Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Wan Manan Muda and Tan Zhai Gen
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

Malnutrition remains a formidable challenge in most societies, with less than a tenth of countries in the world not experiencing at least one major malnutrition problem.

In relatively more food secure countries, where almost everyone has enough to eat, and few live in fear of a sudden loss of access to food, micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) often still loom large.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

One such country is Malaysia where rice is, by and large, available and affordable to almost everyone. However, what else Malaysians eat is quite problematic, causing to undernutrition in terms of micronutrients and other food-related health problems.

Malaysia has long been a melting pot of different cultures, resulting in various traditional foods and food customs coming together and changing with new technological, demographic, environmental, market and other behavioural influences.

Like most other societies, Malaysia has not been exempt from global trends, with greater food consumption away from home, and the growing popularity of ‘convenience foods’, deep-frying as well as sugared food and beverages.

Diets must improve
Undernutrition, or nutrient deficiencies, remains high, even though hunger, or dietary energy undernourishment, has greatly declined. However, stunting among children under 5 increased from 17.2% in 2006 to 20.7% in 2016, as the share of underweight children rose from 12.9% to 13.7%.

Public health efforts should ensure adequate micronutrient absorption in daily food consumption as deficiencies causing serious problems are largely ignored. For instance, median Malaysian calcium intake was less than half the recommended level in 2014.

Meanwhile, 4.9 million Malaysians were anaemic, around half women of reproductive age. Temporary supplementation for pregnant women is desperately needed, but anaemia in the general population deserves far more attention.

Wan Manan Muda

Overweight and obesity increase the risks of many NCDs such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Alarmingly, NCDs are now the leading cause of premature death and disability. Malaysia is now among the ‘heaviest’ societies in Asia, with 17.7% of adults obese, and a further 30.0% overweight in 2015.

In less than two decades, the prevalence of diabetes increased from 6.9% in 1996 to 17.5% in 2015. NCDs reduce productivity and quality of life, and unnecessarily raise health costs, both private and public, with 10–19% of national healthcare spending in 2018 obesity-related.

While dietary energy consumption, mainly of carbohydrates, initially rises with income, further increases in food spending tend to increase dietary diversity.

But without nutrition awareness, changing food behaviours are typically influenced by new cultural norms, e.g., convenience considerations, peer influence, advertising and fads.

Overweight and obesity are also subject to genetics, behaviour, food consumption, physical activity, illness and globalization, e.g., more ‘food processing’ and ‘convenience foods’. Tackling these factors will improve health and use of scarce healthcare resources.

Improving policies
Like others, Malaysia’s nutrition programmes and policies have evolved. Post-independence nutrition programmes initially focused on improving living conditions among rural populations who constituted over two-thirds of its population in the late 1960s.

These efforts have included school feeding programmes, especially for poor children. But such programmes have been undermined by poor intersectoral, multi-stakeholder coordination, inadequate financing, limited human resource capacities and capabilities as well as poor monitoring and evaluation.

A well-organized, government-financed universal school lunch programme can not only improve nutrition for children, but also farmer incomes and food safety. These have successfully inculcated good habits in children, such as better nutrition, health awareness, physical development, learning, academic performance and cooperation.

In countries ranging from Brazil to China, procurement for such programmes has improved food production, increased incomes for farmers and others, parental participation in ensuring food safety and quality, instead of merely enriching transnational food giants.

Better food for all
Marketing of ‘junk’ and other unhealthy foods causing malnutrition needs to be restricted, especially to children, e.g., with stricter regulation of food and beverages sold in school canteens.

Food safety will also need to be improved, e.g., by reducing the overuse of antibiotics for animal, including fish breeding, and of pesticides, most of which also harm humans.

The recent California court decision deeming a popular herbicide carcinogenic raises questions about ‘no-till’ agriculture promotion, ostensibly to increase carbon sequestration in farm top soil, to mitigate greenhouse gas contributions to global warming from agriculture.

‘All-of-government’ nutrition strategies are needed to effectively and comprehensively tackle national malnutrition challenges. Sustainable food systems are needed to promote healthy diets, while public nutrition education is badly needed for both children and adults.

Like other middle-income countries, Malaysia has considerably improved food availability, affordability and stability. What remains is to improve nutrition, health and wellbeing, especially by tackling micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related NCDs.

Addressing Malnutrition in Malaysia by the three authors, all associated with the Khazanah Research Institute, is available at: www.krinstitute.org

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COP25 ended in Madrid without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

Millions of people, particularly in Africa, who lose their property, homes, and even die due to climate-related disasters will have to wait at least another year for the international community to agree on a means of supporting them.

This became clear when the 25th round of negotiations on climate change came to an end in Madrid, Spain on Dec.15 without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries.

“We expected a review of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage for it to have a clear means of implementation, especially for emergency response in Africa,” Prof Seth Osafo, the Legal adviser of the President of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told IPS.

The Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts was established in 2013 during the 19th round of climate negotiations in Warsaw, Poland under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“The common person in Africa is suffering and this is an urgent call for international support,” said Michael Arunga, the Emergency Communication Specialist for World Vision’s Mali Response office.

In Mali alone, says Arunga, 5.7 million people are in dire need of humanitarian support, among them 21.8 million children, given the climate crisis and political conflicts in the country.

Mali’s population mainly relies on agriculture as their main source of livelihood. But Arunga notes that the ever-expanding Sahara Desert, frequent droughts and floods have caused the displacement of thousands of families, especially in the northern parts of the West African nation.

Less than two months ago, 42 people died after they were buried alive by landslides in Western Cameroon following heavy rainfall in the Central African Nation.

• In East Africa, more than 130 people in Kenya lost their lives in the past two months as a result of flooding and landslides due to unexpected heavy rains pounding the region. Experts say that the heavy rains are caused by the warming up of the Indian Ocean.
• According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 330,000 people are in need of humanitarian support in the country, while at least 17,000 have been displaced in the past two months.
• “Children’s lives have been interrupted by the ongoing rains and floods in Kenya, with many of them losing their homes, schools and access to health care,” Maniza Zaman, the UNICEF Kenya Representative said in a statement released on Dec. 4.
• In Tizert Village, in the Taroudant region, southern Morocco, people are yet to forget a flash flood that swept across a soccer field on Aug.18, killing at least seven people who were watching a local match.
• Earlier this year, Southern Africa suffered Cyclone Idai and Kenneth, which led to losses of property and lives. A few months later, some countries in the region are currently experiencing extreme droughts, which experts say are as a result of climate change.

“It is evident everywhere that millions of people have been forced to migrate from their homes due to unfavourable climatic conditions and related disasters, people have lost property worth trillions of dollars, and millions more have died across Africa as a result of climate related disasters,” said Robert Muthami, a climate change expert from Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung based in Kenya.

Scientists have already warned that the situation can only worsen in the coming years, and therefore, there is need for urgent climate action.

Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists said progress was slow on getting developed nations to commit to scaling up finance for losses and damage associated with climate change impacts. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to the African negotiators, most negotiators from developed nations were non-committal on scaling up finance. “We have been discussing to very late hours, sometimes up to 3.00am in the morning, but the progress was very slow,” Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists on Friday.

According to Ambassador Seyni Nafo, the former AGN Chair, the team was forced to push some of the most important issues to the next Conference of Parties (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow in 2020.

“It is better to leave Madrid without having decisions on some key issues [rather] than having bad decisions,” said Nafo.

The negotiators said they were avoiding what they referred to as the ‘Kyoto Disease,’ where there is an agreement with rules and procedures, but without any benefit to Africa.

“It is unfortunate that industrialised countries chose to follow the unproductive path, focusing on nitty-gritty and postponing firm commitments,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Secretary for the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). “It was disappointing that they consistently avoided or sidelined any discussion related to providing support, notably finance,” he told IPS.

Studies have shown that Africa emits only four percent of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming, but the continent is the most impacted by climate change.

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Credit: United Nations

By Lasse Juhl Morthorst
COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

According to political scientist Zaki Laïdi’s La tyrannie de l’urgence (The tyranny of emergency) from 1999, crisis and emergency situations leave no time for analysis, prevention or forecasting. As an immediate protective reflex, they prevent long-term solutions and pose a serious risk of jeopardising the future.

In emergency situations, participants lack perspective, and durable solutions to human problems are treated according to the logic of immediate results and expectations of direct outcomes.

The effects of globalisation’s deepening and fragmenting landscape highlights how governance with short-term efficiency has become normative when dealing with contemporary challenges.

The so-called European refugee crisis from late 2014 and, if we buy its premise, its aftermath have come to symbolise such an emergency situation.

Contemporary political responses expose the electorate and the parties, who respectively gain and lose in the processes of globalisation.

This socio-political cleavage has allowed centre-right parties to take advantage of nationalistic values, with migration viewed through the lens of security – limitation of migration flows and the fight against terrorist groups – law and order, while the centre-left have had to bridge the working class’s fear of cheap labour and economic competition with the middle-class’s liberal socio-cultural preferences.

The European Union’s reaction towards the crisis and its aftermath cannot be seen as a political crisis reaction per se, since the solutions it initiated to manage migration built on existing legislation and practices, helping to consolidate these as routinising emergency in order to naturalise migration politics.

There is a clear political red line between addressing so-called root causes and managing migration by securing external borders and preventing movement of third-country nationals.

This is anchored in the European Commission’s comprehensive approach in the 1994 Communication to the Council, reconfirmed through the integrated approach at the 1999 European Council meeting in Tampere, and developed at the 2002 Seville meeting, where combating illegal migration and addressing root causes were top of the agenda.

What we are witnessing is rather a political crisis, which has lasted for more than a quarter of a century.

Lasse Juhl Morthorst

How did we get here?

As a result of a sceptical post-1973 oil crisis scenario, addressing root causes of migration emerged in the 1980s, with the aim of improving socio-economic conditions in the countries of migrants’ origin, to prevent unwanted migration towards Europe.

When the European Community was developing the single market, with the fluidity of the EU’s internal national borders to facilitate free internal mobility as an outcome, the fear of losing control of external migration became an increasing concern for member states.

The EU’s migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commission’s 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

In the following years, little progress was made towards a unified European migration policy. As a result, the Commission proposed the idea of a comprehensive approach to migration in 1994.

This consisted of a threefold focus: action on migration pressure through third-country cooperation, controlling immigration to make it manageable and optimisation of integration policies for legal migrants.

The root cause approach was to be seen as a long-term humanitarian development solution to the migration ‘problem’. The ideas of cooperation and addressing root causes have become the popular political take on the EU’s migration challenges, which rhetorically attempt to circumvent the negative connotations of strict migration control and hostility.

Credit: United Nations

During the last decades, the EU has been searching for a new strategic rationalist raison d’être for its common asylum policy, through harmonisation of the EU asylum legal acts, the Common European Asylum System and attempting to solve the stalemate between member states and intra-institutionally, regarding the Dublin system’s tightening Gordian knot.

The EU has failed to solve the structural and systemic impasse in approaching migration flows, which will not end by continuing harshened border controls and security measures, earmarked development aid, externalisation processes or dubious bilateral agreements.

The EU’s migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commission’s 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

Nothing new from Brussels?

Ursula von der Leyen’s new Commission is taking office in a situation shaped by vast global challenges of geopolitical turbulence and internal fragmentation, towards which she has proposed a rather pragmatic and strategic approach.

Through her manifesto and mission letters to the designated Commissioners, von der Leyen’s new ‘geopolitical Commission’ will focus on making the EU an outward-looking politically influential global powerhouse, which must protect the Union from omnipresent geopolitical and external value-based challenges.

She has proposed ‘a fresh start’ on European migration policy, via a new pact on migration and asylum, a relaunch of the Dublin reform and a new way of burden sharing (the Achilles heel of the Dublin reform).

In charge of this agenda will be Commission Vice-President for Promoting the European Way of Life Margaritis Schinas (Greece), who will work closely with Ylva Johansson (Sweden), the Commissioner for Home Affairs, and Development Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen (Finland).

There are clear tensions and ambiguity in von der Leyen’s agenda towards migration and development, which has toxically been coined with security politics, as it has to find a ‘common ground on migration by working towards a genuine European security union’.

The external dimensions of migration management are explicitly present in the mission letters to both Schinas and Johansson. In these letters, they are instructed to cooperate with the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Josep Borrell, Spain), to develop a ‘stronger cooperation with countries of origin and transit’ in the case of Johansson and ensure ‘the coherence of the external and internal dimensions of migration’ for Schinas.

The EU’s interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding.

Beyond the initial internal focus against the backdrop of the eurozone and financial crises, this aligns closely with the Juncker Commission’s focus on the external dimensions of migration.

In 2015, the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was founded to intensify cooperation with third countries. Migration is also, beyond the Trust Fund, a central element in EU foreign policy and it has further come to divide views in the debate regarding development policy.

It appears that the Union is proposing to work even more closely with partner countries to tackle human trafficking, secure borders, optimise effective returns and tackle root causes of migration through development initiatives. Schinas confirmed this at his hearing on 3 October 2019.

A reminder from the ‘field’

The collaboration with third countries regarding externalisation of borders is vastly problematic, since in some cases, as a trade-off through the funding of development aid earmarked for increased border control, it comes to support militias and authoritarian and hybrid governments.

A large amount of the support often ends up in quasi security organs of rebel groups, which have been seen continuously abusing human rights.

This can presently be witnessed in nations in the Sahel, Maghreb and MENA regions – where tight border control has led to the diversification of pre-colonial circular and reciprocal migrant routes into increasingly perilous areas and methods, along with the risk of promoting economic stagnation, recession and militia isolation.

The diversification of migration routes ultimately creates a favourable environment for the human smugglers that the Union is trying to eliminate.

The EU’s interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding. These policies do not tackle any root causes of migration; by aiding regional security units and military forces, they risk limiting democratic accountability and aggravating repression – some of the actual root causes of migration.

Agreements of principles and statements of intention do not compensate for the deflection of focus of an international community’s failure to get to grips with the need of today’s migrants for protection and recognition.

Von der Leyen’s agenda seems like an anachronistic reverberation of the unsuccessful policies introduced more than three decades ago, despite the opportunity to begin abolishing the tyranny of emergency.

*This article first appeared in International Politics and Society (IPS) published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

The post EU Policies Don’t Tackle Root Causes of Migration – They Risk Aggravating Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lasse Juhl Morthorst* is a freelance writer and researcher. He mainly works on international politics, development, refugee- and human rights issues.

The post EU Policies Don’t Tackle Root Causes of Migration – They Risk Aggravating Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post How to Recognise Nigeria’s Trafficked Kids appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In this edition of Voices from the Global South, IPS correspondent Tobore Ovuorie takes to the streets of Lagos to find out what Nigerians know about human and child trafficking.

The post How to Recognise Nigeria’s Trafficked Kids appeared first on Inter Press Service.

"They're the ideal duo," because the combination of solar and biogas sources makes it possible to provide electricity around the clock, one during the day and the other at night, says Anelio Thomazzoni, a pig farmer who has become a producer of clean energy in southwestern Brazil.

By Mario Osava
VARGEÃO, Brazil, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

“They’re the ideal duo,” because the combination of solar and biogas sources makes it possible to provide electricity around the clock, one during the day and the other at night, says Anelio Thomazzoni, a pig farmer who has become a producer of clean energy in southwestern Brazil.

Thomazzoni, who owns a farm in Vargeão, a small municipality of 3,500 people in the west of the state of Santa Catarina, where he raises and fattens 38,000 hogs, uses the manure to extract biogas and generate 280,000 KW-hours per month.

The generation of energy will increase 46 percent when the solar panels that he is installing on 6,000 square metres of his 100-hectare farm begin to operate. And it will rise further when his largest biodigester, currently under construction, is completed, because it will provide more biogas for his three electric generators.

 

 

A new farm, with 30,000 pigs, will represent more meat and more biogas that can be converted into electricity or biomethane, the purified gas used as fuel for trucks, tractors and passenger vehicles.

The enthusiasm of the 60-year-old Thomazzoni is fueled by the promising new business he has been developing over the past four years, which already generates significant additional income.

He also saves on energy costs by consuming a small part of the electricity generated.

And what is left of the manure after the gas is extracted is converted into fertiliser for growing hay and for a eucalyptus plantation used for firewood. “I have an integrated production system,” he tells IPS proudly at his farm.

With solar energy, he believes he will achieve a perfect combination, using biogas to generate electricity when there is no sunlight.

Biogas power plants, which are just beginning to take on an important role in Brazil’s energy mix, help provide stability to the electric grid affected by the expansion of solar and wind sources, whose intermittency must be offset by a “storable” source to ensure distribution without fluctuations or blackouts.

Biogas also contributes to mitigating global warming, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and helps keep the environment clean by making use of garbage and urban sewage, agricultural waste and manure that would otherwise contaminate the water and soil.

For all of these reasons Thomazzoni has become an activist advocating this alternative source of energy. He heads a national association of pig farmers who produce biogas, which seeks to foment the production of this alternative fuel through agreements that entail mutual benefits, such as market expansion and the exchange of incipient technologies that require adaptation to local conditions.

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By External Source
MADRID, Dec 16 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The African Development Bank has urged the continent’s nations to stay the course on climate action, after a marathon session of talks at the twenty-fifth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 25) in Madrid.

The conference was scheduled to run from 2 to 13 December, but only concluded business on Sunday, two days after the official programme ended. 

Meanwhile, back home, Africans were reminded of the all-too-real consequences if these talks fail to deliver results. Thousands of East Africans have been displaced in the wake of heavy rains that have battered the region since October, and more wet weather is expected due to an Indian Ocean Dipole attributed to the warming of the ocean.

Such extreme weather events should galvanise Africans; their governments are spending 2% of GDP on climate related disasters, said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank. He encouraged the global community to remain steadfast in finding effective solutions to climate change.   The annual negotiations are now in their 25th year.

“The global community, and in particular Africa has a lot to offer in terms of solutions; what is evidently lacking is the global political will to turn potential into wealth to serve humanity and the planet,”” said Nyong, who led the Bank’s delegation to the UN conference.

At the conference, African delegates pushed for support for climate finance to build resilience against the impact of climate change and for special consideration for Africa around targets contained in the treaties under discussion.

The discussions at COP 25 centred around the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls on countries to cut carbon emissions to ensure that global temperatures do not rise by more than 2°C by the end of this century, while attempting to contain it within 1.5°C.  The conference ended with a declaration on the “urgent need” to close the gap between existing emissions pledges and the temperature goals of the Paris agreement.

The African Development Bank attended the conference to lend strategic support to its regional member countries in the negotiations.

Nyong pointed out that Africa is committed; 51 of the 54 African countries have already ratified their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement signed at the landmark COP21 in Paris. The NDCs are specific climate change targets that each country must set.

Support for the Bank-funded Desert to Power project highlighted Africa’s determination to strive for a climate-friendly world, especially for its local populations, said Nyong. Desert to Power is a $20 billion initiative to deploy solar energy solutions across the entire Sahel region, generating 10,000 MW to provide 250 million people with clean electricity.

“The African Development Bank stands ready as ever to assist its regional member countries to build resilience against climate change, as indicated by the Bank’s decision to join the Alliance for Hydromet Development, announced at COP 25. The Alliance will assist developing countries to build resilience against the impact of natural disasters caused by extreme weather,” Nyong said.

The Bank will also continue to drive initiatives to strengthen the ability of regional member countries to advocate robustly at global forums such as COP 25, Nyong added. One example was the Bank’s participation at the annual African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and support for the Africa Group of Negotiations (AGN). 

“We look forward to engaging further with regional member countries and other parties to ensure that the continent’s development agenda remains on track,” Nyong added.

Leaders and institutions from 196 nations plus the European Union, who have signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, attended the conference in Madrid.

Media contact: Gershwin Wanneburg, Communication and External Relations Department, African Development Bank email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org   

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The glaciers of the Andes Mountains are threatened by global warming. Credit: Julieta Sokolowicz/IPS

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

By any measure this has been a devastating year: fires across the Amazon, the Arctic and beyond; floods and drought in Africa; rising temperatures, carbon emissions and sea levels; accelerating loss of species, and mass forced migrations of people.

As seen through the eyes of IPS reporters and contributors around the world, 2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all, and hopefully also for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.

Calls to combat the climate emergency were ringing in the ears of delegations from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit that opened in Madrid on December 2. Yet despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, fears remained that the two weeks of negotiations would end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

But the heads of government of the world’s biggest emitters were notably absent, including Donald Trump of the US, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to host the meeting, also stayed away rather than face a hostile reception. Protests against the fires sweeping Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the government’s encouragement of deforestation are spreading around the world, especially in Europe. Youth is the new face of activism as inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others.

In one of many scientific surveys ringing alarm bells in 2019, a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, warned that more than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

The climate crisis and species extinction are twin challenges with far-reaching consequences. IPS this year covered how drought in some areas of Africa is leading to re-runs of famine and migration.

The expanding Sahara desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. The Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Relief workers warned in November that more than 50 million people across southern, eastern and central Africa were facing hunger crises because of extreme weather conditions made worse by poverty and conflict.

While much of the Horn of Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are being ravaged by drought, small island states, especially in the Pacific, are sinking beneath rising sea levels or becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes and typhoons.

Irregular migration is on the rise, and has driven thousands to their deaths on hazardous journeys. The thousands drowned crossing the Mediterranean has led to projects like Migrants as Messengers in Guinea launched by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which recruits returnees to raise awareness of the dangers.

People smugglers make money out of migrants with scant regard for their safety while other vulnerable people, especially women and girls, fall into the hands of exploitative human traffickers. As a major source of migrants heading towards the United States, Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world. Human trafficking has deep roots in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for decades and, as IPS has reported this year, it increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks and help women forced into sexual exploitation.

Over 40 million people are estimated to be enslaved around the world. Presenting her report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN expert Urmila Bhoola pointed out that servitude will likely increase as the world faces rapid changes in the workplace, environmental degradation, migration and demographic shifts.

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal / IPS

Eradicating modern slavery by 2030, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would require the freeing of 10,000 people a day, Ms Bhoola reported, citing the NGO Walk Free.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 70 million people are currently displaced by conflict, the most since the Second World War. Among them are nearly 26 million who have fled their countries (over half under the age of 18). But the response of many countries has been to erect barriers and walls.

And the plight of some one million Muslim Rohingya refugees, driven out of Myanmar into Bangladesh, shows little sign of resolution. Paralysis at the U.N. Security Council, where veto-wielding China can protect its interests in Myanmar, has triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Bangladesh is already struggling with the impact of severe cyclones in November and, as recently reported by IPS, long-term projects are helping its own climate migrants achieve food security. Because of government interventions in agriculture, Bangladesh has already achieved sufficiency in food. According to the Food Sustainability Index 2018 of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) many farmers have substantially reduced fertiliser use and increased yields.

The SDGs made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change.

But since 2016 global numbers of hungry people have been on the rise again. In September a welcome $650 million of funding reached CGIAR, a partnership of funders and international agricultural research centres and formerly known as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.

At the other extreme, April is Reducing Food Waste Month in the United States, as efforts mount to reduce food loss and waste, and deal with growing obesity. For the U.S. and 66 other countries BCFN has produced a food sustainability index profile that dives into all the relevant sectors, ranging from management of water resources, the impact on land of animal feed and biofuels, agricultural subsidies and diversification of agricultural system, to nutritional challenges, physical activity, diet and healthy life expectancy indicators.

The Global Commission on Adaptation Report, launched in October, says the number of people who may lack sufficient water, at least one month per year, will soar from 3.6 billion today to more than 5 billion by 2050. Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and girls who bear the brunt of looking for water.

Nutrition is the best investment in developing Africa, experts say, with evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities. The nutritional situation is worrying in Africa, Busi Maziya-Dixon, a Senior Food and Nutrition Scientist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told IPS with research showing all forms of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and obesity, are growing. “We need to educate our governments to link nutrition to economic development and prioritize nutrition.”

Overall investment in Africa continued to gather pace in 2019, however. Amid IMF warnings of a “synchronised slowdown” in global economic growth, 19 sub-Saharan countries are among nearly 40 emerging markets and developing economies forecast to maintain GDP growth rates above 5 percent this year. Particularly encouraging for Africa is that its present growth leaders are richer in innovation than natural resources.

Small steps can bring big results by simply getting together. In September Manila hosted the first ever global forum for people with Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy. Participants from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean shared common challenges at the forum organised by The Nippon Foundation (TNF) and Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF). Last week in Bangladesh, the country’s National Leprosy Programme, in collaboration with the TNF and SHF brought together hundreds of health workers, medical professionals and district officers to discuss the issue under the theme “Zero Leprosy Initiatives”. Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who opened the Congress said, if special attention is given to its northern region and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it is quite possible to declare Bangladesh a leprosy free country before 2030.

All in all however, the SDGs are in trouble, with the U.N. Secretary-General warning in July that a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals”. A 478-page study by independent experts drove the message home.

Lastly, as 2019 draws to a close, let’s pay tribute to all those reporters around the world who have bravely covered these issues, spreading knowledge and defending press freedoms despite obvious dangers and more insidious campaigns of vilification.

The post 2019 – A Devastating Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Women in Asia and Africa hardest hit by climate change have a tough time adapting to the climate emergency, even with support from family or the state, finds a new study. The results raise questions for global agreements designed to help people adapt to the climate emergency, it adds.  

The findings are based on 25 case studies in three agro-ecological regions on the two continents: 14 in semi-arid locales, 6 in mountains and glacier-fed river basins (including one in Nepal) and 5 in deltas. The main livelihoods in these natural resource-dependent areas include agriculture, livestock rearing and fishing, supplemented by wage labour, petty trade and income from remittances.

Environmental risks include droughts, floods, rainfall variability, land erosion and landslides, glacial lake outburst floods, heat waves and cyclones, all of which negatively affect livelihoods. The study, A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Women’s Agency and Adaptive Capacity in Climate Change Hotspots in Asia and Africa was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

When households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’

It found that when households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’. This occurred even in cases where support appeared to be available in the form of families/communities or via the state.

Examples include when men migrate to find work because of climate change-induced impacts at home. While the money they earn can boost family incomes, when men are away women must shoulder a larger burden. As a result, most women ‘reported reduced leisure time, with negative consequences on their wellbeing, including the health and nutrition of themselves and their households,’ says the report.

In other cases, governments stepped in with support but during floods or droughts, for example, men dominated state-provided aid and relief facilities, making women rely on their male relatives to receive support.

‘In a sense, women do have voice and agency, yet this is not contributing to strengthening longer-term adaptive capacities,’ concludes the report.

But in three examples in the study, one in Nepal, women did adapt to the increased burdens delivered by climate change. In Chharghare of Nuwakot district, support from a well-established cooperative enabled many women — excluding Dailit women — to switch from raising buffalo and cattle to rearing goats, which adapted better to growing rain scarcity.

“By enhancing women’s agency, we need to understand that we are helping them to create an enabling environment where a women’s right to make decisions about her own life is recognised, where women are economically empowered and free from all forms of discrimination and violence,” said Anjal Prakash, who worked on the case study for the Integrated Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Poverty is the main factor in the declining decision-making power of women in some hot spots, says the report, even when women share responsibilities in the family and work outside of the home. In semi-arid Kenya, for example, women of female-headed households sell alcohol to earn money to pay for children’s schooling, but this exposes them to health risks, such as engaging in sexual activities with their clients.

A 35-year-old woman told researchers, “Despite our efforts, there is a high level of malnutrition here. We can’t afford meat, we just eat rice and potatoes, but even for this, the quantity is not enough.”

The study notes that international agreements, such as the gender action plan of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) require information about what builds the adaptive capacity of women, and men, so that agreements can support sustainable, equitable and effective adaptation.

It suggests that effective social protection, like the universal public distribution system for cereals in India, or pensions and social grants in Namibia, could contribute to relieving immediate pressures on survival.

‘This however cannot always be done on the “cheap” — investments are needed to enable better and more sustainable management of resources. ‘Women’s self-help groups are often presented as solutions, yet they are confronted by the lack of resources, skills and capacity to help their members effectively meet the challenges they confront,’ the report adds.

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Shubha Nagesh
ABUJA, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Recently, Madhukar Pai, the Director of McGill University Global Health Program wrote about the inequity in global health research. He observed that researches are skewed in favor of the global north. We agree that this inequity exists. However, we also have found that global fellowships such as the Atlantic Fellowship, of which we are both Senior Fellows, are platforms to reverse this inequity, foster international partnerships and amplify voices of development practitioners from the global south. 

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor by training and thereafter specialised in Global Health from Karolinska Instituet, Sweden as an Erasmus Mundus Fellow. She presently works with children with developmental disabilities in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.

Ifeanyi Nsofor is a Nigerian medical doctor and a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and 2006 Ford Foundation International Fellow. Ifeanyi is a leading advocate for universal health coverage in Nigeria.

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health

The Atlantic fellowship is funded by the Atlantic Institute and connects the seven Atlantic fellows programmes spread across six countries. The goal of the Atlantic Institute is to advance fairer, healthier societies. Fellows have diverse backgrounds and are united by their commitment to a more inclusive world.

As Senior Fellows of the Atlantic Fellowship for Health Equity at George Washington University, both authors have benefitted from an enriching fellowship year. This experience has led to convenings in the U.S., Rwanda and other locations and have been great learning opportunities to understand the local health systems and the benefits of international collaborations.

The mid-year convening at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, allowed both authors to witness firsthand the partnership between the government of Rwanda and Partners in Health, which has led to significant improvements in mental health through the Mario Pagenel Fellowship in Global Mental Health Delivery. In previous opinion pieces, Shubha wrote about her Rwanda experience and Ifeanyi did the same.

From our combined experiences of benefiting Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, Ford Foundation International Fellowship, Aspen New Voices Fellowship and Atlantic Fellowship, there are four lessons that the global health community can learn to gradually reverse the inequity in global health workforce.

 

First, talent is universal, but opportunities are not. Opportunities for development experts from the global south are limited, especially those that demand leadership positions. Fellowships help create platforms for development experts from different countries to interact, get to know each other and learn about the capacities that everyone brings to the table.

For instance, the 2019 Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity at George Washington University comprises of 18 Fellows from 7 countries – Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, US, Philippines, India and Iraq. Over a period of one year, the Fellows exchanged ideas and supported each in pushing for health equity in their different countries.

 

Second, prioritise women in global health workforce appointments because women face more inequities than men. Out of the 18 Fellows mentioned above, 15 are females. This was intentional on the part of the organizers in order to ensure that the gap between men and women will gradually be reduced. While women form the bulk of the health workforce, . key decision makers in the health sector are usually men. The recent appointment of Winnie Byanyima as the Executive Director of UNAIDS, after serving a successful 6-year tenure as the Executive Director of Oxfam, should be replicated across more global health agencies.

 

Third, Fellowships can amplify global south voices on the global stage. This is the core aim of the Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship. It has trained more than 100 senior fellows from many countries from the global south.

These fellows have written more than 1,000 opinion pieces published on different platforms and have been interviewed on radio, TV and other platforms sharing their ideas. Ifeanyi is a Senior New Voices Fellow and has within the past 2 years written and published 33 opinion pieces on platforms such as Devex, The Hill, Scientific American, Biomed Central, All Africa, Inter Press News Service etc.

Therefore, this opinion piece is another case of amplifying voices of Indian and Nigerian development experts on the global stage.

 

Fourth, collaborations are for life and reduce inequities. The agenda of most fellowships is to nurture collaboration and not competition. Collaboration beats competition, every single time. Mentorships created within the boundaries of Fellowships can be transformed to collaborations that could prove beneficial for a long time.

 

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health. This African proverb captures our thoughts succinctly; “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

To be sure, Fellowships will not stamp out the global health workforce inequity overnight. However, fellowship should be used as platforms to systematically work to reverse the inequities articulated by Madhui Pai.

As Senior Fellows for health equity at the Atlantic Institute, we will collaboratively continue to advance fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.

 

The post Four Lessons to Reverse Inequity in the Global Health Workforce appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all. Hopefully, it will also be remembered for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.Calls to combat climate change rang in the ears of delegates from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit in Madrid. But the heads of government or state of the world’s largest polluters were notably absent, including the United States, China and Russia.

As planetary temperatures have risen, a landmark report by the IPBES warned that more than a million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction – many within decades. This twin challenge has far-reaching consequences and the ramifications of complacency have started to show.

 

 

The expanding Sahara Desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. More than 50 million people across Southern, Eastern and Central Africa are facing a hunger crisis because of extreme weather conditions. And in the Pacific, small Island States are sinking beneath rising sea levels.

Irregular migration is rising and has driven thousands to their deaths. Human Traffickers are exploiting this exodus and are contributing to the second largest criminal economy on the planet, with an alarming 40 million people enslaved around the world. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 70 million people in the world are currently displaced by conflict, and the response of many countries has been to erect walls.

The SDG’s made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change. However, the SDG’s are in trouble and the UN’s Secretary General has issued a clear warning: a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals.”

As inspired by Swedish Teenager Greta Thunberg and others, youth is the new face of global activism. It is imperative that we follow their lead to secure the future they will inherit, and pay heed to Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning: “Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?”

 

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By External Source
MADRID, Dec 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The African Development Bank has joined forces with 11 other international organizations to assist developing countries to build resilience against the impact of natural disasters caused by extreme weather.

Following a series of deadly weather events that have caused widespread destruction, especially in Africa, the institutions came together at the COP 25 climate change conference in Madrid on Tuesday to launch the Alliance for Hydromet Development.

“The science is clear: the global average temperature has increased by 1.1°C since the pre-industrial period, and by 0.2°C compared to 2011-2015,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

“Ambitious climate action requires countries to be equipped with the most reliable warning systems and best available climate information services. Many developing countries are facing capacity constraints to provide these services. The Alliance is the vehicle to collectively scale up our support to the most vulnerable.”

The members of the Alliance have committed to ramping up action that strengthens the capacity of developing countries to deliver high-quality weather forecasts, early warning systems, hydrological and climate services. Known for short as “hydromet” services, these underpin resilient development by protecting lives, property and livelihoods.

“The African Development Bank joins the Alliance in recognizing the gap in the limited capacity of African countries to address vulnerability to extreme climate shocks,” said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank.

“Through the Hydromet Alliance, we are committed to doubling our climate finance support to African countries and will work with them to transition from dealing with disaster emergencies to building resilience against the impacts of extreme weather events.”

The founding members of the Alliance for Hydromet Development are the Adaptation Fund, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, the World Food Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

Members of the Alliance have committed to unite their efforts in four areas: by strengthening capacity to operate observational systems and seeking innovative ways to finance observations; by boosting capacity for science-based mitigation and adaptation planning; thirdly, by strengthening early warning systems, for improved disaster risk management (this would involve developing multi-hazard national warning systems, comprising better risk information, forecasting capabilities, warning dissemination, and anticipatory response). The members also agreed to boost investments for better effectiveness and sustainability.  This would include systematically strengthening the World Meteorological Organization integrated global, regional and national operational hydromet system.

The actions of the Alliance to close the hydromet capacity gap are guided by the principles of UN agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals , the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

The Alliance is open for membership to all public international development, humanitarian, and financial institutions that assist the hydromet capacity of developing countries.

Media contacts: 

African Development Bank: Gershwin Wanneburg, email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org

World Meteorological Organization: Clare Nullis, email cnullis@wmo.int

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Staff from MCI Santé Animale, one of the 18 companies that have participated in energy management training organized by UNIDO´s Industrial Energy Accelerator in partnership with the Moroccan government, at work, as the country moves to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel imports. Credit: UNIDO

By Tareq Emtariah
VIENNA, Dec 13 2019 (IPS)

At a time when the world is battling unprecedented drought, bushfires, rising sea levels and water shortages, reducing energy use across industry is one powerful way to fight climate change in the immediate term.

However, historic slowdowns in energy efficiency progress persist. As we conclude another Conference of Parties (COP25) on climate change, and move into a new decade with unprecedented environmental challenges, governments have to put industrial energy efficiency back on the agenda before it is too late.

I have worked in the energy sector for nearly 25 years. During this time, I have witnessed some incredible advances. Yet, now, when we should be doing everything in our power to reduce the unnecessary use of fossil fuels, we are instead witnessing a slowing of progress on energy efficiency, with the International Energy Agency reporting last month that progress on energy efficiency had declined to its slowest rate since this decade began.

Among the many reasons for this “historic slowdown” is a lack of national government commitment for the cause, which is seriously hampering wide-scale change.

Prioritising industrial energy efficiency is one way that governments can simultaneously ease pressure on the economy, enhance energy security and the environment in the here and now. It’s what we at UNIDO refer to as the “invisible solution”.

A large-scale shift toward more energy efficient practices in industry would enable companies to massively reduce their power bills. In economic terms, industrial energy efficiency can increase productivity, lower manufacturing costs, and create more jobs.

When it comes to the environment, the widespread adoption of energy efficiency measures could reduce industrial energy use by over 25%. This potential is a significant reduction of 8% in the global energy use and 12.4% reduction in global CO2 emissions.

Tareq Emtariah – Credit: UNIDO

With this in mind, here are five practical steps governments can take to harness industrial energy efficiency against climate change:

1. Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, at least for those industries which are large enough to afford it. Analysis commissioned by the IMF this year found that if fossil fuels had been priced appropriately, global carbon emissions would be reduced by 28 per cent and governments revenues would increase 3.8 per cent of GDP. Developed economies and nations such as those in the United States and European Union should be leading by example on this issue.

Meanwhile, in major emerging economies like Argentina, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Russia fossil fuel subsidies have historically kept the cost of energy artificially low.

As a result, there has never really been a major concern for industries to makes changes. When industries don’t fully understand the potential of energy efficiency, and energy costs are bearable, it’s a lot easier for them to become complacent.

One just has to look to Morocco for inspiration. In 2014 the North African nation ended subsidies of gasoline and fuel oil and begun to cut diesel subsidies as part of its drive to repair public finances.

Fast forward to today and Morocco is considered one of the most progressive countries when it comes to its national energy commitments and efforts to prioritise industrial energy efficiency.

2. Breaking down barriers to finance. In developing economies in particular, investors’ lack of awareness of the commercial benefits of best practices in energy efficiency is preventing much needed investment. In countries like Brazil, ‘high-risk’ perceptions surrounding energy efficiency projects mean that interest rates are often impossibly high for companies eager to invest in industrial energy efficiency advancements.

The public sector must pinpoint the best ways to design and implement energy efficiency policies to effectively mobilise finance and investment. Co-funded blended finance schemes, tax breaks, financial sector training and project bundling are just some of the many ways governments can help to simultaneously incentivise and de-risk investments into industrial energy efficiency.

Improving the competitiveness of Brazil’s industrial sector, which contributes to 20 per cent of the country’s GDP, requires significant investment into energy efficiency. UNIDO’s Industrial Energy Accelerator undertook three energy efficiency workshops aiming to change perceptions among investors. Credit: UNIDO

3. Supporting SMEs. Often in emerging economies, small-to-medium sized enterprises make up the majority of the industrial sector. However, many of these small businesses lack the formal qualifications and the collateral needed to access finance and adhere to newly introduced industrial energy efficiency regulations.

In Mexico for example, where small-to-medium sized enterprises form the backbone of the national economy, the government is working to introduce a labour competencies standard for internal energy auditors that responds specifically to the needs of SMEs.

4. Making the invisible, visible. Despite offering so many win-win benefits, industrial energy efficiency is often referred to as an invisible solution. Energy efficiency interventions require changing behaviours and they are often technical.

Retrofitting the insulation level of pipes or replacing an old inefficient boiler is not as appealing as investing into multimillion-dollar renewable energy projects panels or as noticeable as saving forests.

However, government leaders can help change this by working with industry to advocate and discuss the potential of implementing industrial energy efficiency measures to consumers and other stakeholders. To facilitate and amplify this conversation, UNIDO recently launched a dedicated Industrial Energy Accelerator website and Linkedin community.

5. Joining forces. We cannot solve this challenge country-by-country, we must work together under a coordinated and ambitious multilateral framework. At the end of the day we are calling on competitive multinational companies to overhaul their production processes, incentivize their global supply chains and invest in long-term sustainability measures.

In order to enable this, countries must create a level playing field for businesses to operate within by aligning national incentives and energy pricing systems.

Government is absolutely critical to the energy efficiency transition. Even with the willpower of the private sector, without coordinated government incentives, – such as support for SMEs, advocacy and effective policy- industrial energy efficiency will be impossible to achieve on a large scale.

As we conclude another COP and move into a new decade with unprecedented environmental, social and economic challenges, on behalf of UNIDO and the Industrial Energy Accelerator, I urge all governments worldwide to put industrial energy efficiency back on the agenda. We have the knowhow, we have the technology, now is the time for leadership and effective policy to help us implement the solutions.

UNIDO’s Industrial Energy Accelerator works on the ground to rally government, business and finance around solutions for industrial energy efficiency. Next year the programme will enter phase two of project implementation in the Accelerator’s first five partner countries, and we will begin work in new countries including: Palestine, Sri Lanka, India, Ukraine and Ghana.

The post Industrial Energy Efficiency is a Climate Solution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Tareq Emtariah is Director of the Department of Energy at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

The post Industrial Energy Efficiency is a Climate Solution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: AFDB

By PRESS RELEASE
MADRID, Spain, Dec 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

There was standing room only as ministers, diplomats, activists and journalists gathered at the IFEMA conference centre in Madrid to mark Africa Day at the COP 25 climate meeting.

Speakers called for a united front to tackle the challenges of climate change in Africa.

In the opening statement for Africa Day on Tuesday, Yasmin Fouad, Egypt’s Minister of Environmental Affairs, on behalf of the African Union, said: “We have, and will continue to engage and to seek landing grounds on the outstanding issues. But we must flag our concern at the apparent reluctance by our interlocutors to engage on issues of priority to developing countries, as evidenced by the large number of such issues which have simply been pushed from session to session without any progress.”

Africa contributes the least to global warming emissions yet is the continent most vulnerable to climate change, as witnessed by devastating natural disasters recently. Africa Day has been held at the conference every year since COP 17 in 2011 to rally support for the continent’s cause.

“The climate disaster issues confronting the continent demand a predictable and unified response,” said UN ASG Mohamed Beavogui, Director General of African Risk Capacity, an agency of the African Union that helps governments respond to natural disasters.

“Africa needs to move towards market-based innovative financing models to achieve a strong, united, resilient and globally influential continent. The future of Africa depends on solidarity.”

Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), said the ECA would support African countries to revise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to attract private sector investments in clean energy.

“The lack of concerted and meaningful global ambition and action to tackle climate change poses an existential threat to African populations,” Songwe said.

The Paris Agreement is the guiding force of current climate negotiations. It calls on nations to curb temperature increases at 2°C by the end of this century, while attempting to contain rises within 1.5°C. The next step is to implement NDCs, which set out national targets under the Paris Agreement.

While African countries outlined bold aspirations to build climate resilient and low-carbon economies in their NDCs, the continent’s position is that it should not be treated the same as developed nations as its carbon emissions constitute a fraction of the world’s big economies.

“The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) remains committed to partnering with other institutions in providing the requisite support to AU member states in reviewing and updating their NDCs,” said Estherine Fotabong, Director of Programmes at AUDA-NEPAD.

Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s Environment Minister and current chair of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, said the Africa Day event should come up with new ideas to enhance the implementation of NDCs in Africa.

Africa is already responding positively to the challenge of climate change, said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank, citing huge investment interest in renewables at the Bank’s Africa Investment Forum in Johannesburg.

“Clearly, we are a continent that has what it takes to create the Africa that we want to see happen. I believe what has been the missing link is the ability to brand right and to act on the market signals,” Nyong said. “We continue to present Africa as a vulnerable case and not as a business case with opportunities. In fact, where we have attempted the latter, the results have been spot-on.”

Chief Fortune Charumbira, Vice President of the Pan-African Parliament, said robust climate legislation was key.

“The world’s response to the challenge has shown that legislation is imperative to cement efforts employed by various stakeholders; from the Paris Agreement to Nationally Determined Contributions,” he said.

Amb. Josefa Sacko, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the African Union Commission, said climate change affected sectors key to Africa’s socio-economic development, such as agriculture, livestock and fisheries, energy, biodiversity and tourism. She called on African countries to take stock of the Paris Agreement, and its implementation around finance capacity building and technology.

Media contacts:
African Union: Esther Azaa Tankou, Head of Information Division, Directorate of Information and Communication, African Union Commission, email: YambouE@africa-union.org

African Development Bank: Gershwin Wanneburg, email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org

ECA: Sophia Denekew, email: Denekews.uneca@un.org

Pan-African Parliament: Ntsiuoa Sekete, email: ntsiuoa.sekete@panafricanparliament.org

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By Stella Paul
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec 13 2019 (IPS)

Dr Rahat Chawdhury is the Deputy Program Manager at the National Leprosy Program of Bangladesh. His is the umbrella organization of hundreds of doctors, technical experts, counsellors, strategists, health advocates, field workers and thousands of leprosy-affected people as the beneficiaries.

In Dhaka, the past two days, Chowdhury has been busy organizing and coordinating the National Congress on Leprosy. The 2-day event included a high-level segment which was attended by the Prime Minister of the country, Sheikh Hasina and a gathering of all the leprosy-people’s organizations.

On the second day, on the sidelines of the leprosy-affected people’s forum, Chowdhury spoke with IPS, throwing light on the work of the leprosy mission.

In this interview, Chowdhury describes in details the areas where Bangladesh has made most progress and the areas where he biggest of the challenges now remain. Finally, he explains says that if the country wanted to zero-leprosy status, this is the best time to do it.

 

The post AUDIO: If We Are to Achieve Zero-leprosy by 2030, This Is the Best Time and Opportunity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
DHAKA, Dec 13 2019 (IPS)

Dr Erwin Cooreman is the Team Leader of WHO’s Global Leprosy Programme. This week, he is in Dhaka to attend the National Conference on Leprosy, which was inaugurated by the prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina. In her speech, she reiterated her commitment to make the country Zero-Leprosy by 2030.

On the sidelines of the conference, IPS interviewed Cooreman to ask him his reaction to the Bangla prime minister’s commitment and the countries which are showing promise to achieve the Zero-Leprosy target by 2030.

IPS also asked Cooreman about the need for a leprosy vaccine and when it would possibly be out. In this podcast Cooreman answers these questions, and also reminds the fact that leprosy cannot be eradicated completely unless India, Indonesia and Brazil eradicate it first.

 

 

The post AUDIO: “We Cannot Achieve Zero-Leprosy by 2030 Without a Vaccine” – WHO Team Leader appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Haiti’s Environment Minister Joseph Jouthe says that “climate change is a very big terror in Haiti”, and without funds the Caribbean island nation is unable to adapt and mitigate against it. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
MADRID, Dec 13 2019 (IPS)

Haiti’s Environment Minister Joseph Jouthe has compared the climate emergency to a violent act and appealed to the international community for help to fight climate change.

“Climate change is a very big terror in Haiti. It’s very hard for us to deal with climate change,” Jouthe told IPS on the margins of the United Nations climate summit, the 25th Conference Of The Parties (COP25), in Madrid, Spain.

“Haiti is not responsible for what’s going on with climate change but we are suffering from it. We want better treatment from the international community.”

Jouthe said Haiti remains committed to strengthening its resilience to climate shocks and to contributing to the global effort to mitigate the phenomenon.

Haiti is pursuing a four-fold objective in relation to climate change:

• promoting, at the level of all sectors and other ministries, a climate-smart national development;
• creating a coherent response framework for country directions and actions to address the impacts of climate change;
• promoting education on the environment and climate change as a real strategic lever to promote the emergence of environmental and climatic citizenship; and
• putting in place a reliable measurement, reporting and verification system that can feed into the iterative planning processes of national climate change initiatives.

But Jouthe said the country simply cannot achieve these targets without financial help.

“In Haiti all the indicators are red. We have many projects but as you may know [The Caribbean Community] CARICOM doesn’t have enough funding to build projects,” he said.

Patrice Cineus, a young Haitian living in Quebec, said access to funding has been a perennial problem for Haiti.

But he believes Haiti is partly to blame for the seeming lack of inability to quickly receive financial help.

“Haiti, my country needs to build evidence-based policies, and this will make it easier to attract help from the international community,” Cineus told IPS.

“If we don’t have strong policies, it’s not possible. We need research within the country. We need innovative programmes within the country and then we can look for financial support and technical support.

“We cannot have access to funding because the projects we are submitting are not well done. We don’t use scientific data to build them. They are not done professionally,” Cineus added.

Cineus’ theory appears to be substantiated by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), which helps CARICOM member states address the issue of adaptation and climate change.

The centre’s Executive Director Dr. Kenrick Leslie said since 2016, under an Italian programme, it is required to develop projects that would help countries adapt to different areas of climate change.

“One of the areas that we have been considering, and we spoke with Haiti, is to build resilience in terms of schools and shelters that can be used in the case of a disaster.

“Funds have been approved but, unfortunately, unlike the other member states where we have already implemented at least one, and some cases two, projects, we have not been able to get the projects in Haiti off the ground,” Leslie told IPS.

“Each time they have identified an area, when we go there the site is not a suitable site and then we have to start the process again.”

While Haiti waits for funding, Dr. Kénel Délusca, current head of mission of a technical assistance project, AP3C, of the Ministry of Environment and Environment and the European Union, said the country remains one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change.

Scientists say extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods and droughts will become worse as the planet warms, and Island nations like Haiti are expected to be among the hardest hit by those and other impacts of a changing climate, like shoreline erosion.

“The marine environment is extremely important to the Haitian people. There are more than 8 million people living in coastal communities in Haiti,” Délusca told IPS.

“There are more or less 50,000 families whose activities are based on these specific ecosystems. In other words, this is a very important ecosystem for Haiti and different levels – at the economic level, at the cultural level, at the social level.”

Haiti is divided into 10 départements, and Délusca said nine of them are coastal. Additionally, he said the big cities of Haiti are all located within the coastal zone.

“These ecosystems are very strategic to the development of Haiti. The Haitians have a lot of activities that are based on the marine resources. We also develop some cultural and social activities that are based on these environments,” Délusca said.

For poor island countries like Haiti, studies show, the economic costs, infrastructural damage and loss of human life as a result of climate change is already overwhelming. And scientists expect it will only get worse.

Though Haiti’s greenhouse gas emissions amount cumulatively to less than 0.03 per cent of global carbon emissions, it is a full participant in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emission by five percent by 2030.

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The post How Climate Change is Fuelling Insurgency of Nigeria’s Militant Boko Haram appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In this edition of Voices from the Global South, Sam Olukoya goes to Maiduguri, Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria, and reports on how climate change is fuelling Boko Haram's insurgency.

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Feroza Begum, Leprosy activist. Credit: Rafiqul Islam / IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec 12 2019 (IPS)

When Feroza Begum was first diagnosed with leprosy in 2006, it felt as though she had been struck by a thunderbolt due to the deep-seated prejudice in her society that the disease is a curse from Allah (God).

“ I was affected with leprosy disease, nobody accepted me (in the past). They had made me isolated. I cannot forget the plight I suffered at that time. Even my family was broken as I was left by my husband,” she told IPS. The 35-year old says she was ostracized and made to feel like a lesser person.

Feroza travelled about 200 kilometres from Bogura district to Dhaka, the capital city to attend the first-ever Conference of organizations of persons affected by leprosy. Feroza came to listen and talk to other people who had similar stories and also to engage with organizations that are fighting for an end to discrimination of people with leprosy.

“I got married in 2006 and a few days later, I was diagnosed as a leprosy patient’. She says after the diagnosis, members of her husband’s family started ignoring her. ‘They ignored me and did not talk to me and one day sometime in 2007 my husband divorced me and sent me back to my father’s home.”

After returning home, she started treatment with support from a local NGO and she eventually recovered from the Hansen disease. But as a result of the disease, she could not avoid disability.

Leprosy stigma in Communities

Although there is a stigma around leprosy in her society, Feroza is living with a disability and is leading a normal life. “Fighting stigma for a leprosy patient is a hard task in our society and leading a normal life is a challenging task too,” she added.

“Now my mother and I prepare mats and sell them in a local market. This is our only livelihood option but I never bow down to the stigma,” Feroza said.

Dr David Pahan, Country Director of Lepra Bangladesh, said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s announcement of the ‘Zero Leprosy Initiative’ to eliminate the Hansen disease from the country by 2030 is commendable.

“Bringing leprosy patients into the mainstream of society is big for us as there is a negative perception about leprosy in our society,” he told IPS on the sidelines of the conference.

Now it is time for an Action Plan

Although the Zero Leprosy Initiative was announced, formulation of policies and action plans to eliminate leprosy is also a challenging task which lies ahead, he added.

Dr Pahan, who has been working on leprosy elimination since 1996, said leprosy patients must raise their voice together so that the authorities concerned take proper steps to bring them into the mainstream of society.

Dr David Pahan, Country Director of Lepra Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam / IPS

Close to 100 leprosy patients and representatives from several organizations working in the field of leprosy attended the landmark leprosy conference in Dhaka which was organized by members of the Leprosy and TB Coordinating Committee (LTCC) and People Organizations, with support from The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation.

The conference allowed people from across the country to share their experiences about the long plight in the recovering period of the disease.

Bangladesh is still a high burden leprosy country. The registered prevalence of leprosy was 0.7 percent, 0.27 percent and 0.2 percent in 2000, 2010 and 2016 respectively, and stood at 0.19 per 10,000 population in 2018, according to official data. The data also shows that about 4,000 patients were detected per year in the country over the last few years, with this figure standing at 3,729 in 2018.

Access to resources limited

Sonia Prajapoti of HEED Bangladesh, a local NGO working on leprosy control, said the case of leprosy is highly prevalent among tea workers in Sylhet, Habiganj and Moulvibazar districts as they are not aware of the leprosy disease and have limited access to civic amenities.

She said a social awareness must be created among the tea workers to keep them free from leprosy, while the leprosy patients could be brought into the mainstream of society by increasing their social status, providing proper healthcare and creating working opportunities for them.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s announcement of the ‘Zero Leprosy Initiative, will increase the voice of the people who have been working on leprosy elimination, and this will help them fight leprosy together,” said participant Shandha Mondal, district coordinator of local NGO Shalom (leprosy) in Meherpur.

Speaking as the chief guest at the conference, Chairman of The Nippon Foundation and WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, Yohei Sasakawa, assured Bangladesh of continuing support of the implementation of ‘the Zero Leprosy Initiative’ which was announced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and which aims to eliminate leprosy by 2030.

“The government has already announced the Zero Leprosy Initiative that will help eliminate the discrimination the leprosy patients have been facing,” he said.

“You, the leprosy patients, know better about the disease than doctors…your government is working to eliminate leprosy by 2030. And we are here to know how we can help your government fight leprosy,” Sasakawa said.

The Nippon Foundation and the Sasakawa Health Foundation of Japan organized a national conference on leprosy in Dhaka on December 11 under the theme “ZeRo leprosy initiative”.

The post Mainstreaming Leprosy-affected People a Big Challenge in Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Crystal Orderson
DHAKA, Dec 12 2019 (IPS)

The Chairman of The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation, Yohei Sasakawa is passionate about ensuring the world does not forget Leprosy and reminding us of the discrimination that people living with Leprosy still face. Sasakawa who is also a WHO Goodwill Ambassador is in Bangladesh where his Foundation held the first-ever meeting of organizations working in the leprosy field.

Mr Sasakawa, speaking through a translator spoke to IPS’s Crystal Orderson on why he believes Leprosy is such an important health issue that should never be forgotten or ignored.

 

 

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International Court of Justice in The Hague. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 12 2019 (IPS)

Appearing before 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto civilian leader of Myanmar, became a public apologist for the military government of Myanmar which has long been accused of genocide and forcing over 730,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh since a 2017 crackdown.

She was now ingloriously reduced to the point where she was defending the same military junta she battled for decades, which helped her win the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1991, while she was campaigning for democracy at the same time.

And her appearance before the ICJ was also meant to boost her popularity at home while plotting a meticulously laid path for re-election in 2020—this time misusing the halls of justice in The Hague?

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, told IPS: “This case marks the final ignoble fall of Aung San Suu Kyi from Nobel Peace Prize winner to genocide denier and defender of Myanmar’s murderous military.”

It is a shocking fall from grace and dignity in the pursuit of domestic political power, he added. He also pointed out that this case is “truly historic”.

“Myanmar’s responsibility for genocide is being discussed in front of the International Court of Justice and the eyes of the world. The Gambia should be congratulated for having the intestinal fortitude to take this case forward when so many states and superpowers did not,” he added.

He said any other signatory to the Genocide Convention could have filed this case but only The Gambia had the courage to do so. This case is about establishing the historical truth of Myanmar’s state responsibility for genocide against the Rohingya.

Dr Adams said the ICJ could issue provisional measures that actually have an impact on the ground inside Myanmar and could help ease the persecution of the Rohingya.

And symbolically this ICJ case is devastating for Myanmar’s military. The whole world is discussing their atrocities. Their sense of impunity is looking a little less flimsy than they hoped, he declared.

Responding to the statement made by Aung San Suu Kyi at the ICJ, Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s Regional Director, said: “Aung San Suu Kyi tried to downplay the severity of the crimes committed against the Rohingya population. In fact, she wouldn’t even refer to them by name or acknowledge the scale of the abuses. Such denials are deliberate, deceitful and dangerous.”

The exodus of more than three quarters of a million people from their homes and country was nothing but the result of an orchestrated campaign of murder, rape and terror. To suggest that the military ‘did not distinguish clearly enough between fighters and civilians’ defies belief, Bequelin noted.

“Likewise, the suggestion that Myanmar authorities can currently and independently investigate and prosecute those suspected of crimes under international law is nothing but a fantasy, in particular in the case of senior military perpetrators who have enjoyed decades of total impunity,” he declared.

Dr Tawanda Hondora, Executive Director of World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), the organisation that houses and coordinates the work of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), told IPS Aung San Suu Kyi’s concession that “…under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis” is reason enough for the ICJ to impose an injunction against Myanmar for the well documented atrocities that have been committed in the country.

He said Aung San Suu Kyi must do the right thing and concede to the imposition by the ICJ of interim measures against Myanmar prohibiting its security forces from persecuting the Rohingya.”

“The Gambia must be applauded for lodging a complaint calling for the protection of the Rohingya in Myanmar.”

“The Rohingya minority in Myanmar have suffered terribly at the hands of the military regime but unlike Aung San Suu Kyi’s they are not in a position of power and have needed the goodwill of The Gambia.”

Referring to the paralysis in the UN Security Council , Dr Hondora said the leaders of the US, Russia, China, the UK and France – countries that constitute the UNSC P5 – should be ashamed that it has fallen on the Gambia a small country struggling with the aftereffects of the rule by a tyrant, Yahya Jammeh, to seek justice for the Rohingya”

The World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy has called on the UN General Assembly to stand as one against states and others that commit offences that shock the conscience of humankind.

“The UN General Assembly must push for real and effective reforms of the UN system so that we can realise our collective ambition for the world to Never Again suffer such unimaginable atrocities,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a statement released here, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect said a decision on the request for provisional measures can be expected within weeks.

According to Article 94 of the UN Charter, judgments of the ICJ are binding and the UN Security Council can take collective action to ensure that they are upheld.

Members of the Security Council should name the crime committed against the Rohingya and actively ensure that any provisional measures imposed by the Court are expeditiously implemented.

During her remarks the Nobel Peace Prize winner acknowledged the disproportionate use of force in the context of an “internal armed conflict,” but denied genocidal intent, the Global Centre said.

Tellingly, Aung San Suu Kyi did not use the word “Rohingya” once during her statement. Human rights specialists have argued that Myanmar’s official denial of Rohingya identity is inextricably linked to their policy of persecution, the denial of universal human rights and ultimately to the genocidal actions of the military in Rakhine State during August-December 2017.

On 9 December Canada and the Netherlands issued a joint statement welcoming the ICJ case and expressing their “intention to jointly explore all options to support and assist The Gambia in these efforts.”

All other parties to the Genocide Convention should also meaningfully support the case through public statements and legal interventions at the ICJ.

The international community failed to prevent a genocide in Myanmar, but it can still act to hold the perpetrators accountable, the statement added.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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