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Teenager Karen Semens, from the Federated States of Micronesia, says her main challenge growing up is being a girl. She says that her culture doesn’t afford girls the same rights and opportunities of boys. Photo supplied.

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

For 13-year-old Karen Semens, growing up on Pohnpei — one of the four main island states in the Federated States of Micronesia, which comprises of more than 600 islands in the western Pacific Ocean — the main challenge is being a girl.

“In our culture, girls don’t have the same rights and opportunities nor do they get credit and recognition for their achievements as boys do. This prevents us from speaking our minds. For example in family meetings, only men make the decisions. I would like all girls to be treated as equals and have a say in decision making,” the 8th grade pupil from the Ohmine Public Elementary school in Pohnpei, tells IPS.

Equal rights for the girl child, climate change, access to healthcare and education are some of the issues Pacific island children are raising at the 84th extraordinary outreach session of the Committee on the 1989 United Nations (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) being held in Samoa’s capital, Apia, from Mar. 2 to 6.

Over 100 children from Pacific Island nations are having the opportunity to highlight the issues impacting them and their hopes for the future to the Committee on CRC. In a historic first, a U.N. human rights treaty body is meeting outside the U.N. headquarters of New York or Geneva, offering more governments, civil society organisations, regional agencies, and national human rights and academic institutions a chance to directly interact with the CRC and learn about its work. Having the session in Samoa is also providing the Committee with new insights and understanding of local and regional issues of the Pacific.

On the Mwokilloa atoll, where 13-year-old Austin Ladore’s mother grew up and where he spends his summer holidays, rising sea levels and coastal erosion are threatening the very existence of this low lying island and its people.

“We want action on climate change so our islands are protected and we, the children, can have a sustainable future,” Austin, Semens’s classmate, tells IPS.

“We are at the frontline, facing the consequences of climate change,” Ladore says. 

Austin Ladore (13), who is in 8th grade at the Ohmine Public Elementary school in Pohnpei, one of the four main island states in The Federated States of Micronesia, says children on his island are on the frontline of climate change. Photo supplied.

These children would also like access to proper healthcare, drinking water, good quality education, and affordable nutritious food.

“There aren’t enough qualified doctors and our hospitals aren’t equipped to treat some of the chronic diseases. Many of us eat unhealthy instant noodles as fruits and vegetables are very expensive. Every day, it is getting hotter. It makes us dehydrated, but there is scarcity of drinking water. Most of the schools on the islands have outdated books. We want a solution to all these problems,” Semens tells IPS.

The Committee consists of 18 Independent experts that monitor implementation of the CRC, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, by its 196 States parties. During this session, the Committee will review the Federated States of Micronesia, the Cook Islands and Tuvalu on how their countries are protecting, promoting and can further improve the rights of children under the CRC. It will also prepare Lists of Issues on the Republic of Kiribati.

Acting chief justice Vui Clarence Nelson of Samoa, who is the vice-chair of the CRC and the only Pacific Islander to ever sit on any of the U.N. treaty bodies tells IPS: “The Pacific is a strategic choice by the Committee as it is a region with big potential for improved treaty body effectiveness where: reporting rates and civil society engagement levels are generally low; treaty body engagement and implementation is impeded by geographical and resource constraints – in Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Cook Islands, it takes three days to travel by boat to the more remote outlying islands; and representation on the treaty bodies is extremely low, further reducing the likelihood of effective engagement and implementation.”

The Session is ‘extraordinary’ in nature because of being held in Samoa and is one week in length as opposed to three.

“By ‘bringing the treaty body system to the regions and rights holders in their backyard’ it is believed that the following impacts will be achieved: Increased ratification of human rights instruments; increased engagement of the States, national human rights institutions, and the civil society with the treaty body system in particular with the Committee on the Rights of the Child; and raising global awareness of regional issues – especially the effects of climate change in the Pacific. To this end a special part of the Session is being devoted to climate change and the right to a healthy environment,” Nelson tells IPS.

The principal intergovernmental organisation in the region, the Pacific Community’s (SPC – Sustainable Pacific Development) human rights division Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) has partnered with the U.N. to bring this extraordinary session to Samoa.

SPC RRRT director Miles Young tells IPS: “It is an excellent example of collaboration amongst many parties with a common interest in bringing the treaty body system closer to its stakeholders – in this case, the children, people and countries of the Pacific. This level of interaction with Pacific Islanders would not have occurred had the hearing been held in Geneva or New York.  The effect will be to make the treaty body system – and therefore human rights – more tangible to Pacific Islanders.”

Fourteen Pacific Island Countries (Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu) have ratified the CRC.

While progress has been made in implementing the CRC, especially in enacting child protection laws, reducing child poverty, child marriages and mortality rates for children under five years of age, many challenges persist.

Besides climate change, children are suffering from economic inequalities, food and water insecurity, poverty, epidemics and outbreaks of diseases, domestic violence, sexual abuse and neglect, absence of child protection laws and mechanisms, high levels of corporal punishment in the family and domestic setting, outdated child rights legislation in some of the jurisdictions, and in some States an inadequate child justice system.

“The event has raised the profile of the CRC in the Pacific and we can build on this to generate greater momentum for human rights. We, in the Pacific, are almost always the ‘forgotten’ region when it comes to global affairs.  This is an opportunity to raise a key issue for the region – climate change in the context of Pacific children and the region more generally,” Young says.

In June 2019 the annual meeting of chairpersons of the treaty bodies stated its support for conducting dialogues with States Parties at a regional level. The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has organised the Samoa session with assistance and advocacy of SPC RRRT. The governments of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden are sponsoring the session and the Government of Samoa is hosting the event.

“RRRT will be assessing the pros and cons of the sitting – this analysis will feed into the U.N.’s review of the treaty body system, which the U.N. is currently undertaking, and help inform decisions on how and where it holds future treaty body hearings,” Young adds.   

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the session on 2nd March, SPC’s deputy director general, Dr A Aumua said: “In the Pacific, there is a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. The meaningful participation of children is essential to the fulfilment of their rights, aspirations and full human potential. I’m confident that we can show the leadership needed to build a sustainable future for the children of this region.”

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Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations, Ambassador Mona Juul, is also president of the U.N.Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Courtesy: Monica Hellman/Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

Ambassador Mona Juul started her role as the Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in January 2019, and is also the president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

Prior to joining as the Permanent Representative, Juul had an extensive career where she played key roles in major foreign diplomacy efforts. Soon after starting her career in 1986, she was a part of the Cabinet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs team from 1992 to 1993 that worked on secret negotiations between Israel and Palestine Liberation Organisation that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords. 

With a Master’s degree in political science from University of Oslo, Juul went on to embrace numerous other roles including the Special Advisor, Ambassador and Middle East Coordinator in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In July 2019, just within a few months of joining as the Permanent Representative to the U.N., she also became the president of ECOSOC. 

Her role in Norway’s foreign relations, as well as in diplomacy efforts in the Middle East is one that is of inspiration to anyone who dreams of being in the field — more so for women. We caught up with Ambassador Juul on her journey: 

Inter Press Service (IPS): As the U.N. Permanent Representative for Norway, what is your key message for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD)?

Mona Juul (MJ): My message to women and men, girls and boys is to speak up in favor of women and girls, and protect those who defend their rights. 

IPS: As president of ECOSOC, you have expressed your concern about “a new generation of global inequalities – fuelled by climate change, technological change” – can you share how these inequalities affect women specifically? And how do we address that?

MJ: Norway fights for women’s rights and opportunities every day. In the U.N. and all over the world, we are continuously working to increase girl’s access to education, to decide over their own bodies and to have fundamental human rights. Norway is a consistent partner for women’s rights. We will keep our promise to work tirelessly to promote gender equality for all.

IPS: As the U.N. Permanent Representative as well as president of ECOSOC, what does this year’s IWD theme #EachforEqual mean to you?

MJ: We must place gender equality at the heart of our work. The rights of women and gender equality remains a reform priority and a cross-cutting issue for me as president of ECOSOC. This year, we celebrate 25 years of championing women’s rights since we adopted the Beijing Platform for Action. It is a vision of a more prosperous, peaceful and fair world, that is better for women and men, girls and boys. Women’s participation is a prerequisite and a key factor for economic growth.

IPS: What is your message to young women who would like to one day work in this field? 

MJ: Stand up against inequalities. Fight for what you believe in. Each one of us can make a difference. Today and every day, I am reminded of Nelson Mandela’s words: ‘The best weapon is to sit down and talk’. I hope that if we all followed that advice, we would each be equal.

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Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

For International Women’s Day, IPS United Nations is featuring female permanent representatives who to share about their work, inspiration and challenges in an otherwise male-dominated field. This is the first in the series.

The post Q&A: ‘Place Gender Equality at the Heart of our Work’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

As the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 threatens a global pandemic, major stock markets around the world have suffered their worst performance since the 2008 financial crush.

Growth disruption
The OECD has warned that the coronavirus outbreak could halve global economic growth this year to 1.5%, the slowest rate since 2009. It has cut its 2020 growth forecast for China to a 30-year low of 4.9%, down from 5.7% in November.

Anis Chowdhury

The IMF downgraded its growth forecast for China to 5.6% in 2020, its lowest since 1990. Economists, polled by Reuters during 7-13 February, expected China’s economic growth to slump to 4.5% in the first quarter of 2020, down from 6% in the previous quarter, the slowest since the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, China’s manufacturing sector tumbled in February, as many factories remained closed after the annual lunar new year break. The Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a widely used measure of factory activity, plunged to a record low in February, reflecting the sharp contraction.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) head expects the coronavirus epidemic to greatly slow the global economy, as China accounts for 19.1% of global GDP using purchasing power parity (PPP), or 17% at current exchange rates, 13% of global trade, and 28% of global manufacturing output in 2018.

Impact on developing economies
Developing countries, especially those dependent on commodity exports and global supply chains, are particularly vulnerable.

The impact is expected to be more severe for the 21 African countries the IMF sees as ‘resource-intensive’, where growth had already slowed to about 2.5%. Trade between Africa and China grew 2.2% in 2019 to US$208.7bn, compared with a 20% rise the year before.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Even Latin America counts China as its largest overall trade partner. The key downside risk is further deterioration of the commodity terms of trade. The most exposed economies are Chile, Peru and, to some extent, Brazil.

Asian developing countries linked to China through supply chains, raw material exports, investment and tourism are especially vulnerable, while other Asian giants, Japan and South Korea, have also been hit by the virus.

Global supply chain disruptions
The virtual shutdown of the ‘factory of the world’ has slowed the supply of products and parts from China, disrupting production the world over. Apple’s manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, is experiencing production delays, while a Lombardy electronics factory was forced to close by the Italian authorities due to an outbreak.

Some carmakers, including Nissan and Hyundai, have temporarily closed factories outside China due to parts supply shortages. European manufacturing could suffer considerably due to its extensive links with China through supply chains. Already, four of the world’s biggest carmakers are expected to shut down European production.

Meanwhile, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies are facing supply chain disruptions due to the coronavirus. Even the pharmaceutical industry is expected to face disruption.

For the Harvard Business Review, “the worst is yet to come”, expecting the Covid-19 impact on global supply chains to peak in mid-March, “forcing thousands of companies to throttle down or temporarily shut assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe”.

Commodity prices plunge
Prices for commodities, from natural rubber to coal, plunged in February as Chinese companies cancelled orders, dragging down prices.

The Wall Street Journal reports one of the worst routs in commodity prices in years due to the coronavirus outbreak as prices for some natural resources plunged to new lows.

With the outbreak spreading to more countries, the oil price has been dropping precipitously as global demand weakens further. US and Brent crude benchmark prices fell 16% and 14% respectively during the past week, to its lowest levels since July 2017.

Meanwhile, iron ore prices dropped to US$81.35 per tonne during the first week of February from around US$90 throughout January.

Perfect storm?
Years of spending cuts due to fiscal austerity policies have undermined public health provisioning, not only in developing countries, but also in developed economies.

Various countries are bracing for economic fall outs from the COVID-19 virus outbreak, but have very limited policy space after eschewing sustained fiscal recovery efforts following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Instead, monetary policies, including unconventional ones, with historically low interest rates and central bank balance sheets, are still being relied upon.

China’s central bank has already cut the country’s benchmark lending rate in February. The US Federal Reserve has recently further loosened monetary policy, with others quickly following or expected to follow. However, while rate cuts may temporarily boost financial market indicators, they are unlikely to be of much help.

Despite rejecting sustained fiscal efforts to revive economic growth in favour of austerity for a decade, debt levels continued to rise as revenue declined due to tax breaks. Scope for a ‘big boost’ fiscal package is also limited by public perceptions of the record global debt level—estimated at US$253tn, more than three times global GDP.

Although the economic consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak require a global response, multilateralism is in disarray. As if to underscore its growing irrelevance, the G20 missed an important opportunity to provide leadership at its 22-23 February finance ministers’ meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The post Coronavirus Exposes Global Economic Vulnerability appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Patrícia Campos Mello. Credit: Marcos Villas Boas

By Natalie Southwick and Renata Neder
NEW YORK, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello made her career reporting from conflict zones around the world — but lately, the greatest threats to her security are coming from closer to home.

In recent weeks, Campos Mello has faced a violent onslaught of crude threats and personal attacks, after a witness in a Congressional hearing suggested she had offered to trade sexual favors for information.

The unfounded allegations spread on WhatsApp and Twitter, fed by trolls and politicians sharing memes calling her a “prostitute,” and spilled over into the public conversation, with President Jair Bolsonaro repeating the claims in a February 18 interview.

“It’s an attempt to discredit the work of us female journalists,” says political journalist Juliana Dal Piva, who has also been harassed for reporting on the president and his family. “When the articles are critical of Bolsonaro, this is the attack. They imply that journalists are willing to trade sex for information.”

From denied opportunities to workplace harassment, attacks by troll armies, sexual violence and even femicide, the job description for female journalists in Latin America has some horrifying drawbacks.

Most governments and workplaces still lack proper mechanisms to respond to these threats, leaving female reporters to come up with survival tactics on their own.

For most male journalists, danger lies in the field — but for women, the office can pose a threat, too. In 2017, Bolivian television journalist Yadira Peláez was fired from a state TV station after reporting her boss for sexual harassment — then the station sued her for “economic damage.”

A 2017 survey of almost 400 women journalists in 50 countries found that 38 percent of incidents of gender-based violence against women journalists came from a boss or supervisor.

The lurid attacks on women like Campos Mello play on an old sexist trope: the glamorous journalist who, in the process of reporting a big scoop, falls in love — or at least into bed — with her source.

The reality is closer to the opposite. In a 2017 survey of nearly 500 female journalists in Brazil, 10 percent said they had received offers of exclusive information or materials in exchange for sex.

Although sources are more likely to try to negotiate a date in exchange for an interview, female journalists are the ones who face professional consequences for any rumor of impropriety.

They are the ones whose social media profiles are scoured, private information shared, personal photos downloaded and turned into memes, who open their email to a deluge of violent threats — stalking, rape, murder, photos of dismembered bodies — and who must keep doing their job.

To attack a male journalist’s credibility, go after his work or objectivity. To attack a female journalist’s credibility, go after her body.

For women in the public eye, their physical appearance, personal relationships, professional histories and families all become fair game. Dal Piva says her greatest fear is that the campaigns against her might expose her family members to similar harassment.

The attacks are even harsher against women of color and queer women, like Brazil’s Maria Júlia Coutinho, or sports reporter Fernanda Gentil, who has talked openly about the homophobia she faced in 2016 when her relationship with another woman became public.

While threats against female reporters are a universal truth, they have frightening implications in Latin America, a region with some of the world’s highest violent death rates for women.

Since 1992, 96 women journalists have been killed in connection with their work. Eleven of those were in Latin America — all but two in either Mexico or Colombia.

Yet despite institutional barriers, threats and sexist smear campaigns, Latin America’s female reporters continue setting the standard, leading newsrooms, developing innovative projects and pushing the envelope on what journalism can — and should — do.

And they are fighting back. As the #MeToo movement has rippled through offices and newsrooms, its effects appear in coordinated efforts among female journalists to support and protect one another.

After Bolsonaro’s comments on Campos Mello, nearly 850 women journalists published an open letter protesting the “sordid and false attacks.”

In 2018, after a series of on-camera assaults targeted female soccer reporters, a group of Brazilian journalists launched the #DeixaElaTrabalhar (#LetHerWork) campaign, pressuring authorities to take action against sexual harassment on and off the field.

A year earlier, a group in Mexico launched an NGO, Versus, to combat “abuse, violence and discrimination” against women reporters. Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya, herself a survivor of sexual violence, has for decades been an outspoken advocate for safety for women journalists and justice for survivors.

CPJ and other organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists and the International Association of Women in Radio and TV, have resources on how to protect accounts from hacks or doxing, responding to online harassment, and preventing sexual violence.

While preventative steps and advice are useful in the moment, they don’t address the source of the problem: a professional and societal context that devalues the work and presence of women, and often pressures women to simply be quiet — something out of character for successful journalists.

Fighting those norms will be a long-term battle, but Latin America’s women journalists are ready.

*The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. Press inquiries: press@cpj.org +1-212-300-9032

Latest Data:
250 journalists imprisoned as of Dec 1, 2019
Journalists killed globally (updated regularly)

The post To Attack a Female Journalist’s Credibility, Go After Her Body appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Natalie Southwick is Program Coordinator/Coordinadora del Programa, Central and South America & the Caribbean, The Committee to Protect Journalists* (CPJ) & Renata Neder is CPJ's Brazil Correspondent

The post To Attack a Female Journalist’s Credibility, Go After Her Body appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Mar 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) call upon all parties to the conflict in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon to uphold international human rights and international humanitarian law and cease all attacks on civilians without delay.

The crisis destabilizing the English speaking parts of Cameroon has taken a worrying turn, with an increasing number of reports of targeted attacks against civilians, property and violations of the humanitarian space. More than 700,000 people are displaced, nearly 1 million children are out of school, and the humanitarian needs are mounting.

Survivors have shared testimonies of gruesome attacks that have left children orphaned, people homeless, and limited or cut off access to public facilities such as hospitals and schools. “I have been out of school for two years. The boys stopped us from going to school. They would beat you if you tried,” said Charlene, a 23 year-old single mother. “My teacher wanted to give us private classes so we could sit our exams, but they took and tortured him”.

The conflict would take even more from Charlene when her home was burned down by the military. “There was fighting and the boys hid in our corridor. The military set fire to the house to catch them. We became homeless. We lost everything.”

Reports indicate that an incident on February 14 in Ngarbuh Village, North-West Cameroon, left 24 killed, most of whom were women and children. This is only one of several incidences of disturbing attacks, many of which remain undocumented and impact directly the civilian population.

NRC, the IRC and partners have also witnessed attacks on civilians during humanitarian distributions. “We cannot silently witness defenceless civilians, who are already suffering from extreme deprivation, being attacked while seeking lifesaving assistance,” said Maureen Magee, NRC Regional Director for Central and West Africa. “People in need of humanitarian assistance must be allowed to access necessary support, without having to fear for their lives.”

“This crisis needs more attention,” said Paul Taylor, IRC Regional Vice President for West Africa. “People have been forced to flee and sleep in open air without adequate food or clean water. Aid agencies need additional resources to meet the needs of those displaced by this crisis, and all parties need to ensure that aid agencies are able to access those who are in desperate need of basic services.”

The IRC and NRC call for the immediate cessation of attacks against civilians, the respect of humanitarian space, and that parties to the conflict allow unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations, in accordance with the law, to conduct a coordinated response to reach the people most in need.

For interviews or more information, please contact:

NRC: media@nrc.no, +4790562329

IRC: Kellie Ryan, kellie.ryan@rescue.org or communications@rescue.org, +254758710198

The post Joint statement on attacks on civilians in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rashmi Hamal is a local heroine who helped to save her friend from an early marriage. She campaigns actively against child marriages in the Far Western Region of Nepal. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women’s conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN report revealed.

While there have been remarkable gains for girls in education, little headway has been made to help shape a more equal, less violent environment for them, warned the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), together with UN Women and the non-governmental organization Plan International in their report, A New Era for Girls: Taking stock on 25 years of progress.

“25 years ago, the world’s governments made a commitment to women and girls, but they have only made partial good on that promise”, flagged UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

The report highlighted that in 2016, women and girls accounted for 70 per cent of detected trafficking victims globally, mostly involving sexual exploitation.

“As long as women and girls have to use three times the time and energy of men on looking after the household, equal opportunities for girls to move from school into good jobs in safe workplaces are going to be out of reach”

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director

Moreover, an astonishing one-in-20 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, has experienced rape in her lifetime.

“While the world has mustered the political will to send many girls to school, it has come up embarrassingly short on equipping them with the skills and support they need not only to shape their own destinies, but to live in safety and dignity”, the UNICEF chief spelled out.

 

Lagging on equal rights

The report has been launched in line with the Generation Equality campaign to open a global conversation for action and accountability on gender equality, and to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

“Since 1995 in Beijing, when a specific focus on ‘girl child’ issues first emerged, we have increasingly heard girls assert their rights and call us to account”, said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “But the world has not kept up with their expectations of responsible stewardship of the planet, a life without violence, and their hopes for economic independence”.

Girls today are at a startling risk of violence, whether it is in school, at home, or online as well as throughout their communities, which leads to physical, psychological and social consequences.

A New Era for Girls also covers harmful practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), which continue to disrupt and damage the lives and potential of millions of girls around the world.

According the report, each year 12 million girls are married in childhood, and four million risk FGM.

And girls aged 15-19, are as likely to justify wife-beating, as boys of the same age.

“As long as women and girls have to use three times the time and energy of men on looking after the household, equal opportunities for girls to move from school into good jobs in safe workplaces are going to be out of reach”, said the UN Women chief.

“For everyone’s sake, that’s got to change, along with making sure that the skills girls learn are right for the new tech and digital jobs of the future, and that the violence against them ends”.

 

Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

 

79 million fewer girls out of school

The report noted that in the past 20 years, the number of girls out-of-school has dropped by 79 million and over the last decade, more are actually likely to be in secondary school than boys.

However, it also pointed to negative trends for girls in nutrition and health.

For example, globalization has shifted traditional diets to more processed, unhealthy foods and aggressive marketing techniques targeting children have fuelled consumption, along with sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Access to education is not enough”, maintained the UNICEF chief, adding, “we must also change people’s behaviours and attitudes towards girls”.

Meanwhile, concerns are growing over poor mental health, exacerbated in part by the excessive use of digital technology.

A New Era for Girls revealed that suicide is currently the second leading cause of death among adolescent girls in that age bracket, surpassed only by maternal conditions.

Turning to their heightened risk of sexually-transmitted infection, the report found that some 970,000 adolescent girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are living today with HIV – accounting for around three-in-four new infections among adolescents worldwide – as compared to 740,000 girls in 1995.

“True equality will only come when all girls are safe from violence, free to exercise their rights, and are able to enjoy equal opportunities in life”, concluded the UNICEF Executive Director.

This story was originally published by UN News

 

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An increasing number of New Yorkers appear to have started wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus. The city recorded its first case 1 March. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

First, it was the ill-fated annual sessions of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled for March 9-20, which was undermined by the spreading coronavirus COVID-19.

Now comes a second potential casualty—the upcoming month-long (27 April-22 May) Review Conference of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which may be upstaged by the deadly virus.

The landmark treaty— which represents the only binding multilateral commitment to the goal of disarmament by the world’s nuclear-weapon States—would also mark its 50th anniversary this year.

But a lingering question remains: will the Review Conference be either postponed, cancelled or held under restrictive conditions–even as the Trump administration plans to deny entry visas to visitors, and by extension delegates, from heavily-infected countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy and the Philippines, among others.

The 10-day CSW meeting, one of the key annual gatherings of women, was shrunk to a one-day event, scheduled for March 9 — because of the fast-spreading coronavirus—which would have shut off most of the approximately 8,000-9,000 participants from overseas.

“The 50-year old NPT is threatening the world with an even worse illness than the new terrifying coronavirus,” one anti-nuclear activist warned.

According to the United Nations, the Treaty, particularly article VIII, paragraph 3, envisages a review of the operation of the Treaty every five years, a provision which was reaffirmed by the States parties at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York City, told IPS that aside from whether protection of health warrants a postponement of the Review Conference, delay could be good for the non-proliferation/disarmament regime.

Right now, the United States, Russia, and China have nothing to offer in the way of nuclear arms reductions, actual or prospective, he argued.

Signing ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 20 September 2017. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

“This is despite the commitments they made, along with the United Kingdom and France, at the 2010 Review Conference, “to undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons”.

The failure to fulfill this and other commitments made at the 1995, 2000, and 2010 conferences is the single most important factor casting a pall over the upcoming conference and making a consensus substantive outcome unlikely, warned Burroughs.

Dr Rebecca Johnson, Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament and Diplomacy, who has reported on every NPT meeting since 1994, told IPS “the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads quickly, so on grounds of public health, we all need to limit physical meetings and travel.”

“On those grounds, I think it would probably be prudent to postpone the NPT Review Conference to a time when we have a clearer idea of the COVID-19 impacts and there is greater capacity to deal with it’.

If this is to be their decision, she noted, the UN and NPT states need to make it sooner rather than later, as a lot of people — myself included — have already booked travel and accommodation in New York.

“I would not support any proposals to “limit” the NPT Review Conference as this would likely be used to restrict the full participation of civil society and many delegations who do not have their nuclear experts based in New York”.

Dr Johnson said the postponement of the Review Conference to 2021 should not be a political problem for the NPT and non-proliferation regime, and may even turn out to be advantageous for the health of the NPT.

“This year, there are deep concerns that toxic political relations between several nuclear-armed or significant NPT States Parties will cause the NPT Review Conference to fail, the third time since 2015. There may be better prospects for a positive NPT outcome in 2021, though of course nothing is certain in life or politics!”

She added: “If held in 2021, it would be sensible to choose the most practical NPT-related city, whether Vienna, Geneva or New York.”

Burroughs said it is conceivable that the picture will be better by the end of 2020. He said Reuters reports that on February 28, a senior US administration official said that President Trump is willing to hold a summit of the five NPT nuclear weapon states to discuss arms control.

“While China maintains that it will not join trilateral arms control negotiations due to the vast disparity between its nuclear forces and those of the United States and Russia, it has said that it would discuss “strategic security” issues in a five-power format”.

China’s position that it will not engage in arms controls talks should be challenged. Negotiators can be creative, he said.

One can imagine, for example, addressing intermediate- and short-range missiles, most conventionally armed, fielded in its region by China, as well as US and Russian actual and planned deployments of such missiles, Burroughs said.

“Or China’s long-range nuclear forces could be capped while US and Russian reductions proceed. More ambitiously, the five NPT nuclear weapon states could launch negotiations on global elimination of nuclear arsenals and invite non-NPT nuclear-armed states and perhaps other states to join”.

The five NPT nuclear weapons states are the US, UK, China, Russia and France – all veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council– while the four non-NPT nuclear armed states are India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-summit-idUSKCN20M3CJ
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1746174.shtml

Dr M. V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, and Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, told IPS “I think there is a good case to postpone the Review Conference”.

“At this point, we don’t know how the coronavirus infections will spread — and bringing together a large number of people from different countries to one building definitely contributes a level of risk”.

Further, he said, there will be the additional uncertainty imposed by the Trump administration’s plans to block people from various countries with high levels of infections. Some of those countries, China and Iran, are central to the future of the NPT.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The post Coronavirus Threatens to Wreck Nuclear Review Conference appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Afra Burga Ambui spent 9 years in forced servitude. Now her former employer is in court in Jakarta, Indonesia, facing charges of assault. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

When her uncle offered her an opportunity to work in Jakarta almost a decade ago, the then 15-year-old Afra Burga Ambui immediately agreed and soon she was boarding a two-hour flight to the country’s capital and away from her village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara, southern Indonesia.

Soon she will likely testify in a case of assault against the man who kept her as virtual prisoner for almost eight years. It was only last October, after he had beat her so severely that it resulted a head injury, that she was finally able to speak out and seek help.

“I want him to be given a very long jail sentence. He locked me up like a prisoner for over eight years, he has to experience what I have gone through,” Ambui told IPS.

Held captive and abused

Shortly after arriving in Jakarta in November 2010, Ambui was hired as a live-in maid by the businessman. He had agreed to pay her a monthly salary of $44, which was roughly half the city’s minimum wage at the time.

“My employer promised to increase my salary by $3.8 every six months but he never paid my salary. As a live-in maid, I also worked long hours without a day off,” Ambui told IPS before a court hearing in western Jakarta.

Seven months into her job, her employer began beating her with sharp objects, plastic pipes, and sometimes even broom handles.

A family in mourning

“I could not tell my condition to family members or friends because I was not allowed to have a cellular phone. Also I could not run away as the doors were always locked. Even when he asked me to buy something from the nearby grocery stores, he would watch me from the gate,” she said.

Meanwhile, at home on Flores Island, her family had already performed her funeral rites and were mourning her death. Her uncle, who had recruited her, had told them that he and the labour agency had lost touch with Ambui.

And her family had decided not to report her missing to the police because they “didn’t want to destroy family relations,” with the uncle who had recruited her, Ambui explained.

But even though Indonesia has the 2007 Eradication of the Criminal Act of Trafficking in Persons law, which imposes imprisonment of between three to 15 years and a fine between $8,440 and $42,216, Ambui’s former employer is only standing trail for assault under a domestic violence act that carries a sentence of up to 10 years. 

When asked why he had not been charged under the anti-trafficking law, lawyers prosecuting the case told IPS it was the best they could do.

A work contract doesn’t guarantee safety against human trafficking

Santi Arief, a 27-year-old migrant domestic worker from West Sumatra, Indonesia, left for Malaysia in January 2019 with a contract, which, among other things, stated that she would receive a salary of $288 per month. She was also to receive overtime pay for work done outside of work hours and one day a week off. However, her employer wanted to pay her only $234, with no overtime or days off.

Upon her arrival in Malaysia, Arief said she was “locked up in a room, while my boss searched my belongings and confiscated all related documents [her work contract, work permit, visa and passport] and my cellular phone”.  

“I insisted that he honour the signed contract but because of that he decided not to pay my salary altogether. I was also made to work long hours and without a day off,” she told IPS.

Towards the end of last year she escaped and sought protection at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, but her employer had falsely reported her as an irregular migrant to immigration authorities and she was later arrested.

She was detained in prison for several months, living in “unbearable” conditions and also being verbally assaulted by the guards. Eventually someone forced her to sign some documents, which Arief now believes were papers to withdraw the complaint against her employer.

She was sent back to Indonesia soon after.   

Indonesia lacks official records of human trafficking 

Arief and Ambui are just two of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of victims of human trafficking. According to Fitri Lestari, head of Migrant CARE’s Legal Division, a non-governmental organisation working with migrant workers, “human trafficking is becoming rampant with the number of victims increasing every month, in fact every day”. 

The government has no official record of human trafficking cases here. According to the national police, a total of 2,400 cases were investigated and brought to court over from 2013 to 2018.

“We believe those 2,400 cases are just the tip of the iceberg of trafficking in Indonesia,” Destri Handayani, Deputy Assistant for Women Right’s at the  Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, told IPS.

“Many victims don’t want to report to the police because it involves their own family members, close relatives, or in some cases well-connected public figures,” Handayani said.

In some cases, active or retired military/police officers are taught to own or have a connection with many of the so-called labour agencies here.   

Endemic corruption and a human trafficking law that is not implemented  

The 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report, by the United States Embassy in Jakarta praised efforts taken by Indonesia to stem human exploitation but noted the country “does not fully meet the minimum standard for the elimination of trafficking”. It paid attention to the fact that “endemic corruption among officials remained, which impeded anti-trafficking efforts and enabled many traffickers to operate with impunity”.

But not all law enforcement agencies are charging accused criminals with the human trafficking law. In late January, Jakarta police arrested six people for luring 10 teenage girls into prostitution. The girls were reportedly forced to serve at least 10 customers per night or face a fine if they refused, prompting the National Commission on Child Protection (KPAI) to call for harsher punishment for traffickers.

“Those children were recruited and sold both off and online by recruiters,” KPAI commissioner Ai Maryati Shalihah told IPS. “The perpetrators should be punished severely under the anti-trafficking law, not the child protection law, to deter anyone considering exploiting children.”

But Indonesia still remains a transit country, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa, who are looking to for a better life in Australia or other countries.

• Since 2008, the government has established task forces to combat human trafficking in almost half of its 514 municipalities and regencies across 32 provinces.
• Task force members come from various government agencies, including the national police, the state intelligence agency and the ministries of foreign affairs, health, labour, and social affairs.
• These task forces coordinate prevention efforts and handling of victims of human trafficking, conduct advocacy campaigns and trainings on the dangers of trafficking, and monitor victim protection programmes such as rehabilitation and social reintegration.

In 2017, Indonesia ratified the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Person Especially Women and Children and enacted a national law designed to protect its workers overseas.

Demand for Indonesian workers abroad

But, according to Handayani, high demand for Indonesian workers and the involvement of human trafficking syndicates have undermined the country’s efforts to combat the crime.

“Overseas demand for Indonesian workers remains high, while law enforcement has managed to prosecute small-time field recruiters only, while the funders and end-users remain free to operate,” Handayani said.

At least 4.5 million Indonesians are working in Asia and the Middle East and around 1.9 million of them are undocumented, making them vulnerable to trafficking. A majority of these workers are in domestic service, or work in factories, in the construction industry, on palm oil plantations in Malaysia, and aboard fishing vessels in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery.  It has been focusing efforts on creating a global movement of change and a list of recommendations aimed at employers, it states, among other things, that there should be; no withholding of passports and IDs, wages should be directly paid into employees’ bank accounts, their living conditions must be safe and they must be guaranteed freedom of movement.

Emi Sahertian, a church leader and activist in Kupang, the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province, said that while Jakarta’s anti-trafficking programmes were good, they did not address economic poverty as a root cause.

According to a World Bank report, around 9.4 percent of the country’s 264 million people still live below the poverty line in 2019.

“People risk their lives by entering a country illegally because they have no stable income at home. The government should direct its efforts towards creating new jobs,” Sahertian told IPS from Kupang.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

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• http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/02/zimbabwes-thin-line-child-smuggling-child-trafficking/
• Beaten and Tortured for a Ransom, Lured by the Promise of a Livelihood
• When the Search for Jobs Ends in Slavery

The post Indonesia’s Laws Ineffective against Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Despite having a law and various tasks forces to combat human trafficking, Indonesia is still grappling with the crime that likely sees tens of thousands of people turned into modern day slaves.

The post Indonesia’s Laws Ineffective against Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

The great American impeachment show has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. The dirt was washed away from President Trump, the perfect Teflon Guy. Maybe his invulnerability comes from the fact that he appears to be more of a brand than a real person, adapted to a frame of mind that increasingly dominates social media – cheap entertainment, shallowness, vulgarity, invectives, and catchy phrases without support in well-founded facts. Trump is all and nothing, a shape shifting trickster pretending to be the role model for voiceless masses.

We are subjects to a constant flow of information. Social media makes it easy to select issues that interest us. Influenced by this selective behaviour people tend to adapt their views to those of their idols, accepting them with lock, stock, and barrel, defending them as if they were part of them. Just as they tend to excuse their own improprieties, they accept the flaws of their role models.

An era characterized by strong mainstream parties with loyal followers and generally stable politics is now coming to an end, the latter being replaced by general opinions floating around on social media. However, this does not hinder that some of these opinions are supported by fanatical believers.

In 1848, Marx and Engels proclaimed: ”A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”.2 We may now replace this spectre with National Populism, haunting not only Europe, but many other regions of the world as well. This ideology has been claimed to emanate from the so-called Four Ds´ – distrust, destruction, deprivation, and de-alignment.3

Distrust of politicians and institutions fuelled by a general feeling that they are governed by elites distanced from ordinary citizens. It is also assumed that a ”voiceless” majority is ignored while historically marginalized groups, like women and ethnic minorities, gain voice and presence in the legislature.

Destruction of national groups´ historic identity and established way of life. North America and most of Europe are assumed to be ruled by culturally liberal politicians, transnational organizations and global finance, eroding nations and moral values by encouraging mass-migration. At the same time it is believed that ”politically correct” agendas seek to silence any opposition.

A sense of deprivation is growing, particularly among workers and small business owners who are experiencing decreasing wealth and vanishing benefits. Millions are convinced they are losing out relative to others. Feelings inflamed by a conviction that even if they do not belong to an underclass of strangers and welfare-takers they are nevertheless excluded from decision making. Accordingly, many suffer from de-alignment, feeling lost in a world perceived as more chaotic and less predictable than it was in the past.

Such notions are by demagogues successfully applied to seductive tactics. They present themelves and their party as spokespersons for the people, an imaginary unified group, with the same identity, interests, characteristics, and needs. What the people have in common are their nationality and culture. Gender, class, ideology, income, education or individuality do not matter. Political schemers indicate the existence of an elite that is not on the people’s side. A self-sufficient class of highly educated and wealthy politicians and bureaucrats who control media and have lost all contact with the common man, while lining their own pockets on the bases of their influence. For a political rabble-rouser it is also opportune to identify a group as scapegoats, who are not part of the people and accordingly lack any common interests with them. These scapegoats are depicted as being in league with the elite, which ensures that resources of the people are directed towards these alien parasites. Should the people get rid of the scapegoats as well as the elite everything would be just as fine as before.

Through such deceptive simplifications a politician like Donald Trump, in spite of the fact that he is a billionaire and part of a wealthy, privileged elite, attracts a fan base cosidering him to be the incarnate hope for benign change. Donald Trump, who was a pop-culture icon before he became a politician, has been adopted by what has been called toxic fandom.

Fan is short for fanatic originating from the Latin fanaticus, meaning “of or belonging to the temple, a temple servant, a devotee.” Fandom is a subculture composed of people characterized by a shared feeling of empathy and camaraderie emerging from a common interest. It is supported by a parallel ”make-believe” universe created by social media and a growing industry catering to the wishful thinking of gratified consumers. Several supporters of nationalist leaders seem to consider them as incarnations of their own beliefs. If such an idol is accused of misconduct his/her fans are ready to rush to his/her defense, since attacking an idol would be like attacking them.

Michael Schulman, staff writer at The New Yorker, recently stated that ”a glance around the pop-culture landscape gives the impression that fans have gone mad”.4 ”Couch potatoes” that earlier idled their time away in front of TV-sets and computers are now rising up and are through social media becoming active, opinionated participants in what is happening around them.

For example, when the TV-series Game of Thrones in May 2019 did not end in accordance with several fans´expectations more than 1.7 million of them signed a petition to HBO to ”remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers.” However, such incidents are nothing compared to what happens to an individual who dares to question the behaviour of an admired idol. Social media provides numerous examples of how idol detractors are targeted by outrageous threats directed towards them and their families.

The stout support Donald Trump receives from Republican politicians and his immovable base appears to be a mixture of fandom and concerns about personal power and well-being. Extremely few Republicans want, or dare to, state that ”the emperor is naked”, that Trump actually is an ignorant bully and a narcissist guilty of a great number of misdeeds and abuse of power. Doing that may result in being hounded by Trump fans who brazenly stood by his side during the impeachment proceedings.

Contrary to Trump, who seems to be a self-consciously constructed media product, US Senator Mitt Romney appears to be a morally motivated politician adhering to steadfast principles. Trump proclaims his guiding principle to be America First, while Mitt Romney in 2010 realeased a book he called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.5 However, Romney´s Americanism is contrary to Trump´s populism founded on strict morals. The American Exceptionalism he brings forward in his book is based on three related ideas. The first is that US history is different from the one of other nations. Through the American Revolution (1765-1783) the USA became the first new nation and thus developed a unique ideology – Americanism, based on liberty, equality before the law, individual responsibility, republicanism, representative democracy, and laissez-faire economics. Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world, that Americans have a duty to ensure that ”government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The third is a conviction that the United States’ history and mission give it superiority over other nations.

Mitt Romney served as Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. Furthermore, he is a fifth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and has throughout his adult life served as this religion´s bishop. He is a faithful follower of the Mormons´ moral code based on a scripture called the Word of Wisdom. Accordingly, he abstains from the consumption of alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco and follows his Church´s Law of Chastity, which prohibits adultery and sexual relations outside of marriage. When Romney critizises Trump he does so from a moral standpoint.

One might be skeptical to both Mormonism and American Exceptionalism, though it is difficult not to admire the personal courage Romney displayed on February 5, when he on the Senate floor decried President Trump’s intents to ”corrupt” a general election to keep himself in office as “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of an oath of office that I can imagine.” Romney was the only Republican politician who publically supported the impeachment of Trump. In his speech Romney condemned the lies and moral laxity of the US president, answering the question ”whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor” by ”Yes, he did.”

Romney counted with attacks and accusations of disloyalty from his fellow Republicans. And he certainly became a target of the uncontrollable wrath of Trump´s fandom and of course of their idol as well. Trump labeled Romney as a ”failed presidential candidate” adding that ”I don´t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Nevertheless, it was the other way around – Romney used his faith to justify what he believed to be right. In opposition to the complicity of his party colleagues, he stood his ground by declaring ”I am a profoundly religious person. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.” 6

Mitt Romney proved that personal moral conviction and decency can survive within a party that has been hijacked by National Populism and spineless sycophants. We may hope that more people like Mitt Romney are prepared to listen to their conscience and be brave enough to reveal the manipulations and lies of narcissistic manipulators like Donald Trump. We also have to find effective means to address the deceit, hate and ignorance that have invaded social media.

1 Nicoletti, Gianluca (2015) “Umberto Eco:´Con i social parola a legioni di imbecelli´,” La Stampa, June 11.
2 Hobsbawm, Eric (2012) How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism. New Haven.Yale University Press.
3 Eatwell, Roger and Matthew Goodwin (2018) National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democarcy. London: Penguin Books.
4 Schulman, Michael (2019) ”Fans are more powerful than ever. Does their passion have a dark side?” The New Yorker, September 9.
5 Romney, Mitt (2010) No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. New York: St. Martins Press.
6 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/us/politics/mitt-romney-impeachment-speech-transcript.html

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

The post Personal Conviction Versus Fandom: The Case of Mitt Romney appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. They were immediately silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots.” 1

                                                                                                                                                           Umberto Eco

The post Personal Conviction Versus Fandom: The Case of Mitt Romney appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Iffat, humanitarian public health promoter for Oxfam, talks to Rohingya refugees Asia Bibi*, son Anwar* and daughter Nur* in the camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Iffat was part of the Oxfam emergency response team working to provide vital aid including clean water, food vouchers and toilets. Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith/ Oxfam

By Anna Tonelli
NEW YORK, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

This International Women’s Day, 25 years after we first heard it declared that “women’s rights are human rights” at the historic Beijing 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, we need to take the space and time to reflect on just how far we’ve come – and just how much more work there is to do.

This year, achievements in the quest for recognizing women’s rights, leadership, and voice must be celebrated; but more than anything we need to double down and hold governments and other powerbrokers to account – to be part of the movement to ensure women’s rights are actually respected as human rights once and for all.

Every March, women arrive in New York from around the world to do just that – to advocate for the implementation of the myriad commitments that international decision-makers have made to the realization of women’s rights.

Tucked away in a small corner of Manhattan, the yearly Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the UN brings thousands of women and allies together to connect and learn from each other, and to hold their governments accountable.

This year would have been historic as more than 12,000 people had registered to join this conference, a testament to the importance of Beijing’s anniversary and the commitments it produced.

Sadly, this series of events has been postponed due to the Coronavirus – a grim but important reminder of how interconnected our world has become, and how much we must rely on each other to protect ourselves and make progress.

Anna Tonelli

Oxfam, just one small piece of this moment was set to bring 22 partners to participate – activists and leaders from places like Russia, India, Palestine, Zambia and Bolivia.

Oxfam and our partners were to host events and conversations on issues ranging from gender-based violence, women land rights, fundamentalism in Latin America and Russia, women and climate, natural and resource governance and unpaid care work. These issues and conversations may not be happening in person next week, but they must still go on.

Right now is a critical moment for Latin America, and Oxfam staff and our partners are speaking out against the chronic violation of women’s rights and feminicides that have become the norm in the last years.

It is where the rise of fundamentalism, toxic masculinity, and extreme authoritarianism have created a wave of impunity and normalization of human rights violations.

As we have watched forests burn, air quality suffer and temperatures rise, women from Zambia, India, Colombia and more are pushing for transformative feminist leadership and climate-just governance for natural resources like coal, oil and other extractive industries – and for the intrinsic connection between women’s rights and the climate crisis to be more widely recognized.

As inequality spirals out of control, Oxfam is calling for an end to our sexist economies that have put us in the position where the richest 22 men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

It’s no accident that while most billionaires are men, women do more than three-quarters of all unpaid care work, and when they do work, dominate the least secure and lowest-paid jobs. These are just more barriers women face when trying to make a difference and lead in their communities.

Dorothy, 27, stands inside the house she is rebuilding with her brother, in the village of Malambwe, southern Malawi, following the flooding brought on by Cyclone Idai. Dorothy’s house collapsed and the floodwaters carrying away many of her belongings, as well as some of her livestock. She took her four year old child, and went to higher ground to escape the floodwaters. Credit: Philip Hatcher-Moore/Oxfam

Even as thousands had plans to travel and convene at CSW, this space was never open for all. Travel restrictions and statelessness had stopped plans to have a Rohingya leader join from Bangladesh to help launch an Oxfam report highlighting Rohingya women’s challenges, priorities and leadership.

It calls for an immediate focus on addressing the root causes of the crisis, better supporting women to meet their basic needs with dignity and further enabling their leadership in decision-making at all levels.

Many women caught in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and conflicts – like Yemen, Syria and South Sudan – also do not have access to these opportunities due to instability at home, threats to their safety, and the discriminatory Muslim Ban enacted by the Trump administration.

The postponement of CSW is a reminder of the women’s voices we must always be amplifying around the world during these moments and in between. Whether we’re together in New York or spread around the globe, acts of solidarity through elevating women’s stories and demands on social media, signing petitions for national decision-makers, and joining campaigns make all the difference.

We also need to see more women and men in power who support women and who will put forward a feminist foreign policy. On International Women’s Day and every day, we have a duty to shine a light on these women and the efforts they are making to realize their rights. In a time of increasing anxiety about health, politics, climate and more – we should appreciate the advocates and leaders who paved the way for anniversaries like Beijing, and celebrate the communities of smart, driven, tireless women who continue to push for a more inclusive and just world.

The post Sexist Economies Where World’s 22 Richest Men Have More Wealth than All the Women in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Anna Tonelli is Oxfam’s Inclusive Peace and Security Senior Policy Advisor

The post Sexist Economies Where World’s 22 Richest Men Have More Wealth than All the Women in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By GGGI
Mar 3 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has partnered with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA) to support Peru’s efforts to reduce deforestation through an innovative approach that promotes sustainable agroforestry practices and secures land tenure of small farmers in the Amazon.

Representatives from the Government of Norway, GGGI, ICRAF and the SPDA, gathered in Lima to mark the start of a 3-year project whose objective is to provide technical, legal, financial and institutional support to help the Government of Peru implement the Agroforestry Concessions system.

Among those present were Thorstein Wangen, Advisor for Climate and Forestry of the Royal Embassy of Norway concurrently accredited in Peru, Elise Christensen, the Senior Advisor for the Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), Einer Telnes, NORAD Senior Advisor of the Department for Climate, Energy and Environment, as well as Aaron Drayer, the GGGI Peru Country Representative, along with the GGGI teams and project leadership from ICRAF and SPDA.

Agroforestry Concessions are an innovative legal mechanism that seeks to incorporate family farmers in the forest economy by offering those that occupy land in the public forest domain a forty-year usufruct contract over land and tree resources. Their possession is conditioned upon halting deforestation and implementing sustainable land use, including agroforestry.

The project’s expected impacts are to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions in the Peruvian Amazon, promote restoration through agroforestry of previously deforested land, and improve livelihoods of vulnerable small-scale farmers at the forest frontier. It is estimated that Agroforestry Concessions could benefit more than 120,000 families that are currently farming over 1.5 million hectares of forest land.

Successful implementation of Agroforestry Concessions will require the coordination of multiple sectors and governance levels to support the transition of family farmers at deforestation frontiers to engage in sustainable land-use practices that are also financially sound. For this reason, the consortium team will work hand in hand with the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the Peru Forestry and Wildlife Service and the Ministry of Environment, as well as Amazonian regional governments.

In the meeting, consortium members and the representatives of the Government of Norway discussed the importance of a multi-stakeholder process to ensure that the Agroforestry Concessions system is successful. Mr. Aaron Drayer indicated how the consortium represents a sum of complementary expertise and approaches to respond to that complexity.

The representatives of the Government of Norway highlighted the importance of this new mechanism to help Peru comply with its climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement. Mr. Thorstein Wangen highlighted the importance of engagement with government actors at all levels and connecting the project to public policies. And. Mr. Einer Telnes stressed the importance of this new system to support the Government of Peru towards its zero-deforestation goal. He also emphasized the opportunity for other countries to learn from the Peruvian experience promoting agroforestry, securing land rights and improving farmers’ livelihoods.

Finally, Elise Christensen pointed out that the project’s approach is built upon an in-depth understanding of the complexities of land use at the agricultural frontier and that it focuses on a model that relies more on recognizing land tenure rights for farmers and providing financial incentives than on command and control models.

GGGI and the consortium partners will work closely with the National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR), the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI), the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) and key regional governments to help build the enabling financial, legal, institutional and technical conditions for the successful implementation of the new Agroforestry Concessions system for family farmers in the Peruvian Amazon.

The post GGGI Supports Peru’s New Agroforestry Concessions System for Family Farmers to Reduce Deforestation in the Amazon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sahle-Work Zewde, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

By Sahle-Work Zewde and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years ago, thousands of representatives adopted the Beijing Declaration, one of the most progressive universal agreement to advance women’s rights.

The Beijing Declaration built on the human rights inscribed in the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, whose articles 7 and 8 clearly states the need for removing all discriminations preventing women from leadership.

On September 1995, the Beijing Platform of Action took full ownership of the human rights agenda initially contained in CEDAW, advanced women’s rights and strongly reaffirmed the universal commitment to women’s power and leadership. Women took ownership of the human rights agenda and redefined it to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment would be at its core.

At the time, world leaders committed to the extraordinary Platform for Action with tangible and ambitious commitments in strategic areas, from peace to development, and designed roadmaps to get us there.

Since 1995, the world continued the march to make the world more gender equal and to enhance women’s leadership and participation in peace, security and development processes.

In 2000, following decades of advocacy led by women civil society organizations and women human rights activists, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1325, the global commitment to ensure that women are systematically and sustainably integrated into peace and security processes.

The international community furthered the women, peace and security agenda in 2009 by recognizing the harmful impact of sexual violence in conflict on women and communities, making this scourge punishable under International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law.

In the last twenty-five years, African women have made substantive progress in political, economic and social arenas but also have faced numerous constraints.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The positive picture reflects enhanced political and legislative leadership to ensure that women do have a seat at the table of key decision-making processes.

Today, Rwanda has the highest percentage of women members of parliament in the world: 61%. Namibia, Senegal and South Africa follow closely with at least over 40% of women holding seats in Parliament.

Ethiopia not only made great strides by electing its first female President in October 2018, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed also raised the bar high for national governments by ensuring a gender equal cabinet with 50% of its members being women.

Across Africa, women have taken the seat at the top table, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, President Catherine Samba-Panza of the Central African Republic and President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim of Mauritius.

More women are being elected in public office or appointed to ministerial positions. These changes have not happened by coincidence but as the result of deliberate policy decisions and grassroots action.

In many cases, this transformation was realized through hard-fought constitutional amendments and parity legislation aimed at reserving the necessary space for women and youth.

At continental level, the African Union has developed an extensive and progressive body of legal instruments as well as innovative solutions and platforms in its various thematic areas of work. The years 2010-2020 marked the African Women’s Decade.

The AU Strategy for Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment (2018 – 2028) is informed by global standards that include instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs – whose Goal 5 is on “Gender Equality”).

Other human rights instruments of the African Union such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights consider women’s rights as an integral component of the key rights. The AU has appointed Heads of State as champions and leaders to push for implementation of commitments under various thematic areas of the work of the Union.

Despite these great achievements, we must admit that the world – and we as leaders – did not keep our promise to ensure that every woman and girl, wherever she may live, could be assured to enjoy her full human rights reach her full potential.

The reality is that we have failed women and girls. Some of the best minds remain excluded because we failed to provide access to education to all women and girls. Many of the potential pillars of our societies remain marginalized because we failed to properly address and eradicate gender inequality and violence against women.

Our continent is lagging behind in creating the peaceful and developed societies we seek to realize, in part, because we failed to offer women and girls the necessary opportunities and tools, which would allow them to thrive and be full contributors.

And despite the elections of some women to high and highest offices, and existing legislative and legal frameworks, by and large, across Africa women are still struggling to gain a seat at the decision-making table or in peace and security processes.

Despite the existing evidence revealing that gender perspective drives the sustainability of peace and security processes, there is still a blunt implementation gap in terms of ensuring women’s participation in peace processes.

The evidence is staggering, with women constituting about 4% of signatories of peace agreements, 2.4% of chief mediators, 3.7% of witnesses or observers to peace negotiations, and 9% of negotiation team members. . Today, Africa currently counts one female Head of State (Ethiopia), four Vice-Presidents (The Gambia, Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia) one Prime Minister (Namibia).

This stark reality is a daily reminder that we cannot slow down our efforts. We must accelerate our efforts against the pushbacks. Women’s meaningful participation and leadership are crucial in the effective functioning and sustainability of our communities and our world.

To achieve this, a top-down approach is not sustainable to build the necessary transformative change. If the promise made is to be delivered, women and youth must be front and center and the drivers of the positive change we all aspire.

In this spirit, on 2 June 2017 African women leaders – I among them – came together as a movement to launch the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) and its Call to Action, backed by the African Union and the United Nations through UN Women.

Our Network aims to advance, train and support female leaders across sectors and generations in Africa. The AWLN is pushing for policies and programmes that empower and enable women on the continent across the political, economic and humanitarian fields to reach their full potential.

Since June 2017, the African Women Leaders Network has achieved key milestones, from bolstering the voices of African women leaders across generations on the ground to enhancing their participation and leadership in key decision-making processes.

The Network committed to push and deliver on the commitments made in UN Security Council resolution 1325 by October 2020, its 20th anniversary and to be in solidarity with the women and communities in conflict and post-conflict situations throughout Africa.

Since 2017, the AWLN conducted joint UN-AU solidarity missions to revitalize women’s participation and leadership in peace, security and development in Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Niger Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan. The missions brought much needed political attention to the situation on the ground, while promoting women’s meaningful participation as mediators in all efforts of conflict-resolution, sustainable development, peacebuilding and humanitarian interventions.

The AWLN redefines the faces and structures around power and leadership – considering each and every woman or girl a leader, standing up for her human rights, may she be a Head of State or a grassroots activist working for peace and development, an entrepreneur or a schoolgirl with a dream.

We support the advancement of African women through six (6) flagship projects in peace and security, governance, finance, agriculture, young women’s leadership and social mobilization. The Network further provides peer learning, experience sharing and cross-generational dialogues in order to bolster women’s contributions to building and sustaining peace, sustainable economies and social transformation.

Women are making a crucial difference in the lives of the people they serve at local level. In this spirit, the AWLN national chapters are the cornerstones of movement building for the Network and support its localization at grassroots level and represent a major milestone benefiting all African women and ensuring that their voices are better heard, and their issues better addressed, in order to increase women’s ownership in the transformation of the continent and the 2063 Agenda “The Africa We Want.”

Since 2017, the AWLN has established 11 national chapters in (chronologically) the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco and Cameroon.

The Network, with the support of UN Women and the AU, plans to have a total of 25 national chapters established by March 2020, in line with UN Women’s Generation Gender Equality Campaign, and to ensure that a critical mass of women is leading the movement throughout the continent.

We are working closely with women’s groups, the UN System, the African Union and development partners to ensure that, beyond women’s participation, all efforts are undertaken to create a conducive environment for women empowerment and the protection of their rights and freedoms.

We encourage all African Member States to speed up the process and to offer the necessary support to women and young people coming together for Africa’s transformation. The time for action is now to build irreversible positive changes for gender equality in Africa.

In 2020, 25 years after the Beijing Declaration and 20 years after Security Council resolution 1325, it is clear that we must accelerate our efforts, move faster on the roadmap towards the targets we want to reach, and deliver tangible actions for the people we serve.

As I write these words, we are still very far away from achieving gender parity and full women’s empowerment in Africa. We must build on the positive strides that we have made so far to achieve this urgent ambition.

As African women, we call on all African men – leaders in politics and business, elders and young, neighbors in our cities and villages, fathers, brothers and sons – to join women in a great partnership for human rights, peace and development.

We call on them to lead and invest in change at a national level with the African Women Leaders Network National Chapters and women’s movements for peace to address the gender equality gaps that we know persist.

Africa has already adopted strong protocols, including the Maputo Protocol, and instruments that bind us, and through which Heads of State and Government have already agreed on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Women must be meaningfully included in peace, security and developments negotiations and in the politics of their country.

We are asking all our allies to use their power and influence to support African women in taking their rightful place in the next chapter of the continent and building a future where women and girls can live out their lives freely, in purpose and happiness.

The movement of African women across the continent is a rally for action. A movement to ensure that leaders keep on their commitments and promises.

It is time for action.

Together, we can unite for Africa’s transformation.

The post It is Time for Action! Uniting for Africa’s Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Sahle-Work Zewde, is President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, is Executive Director of UN Women

The post It is Time for Action! Uniting for Africa’s Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific Community (SPC) is calling for contestants to join the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest and showcase their cooking skills and creativity to promote healthy eating and prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Up to 75 per cent of deaths in Pacific countries are related to NCDs, such as diabetes and heart diseases, with unhealthy diets and lifestyles seen as important factors in their development.

From observation, the Pacific diet has changed over time and consumption of local foods has transitioned into consumption of more imported processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt. Approaches to improve eating habits includes trainings on healthy eating, development of resources to improve knowledge and health promoting campaigns to increase awareness.

Who can apply?
The contest will be open to all Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

How to apply
The contest will be launched through SPC social media.

Contestants will be invited to:
– Complete the registration online or fil this word document until 29 February 2020
– Follow the directions given to submit details of their recipe that they have created together with a photo of the prepared dish.

Prize
The winner and their entire family (up to 10 people) will enjoy a gourmet meal prepared in the comfort of their own home by a well-known chef!
All participants will get a copy of the ‘Pasifka Plates’ cook book.

How to assess the winner?
Assessment of the winner will be based on:
• Use of local ingredients
• Recipe with less sugar, salt and fat
• Creative and aesthetic presentation
• Showcasing of Pacific cooking traditions.

The recipes will be made available on the SPC website as well as shared through other means of communication.

Useful links:
Competition Terms and Conditions
Participation Form

For more information, it is possible to contact the organizers at the following address: health-enquiries@spc.int.

Media contacts:
Solène Bertrand-Protat, Non-Communicable Diseases Advisor, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | soleneb@spc.int

General Inquiries:
Evlyn Mani, Communications Officer, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | evlynm@spc.int
Alexandre Brecher, Senior Communications Officer, Corporate Communication Office, Pacific Community (SPC) | alexandreb@spc.int

About SPC:
The Pacific Community has been supporting sustainable development in the Pacific, through science, knowledge and innovation since 1947. It is the principal intergovernmental organization in the region, owned and governed by its 26 member countries and territories.

Division
Corporate
Public Health Division (PHD)

The post The Pacific Community launches the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

US President Donald Trump looks on as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves during a rally in India in February 2020. PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By James M. Dorsey
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Television news summarises daily what a new world order shaped by civilisationalists entails. Writer William Gibson’s assertion that “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed” is graphically illustrated in pictures of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of desperate Syrians fleeing indiscriminate bombing in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold, with nowhere to go.

It’s also evident in video clips from the streets of Indian cities where police stand aside as Hindu nationalists target Muslims and Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns Muslims into second-class citizens; refugee camps in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar linger with no prospect of a better life; a devastating civil war in Libya fuelled by foreign powers propagating a worldview that has much in common with civilisationalism; a take-it-or-leave it US plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that belittles and disregards Palestinian aspirations; the Trump administration’s adoption of rules that favour immigrants from Europe rather than Africa, Asia and Latin America; and China’s brutal efforts to erase the identity and culture of its Turkic Muslim minority.

The constant TV diet of the horrors of civilisationalist-inspired violence, war, human suffering, discrimination and prejudice, coupled with fears of existential threats posed by the other, migration and globalisation, no longer sparks outrage.

“The horrors in Idlib are one face of the emerging ‘new world disorder,'” said Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead. Underlying civilisationalist discrimination and repression that risks dislocating minority segments of populations, political violence and mass migration on unmanageable scales is the mainstreaming of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and the demonisation of liberal values that propagate basic, human and minority rights and ideologies that seek to synthesise democratic and conservative values steeped in tradition and religion, particularly Islam.

Civilisationalists and right-wing populists, including Messrs. Trump and Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, feed from similar philosophical troughs.

Political scientist Shawn W Rosenberg argues that the political structures of states that are governed by populists and/or defined by a civilisation rather than the Westphalian concept of a nation are built on the notion that people are characterised not by their ties to one another, but by being part of a nation.

Civilisationalists and populists ignore individual differences and emphasise an individual’s relationship to the nation. In their world, individuals are at the bottom of the heap in a civilisationalist state that is anchored in concepts of loyalty to the nation, and obedience to the state and its leaders who embody the will of the people.

Rosenberg warns that civilisationalists see an independent judiciary, Western concepts of rule of law, and a free press as institutions that not only obstruct accomplishment of their mission but also undermine their definition of the role and place of the individual.

To protect a nation’s integrity, civilisationalists and populists seek to shield “the people” from foreign influences, migration and the nation’s competitors—other nations. They see their nation’s power as derived from being stronger than others and doing better than others at the other’s expense.

Foreign policy is geared towards that goal rather than towards a global community that upholds principles of equality, equity and cooperation, Rosenberg asserts. Civilisationalists and populists seek economic and/or military diminution, if not domination of others, which by implication requires a rejection or hollowing out of international institutions.

The civilisationalist approach is making itself felt not only in lands governed by civilisationalists. Mainstream political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, widely viewed as a centrist who is attempting to counter civilisationalism and populism, are not immune to aspects of civilisationalism.

Nor is the Dutch parliamentary commission that earlier last month held controversial hearings about “unwanted influencing by unfree countries” that focused on Gulf support for Dutch Muslim communities and an unnuanced view of political Islam. The commission contemplated following in the footsteps of Austria, which has banned foreign funding for Muslim organisations. France is considering a similar ban.

Speaking in the city of Mulhouse earlier last month, Macron laid out his strategy to combat political Islam represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, who in his words insist that Islamic law supersedes the laws of the French Republic and emphasise “Islamist separatism” and “Islamist supremacy.”

Kuwait and Qatar are funding the construction of an Islamic religious and cultural centre in Mulhouse. Qatar has backed the Brotherhood in the past and is home to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, widely viewed as one of the foremost influencers of the Brotherhood, a catch-all for a multitude of aligned Islamist groups that bicker among themselves.

“In the Republic, we cannot accept that we refuse to shake hands with a woman because she is a woman. In the Republic, we cannot accept that someone refuses to be treated or educated by someone because she is a woman. In the Republic, one cannot accept school dropouts for religious or belief reasons. In the Republic, one cannot require certificates of virginity to marry,” Macron said.

Macron’s sweeping opposition to political Islam persuaded him to support Libyan rebel leader Khalifa Haftar, who stands accused of human rights violations and has aligned himself with a Saudi-backed strand of Salafism that preaches absolute obedience to the ruler.

Haftar, who also enjoys the support of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, two countries opposed to democracy and any expression of Islam that rejects submission to an autocrat, is seeking to wrench control of the Libyan capital of Tripoli from the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). The GNA is backed by Turkey and includes elements associated with the Brotherhood.

To be sure, France has had its share of jihadist violence in recent years, with deadly attacks on a French satirical newspaper, restaurants, music halls and soccer stadiums and the ramming of a truck into a crowd on the streets of Nice.

Creeping civilisationalism does not, however, by definition characterise the efforts by Europeans like Macron and others to ensure that minority communities, including Muslims, are full-fledged participants in a society that should afford them equal opportunity and rights and requires them to accommodate dominant mores.

Civilisationalist approaches, nonetheless, contribute to the failure to be agnostic in countering all forms of supremacism and racial, ethnic or religious prejudice and the lumping together of ideologies that reject democratic values with ones that seek accommodation.

It is a failure that creates the environment in which someone like white supremacist Tobias Rathjen was emboldened, earlier last month, to kill nine people with immigrant backgrounds in the German city of Hanau. German politicians accused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party of contributing to that environment. They demanded that the party be placed under surveillance.

Countering civilisationalism is one side of the coin. Avoiding unhelpful generalisations and oversimplifications is another.

In an examination of the concept of popular sovereignty in Islamic thought, political scientist Andrew F March argues that this decade’s popular Arab revolts marked an “intellectual revolution” and “a comprehensive reformulation of Islamic political philosophy”, involving not only “reducing rulers to their proper status as agents of the people but also implicitly raising the people to the ultimate arbiters of God’s law.”

No doubt, it is a revolution that is rejected by ultra-conservative Muslims, elements of the Brotherhood and various strands of Salafism. Nonetheless, it was a revolution articulated in February 2011, days after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, by none other than Al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent Islamist thinkers.

Quoting Martin Luther King Jr’s prediction that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Mead, the columnist, concluded that this “is hard to see from Idlib.”

He could have just as well been speaking about the dislocation and suffering in a civilisationalist-dominated world that plays out on television screens across the globe in which rights, equitable rule of law and international law are relegated to the dust bin.

Dr James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the

University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Not a pretty picture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Orange the World march in Ecuador. November 2019. Credit: UN Women/Johis Alarcón

By External Source
QUITO, Ecuador, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

Inclusion of women in political processes is one of the key ingredients of sustainable peace.

Although the number of women in political office has increased worldwide over the past 25 years, progress has been slow.

As of 1 January 2020, only four countries had 50 per cent or more women parliamentarians (Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia and United Arab Emirates).

In the Americas region, an average of 30.6 per cent of parliamentarians were women as of October 2019. In December 2019, the National Assembly of Ecuador approved a package of reforms to advance gender parity and address obstacles in the way of women candidates to elected office.

Data, analysis and recommendations by the United Nations contributed to what is considered a milestone in the country.

The United Nations and other international organizations will devote substantial time and attention in 2020 to assessing progress (or the lack of it) in increasing the participation of women in political and peace processes.

Twenty years since the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325, the consensus, backed by evidence, is that women’s participation in peacemaking and peacebuilding contributes to the quality and durability of peace after conflict.

There is also growing evidence that women’s leadership in political decision-making processes improves such processes. Adding to that body of evidence is a recent study (in Spanish) by UN Women, carried out in cooperation with the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), on the situation in Ecuador.

The South American country ranks sixth in Latin America, out of 33 countries, in terms of the number of women legislators in the National Assembly. The number of women elected officials at the local level, however, is very low.

The UN study set out to determine, among other things, why this was so and what could be done about it. The research identifies discrimination, but also political violence against women, as reasons for the scant number of women officials in the country.

The study includes information from 154 people, including 41 women candidates and 12 focus groups in the the March 2019 elections. It focuses on the situations of discrimination and violence that women experience when choosing a political party and movement; registering their candidacies; taking office as authorities; performing their duties, and during the campaign and election process.

The findings show that violence against women candidates takes place within their families, communities and political parties. The violence is largely psychological, but it is also physical and sexual. This violence is a central barrier to women’s access and participation in politics.

Sixty-six per cent of the women interviewed said that psychological violence was the most frequent manifestation of political violence, including reputation bashing and rumor campaigns against them; making them invisible, hardly publicizing their candidacy or their governance, and isolating them, excluding them or marginalizing them; and party members or local government officials concealing information or providing false information.

One third of the women responding mentioned that they had been subjected to bullying, ridicule and public mocking, prevented from talking or expressing what they think.

The perpetrators of political gender-based violence against women were political stakeholders (leaders of political parties, electoral candidates, political party activists and electoral campaign personnel); societal stakeholders (voters, family members, community members or groups, religious or traditional leaders, media and social networks, employers and workmates); and governmental stakeholders (police, military and other governmental staff from all branches of the State, including electoral officials and personnel).

In June 2019, DPPA adopted a new Women, Peace and Security Policy calling for specific efforts to advance gender equality and the inclusion and empowerment of women, including action needed to promote women´s political participation through legislation.

An Electoral Needs Assessment Mission deployed to Ecuador in May 2019 explicitly recommended supporting the National Electoral Council to prevent and mitigate violence against women in political life.

In partnership with UN Women Ecuador, DPPA backed efforts to address political violence against women, promoting the linkages between SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG 5 on gender equality.

The UN study recommended specific structural reforms to the legal and institutional framework, as well as promoting cultural change through the women’s movement and media. The study in particular urged changes to prevent, identify, denounce and punish violence against women candidates.

In August 2019, the National Electoral Council’s Democracy Institute held two public discussions in Quito and Guayaquil on the findings of the study.

The information and analysis in the study, the feedback from female politicians, and the joint work among the National Electoral Council, the Democracy Institute and UN Women, with support from DPPA, served as the basis for a draft proposal to amend the Code of Democracy.

The National Electoral Council submitted the proposal to the National Assembly in the fall of 2019. On 3 December 2019, the National Assembly approved the package of reforms, with key provisions to advance gender parity and to address violence against women candidates.

Diana Atamaint, the President of the National Electoral Council, welcomed the reforms and thanked the United Nations for its contributions through data, analysis and recommendations, to this important milestone.

The reforms include parity headings in the lists of candidates in a progressive manner: 15 per cent of women by 2021, 30 per cent in 2023, until reaching 50 per cent in 2025.

The presidential binomials must be composed of male-female or female-male candidates by 2025. In addition, provisions on political violence included specific sanctions against gender-based political violence.

*The article was first published in the online magazine of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA)

The post Helping Advance Women’s Political Rights in Ecuador appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

International Women’s Day, March 8 2020

 

UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA)*

The post Helping Advance Women’s Political Rights in Ecuador appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Lebanese women in politics. Credit: Eliane Eid

By Eliane Eid
KESERWAN, Lebanon, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

Women were at the forefront of Lebanon’s 2019 ‘October Revolution’. Beyond the iconic images of their participation, it seems that by women linking equity in politics to the broader issues of mismanagement of corruption paid off – although activists say there is a long road ahead.

In May 2018 saw the election of six Lebanese women to parliament from 86 female candidates. Following the October 2019 uprising, that started to change the equation within the political system and under the continued pressure of the civil society, a new cabinet was formed. It included six female ministers out of 20.

From a general perspective, this seems like a win for achieving gender equality, considering that 30% of the actual cabinet is female. Lebanon, a democratic republic in the Middle East, is deemed to have acknowledged the role of women and started to include them in the political field.

However, from a Lebanese perspective, questions arise whether this achievement is a veneer to please the streets and Western donors in a crumbling country?

Rouba El Helou-Sensenig, coordinator of the gender, communications and global mobility studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, is not convinced this change is enough.

“Even though the Lebanese government signed international agreements related to advancing women’s rights and their participation in political life, I believe that the Lebanese government is not serious about reaching gender equality,” she says.

“What has been achieved so far is the result of a combination of pressure from civil society and international bodies,” she added, citing a list of reasons why women’s rights within the country are flawed.
“Today, the Lebanese people, whether they are with or against gender equality, are aware that Lebanese women do not have the right to give their citizenship to their children; that the religious courts do not rule in favour of a mother most of the time.”

She says the Kafala system promotes more injustices in Lebanese society and “family friendly-policies should be drafted and implemented” as a matter of urgency.

El Helou-Sensenig explained to IPS that Lebanon still has a labour code with a long list of articles which prohibit women from working in certain fields. Gender-based violence and sexual harassment are still not appropriately criminalised.

Two young women rest in the morning of a new day during the October 2019 Revolution, Lebanon. Credit: Blanche Eid

Historically, Lebanese women waited until 1953 to vote and run for elections – and their fundamental rights undermined until Lebanon signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997.

Most of the women in parliament have been elected based on their political affiliations or even traditional ones. Lebanese society has rarely seen any organic approach to promote female candidates in any election.

This year the World Economic Forum (WEF), in its 2020 report Mind the 100 Year Gap, noted that gender parity would not be attained for 99.5 years – meaning that none of the current generations will witness it. WEF’s even more sobering analysis puts the gap in the Middle East, and North Africa is 140 years. This is a challenge to NGOs and institutions fighting gender discrimination.

Once such a global advocate for gender equality and health and rights of girls and women, Women Deliver is working with five civil society organisations (CSOs) to breach the gender inequity gap in Lebanon. Its Humanitarian Advocates Program, along with the CSOs, is working toward meeting the needs of the women and children who make up 80% of the country’s more than 1 million registered refugees.

In the broader society equality will take time, but many countries still lack fundamental human rights, including Lebanon.

In February Notre Dame University held a seminar on women pursuing peace and justice and being politically active. During the seminar, Cedar Mansour, dean of the faculty of law and political science, explained that for Lebanon to make changes, women need to be more involved in policymaking and participation.

“In order to make a real difference, the change should start in the institutions. Equality should be paramount, inherited discrimination that is infesting our laws should be revolted against,” Mansour said.

By making laws and creating opportunities for women to become more involved, only then, Lebanon will have a chance to stay in the race.

Many factors stand in the way of achieving these goals, the seminar heard.

Lea Baroudi, the founding member and director of March, Lebanon, told IPS has personal experience of many of these challenges and what it takes to be successful.

“What made me continue is what I saw I was capable of doing. I had this belief that I can change. There are two struggles that affect us as women: the patriarchal attitude and the older generation mentality. The attitude of ‘you cannot do it’,” she said.

“But, to succeed, you have to fail many times, and that’s what kept me going”.

Baroudi explained that no matter what a woman will do, she will always be questioned and evaluated every step of the way. She always has to be number one in every field; otherwise, she is considered weak and powerless.

“As long as we cannot change the laws, we have a problem” she adds. Lebanon needs a shift in the understanding of gender equality and its implementation. Many factors play an essential role in shaping this culture, especially patriarchal power rooted in the Lebanese mindset.

In 2016, Lebanon created the first ministry of women’s affairs; this initiative was supposed to be a step forward to achieve political empowerment and gender equality. In the case of Lebanon, the minister of women’s affairs was a man. The idea of creating this ministry was to promote political empowerment, but a female figure in Lebanese politics is known to be more of a mediator than an action taker.

Four months have passed since the revolution started – women have taken a critical role in keeping this uprising safe and its agenda in the spotlight.

One of the current demands is to have an early election with more women involved.

Lebanon might witness a new era of female leaders, but the key issue is whether create a safe environment for Lebanese women by changing policies or they would fall in the trap of being the winning ticket for political parties.

The post What’s Needed for Real Changes for Women in Lebanese Politics? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

International Women's Day, March 8 2020
 

The year 2020 began with a shock report, Mind the 100 Year Gap, from the World Economic Forum which projected that gender equity would take at least 100 years to realise. Women and girls play a crucial role in society. However, they bear the brunt of patriarchy, their needs often unmet by traditional humanitarian responses and their health and education needs not prioritised. In the run-up to International Women’s Day with its theme, “I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights” IPS is publishing a series of features, opinion and editorials from experts and affiliated journalists around the world on women.

The post What’s Needed for Real Changes for Women in Lebanese Politics? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Emina Osmandzikovic
Mar 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A succession of meetings over the last two months in Berlin, Geneva and Munich has signified a renewed multilateral effort to resolve the Libyan civil conflict. With 13 nations led by the UN, seeking to enforce a brittle arms embargo and comprehensive cease-fire, the concerned parties have been seeking to resolve the rivalry between the UN-recognized administration based in the capital of Tripoli and the country’s western regions with the backing of Turkey, Qatar and Italy, and the rival eastern-based government led by General Khalifa Haftar, with the support of Egypt, France, Russia and other states.

Emina Osmandzikovic

While recent diplomatic efforts have produced a 55-point road map to resolve the conflict, a potential conflict resolution is still very much dependent on the complex interplay between internal and external actors and the willingness of all parties to observe the tentative internationally-led peace effort. With the humanitarian situation in Libya deteriorating due to the country’s contracting economy, a robust peaceful solution is urgently needed.

Libya as a proxy in foreign powers’ interplay

Nine years after the initial outbreak of violence against the regime of Muammar Al-Qaddafi, Libya is still at war, marred with the refugee and migrant crises, internal strife between opposing militias, haunted by Islamist groups, and unable to govern its own territory. In addition to an over-inflated narrative of Al-Qaddafi’s prominent role in inciting violence in 2011, the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya[i] left a jarring environment of tribal, ethnic, religious and ideological violence that had a negative spill-over effect on the neighboring countries, the most prominent example being the case of Mali in 2013.

The 2012 parliamentary elections were initially seen as a promising development. With the turn-up rate higher than 60 percent, the elections brought to office a moderate, secular coalition government despite persistent instances of violence across the country. However, since mid-2014, the country has seen the rise and progression of two parallel governing systems, one based in Tobruk, controlling the Libyan National Army (LNA), the other based in Tripoli with the international endorsement and support of the UN and external allies, further complicating the already byzantine political landscape of post-uprising Libya.

As one of the key markers of the conflict, tribal violence has gone unaddressed under Al-Qaddafi and further exacerbated in the post-uprising Libya. While this item took a backseat on the agenda of the recent internationally-brokered peace talks, this issue remains crucial to tackling the country’s peaceful power-sharing. The inability of the dual government to impose a monopoly on violence has been further perpetuated by the 2013 Political Isolation Law, which came as an attempt to prevent members of the Qaddafi regime from holding public office during the country’s transition to peace and stable power-sharing. Moreover, most of the militias across the country have been paid by one of the two rival governments despite failed attempts to incorporate them in the budding, but still weak, national security forces. This is in addition to a massive number of weapons still in possession of private individuals.

Marginalized in the peace talks, one impeding factor that cannot be ignored is the rising influence of radical Islamists, including various branches of ISIS), aided by larger regional movements. Such groups have actively worked to undermine any progress toward peace, as stabilization is not in their interest. One particularly (unclear) has been garnering support from the local population by undertaking charity work, especially for martyrs’ families. They have positioned themselves as worthy challengers by providing socio-economic assistance where the government had previously failed. As a consequence, the Islamist agenda is becoming more attractive for Libyans, begging the question of potential legitimacy of either of the two competing governments in any post-conflict scenario.

Post-2011, the deep-seated tribal divisions that had been utilized by the Qaddafi regime have been left untouched, which has opened a Pandora’s box of difficulties for consolidating any power-sharing mechanisms and establishing peace. The tribe-state relations in Libya have been historically fluid, pragmatic and opportunistic, and the marginalization has reinforced the co-optation of some tribes, but contended to threaten the exclusion of others. The downside of tribal involvement in security provision is that protection is offered in selective manner, reproducing politics of co-optation and exclusion at local level.

The 2011 uprising led to a Libyan polity that was able to remove Qaddafi from power, yet remained short of addressing the tribe-government nexus, which was later swallowed by a vortex of militias, extremist groups and external players. This conundrum was furthered by the NATO intervention in Libya and the intense involvement of external forces in the country’s civil war, a factor that marks the conflict even today and continues to be one of the greatest impediments to any serious peace negotiation. As an antithesis to any on-ground progression toward peace, the role of external forces further complicates the situation in the country by internationalizing its conflict without tackling its domestic drivers.

The UN has been involved in the country since the beginning of the Libyan revolt in 2011. Following the NATO intervention in Libya, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), established in September of the same year, became the primary international body seeking reconciliation between various revolutionary groups. Egypt and Russia have steadily supported the House of Representatives in Tobruk in efforts to drive other groups out of Benghazi and Eastern Libya, according to some reports, while Turkey, Qatar and Sudan have supported the Tripoli-based government.

Ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict

Despite several meetings that have taken place and those that are scheduled in the old continent, the short- and medium-term future of Libya continues to hang on a thread. As the first meeting between Libya’s warring sides since early 2018, the Berlin conference failed to produce fruitful and credible results. The sequel, seen in the Munich Security Conference held in early February, merely addressed the failures of its predecessor. The most recent Geneva talks failed to even include the warring sides. These failures, especially the inability to stop the supply of weapons to various factions in Libya, indicate a lack of credible commitment by both local and international actors toward any sustainable peace efforts.

Following the latest peace effort in Geneva, the next meeting is scheduled for early March in Rome, though it remains uncertain which of the parties will attend. While the unprecedented frequency of high-level meetings indicates renewed global interest in resolving the conflicts in Libya, these platforms have also been used as an extension of proxy confrontations among various sides. For instance, the European Union has, thus far, used the UN arms embargo on Libya to cease its Operation Sophia and launch Operation EU Active Surveillance. In parallel, Turkey has used the very same political vacuum to send fighters from Syria to Libya.

These high-level discussions have largely contributed to the marginalization of previously-mentioned local processes within Libya, thereby undermining the efforts of local actors to maintain their step-by-step approach to forging the country’s peaceful future. Ensuring that no external party further complicates the on-ground conundrum has proven to be virtually impossible. In the short-term, the international community needs to work on establishing credibility and trust in order for all sides to step away from armed conflict. And in the long-term, all parties involved have to diligently and collectively work on securing a permanent cessation of hostilities as both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the resumption of Libya’s dormant political process.

The urgent need for a negotiated solution is compounded by Libya’s rapidly deteriorating economic situation, with a contributory factor in the UN’s prediction that more than 900,000 people in the country will be in need of some form of humanitarian assistance in 2020. Perhaps the right solution lies beyond regularly meeting and talking peace with the warring sides, in their presence or otherwise.

Competing external and internal factions

In an interplay between domestic forces and international actors, eastern Libya ports, controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA) under the command of Khalifa Haftar, have shut down oil exports, resulting in national crude output being cut by more than half ahead of the Berlin summit. In addition, of the build-up to the Munich follow-up conference held on February 16-17, a period of calm was overshadowed by high-level discussions on the future of the UN arms embargo on Libya and the complicating factor of Turkish troops being deployed in the war-torn country.

As the first meeting between the warring sides since 2018, the Berlin summit left a bitter aftertaste for both the LNA Chief, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and the Prime Minister of the GNA, Fayez al-Sarraj. In January 2020, as many as 11 world leaders and both warring sides of the Libyan conflict walked away with a diluted pledge to cease the flow of weapons into Libya and a promise to form a five-by-five military council to negotiate a ceasefire in the near future. In the event, the Munich follow-up meetings produced similar results to the most recent Geneva talks.

In the post-Berlin period, the international community has maintained its focus on the conflict-torn Libya despite the tensions and conflicting interests that undermined the negotiations in Geneva.

The renewed efforts to seek a solution have been galvanized by Turkey’s direct military intervention in the conflict. Even as Berlin prepared for the meeting, the UN called for an end to foreign intervention in Libya. Yet Turkey announced in January that it is sending troops to Libya in support of the GNA. The decision was backed by the deployment of hundreds of Syrian fighters to bolster the GNA forces’ efforts, envisioned to work in tandem with the Turkish forces. Around the time of the Munich conference, however, additional reports surfaced that Turkey sent fighters to fight in Libya, a move that underscored the extent to which the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prepared to disregard the UN-led principle of non-involvement. Although Erdogan stated that Turkish forces were involved in Libya for training purposes only, the intervention suggests that Turkey wishes to further assert its power in the Eastern Mediterranean in order to overcome its relative diplomatic isolation following recent agreements between Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel on exploring local hydrocarbons reserves.

The announcement served as a prelude to ceasefire negotiations and a mini-summit between the GNA, supported by Turkey, Qatar and Italy, and the LNA, supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France and Russia, that took place on January 13 in Moscow, reflecting the fact that Russia increasingly sees Libya as one of the focal points of its interest in the region. President Vladimir Putin’s interest in the conflict stems from his ambition to assert Russia’s interests in the Mediterranean as part of a strategic push-and-pull with the Western powers and a conviction that Russia’s status necessitates a say in the outcome of the Libyan civil war. However, the January talks in Moscow prematurely ended when Haftar requested more time for consideration, subsequently leaving Russia without a concrete agreement and signaling to Moscow and other capitals that Haftar’s objectives might greatly differ from their agendas.

With no concrete steps on the horizon, the reiteration of the urgency of obtaining peace in Libya was at the heart of the Munich debate. Despite the fact that the Berlin summit hosted all the key players of the Libyan conflict, including the Arab League and the African Union in an attempt to prevent the marginalization of Libya’s immediate neighbours, the ultimate conclusion did not progress from previous efforts. Moreover, the voices of both the Arab League and the African Union have gone unheard amid renewed tensions and the latest spill of weapons into Libya, despite prominent statements from the region repeatedly seeking consensus-based political arrangements.

The unofficial ceasefire declared by Turkey and Russia, who support the GNA and Haftar respectively, has reduced active fighting to Libya’s capital since it went into force on January 12; however, no official document detailing the ceasefire has been signed. Under the auspices of the UN special envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salame, Germany was hoping to finalize a political roadmap agreement during the Berlin summit in Europe’s latest and most concrete attempt to stabilize Libya; however, no concrete follow-up has been negotiated as of February 27th.

Viable future avenues

While the UN is seeking a step away from foreign interference in Libya, focusing on transforming the unofficial ceasefire into an official agreement with monitoring and separation of rival groups and repositioning of heavy weapons, the most recent wave of geopolitical focus on Libya paints a different picture. Turkey has sent troops to Libya, followed by a Russian-led ceasefire negotiation that was left open-ended, as a prelude to the Berlin summit and Europe’s increased involvement in Libya’s future. In negotiating the ceasefire and Libya’s post-conflict peace landscape, efforts to build a new Libya should take into account the country’s strong tribal character and should look into integrating tribal forces in a manner that favors the central state project while simultaneously allowing for true representation and inclusion of all local and tribal entities.

In the long-term, an improvement of the current situation in Libya is direly needed, especially in terms of the rule of law, the socio-economic sector; and infrastructure. Politically, such a leap toward peace could be achieved through federalism and a step-by-step approach in addressing the country’s system of dual governance and underlying tribal issues, that could further aid both national and international efforts in containing armed opposition and re-securing entire Libya’s territory.

Ultimately, securing Libya’s peace process will be a tedious and fickle process. The international community and the parties to the conflict have to stick to the step-by-step approach to tackling each issue that is undermining the credibility of actors and viability of a peaceful status quo. In the short-term, all sides will have to jointly and in good faith work on establishing and maintaining the credibility of intention and trust. In concrete terms, abiding by the UN arms embargo on Libya may not necessitate the cessation of other measures, which is what the EU had done with Operation Sophia to launch Operation EU Active Surveillance. This will also demand greater involvement by other parties as well, which have thus far been seen as marginal to the negotiations, including the African Union, with a stronger pledge to adhere to the UN embargo. In the long-run, such efforts will ensure a permanent cessation of hostilities within Libya along with a greater degree of certainty of not reverting to lawlessness.

[i] Kuperman, Alan J. “A model humanitarian intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya campaign.” International Security 38.1 (2013): 105-136.

Author’s profile: http://trendsresearch.org/expert/emina-osmandzikovic/

This article was first published by TRENDS Research & Advisory.

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Credit: UN News/Li Zhang

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2020 (IPS)

The deadly coronavirus COVID-19, which is spreading across China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy, the Philippines– along with new cases in Asia, Western Europe and the Middle East– has claimed one of its first casualties at the United Nations.

The annual inter-governmental meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), due to take place March 9-20, is being described as dead on arrival (DOA).

But it is still likely to take place as scheduled— minus the participation of over 5,000 to 6,000 delegates from overseas.

The 11-day meeting, the largest single gathering of women delegates from 193 countries, is being significantly downgraded because of the threat of COVID-19.

The United States, meanwhile, has postponed its own summit of world leaders of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) due to take place in Las Vegas March 14.

“As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting previously scheduled for mid-March,” a senior administration official was quoted as saying.

Ma.Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the 64th session of the upcoming CSW session should not be cancelled because of the outbreak of coronavirus disease — but its methodology should be modified.

“It is a very important event that brings a big momentum to our advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality, especially this year as we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most comprehensive global women’s rights agenda,” she pointed out.

In light of the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the UN Secretary-General’s suggestion to the Chair of the CSW that Member States consider amending the format and conduct of the session is a good idea, she said.

“However, I don’t think it should be limited to New York-based delegations only. The valued-added of CSW sessions lie on the huge participation of women’s rights activists and gender experts from around the world,” said Cabrera Balleza.

Such strong participation allows for discussions on diverse topics that impact on women’s enjoyment of their rights in political, economic, and social arenas, she noted.

UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters February 28 that given the fast evolving situation regarding COVID-19– and the need to balance the UN’s critical work and public health concerns—UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has suggested to the Bureau of the Committee on the Status of Women that they hold a scaled down meeting, limiting participation to New York based representation.

This, in effect, would bar delegates coming from their home countries preventing the spread of the virus through travel.

The limited participation, Dujarric pointed out, would still enable the CSW to adopt decisions and implement its mandate.

The final decision, which is likely to be aligned with the recommendation made by Guterres, will be taken by the 193 member states later this week.

Emergency room nurses wear face masks at Second People’s Hospital of Shenzhen in China. Credit: Man Yi/ UN News

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his first priority “is to protect our homeland. We have imposed prudent travel restrictions and strong travel advisories to slow the spread of the virus in the United States.”

This could, in effect, prevent women delegates from some the US blacklisted countries from entering the US and participating in the CSW session.

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news briefing February 24: “It’s not so much of a question if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.”

She said that cities and towns should plan for “social distancing measures,” like dividing school classes into smaller groups of students or closing schools altogether. Meetings and conferences may have to be canceled, she said. And businesses should arrange for employees to work from home.

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the CSW session, like in the case of other large meetings and conferences, is under serious consideration on the part of the organizers of canceling the meeting due to the growing epidemic of the coronavirus COVID-19.

“As an advocate of women’s issues, I will of course be disappointed if the meeting is not held as planned but as a public health professional as well, I would advocate for caution.”

She said the situation of the virus is evolving rapidly and merits a careful assessment of the risks of any global meeting.

The meeting is next week and countries remain at different stages of preparedness to deal with the epidemic, said Mane, a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

She pointed out that the World Health Organization (WHO) has consistently advised against the application of travel restrictions.

However, several countries have imposed restrictions nonetheless, such as quarantine, visa restrictions or denial of entry of passengers.

In others there is far stricter screening of passengers on arrival and discrimination against citizens from certain regions of the world, even though the epidemic has spread to every continent except Antarctica, and cases are growing on a daily basis, she declared.

Cabrera Balleza told IPS: If most CSW participants will not be able to travel to New York, virtual conferences can be organized.

However, UN country teams and governments in developing and conflict-affected countries should open up their offices so grassroots women’s rights activists can go there, use the internet and participate in virtual conferences.

The UN should also provide transportation and interpretation support during virtual conferences, she noted.

As WHO has declared a global emergency over the coronavirus and has been lending support to China and other countries, the UN HQ in NY should ensure that it is taking all necessary precautions and its operations are not in any way contributing to the spread of the disease.

There are a number of logistical challenges in organizing a modified CSW session but they are not insurmountable.

If the UN and Member States are truly committed to women’s rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment, they will mobilize necessary resources to ensure that the CSW session in 2020, will contribute to making this a pivotal year for the accelerated realization of women’s empowerment and gender equality for all women and girls around the world, said Cabrera Balleza.

The other key concern, she said, is the lack of “care planning” if participants catch the virus.

“What if they get sick when they are already in New York? Are there enough facilities that are equipped to handle coronavirus cases? Let alone the cost of medical care in NY. What if they get sick on the way back to their countries? Not having immediate access to care when traveling is a big problem,” she cautioned.

Mane told IPS that in a situation in which many countries are not in a state of topnotch preparedness for dealing with this epidemic, it is judicious to wait to hold a global meeting.

“And in a situation in which some countries are imposing travel restrictions despite WHO advice, it is obvious that not everybody who wants and should be present at this important meeting will be able to participate in person, anyway, reducing the impact of the CSW meeting.”

She said that each of the intergovernmental meetings is expected to be assessed on a case-by-case basis depending on the evolving situation.

But since the CSW is the first major intergovernmental meeting of 2020, the decision will undeniably impact other intergovernmental meetings to follow.

For the CSW, taking into consideration the pragmatic and public health considerations, it makes sense to give countries more time for building preparedness and to permit the presence of more delegates at the CSW.

It might be optimal either to organize country level meetings to feed into global recommendations for the CSW or an outright postponement of the date, so that when the CSW is held, it is a truly global event. In view of the vital subject of women’s status being dealt at the CSW, it would be prudent and ethical to do so.

UN Spokesperson Dujarric said the advice given by the Secretary-General is based on inputs from the Senior Emergency Policy Team and very close consultations between the U.N. Medical Services and the WHO.

“Forthcoming intergovernmental meetings at Headquarters and elsewhere will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the specificities of the meetings and evolving circumstances,” he added.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

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Members of the Alliance for Food Health, a collective of organisations and academics, called in Mexico for better regulation of advertising of junk food aimed at children and of food and beverage labelling, during the launch of the report “A childhood hooked on obesity” in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Paradoxically, when the number of people suffering from undernourishment or hunger has risen in the world, so, too, have those afflicted by overweight and obesity. Latin America’s second largest economy, Mexico, for instance, is currently battling one of the world’s largest epidemics of obesity and its success is bound to be emulated by countries of the South. The numbers involved are staggering. The director-general of the National Institute of Public Health, Dr Juan Rivera told the Financial Times that “seventy five percent of adults and 35 percent of children and adolescents are overweight or obese… The State has a duty to protect public health.”

Mexico’s public health crisis is reflected in the third edition of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) – based on the pillars of sustainable agriculture, food loss/waste and nutritional challenges — developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in Italy. Nutritional challenges in particular are tracked by several indicators like life quality (prevalence of malnourishment, micronutrient deficiency), life expectancy (prevalence of overnourishment, impact on health) and dietary patterns (diet composition, number of people per fast food restaurant and quality of policy response to dietary patterns).

Out of a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 represents the greatest progress towards meeting a performance indicator, Mexico registered low scores of 13.9 on the prevalence of overnourishment or overweight that ranks it 61st out of 67 countries tracked by the FSI.The share of those who are overweight among adults and children are also broadly in line with what was indicated by Dr Rivera. Mexican diets have high levels of sugar with a score of 10.3 that places it among the bottom five out of the 67 countries as per this indicator. The score for the number of people per fast food restaurant is also rather low at 1.9.

N Chandra Mohan

However, Mexico is in the top five countries for its policy response to dietary patterns. The country now plans to have a compulsory labeling system in place by March whereby food and beverage products sold in the country will have warnings that they “contain too much sugar” or “too many calories” or “too much fat”. In 2014, this country imposed taxes on sugar in foods like soft drinks and junk food. But this taxation route has had a limited impact in curbing consumption of these items as obesity has acquired epidemic proportions. Non-communicable diseases in the population have also increased like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

The proximate causes of this obesity epidemic stem from more and more Mexicans living in urban areas with economic development. Only a fifth now resides in rural areas. Urbanisation in turn has been associated with shifts in dietary patterns from traditional foods including fruits and vegetables towards low-cost energy-dense foods that are high in sugar and deficient in micronutrients. Metropolitan life styles are also sedentary than living in the rural countryside. With the consumption of more fast food and sugary drinks, the energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended is manifested in overweight and obesity.

To combat obesity, a welcome factor of change is that local communities, especially in Mexico’s countryside, are also getting involved in this effort. Last year, IPS reported the efforts of the non-governmental Amaranth Network in the Mixteca region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, to grow a native crop amaranth alongside traditional corn and beans. The inclusion of amaranth with other high protein seeds helps to significantly improve the nutritional quality of diets. The cultivation of this crop has produced benefits such as the organisation of farmers, processors and consumers and much-needed public funding to scale up this laudable initiative.

In contrast to Mexico, elsewhere in the South – in vast parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia like India — the problem is much grimmer with the paradox of undernourishment or hunger coexisting with obesity. This double burden of malnutrition co-exists within countries, within communities and also within households according to Dr Raghav Gaiha, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Manchester. The excess energy from low-cost energy-dense food can affect children and adults within the same household differently: The children may use up the excess energy and remain underweight while adults are likely to become overweight.

In India, for instance, the ranks of the hungry are also set to further rise with domestic food prices (including global as well) going through the roof amidst a sharp slowdown in overall economic growth. This can constrain budgetary resources for vastly stepping up outlays for nutrition initiatives for children through schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services and Mid-day Meals Programme. The provision of healthy food items like millets and pulses through the nationwide public distribution system is also necessary. The prevalence of hunger with rising obesity calls for best practices to be shared within the South.

N Chandra Mohan is an economics and business commentator

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Civil protection volunteers engaged in health checks at the "Milano Malpensa" airport. This week a joint team between WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control arrived in Rome to review the public health measures put in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Courtesy: Dipartimento Protezione Civile

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 2020 (IPS)

Just a month since the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus a public health emergency, it is now taking steps to contain misinformation being spread about the disease. Globally, there have been more than 82,000 cases of Coronavirus, which has claimed 2,800 lives — the majority being in China, where the disease has been traced to. 

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres reiterated at a talk in New York that it’s not yet a pandemic but urged people to practice caution. 

“We are not yet in a pandemic, but there is a clear risk there and the window of opportunity to avoid it is narrowing,” he said, adding that governments must do everything possible to stop the transmission and to do it now. He also expressed his concern about countries in the developing world that “lack the capacity” to address the massive scale of the issue. 

“This is still the moment to ask for countries to contain the disease and to do everything possible to contain the disease because we’re not yet in an irreversible pandemic,” he said. 

He urged people to avoid stigmatising the illness, and to “have a human rights approach to the way this disease is fought”.

However, as health officials around the world continue to gear up for the disease, which seemingly has no cure, there is another aspect of the crisis to be dealt with: misinformation about it spreading on the internet. 

David P. Fidler, a senior fellow for cybersecurity and global health at the non-profit think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, detailed the issue of misinformation and the harm it does during a health emergency like this. 

“Disinformation threatens health because it undermines confidence in the underlying science, questions the motivations of health professionals, politicises health activities, and creates problems for responses to disease challenges,” he wrote in 2019 about how disinformation during an Ebola outbreak was a major concern. 

He went on to explain that it has historic roots: often, illnesses are mistakenly associated or linked to immigrants or a foreign country in order to perpetuate xenophobic sentiments.

“Spreading misinformation about diseases was a tactic of disinformation campaigns by governments before the social media era,” he wrote. 

IPS caught up with Fidler on how misinformation in the current situation can exacerbate the crisis:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Usually during a crisis like this (or in the past during Ebola or SARS), what is the main challenge in containing misinformation being spread?

David Fidler (DF): In past outbreaks, two factors typically converged to produce problems from information and misinformation: uncertainty about the outbreak on the part of national and international health officials making efforts to address the disease, and lack of trust in the population in the information provided by official sources. These factors appeared in disease outbreaks before the advent of social media, and the scale and intensity of information and misinformation circulating on social media platforms exacerbates the two factors noted above.

In addition, the ease with which misinformation can be spread and amplified on social media has become yet another factor public health officials have to address in dealing with outbreaks. Social media even makes communicating accurate information more difficult. I have seen, across my Twitter feed, a cacophony of attempts to share information that has frustrated experts trying to identify and share the latest information about COVID-19.

 

IPS: What leads to misinformation during times like this?

DF: In the past, people with political agendas would exploit the fear that serious outbreaks create to produce and spread misinformation. Such misinformation in essence weaponised the outbreak for other political purposes. In the age of social media, this “weaponisation” of outbreaks for political purposes has become, for lack of a better term, industrialised by state and non-state actors exploiting the potential of social media to spread misinformation on a scale and at a speed never seen before, especially in the public health context.

 

IPS: What, in your opinion, is currently the biggest misunderstanding about the Coronavirus?

DF: We are seeing, I think, a “triple burden” in the information space concerning COVID-19. First, international and national health officials are struggling to communicate information concerning a new virus about which much is not known.

However, at the international level, WHO has made the information climate worse by praising China’s response even though much of what China has done in trying to address the outbreak in its territory is not consistent with WHO’s recommendations on the outbreak or WHO’s emphasis in the past on responses to outbreaks that do not unnecessarily restrict trade, travel, and human rights. WHO’s credibility, I think, has taken a massive hit. At the national level, we see, for example, the current circus in the U.S. government about communicating to the American people about the outbreak, and I imagine other national governments are also scrambling to get the “messaging” right.

What’s astonishing to me, having studied outbreaks for nearly three decades, is that this communication problem continues to flummox national and international health officials just about every single time–so that “lesson learned” is apparently never actually learned.

Second, we are seeing the weaponisation of the outbreak in the misinformation being circulated for different political purposes. For me, this outbreak is different in that the weaponisation has connected to the change in geopolitics, with the rise of China and worries about China’s growing power and influence sharpening and broadening criticism of China’s response to the outbreak. Here, unlike Ebola in Africa, we have the outbreak entangled with the increasing rawness of balance of power politics between the United States and China.

Third, we have the social media effect where state and non-state actors are spreading misinformation widely and rapidly in a context where no government or international organisation has any effective policy responses to address this problem.

 

IPS: What is your recommendation to the following sections of society to do their role in making sure misinformation doesn’t spread:

 

DF: Policymakers: The touchstones of effective communication during outbreaks have been studied and promulgated frequently, so follow the playbook, including making the most up-to-date information available with great frequency across media outlets in ways accessible to people, and include in the information advice on any steps individuals can take to protect themselves and their families. Rinse and repeat, again and again as the outbreak evolves. The information/misinformation environment is more competitive now because of social media, but the basic principles of effective communication in a crisis context remain valid even amidst more noise.

 

DF: Institutions such as schools and workplaces: School and company leaders should monitor information being released by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and translate that information into actionable steps and plans for the school context and for specific workplace contexts. Again, be fast, frequent, and user-friendly with the information that school and company leaders provide to students and employees.

 

Individuals: Do not rely solely on social media for information about the COVID-19 outbreak and how it might affect you and your family. Visit and re-visit the information provided by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and translate that information into your individual and family circumstances. 

• In order to tackle the misinformation concerns, WHO launched its EPI-WIN initiative, which aims to provide users with timely and accurate information while also filtering through “infodemics”, which the organisation describes as “excessive amount of information about a problem that makes it difficult to identify a solution”. 

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