid world, if indeed such a world will ever exist again.

The writer holds the Global Water Futures Chair at the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment & Health (UNU-INWEH), which is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, and which marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 18 2021 (IPS)

Millions of people are expected to die due to delayed and unaffordable access to COVID-19 tests, treatment, personal protective equipment and vaccines. Urgent cooperation is desperately needed to save lives and livelihoods for all.

Vaccine apartheid
Thus far, rich countries have bought up most available vaccine supplies. By mid-April, rich countries had received more than 87 percent of the more than 700 million vaccine doses dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

A quarter of the former’s population had been vaccinated compared to one in 500 of the latter’s! By mid-May, less than a twelfth of the world’s population had been vaccinated, with ten rich countries getting four-fifths of all vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine is mainly reaching the world’s rich.

Despite CEO Alberto Bourla’s promise to ensure that poorer countries “have the same access as the rest of the world”, World Health Organization (WHO) data confirm that Pfizer has actually done little for the world’s poor.

After promising earlier not to profit from the pandemic, Moderna – which has never made a profit after a decade and no other revenue – has decided to profit from its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have both vowed not to profit from vaccine sales during the pandemic.

Pfizer profits
According to a New York Times article, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer chose early to profit from COVID-19 vaccines, rejecting rival developers’ decisions not to profit from them during the pandemic.

In the first quarter of 2021, Pfizer sold vaccines worth US$3.5 billion, its greatest revenue source. Vaccine sales are fast overtaking Pfizer’s cholesterol medicine, Lipitor, which sold about US$125 billion over the last 15 years.

But profits from vaccine sales have been deliberately obscured. The US pays US$19.50 for each Pfizer dose, while Israel paid over 50% more to accelerate vaccinating its citizens. Last week, the European Union agreed to pay more than before for its vaccines.

Pfizer made US$9.6 billion in profits in 2020, before vaccine revenue was significant. Already highly profitable, Pfizer did not need or take US federal funds under Operation Warp Speed. But its vaccine development partner BioNTech received much support from the German government.

CEO Bourla signed the 2019 Business Roundtable pledge to serve a range of ‘stakeholders’, not only shareholders. Pfizer even joined Covax in January 2021. Selling mainly to rich countries, by April, Pfizer had earned around US$900 million in pre-tax profits from vaccine sales.

Pfizer now expects US$26 billion in such revenue vaccine sales this year, instead of its earlier projection of US$15 billion. It now expects a massive revenue stream with COVID-19 becoming endemic, requiring booster shots. The company is changing business strategy accordingly.

What the pandemic demands
With the COVID-19 virus rapidly mutating, almost exponentially, this is not only of concern to poor people and nations, left far behind. Containing the pandemic requires vaccinating the whole world as soon as possible.

Several virus mutations are more contagious, with some deadlier than the original, and some more resistant to existing treatments or vaccines. Although mRNA vaccine developers believe they can be quickly modified against new mutations, there is little disagreement over the urgent need to stem the contagion.

Since 1995, patents have been enforced internationally via the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. TRIPS prevents governments giving compulsory licences allowing “someone else to produce a patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner”.

But now, most WTO members support a temporary waiver for COVID-19 tests, treatments, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies. Although the waiver has become all the more urgent as the pandemic toll rises rapidly, it remains blocked in the WTO.

Technology transfer needed
The waiver is legally necessary for progress, but hardly sufficient. Much more is needed to urgently vaccinate the world. Vaccine production has also been constrained by companies refusing to share knowledge and technology.

Even when companies have benefited from government subsidies and public research, private monopolies have little incentive to quickly supply many more vaccines affordably. Enabling and, if needed, requiring knowledge and technology transfer are clearly necessary.

Not a single major vaccine or pharmaceutical company has joined the WHO COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative to share such knowledge. Licences and technical know-how to produce vaccines have been denied to many potential manufacturers, even those with the necessary facilities.

Taxpayer-funded basic and applied research has been essential for COVID-19 vaccine development. For example, US National Institutes of Health (NIH) patented technology is necessary to make mRNA vaccines, with Pfizer using BioNTech’s licence.

Noting that “the Biden administration has already persuaded Johnson & Johnson to share its technology with Merck to boost domestic production of its single-dose vaccine”, Jayati Ghosh suggests that “other companies that have benefited from public support could be pressed to do the same”.

“Moderna… has already declared that it will not enforce its patent. But its… vaccine uses some knowledge that it has licensed (and paid for) from other companies, which could in turn sue any other producer using the same technology.” The TRIPS waiver would eliminate such legal threats, allowing production to be rapidly scaled up.

What the world needs now
The current generation of COVID-19 vaccines only mitigates the severity of infections, rather than eradicates the disease, as with polio or smallpox. Thus, our world is now trapped in a seemingly endless spiral of ‘catch-up’ vaccine development with new boosters to mitigate perceived new threats.

To achieve real progress, the world desperately needs cooperation, not only among researchers working for competing vaccine developers, but also among governments who can – and must – end the protracted genocide and greater catastrophe the world is now in.

Warning “that private vaccine producers have little financial incentive to meet current global needs”, Ghosh also makes the case for public production in the US and elsewhere.

Citing a health advocacy organisation report, she argues that “the US government can build a facility to produce enough mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity to vaccinate the entire world in one year, with each dose costing only $2”.

Sharing knowledge and working together are clearly needed to accelerate innovation. As governments have paid, directly and indirectly, for vaccine development, they can now quickly accelerate further progress needed. Previously, I suggested using the 1980 Bayh-Dole law, but in fact, this is specifically excluded by the US government contract with Moderna.

Instead, Dean Baker has noted that Section 1498 of the US commercial code provides the necessary legal authority. Thus, needed technological expertise, including trade or industrial secrets, can be either bought or otherwise secured by government authorities.

 

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Extreme weather associated to climate change has resulted in million of dollars in loss and damage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By SWAN / A.D. McKenzie
KINGSTON / PARIS, May 17 2021 (IPS)

The “all-virtual” Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week (LACCW) that took place May 11-14 highlighted islands’ particular vulnerabilities in the face of both climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. But the event – hosted by the Dominican Republic – also provided “important momentum for a successful UN Climate Change Conference” (COP 26) in November in Glasgow, according to the United Nations.

When that conference takes place, island states will no doubt be among the most vocal in calling for urgent climate action, again – just as they did at COP 21, joining the “1.5-to-stay-alive” stance in the runup to the Paris Agreement. Yet, island governments and their supporters aren’t just waiting around for the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to listen to them (or to commit fully to limiting the rise in global warming to 1.5C). Instead, many are banding together to exchange ideas and to come up with sustainable measures, confronted by ever-present disaster.

James Ellsmore

Besides LACCW, initiatives that have been bringing islands together include Island Innovation, a group founded and directed by James Ellsmore, who organized a high-level “Island Finance Forum” in April. This four-day virtual event featured a line-up of entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations, academics and other experts.

Also participating were officials like Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda (which suffered a devastating hurricane in 2017), and Pearnel Charles Jr., a senator and government minister in Jamaica – which has warned about the severe economic problems linked to climate change.

Ellsmore told IPS that Island Innovation began with a newsletter and a series of virtual events, and has evolved into a community of more than 100,000 members. In addition, Ellsmore is the co-founder of the NGO Solar Head of State (SHOS), which “works with governments to push action on renewable energy”.

The NGO has focused on small island developing states, with solar installations on the Office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Government House in Saint Lucia and the Presidential Palace of the Maldives. Ellsmore said that SHOS is now working with the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and the Pacific Island Development Forum to install solar on the official residences “across these organizations’ combined 24 member states”.

Besides working in the Caribbean, Ellsmore (who grew up on a farm in Shropshire, England) has worked in the United States and Colombia and is now based in Lisbon, Portugal.

The next global event that he and Island Innovation are organizing will be the Virtual Island Summit, Sept. 6 – 12. He spoke with IPS reporter A.D. McKenzie via email about these and other ventures. An edited version of the interview follows.

IPS: Islands are on the frontline of the battle against climate change. Over the past years, you have been highlighting this through a series of initiatives and conferences. Can you tell us how this work began?

JAMES ELLSMORE: Island Innovation initially started as a network, sharing sustainable development stories from rural, remote and island communities across the globe. I saw that these island communities were facing many similar issues, and there was an opportunity for them to connect on a bigger scale and collaborate. Islands as different as Greenland, Barbados, Okinawa and Saint Helena share certain commonalities and we created opportunities to build “digital bridges” to connect them. The community now include over 100,000 participants from across the globe.

Although islands are so diverse, they share many common issues, of course the effects of climate change being among the most pressing. By creating this virtual space, remote islands from opposite corners of the globe can come together to highlight challenges they face, share solutions and promote solutions for sustainable development.

IPS: At the recent Leaders Summit on Climate, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Mother Nature is not waiting. The past decade was the hottest on record. Dangerous greenhouse gases are at levels not seen in 3 million years. Global temperature has already risen 1.2 degrees Celsius – racing toward the threshold of catastrophe. Meanwhile, we see ever rising sea-levels, scorching temperatures, devastating tropical cyclones and epic wildfires.” What can islands do amidst this crisis?

J.E.: I think it’s important to note that although islands, and particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are very much on at the frontline of climate change, they have been a clear voice in pushing climate change to the forefront of the agenda, as well as proving their resilience. Promotion of innovative finance models and economic diversification is key to support island communities and SIDS, and this was one of the main focal points in our recent Island Finance Forum. At the United Nations, the leaders calling for climate action are often from islands, but these efforts to call for change affect everyone.

IPS: Your most recent conference, organized by your group Island Innovation and held virtually, focused on finance. It attracted some 6,000 registrants, with 70 speakers that included prime ministers, climate finance experts, activists and others. What was the motivation for organizing this conference?

J.E.: Our annual event, the Virtual Island Summit covers a wide range of topics. Listening to attendee feedback is important to me and I found that a common question that came out of the Virtual Island Summit was how island communities can get access to the sustainable finance solutions and projects on offer. We launched the Island Finance Forum as a way to connect our island stakeholders with the financial experts, with a focus on sustainable and inclusive finance structures for island communities. So often there is enthusiasm for change but there need to be channels for financing action.

IPS: What did you look for in the potential speakers?

J.E.: The Island Finance Forum was a high-level event and we wanted to have the senior financiers and experts who are responsible for projects that are making sustainable and economic changes in island communities. It’s also very important for us to have island speakers at our events who can give that first-hand insight and experience. We included high-level island politicians such as the Prime Ministers of Fiji, Vanuatu and Antigua & Barbuda. Speakers also hailed from multinational finance institutions such as BNP Paribas and local island banks such as NCB Capital Markets in the Caribbean.

IPS: What do you think participants gained from the information provided and the discussions that took place?

J.E.: I believe we achieved what we had set out to do, which is connect island stakeholders with “decision-makers” and financial experts. As with all our events, we created a space to share and exchange knowledge and I hope that our stakeholders can take away these updates on successful and sustainable projects that can be implemented on their own islands. Our events include hundreds of islands and this diversity of participation is really exciting.

IPS: Your next conference will be the Virtual Island Summit, Sept. 6 – 12. What will be the major themes of this gathering?

J.E.: The Virtual Island Summit is much broader in scope and will cover all of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. There will of course be a strong focus on solutions to mitigating climate change, as well as discussion on the blue economy, agriculture, tourism and post-Covid recovery. The Virtual Island Summit will also feed into our involvement at the COP26, where we are planning to create an “Island Space” to share insights into island communities. A big part of this work is breaking down silos and we always ensure we include representatives from government, NGOs, academia and the private sector.

IPS: How do you expect this conference to help islands in their fight against climate change and in addressing other issues that affect them, including the Covid-19 pandemic?

J.E.: Through facilitating these important global conversations and collaborations. Not just during the week of the event but beyond, through our online community where conversations flourish, and we continue to learn from each other. Our events highlight that island communities experience similar problems, but if we can continue to make connections between them to exchange knowledge on how to respond and act on issues, this can only be a good thing.

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 17 2021 (IPS)

Somalia is one of the most complex regions of the world, with threats and political instability, extreme weather conditions, movement of internally displaced people (IDPs), decades of conflict, poverty-related deprivation, poor health and communicable diseases that are killing people. There is a constant risk of gender violence making women, children and members of minority groups particularly vulnerable, and more so during displacement or while seeking work. Three decades of civil war and instability have weakened Somalia’s health system and contributed to it having some of the lowest health indicators in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another strain on its tremendously fragile infrastructure presenting unexpected challenges and dilemmas.

Dr. Deqo Mohamed

This report by Oxfam states that, “the multitude of crises and rates of inflation have left the majority of families food insecure and without income, halted education and health services, and exacerbated existing vulnerabilities and the incidence of violence. Needs far exceeds the current available resources and capacity.”

One of the doctors leading healthcare and currently involved in the fight against COVID-19 in Somalia is Dr. Deqo Aden Mohamed, an obstetrician-gynecologist, founder of ‘The Hagarla Institute’ and co-founder of ‘The Somali Cancer Society’.

Dr. Deqo has been working full time on the ground in Somalia, and leads multiple projects on maternal health and the National Call Center for COVID-19, and is part of the Somali National Taskforce for COVID-19, 2020. In an interview given to me, Dr. Deqo says, “the pandemic has been exhaustive, we created a national call centre last year, which helped reduce the effect of COVID-19 to some extent. We have a very young population in Somalia who are all below 40 and they were able to recover from COVID-19 with very mild symptoms. A few elderly with comorbidity needed beds, but we were not ready when COVID-19 hit last year. We barely had 19 beds, and we didn’t even have ventilators.

“The good thing in Somalia is that because we have been through several famine and natural disasters, people or the government or the non-profit organizations/ international ones, are set in their mechanisms, where they are able to quickly react in emergency situations. They were able to set up one hospital last year very quickly, which also was just not enough.” Dr. Deqo said.

Last year amongst many, Somalia also lost one of its fearless and most compassionate humanitarian whose life’s work gave hope to tens of thousands in her native Somalia, while inspiring countless others worldwide. Also known as “Mama Hawa” and “the Mother Teresa of Somalia”, Dr Hawa Abdi, gave refuge to 90,000 displaced Somali’s in a refugee camp close to the Adbi hospital, which was dubbed as Hawa Village. It is estimated that two million were served by her foundation over a period of 35 years. It was in these camps, Dr. Deqo grew up feeding the refugees her mother was harboring and shaping her destiny of becoming a doctor herself.

“My mother, (Dr Abdi) started the Hawa Abdi Foundation, it was started with the goal to help mothers have access to maternal healthcare. But once the civil war began, it transitioned from rural healthcare to an organization that did everything. It was very inspiring to watch her, the way she stood up as a woman, the way she negotiated with the elderly, the way she taught that your femininity should not hold you back, because in a society as a woman you are undermined. She was a strong woman,” Dr. Deqo added.

What began as a one-room clinic, changed the course of healthcare in Somalia, and helped in alleviating poverty and suffering in the country. However, the health care system in Somalia still remains one of the weakest, poorly resourced and inequitably distributed in the world and in the absence of functioning public sector facilities, the country’s healthcare system has been “vertically privatised.”

While private health services and the pharmaceutical sectors largely remain unregulated, they are the backbone of healthcare in the country. Most funding for the health sector comes from international donors and is ‘off-budget’.

“The government runs only three hospitals here, so imagine in Mogadishu we have 4 million people and just three hospitals. The second wave of COVID-19 was much harder than last year. What we lost in one years time, we lost in one month in 2021,” says Dr. Deqo.

Currently the country is grappling with the triple threat of drought, COVID-19 and insecurity in Mogadishu which is driving severe humanitarian needs in Somalia. Somalia has already seen a 48% increase in deaths from COVID-19, doubling of cases from 6687 to 13,812 cases in just 59 days. The recent conflict in Mogadishu, is adding to the difficulties in deliveries of humanitarian services in several parts of the country.

In a statement issued by International Rescue Committee, (IRC) Richard Crothers, IRC Somalia Country Director said, “Over 80% of the country is suffering from drought conditions, cattle and crops are dying as the frequency of climate-related hazards increase. We’ve seen a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths over the last month, with many cases going undetected and untested. In a country already suffering from severe humanitarian crises, with almost 6 million people in need, the drought will drive even more displacement and food insecurity. Now more than ever we need an increase in support and funding in order to meet the rising humanitarian need.”

In this report, co-authored by Dr. Deqo, lack of access to screening services and important information about COVID-19, could put millions of internally displaced people in Somali settlement camps at risk.

“Three million internally displaced people (IDP) live in more than 2,000 settlement camps in Somalia. The large-scale camps are a tinderbox for potential outbreaks of infectious disease. Overcrowded conditions restrict opportunities for physical distancing and the camps often lack reliable access to basic amenities such as running water, soap, and medical treatment. The humanitarian crisis is already acute in Somalia,” the report states.

“The government wants to help, they communicate everyday, but the capacity is very limited, they don’t have funding, allocation of funding to government healthcare is very limited, basically they cannot run their own hospital, so that’s the situation.

“…If we have people in place – those with the right skills, knowledge and moral compass, things will be fine. Right now, as a doctor I am putting my energy and resources to have the best people in place. The country was brain drained, it lost two generations due to civil war and I think that’s what we are missing. I cannot solve all the issues from the ground, but I think we have the best opportunities in Somalia right now, and if we can learn from the mistakes, we can have a good healthcare system in the country,” says Dr. Deqo.

Somalia is among the first African countries to receive doses of COVID-19 vaccine delivered through the COVAX Facility. According to UNICEF, 300,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Somalia, but health officials say less than half the doses have been used. One of the major reasons according to this report is “the Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab’s warning in Somalia that people are used as “guinea pigs” for AstraZeneca, large sections of Africans are steering clear of vaccines.”

Despite mechanisms in place to react quickly, as mentioned earlier by Dr. Deqo, the broader challenge for Somalia to battle through is the combination of a weak healthcare system, raging political and humanitarian crisis and adding to this, vaccine hesitancy must be a priority for the Somali government to overcome. If not, then COVID-19 will not only remain a regional threat, but possibly a global one as well, given the aggressive and uncontrollable mutation of the virus, which Somalia cannot afford to risk.

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.

 

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Sudanese youth live with continuous insecurity due to climate change vulnerability, including droughts, desertification, land degradation and food insecurity. Courtesy: Albert Gonzalez Farran/ UNAMID/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, May 17 2021 (IPS)

Recently, I participated in a Congressional hearing on the “Effects of climate change in Africa”, before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and Internal Organizations, chaired by Congresswoman, Karen Bass.

Without a doubt, climate change is arguably, the most pressing challenge of our time, the biggest threat to humanity and an increasing threat to Africa and our global world.  Because of climate change, millions of African citizens, many of whom depend on agriculture as a source of livelihood, are hungry, poor, food insecure, and displaced.

Tens of millions of African citizens are driven from their homes by floods, storms, intense cyclones, and droughts. Sadly, these numbers are expected to increase. Tragically, it is the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities that are suffering.

Helping African countries to address the escalating climate change crisis is the right thing to do for the United States. African Governments cannot do it alone, and nor should they

Already in 2021, flooding events have damaged homes, displaced communities, and killed African citizens from several countries, from Angola to Zimbabwe. But if it is not flooding, then it’s usually a drought that’s harming members of the continent.

Repetitive and vicious cycles of drought and famines have become common in Africa. As a result, millions of African citizens are living in abject poverty. Millions have been forced to migrate-and along the migration paths, women and girls are often raped, leaving lifelong scars that are hard to erase.

Then what drought hasn’t taken, crop-eating invasive insects often take. For instance, East Africa is still recovering from a plague of locusts – the most extensive and worst outbreaks the region had seen in generations.  Before the locusts were the fall armyworm which affected more than 44 African countries. I am an Entomologist, and science predicts a future where insect invasions will become common.

While the impacts of climate change have been enormous, we MUST applaud African countries because they have not walked away from these issues.

They consider the climate crisis a serious threat and have boldly stepped up to cut greenhouse gas emissions and address the climate change crisis. African countries are members of international climate agreements, including the 2016 Paris Climate Accord, and have fulfilled the critical requirements.

And many governments are prioritizing climate-proofing and mitigation development activities in critical sectors like agriculture and energy. Further, they’ve launched new initiatives such as the African Development Bank’s Desert to Power project, and the Great Green Wall initiative.

The truth, however, is that African leaders cannot do this alone. And nor should they. The U.S. must help and here’s how.

First, the US must cut its own greenhouse emissions and continue treating climate change as an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security. They contribute more to climate change than African nations and curbing their own contributions would help Africa – and all nations. the U.S. must live up to the promises made at the recently concluded White House Climate Summit.

Second, the U.S. should help African countries build a climate-resilient and vaccinated agricultural sector. Unless African agriculture is resilient, even the most ambitious climate mitigation and action initiatives will bear minimal returns.

Indeed, African agriculture must modernize and doing so demands significant investments in irrigation, better roads, seed systems, post-harvesting systems and climate smart agricultural and technologies. This will pave the way for the attainment of African food security, self-sustainability and facilitate a more stable and prosperous African continent. Launched initiatives must be guided by recent science evidence.

Third, beyond the agricultural sector, the US can help African countries build their renewable energy sector. Doing so will create millions of jobs.

Fourth, the US must commit to sharing resources, expertise, and capabilities with the African countries. Furthermore, the US can work with African countries and enhance their ability to tap on big data.

Finally, as an agricultural scientist and an Assistant Professor at a Land Grant University, I see firsthand how one of the ways the US can help is to increase the funding through US Feed the Future Initiatives. This would allow for more collaborative research between African universities and US universities. Initiatives funded by the US should always focus on what African countries need and not vice versa.

Climate change is the most urgent crisis of our times. Helping African countries to address the escalating climate change crisis is the right thing to do for the United States. African Governments cannot do it alone, and nor should they.  African lives are at stake. Now is the time to ACT by looking to science.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, May 17 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on January 4 2021

Contamination of rivers and streams by mine waste in the vicinity of the Panguna copper mine in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson

CANBERRA, Australia, Jan 4 2021 (IPS) – Local communities in the vicinity of the abandoned Panguna copper mine, have taken decisive action to hold the global mining multinational, Rio Tinto, accountable for alleged environmental and human rights violations during the mine’s operations between 1972 and 1989.

The mine operated in the mountains of central Bougainville in Papua New Guinea until 1989.

The complaint by 156 residents was lodged with the Australian Government in September by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre and subsequently accepted in November, paving the way for a non-judicial mediation process.

“We and the communities we are working with have now entered into a formal conciliation process with Rio Tinto facilitated by the Australian OECD National Contact Point and talks with the company will begin very shortly,” Keren Adams, Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne told IPS.

Rio Tinto was the majority owner of the Panguna mine through its operating company, Bougainville Copper Ltd, with a 53.8 percent stake. However, 17 years after it began production in 1972, anger among indigenous landowners about contaminated rivers and streams, the devastation of customary land and inequity in distributing the extractive venture’s profits and benefits triggered an armed rebellion in 1989. After the mine’s power supply was destroyed by sabotage, Rio Tinto fled Bougainville Island and the site became derelict during the decade long civil war which followed.

The mine area, which is still controlled by the tribal Mekamui Government of Unity, comprising former rebel leaders, hasn’t been decommissioned and the environmental legacy of its former operations never addressed.

Now, according to the complaint, “copper pollution from the mine pit and tailings continues to flow into local rivers … The Jaba-Kawerong river valley downstream of the mine resembles a moonscape with vast mounds of grey tailings waste and rock stretching almost 40 km downstream to the coast. Levees constructed at the time of the mine’s operation are now collapsing, threatening nearby villages.”

Gutted mine machinery and infrastructure are scattered across the site of the Panguna mine in the mountains of Central Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

There are further claims that contamination of waterways and land is causing long-term health problems amongst the indigenous population, such as skin diseases, diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, and pregnancy complications.

Helen Hakena, Director of the Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency in Bougainville’s main town of Buka, fully supports the action taken by her fellow islanders.

“It is long overdue. It is going to be very important because it was the big issue which caused the Bougainville conflict. It will lay to rest the grievances which caused so much suffering for our people,” Hakena told IPS.

The Bougainville civil war, triggered by the uprising at the mine, led to a death toll of 15,000-20,000 people.

The people of Bougainville believe that Rio Tinto has breached the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises by failing both to take action to mitigate foreseeable environmental, health and safety-related impacts at the mine and respect the human rights of the communities affected by its extractive activities. The Human Rights Law Centre claims that “the mine pollution continues to infringe nearly all the economic, social and cultural rights of these indigenous communities, including their rights to food, water, health, housing and an adequate standard of living.”

“While we do not wholly accept the claims in the complaint, we are aware of deteriorating mining infrastructure at the site and surrounding areas and acknowledge that there are environmental and human rights considerations,” Rio Tinto responded in a public statement.

“Accepting the AusNCP’s ‘good offices’ shows that we take this complaint seriously and remain ready to enter into discussions with the communities that have filed the complaint, along with other relevant communities around the Panguna mine site, and other relevant parties, such as Bougainville Copper Ltd, the Autonomous Bougainville Government and PNG Government,” the statement continued.

In 2016, Rio Tinto divested its interest in Bougainville Copper Ltd, the operating company, and its shares were acquired by the PNG and Bougainville governments. Simultaneously, the corporate giant announced that it rejected corporate responsibility for any environmental impacts or damage.

Panguna mine’s copper and gold await political settlement before extraction can resume. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Mineral exploration in Bougainville in the 1960s, followed by the construction of the Panguna open-cut copper mine, occurred when the island region was under Australian administration. It would subsequently become a massive source of internal revenue Papua New Guinea, which was granted Independence in 1975. During its lifetime, the Panguna mine generated about US$2 billion in revenue and accounted for 44 percent of the nation’s exports.

The mining agreement negotiated between the Australian Government and Conzinc Rio Tinto Australia in the 1960s didn’t include any significant environmental regulations or liability of the company for rehabilitation of areas affected by mining.

There has been no definitive environmental assessment of the Panguna site since it was forced to shut down. However, about 300,000 tonnes of ore and water were excavated at the mine every day. In 1989, an independent report by Applied Geology Associates in New Zealand noted that significant amounts of copper and other heavy metals were leaching from the mine and waste rock dumps and flowing into the Kawerong River. Today, the water in some rivers and streams in the mine area is a luminescent blue, a sign of copper contamination.

Bougainville residents’ action comes at the end of a challenging year for Rio Tinto. It is still reeling from revelations earlier this year that its operations destroyed historically significant Aboriginal sacred sites, estimated to be 46,000 years old, in the vicinity of its iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company’s CEO, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, has subsequently resigned.

Nevertheless, Adams is optimistic about the corporate giant’s willingness to engage with Bougainville and PNG stakeholders.

“In the first instance, we hope that this non-judicial process will help to facilitate discussions to explore whether Rio Tinto will make these commitments to address the impacts of its operations. If not, then the communities will be asking the Australian OECD National Contact Point to investigate the complaint and make findings about whether Rio Tinto has breached its human rights and environmental obligations,” the Human Rights Law Centre’s Legal Director said. A full investigation, if required, could take up to a year.

Ultimately, the islanders are seeking specific outcomes. These include Rio Tinto’s serious engagement with them to identify solutions to the urgent environmental and human rights issues; funding for an independent environmental and human rights impact assessment of the mine; and contributions to a substantial independently managed fund to enable long term rehabilitation programs.

Otherwise, Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre predicts that “given the limited resources of the PNG and Bougainville governments, it is almost inevitable that if no action is taken by Rio Tinto, the environmental damage currently being caused by the tailings waste will continue and worsen.”

 

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COVID-19 vaccinations are key to overcoming the pandemic, says the World Health Organizations (WHO). The UN agency has approved the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use, which is a prerequisite for inclusion in the global vaccine solidarity initiative, COVAX. Credit: Unsplash/Ivan Diaz via UN News

By Sunil J. Wimalawansa
NEW JERSEY, USA, May 17 2021 (IPS)

The global community is conducting a rapid vaccination program against the SARS.Cov-2 virus, using several vaccines, authorised for emergency use. To date, the percentages of adults vaccinated vary between less than 2% to over 90% in different countries.

Vast socio-economic variation is primarily responsible for this disparity. Moreover, while the industrialised countries have secured more than adequate COVID vaccines, the middle- and low-income countries (MLIC) are significantly lagging.

Globally, the vaccination rate is slowing down, scarcity in some countries and refusal in others. At the current rate of vaccination, less than half of adults in MLIC countries will be vaccinated by the end of 2021.

Therefore, the focus of WHO and MLIC countries must be directed to improving this grim situation.

Concerns about achieving herd immunity

The increasing virulence of new mutations (i.e., variants) of SARS-CoV-2 [i.e., increasing reproductive number (R0)] increased R0 from original SARS.Cov-2higher infectivity, and the human behaviour, achieving a global herd immunity needs vaccinating approximately 85% of adults, in the absence of vaccinating children under 12 years.

Considering that between 15 and 30% of adults and adolescents (and parents of younger children) are reluctant to be vaccinated, and children up to 16 years are not approved for COVID vaccination in most countries, achieving herd immunity is impossible soon.

On May 5th, the FDA and the CDC approved vaccination of children between 12 and 15 years in the USA. However, vaccination of even 70% of children between 12 and 18 is insufficient for achieving herd immunity.

Although millions of people have recovered from COVID infection, at the current rate, accomplishing herd immunity collectively from immunisation and post-infection immunity) is hard.

In addition, there are concerns about short-term and long-term ill-effects, known and unknown, and to what degree is vaccinating children justified given their generally low (in the absence of obesity and deficient vitamin D) probability of being seriously harmed or killed by COVID-19.

Based on the availability of vaccines and the reasonable immune responses to defend against current and likely future variants, vaccination of adults and adolescents has become an ongoing process.

Barriers to achieving herd immunity

The collective effects of those mentioned above likely to prevent a sufficient percentage of people fully immunised within a given period to achieve and maintain herd immunity. Failure will allow the virus to spread within and from country to country for years to come, as it disseminated across the world during the early part of the pandemic.

It demonstrates the importance of honest and open collaborations of all counties, working coherently to achieve global herd immunity, enabling the elimination of SARS.Cov-2 from the world.

Herd immunity cannot be achieved through vaccination and actual infection unless (A) pharmaceutical (vaccine) companies eliminate their greed, (B) revoke or share restrictive patents related to COVID vaccines and their production for a greater good, (C) provide adequate doses of effective vaccines free or at a discount for the MLICs, (D) motivate and incentivise those who are reluctant to get vaccinated, and (E) maintain wearing facemasks and avoiding mass gatherings for months to come.

Even if the mentioned barriers are overcome, the inability to access, secure or purchase COVID-vaccines by most MLICs will prevent achieving herd immunity. Despite vast propaganda, the World Health Organization (WHO), GAVI institute, and industrialised (G-20) countries seem not to pay attention to overcome these critical barriers promptly.

Vaccination of children

The recently started vaccine clinical trials in children between age 5 and 16 years is expected to be completed by the end of summer/fall 2021. Assuming there are no complications or unexpected developments, COVID vaccines for children ages five upwards are likely to be approved towards the end of the year.

Despite rhetoric by vaccine companies and certain administrators, the scenario could worsen because both the natural and vaccine-induced immunity fail to sustain for more than one year.

Still, concerns remain about currently unknown longer-term ill-effects of vaccine and the degree to which these uncertainties can be justified, depending on the near-term likelihood of COVID-19 infection versus harm to a child.

While clinical trials are ongoing in children, the wealthy countries should consider (A) waiving patents related to the COVID vaccine, (B ) postponing vaccination of children under 16 years, and (C) divert millions of doses of surplus vaccines and those ear-marked for younger children to MLIC countries immediately.

The approval status of COVID vaccines

COVID vaccines are currently using, via “emergency use authorisation” (EUA) by regulatory authorities, including the FDA. EUA is required by federal law when the intended agent is not licensed and there is no effective treatment.

However, this temporary approval status under the EUA for COVID-vaccines will be- or arguably should be-rescinded when alternative agents, such as vitamin D3, ivermectin, etc., are approved for prevention or treatment of COVID.

It is noteworthy that none of the COVID vaccines is licensed for the prevention or treatment of COVID. Consequently, COVID-19 vaccine consent forms and promotional material mandated to indicate that vaccine has not been approved or licensed by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) but authorised only for emergency use (see below).

Moreover, federal law prohibits mandating investigational agents (i.e., COVID vaccines) by states, employers, school administrators, etc.: i.e., medicines authorised under the EUA rule cannot be legally mandated. Thus, people have the right to refuse.

While organisations and entities are encouraged to facilitate and provide vaccination to employees and students, the law prevents them from making vaccination compulsory. While vaccination is likely to prevent complications and deaths, employee and students have the right to decline. If the regulators, such as the FDA, eventually licensed vaccines, guidelines will change.

Industry disclaimers associated with COVID vaccine

The US Federal government and the FDA have mandated the inclusion of specific disclaimers by manufacturers and state governments on COVID-19 vaccines. The following statements appear in the consent forms informing the recipients prior to getting the vaccine and advertisements.

The disclaimer states, “I have informed that this COVID-19 vaccine is an unapproved drug permitted under an Emergency Use Authorisation from the FDA. I have been informed of alternatives to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and the risks and benefits of alternatives. I have also been informed of the significant known and potential risks and benefits of this COVID-19 vaccine and the extent to which such risks and benefits are unknown.”

Nevertheless, no one reads these small-print consent forms in detail since they are eager to get vaccinated. The second half of the above disclaimer is not adhered to by the vast majority of vaccination staff, and most have no clue about it.

Consequently, vaccination teams neither inform recipients of alternative options nor potential risks, benefits, or available alternatives to recipients to make an informed choice.

Contact information: Sunil J. Wimalawansa, MD, PhD, MBA, DSc: suniljw@hotmail.com

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology & Nutrition, Director CardioMetabolic Institute, USA

Escalated hostilities in the Gaza Strip have resulted in heavy casualties and large-scale displacement. More than 50 children have been killed in the current crisis in the Middle East, a senior UN official, said May 15. Credit: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 17 2021 (IPS)

In most civil wars and military conflicts across the politically-volatile Middle East, including in Syria, Yemen and Palestine, the ongoing battles are being fought not on a level playing field but on an uneven killing field.

And it is more so in the current fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, described as a “Middle East carnage” where children are among the civilians killed in airstrikes. The fighting is largely a battle of weapons: sophisticated US-supplied state-of-the-art fighter planes vs home-made rockets and mortars.

The overwhelming Israeli firepower that continues to be unleashed on Palestinians –which has so far killed 192, including 58 children, in a weeklong confrontation — is perhaps reminiscent of the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) when France, the colonial power, used its vastly superior military strength to strike back at the insurgents with brutal ferocity.

While France was accused of using its air force to napalm civilians in the countryside, the Algerians were accused of using handmade bombs hidden in women’s handbags and left surreptitiously in cafes, restaurants and public places frequented by French nationals living in occupied territory.

In one of the memorable scenes in the 1967 Academy Award winning, cinematic classic “The Battle of Algiers,” which re-created Algeria’s war of independence, a handcuffed leader of the National Liberation Front (NLF), Ben M’Hidi, is brought before a group of highly-partisan French journalists for interrogation.

One of the journalists asks M’Hidi: “Don’t you think it is a bit cowardly to use women’s handbags and baskets to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people [in cafes and night clubs?]

Responding with equal bluntness, the Algerian insurgent retorts: “And doesn’t it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on unarmed villages on a thousand times more innocent victims?”

“Of course, if we had your fighter planes, it would be a lot easier for us,” he adds. “Give us your bombers, and you can have our handbags and baskets.”

Perhaps, in the current confrontation, it would be interesting to see the roles reversed: the Palestinians with American fighter planes and battle tanks and Israelis with homemade rockets and mortars,

Besides F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, the Israelis also use a wide array of U.S. weaponry, including Apache helicopters, M60 battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavy artillery.

Israel’s prodigious military strength and its economic stability are attributed largely to unlimited American economic and military assistance from successive US administrations and backed by American politicians.

On May 16 alone, 33 Palestinians were killed, in what was described as “the single deadliest airstrike” by the Israelis. But, as of now, and despite a Security Council meeting, there are no indications of a halt to the killings.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying: “We’ll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet.”

According to a report in the New York Times, Israeli intelligence has estimated that Palestinian militants, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have access to about 30,000 rockets and mortar projectiles stashed in Gaza, most of them manufactured in Gaza with technical expertise from Iran. The rocket attacks have claimed 10 lives so far.

Asked about the massive Israeli military arsenal, Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher, Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) told IPS the US, by far, has been the most important arms supplier to Israel since the 1970s.

He pointed out that over the past five years the uninterrupted US supplies included F-35 combat aircraft (described as the most advanced state-of-the art fighter plane), F-15C combat aircraft and many thousands of guided bombs and armoured vehicles.

The purchases of such weapons (and similar weapons before), he said, are funded by the over $3.0 billion in annual military aid the US provides to finance Israeli arms procurement.

In addition, the US also finances and provides technical input into Israel developing missile defence systems, include those that have been used so intensively in the past few days. The US also supplies Israel with a range of other military equipment, ranging from trucks and rifles to spare parts for older US-supplied equipment, Wezeman said.

A Reuters news agency report in September 2016 said the US agreed to provide Israel a staggering $38 billion package in military assistance over the next decade, described as “the largest such aid package in U.S. history, under a landmark agreement signed by the two countries”.

The $38 billion memorandum of understanding (MoU) covered U.S. fiscal years 2019-2028 and replaced the $30 billion MOU signed in 2007, (which expired at the end of fiscal year 2018).

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a Security Council meeting May 16: “The current hostilities are utterly appalling. This latest round of violence only perpetuates the cycles of death, destruction and despair, and pushes farther to the horizon any hopes of coexistence and peace.”

Fighting must stop. It must stop immediately, he urged. Rockets and mortars on one side and aerial and artillery bombardments on the other must stop. “I appeal to all parties to heed this call.” The United Nations, he said, is actively engaging all sides towards an immediate ceasefire.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the 15-member Council “the United States has been working tirelessly through diplomatic channels to try to bring an end to this conflict, because we believe Israelis and Palestinians equally have a right to live in safety and security.”

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who chaired the meeting as Council president for the month of May, said: “We call upon the U.S. to shoulder its responsibilities, take a just position, and together with most of the international community support the Security Council in easing the situation.”

Asked about secondary arms suppliers to Israel, SIPRI’s Wezeman singled out Germany and Italy.

He said Germany has supplied engines for Merkava tanks made in Israel (the engines are really assembled in the US so that Israel can acquire them with US military aid financing) and torpedoes for submarines which Germany has supplied earlier.

One more submarine from Germany is planned for delivery this year while a contract for three more is apparently still being negotiated. Germany is also in the process of delivering four frigates to Israel, which will be equipped with Israeli combat systems.

Italy has supplied eight advanced military trainer aircraft to Israel 2016-2020 (in addition to 22 delivered five years earlier). These are used to prepare and train pilots who will fly the US supplied combat aircraft.

Asked about the state-of-the-art US weapons systems in the Israeli military arsenal, Wezeman said the US supplied combat aircraft, especially F-16s and F-15s, and US guided munitions have played a central role in Israel’s military actions in Gaza and elsewhere (including Syria and Lebanon).

The most advanced weapon the US supplies to Israel is the F-35 combat aircraft, including a few delivered just a few weeks ago. Of the 50 ordered, about 31 have been delivered so far, while more are planned to be ordered.

However, these aircraft are designed for attacking targets deep inside well defended enemy territory, for example, targets deep inside Syria. They may thus not have seen much or any use in the past few days, he said.

Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group. He is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” from which this article is adapted. Published by Amazon, the book is peppered with scores of anecdotes– from the serious to the hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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Gas development in South America, during pandemic and post pandemic times, was the issue of a new round of debates this Friday 14 at the XXX La Jolla Energy Conference, which takes place virtually from May 7 to 28, and brings together officials , Latin American businessmen and analysts. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS.

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 14 2021 (IPS)

The gas producing countries of South America are debating on how toSouth America debate on how to make better use of the resource and how to integrate the sector, amid geographical and infrastructural barriers.

The issue was the center of discussions this Friday 14 during the weekly debate at the XXX La Jolla Energy Conference, which began May 7th and will conclude on May 28th and is being held virtually, due to the limitations imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

The Conference will be held on Wednesdays and Fridays of every week in May and is organized by the Institute of the Americas (IA), which has its headquarters in the coastal city of La Jolla, in the state of California, in the United States. Dedicated to promoting public policies and public-private cooperation in the hemisphere, the IA has energy as one of its main focuses of action.

In the case of Argentina, Juan Bulgheroni, Pan American Energy’s vice president of Upstream Strategy and Planning for that country, highlighted the characteristics of the Vaca Muerta unconventional gas field in southwestern Argentina.

“It has sufficient resources to meet a growing demand. Productivity has increased and costs continue to fall. We have to develop new facilities to control polluting gases and to transport more gas,” he explained.

Bulgheroni assured during the discussions that “Argentina is on the road to recovery, as prices and consumption have returned.”

In 2020, Argentina produced 123.21 million cubic meters (m3) of gas, almost nine percent less than the previous year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the January-February period of this year, gas production totaled 115.31 million m3 per day, a drop of 10.6 percent in relation to the same period of the previous year, in a two-month period in which the pandemic, declared a month later, had not yet broken out.

In late January, Vaca Muerta delivered 26.85 million m³ per day of the fuel, but this productive basin reported a 10 percent drop between March 2020 and the same month of 2021.

That same month the government applied the Plan Gas.Ar, which seeks to encourage investment and domestic gas production to replace imports, and through which the government pays producers for the fluid injected into the national system.

In Brazil, the Gas Law also came into force in April and puts an end to the monopoly of the state-owned Petrobras group in the access and transportation of gas and regulates the transportation, treatment, processing, storage, liquefaction, regasification and commercialization of the molecule.

The South American giant extracted 127 million m3 per day in 2020 and aims for a target of 276 million in 2030.

“We don’t have 20 years to develop our gas resources. We have to do it fast, as there is a lot of unsatisfied demand. Demand is concentrated near production centers, which is an advantage. And we have to see which fuel gas has to compete against,” said Sylvie D’Apote, Brazilian Petroleum Institute’s executive director for natural gas.

The Conference, attended by higher officials, executives and analysts from the region, will also address topics such as the future of transportation, including its electrification; the outlook for hydrogen; energy cooperation between the United States and Mexico; as well as the future of hydrocarbons and the financing of the post-covid economic recovery.

Countries such as Colombia and Peru are also analysing how to extract more gas to increase their domestic market.

Armando Zamora, Colombia’s governmental National Hydrocarbons Association president, the sector’s national regulator and administrator, predicted that investment and production “will go up when companies are authorised to return to work”.

“The expectation is to return to pre-pandemic levels of investment and exploration. This year investment is returning,” he said.

Colombian gas production is already at pre-pandemic levels, at around 1 billion cubic feet per day.

Carlos Sarmiento, Schlumberger’s managing director for Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, said the new Ecuadorian government, which will take office on 24 May, is keen to increase investment in the sector.

“Much of the effort has been made to maintain production. Therefore, a lot has to happen to the legal framework and production strategy, there must be changes to attract investment in exploration, there is the potential and the infrastructure,” he said.

Ecuador extracts some 1.08 million m3 of gas a day, which is insufficient to meet the growing demand.

 

Vaporous illusions

The common dream of South American gas-producing countries is to consolidate the domestic market and build an exploration platform. But this goal faces several barriers.

Argentina’s Bulgheroni highlighted opportunities in petrochemical production, for plastics, and urea, for fertilisers. “The best domestic product is to export. Many of the internal barriers will be overcome, but there is a need to invest in pipelines. There is a bottleneck to extract and transport more gas,” he said.

For Brazil’s D’Apote, there are opportunities for gas in the fertiliser industry, but there are “infrastructure and price barriers”.

One strategy is to build regasification plants for liquefied gas (LNG), imported mainly from the United States, and connected to South American gas pipeline networks.

Decio Oddone, CEO of Brazil’s Enauta, concluded that gas integration is not possible because a country’s internal problems impact the supply of the entire network.

“What I see now is that since LNG is available, it defines prices. If Bolivia or others want to be competitive in Brazil, they have to compete with LNG. I don’t see the need for pipelines,” he said.

For Oddone, “Brazil can become a gas exporter, but first it has to develop the domestic market, which can be more attractive than the foreign market”.

Sarmiento questioned that there has been little exploration in Ecuador. “We have many opportunities for integration. For example, using Ecuadorian oil in a Peruvian refinery or developing fields in southern Colombia, using Ecuadorian infrastructure,” he said.

Saverio Minervini, FitchRatings’ director of Latin American corporationst, predicted that regional integration will incorporate LNG, but “there are political risks and geographical and engineering challenges”.

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A healthcare worker collects samples for COVID-19 testing at Mimar Sinan State Hospital in Buyukcekmece district, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2020. New numbers reveal that men outnumber women 3-1 in 225 COVID-19 task forces around the world, while 70 percent of the frontline healthcare workers are women. Credit: UNDP Turkey/Levent Kulu

By Raquel Lagunas
UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2021 (IPS)

There are teams of experts around the world right now tackling the coronavirus pandemic, providing pathways to put an end to this deadly global scourge and charting the course for recovery.

These task forces comprise health experts, economic leaders, policy makers, and more to ensure the best holistic solutions are put forward. But what they don’t have is gender balance and, in some cases, any women at all.

There are three men to every woman on national COVID-19 task forces around the world, according to recent data from the United Nations Development Programme, UN Women and the University of Pittsburgh.

The data show that women, on average, still make up only 24 percent of members among the 225 COVID-19 task forces examined across 137 countries. And in 26 task forces, there are shockingly no women at all.

This is a problem. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in recent remarks, the pandemic has provided yet another opportunity for men to dominate decision-making. And when women are missing from decision-making, we see the world through only one perspective.

Male-dominated decision makers will lead to male-dominated policies. With each new recommendation or proposed policy towards pandemic recovery, assumptions will be made on behalf of women, because women aren’t in the mix.

When male-dominated task forces recommend economic measures, for instance, are they considering the mass exodus of women workers who were forced to leave their jobs to take care of their families during this crisis?

Tracking governments’ pandemic responses will help us better understand the gender gaps in global policies and actions. That is why the COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker, developed by UNDP in partnership with UN Women, collects data on national COVID-19 measures taken by governments and showcases them in a one-stop shop for policy makers to see where they need to correct course.

The tracker, which includes over 3,100 policy measures across 219 countries and territories, indicates that the global response to the economic fallout remains, so far, largely gender blind. It shows, for example, that only 13 percent of all the fiscal, labour market, and social protection policy measures analyzed target women’s economic security.

We know that women’s full participation is essential for democracy and can lead to more sustainable peace and greater climate action. It also brings more inclusive perspectives that can influence public policies and institutional practices to include a gender lens.

So, why are women’s voices still missing from COVID-19 leadership, especially when they are being disproportionately affected by this crisis?

Many factors play a role in this exclusion. Among them are perceptions and bias. Last year UNDP released data that showed 90 percent of people surveyed had some bias against women. The index also showed that about half of the world’s men and women feel that men make better political leaders, and over 40 percent feel that men make better business executives and that men have more right to a job when jobs are scarce. How women are viewed by society places them at the back of the line.

There’s also a gender gap in public administration. We know that having more women in the public sector and civil service brings women’s perspectives and needs to policy and public service delivery, but women are still missing from leadership positions in this area.

Data from 2018 show that women made up 45 percent of the public administration workforce but only 34 percent of decision-making positions.

Over the past year the pandemic has worsened these longstanding gender inequalities and revealed just how deep and pervasive these inequalities are in our political, social and economic systems. Women’s economic security is in jeopardy as their jobs are hardest hit, their unpaid care work continues to dramatically rise, and a shadow pandemic has emerged as domestic violence surges globally.

At the same time, women are “the shock absorbers of society” and make up the majority of the global health workforce, working at the frontlines of the pandemic. Women should have the opportunity to shape their own future and the post-pandemic world, and to bring their different views and perspectives to the table.

It’s not too late to change this.

Women have the skills, the knowledge and the expertise to lead in all decision-making spaces, including the COVID-19 response. What they lack though is power. We must work together – UN agencies, governments, civil society, the private sector and others – to shift the power into women’s hands and to close this power gap.

To create this change, we need to break down the structural barriers and alter discriminatory social norms and attitudes that are holding women back. Strengthen constitutional, legislative, and political processes, for example by establishing quotas.

Address the increasing violence that women in public life face, both online and offline, as well as reform our workplace cultures so women can harness their full leadership potential. Recognize women’s unpaid care and domestic work and address the crisis of care to ensure women have equal conditions to participate fully in decision-making in their societies.

As we determine the best way forward from this pandemic, let’s not waste this opportunity to do things differently. Now is the time to work together to ensure that women finally have a seat at the decision-making table, in the COVID-19 response and beyond.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Gender Team Director at UN Development Programme (UNDP)

Smoke from an airstrike rises over the city of Rafah in southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2021 (IPS)

The UN Security Council (UNSC), the most powerful political body at the United Nations, has largely remained silent or ineffective in resolving one of the longstanding military conflicts in the Middle East involving Israelis and Palestinians.

But, at the same time, several attempts to condemn Israel for its excesses have been thwarted by successive US administrations, which have exercised the veto power in the Security Council to protect a client state whose survival has depended largely on billions of dollars in US economic and military aid, state-of-the-art weapons systems and outright military grants doled out gratis.

Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS the US has vetoed no less than 45 resolutions critical of Israel, “thereby rendering the Security Council effectively impotent”.

Asked if any other UN member state has been protected by so many vetoes, he said: “Not even close”.

In January 2017, he pointed out, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed a resolution opposing United Nations involvement on the question of Israel and Palestine, insisting all matters should be resolved only through direct talks between the Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers, a position which thus far appears to being upheld by the administration of President Joe Biden.

Still, said Dr Zunes, it is unlikely the Biden administration will allow any resolution to pass that is critical of Israeli attacks in East Jerusalem or Gaza, even if balanced by criticism of Palestinian actions, since in the view of Washington, every military action by Israel is by definition “self-defense.”

Early this week, a State Department spokesperson defended the Israeli air strikes in a crowded urban area in the Gaza Strip on the grounds that every state has a right to self-defense.

However, when pressed, he was unwilling to acknowledge–even theoretically–that Palestinians also have a right to self-defense, said Dr Zunes, a columnist and senior analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus.

Credit: The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

As US Presidents go, Biden was no exception when he told reporters early this week that his expectation was that tensions would be “closing down sooner rather than later” but pointed out that “Israel has a right to defend itself, when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.”

But he ignored the lethal Israeli airstrikes with US-supplied fighter planes that have so far killed 67 Palestinians, including women and children, while turning houses and buildings into rubble, including a 12-storeyed office building.

In the US, the Israeli lobby has remained so powerful that few Americans politicians dare challenge the Jewish state or its violations of Security Council resolutions.

Pat Buchanan, a senior advisor to three US Presidents and twice candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, once infamously described the United States Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory” -– apparently because of its unrelentingly blind support for Israel.

Meanwhile, according to Cable News Network (CNN), riots and violent clashes between Arab and Jewish citizens have swept through several Israeli cities after days of deadly airstrikes and rocket attacks.

“Militants in Gaza have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel since the latest round of violence began Monday afternoon, and Israel has responded with devastating airstrikes in Gaza.”

At the same time, residents have reacted with fury, and there have been reports of attacks and raids at places of worship, said CNN.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been left to fester and rot for a generation.

In the past, he said, the United States routinely used its veto to provide political cover for Israel, making the UN Security Council irrelevant.

“The new Biden administration should make it clear that the US will no longer provide diplomatic excuses for Israel’s violations of international law, its collective punishment of civilian populations or its apartheid-like policies,” he said.

“Otherwise, the UN Security Council will be left on the sidelines watching as yet another senseless war kills both Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” declared Dr Adams, a former member of the international anti-apartheid movement and of the African National Congress in South Africa.

Zunes said since the United Nations and virtually the entire international community recognizes East Jerusalem as territory under foreign belligerent occupation, responding to the escalating violence is very much within the purview of the Security Council.

Since 1993, however, the United States has blocked—either by a veto threat or an outright veto—every UN Security Council resolution which has included criticisms of Israeli actions in Jerusalem in its operational clause.

It was under the Clinton administration when the United States began to informally recognize occupied East Jerusalem as part of Israel and blocking UN Security Council resolutions that confirmed greater East Jerusalem as occupied territory.

https://fpif.org/us_policy_toward_jerusalem_clintons_shift_to_the_right/

Meanwhile, an “Atrocity Alert” issued by the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protec, said Israel has controlled East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, but Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.

Jahaan Pittalwala, Research Analyst at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, said that, “forced evictions of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem are rooted in the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. The illegal transfer of Israeli settlers into occupied territory may amount to a war crime.”

With tensions already high in Jerusalem, last Friday, 7 May, Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as tens of thousands of worshippers finished their prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israeli authorities fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at Palestinian protesters who were throwing rocks.

The situation escalated further when Israeli forces carried out another raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,000 Palestinians were wounded between 7-10 May. At least 17 Israeli police were also injured.

On 11 May two UN Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement asserting that, “the recent scenes of Israeli police and security forces attacking large crowds of Palestinian residents and worshipers is only intensifying a deeply inflammatory atmosphere in the City. A militarized response to civilian protests against discriminatory practices only deepens social divisions.”

Thalif Deen is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Published by Amazon, the book is mostly a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes– from the sublime to the hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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People holding a vigil in Yangon, Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Zinko Hein

By Yanghee Lee
SEOUL, May 13 2021 (IPS)

In one particularly bloody day in March, Myanmar’s security forces shot and killed at least ten children, some as young as 6, in violent crackdowns against peaceful protests. Since the military seized control over the country three months ago, more than 50 children have been killed, countless others injured, and more than 900 children and young people arbitrarily detained across the country.

Security forces have also occupied more than 60 schools and university campuses, exacerbating the education crisis for almost 12 million children. This week, as we mark 100 days since Myanmar’s military seized control of the country, the chaos and devastation show no signs of slowing.

The Myanmar military’s blatant disregard for children’s lives is nothing new. Known as the Tatmadaw, they forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya civilians into Bangladesh, the majority of them children, in 2016-2017. I had called this “the hallmarks of genocide”.

As the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar and a founding member of a new Special Advisory Council on Myanmar, I have seen first-hand the devastating consequences of the Tatmadaw’s brutal tactics on children’s lives

The UN secretary-general has documented the Tatmadaw’s grave violations against children across the country year after year, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, and attacks on schools and hospitals. Currently, many schools and hospitals have been seized by the Tatmadaw. And at least three high schools were bombed last month, according to groups in Karen state.

As the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar and a founding member of a new Special Advisory Council on Myanmar, I have seen first-hand the devastating consequences of the Tatmadaw’s brutal tactics on children’s lives.

I have seen children who survived being thrown into fire by the Tatmadaw. It sent chills down my spine when a mother told me she had to leave behind her baby who had been thrown into a river, because she had to see to the safety of her other children in their exodus into Bangladesh. I heard many more similar testimonies.

Since 2003, the secretary-general has included the Tatmadaw for recruitment and use of children in his ‘list of shame’—an annex to his annual report on children and armed conflict where he names those responsible for grave violations against children. Listing is an important accountability tool since it names the perpetrators, draws the UN Security Council’s attention, and opens the door to engagement with the UN to end abuses. 

But in June 2020, Secretary-General António Guterres removed the Tatmadaw from his list for recruitment and use of children, even though in the same report, the UN had documented 205 cases where the Tatmadaw had recruited or used children in its ranks in the preceding year.

Having reported on human rights concerns in Myanmar for many years, I can say with certainly that despite Myanmar’s pledges to stop recruiting and using children in conflict, the Tatmadaw never ceased the practice. It was also a known fact that in order to leave the Tatmadaw, a regular soldier had to recruit two children to replace him, as term limits for service were vague.

Yanghee Lee

At the time, the secretary-general said he delisted the Tatmadaw due to “continued significant decrease” in recruitment and ongoing efforts to prevent new recruitments and release any remaining children in its ranks. He also said that the delisting was conditional and that failure to end recruitment and use would result in relisting. Prematurely removing parties like the Tatmadaw from the list—and this was not an isolated case—threatens the credibility of the list, a critical mechanism for protecting children and holding their abusers accountable. 

Being removed from the list seems to have emboldened the Tatmadaw to commit even more violations. In the first half of 2020, the Tatmadaw used 301 boys in support functions such as military camp maintenance and digging trenches. And in October 2020, two boys were killed after a Tatmadaw unit allegedly used them as human shields, in an incident that the UN publicly condemned. 

As protests across Myanmar continue, armed conflict is escalating between the military and ethnic armed groups. Children will face even greater risk, so the Security Council must urgently act to stop the military in its tracks. Instead, the Council seems hard pressed to reach consensus due to China and Russia’s opposition to strong measures such as an arms embargo. 

The 2020 delisting of the Tatmadaw was inexplicable and unjustifiable given the military’s conduct. Now Secretary-General Guterres has an opportunity to set the record straight. In a few weeks, he will release his 2021 report and list of perpetrators.

He should return the Tatmadaw to the list for its recruitment and use of children. In light of the military’s total disregard for children’s rights, this is a concrete action he must take to hold the Tatmadaw accountable for its crimes against children. 

Yanghee Lee is Professor in the department of Child Psychology and Education at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. She is former chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and former UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

Wallhouse, Dominica, 2017, a few days after Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck the island. At the Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week the Dominican Republic called for a consolidated regional vision in the face of climate change that would bring a strong regional position to COP26. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2021 (IPS)

The Dominican Republic opened the 2021 virtual Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week with a pledge to increase the country’s climate ambition by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 27 percent and maintaining progress towards climate neutrality according to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“For us, climate action is not just about mitigation. We need to prepare for what is coming. We especially welcome this Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week. Let’s consolidate a regional vision in the face of climate change and bring a strong regional position to COP26,” said Dominican Republic’s Environment and Natural Resources Minister Orlando Jorge Mera.

Jorge’s emissions announcement and call to action come as the United Nations is urging countries to put climate action and sustainable development at the center of COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts.

Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Patricia Espinosa said the May 11 to 14 Climate Week is an opportunity to face the sobering reality that current ambition and action levels are insufficient to tackle the climate crisis.

“Despite all the evidence, the numbers, statistics, human misery, nations have not yet moved the Paris Agreement from adoption to implementation, nor have they fulfilled commitments under it,” she told the opening ceremony.

This year’s Latin America and the Caribbean Climate week is taking place six months ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. The organisers are hoping that the regional talks end with a commitment to put accelerated climate action at the heart of COVID-19 recovery efforts.

The event’s backdrop is a grim one. It includes the findings of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Adaptation Gap Report released earlier this year, which concluded that the world is lagging far behind in adaptation to climate change, finance and implementation.

As countries continue to deal with the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Meteorological Organisation recently published its State of the Global Climate Report, which found that concentrations of the major greenhouse gases increased, despite a temporary reduction in emissions in 2020, due to COVID-19 containment measures.

The report also noted that 2020 was one of three warmest years on record.

It is against these reports that the UNFCC says this week’s talks are taking place at a time of ‘great urgency.’ 2021 is regarded as a historic year for climate action and the Caribbean, with its small island states, warming ocean temperatures and increasingly intense storms, is on the frontlines of the climate emergency.

“This is the year we either lose sight of the Paris targets, or it is the year we start implementing the Paris Agreement. It is our opportunity to increase global climate ambition in COVID-19 recovery and kick-start a decade of action,” a UNFCC statement said.

The regional climate week talks are divided into three thematic themes; national actions and economy-wide approaches, integrated approaches for climate-resilient development and seizing transformation opportunities.

Organisers are hoping to amplify the Latin American and Caribbean youth voice on climate action and convened a special event focused on helping young people to take a leading role in climate advocacy.

Madrelle, Loubiere, Dominica 2017, a few days after Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck the island. The Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week is exploring challenges and ambitious solutions to protect lives and livelihoods from climate change impacts. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

Youth climate activist and Caribbean Youth Environment Network Special Envoy Jevanic Henry of Saint Lucia addressed that panel. He told IPS that as climate change poses a significant threat to lives and livelihoods, platforms like climate week are critical for youth contribution to solutions.

“I always emphasise on the need for youth led-entities particularly in our Small Island Developing States to use their collective strength, building partnerships across the region, to facilitate great knowledge exchange and resource sharing which can contribute towards scaling up youth capacity building initiatives,” he told IPS.

“Going forward, I believe there is still a need for an increase in dedicated resource facilities both at the national and sub-regional level which are easily accessible for grassroots youth-led entities, that they can use in strengthening the capacity of young people from all walks of life, in line with the Sustainable Development Agenda of ‘Leaving no-one behind.’”

Henry, a youth award winner for his work in climate change and sustainable development, said he is pleased with the increasing inclusion of youth in climate solutions.

“I have seen the steady growth of youth involvement in climate action at the national and regional level. It is due to such increased youth action I can say with Saint Lucia’s recent submission of its updated NDCs, not only as young people we were engaged in the revision process, but also in this submission the Children/Youth component of the NDC has been strengthened,” he told IPS.

Like the UN officials at this week’s summit, Henry said there is room for improvement, particularly in holding governments accountable to climate commitments between 2021-2030.

“Until such time that the climate crisis is a staple in the minds and discussions of all young people like with the COVID19 pandemic, there will still be a need for improving our national and regional youth climate movement,” he said.

The UNFCC said this regional meeting is an opportunity for ‘grassroots exchange’ among youth, government, civil society and the business community, to contribute to COP26.

The message is that the time for a surge in action is now.

“You cannot measure climate change by numbers, statistics and economics alone. Its true impact is measured in human misery, loss and death. Nor can numbers capture the growing sense of fear and anxiety from people throughout the world who know that climate change is not some future challenge, but a problem that their leaders are simply not working hard enough to address today,” said Espinosa.

The organisers will convene two more regional climate talks ahead of COP26.

Asia-Pacific Climate Week is scheduled for Jul. 6 to 9, while Africa Climate Week will take place from Jul. 19 to 22.

 

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Older adults are amongst the first Peruvians to receive COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination site in Lima, Peru. “The World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Access Fund, or Covax, amounts to a clearinghouse for the West’s leftovers,” says the writer. Credit: UNICEF/Jose Vilca

By Valentina Lares
MADRID, May 13 2021 (IPS)

While Western countries were busy with their own vaccination campaigns, Russia has filled the leadership vacuum in developing countries.

Amid the West’s scramble for vaccines, a trickle of news flies under the radar. Argentina becomes the first country in South America to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The first shipment of Sputnik V is promised to Peru by May.

Some 11,000 Sputnik V doses reach North Macedonia, while Tunisia begins administering 30,000 doses, and 1.7 million more are promised to Bolivia by May. The African Union confirms it has received an offer of 300 million doses from Russia, which has already signed agreements to produce tens of millions of doses in China, Brazil, Iran and Serbia.

While we weren’t looking, Russia’s Sputnik V became the cornerstone of pandemic response for the developing world.

The race for influence

The vaccine offers a unique chance to launder Russia’s reputation. But the Sputnik V jab is about more than image. It’s a calculated campaign to increase the Kremlin’s power and influence through a global scientific, diplomatic, and media influence operation.

Russian capabilities align elegantly with the world’s pandemic needs. As developing countries tried and failed to secure enough vaccine supplies through Western mechanisms, headlines worldwide hail Russia as the partner that really comes through when it counts.

As developing countries tried and failed to secure enough vaccine supplies through Western mechanisms, headlines worldwide hail Russia as the partner that really comes through when it counts.

Sputnik V is the image of Russia the Kremlin wants to project. Far from the authoritarian, bellicose, annexationist Moscow that poisons its domestic political opponents and interferes in its rivals’ elections, Sputnik V casts Russia in the role of scientific superpower and pandemic saviour.

Flexing the media-muscle

Russia’s official mouthpieces — Russia Today, Sputnik Radio, and the TASS news agency — minutely cover each new country, from Laos to Panama, that approves Sputnik V for use, while the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Kremlin agency that bankrolled Sputnik V’s development, trumpets Russia’s achievement not just in finding a vaccine first, but also in making it widely available.

Valentina Lares

Sputnik V’s Twitter feed (because of course Sputnik V has its own Twitter feed) pumps out messages once or twice an hour — ‘A planeload of vaccines lands in Armenia!’ — or retweets good news from partner countries, such as this one, from the Mexican Health Ministry, which claims that Sputnik V is the only vaccine with a 0 per cent chance of producing serious adverse side effects.

What Russia can no longer achieve with its declining military strength, Flemming Splidsboel Hansen at the Danish Institute for International Studies writes, it now seeks through cognitive and digital means.

And Russia’s storied bot armies are on the march on the vaccine’s behalf. In December 2020, an investigation in The Daily Beast found that a Russian state-linked content farm known as Caliwax was behind Why Africa should focus on Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, a viral WhatsApp chain that spread far and wide through Ghana and Nigeria.

Meanwhile, sources that the State Department’s Global Engagement Centre describes as ‘guided’ by Russian state intelligence have been peddling between two and three pieces a day hyping the arrival of Sputnik V in locations around the world.
What Russia can no longer achieve with its declining military strength, Flemming Splidsboel Hansen at the Danish Institute for International Studies writes, it now seeks through cognitive and digital means.

Supporting allies

First in line for the Russian jab have been Moscow’s long-time allies, typically led by autocrats like Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. ‘The vaccines underline the anti-Western bloc’s scientific prowess,’ says Félix Arellano, a professor of international relations at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas.

‘Ideology demands it be portrayed as greater than the West’s. Russia’s posture, in offering up highly effective vaccines at a low price for countries like Venezuela, is media-driven. It’s how Russia and its allies seek to show that authoritarian governments can also grow in the scientific realm, that it’s possible to grow without democracy.’

Argentina, under a proto-socialist government, was the first to send a team to Moscow to translate Sputnik V’s technical documentation to Spanish and set up its own production facilities.

Other countries soon followed suit: Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, and even U.S. allies like Peru, Chile, and Colombia. These last three were the ultimate feather in the Kremlin’s cap, the final seal of approval on an operation that is succeeding largely thanks to the West’s navel-gazing inaction.

‘At this point the discussion, at least in Peru, grants the need to negotiate to secure whatever vaccine is on offer,’ explains Oscar Vidarte, a professor of international relations at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú in Lima.

Western failures are Russia’s success

For Colombia, Washington’s most reliable ally in South America, buying into Sputnik V serves two purposes: immunising a vulnerable population and rebuilding bilateral links with Moscow, which had been icy since Colombia expelled two Russian diplomats accused of spying in Colombian oil and mining regions last December.

‘We’re [Washington’s] key ally in the region,’ says Mauricio Jaramillo, who teaches international relations at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, ‘and the U.S. is not trying to leverage vaccines to project its power or earn prestige.’

Russia makes sure to portray vaccine supply deals not as charity, but as partnerships among equals. Giving the leaders of poor countries the chance to say ‘I’m doing something about this’ is almost as big a prize as the shots themselves, he says.

The West hasn’t so much lost this fight as forfeited it. The World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Access Fund, or Covax, amounts to a clearinghouse for the West’s leftovers.

The Biden administration has pledged some $4 billion to Covax, but the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledges that ‘when there are no vaccines to buy, money is irrelevant.’

Arellano has pointed out that it’s not just access to ample supply that’s tilting the field in Moscow’s favour: It’s how the Russians approach supply agreements. Russia makes sure to portray vaccine supply deals not as charity, but as partnerships among equals.

Giving the leaders of poor countries the chance to say ‘I’m doing something about this’ is almost as big a prize as the shots themselves, he says.

Coming through when it really counts

Sputnik V’s successes keep mounting. The European Union’s shambolic vaccine roll-out has brought even some member countries like Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, and the Czech Republic knocking on Moscow’s door. Each has had to negotiate unilaterally for its share.

Italy and Spain are now considering doing the same, and the European Medicines Agency has had no choice but to formally consider certifying the Russian vaccine, softening its line in the wake of Crimea and Navalny.

To be sure, liberal democracy need not fear for its life from the Russian vaccine. But the West has left a huge leadership vacuum at a moment of acute crisis that Russia is determined to exploit.

Western democracies, and particularly the United States, have lost too many opportunities to the pandemic — not least among them the chance to back their allies, firm up their influence and position themselves as the go-to model for how to manage a crisis that, many scientists fear, could be repeated sooner than many realise.

Where will the world turn then?

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

This article was originally published in the community blog Persuasion.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is a journalist and managing editor of Armando.info, an investigative journalism site.

Credit: UNICEF

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, May 12 2021 (IPS)

The month of May marks mental health awareness month or mental health awareness week in several countries around the world. Many people will be reading posts and blogs about the importance of getting more sunshine and exercise to avoid the blues, about ways to deal with the stress of the pandemic, about dealing with everyday challenges that disrupt our striving for happiness.

But for children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises who are living through the extreme stress and adversity of armed conflicts, forced displacement, attacks on schools and climate-induced disasters, the need for mental health and psychosocial support services extends far beyond wellness remedies. It requires a sincere understanding of their suffering and a profound recognition of their resilience.

As we look to care for our own mental health, it is also crucial that we also take action to care for the mental health of the world’s most vulnerable: crisis-affected girls and boys. Their lives torn apart, their dispossession, their fears and soul-shattering experiences can either make or break them.

What has become clear to us at ECW, and the education sector as a whole, is the importance of continuing to invest in and further deepen mental health and psychosocial support – yes there’s a hashtag for that: #MHPSS – across ECW’s broad portfolio of investments.

Yasmine Sherif

Every day, ECW and our partners are investing in new ways to provide crisis-impacted children and youth with the safety, hope and opportunity of a quality education that is truly meaningful. For education to have a lasting impact, mental health must be part and parcel of education responses in crisis and displacement contexts. We aim at empowering these girls and boys to find meaning in their suffering, like the great psychoanalyst, Victor Frankl, wrote in his world best-seller “Man’s Search for a Meaning.” Because, at ECW we believe, that their suffering and pains can – with the right MHPSS approach – also be that tipping point for turning their education into a powerful tool for change and achievement.

Imagine girls like Janat Ara, a Rohingya adolescent girl who fled through the night and hid in the forests before finding at least some hope in the refugee camps of Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar. Janat, and other adolescents like her, are now back to learning but they need even more support before they can fully return to a place of mental and psycho-social safety, and from there be the young change-makers of their community, society and people.

The Sustainable Development Goals and The Agenda for Humanity set the stage for the humanitarian and development ecosystem to chart a new path forward to ensure that education in emergency and protracted crises programming creates safe, protective environments that promote the wellbeing and healthy development of all girls, boys and adolescents – via meaningful, relevant, quality, holistic education.

These commitments have led to ECW taking a strong stance: school-based and well thought through MHPSS is a required component in every ECW country investment. The logic behind this is that crisis-affected children and youth all have great potential and their experiences can enable them to not only fully learn, but to achieve and actually become their true potential if MHPSS is of the highest standard.

In the same vein, teachers will not be able to successfully support learners, if the well-being of both the students and the teachers are not tended to and supported at the most profound level of understanding what they have gone through and what they can achieve.

Credit: UNICEF

Accelerating support
To create high-impact public goods that will accelerate MHPSS support for girls, boys and adolescents like Janat Ara, ECW supports a number of key initiatives:

• Just this month, ECW announced new grant funding to support the Norwegian Refugee Council’s “Better Learning Programme (BLP).” The BLP is a best-practice, evidence-informed, school-based, diverse set of MHPSS interventions that is helping children and adolescents across the Middle East and North Africa to heal and cope with displacement, adversity and stress.
• ECW is also announcing a new grant to the Child Protection Area of Responsibility. Led by UNICEF, this focal area fosters localization and coordination to ensure marginalized children and adolescents have access to specialized, focused MHPSS supports in their schools and communities.
• Refugee children and youth have unique needs, and ECW works with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to ensure that girls and boys who have endured displacement and protracted crisis have access to mental health supports and services as part of their education. Together, we are changing the way refugee students are protected and served.
• ECW also works with the International Federation of the Red Cross’s Psychosocial Centre, as a co-chair for the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s MHPSS Reference Group. Throughout the unprecedented time of COVID-19 and associated school closures, ECW supported IASC and IFRC to provide rapid MHPSS guidance, trainings and tools to parents, caregivers and teachers across the globe.
• Teacher well-being has a significant impact on student well-being. ECW and INEE’s PSS/SEL Collaborative have joined forces to ensure that Teachers’ mental health and wellbeing is protected and promoted in emergency and crisis contexts.
• Lastly but certainly not least, ECW is rolling out a new unprecedented approach on MHPSS that draws on Victor Frankl’s Logotherapy by which mental health transforms suffering into meaning and hope for the future.

Meeting the needs of the whole-child and effectively delivery on the Global Goals – especially SDG4 – will require a sea change in partners’ collective way of working: education, child protection and health working collaboratively via joint programming and coordination through existing networks and channels. You can learn more about ECW’s work here in our MHPSS Technical Guidance Note.

Today, more than ever, crisis-affected girls and boys around the world need the mental health and psychosocial support they so desperately need and deserve. With that, “they are the ones we have been waiting for”, as Alice Walker once said. With that they can change the world.

 

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
 
To achieve SDG4 on quality inclusive education, we must prioritize mental health

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, May 12 2021 (IPS)

People affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, are often stigmatised. In countries like Nigeria, many of them end up as beggars due to the psycho- and socio-economic problems they face. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought fresh challenges for them and life is getting increasingly difficult. Sam Olukoya in Lagos takes a look at how people affected by leprosy in Nigeria are faring in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

SCRIPT

SONG:

NARRATION: In Nigeria, many people affected by leprosy survive as beggars. They usually sing songs like this as they solicit for assistance. One of them, Musa Gambo, says life has changed for the worse for them since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

GAMBO: We have been facing problems since the Corona pandemic started. The price of food has gone up, everything is expensive, yet we cannot do any job. The money people give us as alms now is much lower than what they used to give us in the past. Some people will give you nothing and just walk away because they are facing difficult times. Some people are even angry and irritated when you beg them for money because life is tough for them. They will ask why you are disturbing them for money as if you are not aware that there is corona.

SOUND OF BUCKETS

NARRATION: Musa Ibrahim arranges buckets which he uses to store water. Ibrahim who is affected by leprosy says as beggars they often face arrest.

IBRAHIM: The lockdown has been lifted and people can move about freely, but for us if we go out they will arrest us and they will not release us. They came even yesterday. It is difficult for us to go and beg for alms g because they will arrest us. Our crime is that we are begging, they said they don’t want beggars, for us that is the only way we can get money to sustain ourselves. If we cannot beg for money honestly it will be difficult to feed. They did not give us jobs yet they are stopping us from looking for money, that is not good.

NARRATION: Audu Garba says people like him who are affected by leprosy have to survive as beggars due to the discrimination they face.

GARBA: Because we have leprosy, people will not patronise us if we set up a business due to the stigma. Here in Lagos anyone with leprosy who set up a business is deceiving himself because the business will not succeed. If I have money my business idea will be breeding and selling livestocks. If I have the resources for this business I will cease to be a beggar.  But I don’t have the resources. I cannot farm, so if I don’t live as a beggar what else should I do? I cannot get loan from the bank, who will give me loan in the bank, when I don’t have a farm or a house that I can use as collateral to get a loan?

NARRATION: Garba says the pandemic has increased the stigma against people affected by leprosy as many Nigerians believe they are infected by the Corona virus.

GARBA: We have been facing discrimination in the past and it has continued. It is now double discrimination with corona, because now they see us as the people who actually have Corona. I swear. It saddens me when they say we have corona. Till now they go about with that impression that we have Corona. When some people even pity you and want to give you money, they will throw it at you from a distance. Yes, it is because of the stigma that we have Corona that is why they treat us this way. They discriminate against us because they don’t regard us as normal human beings.

NARRATION: Lagos based medical doctor, Kunle Ogunyemi, says once treated, people who had Hansen’s disease are not contagious and can live a fairly normal life. He said misconceptions about the disease make many people think they are still contagious.

OGUNYEMI: Ordinarily when they are fully cured, they are not infectious. Perception of the public or even some health care workers unfortunately does not accommodate them at all because knowledge about it, it is not a common disease at all and because not too many people know, the tendency is still to keep them at arms length.

SONG:

NARRATION: With songs like this, people affected by leprosy often appeal to society to respect the rights of vulnerable people like them. But Garba says so strong is the discrimination against them that he is not optimistic that they will get the COVID-19 vaccine which is supposed to be freely available to Nigerians.

GARBA: We are happy that there is vaccine, but it is not meant for us. If the populace are vaccinated we shall thank God, but for us, it is not a priority. If they look for us we shall take the vaccine since everyone ought to have it, but if they don’t look for us, we shall not force ourselves to get it, it will be difficult for us to get the vaccine. Take the newly introduced national identification card, I don’t have one, because they asked for money, I don’t have money. The situation with the vaccine will be similar, they will ask for money but we don’t have money.

A local cemetery working running on the ground collecting logs for funeral pyres, to perform the last rites for patients who died of Covid, on 29 April at the Ghazipur cremation ground in New Delhi. (Ghazipur Cremation Ground/File-Amit Sharma)

By Shubha Nagesh and Ifeanyi Nsofor
DEHRADUN, India/ABUJA, May 12 2021 (IPS)

The media is awash with the devastating news of deaths and sufferings due to COVID-19 coming out of India. What most media outlets overlook is the way Indian communities are rallying to save lives, reduce sufferings and stop the current wave of the pandemic.

As of May 11, 2021, India’s COVID-19 case total is about 23 million – with above 19 million recoveries, while total deaths are 250,025, according to the health ministry. All levels of hospitals and health facilities are full, after optimising their beds and staff, oxygen is almost not available, medicines are being bought in the black market and crematoriums have been inundated, forcing them to use nearby open spaces and parking lots to deal with the surge. Despite being the world’s largest producer of vaccines, India does not have enough for its own people.

Communities have to be acknowledged as the true heroes in this second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in India. Without support however, even they cannot flatten the COVID-19 curve

Shubha lives in Dehradun, in North India- with a population of one million, Dehradun is no different from anywhere else in India, but for the lack of much media attention. The Kumbh Mela, (a major pilgrimage and festival in Hinduism) did bring some focus to the state of Uttarakhand as a super-spreader event in the last month.

The past week has been consumed with calls all day around beds, medicines, oxygen and plasma. It all got really intense when someone in her own family got really serious and her condition scared the family tremendously. That was when the reality actually hit home – the scarcity, the fear, and the unrelenting nature of the virus.

While institutional care has taken priority in the conversation around COVID, from what is evident on the ground, it is the people who are enabling each other to seek appropriate care. Communities are coming together to maximise the resources they have, to promote preventive care and support post-hospital care. Mahatma Gandhi captured this sense of community aptly;

“a nation’s culture resides in the heart and in the soul of the people”.

This quote by Gandhi describes an important truth – one that still inspires us to believe the tremendous strength and courage that the people of India show in coming to the aid of sick people.

The current situation in India is clearly demonstrating the inequity in access to care, utilisation of care and showcases how institutions are catering to the privileged while the less-privileged suffer. As India attempts to rebuild, one good starting point is strengthening community supports and networks between the community and healthcare facilities.

Communities are the heart and soul of India. They have the potential to make or break the health of its people and impacts the determinants that drive health. It is important for us to understand its might and do all to meet the potential, now.

We give five examples of communities taking leadership to stem this second wave of COVID-19 in India:

First, religion unites. Religious communities have come forward to do their bit for patients and their families. The Sikh community in India and abroad has come forward to support families by distributing food, creating helplines, distributing oxygen, converting gurudwara premises into makeshift health facilities, and so much more.

Second, the power of celebrity. In India’s Covid-19 response, while most of the celebrities chose to stay quiet, one celebrity has been helping all along, including transportation for the migrant workers to return home, arrangement for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders, etc- Sonu Sood has been phenomenal in his relief efforts, and as he admits, “This was sheer teamwork and the will to help our fellow countrymen”.

Third, the Indian community knows no boundaries. Within the country and the Indian diaspora communities, the people are providing support. Nothing is too small to give. It all eventually adds up. For instance, the India COVID SOS is less than two weeks old.

However, it now has more than 500 members donating funds, equipment and expertise to stem the outbreak. In Dehradun, the number of people who have connected to share information about beds, oxygen, medicines and tests is unbelievable. It will take all of us, each of us, to get through this difficult time.

Fourth, heroic efforts of good samaritans, men, women and many others have ensured food for families through the pandemic. Pushkar Sinha of South Delhi collected details of all the elderly living in his building, collaborated with a nearby hospital and registered them for getting Covid-19 vaccination through the government’s Co-WIN app.

When some of the people said they were unable to get to the hospital, he arranged cars to ferry them. Deshna Krupa and her mom Ahalya from Chennai have been cooking free meals for Covid-19 patients who are quarantined at home.

Two sisters from Patna, Bihar, Anupama Singh and Neelima Singh along with their mother, Kundan Devi prepare and deliver food to homes.

Within days, groups all over India emerged to help support those in need.

Finally, the power of youths. Young people becoming volunteers to create resources for those in need of services. When Arushi Chaddha asked for help on Instagram, Suhail Shetty came forward to arrange for an oxygen concentrator. Nupur and Rahul Agarwal started “Mission Oxygen” to track oxygen concentrators and supplies, when they found a shortage of 3000.

With the help of social media, youth developed digital covid helplines to support affected families with testing, treatment, hospitalisation, oxygen support facilities, mental health, counselling and food services. Youth volunteers have created mobile apps to track bed situations in hospitals across the country.

India is really struggling with Covid-19 and needs global support. Importantly, communities have to be acknowledged as the true heroes in this second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in India. Without support however, even they cannot flatten the COVID-19 curve. The government must show responsibility to ensure that these community efforts are amplified.

The General Assembly held a “dialogue” on May 7, 2021, with the UN’s member countries and António Guterres, the only officially recognized candidate for UN secretary-general and an incumbent. Only two civil society groups were able to ask questions across the three-hour session. Credit: ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO

By Barbara Crossette
NEW YORK, May 12 2021 (IPS)

It was all over in one crucial week. Barring an unforeseen hitch, António Guterres is the clear winner of a second, five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations, beginning on Jan.1, 2022. This was not a surprise: he had no major competition and the process moved faster than expected.

A three-hour question-and-answer session with UN diplomats from around the world in the General Assembly on May 7 appeared to support a growing sense internationally that the Security Council may decide by late June or July, three months before the normal deadline for a candidacy to go to the General Assembly for final affirmation.

Guterres spoke mostly in generalities at the session, but he sometimes used statistics and technical points about his vision for the UN in the ensuing years.

The center of his campaign in 2016, on preventing conflicts, has not been borne out under his current leadership, some diplomats contend.

The Armenian ambassador, Mher Margaryan, asked Guterres, for example, how he would “strengthen” the UN’s response to early-warning signs of atrocity crimes occurring. (United States President Joe Biden recently recognized the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.) Guterres answered, in brief, that the problem was not missing early-warning signs but “the problem is in early action.”

In July, the rotating presidency of the Council will be held by France, which may announce the decision to back the 72-year-old Guterres, a diplomat from Latin America, told PassBlue. The European Union has been the strongest supporter of the incumbent secretary-general, as Guterres is from Portugal, so a fellow European. He was the only candidate proposed by a government, Portugal.

The Biden administration has not formally and publicly endorsed Guterres. In remarks to a Security Council debate on multilateralism, also on May 7, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke of a renewed American commitment to the UN Charter and international cooperation after the destructive Trump years.

“Nationalism is resurgent, repression is rising. Rivalries among countries are deepening — and attacks against the rules-based order are intensifying,” he said to his fellow Council members and the public. “Now, some question whether multilateral cooperation is still possible.”

“Multilateralism is still our best tool for tackling big global challenges, like the one that’s forcing us to gather on a screen today rather than today rather than around a table,” Blinken added, describing the Council’s virtually staged session because of the pandemic.

On May 4, the General Assembly president, Volkan Bozkir, explained in a news conference why he had ruled out candidates other than Guterres for the May 7 event. Seven people have submitted applications to him in the last few months, and civil society organizations were also calling for a wider slate. Bozkir, a Turk, passed all applications to the Council, he said at the news conference.

“It looks like the Security Council has a view that only candidates or applicants supported by a country will be considered by the Security Council,” he said to numerous questions on the process. None of the applicants has been recognized by Bozkir or any of the monthly rotating Council presidents, who both lead the procedure.

Further confusing reporters, Bozkir added, “And again, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a person who is supported by a country will get the guarantee of becoming a candidate.”

Armenia’s ambassador to the UN asked how the organization could better react to early-warning signs of atrocities, May 7, 2021.

None of the Council’s permanent members with veto power — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has so far publicly questioned a second term for Guterres. And Guterres has certainly not ruffled those countries’ feathers too much, to the consternation of certain civil society advocates, like Human Rights Watch.

In 2001, the US vetoed a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt and persuaded other Council members to back Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, who then served two terms unopposed.

How and why did Guterres win the approval of the Security Council members so easily? With Western support locked in, he spoke last week by phone with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, without revealing whether the subject of the secretary-generalship came up. China has welcomed his bid for a second term.

Guterres is planning a trip to Moscow from May 12 to 13. The speech by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, at the Security Council session on May 7 was the most bitter during the discussion of multilateralism. His remarks were directed at Western democracies.

Guterres, who was UN high commissioner for refugees for a decade, has been what could be described as an acceptable head of the UN for many of its 193 member governments.

He is, however, not a popular or well-known figure outside the UN, nor is he much liked among many employees of the organization, according to civil society groups, advocates and some UN staff themselves.

He is criticized for being a secretive minimalist who has not dealt well with internal crises, such as the continuing, documented sexual abuse in and around UN peacekeeping and the scant help available for survivors of rape and other assaults.

Women are often the most vulnerable people not only where UN peacekeeping operations are based or in active conflict zones but also in refugee camps or ad hoc congregations of displaced people. Men and children also suffer.

When babies are born of rape, they often grow up in extreme poverty, hungry and stigmatized for life, and the UN defers the resolution of these hardships to the national governments of the peacekeepers instead of getting involved directly.

Guterres said on May 7 in the General Assembly in response to critiques and questions from civil society participants (only two were given the opportunity to be heard) that the UN was, for example, meeting resistance from governments over problems like conducting paternity tests of peacekeepers when complaints were lodged.

In his introductory remarks to diplomats taking part in the live session, in which he appeared flustered at times, he acknowledged that much of civil society had not been offered seats “at the world’s main diplomatic table.” He added that cities, the corporate world and young people are “essential voices that must he heard.”

He also said, agreeing with some envoys who raised the issue at the dialogue, that the UN system needed better coordination of all its parts — agencies, programs and semiautonomous bodies like the World Health Organization. Yet that bureaucratic challenge has never been solved by any secretary-general, despite attempts at reform.

The most insistent opposition to the renewal of Guterres’s appointment came from advocates for the election of a woman and diverse groups that generally backed a more transparent process for selecting the chief official of the UN, such as the 1 for 7 Billion campaign.

The UN, at 76 years old, has never been led by a woman. The demands of advocates included adding women to the list of candidates and not requiring applicants to have official endorsement of governments. But both requests have been overlooked by Bozkir and the monthly Security Council presidents.

The important involvement of advocates for a woman as secretary-general is a sign of changing times. More women are emerging in top political positions in many countries, corporations and other high-profile organizations.

Some, like Angela Merkel, the retiring German chancellor, made it clear that she did not want the job of UN secretary-general, despite persistent questions about her interests. Other women elected as prime ministers or presidents of their countries think they would be more useful in geopolitics as national leaders.

And some of the women who could have challenged Guterres this year saw the light early on: as a white, male incumbent who knew how to navigate around the self-interests of the permanent Council members, he was a shoo-in.

In 2016, under a more open campaign process, there was no incumbent. Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean who had completed two terms, was also a widely criticized secretary-general for an administration that was often cloaked in secrecy and shielded by fellow South Korean aides.

Well-qualified women competed to be elected his successor in 2016, a position that ultimately went to Guterres, a former prime minister.

Among the women competing in 2016 were Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian and former director-general of Unesco; Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and administrator of the UN Development Program; Kristalina Georgieva, also Bulgarian, a former European Commissioner for International Cooperation and now managing director of the International Monetary Fund; and Susana Malcorra, who had been Ban’s chief of staff before becoming Argentina’s foreign minister when she ran.

This year, there were no equally qualified women interested in seeking the job against considerable odds; the few campaigns that surfaced — including “protest candidates” against UN “corruption” — quickly became sideshows.

Even one potentially serious candidate who emerged recently, Rosalía Arteaga, a short-lived president of Ecuador, said she had the support of President Lenín Moreno but then asked him to drop it, as she preferred to be a “civil society” candidate, she told PassBlue in an email. (A new Ecuadorean president, Guillermo Lasso, is to be inaugurated this month.)

Many feminist organizations, realizing the futility of launching campaigns for candidates this year, opted to wait it out until the 2027 term. With the world in crisis on many fronts and a seasoned politician in charge at the UN, it was believed that being a woman was not enough this year. Moreover, no woman wanted to compete, keenly aware of the negative optics of losing.

A list of six Latin American women — some former heads of state, like Michelle Bachelet of Chile (now the UN high commissioner for human rights) — circulated this spring among high-level political circles in the region to test who might be the most successful candidate to run for secretary-general next time.

But Eastern Europe, which tried to win the current term because it was that region’s unofficial turn to claim the job, is ready to contest Latin America on that front.

Last month, Maritza Chan, a diplomat from Costa Rica, pointed out in a meeting at the UN about the overall secretary-general selection process that her country “strongly believes that the time has come to select a female secretary-general. . . . We believe that should qualifications among candidates be equal, we should choose a woman.”

By doing this, she added, “we uphold the principle of equality and empower the women of today and tomorrow.”

Lyric Thompson is the senior director of policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women, which grades the work of Guterres with annual report card on gender issues. He got a B for 2020, up from a C- in 2017 and a B- in both 2018 and 2019.

Thompson, who was a member of the Biden administration’s delegation to the UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women this year, pointed to tough speeches by Guterres warning of pushbacks on women’s rights and his frequent condemnations of worsening violence against women and girls. He also attempted, with limited success, to persuade governments to donate more financially to UN initiatives on women.

Indeed, Guterres calls entrenched patriarchy “stupid,” and told an audience in New York City early in 2020: “Just as slavery and colonialism were a stain on previous centuries, women’s inequality should shame us all in the twenty-first.”

In an interview with PassBlue early this year, Thompson said that feminists were focusing on the next election for a secretary-general.

“I think we will see an unprecedented drive for a female SG after his second term,” she said, adding that “this is a long way off . . . which means the UN will not have had a woman leader across its 81-year-history.”

The post The UN’s Guterres, an Incumbent With Strong Backing by Europe, Is Bound to Win Another Term appeared first on PassBlue.

Barbara Crossette is United Nations correspondent for The Nation, a senior fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the City University of New York, contributing editor at PassBlue.com, and a freelance writer on foreign policy and international affairs. Most recently she was a co-author with George Perkovich of a section on India in the 2009 book Powers and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World.

 

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Excerpt:

Barbara Crossette, PassBlue