Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Kohler and International Development Enterprises (iDE) have partnered to provide safe sanitation solutions to communities in Ghana since 2016. Photo Cred: iDE

By Ratish Namboothiry
KOHLER, Wisconsin, Nov 21 2019 (IPS)

Each year, World Toilet Day* raises awareness of the crucial role that sanitation plays in reducing disease and creating healthier communities.

At Kohler, we’re committed to finding solutions for universal sanitation access by leveraging our design & innovation competencies and partnering with like-minded organizations to bring meaningful innovations to those communities most in need.

It’s time to shine a brighter light on a sad and heartbreaking truth: each day people are dying because of a lack of basic sanitation solutions.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet, open defecation still exists for 10% of the population, and women and girls spend 266 million hours a day trying to find a safe and discrete place to go. The result? Hygiene-related diseases, like diarrhea, that account for 1 million deaths annually. This has to end.

Partners like Water Mission and iDE are making a meaningful impact and changing the story for so many.

In January 2017, Water Mission initiated a Healthy LatrinesTM program to provide safe sanitation to families in in western Honduras. Enter the KOHLER Pour Flush Toilet – an affordable seated toilet that flushes when water is poured in by the user.

To date, Water Mission has impacted over 6,300 people by building Healthy LatrinesTM that include a Kohler pour flush toilet. Additional installations are currently under construction as part of a program to reach 5,000 families in five years.

The organization provides the toilet to the families, who in turn, are asked to help build the Healthy Latrines.

[The Water Mission® organization is a Christian engineering nonprofit that designs, builds, and implements safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) solutions for people in developing countries and disaster areas.

Since 2001, Water Mission has used innovative technology and engineering expertise to provide access to safe water for more than four million people in 55 countries. Water Mission has 350 staff members working around the world in permanent country programs located in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.]

“We like the Kohler toilet because it is designed to be practical in its installation,” remarked Hector Chacon, Water Mission’s County Director in Honduras. Moreover, individuals take great pride in the aspirational design and working to improve general sanitation issues.

In addition to its longstanding partnership with Water Mission, Kohler has also worked closely with iDE – a social enterprise organization that developed its own self-enclosed toilet.

As part of an overall effort in Ghana (a country where just 67% of the population lives without access to a toilet), iDE’s brand Sama Sama chose the KOHLER pour flush toilet as an option for those individuals requiring a sitting model, such as families with older members or those with special needs.

Sama Sama Managing Director Osei Agyeman-Buahin said the goal is to consistently innovate to diversify its offering for a diverse customer base.

Our goal is to provide safe sanitation solutions for all and to continue to push ourselves to innovate, iterate and improve upon the solutions we provide. Innovation for Good is Kohler’s internal incubator designed to find new business opportunities that have a social purpose aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

At Kohler, we lean into our water and sanitation innovation expertise to create products and solutions that can provide meaningful change.

If we’re going to put an end to the sanitation crisis, the time for real action and strong partnership is now. A better world awaits.

*The theme of World Toilet Day this year was: Leaving no One Behind. According to the United Nations, close to half of the world’s population- or to be exact, 4.2 billion people — are still living without safely managed sanitation. This is not without consequences and it is estimated that inadequate sanitation causes over 400,000 diarrheal deaths every year. The UN’s Sustainable Goal 6 calls for sanitation for all, by 2030. World Toilet Day was commemorated on November 19.

The post More Than just a Toilet: Fusing innovation & Partnerships for a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Rotish Namboothiry is Associate Director-Innovation for Good at Kohler Co.

The post More Than just a Toilet: Fusing innovation & Partnerships for a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 20 2019 (IPS)

To be president in a country like Bolivia might be like a precarious act performed by a tightrope-dancer between “the Devil and the deep blue sea”. After 23 years as Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales finally lost his foothold and ended up as political refugee in Mexico, adding his name to a long list of previous revolutionary exiles, like Augusto Sandino, Fidel Castro, and most prominently – Leon Trotsky. The last one was murdered, though the others came back, something Evo Morales has promised to do:

• “Sisters and brothers, I leave for Mexico, grateful for the generosity of the government of that kindred people who gave us asylum to defend our lives. It hurts to leave the country for political reasons, but I will remain vigilant. Soon I will return with greater strength and energy.”

1

Morales balance act was performed between an urban, social elite, a hostile U.S. government, suspicious neighbouring countries, big landowners, industrialists, the Army, coca growers, corrupt, political allies, alleged mistresses, regional leaders, environmentalists and not the least dissatisfaction amidst loyal supporters among poor and indigenous communities, suffering inevitable frustrations over his adminstration´s inability to provide everything they hoped for.

Nevertheless, a galloping inflation was checked under Morales´s regime. Foreign currency reserves grew steadily, while millions were spent on subsidies and infrastructure. Contrary to many other Latin American populists, Morales is also a pragmatist who instead of outright nationalizing companies and institutions, while throwing out foreign investors, cut better deals for the State and embraced market-friendly policies.

If he had groomed a successor and accepted power transition Morales, who was born to a poor peasant family in the desolate and isolated Aymara village of Iasallawi, could have been remembered as one of the great political leaders of Latin America. Though as most leaders within a volatile, prejudiced and highly combative political environment he made self-interested moves and occasionally stabbed opponents in the back.

In spite of being known as a “modest person with little interest in material possessions”, who when he became president reduced both his own salary and those of his ministers by 57 percent to USD 1,800 a month, he soon became a brand of vitality and infallibility. One example was his regular, predawn workout in a gym, when he in front of an audience displayed stamina and strength. Later in the day he used to visit a couple of cities or villages, where his image was stamped on murals in subsidized housing complexes, on airport billboards and even on taxis and buses.

I first became acquainted with Evo Morales’s mounting presence when I on behalf of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in 2000 began visiting Bolivian universities. When I first arrived in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, it had recently suffered violent clashes between protesters and army troops. Riots erupted after President Hugo Banzer signed a contract with a private consortium to control the city’s water resources. This was part of a privatization policy initiated by his predecessor, Sánchez de Lozada, meaning that more than 50 percent of former state-owned businesses and enterprises were transferred to private investors. In Cochabamba, the price for water tripled, leading to wide-spread rioting among those who no longer could afford clean water.

My hosts at the San Simon University told me protests were organized by radicalized coca growers from Chapare, a district which population between 1992 and 2016 had doubled from 132,000 to 262,000,2 mainly due to an influx of former miners and smallholders, migrating from the highlands, which since the beginning of the 1980s suffered from an economic crisis shutting down mining enterprises and destroying markets for poor farmers. The majority of the migrants were Quechua and Aymara speaking indigenous people. Among the newcomers had been nineteen-years-old Evo Morales, whose family had left the highlands since violent storms had destroyed their small farm.

Several migrants were former union leaders hardened by decades of work in the mines and had no agricultural experience before their arrival, something that proved to be of great importance. The coca plant is autochthonous to the Chapare region, but had so far not been exploited, since its high concentration of alkaloids makes it unsuitable for akulliku (mastication), the common use of coca at higher altitudes. Nevertheless, Chapare coca was well suited for cocaine production and did not need much care from inexperienced farmers. It could be harvested four times a year and was highly profitable, satisfying an expanding, global market.

When I visited Chapare, roads entering the district were guarded by control stations making me remember the ones I passed while entering East Germany in the 1980s. They were guarded by armed personell from the Bolivian Army and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), controlling in- and outcoming traffic. Inside the district, towns and villages made me think of towns in Western movies – haphazardly constructed buildings, bars and even brothels, but no communal squares. Stores were filled with the latest electronic equipment, refrigerators, air conditioners, computers, motorbikes, etc.

The San Simon University supported experimental plantations for various crops to stimulate farmers to quit coca production. Apart from such plantations I visited coca fields where growers told me that international support to drug eradication had actually made coca growing even more profitable – new roads improved buyers´ access, subsidies for alternative crops were gratefully received, while the coca purchasers offered improved plants with higher alkaloid content occupying less space and being suitable for interplantation with other crops. They considered DEA agents as enemies, as well as a Government, which according to them served a wealthy, urban elite bowing to U.S. pressure to persecute coca growers, of which several wore t-shirts with slogans like Coca no es cocaina, ”coca is not cocaine” and Causachun coca. Wañuchun yanquis, ”Long live coca. Death to the Yankees.”

Their hero was Evo Morales, who had organized the Cocalero Union and now headed the country’s second biggest political party. Adorned with a garland of coca leaves Morales gave arousing speeches presenting coca as an emblem of an Andean culture threatened by U.S. imperialist oppression. He was right about inept politicians and the open meddling of the U.S. in Bolivian politics, as well as coca being an integrated, even religiously important part of Andean culture, though he failed to mention that this was not at all the case of Chapare-produced coca. He was also right about the marginalized position of indigenous people, though he failed to mention progress made after the 1952/53 revolution when indigenous people had risen against a corrupt regime in an uprising that lead to extensive land reforms, universal suffrage, strengthened labour unions and efforts to integrate indigenous people in the ruling of a country where roughly 65 percent of the population identify themselves as ”indigenous people”. In short, to me Morales appeared to be a populist who slightly twisted reality to make it serve his political career.

However, Morales proved to be an able politician transforming his pro-coca and pro-indigenous stance to an effective political agenda that eventually changed Bolivia. Already a few months after Morales assumed the presidency in 2006 the State increased its control of the hydrocarbon industry. Corporations had up until then paid 18 percent of their profits to the State – now the new regime reversed the situation by decreeing that 82 percent of the profits would be passed on to the State. Oil companies threatened to cease all its Bolivian operations, but remained anyway. In 2002 the Bolivian State received USD 173 million from hydrocarbon extraction, but already in 2006 it obtained USD 1.3 billion.3

The increased revenue resulting from this and similar measures was invested in efforts to expand the welfare state. Prices of gas and many foodstuffs were controlled. Local food producers were motivated to sell their produce in the local market, rather than exporting it and the economy grew. Stronger public finances brought economic stability and inflation was curbed. Upon Morales’ election, Bolivia’s illiteracy rate was at 16 percent, the highest in South America. A literacy campaign was introduced and in 2009 UNESCO considered Bolivia to be free from illiteracy.4 By 2014, twenty hospitals had been established and basic medical coverage was guaranteed up to the age of 25, while low-income citizens over 60 received a monthly contribution of USD 344. Cash transfer programs were introduced to keep children of low-income parents in school. The legal minimum wage was in 2006 increased by 50 percent and pension age have successively been lowered from 65 to 58 years.

Nevertheless, Morales’s conservative critics have claimed that too much revenue was wasted on unnecessary projects like football fields and communal auditoriums, warning that projects implemented to ensure continued support for the Government would sooner or later end in a catastrophe, like the one in Venezuela.

Morales’s worst nemesis was his promise to support regional autonomy for Bolivia’s departments. When the country’s more affluent eastern departments tried to implement such policies, Morales backtracked, declaring it as an attempt of the bourgeoisie to preserve its wealth. He has also been accused of “hollow populism”, exemplified by the fact that he during his first presidential term gave ministerial posts to self-declared indigenous persons, though they were gradually replaced by middle-class politicians. Already by 2012 only 3 of the 20 cabinet minsters identified themselves as “indigenous”. Similarly, during his second term Morales’s cabinet contained more than 50 percent women, though the number soon dropped to a third. And the coca? He expulsed DEA and introduced fix quotas for coca production, trying to foment alternative crops. However, alkaloid rich coca is still grown in Chapare and there are conflicting information about whether cocaine production has decreased, or not.

The ultimate nail in Morales’s coffin was his decision to run for a fourth term and his various machinations to realize his intention. In spite of the fact that he lost a 2016 referendum that would allow him to pursue the presidency, he nevertheless participated in the 2019 election and declared himself victorious, though after several voting irregularities had been revealed and triggered off violent protests Evo Morales acknowledged defeat and fled Bolivia. The question is whether his legacy will be judged sympathetically, or if he will join the ranks of other former Latin American dictators and presidents whose vanity and clinging to power eventually obscured all their achievements.

1 Collyns, Dan and Julian Borger (2019) ”Bolivia´s Evo Moarles flies to Mexico, but vows to return with ´strength and energy´,” The Guardian, 12 November.
2 INE, Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, 1992 and 2016.
3 Lasa Aresti, Lisa (2016) Oil and Gas Revenue Sharing in Bolivia. New York: National Resource Governance Institute
4 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37117243

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.

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By External Source
Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

The 2019 Global Gender Summit will be held from 25-27 November 2019 in Kigali Rwanda.

 

The Global Gender Summit is organized by the African Development Bank with other multilateral development bank partners. The biennial event brings together leaders from government, development institutions, private sector, civil society and academia.

With the theme “Unpacking constraints to gender equality”, the summit will consider three dimensions in which gender equality and women’s empowerment can be achieved: scaling up innovative financing; enabling legal, regulatory and institutional environments; and securing women’s participation and voices.

The main objective of the summit is to share best practices and catalyze investment to accelerate progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa and around the world.

 

 

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By PRESS RELEASE
PARIS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS-Partners)

UNESCO has presented three reports concerning media issues to Member States meeting at the Organization’s Headquarters for the 40th session of its General Conference. The three reports, available online in English are:

Intensified Attacks, New Defences: Developments in the Fight to Protect Journalists and End Impunity assesses trends in safety of journalists around the world over five years (2014-2018) and flags an 18% increase in the killing of journalists compared to the previous five-year period (495 killings compared to 418 from 2009 through 2013). The report shows that 88% of killings recorded since 2006 remain unpunished. The study also examines the evolution of threats against the profession, notably online attacks and harassment, which disproportionally affects women journalists, undermining freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the report also highlights a growing commitment to protect the media through the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms to monitor, prevent and prosecute attacks on journalists and protect those facing threats. Coalitions seeking to improve the safety of journalists are forming worldwide with the participation of governments, academia, civil society organizations, regional and intergovernmental bodies.

Access to Information: A New Promise for Sustainable Development explores recent legislative developments and their effect in the field, as well as evolving international standards and practices concerning access to information, recognized in Sustainable Development Goal 16.10 which urges governments to “ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” The report furthermore examines models for implementation bodies, new digital challenges and opportunities for access to information. In order to understand the drivers of change, the Report examines trendsetting activities within UNESCO, the Sustainable Development Agenda, the Universal Periodic Review, the Open Government Partnership, and the standard-setting work of regional intergovernmental organizations and national oversight bodies. The research also draws on unique UNESCO surveys and analysis of Voluntary National Reports presented at the United Nations’ High-level Political Forum in July this year. The surge of ATI laws reflects growing awareness of the impact of access to information on human rights, development, democracy and people’s private lives.

Elections and Media in Digital Times highlights three converging trends affecting the media and elections in the digital age: the rise of disinformation, intensifying attacks on journalists, and disruptions linked to the use of information and communications technology in the election process. Offering possible responses to the challenges at hand, the study is a tool for governments, election officials, media organizations, journalists, civil society, the private sector, academia and individuals. It also proposes possible responses to safeguard media freedom and integrity while strengthening news coverage of elections in a digital environment.

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Media contact: Roni Amelan, UNESCO Press Service, r.amelan@unesco.org , +330)145681650

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Rohingya refugee children wade through flood waters surrounding their families' shelters following an intense pre-monsoon storm in Shamlapur makeshift settlement in Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF/UN0213967/Sokol

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

The 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC) stands virtually paralyzed in the face of genocide charges against the government of Myanmar where over 730,000 to one million Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh since a 2016 crackdown by Myanmar’s military.

A team of U.N. investigators has declared that the crackdown was carried out with “genocidal intent”.

The paralysis at the UNSC, attributed to inaction by two of its veto-wielding members, namely China and Russia, has now triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Although judges at the ICC last week agreed to authorise a full-scale investigation into allegations of mass persecution and crimes against humanity, Myanmar is not a party to the Rome statute that established the ICC.

Asked how effective any ruling would be against Myanmar as a non-party, Param-Preet Singh, Associate Director, International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “Any action by the ICC would be against individual defendants, not the state”.

“If your question is whether Myanmar would surrender any suspects to face justice in The Hague, based on its current position with respect to the ICC, it would be easy to say that the authorities would never cooperate.”

But the same was said about Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic – each of whom fell from positions of power and eventually found themselves in the dock at the Yugoslav tribunal, she pointed out.

“Of course, it was a long and complex process to get those defendants before the court, and that’s exactly why it’s difficult to speculate about the success of any ICC efforts to hold individuals to account”, she 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

“While Myanmar disputes that genocide has taken place, it has done very little to prevent and stop the persecution, deportation, forced displacement, killing and torture of the Rohingya community, which acts may amount to genocide.”

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

“We hope that the ICJ will reaffirm the legal principle that any States Parties to the Genocide Convention have legal standing to sue another States Party, which has failed to take steps to prevent and punish acts of genocide.”

“A declaration by the ICJ that Myanmar has failed to prevent and punish those responsible for these heinous acts will help to address the plight of the Rohingya community.”

This case, he pointed out, is a wake-up call for the United Nations Security Council, which continues to shirk its responsibility to maintain international peace and security and has so far failed to protect the Rohingya community.

The formal submission to the ICJ, accusing Myanmar of genocide through the murder, rape and destruction, was made on November 11 by the Republic of the Gambia, on behalf of the 57-member Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Meanwhile, in a statement released November 14, ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said: “I welcome the decision by ICC judges to “authorise my request to open an investigation into the situation in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh/Republic of the Union of Myanmar.”

She said the ICC judges have “accepted my analysis that there is a reasonable basis to believe that coercive acts that could qualify as the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution on grounds of ethnicity and/or religion may have been committed against the Rohingya population”.

With that decision, a formal investigation has been authorised, for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, allegedly committed on or after 1 June 2010, at least in part on the territory of Bangladesh, or on the territory of other state parties, as described in the decision.

This is a significant development, sending a positive signal to the victims of atrocity crimes in Myanmar and elsewhere, she declared.

After a reported military-led crackdown, widespread killings, rape and village burnings, nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state to settle in crowded refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, according to an ICC press release.

Asked what the next step would be if Myanmar refuses to abide by the decisions of the two international courts of justice, HRW’s Singh said: “I think it’s important to discuss both cases as proceedings, since final decisions in both courts are a long way off”.

She said the fact that Myanmar’s actions are being scrutinized by two judicial mechanisms – through the separate but complementary lenses of state and individual responsibility – challenges Myanmar’s empty denials of its role in atrocities and raises the political cost of ongoing abuses, both for Myanmar and the countries that would rather ignore its dismal human rights record.

Asked if the intervention by the two courts also send an implicit message to the UN Security Council which has so far refused to impose sanctions or take punitive action against Myanmar, Singh said: “The actions by Gambia and the ICC prosecutor to find a measure of justice for the Rohingya contrast sharply with and further expose the UN Security Council’s paralysis on the crisis in Myanmar”.

“And with that exposure, there is a rising political cost for its refusal to discharge its responsibility to address concerns about international peace and security in the region,” she noted.

Asked for a reaction from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters November 14: ‘No, it is not for us to comment on procedures going on in the judicial end of the UN system. I think the Secretary General has spoken out very clearly and very forcefully on the need to address the situation of the Rohingyas and for the Government of Myanmar to put in place a number of actions and for justice to be done, but we have no specific comment on that case.’

Meanwhile, back in October 2018, Marzuki Darusman, chair of the fact-finding mission of the Human Rights Council (HRC), briefed the Security Council on the mission’s report.

Among its findings was that Myanmar security forces had committed what amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity in their treatment of several ethnic and religious minorities in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States.

He also said there was sufficient information regarding the treatment of the Rohingya ethnic group in Rakhine State for senior officials in the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) to be investigated to determine their liability for genocide, according to the Security Council Report, a NGO publication monitoring the activities of the UNSC.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, told IPS that it is worth keeping in mind that Bangladesh is a member of ICC. Any indictment from the ICC would mean that some of Myanmar’s senior generals, who are responsible for atrocities, would not be able to travel outside Myanmar without the fear of being arrested and possibly ending up in a prison cell in The Hague.

Symbolically, it may also result in Aung San Suu Kyi‘s final ignoble transition from Nobel Peace Prize winner to indicted suspected perpetrator of Crimes Against Humanity.

He also pointed out that the ICC is about individual criminal responsibility and the ICJ is about state responsibility. But ICC indictments and a condemning judgement from the ICJ would puncture the Myanmar authorities’ culture of denial, exposing them in front of the entire world as a government responsible for genocide, the crime of crimes.

“Both of these international courts, which are sometimes criticized as being distant, bureaucratic and slow-moving, have done more to address the issue of the genocide against the Rohingya than the UN Security Council. More than two years have passed since the genocide began in northern Rakhine State. The UN Security Council needs to name the crime and hold the perpetrators accountable. Anything less is a total abdication of their historic responsibility,” Dr Adams declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Credit: UN Women

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

If I could have one wish granted, it might well be a total end to rape. That means a significant weapon of war gone from the arsenal of conflict, the absence of a daily risk assessment for girls and women in public and private spaces, the removal of a violent assertion of power, and a far-reaching shift for our societies.

Rape isn’t an isolated brief act. It damages flesh and reverberates in memory. It can have life changing, unchosen results—a pregnancy or a transmitted disease. Its long-lasting, devastating effects reach others: family, friends, partners and colleagues.

In both conflict and in peace it shapes women’s decisions to move from communities through fear of attack or the stigma for survivors. Women and girls fleeing their homes as refugees also risk unsafe transport and insecure living conditions that can lack locked doors, adequate lighting and proper sanitation facilities.

Girls married as children in search of increased security at home or in refugee camps can get caught up in legitimized conditions of rape, with little recourse for those wishing to escape, such as shelter and safe accommodation.

In the vast majority of countries, adolescent girls are most at risk of sexual violence from a current or former husband, partner or boyfriend. As we know from our work on other forms of violence, home is not a safe place for millions of women and girls.

Almost universally, most perpetrators of rape go unreported or unpunished. For women to report in the first place requires a great deal of resilience to re-live the attack, a certain amount of knowledge of where to go, and a degree of confidence in the responsiveness of the services sought – if indeed there are services available to go to.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: UN Women

In many countries, women know that they are overwhelmingly more likely to be blamed than believed when they report sexual assault, and they have to cope with an unwarranted sense of shame. The result of these aspects is a stifling of women’s voices around rape, significant under-reporting and continuing impunity for perpetrators.

Research shows that only a small fraction of adolescent girls who experience forced sex seek professional help. And less than 10 per cent of women who did seek help after experiencing violence contacted the police.

One positive step to increase accountability is to make rape universally illegal. Currently more than half of all countries do not yet have laws that explicitly criminalize marital rape or that are based on the principle of consent.

Along with criminalizing rape, we need to get much, much better at putting the victim at the centre of response and holding rapists to account. This means strengthening the capacity of law enforcement officials to investigate these crimes and supporting survivors through the criminal justice process, with access to legal aid, police and justice services as well as health and social services, especially for women who are most marginalized.

Having more women in police forces and training them adequately is a crucial first step in ensuring that survivors begin to trust again and feel that their complaint is being taken seriously at every stage of what can be a complex process.

Progress also requires that we successfully tackle the many institutional and structural barriers, patriarchal systems and negative stereotyping around gender that exist in security, police and judicial institutions, as they do in other institutions.

Those who use rape as a weapon know just how powerfully it traumatizes and how it suppresses voice and agency. This is an intolerable cost to society. No further generations must struggle to cope with a legacy of violation.

We are Generation Equality and we will end rape!

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Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director UN Women

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By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BERLIN and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Any balanced assessment of the so-called Chinese economic miracle will recognize that it was extremely successful, not only during the reform period from 1979, but also since Liberation in 1949 despite the setbacks of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese economy grew at about 5% on average during 1949-1979 and at almost 10% in 1979-2019. Five percent growth was impressive, higher than in most countries of the world at that time, but ten percent growth over the last four decades is quite unprecedented.

Vladimir Popov

Miracle of economic liberalization?
The conventional explanation of this miracle is liberalization, or more accurately, the marketization reforms started in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping. But in other regions of the world, economic liberalization has had rather different outcomes.

In Latin America, the so-called Washington Consensus, implemented after the debt crises of the early 1980s, led to economic stagnation, the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s. Sub-Saharan Africa lost a quarter century to such policies, while the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe lost real and potential output in the 1990s on a scale greater than in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Why did economic liberalization seem to work in China, but not in other regions? Reforms needed to accelerate growth depend on historical and other conditions, which are necessarily varied at different times for countries with various backgrounds.

Growth acceleration conditional
Rapid economic growth can only materialize if enough minimal conditions are met. Growth acceleration is complicated, requiring several crucial inputs—which may include infrastructure, human resources, enabling state institutions, and economic stimuli, among other things.

Without some crucial necessary ingredients, a growth acceleration may not start, or cannot be sustained. Some economists invoke ‘growth diagnostics’ to identify ‘binding constraints’ holding back economic growth.

In some cases, these constraints may be due to lack of market liberalization, e.g., when inappropriate regulation or state interventions deter productive investments and technological progress. In others, inappropriate liberalization may frustrate and block such progress.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Likewise, other factors, such as particular state capacities or capabilities, human resource deficits or infrastructure may be the key constraint. One size does not fit all. There is no universal formula which is not sensitive to conditions, historical and others.

Liberation and developmental governance
So, why did liberalization work in China, but not in Africa and Latin America? In China, the pre-conditions for the last four decades were mostly created in the preceding 1949-1979 period.

Without the progress and achievements of the Mao era, the market-oriented reforms since 1979 would not have had the same impressive results. Needed ingredients, most importantly, people or human resources, had already been prepared in the previous period.

Market reforms from 1979 accelerated economic growth because China already had capable governance created by the state, including the ruling communist party, after Liberation in 1949; the country had lacked such developmental governance for centuries.

Through party structures at all levels, including every village, China’s communist party-led government has been able to enforce rules and regulations all over the country more efficiently than any emperor, not to mention the infamously corrupt Kuomintang (KMT) regime of 1912-1949.

In the late nineteenth century, central government revenues were equivalent to only 3 percent of GDP compared to 12 percent in Japan right after the Meiji Restoration. Under the KMT government, this increased to only 5 percent of GDP.

Mao’s economic legacy
The Mao government left the Deng reform regime with revenues equivalent to a fifth of GDP. China’s crime rate in the 1970s was among the lowest in the world; a Chinese black market or shadow economy was virtually non-existent, and corruption was estimated by Transparency International to be the lowest in the developing world in 1985.

Literacy rates in China increased from 28 percent in 1949 to 65 percent at the end of the 1970s (compared to 41 percent in India). Chinese life expectancy almost doubled to 65 years in the mid-1970s from 35 years in 1950 while India’s rose from 35 to 52 years over the same period.

In short, without the foundations established during the Mao period following Liberation seven decades ago, the selective economic liberalization of the last four decades could well have been ruinous. Liberation also allowed the Chinese authorities to chart their own course without being subject to policy conditionalities imposed by foreign powers.

Vladimir Popov is Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin and author of Mixed Fortunes: An Economic History of China, Russia and the West. Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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A view of India Gate, a war memorial located in New Delhi, covered by a thick layer of smog. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
NEW DELHI , Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Ankita Gupta, a housewife from south Delhi, is anxious about whether she should send her 4-year-old daughter to kindergarten. Outside visibility is poor as smog — a combination of emissions from factories, vehicle exhausts, coal plants and chemicals reacting with sunlight — has settled over the city, surpassing dangerous levels.

Gupta knows that sending her daughter to school is akin to forcefully taking her inside a chemical factory and filling the toddler’s lungs with toxic and lethal smoke.

“Why should I endanger her life by letting her travel through the roads, which are infested with the toxic air? Everything comes later. It is her health which for me is supreme,” she told IPS.

Last week, New Delhi, India’s capital with a population of 11 million, shut down schools for the second time in two weeks, 17 flights were diverted and several delayed due to poor visibility and construction across the city was halted as the Air Quality Index (AQI) measured 447. The AQI works on a scale of 0 to 500, where 0 measures good air quality and 500 measures hazardous.

The government responded declaring a public health emergency.

Children at risk from high levels of air pollution

Gupta is not the lone parent here who has been plunged into anxiety by the city’s worsening air quality.

Bijay Kumar, a mid-level employee in Delhi government, has similar concerns.

Last week, Kumar’s 14-year-old daughter, Ruchi, returned home from school with chest pains and sudden breathlessness. Her family rushed her to hospital where they were told that the ongoing high pollution was a cause of Ruchi’s illness. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), air pollution is linked to cases of pneumonia, stroke and ischaemic heart disease (characterised by reduced blood supply to the heart).

Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

Ruchi was admitted to hospital for two days.

“I even fret to imagine what if something bad had happened to my daughter. This toxic smoke is killing us all silently,” Kumar told IPS.

According to Sanjeev Verma, an environmental activist, air pollution in Delhi is becoming a silent killer, brutally murdering newborns, pregnant women and the elderly.

“Various studies have revealed that air pollution in Delhi is responsible for approximately 10,000 to 30,000 annual deaths. It is more than the people getting killed by the terror attacks on the country evert year. We are in a dire need to take drastic measures to put lid over the crises or else, the situation will turn catastrophic very very soon,” Verma told IPS. 

System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), an air quality information service in India, also issued an advisory, asking people to reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.

“Take more breaks and do less intense activities. Asthmatics, keep medicine ready if symptoms of coughing or shortness of breath occur. Heart patients, see doctor, if get palpitations, shortness of breath, or unusual fatigue,” it said.

Too many private cars on the roads

But the heart of the pollution problem lies with the city’s overburdened roads, according to Samiya Noor, a research scholar in environment studies. Noor told IPS that the lakhs of public and private vehicles driving on Delhi roads every day contribute to nearly 72 percent of the city’s worsening air quality.

According to a 2019 economic survey, there are more than 10 million vehicles on the city’s roads very day, emitting toxic gases that play a major factor in worsening the air quality of country’s capital.  

Noor told IPS that in addition to vehicular pollution, domestic pollution, industrial emission, road dust, construction and the burning of garbage also contributes to Delhi’s total pollution load.

There has also been an 18.35 percent increase in industries operational  in Delhi in the last decade.

“In many of the industries, installed air pollution control devices are found in idle conditions which lead to the emission of pollutants directly into the atmosphere without any filtration. Construction of short chimneys also restricts the polluting gases from escaping into the upper layers of the atmosphere. This all, in unison, is wreaking havoc,” Noor said.

• The government is already restricting the number of vehicles on the roads. Known as the odd-even vehicle rule, private cars with old and even numbers on their licence plates are only allowed on the roads on alternating days.
• It was first implemented in 2016 and subsequently stopped in 2017. However, it was implemented again this month as smog levels rose but stopped last week.
• The government has also attributed, in part, the declining air quality to the burning of crop residue in north India.   

Humayun’s Tomb, a UNESCO Heritage site built in 1570, in New Delhi last week. Air pollution in New Delhi hit hazardous levels, forcing government to shut down schools and declare a public health emergency. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

A government response but is it enough?

This July, India formally joined the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), becoming the 65th country to join the partnership. The announcement underlined the country’s commitment to combat air pollution with a solutions-oriented approach.  

India also announced that it will work with coalition countries to adopt cleaner energy producation and management practices to promote clean air.

The BBC also reported that municipal authorities were also “converting vehicles to cleaner fuel, restricting vehicle use at specific times, banning the use of polluting industrial fuel, prohibiting the entry of the dirtiest vehicles into the city and closing some power stations”. 

But Rajesh Bhatia, a social activist based in New Delhi, said government efforts were not enough and the active participation of people is required to reduce the ongoing pollution in the county’s capital.

According to Bhatia, the use of public transport needs to be promoted and  an adequate number of feeder buses for Metro stations had to be provided. 

“There have been various researchers who have shown how frequent checking of Pollution Under Control Certificates [a certificate issued after a test on a vehicle’s emission levels] needs to be undertaken by the civic authorities in order to ensure that vehicles are emitting gases within permissible norms. People need to be educated to switch-off their vehicles when waiting at traffic intersections,” Bhatia told IPS. 

But as the country’s parliament convenes for the second day of its winter session in Delhi, pollution in the capital is expected to top the agenda. 

Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, told reporters outside parliament yesterday that the government was slowly switching to electric vehicles but urged people to use public transport rather than their private vehicles.  

But for Sanjeev Sharma, a retired government school teacher, it is time to bid adieu to New Delhi — where he has lived for a quarter of a century. 

Along with his ailing wife, who is suffering from chronic bronchitis, Sharma is moving to Bangalore a southern India state where his son is working as a network engineer.

Sharma told IPS that in the very beginning of November, his wife’s health began to deteriorate and suffocation became a constant complaint. “She is on constant oxygen support but the medicos attending attending her told us that her condition is only worsening instead of getting any better in spite of increasing the  daily drug dose,” Sharma told IPS. 

While the capital is currently experiencing reduced levels of pollution, these are expected to rise dramatically by Thursday, according to SAFAR.

“Delhi is no longer a place to live during the winters. The air is getting thinker with toxic smoke with each passing day.

“Gone are the days when you used to find the place green and clean.”

 

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg.

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Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating. Credit: UN

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Mottled and reddish, the Lake Oku puddle frog has made its tragic debut on the Red List, a rapidly expanding roll call of threatened species. It was once abundant in the Kilum-Ijim rainforest of Cameroon but has not been seen since 2010 and is now listed as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

Researchers attribute its demise to a deadly fungal disease caused by the chytrid fungus. As noted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the skin fungus has devastated amphibian populations globally and holds the distinction of being the world’s most invasive killer, responsible for the decline of at least 500 amphibian species, including 90 presumed extinctions.

The IUCN’s Red List has expanded to cover more than 105,000 species of plants and animals, and its most recent update in July found that 27 percent of those assessed were at risk of extinction. No species on the list was deemed to have improved its status enough since 2018 to be placed in a lower threat category.

Human exploitation is often responsible, as with the now endangered red-capped mangabey monkey hunted for bushmeat while its forest habitat in West Africa is destroyed for agriculture; or the East African pancake tortoise critically endangered because of the global pet trade. Thousands of tree species now make the list too.

Farhana Haque Rahman

In its multi-faceted approach towards combating species loss, the IUCN has launched its First Line of Defence against Illegal Wildlife Trade program in eastern and southern Africa, engaging rural communities as key partners in tackling wildlife crime. But this is just a small part of a much wider challenge.

As Grethel Aguilar, IUCN acting director general, noted: “We must wake up to the fact that conserving nature’s diversity is in our interest, and is absolutely fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. States, businesses and civil society must urgently act to halt the overexploitation of nature, and must respect and support local communities and Indigenous Peoples in strengthening sustainable livelihoods.”

Jane Smart, global director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group, said the Red List update confirms the findings of the recent IPBES Global Biodiversity Assessment: “Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.”

More than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, “unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of bio-diversity loss”, according to a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

It bleakly warns that the global rate of species extinction is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years, and the rate will accelerate if action is not taken.

A summary was released in May and the full report is expected to be approved soon, assessing changes over the past 50 years and offering possible future scenarios.

Frightening statistics detail how 32 million hectares of primary or recovering forest were lost across much of the highly biodiverse tropics between 2010 and 2015 alone. Put in perspective that totals an area nearly the size of all Germany.

“Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Professor Josef Settele, co-chair of the report. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

Crucially, for the first time on such a scale of evidence, the report’s more than 400 authors rank the five main drivers of this global disaster. In descending order they are listed as: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

Clearly such challenges are interwoven and cannot be tackled in isolation. Some species are affected by all of these main drivers, or a deadly combination. Researchers into the fungal diseases wiping out amphibians like the Lake Oku puddle frog believe the most important factor in the spread of the pathogens is the global trade in wildlife. Some have also suggested that local changes in climate have also enabled the chytrid fungus to flourish in new habitats.

That governments are failing to address these warnings comes as little surprise, however.

“Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament,” declared 11,258 scientists grouped under the Alliance of World Scientists in a recent report, warning that the climate crisis is accelerating faster than most of them had expected and could reach potential irreversible climate tipping points, making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.

The UN Climate Change Conference, COP25, is to be held in Madrid from 2-13 December amidst severe signs of leadership stress. Brazil was to have hosted the summit but President Jair Bolsonaro ruled that out on his election and in the first nine months under his government over 7,600 sq km of rainforest were felled. The baton was then passed to Chile which pulled out because of ant-government unrest. And then this month President Donald Trump formally launched the process to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement.

COP25 has unfinished business from COP24, held in Poland’s coal-mining area of Katowice, namely negotiating the final elements of the Paris Agreement ‘rulebook’. Work must also start on future emissions targets ahead of the crunch 2020 conference next November in Glasgow, in the knowledge that commitments submitted by governments and current greenhouse gas emission trajectories fall far short of what is needed to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Loss of species and climate change are the two great challenges facing humanity this century,” warns Lee Hannah, senior scientist in climate change biology at Conservation International. “The results are clear, we must act now on both…”

The post Climate Change and Loss of Species: Our Greatest Challenges 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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A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

Ending the practice of defecating in the open, rather than in a toilet, will have “transformational benefits” for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, says the UN’s partner sanitation body, the WSSCC (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council).

Ahead of World Toilet Day, which is marked annually on 19 November, WSSCC’s acting Executive Director, Sue Coates, has been speaking to UN News about how to end open defecation.

 

What is open defecation and where is it mostly practiced?

Open defecation is when people defecate in the open – for example, in fields, forests, bushes, lakes and rivers – rather than using a toilet. Globally, the practice is decreasing steadily, however its elimination by 2030, one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a substantial acceleration in toilet use particularly in Central and Southern Asia, Eastern and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poor sanitation and hygiene practices (for example, not handwashing with soap after defecation and before eating) contribute to over 800,000 deaths from diarrhoea annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)

UN agencies report that of the 673 million people practicing open defecation, 91 per cent live in rural areas. An increase in population in countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, Madagascar and Niger, but also in some Oceania states, is leading to localized growth in open defecation.

 

Why is open defecation such a serious problem?

Open defecation is an affront to the dignity, health and well-being, especially of girls and women. For example, hundreds of millions of girls and women around the world lack privacy when they are menstruating. Open defecation also risks exposing them to increased sexual exploitation and personal safety and is a risk to public health.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria and one thousand parasite cysts. Poor sanitation and hygiene practices (for example, not handwashing with soap after defecation and before eating) contribute to over 800,000 deaths from diarrhoea annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): that’s more people than who die from malaria.

 

Why has it been so difficult to stop it?

Open defecation has been practiced for centuries; it is an ingrained cultural norm in some societies. Stopping it requires a sustained shift in the behaviour of whole communities so that a new norm, toilet use by all, is created and accepted. Ending open defecation requires an ongoing investment in the construction, maintenance and use of latrines, and other basic services.

 

How are people’s lives improved once they have a toilet to use?

On a day-to-day basis, the ability to use a toilet – at home and work, and in public places such as schools, health centres and markets – is a basic human right. Sanitation has transformational benefits supporting aspects of quality of life, equity and dignity for all people.

 

To what extent is sanitation a central part of overall development?

A lack of at least basic sanitation and hygiene services, including a lack of informed choice about menstrual health and hygiene, is a violation of the human rights to water and sanitation, as well as the rights to health, work, adequate standard of living, non-discrimination, human dignity, protection, information, and participation.

WHO and UNICEF report that in 2016, 21 per cent of healthcare facilities globally had no sanitation service, directly impacting more than 1.5 billion people, and over 620 million children worldwide lacked basic sanitation services at their school.

WHO estimates that every $1 invested in water and toilets returns an average of US $4 in saved medical costs, averted deaths and increased productivity. Hygiene promotion is also ranked as one of the most cost-effective public health interventions. Conversely, a lack of sanitation holds back economic growth.

 

How is the UN contributing to ending open defecation?

Member States and UN agencies are committed to ending open defecation and have urged the provision of financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer to help developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.

Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), on clean water and sanitation, requires access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and an end to open defecation, with special attention paid to the needs of women and girls, and those in vulnerable situations.

Increasingly, governments and their UN agency partners have roadmaps to tackle the issue, and WSSCC has been providing grants for community-based solutions for a decade. However, the SDG target is not on track.

It’s estimated that the global annual cost for providing even basic sanitation services is   $19.5 billion, but right now not enough funding is forthcoming. The UN Sustainable Development Goals Report in 2019 warns that while progress is being made in many SDG areas, the collective global response is not enough, leaving the most vulnerable people and countries to suffer the most.

This story was originally published by UN News

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Credit: MONIKA DEUPALA/SONIA AWALE

By Sonia Awale
KATHMANDU, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

For those who think that Nepal is too underdeveloped to make full use of artificial intelligence (AI), think again. That is exactly what they used to say about computers and mobile phones in the 1990s.

It may come as a surprise to many that Nepal has been gaining ground in AI, developing not only software using machine learning algorithms but producing world-class engineers. One company at the forefront is Fusemachines Nepal, which has started using industry experts to train AI students with cutting-edge technology to deliver intelligent solutions.

“I wanted to see if I can contribute in bringing the best AI education to Nepal and make Nepal known around the world as one of the best sources of AI talent,” says the Nepali founder of Fusemachines, Sameer Maskey, a professor at Columbia University.

This is the age of surveillance capitalism, where algorithms determine election outcomes, Siri knows what you want before you do, wearables correctly deduce the state of the heart and Facebook recognises friends.

 

 

AI simply imitates human thinking by recognising patterns in data, so that repetitive everyday work can be done by machines that learn as they go along.

Coming to terms with AI

Artificial Intelligence: Ability of computer systems or machines to make a decision like humans, or the ability to perform tasks requiring human intelligence

Machine Learning: A subset of artificial intelligence that provides a system with the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed, relying on patterns generated from data

Deep Learning: Machine learning that is applied on a large set of data, also known as deep neural learning that uses deep neural networks to model complicated data

Natural Language Processing: Interaction between computers and human languages, deals with programming computers to process and analyse natural (human) language, this field of AI processes, analyses, interprets and distills information from human languages

Computer Vision: Enables computers to see, identify and process images in the same way that human vision does

Image Processing: Part of computer vision that entails analysis and manipulation to find insights from a digitised image

Big Data: Extremely large data sets on which AI is applied to reveal patterns, trends and associations and make decisions
Nepal missed the bus on natural resource processing, manufacturing and information technology. But experts say that training a critical mass of engineers in AI can allow the country’s economy to leapfrog and become globally competitive.

Fusemachines Director of Academic Affairs Bülent Uyaniker, who was in Nepal recently, rejects the notion that Nepal is not ready for artificial intelligence applications. “It is happening already, it is inevitable. If there can be 8.5 million Facebook users in Nepal, then it has the special conditions for AI.”

Proof of this is the increasing number of software companies in Nepal using local engineering talent to work on software solutions for customers in North America or Europe. However, most of the engineers and recent graduates need training in AI to keep up with customer requirements. America alone will need 200,000 data scientists in the next five years, and most of these will come from the UK, Finland, Canada, Singapore, China and India.

Which is why Fusemachines Nepal is also emphasising education. Says the head of its global operations and strategy, Sumana Shrestha: “You cannot learn AI in a one-day bootcamp, it needs intelligent mathematics, but there is a huge demand versus supply gap for engineers proficient in machine learning or other AI components everywhere.”

Nepal established itself as a sought after destination in the past 20 years for outsourcing services such as software and app development, website design and big data management to overseas clients, mostly due to the country’s inexpensive English-speaking workforce.

This move from IT to AI will not just create jobs in Nepal, but also allow the country to increase efficiency and productivity in the workplace. General practitioners in rural hospitals will be able to make diagnoses faster so they can spend more time with patients, high-risk individuals can be identified with cancer screening, and targeted advertising and customised itineraries will lure potential tourists during Visit Nepal 2020.

Recently, a group of engineering students developed a model to help poultry entrepreneurs understand fowl behaviour and the state of their animals’ health, helping them to raise the farm’s business profile.

“With precision livestock farming we can generate patterns to help farmers recognise symptoms before an outbreak of a disease by implementing AI components such as image processing and deep learning,” explained engineering student Sajil Awale at Pulchok Engineering Campus. “This allows for timely intervention to prevent mass deaths and reduce losses.”

Computer vision (which enables computers to see and process images as humans would) can also help identify rotten fruit swiftly, and prevent misuse of pesticides by identifying areas on the farm that require chemicals, and the amounts needed. AI can also estimate future harvests, allowing farmers time to find markets for produce.

Engineers at Fusemachines Nepal are working on Nepal’s first optical character recognition (OCR) system so forms filled out with Nepali handwriting can be digitised and translated into English. This will have huge scope in Nepal’s banking, hospital and government sectors, where pen and paper continues to be the norm.

Sixit Bhatta, CEO of ride-sharing startup Tootle, says Nepal is ripe for AI applications: “Our efforts now should be on preparing for a world in which machines perform skills-oriented tasks and for humans to take on the roles that require creativity and empathy. But before that, the government should design policies that allow AI to grow, and not restrict it.”

Sumana Shrestha at Fusemachines Nepal says that as long as salaries for clerical staff are low, there is less potential for AI to flourish. But she adds: “The curse of cheap labour means companies will prefer to employ people to do repetitive work. But sooner or later, AI will be here. Nepal needs to develop despite government. And the private sector needs to prepare itself for disruption.”

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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The Ocean at sunset seen from SPC headquarters in Noumea. Credit: Cameron Diver

By Cameron Diver
NOUMEA, New Caledonia, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

In just under a month, countries around the world will gather for UNFCCC COP 25. The hashtag for this year’s “Blue COP” is yet another reminder to us all that it is “Time For Action”. We can no longer afford to wait as the effects of the climate crisis become ever more present. Vulnerable populations, whether from Small Island States, the rural heartland or the world’s megacities, are becoming ever more vulnerable, and the wellbeing of people and planet continues to face its most existential threat.

At the Pacific Community (SPC), we are confronted every day by the striking dichotomy between the extreme vulnerability of our small island/large ocean Member States and the remarkable resilience and climate ambition of their peoples. We are also challenged by a new reality: under the effects of climate change, the islands and peoples of the Blue Pacific continent are both sustained and threatened by the ocean.

Responding to this reality, in 2018 Pacific Leaders adopted an expanded definition of human security to include the implications of climate change and environmental degradation, and, in the 2019 Kainaki II Declaration, they called for “urgent, transformational global climate change action” to limit global warming to 1.5°C, transition out of fossil fuels, achieve net zero carbon by 2050, increase global climate finance and invest in science-based initiatives to improve our collective understanding of risk and vulnerability, while providing a robust evidence-base for informed policy making. The Kainaki II Declaration is also a milestone in its express recognition of the ocean-climate nexus and its appeal to “all parties attending COP 25 to welcome the focus on oceans, consider developing a work programme on oceans within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process and convene a workshop on the climate-ocean nexus in 2020”.

Cameron Diver

But it is not only for the island Nations of the Pacific that the nexus between climate change and our ocean is critical. It is just as vital for other Small Island Developing States and, whether they realise it or not, for countries and peoples around the globe, from the coastline to the highest mountains and the farthest reaches of the planet’s great continental landmasses. The recent IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) highlighted that “It is virtually certain that the global ocean has warmed unabated since 1970 and has taken up more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system” with observed negative impacts on ecosystems, people and ecosystem services. The SROCC underscored the risks this creates for, among others, biodiversity, water use and access, vulnerability to extreme weather events, changes in the distribution of natural resources and “intrinsic values important for human identity”.

In this context, where ocean change is driven by climate change and each, in turn, compounds the negative impact of the other, we cannot ignore the science and we should not ignore the crosscutting benefits of combined ocean/climate action. And SPC is already bringing its capacity and partnerships to bear to take action.

As a partner of the Because the Ocean Initiative and the Ocean Pathway Partnership, SPC supported the third regional workshop on the integration of the ocean into NDCs under the Paris Agreement, together with a special ocean-climate negotiators symposium in May 2019. Over past years, SPC’s teams have implemented significant programmes of work on the restoration of ecosystem services and adaptation to climate change, contributed to the Pacific Marine Climate Change Report Card, led and published research on the vulnerability of tropical Pacific fisheries and aquaculture to climate change and, with our partners, developed projections for the future geographic distribution of tuna stocks under the effects of a warming ocean. And through platforms such as the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science (PCCOS), we will convene partnerships, facilitate knowledge exchange and action to strengthen the collaborative contribution ocean science can bring to climate action, as one of our key initiatives under the upcoming United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

A view of Majuro, Marshall Islands. Credit: Cameron Diver

From 2 to 13 December in Madrid, under the incoming Chilean presidency, SPC fully intends to leverage the opportunity provided by the “Blue COP” and mobilise its partnerships to highlight the powerful synergies between ocean action and climate action. We will be convening several events presenting a Pacific perspective on the SROCC, highlighting the impact of climate change on maritime boundaries, emphasising the contribution of ocean science for climate action and outlining a 2030-2050 vision for resilient, green and clean ports in the Pacific islands region. At SPC, we are convinced that to deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement, we need a healthy and sustainably managed ocean. As such, we are also working actively with our Member States and partners like the Green Climate Fund, the European Union, the Agence Française de Développement and others to integrate the ocean into projects that will strengthen action for climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience in the Pacific.

The celebrated Pacific author Epeli Hau’ofa wrote “the sea is our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us”. That eloquent statement of a fundamental ocean identity comes from the heart of Oceania, from the strength of the cultures and traditions of the Blue Pacific. Imagine how powerful it would be if we collectively harnessed “the ocean in us” as a driving force for increased climate ambition and enhanced climate action. COP 25 is our chance to do just that! It is our chance to ensure the ocean is recognised as part of the climate solution. And it is our chance to embed the nexus between climate change and the ocean into our thinking, our cooperation and, above all, our action.

The post The Ocean in Us: Ocean Action for Climate Ambition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Cameron Diver is Deputy Director-General, the Pacific Community (SPC)

The post The Ocean in Us: Ocean Action for Climate Ambition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

The Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Prime Minister Agostinho do Rosario of Mozambique engaged in a discussion titled, Invest in Africa’s Space: Conversation with African Heads of State, moderated by Dr. Victor Oladokun, African Development Bank Group Director of External Relations and Communications, at the Africa Investment Forum, Johannesburg, 11 November 2019.

 

 

President Cyril Ramaphosa identified infrastructure, energy, manufacturing and tourism as the sectors where the most investment opportunities exist in South Africa.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagama said his country has created a conducive investment environment through good governance systems and security, and according to the World Bank, it is the second easiest African country with which to do business.

For Ghana’s President. Nana Akufo-Addo, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area remains a priority. He says his government is working to strengthen the country’s macro-economy. The country’s current priorities are infrastructure, agriculture and mineral resources.

Prime Minister Agostinho do Rosario representing the President of Mozambique, said his government is open to investment, fighting corruption and has improved transparency.

The post Africa is Better Placed Than Ever for Investment appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Turkey’s farmers struggle with the effects of climate change, land degradation and other barriers to sustainable agriculture. Mark Nesbitt/CC by 2.0

By Ed Holt
VIENNA, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

Despite latest research showing Turkey lagging in overall food sustainability, progress in sustainable agriculture appears to be a bright spot in the country’s troubled agriculture industry.

But local farming groups, NGOs and international bodies, while welcoming government efforts to promote sustainable farming, are urging more to be done as farmers struggle with the effects of climate change, land degradation and other barriers to sustainable agriculture.

Turkey is the world’s 7th-largest agricultural producer, according to United Nations estimates, producing and exporting a wide variety of crops and other agricultural products.

Historically, the agricultural sector has also played a fundamental role in Turkey’s society and economy. Agriculture is the largest single employer – accounting for about a quarter of the country’s workforce by some estimates – and a major contributor to overall GDP, exports and rural development.

But in the last two decades the industry has changed. It is thought that as many as 2.5 million small-scale farmers have been forced to leave rural parts of the country to move to major cities in the hope of finding jobs amid rising costs of supplies and equipment for farming. This has not only hurt rural village communities but left millions of hectares of land unfarmed.

Turkey, having once boasted globally-enviable food self-sufficiency, has now become a net food importer.

This has raised concerns over its food security and overall food sustainability.

In the latest Food Sustainability Index compiled by the Economic Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), Turkey ranked 58th among 67 countries in terms of food sustainability.

But as experts point out, some areas of agriculture in the country, specifically sustainable agriculture, are seeing important progress.

“The food sustainability challenges Turkey faces are no different to those faced globally: population growth, rapid urbanisation and instability in rainfall regimes due to climate change are the major challenges,” Aysegul Selisik, Assistant Representative in Turkey for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), told IPS.

“The Food Sustainability Index is a composite of various indicators across three categories – nutrition, sustainable agriculture and food loss and waste, and Turkey’s overall score was low among 67 countries. However, this does not mean Turkey is poor in every dimension of food sustainability, it scored highly for nutrition and sustainable agriculture,” she added.

The FAO points to a number of recent initiatives set up across the country, some of which it is involved in, which have helped educate farmers about sustainable agriculture and promote its use.

One example is the establishment of so-called farmer field schools in the Konya Basin in the Central Anatolia region of the country promoting and supporting sustainable production and conservation, teaching farmers about, among others, reduced tillage techniques and programmed irrigation and water saving.

FAO says these initiatives will build on the knowledge and experience of thousands of farmers with further potential for scaling up to other topics and regions to strengthen farmers’ capacities in conservation agriculture.

The government has also run training programmes for farmers in provinces across the country with the aim of promoting sustainable, efficient and environment-friendly agricultural production, including the efficient use of all resources and conservation of land, plant and water resources. The programmes have been attended by hundreds of thousands of farmers, according to the government.

Meanwhile, other organisations are also helping farmers adopt more sustainable practices, including providing direct financial support. Banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have loaned tens of millions of dollars to organic farmers to help improve land management, use of energy and resource-saving technologies, as well as reduce and recover waste.

The state-owned Ziraat Bankasi (Agriculture Bank) has launched a training programme for young farmers to teach them about best agricultural practices.

Smaller organisations are also helping, with some using innovative technology to help increase agricultural sustainability. The fair trade company Tarlamvar, for instance, has created an online platform brining small-scale farmers and consumers together by tracking the path of food from a farm to a person’s dining table.

“Not only are we helping famers to have a more marketable product and connecting them with customers, we’re also helping consumers to be more conscious about where their food comes from and how it is grown,” Ata Cengiz, Tarlamvar CEO, told local media in August.

However, while these initiatives have been welcomed by many groups, some environmental activists say the government needs to be doing more to combat some of the threats to sustainable agriculture.

Agricultural food production is dependent on biodiversity, providing protection for crops and helping reduce pests and disease, as well as affecting things such as soil fertility and pollination.

But at the same time research has shown that intensified farming has been associated with the loss of certain wild species.

Speaking to the Turkish news website hurriyetdailynews.com in May this year, Hikmet Ozturk of the Turkish Foundation for Combatting Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA) warned that Turkey’s uniquely broad biodiversity was under threat.

“We need to adopt environmentally friendly sustainable agricultural practices,” he said.

Pointing to the threat to biodiversity posed by land degradation and the overuse of pesticides and fertilisers, he added that “the administration is aware [of the threat to biodiversity], but the work being done is insufficient. There is still much other work that could be done for the protection of species and genetic sources”.

Ozturk, like others, is also worried about climate change and the effect this will have on sustainable agriculture.

Current climate change models suggest that in the coming years the Mediterranean region will see more droughts and less rainfall. TEMA’s Ozturk has estimated that as much as 47 percent of Turkey’s land is at risk of desertification due to low rainfall.

“Geographical location, climate, topography and soil conditions, together with the country’s socio-economic interactions, increase sensitivity to climate change impacts, desertification and drought. The possible impacts of climate change in Turkey are expected to be severe, particularly on water resources, agriculture and food security, and ecosystem services,” said the FAO’s Selisik.

The Turkish government has said it is aware of the potential problems of climate change for farming and its National Agriculture Project aimed at ensuring food security through sustainable agricultural production involves projects for the conservation of natural resources.

It has also launched various incentives and projects for farmers to adapt to climate change, including training on implementing climate friendly agricultural practices such as preferring adaptive species, drip irrigation systems and direct sowing.

Despite apparent progress on promoting and adopting sustainable farming in Turkey, however, the challenges faced by farmers in transitioning to sustainable agriculture remain great.

Small, fragmented farms, an ageing population, high input and investment costs, price fluctuations in agricultural raw materials and products are all a worry for farmers, explained Selisik.

“A lack of knowledge about climate friendly agricultural practices, farmer organisation and consultancy services are other barriers to a transformation towards more sustainable farms,” she added.

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A Rohingya girl goes to fetch water in Balukhali camp, Bangladesh. Credit: Umer Aiman Khan/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday authorized an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity, namely deportation, which have forced between 600,000 and one million Rohingya refugees out of Myanmar, into neighboring Bangladesh since 2016.

The pre-trial judges “accepted that there exists a reasonable basis to believe widespread and/or systematic acts of violence may have been committed that could qualify as crimes against humanity of deportation across the Myanmar-Bangladesh border” the Court said in a press statement, in addition to “persecution on grounds of ethnicity and/or religion against the Rohingya population.”

After a reported military-led crackdown, widespread killings, rape and village burnings, nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August 2017 to settle in crowded refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world’s only permanent criminal tribunal with a mandate to investigate and prosecute individuals who participate in international atrocity crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity.
This is the second strike against the alleged crimes this week, as the tribunal’s decision follows a Monday submission by Gambia to the UN’s principal judicial organ, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of “mass murder, rape, and genocidal acts” which violate its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in addition to destruction of villages, arbitrary detention, and torture.

As a member to the Genocide prevention treaty, Gambia “refused to stay silent”, and as a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the small African nation has taken legal action to assist the persecuted majority-Muslim Rohingya, with support by other Muslim countries.

While the UN’s ICJ, known as the ‘World Court’, settles disputes submitted by States on a range of matters, the ICC is the world’s only permanent  criminal tribunal with a mandate to investigate and prosecute individuals who participate in international atrocity crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity.

In July, the ICC’s top Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, requested an investigation be open into the alleged crimes committed since October of 2016, concerning Myanmar and Bangladesh.

At that time, her Office’s preliminary examination found “a reasonable basis” to believe that at least 700,00 Rohingya were deported from Myanmar to Bangladesh “through a range of coercive acts causing suffering and serious injury.”

Under the Rome Statute that created the ICC, which highlights crimes against humanity as one of its four crucial international crimes, the top Prosecutor concluded sufficient legal conditions had been met to open an investigation.

While Myanmar is not a State party to the treaty, Bangladesh ratified the Statute in 2010, meaning authorization to investigate does not extend to all crimes potentially committed in Myanmar, but will focus on violations committed in part on Bangladeshi territory, the ICJ said in July.

 

‘Only justice and accountability’ can stop the violence

Judges forming the pre-trial chamber, Judge Olga Herrera Carbuccia, Judge Robert Fremr, and Judge Geofreey Henderson received views on this request by or on behalf of hundreds of thousands of alleged victims.

According to the ICC Registry, victims insist they want an investigation by the Court, and many “believe that only justice and accountability can ensure that the perceived circle of violence and abuse comes to an end.”

“Noting the scale of the alleged crimes and the number of victims allegedly involved, the Chamber considered that the situation clearly reaches the gravity threshold,” the Court said.

The pre-trial Chamber in addition authorized the commencement of the investigation in relation to any crime, including future crime, so long as it is within the jurisdiction of the Court, and is allegedly committed at least in part in the Rome Statute State Party, Bangladesh, or any other territory accepting the jurisdiction.

The alleged crime must also be sufficiently linked to the present situation, and must have been committed on or after the date of the Statute’s entry into force for Bangladesh or the relevant State Party.

Judges from the ICC have given the greenlight for prosecutors to commence collection of necessary evidence, which could result in the judge’s issuance of summonses to appear in court or warrants of arrest. Parties to the Statute have a legal obligation to cooperate fully with the ICC, nonmembers invited to cooperate may decide to do so voluntarily.

This story was originally published by UN News

The post ICC Gives Greenlight for Probe into Violent Crimes Against Rohingya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

This year the Worldwide Web is thirty years old. For the first time since 1435, a citizen from Brazil could exchange their views and information with another in Finland.

The Internet, the communications infrastructure for the Web is a little older. It was developed from the ARPANET, a US Defense Department project under the Advanced Research Projects Agency; the military designing it to decentralize communications in the case of a military attack.

That network enabled scientists to communicate over email in universities. Then in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland invented the Hyperlink and the Worldwide Web (the Web) rapidly moved from scientists automating information sharing between universities and research institutions to the first Websites now available to the general public.

In 2002 the first social media sites began as specialised websites. LinkedIn launched in 2003 then FaceBook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010 and so on…

Will the Internet become a tool for participation? How will this be done? These are questions that political institutions, if they really care for democracy, must address as soon as possible. The Zuckerberg era must make this choice now, in a few years time it will already be too late…

My generation regarded the arrival of the Web as a great prospect for democracy. We come from the Gutenberg era, an era that in 1435 changed the world. From manuscripts drafted by monks to be read by a few people in monasteries, the invention of reusable movable type meant that in just 20 years already eight million copies of printed books went all across Europe.

Among many other things it also meant the creation of information. People who heretofore had merely a scant horizon beyond their immediate surroundings, could suddenly access information about their country, and even the entire world. The first newspaper was printed in Strasbourg in 1605. From then until 1989, the world was filled with information.

Information had a very serious limit. It was a vertical structure. Just a few people sent news to a large number of recipients; there was little feedback. It wasn’t participatory, it required large startup investments, it was easily used by economic and political powers.

In the Third World, the media system was part of the State. In 1976, 88% of World news flows emanated from just three countries: the US, the UK and France. International news agencies based in these three countries included Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters and Agence France Press (AFP).

The world’s media were dependent on their news services. Some alternative news agencies, like Inter Press Services, were able to put a dent in their monopoly. But what this Western media published, by and large was a biased window on the world.

Then came the Internet, and with it, came horizontal communication. Every receiver was also a sender. For the first time since 1435, media were no longer the only window on the world. Like-minded people could take part in social, cultural and economic interactions.

This change was evident in the United Nations Woman’s World Conference in Beijing, 1995. Women created networks prior to the conference, and came with a common plan of action. Governments were not so prepared, so the Declaration of Beijing was a turning point, one which was entirely unlike the bland declarations from the previous four World Conferences.

Another good example is the campaign to eliminate anti-personnel landmines, started by the Canadian activist Jody Williams in 1992. This soon blossomed into a large coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations from more than 100 countries.

Under mounting pressure Norway decided to introduce the issue to the UN, where the US, China, and other manufacturers of landmines like the USSR, tried to block the debate, declaring that they would vote against it.

Roberto Savio

The activists did not care, and 128 countries adopted the Mine Ban Treaty in 1997 with the US, China and the USSR voting against. A vast global movement was more powerful than the traditional role of the Security Council. The Internet had become the tool to create world coalitions.

Those are just two examples of how far the Internet could change the traditional system of Westphalian state sovereignty as defined at the Conference of Westphalia in 1648. The Internet spanned national frontiers to bring on a new era.

Let’s say, for the sake of symbolism, that the Internet brought us from the Gutenberg Era, to the Zuckerberg Era, to cite the inventor of Facebook and a leading instance of what went wrong with this medium.

The Internet came upon us with an unprecedented force. It took 38 years for the radio to reach 50 million people: television took 13 years; and the Web just four years. It had a billion users in 2005, two billion in 2011, and it now has three and a half billion users, three billion of those using social media.

So the two traditional pillars of power, the political system and the economic system, also had to learn how to use the Internet. The US provides a good example. All of American media (national and regional publications) involves printing 50 million copies daily.

Quality newspapers — both the conservative broadsheets like the Wall Street Journal, and progressive ones like the Washington Post or the New York Times — together print ten million copies a day. Trump has sixty three million followers on Twitter; they read Trump’s tweets but don’t buy newspapers.

The Web has had two unforeseen developments. One was the dramatic reinforcement of the consumer society. Today advertising budgets are ten times larger than budgets for education, and education only lasts a few years compared with a lifetime of advertisement.

With the development of social networks, people — now more consumers than citizens — have become objects for marketing goods and services, and recently also for political campaigns. All systems of information and communications extract our personal data, selling us on as consumers.

Now the TV can see us while we watch it. Smartphones have become microphones that listen in on our conversations. The notion of privacy is gone. If we could access our data, we would find out that we are followed every minute of the day, even into our bedrooms.

Secret algorithms form profiles of each and every one of us. Based on these profiles platforms provide us with the news, the products, and the people that these algorithms believe we will like, thus insulating us in our own bubbles.

Artificial intelligence learns from the data that it accumulates. China, with 1.35 billion people, will provide its researchers with more data than Europe and United States together. The Internet has given birth to a digital extractive economy, where the raw material is no longer minerals, but we humans.

The other development that went awry is that the digital extractive economy has created unprecedented wealth.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was recently divorced from his wife. In the settlement she received 36 billion dollars yet Bezos remains among the 10 richest people in the world. This is just one story from an increasingly sad reality of social injustice, where 80 of the world’s richest persons hold the same wealth as nearly three billion poor people.

A new sector is evolving, the “surveillance capitalism” sector, where money is made not from the production of good and services, but from data extracted from people.

This new system exploits humans to give to the owners of this technology, a concentration of wealth, knowledge and power without precedent in history. The ability to develop facial recognition and other surveillance instruments no longer lies in the realms of science fiction.

The Chinese government has already given every citizen a digital number, where all their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviours converge. If a citizen goes below a level, their children will not be allowed to go to a good school, and the citizen themselves, though they may still be able to travel by train, won’t have access to planes.

These technologies will soon be in use all over the planet. London town now has 627,000 surveillance cameras, one for every fourteen citizens; in Beijing it’s one for every seven.  A study conducted by The Rand Corporation estimates that by 2050, Europe too would also have one camera for every seven citizens.

The interrelationship between democracy and the Internet is now creating a belated awareness in the political system. The European Parliament has just released a study, about the negative impact of the Internet. These impacts are:

1.        Internet Addiction
   There is unanimity among doctors and sociologists that a new generation is coming, one which is very different from the previous one. Over 90% of those aged 15-24 uses the Internet, as against 11% for those over 55. Young people spend 21 hours per week on the PC, and 18 hours on a smart phone. This leaves little time for social and cultural interaction. 4.4% of European adolescents now show pathological Internet use “that affects their lives and health”. The American Academy of Psychology has officially included Internet Addiction as a new ailment. Magnetic resonance studies of those with Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) show that they exhibit the same brain structure alterations as those who suffer from drug or alcohol addiction.
2.        Harming cognitive development
   A particular warning is given about children under two years of age. More than 20 minutes a day of screen use reduces some of their neural development. People pushed to isolation tend to develop symptoms of distress, anger, loss of control, social withdrawal, familial conflicts, and an inability to act in real life. Internet users in tests were faster than non-users at finding data, but they were less able to retain data.
3.        Information Overload
   The condition of having too much information hampers the ability to understand an issue, or to make effective decisions, an important issue for managers, consumers, and social media users. According to Microsoft, attention span for a title has gone from 12 seconds in 2000 down to 8 seconds in 2016. The attention span for reading has gone from 12 minutes to 8 minutes. Two new terms can be used: one, the ‘popping brain’, describes a brain less adept to adapt to a slower pace of real life and then there is ‘Neuroplasticity’; i.e. the ability to alter one’s behaviour after a new experience. Frequent immersion in virtual worlds can reduce neuroplasticity and also make it more difficult to adapt to the slower pace of real life. The need to compete in speed between social media channels is well known. For example Amazon estimates that one second of performance delay would cost 1.16 billion losses per year in sales.
4.        Harmful effects in knowledge and belief
   The fact that social media deliberately tends to gather together users with similar views, tastes and habits, is fragmenting society in a negative way for democracy, resulting in closed systems that don’t allow for alternative viewpoints. Adolescents no longer discuss significant subjects. They go to their virtual world, and if they come across somebody from another group, they tend to insult each other. The Internet is full of fake news and misleading information, and users have great difficulty distinguishing accurate from inaccurate information. Echo chambers appear to be far more pervasive, and may unite those with more extreme and partisan political and ideological positions, therefore undermining possibilities for civil discourse and tolerance, supporting radicalization.
5.        Harming public/private boundaries.
   The Internet blurs the distinction between the private and the public. Private life becomes public. This is especially negative for teenagers who lose the concept of privacy, for example by sending private photos across the Internet. One important observation is that teenagers now get their sexual education from pornography, where women are always an object to satisfy men’s sexual phantasies. This is in turn creating a lack of respect for women, and a new generation that risk, for new reasons, returning to a patriarchal society. Group violations of teenage girls are clearly a result of this trend.
6.        Harming social relationships
   The Internet is clearly a powerful instrument to create new communities. However, when used negatively, it can also damage communities, because of the migration to Internet of many human activities such as shopping, commerce, socialising, leisure, professional activities and personal interaction. That migration creates impoverished communication, incivility and a lack of trust and commitment.
7.        Harming democracy
   The Internet has been a powerful tool for participation, and therefore for democracy. However the study notes with concern that a growing number of activities are also harmful to democracy. These include: a) The incivility of many online political discourses, b) Political and ideological polarisation, uniquely possible using the Internet. c) Misinformation, and, in particular, fake news, d) Voter manipulations through profiling based on harvested social media information. We all know what happened in the US elections with Cambridge Analytica data, gathered by Facebook, and how thousands of false web users and bots now heavily interfere in elections.

We should add to this study some other considerations. The first is that finance now is now also run by algorithms. The algorithms do not only decide when to sell or buy shares, but now also decide where to invest.

The Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) last month reached 14,400 billion dollars in trades, more than that traded by humans. This trend will continue with the development of artificial intelligence and soon finance will become even more dehumanized.  Even when Internet users invest themselves they too will be directed by machines and algorithms.

A second consideration is that young people read less and less. Reading a book is very different to scrolling a screen. We are experiencing a progressive reduction in levels of culture. It’s not uncommon to have university students that make grammar and spelling mistakes.

Let us remember that when the Internet was still new, its proponents told us: it is not important to know, rather it is important to know how to find. We are more and more dependent on search engines, learning less and less, and we are unable to connect that data in a personal holistic logical system.

There is clearly a need for regulation to reduce the negative aspects of the Internet and to reinforce positive values. The owners of social media platforms are now under increased scrutiny so they have taken the road of self-regulation.

Twitter, for instance, has decided that it cannot be used for political purposes. Zuckerberg is an exponent of market myths telling us that good news will automatically prevail over fake news. Except that platforms help users to read and find only what they like, to maintain our attention, providing us what is striking, unusual and provocative. This is not a free market.

The Zuckerberg era is clearly creating an entirely different generation, very different from the generations of the Gutenberg era. This raises many questions, from privacy to freedom of expression (now in private hands), from who will regulate, what to regulate and how.

A five year-old child is now very different from a Gutenberg five year-old. We are in a period of transition. The meaning of democracy is changing. International relations are moving away from the search for common values via multilateralism, to a tide of nationalist, xenophobic and selfish views of the world.

Terms like peace, cooperation, accountability, participation and transparency are becoming outdated. What is clear is that the present system is no longer sustainable. Policies disappear from debate, now referred to only as ‘politics’. Vision and paradigms are getting scarce.

Over and above all of this the threat of climate change is looming; yet last year toxic emissions from the five largest countries increased by 5%. Young people are largely absent from political institutions as is shown by the vote on Brexit where only 23% of the 18-25 age group participated.

At this very moment we have large demonstrations in thirteen countries all over the world. In those streets young people do participate, frequently demonstrating rage, frustration and violence. If we cannot bring back horizontal communication to the Internet and we do not free it from the commercial fracturing of young people, the future is hardly rosy.

Yet as the marches against Climate Change clearly demonstrate, if young people want to change the world, values and vision will return. It is evident that the Internet can be a very powerful tool. But who will redress these failings? Will the Internet become a tool for participation? How will this be done?

These are questions that political institutions, if they really care for democracy, must address as soon as possible. The Zuckerberg era must make this choice now, in a few years time it will already be too late…

 

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

The post Dangers and Questions of the Zuckerberg Era appeared first on Inter Press Service.

GGGW2019 was held in InterContinental Seoul COEX from Oct. 21 – 24

By Ha Young Kim
Nov 15 2019 (IPS-Partners)

It has been a great experience for me to attend the Global Green Growth Week (GGGW) 2019 hosted by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based international, inter-governmental organization dedicated to supporting and promoting strong, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth. Through this year’s event, I had the opportunity to learn more about green growth and listen to diverse opinions from policymakers, researchers, environmental experts, and representatives of the private sector from all over the world. Even though I had attended only two days of the one week event, I gained valuable knowledge from many interesting seminars and informative specialized sessions on topics regarding green growth and renewable energy,. I realized the importance of GGGI as a leading institute to implement a new development paradigm on a model of economic growth that is both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the event, GGGW2019 is GGGI’s flagship conference to accelerate and scale-up the transition toward renewable energy in support of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement. This year was the 3rd instance event under the banner of “Unlocking Renewable Energy Potential” and it was held in InterContinental Seoul COEX from Oct. 21 – 25.

GGGW2019 Schedule at a Glance

On October 21, GGGW2019 began with the welcoming and opening remarks by the Director-General of GGGI, Dr. Frank Rijsberman, and the President and Chair, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. In his recorded address, President and Chair Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of the green energy transformation. He stated that it is important for the international community to adopt resolute measures to transform fossil fuel-based energy systems. He added that, “This transition towards renewable energy sources is not only about challenges. It presents new opportunities to modernize our energy systems, accelerate and diversify their economies, create green jobs, increase productivity and competitiveness and reduce poverty.”

Dr. Frank Rijsberman, the Director-General of GGGI, delivers his welcome and opening remarks

Chair and President Ban Ki-moon calls for international effort to achieve transition toward the sustainable development in his recorded address

Arthouros Zervos, Chair of REN21 presents his keynote on the first day of GGGW2019

After the opening remarks and keynote, there was a high-level panel moderated under GGGI Director-General, Frank Rijsberman. The panelists discussed the key approaches used in countries to support new clean energy systems and infrastructure as well as country experiences and their perspectives on approaches in achieving national economic growth and energy security objectives.

A special session on ‘Youth and Entrepreneurship in the 2030 Agenda’ organized by the Deputy Director-General, Hyoeun Jenny Kim.

In the afternoon, I attended the Parallel Session: Integrated Approaches to Clean Energy Infrastructure (GGKP Partner Presentations), during which panelists discussed to what extent energy infrastructure is significant for achieving the SDGs and how integrated approaches could be practiced to accelerate the action for the social, environmental, and economic aspects of sustainability. The speakers emphasized the role of the government to optimize the outcome by implementing policy and imposing subsidy.

GGGW2019 also offered the platform for the announcement of many new milestones for GGGI; the launch of GGGI’s Green Growth Index, the adoption of the GGGI Strategy 2030, and the announcement of Mr. Ban Ki-moon’s re-election as GGGI Assembly President and Council Chair were momentous proceedings of the event.

The Green Growth Index is the first benchmarked composite index designed to track and assess the performance of green growth based on efficient use of sustainable resources, natural capital protection, green economic opportunities, and social inclusion. Through this launch event, I could learn how the new index can be used to measure countries’ green growth performance and what the index means regarding their current green growth progress. Even though, at the regional level, some countries scored moderate in the index, considerable efforts are still needed to improve the performance at a global level. As a student majoring in Economics, I realized that there is a correlation between the environment and the country’s economy. It was interesting to observe how the concepts and theories that I learned in class were applied in the real-world situation to make the world a greener place.

Ms. Hyo-jung Go from the University of Utah Asia Campus delivers her speech on the role of youth in achieving the SDGs

I would like to express my sincere thanks to people who made the GGGW2019 possible and those who shared their experiences, knowledges, and perspectives during this event.

To learn more about GGGI, please visit gggi.org

The post Summary Report on the event of GGGW2019 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Council of Canadians

By Vi Bui
OTTAWA, Canada, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

On November 6, Los Angeles became the first major city in the United States to earn the designation of “Blue Community” – a bold move that will keep water protected from privatization.

Situated in the heart of the most water stressed region in the country, this is a historic move for LA, and signals the growing movement globally of communities standing up to protect their water.

The Blue Communities Project encourages municipalities and Indigenous communities to support the idea of a water commons framework, recognizing that water is a shared resource for all, by passing resolutions that:

1. Recognize water and sanitation as human rights.
2. Ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and at municipal events.
3. Promote publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services.

Around the world, our water is under threat from over-extraction, pollution, industrial agriculture, and other projects. The looming climate crisis further intensifies all these risks. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that a quarter of the world’s population is facing a looming water crisis.

Maude Barlow, Honorary Chairperson of the Council of Canadians calls our situation “the myth of abundance.” We take water for granted. Communities are going thirsty due to dried up rivers, lakes are being turned into tailing ponds, oceans are filling up with plastics, and yet governments are welcoming corporations to privatize their water with open arms.

The Blue Communities Project has resonated with water activists and communities across the world. Working to safeguard the human right to water from the ground up, the project promotes the water commons framework, shifting the view of water from a resource to extract and exploit, to a public trust and a commons to protect and promote.

Credit: Council of Canadians

We are fighting everyday against corporate water takings, new pipeline projects, and government austerity. Turning our communities “blue” presents an opportunity to reimagine a different kind of relationship to the resource that nourishes us.

Blue Communities around the world are also inoculating themselves against any risks threatening our water, like privatization, by building community resilience and grassroots power.

That is exactly why Los Angeles becoming a Blue Community was such a historic moment for the global water justice movement. Angelenos, as well as residents of surrounding regions, are no strangers to the water shortage and other threats facing their water.

A hot and dry climate and growing population quickly forced LA to look for other sources of water. Today, its residents get their water from a mix of groundwater, the nearby lakes and rivers, snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada, and imported water from the Colorado River through the Colorado River Aqueduct.

The region regularly experiences severe droughts, and access to water source has been a main source of conflict. Climate change has exacerbated the dry conditions through prolonged droughts, reduced rainfalls, and limits to the amount of snowpack available that feeds the many lakes and rivers in the region.

These threats put tremendous pressure on LA’s water and wastewater infrastructure, and putting many residents’ access to safe drinking water and sewer system at risk. Black and Hispanic communities in the Los Angeles – Long Beach area, are more likely to distrust the quality of their drinking water, according to the American Housing Survey in 2015.

Lower income communities are also more likely to experience negative health outcomes due to exposure to poorly treated coastal waters. To receive the Blue Communities designation, the LA Department of Power and Water has committed to assisting residents who need help paying their bill and avoiding shutting off water.

More than that, the city has guaranteed access to safe, clean drinking water and sanitation to its most vulnerable communities.

The City of Los Angeles has embraced an integrated water management system, and a mix of public education, innovative water recycling, and new technologies to deliver drinking water to its residents. This complex and vulnerable system requires a publicly owned and operated water and wastewater systems and services to survive crises and make sure it serves the communities first.

Recently, Californians recently got a taste of what its private utility does under a time of crisis during wildfires. The state private utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), was found to have caused past fires and cut off electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes to avoid liability from its equipment as the blazes spread.

PG&E’s many cost-cutting practices have put millions at risk, and reveals the danger of having essential services owned and operated by private companies, which put their shareholders’ interests above the public’s.

When the climate crisis is unravelling, letting corporate control run free could put vulnerable communities at risk. As the call to nationalize PG&E grows, we must work to keep our water and wastewater services public, and in the case of a vulnerable water sphere in Los Angeles, it is critical. Becoming a Blue Community s commits to just that.

Since the Blue Communities Project started in 2009, communities and water justice activists have brought the made-in-Canada vision around the world. Faith-based communities, universities and school boards joined the fight, and the movement has resonated in Europe, a hotbed of privatization and home to many multinational private water companies.

Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Munich have become Blue Communities after decades fighting privatization to solidify their commitment to protect their water in public hands. With Los Angeles on board, 23 million people around the world have embraced the water commons ethics.

As the first major U.S city to turn “blue”, LA is leading by example that protecting our water is a fight anyone can take up. We look forward to many other American communities joining this growing movement.

If you are looking for a handbook of where to start, read Maude Barlow’s latest book, Whose Water Is It Anyway: Keeping Water Protection in Public Hands (ECW Press). You can find out more about our project at www.canadians.org/bluecommunities.

The post Los Angeles Joins a Global Movement to Protect Human Right to Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Vi Bui is Water Campaigner with the Council of Canadians

The post Los Angeles Joins a Global Movement to Protect Human Right to Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Young people at ICPD25 youth session. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi / IPS

By Crystal Orderson
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

Q: At ICPD25 we heard that women and girls are still waiting for the unmet promises to be met? DO you think this time around there is a commitment to ensure that these promises are met?

The Nairobi Summit is about the Future of Humanity and Human Prosperity.

We all have an opportunity to repeat the message that women’s empowerment will move at snail-pace unless we bolster reproductive health and rights across the world. This is no longer a fleeting concern, but a 21st century socio-economic reality.

We can choose to take a range of actions, such as empowering women and girls by providing access to good health, education and job training. Or we can choose paths such as domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and child marriages, which, according to a 2016 Africa Human Development Report by UNDP, costs sub-Saharan Africa $95 billion per year on average due to gender inequality and lack of women’s empowerment.

Fortunately, the world has made real progress in the fight to take the right path. There is no lack of women trailblazers in all aspects of human endeavour. It has taken courage to make those choices, with current milestones being the result of decades of often frustrating work by unheralded people, politics and agencies.

Leaders like the indefatigable Dr. Natalia Kanem the Executive Director of UNFPA and her predecessors, are pushing the global change of paradigm to ensure we demolish the silo of “women’s issues” and begin to see the linkages between reproductive rights and human prosperity.

Siddharth Chatterjee

Numerous studies have shown the multi-generation impact of the formative years of women. A woman’s reproductive years directly overlap with her time in school and the workforce, she must be able to prevent unintended pregnancy in order to complete her education, maintain employment, and achieve economic security.

Denial of reproductive health information and services places a women at risk of an unintended pregnancy, which in turn is one of the most likely routes for upending the financial security of a woman and her family.

As the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya, I am privileged to serve in a country, which has shown leadership to advance the cause of women’s right-from criminalizing female genital mutilation to stepping up the fight to end child marriage and pushing hard on improving reproductive, maternal and child health.

Q: At ICPD25 we heard that innovative partnerships are needed to ensure commitments to women and girls. 25 years on do you think this will happen? Can you site an example in Kenya or Africa on this?

Achieving the SDGs will be as much about the effectiveness of development cooperation as it will be about the scale and form that such co-operation takes. There is a lot of talk about partnership, but not enough practical, on-the-ground support to make partnerships effective in practice, especially not at scale.

Under the leadership of the Government of Kenya therefore, the UN System in Kenya in 2017 helped to spearhead the SDG Partnership Platform in collaboration with development partners, private sector, philanthropy, academia and civil society including faith-based stakeholders.

The Platform was formally launched by the Government of Kenya at the UN General Assembly in 2017 and has become a flagship initiative under Kenya’s new UN Development Assistance Framework 2018-2022 (UNDAF). As the entire UNDAF, the Platform is geared to contribute to the implementation of Kenya’s Big Four agenda in order to accelerate the attainment of the Country’s Vision2030.

In 2018, the Platform has received global recognition from UNDCO and the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation as a best practice to accelerate SDG financing. This clearly implies that we are on the right track, and as you can read in this report are developing a blueprint for how 21st Century SDG Partnerships can be forged and made impactful, but much more needs to be done.

Primary Healthcare (PHC) – in the SDG 3 cluster – has been the first SDG Partnership Platform window contributing to the attainment of the Universal Health Coverage as a key pillar of the Big Four agenda. We are living in a day and age where we have the expertise, technology and means to advance everyone’s health and wellbeing. It is our moral obligation to support Kenya in forging partnerships, find the right modalities to harness the potential out there and make it work for everyone, everywhere.

With leadership as from my co-chairs, Hon. Sicily Kariuki, Cabinet Secretary for Health in Kenya, and H.E Kuti, Chair of the Council of Governors Health Committee and Governor of Isiolo, and the strong political commitment, policy environment, and support of our partners we have in Kenya, I am convinced that Kenya can lead the way in attaining UHC in Africa, and accelerate the implementation of the ICPD25 agenda.

Q: Funding remains a crucial challenge- do you think there is a commitment to fund the initiatives?

Yes, there is a clear commitment to fund the ICPD Plan of Action.

I applaud partners whom have been doing so for long as the governments of Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and UK, and Foundations as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

But increasingly there is also the recognition that we cannot reach our ambitions through aid and grants.

At the global scale we need to let better regulation evolve for advancing greater equality and support to those furthest left behind.

Especially within middle-income-countries / emerging economies, our ICPD25 funding models need to be underpinned by shared-value approaches, and financed through domestic and blended financing.

I feel encouraged therefore by the Private Sector committing eight (8) billion fresh support to the acceleration of the ICPD Plan of Action.

Considering the trillions of dollars being transacted however by the private sector, this should be only the start and we should continue to advocate for bigger and better partnership between public and private sector targeting the communities furthest left behind to realize ICPD25.

Q: What do you think should be done to ensure young people’s participation?

Africa’s youth population is growing rapidly and is expected to reach over 830 million by 2050. Whether this spells promise or peril depends on how the continent manages its “youth bulge”.

Many of Africa’s young people remain trapped in poverty that is reflected in multiple dimensions, blighted by poor education, access to quality health care, malnutrition and lack of job opportunities.

For many young people–and especially girls– the lack of access to sexual and reproductive health services is depriving them of their rights and the ability to make decisions about their bodies and plan their families. This is adversely affecting their education and employment opportunities.

According to UNDP’s Africa Human Development Report for 2016, gender inequalities cost sub-Saharan Africa US$ 95 billion annually in lost revenue. Women’s empowerment and gender equality needs to be at the top of national development plans.

Between 10 and 12 million people join the African labour force each year, yet the continent creates only 3.7 million jobs annually. Without urgent and sustained action, the spectre of a migration crisis looms that no wall, navy or coastguard can hope to stop.

Africa’s population is expected to reach around 2.3 billion by 2050. The accompanying increase in its working age population creates a window of opportunity, which if properly harnessed, can translate into higher growth and yield a demographic dividend.

In the wake of the Second World War, the Marshall Plan helped to rebuild shattered European economies in the interests of growth and stability. We need a plan of similar ambition that places youth employment in Africa at the centre of development.

In the meantime, the aging demographic in many Western and Asian Tiger economies means increasing demand for skilled labour from regions with younger populations. It also means larger markets for economies seeking to benefit from the growth of a rapidly expanding African middle class.

Whether the future of Africa is promising or perilous will depend on how the continent and the international community moves from stated intent to urgent action and must give special priority to those SDGs that will give the continent a competitive edge through its youth.

The core SDGs of ending poverty, ensuring healthy lives and ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education all have particular resonance with the challenge of empowering youth and making them effective economic citizens.

Many young people in Africa are taking charge of their futures. There is a rising tide of entrepreneurship sweeping across Africa spanning technology, IT, innovation, small and medium enterprises.

They are creating jobs for themselves and their communities.

We need to empower young people to sustain our planet, and let peace and prosperity thrive.

Q: Lastly, we heard strong commitments from President Uhuru Kenyatta on the issue of FGM- do you think it will really happen by 2022?

President Uhuru Kenyatta needs to be lauded for his strong commitment to ending FGM.

Despite being internationally recognized as a human rights violation, some 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, and if current rates persist, an estimated 68 million more will be cut between 2015 and 2030.

We cannot accept this any longer and should step up for this cause.

Without leaders as H.E Kenyatta championing the fight to address cultural harmful practices as FGM – rapid strides will never be made.

The post Empower Young People to Sustain Our Planet, and Let Peace and Prosperity Thrive appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

We need to empower young people to sustain our planet, and let peace and prosperity thrive says UN's Resident Co-ordinator in Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee speaks to IPS on reflections on the ICPD25 Summit.

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(L-R) Somappa, 52, Muniraju, 37, and Kaverappa, 54, finish manually emptying a pit, in Bangalore, India in August 2019. Courtesy: WaterAid/ CS Sharada Prasad/ Safai Karmachari Kavalu Samiti

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2019 (IPS)

People who empty out sewage tanks and scrub down latrines doubtless perform a vital, thankless and even undesirable task. A new report, however, shows that doing such jobs could also cost workers their lives.

A study from the World Health Organization (WHO) and others has revealed that millions of sanitation workers in low-income countries are routinely exposed to contagious bugs, powerful chemicals and filthy conditions that can turn out to be deadly.

The 61-page study titled ‘Health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers‘ holds up the world’s sanitation workers as unsung heroes who risk their lives cleaning other people’s muck, saying they should at the very least get protective clothing and basic employment rights.

Speaking with reporters in New York on Thursday, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric described the “unsafe and undignified working conditions of sanitation workers” across nine developing countries.

Researchers focussed on muck-cleaners in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Haiti, India, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda who typically toiled in an “informal economy” lacking basic “rights and protection,” added Dujarric.

The report by WHO, together with the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, and WaterAid, a charity, described people around the world emptying pits and septic tanks, cleaning sewers and manholes and handling fecal sludge at treatment and disposal works. 

Researchers shone a spotlight on the case of Wendgoundi Sawadogo, a sanitation worker in Ouagadougou, capital of the landlocked West African country, Burkina Faso, a city of some 2.4 million people.

The 45-year was photographed climbing into latrines and open pits, holding muck-smeared ropes without gloves. In a statement accompanying the report, he described finding discarded syringes and broken calls in fetid pits. 

Sawadogo spoke of colleagues struggling to lift the concrete slabs that cover pits, occasionally breaking fingers, toes, and feet. The work is “really dangerous” and some of his co-workers have perished in such trenches, he added.  

“You have no paper to show that this is your profession. When you die, you die,” said Sawadogo.

“You go with your bucket and your hoe without recognition, without leaving a trace anywhere or a document that shows your offspring that you have practiced such a job. When I think of that, I’m sad. I do not wish any of my children to do the work I do.” 

Another emptier in the same country, Inoussa Ouedraogo, described a slab crushing his finger in an injury that cost the 48-year-old about $100 in local currency during 11 months of “painful”  treatment, in which time he had to carry on working. 

Researchers described sanitation workers toiling in sewage pits around the world without safety gear — risking exposure to cholera, dysentery and other killer bugs. Some 432,000 people perish from diarrhoeal deaths each year, the report said.

They also have to work in tanks amid fumes of ammonia, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other toxic gases that can cause workers to lose consciousness and die, or face long-term breathing and eyesight problems.

Few low-income countries have health and safety guidelines to protect sanitation workers, researchers said. There are no reliable global statistics, but it is estimated that one manhole worker dies unblocking sewers by hand in India every five days.

Dr Maria Neira, a public health director at WHO, called for much sanitation work to be mechanised so that workers do not have to touch human waste with bare hands. She called for better health and safety laws, training, protective gear, insurance, and health checks.

“Sanitation workers make a key contribution to public health around the world – but in so doing, put their own health at risk. This is unacceptable,” said Neira. “We must improve working conditions for these people.”

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