Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Health workers inside a "CUBE" talk to an Ebola patient, while a nurse consults a chart outside. ALIMA Ebola Treatment Centre, Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two drugs have been found to successfully treat the Ebola virus. Aid agencies have welcomed the news saying it allows communities to access early treatment. Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

While people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are slowly being made aware that scientists have discovered two drugs that are effective in treating Ebola, letting go of the fear and anxiety that has prevailed across the country this year will require more work.

After several months of intense research, mAb114 and REGN-EB3, two out of four drugs tested, where found to have been effective in a clinical trial, according to a joint statement on Aug. 12 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) and Ministry of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

It is the first ever multi-drug trial for the deadly virus.

The deadly hemorrhagic fever has claimed the lives of 1,800 people since last August.

“This is very good news for patients,” Dr Esther Sterk, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Adviser for Tropical Diseases, told IPS. “It is good that these two drugs are recommended because not only do we expect them to improve their chances of survival, but they are also easier for medical staff to administer.”

The complexities of receiving treatment

But the latest outbreak of the deadly virus has resulted in fear among local communities. With the epicentres of the outbreak largely centred in conflict-ridden areas, communities there have been fearful and mistrustful of the virus and medical workers. Many also found the process of screening for the disease reportedly intimidating.

And on Aug. 13, residents in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and a city of two million people overlooking Gisenyi in neighbouring Rwanda, was overrun by protestors after the news spread that two Ebola patients were been healed and discharged from the treatment centres.

“People misunderstood it, and thought the government and white people were plotting to infect us all with Ebola by letting these patients go home. It is only later in the day that we were told that these people were free to go because they were treated with a new cure that has just been found,” Christian Kasereka, an informal trader, told IPS.

In July, Marixie Mercado, United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF) spokesperson told IPS that, “the Ebola outbreak is taking place in an extremely complex operational environment and the response must of course factor in political, security, and socio-cultural challenges”.

She said that UNICEF was leading the work on community engagement. “We work with a broad swathe of influential community and religious leaders, mass media, schools, and Ebola survivors, to bring crucial knowledge on symptoms, prevention and treatment, to the households and communities most at-risk.

“We are learning from intensive, ongoing research and analysis of community feedback to better understand local needs, fears and concerns, and to adapt the response in ways that are socially and culturally acceptable. There is growing community ownership over the response, but far more is needed,” Mercado said at the time.

Greater community ownership and understanding needed to stop the outbreak

The Goma protests offered truth to her words that more still needs to be done.

Other international health agencies have the same view.

Sterk did caution that while the drugs improved the chances of survival of patients, teams working on the ground could not relax as ways to reduce transmission needed to be found.

“While this is welcome news, it alone, won’t end the Ebola outbreak. We still urgently need to find a way to cut transmission, which requires placing affected communities at the centre of the response by prioritising their healthcare needs and rethinking the current failing response strategies,” Sterk told IPS.

“We expect that using the two most successful treatments will improve the outcome for patients, but the challenges remain there: to break the chain of transmission, to improve the follow-up of contacts, to encourage people to report to a health facility as early as possible when the symptoms appear, to support the healthcare infrastructure in the region so that access to general healthcare is preserved during this difficult time.”

The WHO had echoed these concerns in its statement last week stating that not enough people were being treated. Currently people take 5 to 6 days before seeking treatment.

Euloge Ishimwe, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) head of communications for Africa region, told IPS that people with symptoms often delay or avoid going to a health facility or an Ebola treatment centre, placing their families and communities at risk.

“This also has critical impacts on our work with communities. If communities are engaged and understand the treatment as well as see more people surviving from the disease, they are more likely to seek health care early,” Ishimwe said, adding that the findings were a pinnacle moment in the Ebola response, as it allowed communities to access early treatment.

MSF has worked alongside several partners under the supervision of the WHO and took part in the implementation of the trials while supporting the Ebola treatment centres in Katwa and Butembo between January and February this year.

The study is part of the emergency response in the DRC, in collaboration with a broad alliance of partners, including MSF, the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), the International Medical Corps (IMC), INRB and NIAID, which is part of the United States’ National Institutes of Health.

The study has since stopped and the successful drugs are being administered to all those affected.

“We must move forward to implement the outcomes of this research. We will continue to conduct rigorous research with our partners. We’ll incorporate those findings into the outbreak response through a variety of prevention and control strategies,” Dr Mike Ryan, WHO Executive Director for Emergencies Programme, had said in a statement.

Highlights of the latest outbreak:

• The deadly Zaire Ebola Virus – named before the country changed its name to DRC in 1997 – broke out more than a year ago on Aug. 1, 2018, in the northeast of the country.  It is the most deadliest strain of the virus.
• The outbreak began in the small North Kivu town Mangina, spreading quickly to the larger town of Beni, which is the administrative centre of the region. And then on to the larger towns of Butembo and Katwa, which are also in North Kivu.
• It then spread to Ituri Province in the north-east, close to Uganda’s border.
• So far, the virus has killed some 1,800 people, while 862 people have been cured out of some 2,700 cases, according to the DRC’s health ministry.
• A month ago, on Jul. 14, the first case of Ebola was confirmed in Goma, the capital of North Kivu. The patient died.
• Two weeks later on Jul. 30, a second person in Goma was diagnosed with Ebola; the peson died the next day and a third case was announced.
  

What’s next? 

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), and a co-discoverer of Ebola in 1976, said that the city of Goma was now out of danger since about 200 contacts and suspected cases have been identified. “We are waiting for the latest results and monitoring as the points of entry to the city are being reinforced.”

IFRC Africa’s Ishimwe said the Ebola outbreak was far from over. “This news doesn’t mean it’s over – there is still a lot of work to do. We must stay the course until the last case is treated and the region is declared Ebola-free.”

But Anita Masudi, a resident from Butembo, North Kivu, one of the epicentres of the Ebola outbreak, is relieved.

She told IPS: “Oh yes, we are very happy about what’s happening out there though I’m not sure if  everyone can now relax hoping that it’s the end of Ebola in the North Kivu. Nevertheless, I’m not afraid any more.”

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By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which comprise 16 member states, loses about 8.8 billion dollars in trade-related illicit outflows and about 21.1 billion dollars in external government debt payments annually, according to a new report released here.

Michael Buraimoh, Director, Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), told IPS there are several reasons for this, including the lack of capacity to combat trade mis invoicing and managing debt; nature of politics and institutions in Southern Africa leading to corruption and mismanagement; and the unjust nature of the global economy.

The report, titled The Money Drain: How Trade Misinvoicing and Unjust Debt Undermine Economic and Social Rights in Southern Africa, was launched ahead of a summit meeting of SADC leaders in Tanzania August 17-18.  

Sunit Bagree, ACTSA’s Senior Campaigns Officer and author of the report, said: “It’s a scandal that rich countries barely seem to care that Southern Africa is haemorrhaging money.”

“A broken international economic system is, fundamentally, why trade misinvoicing and unjust debt are depriving SADC governments of massive funds that they could use to realise economic and social rights for the many people living in poverty in the region,” he noted.

Bagree said SADC governments can certainly do more, for example by employing innovative tools to detect potential misinvoicing of trade transactions and organising comprehensive public debt audits.

“But they must also call out powerful international countries for failing to live up to their responsibilities and turning their collective backs on vulnerable people in Southern Africa,” he declared.

The 16 member countries of SADC are: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and  Zimbabwe.

The report revealed that in Southern Africa, the youth unemployment rate is 31 percent, 5.4 million people are currently undernourished, at least 617,400 new HIV infections emerge a year, and more than 40 percent of the population in 12 countries lack access to basic sanitation services.

Trade invoicing causes the SADC region to lose at least 8.8 billion dollars a year, and the report estimated that South Africa alone suffers of a loss of at least 5.9 billion dollars per year due to illicit trade flows.

On top of this, the region is bearing even more losses due to debt. The report cites that Angola alone is emptied of 21.1 billion dollars a year as a result of principal and interest payments on debt.

To add to this, the parts of Africa that were devastated by cyclones earlier this year has mass debts to pay back to wealthier countries.

Several institutions have attempted to raise concerns about trade mis invoicing and debts, but progress has been fragmented and slow, and nothing fruitful has emerged.

Asked what role ACTSA will take going forward, Buraimoh said: “We are promoting our report to the media in the U.K. and USA, as well as in Southern Africa and in continental Europe.”

He also revealed they are aiming to meet with and directly influence, the U.K. and U.S. governments, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, the United Nations, the Commonwealth and African Union (AU) in relation to the report’s findings and recommendations.

This is expected to lay the basis for future advocacy work on debt and trade-related illicit flows with civil society partners such as Jubilee Debt Campaign, Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD), Global Financial Integrity and the Southern Africa Trust.

He added that they aim to add value to the work of these partners and join up regional and global work on these two crucial issues, and that this will be a vital contribution to efforts that considers development from a rights-based perspective and as a concept that relates to issues beyond aid.

“By evaluating success of all the above we can measure progress as relates to the report’s recommendations.

As what role the U.N. should play, Buraimoh said the U.N. Human Rights Council has done some good work on these issues.

“We want to see this continue. The U.N. General Assembly should do more, and some U.N. agencies e.g. Economic Commission for Africa also have engaged, while others can do more.”

He said that all need to work together to ensure International Financial Institutions take more progressive approaches.

“You can really help us by getting the report circulated as widely as possible. The more people are energised about this the better it would be for us to make it an international priority. It is a problem plaguing the entire Global South, not only Southern Africa”, he declared.

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The post Southern African Development Community Loses Billions in Illicit Outflows appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Claudia Ortiz
PANAMA CITY, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

Throughout my ten years working in international development and climate policy, I’ve mostly heard colleagues talk about the private sector as if it was this intangible, multifaceted medusa with its own business lingo that is impossible for us policy experts to tackle: “the ‘private sector’ needs a return on investment in order to act on climate” or “the ‘private sector’ does not have the right incentives, but we need ‘private’ capital to solve this crisis”

First, we need to untangle who we are talking about when we refer to “the private sector”. Are we talking about multinational corporations, wealthy investors, banks, entrepreneurs?

Secondly, unless we approach these actors with the problem, invite them to the discussion table, and hear them out, we will certainly never know the best way to get their interests aligned with climate solutions.

On the other hand, UN organisation and multilateral climate and environment funds interact almost entirely with public institutions and governments. So, when it comes to raising the bar on contributions to the Paris Agreement, climate change adaptation, and accessing climate finance, it seems the ball falls into the governments’ court.

We hear the usual refrain: “Governments need to mainstream climate risk into development policies” or “Governments need to act” or “Heads of State need to meet to raise ambition on NDCs [ Nationally Determined Contributions that countries made to the Paris Agreement]”

But will Government officials shaking hands and signing project proposals magically solve the climate crisis?

Here’s an idea: create a robust business case – whether it is by showing returns on investments or economic losses due to inaction – for profit-seeking actors to financially back up an NDC or National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and activate most of the domestic heavy-lifting that is needed to make these plans a reality. 

In Latin America, we see an urgent need for public-private collaboration regarding action on climate change. As far as climate justice goes, the region is on par with most African and Asian peers: their contribution to global warming is less than that of USA and Europe.

However, the mega-biodiverse region remains highly vulnerable to climate change, economic growth is fuelling more carbon emissions, and the need for climate-resilient development is vital. 

Despite a growing economy, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Latin America is growing at a slower rate than previously anticipated and well below growth rates of other regions, largely due to tightening of global financial conditions and lower commodity prices.

Low investment in human capital and entrepreneurship means economic inequality and a vulnerable middle class continues to be an issue in the region, a region that is already over-dependent on natural resources.

This socio-economic situation is further exacerbated by climate change related catastrophic events, changes in rainfall patterns and in temperatures. It is projected that a temperature rise of 2.5°C could have a negative impact on the Latin American GDP of 1.5 to 5 percent. 

To make matters worse, grant and donor funding from multilateral climate and environmental finance sources are on a downward trajectory in the region, partly due to its “middle income” status; meaning governments are expected to use non-grant instruments to mitigate emissions or adapt to climate change.

The bleak reality is that we can no longer rely on grant-funded projects to cut down emissions or urgently adapt to the already devastating effects of the climate crisis.

But, remember the “private sector”? What is the contribution of wealthy investors, small entrepreneurs, and banks to this puzzle? Should they care? Is the region ready?

The good news in Latin America is that opportunities for private capital investment, which has significantly grown in recent years (for example, venture capital investment jumped from US $500M in 2016 to US $2 Billion in 2018 in the region) is at an all-time high. 

There is also a growing sense of business opportunity amongst regional, national and private banks, investors, and entrepreneurs who understand the implications of climate risks in their value chains, operations, and portfolios.

Impact investors are financing reforestation initiatives in Mexico and climate-resilient productive landscapes in Honduras. Banks are developing innovative and flexible financial instruments to support small producers in rural Costa Rica protect their water resources through ecosystem-based adaptation.

Honey and cocoa cooperatives in Guatemala have established climate-resilient value chains by understanding the outstanding risks of climate change to their businesses. UNDP has served as a connector for these partnerships and supported on-the-ground projects which are the vehicles for these fascinating initiatives.

Taking advantage of the NDC and NAP processes, policy makers are approaching businesses, corporations and investors to see how they can contribute to finance the implementation of such plans.

Such is the case of Uruguay, Ecuador and Chile, where UNDP and its partners – including Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Green Climate Fund (GCF) — have been instrumental.

With the Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week (concluding August 23), including the Regional NDC Dialogues organised by UNDP in partnership with UNFCCC, we have another opportunity to welcome the private sector to the discussion table.

Regional and national banks, NGOs, think-tanks and consulting firms will all convene in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, along with government representatives from across the region, to find ways of working together to fight climate change.

The post Solving the Climate Crisis is Beyond Governments appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Claudia Ortiz is UNDP Technical Advisor on Climate Change Adaptation

The post Solving the Climate Crisis is Beyond Governments appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Gaza. Top management at UNRWA are being probed for alleged abuses of power. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

A senior United Nations official has promised a thorough investigation into allegations of misconduct in field operations in Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territories, saying that those responsible would be punished.

Ursula Mueller, the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, decried the “devastating” impact of U.N. staffers lining their own pockets with cash that was donated for the world’s neediest people.

The world body’s reputation in the Middle East has been dented by a series of allegations that some of its officials in Palestine and Yemen are guilty of graft, sexual misconduct and other wrongdoing.

“We need to really look at the people who are committing these very devastating activities for the humanitarian response,” Mueller said in response to a question from IPS on Monday.

“When we are made aware of these irregularities or corruption or fraud, we follow up and I think there [are] mechanisms and rules in place to do so. And also these people need to face consequences. That it’s not brushed aside and can go unpunished.”

According to documents, top management at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), including its commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl, are being probed for alleged abuses of power.

The confidential report by the U.N.’s internal watchdog describes an “inner circle” of Krahenbuhl and top aides engaging “in sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other” wrongdoing.

Krahenbuhl struck up a relationship with senior adviser Maria Mohammedi in 2014 that was “beyond the professional” and arranged for her to fly alongside him on costly business class flights, it is claimed.

Krahenbuhl has rejected the report’s claims and said UNRWA is well managed.

Meanwhile, the U.N. is battling separate graft claims in Yemen, where it is tasked with tackling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis after five years of war has pushed millions of civilians to the brink of famine.

More than a dozen staffers have reportedly worked with fighters on all sides to pocket cash from the aid cash swishing around Yemen; some gave high-salary jobs to unqualified people, according to an Associated Press report.
A World Health Organization probe began in November, amid allegations of dodgy accounting by Nevio Zagaria, 20, an Italian doctor, who reportedly handed out well-paying jobs to friends, including a student who was tasked with looking after his dog.

The graft claims — and their damaging fallout — showcase how the U.N. can struggle to keep track of funding dollars and its own workers, who often operate autonomously in rapidly-changing crisis zones.

The scandal in UNRWA, which provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees, is particularly damaging, as it comes as the United States Trump administration has called for the agency to be shuttered.

Already, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands have cut funding to UNRWA.

“The United Nations has a zero tolerance for corruption,” Mueller, also the U.N.’s deputy emergency relief coordinator and a former German civil servant and diplomat, told reporters in New York.

“We depend on voluntary contributions from member states from individuals to contribute to humanitarian response … any taint of corruption or fraud is disastrous. So we have fraud prevention mechanisms in place and when we hear about irregularities, we make every effort to follow up and correct it.”

UNRWA was set up in the years after some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their lands during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. It provides medical and schooling services to millions of poor refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

In Yemen, a Western-backed coalition of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others intervened in March 2015 against the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement that ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from power in late 2014.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 20 2019 (IPS)

Recently, Christine Lagarde, outgoing Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), argued that developing ‘countries need a seat at the table’ to design rules governing international corporate taxation.

This acknowledges recent IMF findings that developing countries lose approximately USD200 billion in potential tax revenue yearly, about 1.3 per cent of their GDP, due to companies shifting profits to low-tax locations. Oxfam estimated in 2018 that extreme poverty could be eradicated for USD107 billion annually, i.e., about half the lost revenue.

Anis Chowdhury

Corporate taxation?
This comes on top of ‘beggar thy neighbour’ tax competition, encouraged by past policy advice from international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, purportedly to entice investments by transnational corporations (TNCs).

Corporate tax rates in developing countries have fallen by about 20 per cent since 1980 with uncertain impacts on ‘greenfield’ foreign direct investment (FDI) outside resource sectors. In most cases, there have been net revenue losses as developing countries heavily depend on corporate taxation.

Low and middle income countries have lost USD167-200 billion annually, around 1-1.5 per cent of a country’s GDP, due to corporate tax competition. As a share of GDP, Sub‐Saharan African countries have suffered the most revenue losses, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia.

BEPS
Developing countries’ complaints about tax losses due to TNC profit shifting and tax evasion have long fallen on deaf ears. Designed by developed countries, international corporate tax rules have generally favoured ‘residence’, mainly developed countries, over ‘source’, primarily developing countries, where TNCs operate and secure profits.

Developed countries also lose revenues, as TNCs ‘game’ the rules to minimize their tax liability globally. Estimated annual revenue losses to high-income OECD countries range from 0.15 to 0.7 per cent of GDP, now of greater concern with their heightening fiscal predicaments following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Mandated by the G20, the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project since 2013 has provided countries with tools needed to tackle ‘transfer pricing’, harmful tax regimes, treaty abuse, etc.

Developing countries still not at table
BEPS actions were decided on, and approved by 44 countries, including OECD, OECD accession countries and other G20 members. Recognizing the different needs of developing countries in its 2014 Report (Part 1 and Part 2), the OECD sought to address some of their concerns with two initiatives in 2016.

The first was the BEPS Inclusive Framework (IF) to include developing countries as BEPS associates; as of August 2019, 134 countries were members. Second, a Multilateral Instrument (MLI), involving more than 100 developed and developing countries, was negotiated to deal with, among others, tax treaty abuses.

Almost all countries are now in the IF. Yet, it has not improved on the original BEPS actions. While developing country BEPS associates supposedly participate on an ‘equal footing’, they have no decision-making role. Apparently, ‘equal footing’ only refers to implementation of the BEPS 4 Minimum Standards. MLI largely addresses OECD member concerns and is not intended to protect the tax rights of source developing countries.

Unsurprisingly, although raised during IF consultations, developing country concerns — such as allocation of taxing rights between source and residence states, taxation of informal economy and their differential needs — remain largely unaddressed and unresolved.

With such failures implying legitimacy deficits, BEPS measures are unlikely to benefit developing countries very much. In fact, the BEPS Project and the BEPS Inclusive Framework were never intended to deal with challenges faced by developing countries.

Dubious benefits
BEPS has developed in line with OECD international model tax treaties, reflecting developed countries’ norms. Its technical assistance programmes — such as Tax Inspector without Borders (TIWB), by the OECD with the UNDP, and the Platform for Collaboration on Tax, by the IMF, WB, UNDP and OECD — help developing countries to achieve BEPS Minimum Standards, disadvantaging developing countries in several respects:

• Accelerates harmful tax competition: While most developing countries have committed to implement BEPS Minimum Standards by joining the IF, developed countries are still taking unilateral actions fuelling tax competition, e.g., the USA’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the EU’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive, disadvantaging developing countries.
• No level playing field: Developed countries’ unilateral actions reflect their continued jockeying for advantage regardless of their ostensible BEPS consensus. Australia and the UK have introduced their own rules to address profit shifting by TNCs, while the US Congress declared that, regardless of BEPS, it would craft tax rules favouring US companies. Developed countries can also opt out of MLI provisions for developing countries. The one-size-fits-all approach thus also penalizes developing countries.
• Too onerous and complex: Most developing countries lack the technical resources, personnel, capacity, technical knowledge and economic means to implement the typically complex and costly BEPS actions. Even with foreign assistance, BEPS implementation burdens their tax administrations. While BEPS implementation may not generate extra revenue, they typically need to spend scarce fiscal resources to comply.
• Distorts priorities: They also divert scare resources from improving tax administration and reforming taxation to tackling tax evasion by individuals. The BEPS ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is problematic as developing countries have different and varied needs.
• Shrinks policy space: Policy discretion in developing countries is also constrained by BEPS. The minimum tax rule, proposed in the OECD public consultation document of February 2019, limits the right of countries to set their own rules. Developing countries risk being blacklisted by the EU for failing to implement BEPS minimum standards.

Hence, developing countries must examine both the costs and benefits of the IF for implementing BEPS minimum standards while continuing to demand meaningful seats at the BEPS negotiating table, which should be truly inclusive and multilateral, e.g., at the United Nations itself, and not just through a donor-dominated UN fund or program, where accountability to developing countries is limited.

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In the Solomon Islands, approximately 40 percent of the population of 550,000 could have active Trachoma. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS.

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Aug 19 2019 (IPS)

Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched global consultations for a new Roadmap on how to eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). The roadmap would help achieve universal health coverage by 2030, address health emergencies and promote healthier populations.

This intervention is unprecedented because it could begin to reverse the neglect and inequities that the 17 main NTDs bring. Many NTDs are debilitating and reduce the quality of life of and dehumanize the infected, yet most are preventable and treatable.

NTDs disproportionately affect 1.6 billion poor people worldwide. Most of the burden is in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Africa accounts for more than 50% of the global burden of NTDs. South East Asia has the second highest burden of NTDs – the region accounts for 74% of reported cases of leprosy globally.

A reason for this geographic clustering of NTDs is that they thrive in communities without access to clean water, basic sanitation and primary health care. Simply put, NTDs are diseases of inequity.

Neglected Tropical Diseases disproportionately affect 1.6 billion poor people worldwide. Most of the burden is in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Sadly, women and children bear the brunt of NTDs the most.  These diseases have negative impacts on school attendance, reproductive health and economic activities. Leprosy, intestinal worms and trachoma highlight the devastations caused by NTDs and show why it is imperative to address them to improve people’s economic wellbeing and human dignity.

Intestinal worms such as hookworm, roundworm, whipworm, and schistosomiasis infect more than 25% of the world’s population. The demographic mostly infected by these worms are school-age children.

Hookworms are passed in stool. In many developing countries, there is still widespread public stooling – 546 million Indians (equivalent to 74% of population of Europe) have no access to toilets and therefore stool in public. In Nigeria, for instance, 23.5% of the population stool in public.

It is not hard to imagine that in communities with open defecation, playgrounds become breeding grounds for all sorts of infections. Hookworms which are passed in stool lurk around, penetrate the skin and infect children. Therefore, a favorite pastime of children becomes a dangerous gateway to lifetime of misery, discomfort and lost productivity. Mass drugs administration delivered once a year clears intestinal worms.

Imagine having an infection that makes you lose all sensory feelings. You could run into a wall or step into fire unaware. These are some of the consequences of leprosy. More than 200,000 cases of leprosy were reported in 2017, according to WHO. Because the previous practice of isolating people affected by leprosy was to stow them away in leprosy settlements, people are unware that leprosy still deforms, isolates and stigmatizes many.

Leprosy is a disease linked to poor sanitation, but it could take years for deformities to begin to manifest. Perhaps the saddest part of leprosy is that it begins as hypopigmented spots on the skin that have lost sensation. Access to primary healthcare in poor and underserved communities where leprosy is prevalent means that such skin patches are properly diagnosed early as leprosy and patients placed on the right medications. Once these medications are started, the person affected with leprosy can no longer transmit the disease.

Trachoma, an infection of the eye is the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide. Again, poor sanitation is implicated in the transmission of trachoma. Infection of trachoma spreads through personal contact. Flies that have been in contact with eye and nose discharges from infected people carry the infection.

Repeated infections over many years leads to eyelashes rubbing directly on the surface of the eyeball thereby leading to blindness. One hundred and fifty-eight million people reside in trachoma endemic areas and are at risk of blindness.

Prevention and control of trachoma involves surgery to treat the blinding stage; antibiotics through mass drugs administration to clear the infection; facial cleanliness to ensure the infection does not linger; and environmental improvement by giving access to clean water and sanitation.

While the proposed roadmap is commendable, governments across Africa, Asia and Latin America must show leadership in prioritizing universal access to health care and focusing on social determinants of health.

When primary health care is available in the remotest communities, health workers can provide basic health education and healthcare to the people. Universal Health coverage should be backed by increased risk communication to communities, to engender behavior change. For example, educating communities on the negative consequences of open defecation must be followed with provision of clean water.

To be sure, governments alone cannot provide the required solutions to reduce the burden of NTDs. Philanthropists, pharmaceutical companies, foundations, civil society organisations and social entrepreneurs must join this fight.

In 1987, the pharmaceutical company Merck made a commitment to donate as much Mectizan as needed to help eliminate river blindness – the  Mectizan Donation Program. Thirty years later, this commitment reaches more than 250 million at-risk people annually.

Likewise, the Audacious Fund plans to reach 100 million people in Africa, who are at risk of NTDs with deworming programs integrated with access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene strategies.

The WHO roadmap is an open call for inputs. All stakeholders must come on board and ensure that these preventable and treatable diseases that affect the poorest billion in the world are eliminated once and for all.

The post World Health Organisation’s New Effort Can Help End Neglected Tropical Diseases appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch

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Osamu Kusumoto (Ph.D.), Executive Director and Secretary General Asian Population and Development Association (APDA)

By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, Japan, Aug 19 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) organized the “African and Asian Parliamentarians’ Meeting on Population and Development for ICPD+25” on August 5 – 6, 2019, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to serve as a platform to gather the opinions and set of proposed actions of parliamentarians in the Asia and Africa regions.

Osamu Kusumoto

This November, the world will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) through a Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.

The theme of the event, which is called ICPD+25, will revolve along with the progress made by countries on the Programme of Action (PoA) in the last 25 years, as well as on how to tackle the unfinished business of the ICPD. The event will also underscore the role of parliamentarians in ensuring that the gaps are addressed.

The ICPD+25 Summit in Nairobi will coincide with the 50th-anniversary celebration of the establishment of UNFPA, the international organization who was and continue to be the main force behind the ICPD.

The ICPD+25 Summit will define the efforts of countries in addressing population issues in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, which was adopted in 2015.

The ICPD Programme of Action shaped the discourse around the issues of population, reproductive health and rights, and gender equality. Before the ICPD, the population was regarded as the main variable for achieving sustainable development.

The ICPD achieved a paradigm shift in the way we perceive population issues as its nature from one of the most important variables for achieving sustainable development to becoming the subject of society’s debates. It used to be handled as a statistical target but following the principles of the ICPD, it became clear that addressing population issues should be a result of voluntary decision making or through informed choice.

As a result, two different philosophies were formed: the population is the largest variable in sustainable development, and at the same time it is not a means of sustainable development. The past 25 years of addressing population issues exist between these two directions, and the center of the population activities was a history that emphasizes the direction of RR.

In view of this, the African and Asian Parliamentarians’ Meeting is set to make a major contribution to the Nairobi Summit, which requires substantial international agreement since ICPD, through the integration of reproductive rights and the SDG approaches. It clarified several issues, made recommendations and affirmed its commitments.

Thus,

(1) Reaffirming the philosophy of ICPD, which clarified that the population does not just number, it refers to humans that constitute the society;

(2) Clarifying that the purpose of ICPD and SDGs are the same and that without finishing the unfinished business of the ICPD Programme of Action is not possible to achieve the SDGs;

(3) The reproductive rights concept has been clearly defined in the ICPD as early as 25 years ago. Efforts to prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancy – which is the main cause of population growth in developing countries – must be triggered by arguments that population-related problems hamper the achievement of sustainable development goals;

(4) There is a need to achieve an appropriate level of fertility rate in developing and developed countries by using the same perspective to view to fulfill the Reproductive Rights. Fertility transition which introduces balanced fertility at both developing countries and developed countries what will be called the third demographic transition should be the result of social and economic policies that bring about the development in countries; and

(5) Mere discussions and/or interpretation about reproductive rights concept is not productive. To realize its actual meaning, questions such as “How can we achieve reproductive rights?” should be the front and center of the discussions. This and questions around requisite conditions to avoid death due to starvation i.e. ensuring food security, protecting the environment, and securing water are just as important and critical discussion components and should be considered in the bigger scheme of things.

The post “The African and Asian Parliamentarians’ Meeting on Population and Development: Creating Positive Impacts for ICPD+25 and SDGs” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Osamu Kusumoto (Ph.D.), Executive Director and Secretary General Asian Population and Development Association (APDA)

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By Nimarta Khuman
PORT VILA, Vanuatu, Aug 19 2019 (IPS)

Vanuatu is among the world’s ‘most at-risk’ countries to natural disasters. In the last 12 months alone, the country has faced multiple volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, cyclone and tsunami.

The largest humanitarian emergency was caused by volcanic eruptions on the island of Ambae which resulted in the evacuation of over 8,000 people. Some displaced communities have resettled in the islands of Santo and Efate, but land ownership is a contentious issue.

Vanuatu also has the lowest rate of women in parliament and ministerial positions globally and high rates of gender-based violence. Cumulatively, these issues increase the risks affecting women and girls in humanitarian emergency and recovery periods.

In an interview with UN Women, Nimrata Khuman explains what it means to incorporate gender and protection in humanitarian action and why it’s important.

Excerpts from the interview:

What is meant by “Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action”?

When we talk about gender and protection in humanitarian action, we need to ask the questions about whether we have addressed the different needs of women, girls, men and boys in our humanitarian response, because there is no “one size fits all” approach that works.

Every context in which a disaster has happened is different and women and girls may have unique risks, vulnerabilities and capabilities. There are other factors that can contribute to their marginalization and vulnerability, such as disability, age, sexual orientation, income and location.

The Department of Women’s Affairs leads the Gender and Protection Cluster in Vanuatu in partnership with CARE and Save the Children. The Cluster works to promote women’s voice and leadership, prevent and respond to gender-based violence, and ensure child protection and disability inclusion in any humanitarian response is designed and implemented for the affected population.

During the humanitarian response to the Ambae disaster for example, referral pathways for gender-based violence and child protection services were developed and Gender and Protection Cluster partners raised awareness within communities about violence prevention and where to go to access assistance.

Partners also developed and disseminated information for communities about their rights during evacuation and resettlement, conducted leadership training for women involved in humanitarian response, provided psycho-social support services and child-friendly spaces to help children cope with the effects of the disaster.

Volcanic eruption in Vanuatu

How did you incorporate gender and protection in the humanitarian response in Vanuatu?

The Gender and Protection Cluster ensures that people’s rights are protected and respected, and they can access services across all sectors safely and with dignity. This involves assessing needs, referring concerns and raising awareness among communities and service providers (such as agencies involved in food distribution, shelter, education and water, sanitation and hygiene).

It also involves advocating with other ministries to include gender and protection concerns into their response. During the Ambae State of Emergency, a joint Gender and Protection and Health Cluster was established to provide services across sectors for people with disabilities.

The Gender and Protection Cluster worked with the WASH Cluster to raise awareness on issues such as safety, lighting and privacy for toilet and shower facilities. During the Ambae and Ambrym responses, partners also integrated information on gender equality and menstrual hygiene management when speaking to communities.

We have also drawn attention to the lack of access to land and income for displaced communities, exposure to violence and delays in children’s education, when advocating with the Government.

We are now in the Ambae recovery phase and have been working with the Prime Minister’s Office to ensure all sectors include relevant actions and budgets for gender and protection in the programmes under the Ambae and Affected Islands Recovery Plan.

What has been the role of women in the different crises in Vanuatu in the past year?

Women are a vital part of humanitarian response and the ongoing emergencies have presented an opportunity to increase women’s participation and leadership in humanitarian action. In the Department of Women’s Affairs for example, seven of the ten staff who have been involved in leading response in different provinces are women.

The National Disaster Management Office and NGOs have involved senior female staff members in coordinating and responding to emergencies. The Vanuatu Women’s Centre has also been very active in efforts to prevent and respond to gender-based violence in emergencies and has provided support for life-saving counselling, health, legal assistance and access to justice services for survivors of violence.

At the community level, women are pivotal to disaster preparedness, and for designing response and resilience activities that meet the needs and realities of their communities. Gender and Protection Cluster partners are implementing programmes involving women in Community Disaster and Climate Change Committees and increasing women’s voice in decision-making at the local level.

But we need more women in leadership positions within communities, in the humanitarian sector and in Ministries and Departments which make decisions on policy, planning and financial resource allocations.

What are the biggest challenges that you are facing in your work in Vanuatu?

Since I arrived in Vanuatu a year ago, there have been five natural disasters due to the volcanic eruptions in Ambae, volcanic eruptions and earthquake in Ambrym, a tsunami affecting Aneityum, Tropical Cyclone Oma, and most recently, the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle, which has the potential to destroy livelihoods of tens of thousands of people if left untreated.

These disasters have caused people to leave behind their homes, their land and jobs. Integrating into new communities has also not been an easy process for the displaced. Some are still living in tents in Santo and there is tension between displaced people and host communities due to the lack of essential services and resources in resettlement sites.

Some of the key issues that the Gender and Protection Cluster addresses in times of emergencies include violence against women and children, family separation, inclusive response for marginalized groups and ensuring that people can access services across sectors.

Although we have been able to shape policies, we need them to be implemented down to the community level. For this to happen, we need increased awareness that addressing gender and protection in humanitarian action is lifesaving and planning and budgeting needs to reflect that.

More initiatives are also required to prepare communities for the effects of natural disasters and to ensure that they are supported in the recovery phases.

What innovative approaches have worked so far?

Listening to communities and community-led solutions have been key in the programmes developed by the Gender and Protection Cluster partners. In Vanuatu, we have very strong church and chief systems and the Gender and Protection Cluster has been working with both in disaster preparedness, emergency and recovery.

Partners have trained church leaders and chiefs in community-based protection, peacebuilding, violence prevention and referral pathways. Churches are often used as evacuation centres and in the recovery phase, the Vanuatu Christian Council has mapped churches and assessed inclusivity of design in different islands.

The Vanuatu Women’s Centre has trained church leaders and chiefs to become male advocates and other partners have included local chiefs in their awareness-raising activities to ensure women’s leadership and voice is factored into response programmes.

The joint Gender and Protection and Health Cluster for the Ambae State of Emergency was also the first of its kind in Vanuatu and demonstrated that collaboration across different sectors and ministries can increase access to services for the most vulnerable.

Building upon lessons learned from recent disasters, in the next year we will be working on strengthening preparedness and response at the local level and developing protocols for elimination of violence against women and girls in emergencies.

We will also be training government, NGO partners and community leaders in Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action and setting up Gender and Protection Committees in each of the six provinces of Vanuatu.

The post Addressing Gender & Protection Issues During Humanitarian Emergencies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nimarta Khuman is a Gender and Protection Advisor at UN Women under the Australia Assists Program, managed by RedR Australia. Her role involves supporting the Vanuatu Government’s Department of Women Affairs and Gender and Protection Cluster to address gender and protection concerns related to the Ambae emergency and other natural disasters.

The post Addressing Gender & Protection Issues During Humanitarian Emergencies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marcy Hersh
BEIRUT, Aug 19 2019 (IPS)

To mark World Humanitarian Day, we celebrate the overlooked women leaders who are first responders, unwavering advocates, and powerful change-makers in humanitarian emergencies.

Yet to truly power progress, we can’t stop at celebrating their efforts – we must also push for the support and investment women humanitarians need to continue their vital work.

Women Deliver spoke with Cecilia Chami, Programs Director for the Lebanon Family Planning Association for Development and Family Empowerment (LFPADE)  on what women-focused civil society organisations (CSOs) need to maximise their impact.

World Humanitarian Day also coincides with a special milestone for LFPADE: today, August 19, marks their 50th anniversary as the first and oldest family planning organisation in Lebanon.

Drawing from LFPADE’s five decades of experience, Chami highlights the power of women-focused CSOs, and what the world can do to help continue their vital work.

Excerpts from the interview:

HERSH: Women make up a large part of LFPADE’s team, including in leadership positions and as direct service providers. How does having strong women on your team help advance LFPADE’s work and mission?

CHAMI:  LFPADE works to empower women in all aspects of their lives to achieve gender equality – so having strong women on our team is essential. Women are the best experts on our lives, so we understand what women in our communities need, can relate to the challenges they face, and appreciate the quality of services they deserve.

 For example, we know from experience that access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services improves lives and futures of girls, women, and their whole communities. So, while these services might be sidelined in many traditional humanitarian responses, we prioritise a woman’s ability to control her fertility at the core of all our work.

 As women from Lebanon, we also know the contexts and entry points to deliver services most effectively. We work with anyone who influences the lives of girls and women – including boys, men, community leaders, and mothers-in-law – to help girls and women make more autonomous decisions about their lives and bodies. We are only able to form these partnerships because communities know us, trust us, and believe in us.

HERSH: What can the world do to better support women and women-focused organisations in humanitarian action?

CHAMI: International actors wield so much power in humanitarian action – and it’s time they share more of that power with women-focused CSOs.

First, international organisations must work hand-in-hand with women-focused CSOs as equal partners, designing programs together that really respond to the needs of girls and women in our communities.

Often, local and national organisations like LFPADE are only seen as implementing partners that can execute the projects envisioned by foreigners. We bring grassroots expertise and community voices to the table – so we must actually be engaged at the outset.

Resources are key to maximising our impact, too. We often rely on unreliable funding streams and short-term grants to sustain them, which makes it very hard for us to work. Long-term investment in women-focused CSOs is the fuel we need to achieve results that have a real impact.

HERSH: LFPADE has worked to provide SRH services to women throughout Lebanon for 50 years, including Palestinian and Syrian women. When you reflect on the organisation’s history, what have been some of the biggest successes and lessons learned?

CHAMI: The biggest success of LFPADE was pushing for the removal of regressive laws which forbade talking about family planning and contraceptives in Lebanon. By doing so, we made it possible for us – and other women-focused organisations across the country – to advocate for family planning and the sale of essential contraceptives. This also made it possible for the government ministries to begin to implement SRH programs nationwide.

Another success was our ability to mobilise quickly to ensure that refugee responses prioritise SRH services for all girls and women. We worked with the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) to provide their medical and paramedical staff with training on how to provide these services in their clinics.

Since 2013, we have also dedicated a large part of our efforts to meeting the needs of Syrian refugees who have fled from home – and to date have reached over 30,000 Syrian men, women, and children with SRH awareness campaigns and programs.

One big lesson learned throughout all these successes is that girls and women must be included in the design of all projects for them. When we take the time to speak with girls and women about their needs and challenges at the outset, we be sure to design programs to fit their realities.

HERSH: You work you do is often difficult and tiring – but you continue to be an inspiring change-maker in Lebanon. What motivates you to continue your important work as a Program Director for LFPADE, even during the most challenging times?

CHAMI: What motivates me to continue working is the impact our programs are achieving. When I meet and talk to girls and women, I see firsthand how our efforts improve their lives and the lives of their children.

One quote that will always stay with me comes from a woman who attended a course LFPADE runs on women’s leadership: “You gave us self-confidence and knowledge, and we know now that we too can make a difference.” When every woman in Lebanon realises their power to make a change, my job will be done.

The post The Role of Women’s Organisations in Crisis-Settings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:


Marcy Hersh, is the Senior Manager of Humanitarian Advocacy at Women Deliver & Cecilia Chami is the Programs Director of Lebanon Family Planning Association for Development and Family Empowerment (LFPADE).

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By Crystal Orderson
LHASA, Aug 19 2019 (IPS)

Tibet’s complicated typography means that the terrain is not easy for its people. Whilst the country is breathtaking, one incredible story about Tibet is that of the dramatic socio-economic changes the region has undergone.

The post How Tibet Doubled its Life Expectancy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said two medical workers were killed in an attack Wednesday at an ambulance centre in Ma’aret Hurmeh, a town in Idlib province. Courtesy: Syrian American Medical Society

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

Medical aid groups have again blasted Russian and Syrian government forces this week for an ever-growing death toll among doctors, paramedics and other health workers in military strikes in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said two medical workers were killed in an attack Wednesday at an ambulance centre in Ma’aret Hurmeh, a town in Idlib province, which has been gripped by fighting in recent weeks.

Paramedic Mohamad Hussni Mishnen, 29, and ambulance driver Fadi Alomar, 34, died in a series of six airstrikes that levelled the facility, SAMS said. A rescuer also perished in a “double tap” hit on the centre as he tried to pull Mishnen and Alomar from the rubble.

Several aid groups and the United Nations have warned of repeated strikes on Idlib’s hospitals as Syrian government forces, backed by Russian airpower, retake the last rebel bastion in the country’s eight-year civil war. 

Mufaddal Hamadeh, president of SAMS, said in a statement he was “saddened and disturbed by this terrible incident”. He paid tribute to the medics and said those responsible for such “blatant crimes” should be held accountable.

Another group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has received reports of 46 attacks on  health centres since Syrian government and Russian forces launched an offensive on Idlib on April 29. The group has verified 16 of them.

“PHR’s rigorous research since the conflict began reveals that Syrian government and/or Russian government forces have committed approximately 91 percent of the attacks on health facilities in Syria,” said the group’s policy director Susannah Sirkin.

“The fact that these courageous professionals in Idlib were killed while merely doing their jobs should compel the U.N. and all parties to act now to stop the relentless bombing of civilians.”

Last month, after two-thirds of U.N. Security Council diplomats issued a protest note, U.N. secretary-general António Guterres launched an inquiry into attacks on civilian infrastructure including hospitals, clinics and schools.

The so-called Board of Inquiry will probe whether GPS coordinates of hospitals and clinics that the U.N. provides to Russia, the U.S. and Turkey to ensure the hospitals’ protection were used instead to target them.

Guterres “must conduct a rapid, public, and transparent investigation into attacks on health in the face of the deconfliction agreements”, while Security Council members “must ensure that those responsible for these unthinkable crimes are held accountable,” added Sirkin.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Moscow, whose airpower has been critical to Damascus’ military gains in recent years, say they are fighting terrorists and deny targeting civilians, schools or hospitals, which can constitute war crimes.

Replying to a question from IPS, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s envoy to the U.N., said he was “disappointed” by the U.N.’s decision to launch the probe but did not commit to cooperating with investigators.

“If we were sure that this board will really try to establish the truth, then I can’t exclude this,” Polyanskiy told reporters.

“But there are a lot of doubts about this. These countries that were pushing for the establishment of this board … are not seeking to find the truth about what’s happened, they seek another tool to pressure Russia, to pressure Syria, and to just distort the actions that we take there.”

Syria’s U.N. ambassador Bashar Ja’afari has said that northwest Syria’s healthcare centres were used by “terrorist groups” rather than doctors.

According to the U.N., more than 450 people have been killed in the Idlib offensive and hundreds of thousands more displaced by fighting. Idlib’s population is about three million, most of whom have fled from other parts of war-torn Syria.

Idlib and nearby parts of the northwest were covered by a “de-escalation” deal to staunch the conflict that was struck in September by Russia and Turkey, which backs some rebel groups in the area. 

But the deal was never fully implemented after fighters refused to withdraw from a planned buffer zone. Fighting has ratcheted up again in recent weeks, sending waves of refugees spilling from conflict hotspots.

President Assad is seeking to claw back control of Syria after peaceful protests in 2011 spiralled into a brutal civil war that saw him lose much of the country to armed religious extremists and other rebels.

More than 400,000 people have died across Syria since 2011, according to World Bank figures, and almost 12 million others have been forced to flee from their homes because of the fighting, both within Syria and abroad.

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Students in Primary Seven at Zanaki Primary School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania during an English language class. Credit: Sarah Farhat/World Bank.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is convinced that the world’s 1.8 billion adolescents and youth– a quarter of the global population—have a key role to play in helping implement the UN’s 2030 Development Agenda.

In an interview with IPS, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) Dereje Wordofa, said “young people are at the centre of sustainable development”.

“If we do not work with, and for them, there is no way we can achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030, or UNFPA’s three transformative results,” he warned.

Through “My Body, My Life, My World!”, UNFPA is also contributing to each of the five priorities of the UN’s overall Youth Strategy, “Youth 2030”.

“If we make coherent, tailored, large-scale reforms and investments, especially in health (including sexual and reproductive health), skills development, and employment, those nations can achieve a huge demographic dividend from their healthy, empowered young populations"

Dereje Wordofa, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme)

“These are engagement, participation and advocacy, informed and healthy foundations, economic empowerment through decent work, and peace and resilience,” he pointed out.

Speaking during International Youth Day on August 11, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres complained schools are “not equipping young people with the skills they need to navigate the technological revolution.”

Last year, he also stressed the importance of young people in addressing the challenges confronting the contemporary world, including peace, impacts of climate change and growing inequalities.

“The best hope [to address these] challenges is with the new generations. We need to make sure that we are able to strongly invest in those new generations,” said Guterres, urging the international community to be fully engaged in addressing a key problem of youth unemployment.

Asked how realistic was UNFPA’s strategy in poverty-stricken communities struggling to survive on less than $1.25 a day, Wordofa told IPS: “Having lived and worked in many countries affected by poverty and deprivation, including in my own Ethiopia, I couldn’t agree with you more”

He said Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) is a lynchpin for all the other SDGs, and in all sectors of development “we are contributing towards reducing poverty. I believe empowered young people will play a vital role here too”.

“At UNFPA, we firmly believe that one of the most essential routes to achieving sustainable development lies in educating and empowering young people to make decisions about their health and wellbeing, giving them the tools to take charge of their lives, to drive development, and to sustain peace”.

“We must recognize that adolescents and young people make up the majority of the population in many economically poor nations,” he declared.

“ If we make coherent, tailored, large-scale reforms and investments, especially in health (including sexual and reproductive health), skills development, and employment, those nations can achieve a huge demographic dividend from their healthy, empowered young populations,’ said Wordofa, who earlier served as the International Regional Director, Eastern and Southern Africa, at SOS Children’s Villages and Regional Director for Africa at the American Friends Service Committee.

In this context, he pointed out that UNFPA’s “My Body, My Life, My World!” is a human-centric approach: “we are emphasizing how all the different issues affecting adolescents and youth today are interlinked and inseparable”.

“For example, without rights and choices over their bodies, it is not possible for young people to have full control over their lives and actively shape their communities and end poverty. So we must continue to address the complex determinants that affect young people’s health and wellbeing,” he noted.

 

UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) Dereje Wordofa.

 

 

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: How best would you describe the UNFPA’s new strategy on adolescents and youth? 

WORDOFA: UNFPA’s vision is to create a world where every young person can make their own choices and enjoy their rights. The strategy titled “My body, my life, my world!” is our new rallying cry for every young person to have the knowledge and power to make informed choices about their bodies and lives, and to participate in transforming their world.

The strategy puts young people – their talents, hopes, perspectives and unique needs – at the very centre of sustainable development, and offers a new approach to collaborate with, invest in, and champion young people around the world. It encompasses everything that was called for and promised by world leaders at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) back in 1994 in Cairo.

“My Body, My Life, My World!” provides a new narrative for all of UNFPA’s youth work, building on the organization’s strategic plan and the UN’s “Youth 2030” strategy, and putting young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights at the core of what we do both in development and humanitarian settings.

In addition to the crucial need for young people to enjoy their right to sexual and reproductive health, the strategy also includes their fundamental right to participate in sustainable development, humanitarian action and sustaining peace.

By working with and for young people, we will deliver across the three spheres that matter to them – their body, life, and world. This will be essential if we are to finally fulfil the promise of the ICPD of rights and choices for all adolescents and youth.

IPS: Are you working on a deadline for its implementation?

WORDOFA: UNFPA seeks to achieve its three transformative goals by 2030; namely zero unmet need for family planning, zero maternal deaths and zero violence and harmful practices against women and girls. “My Body, My Life, My World!” will be a key accelerator to achieving these three goals.

IPS: Do you think the world’s 1.8 billion adolescents and youth now remain largely marginalized in decisions relating to reproductive health, marriage and child-bearing?

WORDOFA: Yes! It is a sad fact that far too many young people are still a long way from being able to exercise their reproductive rights, despite being promised them by world leaders twenty-five years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

The numbers are staggering: 21 per cent of girls worldwide are married before age 18. Tens of thousands of girls get married every day. And every day in developing countries, 20,000 girls under age 18 give birth: this amounts to 7.3 million births a year.

The choices young people make—or are forced to make—determine their lives now, their futures as adults, and the health of future generations. A single choice, for example, to stay in school may protect against early pregnancy, child marriage, gender-based violence and HIV infection.

Yet many young people will not be able to make that choice. Poverty, humanitarian crises, race, ethnicity, gender and cultural traditions are just some of the barriers that may stand in the way.

IPS: What role can civil society play in promoting the Youth strategy in the developing world?                   

WORDOFA: Making a real difference in the lives of young people rests on shared leadership and shared responsibility. Youth-led and youth-serving organizations, governments, community leaders, UN entities, civil society, academia, the private sector and the media all have essential roles to play.

As UNFPA, we take pride in being a trusted ally and partner for youth leaders, organizations and networks. We systematically invest in strengthening national and regional youth-led networks, and pioneering models for youth leadership and participation in many countries.

Adolescents and youth both benefit from our programmes, and as our close partners, offer vital contributions to shaping their design and implementation.

For “My Body, My Life, My World!” we are excited to strengthen and broaden our partnership base and collaborate with youth-led organizations, community-based organizations, but also iNGOs, to scale up joint implementation efforts with young people.

IPS: How will your young professional network – the Tangerines – described as the first of its kind in the UN system, be deployed in promoting your new strategy?

WORDOFA: The Tangerines played an important role in formulating and shaping the strategy. We will continue to provide a safe space and promote an organizational culture that encourages young professionals within UNFPA to be closely linked to the implementation of “My Body, My Life, My World!” We know we need to start by walking the talk.

At the conception phase of the Strategy, we conducted a global survey with Tangerine members and consulted with our Executive Director, Dr Natalia Kanem, and the UN Secretary General’s Youth Envoy to explore how UNFPA was delivering for young people and what could be strengthened.

We are planning to collaborate closely with the Tangerines for the global launch and promotion of the Strategy, as well as when thinking about how we can reach young people and operationalize the strategy.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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The Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research. Credit: IAEA Imagebank/CC By 2.0

By Tengfei Wang
BANGKOK, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

The success of Silicon Valley has been inspirational for many countries worldwide wishing to establish science and technology parks. In Asia, successful science and technology parks can be found in many economies, including China, Japan and Thailand.

Despite this, if the precursory conditions are not in place, a science and technology park could turn into a white elephant project. This is a key message from the ESCAP guidebook titled Establishing Science and Technology Parks: A Reference Guidebook for Policymakers in Asia and the Pacific.

Worldwide and in the region, most science and technology parks are in economically advanced or large economies. As developing economies attempt to close the technology gap, governments are increasingly turning to science and technology parks as a key driver of their national strategies.

For example, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported that approximately 80 per cent of the countries surveyed (including developed, developing and least developed countries) planned to use specialized zones, including science and technology parks, as a part of their 21st century industrial or science, technology and innovation (STI) policies.

Placing the physical infrastructure of a science and technology park is often straightforward. To make it work, however, is more complicated. Only 25 percent of science and technology parks in an advanced economy could be regarded successful in achieving their goals.

How do we ensure a science and technology park is a success?
Before a science and technology park is developed, it is essential to check whether the pre-conditions are in place. These key precursor conditions are:

1. The key tenants or the anchor tenants – such as national research institutes – are committed to staying in the science and technology park. Anchor tenants are crucial to ensuring that a science and technology park has its backbone and may be useful in attracting other firms to co-locate;
2. A management team with all the skills necessary for managing the science and technology park can be identified and assembled. The management team needs to have expertise in not only research and development, but also business, marketing, negotiation and communications. Furthermore, the management team must be able to adjust its strategy to an ever-changing environment. Such multi-tasking means, for many developing countries, that assembling an effective management team is a real challenge;
3. A strong science base in the surrounding areas of the science and technology park is already available. This factor is important because a science base in the surrounding area will provide potential tenants of the science and technology park. In addition, this will ensure that the firms within the park can easily communicate with firms outside the park;
4. The city or area where a science and technology park will be built is attractive to talented researchers and entrepreneurs.;
5. An entrepreneurial culture is available in the city or country where a science and technology park will be built. This factor is particularly important if the key objective of a science and technology park is to foster start-ups and entrepreneurs;
6. Finance, especially seed and venture capital, is available in the city or country where a science and technology park will be built. These resources are critical to support long-term STI initiatives and build upon existing research.

In addition, it is important to assess a science and technology park in a broad national or local economic context. In this connection, key questions should be asked on what can be achieved by establishing a science and technology park and whether there are better but alternative ways to achieving that goal.

While a science and technology park can be developed by the private sector, if a government or public sector finances the development of the park or provides other incentives such as tax exemption or reduction, the science and technology park needs to provide social benefits such as advanced research and development, which subsequently boosts its national STI and/or economic development.

The guidebook was launched at the inaugural Asia-Pacific Innovation Forum. Close collaboration with the Asian Science Park Association ensured not only the relevance of the guidebook but also its effective dissemination.

Tengfei Wang is Economic Affairs Officer, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

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Excerpt:

Tengfei Wang is Economic Affairs Officer, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

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By Ruth Richardson
TORONTO, Canada, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

The special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  on climate and land, launched last week, makes it clear that without drastic changes in land use, agriculture and human diets, we will fall significantly short of targets to hold global temperature rise below 1.5°C. 

Agriculture and food systems are identified as they key drivers of land degradation and desertification, with carbon emissions and extractive activities affecting 75 per cent of the Earth’s land surface. Now, as forests, food, and farming become the next frontier in the climate emergency, there is an urgent need to accelerate creative and effective solutions.

It is against this backdrop that a new report  – Beacons of Hope: Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Food Systems – showcases 21 initiatives from across the world that are already working in diverse ways to achieve sustainable, equitable and secure food systems.

Each Beacons of Hope is disrupting the status quo and regenerating landscapes, enhancing livelihoods, restoring people’s health and wellbeing, reconnecting with Indigenous and cultural knowledge, and more, in order to achieve a resilient food future.

There is an opportunity to learn from these initiatives, as well as apply those learnings to facilitate and accelerate more food systems transformations.

The report makes the case for why we must pinpoint the drivers of change and seize the opportunities they bring. Climate change is called out as the predominant overriding challenge facing Beacons of Hope and is identified as a key driver of change across food systems.

An awareness of the health impacts of current food systems and the desire to improve community health and well-being also emerged as important drivers of change across many Beacons of Hope. As well, migration and immigration – the movement of people from rural to urban areas, as well as across borders – was found to significantly impact agriculture and health outcomes.

Yet, though food systems are vulnerable and complex, this report makes clear that they can be transformed to provide the people- and nature-based climate solutions we urgently need to address a multitude of issues – from climate emergency, urbanization, and the need for healthier and more sustainable diets.

 

In Andhra Pradesh, India

 

In particular, the report details that we need to accelerate agroecological approaches as a way to achieve transformation with many Beacons of Hope putting agroecological principles at the core of their work and their vision of the future.

Take for example how the Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) initiative in Andhra Pradesh, India, promotes food resilience through traditional, chemical-free farming and agroecological processes and plans to scale from 180,000 farmers today to a massive 6 million by 2024.

At the same time, the Agroecology Case Studies (from the Oakland Institute) present evidence that agroecology can provide better yields, pest management, soil fertility, increased biodiversity, and increased farmer incomes compared to conventional farming.

Both these Beacons of Hope challenge the dominant narrative around food production that pressures national governments to privilege industrialized agriculture and foreign investment over local natural resource management through agroecology.

They also demonstrate that knowledge transfer and skills training, through farmer-to-farmer mentoring, is fundamental to not only building the capacity of farmers and communities over time, but to also challenge top-down approaches to reform and/or single-focused interventions that can cause unintended consequences.

As forests, food, and farming become the next frontier in the climate emergency, there is an urgent need to accelerate creative and effective solutions

Another of the Beacons of Hope – Agricultures Network (AN) is producing regional and global magazines that put farmers at the center of the development of agriculture, and thereby, is facilitating knowledge co-creation between farmer communities, researchers, civil society actors, and others.

Crucially, AN brings to life how sustainable food production also: reduces inequality; fosters healthy society, soil, and environment; and reduces youth unemployment.

Another key takeaway from the report is that new market mechanisms should be identified, developed, and supported by policy and practice. Environmental and social externalities should be internalized by policy and markets in order to balance the playing field on which initiatives addressing sustainability are currently disadvantaged.

This is something that was done, in part, at the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) in Zambia. Established in 2009, this Beacon of Hope channels market incentives to rural economies, promoting income generation, biodiversity conservation, and food security by training poachers to be farmers and farmers to be stewards of the land.

Now, thanks to this initiative, the farmers involved are able to grow their own food and create a livelihood outside of elephant hunting, which benefits the environment as well as the health of the smallholder farmers and their families.

Ultimately, there’s little doubt that we need systemic change, new policies, and a shift in power dynamics in order to realize a safe, resilient, and fair food future. We need to see systems-thinking in order to facilitate transformative processes in place-based, contextual ways.

Equally, we need to see long-term thinking, and creative partnerships and investment from across the private sector, civil society, and government committed to transforming food systems. Only then can we ensure that the negative externalities are minimized and positive benefits — economic, social, ecological, and cultural — are enhanced and properly valued.

The Beacons of Hope show us that transformation is not only possible, but is already happening. This creates space for hope, possibility, and opportunity through the groundswell of people transforming our food systems in beneficial, dynamic, and significant ways, through nature- and people-based solutions accelerating meaningful food systems transformations at this critical time.

For more about the Beacons of Hope, visit: www.foodsystemstransformations.org/

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Excerpt:

Ruth Richardson is Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

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Romário Schaefer, 65, stands between the biodigester buried in the ground on the right and the blue tank holding whey that is mixed with the manure of the pigs he fattens in a row of pig pens (top left) to produce biogas, in the southern Brazilian municipality of Entre Rios do Oeste. In the background is his brick factory, which saves about 6,500 dollars a month in electricity by using biogas. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
ENTRE RIOS DO OESTE, Brazil, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

Romário Schaefer is fattening up 3,300 pigs that he receives when they weigh around 22 kg and returns when they reach 130 to 160 kg – a huge increase in meat and profits for their owner, a local meat-processing plant in this city in Brazil.

Schaefer is not interested in the pork meat business. What he wants is the manure, which he uses to produce biogas and electricity that fuel his brick-making factory.

“I’m not a farmer,” he says as he shows us around his Stein Ceramics company in the middle of a 38-hectare rural property on the outskirts of Entre Rios do Oeste, a farming town of 4,400 people in western Paraná, one of three states in Brazil’s southern region, on the border with Paraguay.

He is explaining the difference between himself and neighbouring pig farmers who produce biogas and sell it to the Mini-Thermoelectric Plant inaugurated on Jul. 24 to generate energy that serves the Entre Rios municipal government and all of its facilities in the town itself and the rest of the municipality.

For them it is a new agricultural product, and has been recognised as such in Paraná for commercial and tax purposes. But for Schaefer it’s an input for his factory, which makes bricks.

Animal waste, which pollutes the soil and rivers, is becoming an important by-product in southwestern Brazil, where pig and poultry farming has expanded widely in recent decades.

The Haacke farm, in the municipality of Santa Helena, south of Entre Rios, uses the waste produced by its tens of thousands of hens and hundreds of cattle to produce biogas, electricity and biomethane.

Its biomethane, a fuel derived from the refining of biogas which is employed as a substitute for natural gas, is used in vehicles at the giant Itaipú hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay on the Paraná River, which forms part of the border between the two countries.

In Mariscal Cándido Rondon, a few kilometres to the north, the Kohler family, pioneers in the use of biogas on their large farm, took on another role in the chain of this energy which is more than just clean – it actually cleans the environment.

Part of Stein Ceramics, whose prosperity and ecological production were made possible by the biogas produced from the manure of 3,300 pigs. The factory produces enough bricks monthly to build 200 60-square-metre homes in the state of Paraná, on Brazil’s border with Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

They created a biodigester company, BioKohler, which is present in many projects spreading throughout Paraná and other Brazilian states, not only selling equipment but also sharing know-how brought from other countries.

The new family initiative that can guide new projects is a biogas-fired power plant with an installed capacity of 75 kilowatts, built on the farm in partnership with the German company Mele, with many “tropicalised” technological innovations.

“Such a unit is only viable above 150 kilowatts of power, a scale that allows the cost of the investment to be recovered,” Pedro Kohler, who leads the family’s industrial branch, told IPS.

Schaefer looks at the question from the angle of the consumer who generates his own energy. “Without biogas my factory would not be viable, I would not be able to compete and survive in the market,” he said.

In recent years, many ceramic products factories, including brick-makers, went bankrupt in Brazil, something that also happened in the west of the state of Paraná, after the national economic recession of 2015 and 2016, which especially affected the construction industry and aggravated the rise in energy costs.

The pig fattening contract with the slaughterhouse allowed him to avoid bankruptcy, the businessman said.

Pedro Kohler, who heads a biodigester company in the western Brazilian state of Paraná, stands between a biodigester and deposits of biogas and biofertilisers from the thermoelectric plant he installed on his family’s farm in the municipality of Cándido Rondon. Innovative technologies and equipment, provided by their German partner Mele, will modernise the biogas sector in Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“The meat-packing plant supplies everything: food, medicine and technical assistance. What I provide is the installations and the workforce; a couple of workers is enough because everything is automatic, and I keep the manure,” he told IPS on his rural property.

That makes it possible for him to deposit 1.8 million litres of pig waste in the biodigester, a large closed ball of black canvas, half buried in a pit measuring about 10 metres in diameter, where it ferments thanks to anaerobic bacteria.

The biodigester is the source of the biogas that feeds a generator which produces 23,000 megawatts/hour per month, enough to save 25,000 reais (6,500 dollars at the current exchange rate) – almost half of his electricity bill.

Actually, his mini-plant operates only four to five hours a day. It does so during peak evening consumption hours, when the electricity supplied by the distribution company is most expensive.

In the next few months, Schaefer hopes to put an additional 2,000 piglets in his fattening shed, where he is building new pigsties. He would thus expand biogas production, both to generate more electricity and to feed the kilns, replacing the burning of briquettes and wood waste.

The businessman has 19 years of experience with biogas, initially focused on burning it as a substitute for firewood, which was scarce, and on preventing pollution. As he explains, he proudly points to his “smokeless” fireplace.

In 2013, rising costs forced him to expand the biodigester and install the electric generator.

He also had to automate his factory to survive. “In the past we employed up to 90 workers, today there are only 20 and production has risen threefold,” he said.

Long sheds where thousands of pigs are fattened are becoming a familiar part of the landscape in rural areas of Entre Rios del Oeste, in southwestern Brazil, where a Mini Thermoelectric Plant was inaugurated on Jul. 24. The plant runs on biogas produced by a network of 18 pig farms and supplies the city government facilities. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Behind the progress made was great persistence, the ironing out of numerous problems and third party assistance. Sometimes he almost gave up, he confessed. Some solutions came to him by chance, like the biodigestion mixer recommended by a German embassy official, during a visit to his company.

Similarly, he learned about the advantages of incorporating waste whey into cheese production. This offers the dairy industry a sure way to dispose of it, while preventing pollution.

The main source of learning, technical support and drive for the various projects in western Paraná is the International Center for Renewable Energy-Biogas (CIBiogas), which operates in the Itaipu Technology Park.

Founded in 2013 as a non-profit association of 27 national, local and international institutions, CIBIogas has a specialised laboratory and implemented 11 biogas projects on farms and in agribusiness enterprises.

It is an energy source with varied uses and inputs that requires a lengthy learning process and depends on business models and markets that have yet to be defined and are not yet consolidated, said Rafael González, director of Technological Development at CIBiogás.

Each project has its unique characteristics. Changes in animal feed, which primarily seek to improve the production of meat or eggs, for example, can negatively affect the production of biogas.

“The hormones in pigs change their waste and biogas,” González told IPS.

There are also differences between animal manures, said Daiana Martinez, information analyst at CIBiogas. Cattle manure, for example, is more productive, but contains a high level of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that causes corrosion, requiring more refining.

González said biomethane is the fuel currently used by 82 Itaipu cars and has already been approved in tests with tractors, buses and other large vehicles. It is best to produce it from bird droppings, which facilitate the removal of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, he explained.

Biogas can meet up to 36 percent of the electricity consumption of this South American country, which is the size of a continent and is home to 210 million people, CIBiogas estimates.

This potential is basically divided between agricultural waste, which includes livestock and sugarcane vinasse, and urban waste, including sewage and garbage dumps.

In addition to avoiding pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases, biogas has been shown by local experience to promote local development, through energy projects and a chain of businesses, such as equipment industries, services and productive arrangements, González said.

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• Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil

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The first Geneva Convention protects wounded and sick soldiers on land during war. Courtesy: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2019 (IPS)

World governments are not doing enough to stop armed groups from committing mass rape, torture and other war crimes, the head of the Red Cross aid group head Peter Maurer said on Tuesday.

Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said that 70 years after their adoption, the Geneva Conventions were being breached and urged world powers to clamp down on those who commit atrocities.

As he spoke, fighting raged in Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other hotspots in which United Nations investigators have warned of widespread civilian casualties and other likely war crimes.

“It is clear by the obvious terrible suffering in today’s conflicts that [the Geneva Conventions] are not universally respected,” Maurer told the U.N. Security Council via video link at an event to mark their 70th anniversary.

“Too often, ICRC sees the impact on people when international humanitarian law is violated — indiscriminate killing, torture, rape, cities destroyed, psychological trauma inflicted.”

The four Geneva Conventions are international treaties that deal with the treatment of injured soldiers in the field and at sea, the treatment of medics and prisoners of war and how to protect civilians.

They were adopted on Aug. 12, 1949, after lengthy deliberations.

For Maurer, they are increasingly tested by modern-day conflict, in which big powers frequently partner with local groups, fighting is concentrated in towns and cities and drones and other hi-tech military gear are deployed.

“There is no doubt that the modern battlefield is a complex arena; urbanised warfare, an increasing number of armed groups, partnered warfare are posing new and difficult dilemmas,” Maurer said.

“Rapidly developing technologies are creating new front lines in cyberspace, as well as new ways to fight, for example, autonomous weapon systems and remote technologies.”

U.N. diplomats pointed to Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russian airpower, are accused of torture, bombing civilians and using poison gas as they claw back rebel-held territory in the country’s eight-year civil war.

In Yemen, both the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition seeking to restore a U.N.-supported government have reportedly attacked civilians, schools and hospitals and recruited child soldiers in the protracted conflict.

Elsewhere, investigators have probed violations of international humanitarian law in Libya, the occupied Palestinian territories and in several African hotspots, including DRC, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Governments should sign up to humanitarian law treaties, pass domestic legislation, train more war crimes sleuths and raise the ethical standards of soldiers, said Maurer, a former Swiss ambassador.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said military field commanders needed to know that pulling the trigger on an ethnic cleansing campaign could well see them end up in the dock of The Hague. 

Czaputowicz, a pro-democracy activist during Soviet times, said the rules of war were “not sufficiently observed” in such conflict zones as Libya, South Sudan, and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The “Syria regime definitely used chemical weapons and should be held accountable,” Czaputowicz said in answer to a question from IPS.

The original Geneva Convention, which covered the “amelioration of the condition of the wounded in armies in the field”, was adopted in 1864 in after a proposal by Henry Dunant, who founded the ICRC.

In the years leading up to the second world war, the ICRC drafted extra treaties to expand protections for civilians who got caught up in combat, but governments did not commit to the new rules. 

The horrors of the second world war galvanised momentum and governments agreed to revise and update the conventions in 1949, adding a fourth to protect civilians and property in wartime. Two extra protocols were added in 1977.

The conventions are largely universal, having been ratified by 196 countries, including all members of the world body and observers like Palestine, the most recent authority to sign up to the treaties in 2014.

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Members of the Samburu tribe in Kenya. Samburu women pastoralists are affected by climate change.

By Sharon Birch-Jeffrey, Africa Renewal
NAIROBI, Aug 14 2019 (IPS)

For many people, climate change is about shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, longer and more intense heatwaves, and other extreme and unpredictable weather patterns.  But for women pastoralists—livestock farmers in the semi-arid lands of Kenya—climate change has forced drastic changes to everyday life, including long and sometimes treacherous journeys to get water.

Faced with an increasingly dry climate, women pastoralists now must spend much more time searching for water. That takes time away from productive economic activities, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.

 

A marginalized group

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,” Agnes Leina, a Kenyan human rights activist and pastoralist, told Africa Renewal.

Leina established the Il’Laramatak Community Concerns organisation in 2011, because women pastoralists have inadequate land rights, are excluded from community leadership and are often not involved in decision making, despite the responsibilities they shoulder.

This year, Leina was invited to the Commission on the Status of Women at UN headquarters in New York, an opportunity she used to promote the rights of the Maasai, seminomadic pastoralists of the Nilotic ethnic group in parts of northern, central and southern Kenya.

Climate change has made their situation worse, she says.

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,”
Leina’s organisation addresses the loss of earnings women incur due to climate change by creating programmes that teach them how to make and sell beads, mats, and milk products. It also helps foster girls’ resilience by giving them the tools to set goals for themselves.

She says it used to take her about 30 minutes to fetch 20 litres of water from a river not far from her mother’s home, which was hardly enough to wash clothes and utensils and take a bath. That was until the river started receding.

The time she spent fetching water increased to “one hour, then two hours because, of course, there was no water and so many of us lined up for the little that was available. Then suddenly it completely dried up.”

Now, she says, “You have to travel to another river, which is like one hour’s walk, to fetch water.”

As a result, many girls between ages 14 and 16 run the risk of being attacked by wild animals or becoming victims of sexual assault while searching for water. They have no time to do their homework and, for fear of being punished, they miss school, she explains.

Other girls, discouraged by these realities, “settle for a man in town who has water and then marry him,”  Leina admits with regret.

Agnes Leina.

Climate change also increases the pressure for child marriages. In pastoralist communities, livestock is a status symbol. Losing cattle because the land is too arid for them to survive may compel a father to offer his young daughter’s hand in marriage in exchange for more cows as a bride price.

Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change. The UN Environment (UNE) projects that some countries’ yields from rain-fed agriculture will have been reduced by half by next year. Countries hard hit by land degradation and desertification include Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

“Most African women depend on rain-fed livelihood systems like farming and livestock keeping. Therefore, any shift in climate patterns has a significant impact on women, especially those living in rural areas,” concurs Fatmata Sessay, UN Women regional policy advisor on climate-smart agriculture for East and Southern Africa Region. UN Women’s mandate is to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Globally, nearly 200 million nomadic pastoralists make their livelihoods in remote and harsh environments where conventional farming is limited or not possible, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Glo.be, the online magazine of the Belgian Federal Public Service’s international development aid programme, reports that Kenyan pastoralists are responsible for up to 90% of the meat produced in East Africa. Kenya’s livestock sector contributes 12% to the country’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

Therefore, a changing climate has serious implications for the country’s economy.

In 2014, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, with support from the International Livestock Research Institute and the World Bank, began a livestock insurance programme for vulnerable pastoralists. That programme has provided some relief to women pastoralists.

 

Technology to the rescue

UN Women is also mobilizing efforts to secure land tenure for women. It is working with the Standard Bank of Africa to help African women overcome barriers in the agriculture sector such as providing access to credit.

Technology is key to saving the water that disappears after a torrential rainfall, says Leina. Windmill technology, for instance, could allow women to access water 300 feet underground. The snag, she explains, is that it’s priced out of the reach of women pastoralists. She hopes authorities can help.

Houses in some rural areas of Kenya have thatched roofs that cannot channel water to household water tanks in the way that zinc rooftops can. Commercial water trucks can fill up household tanks for a fee of up to $60 per tank, but most rural households cannot afford that much.

The situation for women pastoralists is grim, which is why Leina hopes raising awareness of how climate change is threatening their livelihoods may get increased attention—and support—of the Kenyan government and its international partners.

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The UN General Assembly in session.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2019 (IPS)

When Yassir Arafat was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva– perhaps for the first time in UN history– providing a less-hostile political environment for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement by saying “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honourable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.

If Zarif is denied a visa, as expected, it will be a violation of the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement under which Washington was expected to facilitate -- not hinder-- the smooth functioning of the world body

The Trump administration, which has had an ongoing battle with Iran, has imposed a rash of political and economic sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif — even as Washington, paradoxically, proclaims that the Iranian problem can be resolved only diplomatically while, at the same time, it keeps the negotiator-in-chief away from the US.

The sanctions on Zarif will also prevent him from being a member of the Iranian delegation – and also from addressing the six high-level summit meetings scheduled for late September.

If Zarif is denied a visa, as expected, it will be a violation of the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement under which Washington was expected to facilitate — not hinder– the smooth functioning of the world body.

While the PLO was not a full-fledged UN member state, Iran is a founding member of the world body.

The Trump administration has already reneged or abandoned several international agreements, including the 2015 Paris Climate Change agreement, the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, and most recently the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia which helped seal the end of the Cold War.

Will the US-UN headquarters agreement be far behind?

 

Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif.

 

James Paul, who served as Executive Director of the Global Policy Forum (1993-2012), told IPS the Trump administration’s sanctions on Zarif at the end of July have dealt yet another blow to diplomacy and the settlement of dangerous disputes.

Zarif, he pointed out, is not only a highly-respected diplomat.  He is perhaps the person most able to help resolve the spiraling conflict between Iran and the United States.

“One important aspect of Washington’s move against Zarif has escaped notice: the impact on the United Nations,” he added.

There is a strong possibility that the US will violate its responsibilities as UN host country since the travel sanctions will block Zarif from attending UN functions, including the UN General Assembly opening session in late September (as well as subsequent sessions later on), he noted.

“Such a move would be in breach of the US-UN Headquarters Agreement of 1947,” said Paul, author of the book “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council”.

Traditionally, he said, the opening session brings high-level speakers from around the world.  It is important not only as a moment for high-profile speeches, but also as a time for private discussions and negotiations, far from the public eye.

Asked for his response, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters August 6: “Obviously, we’ll have to wait and see what happens at the General Assembly”.

“I can’t predict, but the US has obligations under the Host Country Agreement, as have other countries that host UN Headquarters or host UN conferences.  And, as a matter of principle, we hope that every country that is under such obligations lives up to those obligations, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens,” said Dujarric.

Dr Ramesh Thakur, a former UN Under-Secretary-General and Emeritus Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, told IPS there are three deep problems on the American side.

First, they unilaterally pulled out of a multilaterally-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council (UNSC).

The UNSC further called on all states to help implement the deal, to lift sanctions, and to assist Iran’s economic development. Therefore, by re-imposing unilateral sanctions, it is the US that is in material breach of the agreement and in violation of UNSC demands.

Second, the sanctions on Zarif contravene their stated position of a solution through diplomacy. You cannot engage in any diplomacy by placing a country’s foreign minister under sanctions, he argued.

The third is the General Assembly attendance implication.

“On this, yes, the UN spokesman is correct: it would violate the 1947 HQ agreement. But in the hierarchy of seriousness, violating the JCPOA is actually more serious and shows the complete toothlessness of the UN and UNSC to hold to account any of the P5 (the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France Russia and China), said Dr Thakur a former Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (1998–2007).

He said a similar example of this was when Bolton and Pompeo threatened to put the International Criminal Court (ICC) and all its personnel under sanctions, including the threat of criminal prosecution in US courts if they visited the US.

“As we know from the Meng Wanzhou case in Canada, the US can insist other countries honour US arrest warrants against third country nationals. And the UN meekly accepted the brazen US thuggery and the ICC judges dropped the investigation. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/05/17/commentary/world-commentary/end-international-criminal-court/

Paul said the Trump administration is keen to put further pressure on Iran and to further collapse the much-discussed nuclear deal, signed after years of delicate negotiations in 2018.

Apart from Israel and the UK, he pointed out, there is little enthusiasm internationally for closing the diplomatic doors to this important agreement.

“Governments world-wide also strongly oppose the Trump administration’s strong-arm tactics and the US disregard for an open UN, where all member states are able to speak,” he said.

“This would not be the only time that the US has refused entry to high-level foreign officials, but the push-back may now be especially strong.  In light of the support for the nuclear deal in Europe, Washington could anticipate intense opposition to US high-handedness”.

Zarif lived in the US as a university student and he is famously adept as a spokesman for Iran with his perfect command of English and courteous manner, said Paul.

This infuriates the White House and convinces the hawks there that he is a “threat.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Pompeo has accused Zarif of being “complicit in the regime’s outlaw behavior,” while National Security Adviser Bolton has hurled insults of his own at the soft-spoken Iranian diplomat.

“Will the hawks neutralize Zarif by banning him from the UN, or will the White House feel obliged to let Zarif represent his country at the UN, at least for the present?,’” asked Paul.

At a time when a US war with Iran remains an active possibility, and when secret negotiations at the UN over Iran could ease tensions, the headquarters treaty could have a very big impact on international peace and security, he declared.

Just before the sanctions were imposed, Zarif was in New York in mid-July to address the high-level political forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  But his travel in the US was strictly limited by the State Department.

The United States has rarely denied a visa to a head of state visiting the United Nations to address the General Assembly.

But it did so in November 2013, denying a visa to the Sudanese president, prompting the government to register a strong protest before the U.N.’s legal committee.

Hassan Ali, a senior Sudanese diplomat, told delegates: “The democratically-elected president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, had been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly because the host country, the United States, had denied him a visa, in violation of the U.N.-U.S. Headquarters Agreement.”

Furthermore, he complained, the host country also applied arbitrary pressures on foreign missions, “depending on how close a country’s foreign policy is to that of the United States.”

“It was a great and deliberate violation of the Headquarters Agreement,” he said, also pointing to the closing of bank accounts of foreign missions and diplomats as another violation.

The refusal of a visa to the former Sudanese president was also a political landmine because al-Bashir remained indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But it raised a legitimate question: does the United States have a right to implicitly act on an ICC ruling when Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC?

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Reyna Díaz checks the marinated pork she is cooking in a solar cooker at her home in a poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The use of solar cookers has made is possible for 200 local women to save on fuel and stop using firewood, providing environmental and health benefits. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
VILLA DE ZAACHILA, Mexico, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico.

“My family likes the way it cooks things. I use it almost every day, it has been a big help to me,” Díaz told IPS as she mixed the ingredients for cochinita pibil, a traditional pork dish marinated with spices and achiote, a natural coloring.

She then placed the pot on the aluminum sheets of the cooker, which reflect the sunlight that heats the receptacle.

Before receiving the solar cooker in March, Díaz, who sells atole, a traditional hot Mexican drink based on corn or wheat dough, and is raising her son and daughter on her own, did not believe it was possible to cook with the sun’s rays."I learned while working with the local women. It was hard, like breaking stones; people knew nothing about it. Now people are more open, because there is more information about the potential of solar energy. In rural areas, people understand it more." -- Lorena Harp

“I didn’t know it could be done, I wondered if the food would actually be cooked. It’s a wonderful thing,” said this resident of the poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, in Villa de Zaachila, a municipality of 43,000 people in the state of Oaxaca, some 475 km south of Mexico City.

One thing the inhabitants of Vicente Guerrero have in common is poverty. But although they live in modest houses that in some cases are tin shacks lining unpaved streets and have no sewage system, they do have electricity and drinking water. The women alternate their informal sector jobs with the care of their families.

Diaz used to cook with firewood and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which she now uses less so it lasts longer. “I’ve saved a lot,” she said.

Women in this neighborhood were taught how to use the solar cookers and then became
promoters, organising demonstrations in their homes to exchange recipes, taste their dishes and spread the word about the benefits and positive changes that the innovative stoves have brought.

The solar cookers are low-tech devices that use reflective panels to focus sunlight on a pot in the middle.

Their advantages include being an alternative for rural cooking, because they make it possible to cook without electricity or solid or fossil fuels, pasteurising water to make it drinkable, reducing logging and pollution, helping people avoid breathing smoke from woodstoves, and using renewable energy.

The drawbacks are that they do not work on rainy or cloudy days, it takes a long time to cook the food, compared to traditional stoves, and they have to be used outdoors.

In Mexico, a country of 130 million people, some 19 million use solid fuels for cooking, which caused some 15,000 premature deaths in 2016 from the ingestion of harmful particles, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).

Lorena Harp (L), head of a project that promotes the use of solar cookers in Mexico, shows retired teacher Irma Jiménez how to assemble the device, in the poor neighborhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern state of Oaxaca. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The main fuel consumed by 79 percent of these households is LPG, followed by wood or charcoal (11 percent) and natural gas (seven percent).

In Oaxaca, gas and firewood each account for 49 percent of household consumption.

Of the state’s more than four million inhabitants, 70 percent were living in poverty in 2016 and nearly 27 percent in extreme poverty, according to Inegi. Twenty-six percent lived in substandard, crowded housing and 62 percent lacked access to basic services.

Oaxaca is also one of the three Mexican states with the highest levels of energy poverty, which means households that spend more than 10 percent of their income on energy.

Solar cookers can help combat the deprivation.

They first began to be distributed in Oaxaca in 2004. In 2008, activists created the initiative “Solar energy for mobile food stalls in Mexico”, sponsored by three Swiss institutions: the city of Geneva, the SolarSpar cooperative and the non-governmental organisation GloboSol.

Cocina Solar Mexico, a collective dedicated to the use of solar energy for cooking, was founded in 2009. With the support of the non-governmental Solar Household Energy (SHE), based in Washington, an economical, light-weight prototype was built.

In 2016, SHE launched a pilot project in indigenous communities to assess how widely it would be accepted.

“I learned while working with the local women. It was hard, like breaking stones; people knew nothing about it. Now people are more open, because there is more information about the potential of solar energy. In rural areas, people understand it more,” Lorena Harp, head of the initiative, told IPS.

The four-litre pot, which has a useful life of five to 10 years, costs about $25, of which SHE provides half. The group has distributed about 200 solar cookers in 10 communities.

Harp said it is a gender issue, because “women are empowered, they have gained respect in their families.”

The southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca fails to take advantage of is great solar power potential. The picture shows a rooftop at a solar panel factory in Oaxaca City, the state capital. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Despite its potential, Oaxaca does not take advantage of its high levels of solar radiation. Last June, it was listed among the 10 Mexican states with the lowest levels of distributed (decentralised) generation, less than 500 kilowatts, connected to the national power grid, according to the government’s Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE).

In the first half of the year, Oaxaca had an installed photovoltaic capacity of 6.69 megawatts with 747 interconnection contracts, in a country where distributed generation only involves solar energy.

This Latin American country registered 17,767 contracts for almost 125 megawatts (MW), almost the same volume as in the same period in 2018 -when they totaled 35,661 for 233.56 MW, although there were more permits. Since 2007, CRE has registered 112,660 contracts for 817.85 MW of solar power.

Luís Calderón, president of the Oaxaca Energy Cluster, says things have evolved quickly.

But “there is a lack of precise, reliable information and certainty about the savings achieved with distributed generation, which is generated for self-consumption while the surplus is fed into the grid. In addition, there is no policy in the state,” Calderón, also a member of the National Solar Energy Association, told IPS.

In 2018, Mexico registered a total installed capacity of 70,000 MW, three percent more than the previous year. Gas-fired combined cycle plants contributed 36 percent, conventional thermal 17 percent, hydroelectric 18 percent, coal almost eight percent, wind just under seven percent, and solar only 2.6 percent.

But the government of left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December, is driving the exploitation of fossil fuels and standing in the way of the growth of renewable energies.

It plans to modify the Business Ecocredit initiative, led by the government’s Electric Energy Saving Trust for micro, small and medium enterprises for the acquisition of efficient appliances. The measures include eliminating the 14 percent subsidy and a limit of some 20,000 dollars in financing, but the government has yet to define its future.

In addition, the Oaxaca government’s plan to create two cooperatives for energy for agricultural irrigation does not yet have the 1.75 million dollars needed for two 500-kilowatt solar plants in the municipality of San Pablo Huixtepec to serve 1,200 farmers in 35 irrigation units.

The local women don’t plan to stop using the solar cookers, in a neighbourhood ideal for deploying solar panels and water heaters. “We’re going to keep using it, we’ve seen that it works. We’re going to promote this,” Díaz said, while checking that her stew wasn’g burning.

The SHE assessment found that the solar cookers were widely accepted and have had a positive impact, as nearly half of the local women who use them have reduced by more than 50 percent their use of stoves that cause pollution. Some use the pots up to six times a week, and they have proven to be high quality, durable and affordable. Users also report that the solar cookers have saved them time.

Harp said more partners and government support were needed. “There’s still a long way to go, there are many shortfalls. Something is missing to generate truly widespread use, perhaps a comprehensive policy,” she said.

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The post Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Meals appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By GGGI
SEOUL, Republic of Korea, Aug 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(GGGI) – In June, the Global Green Growth Institute’s (GGGI) staff members and country offices around the world committed to living and promoting sustainable lifestyles. To further this initiative, GGGI published GREENISM Vol. 2, an online magazine featuring stories of GGGI’s Green Office Month events and activities across the organization to spread ideas on how to lead green lives.

GGGI’s Green Office Month is a campaign to promote sustainable living practices and office operations throughout the month of June. As this year’s World Environment Day theme was Beat Air Pollution, GGGI offices around the world contributed efforts towards living a green lifestyle, including hosting a gardening class at the Seoul HQ and by participating in an organization-wide competition titled the “GGGI June Eco-Challenge” to promote sustainable living practices. This volume of GREENISM also features GGGI stories from around the globe, GGGI’s Green Office, and ways to fight air pollution.

 

 

Many individual actions can make a difference in our communities. Therefore, a large part of the GGGI Eco-Challenge was to commit to making changes toward a sustainable lifestyle and to spread the word for others to join in to protect our planet. In Burkina Faso, participants encouraged each other to ride bikes or walk to reduce air pollution that would have been caused by taking cars. In Cambodia, GGGI staff members made individual pledges to commit to a sustainable lifestyle, such as using reusable bottles or composting.

 

 

It’s now more important than ever that we collaborate to preserve the planet, as air pollution is becoming a severe threat to our health and well-being. Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution is estimated to cause 7 million deaths per year according to the World Health Organization. It’s time for all of us to start lowering this amount and reducing air pollution levels to limits below the WHO’s guidelines, to improve both our environment and health.

Join us in the fight against air pollution and start making a difference today! To discover sustainable home and office ideas, read GGGI’s Greenism Vol. 2 here: http://online.anyflip.com/asvh/wdhw/mobile/index.html

 

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