Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

A crisis that has threatened to undermine the future of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is expected to have a devastating impact—not only on the credibility of the United Nations– but also on the lives of over five million Palestinian refugees whose very survival depends on the humanitarian services provided by the beleaguered UN agency based in Amman and Gaza.

Mouin Rabbani, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, told IPS: “This crisis must be resolved on an accelerated schedule in accordance with proper organisational procedures, both for its own sake, and to ensure that Palestinian refugees are not forced to pay the price of what is indisputably a political campaign led by the US and Israel to eliminate Palestinian refugees and their rights from the international agenda.”

Rabbani said one needs to look at this crisis from both an organisational and political perspective.

Viewed from an organisational perspective, he said, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl stands formally accused of illegitimately concentrating decision-making authority in the hands of a small circle of hand-picked associates, and using these powers to engage in extremely serious abuses of authority.

Significantly, Rabbani pointed out, these accusations have emanated from within UNRWA, and also from the Ethics Office, which claims to have “credible and corroborated” evidence, presented in a detailed report forwarded to the Office of the UN Secretary General, and has been deemed sufficiently credible to result in a formal investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

While investigations are continuing, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, have suspended their contributions to UNRWA. And back in January 2018, the Trump administration decided, primarily for political reasons, to withhold $65m out of a $125m aid package earmarked for UNRWA triggering a financial crisis.

A former senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed alarm that some member states had rushed to suspend their vitally needed contributions to UNRWA, which would punish innocent Palestinians, tens of thousands of whose children would be tipped into further deprivation.

“To take such a drastic step on the basis of media coverage of a confidential internal report not available to member states and which they know is still being investigated by OIOS, is far too harsh, especially at a time when even the separation of a single immigrant child from his parents is rightly considered unacceptable,” he declared.

He told IPS he was concerned about the demonization of UNRWA’s senior officials on the basis only of this confidential Ethics Office report’s media accounts, which are necessarily selective but could also be erroneous, misleading or downright malicious, especially on a charged issue like Palestine and Israel.

He said the Ethics Office is a key UN unit designed to check abuses, and its reports are taken seriously.

But it does not have the mandate or the resources to conduct definitive investigations, so it gathers and presents information and evidence to OIOS for determination, he argued.

However, he emphasized that even if OIOS found serious lapses by top managers, Palestinian refugees should not be made to suffer.

He said UNRWA was struck a near-catastrophic blow when President Trump terminated the US’s $360m annual contribution. But an intense, ongoing UNRWA campaign had by last month raised over $110m from other countries.

“If UNRWA were riddled with serious dysfunction at the top, I cannot imagine that member states would be totally unaware and would have been so exceptionally supportive,” he declared.

According to UNRWA, the UN agency is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions. The only exception is a very limited subsidy from the regular budget of the United Nations, which is used exclusively for administrative costs.

“The work of UNRWA could not be carried out without sustained contributions from state and regional governments, the European Union and other government partners, which represented 93.28 per cent of all contributions in 2018.”

In 2018, said UNRWA, 50 per cent of the Agency’s total pledges of $ 1.27 billion came from EU member states, who contributed $643 million, including through the European Commission.

The EU (including the European Commission), Germany and Saudi Arabia were the largest individual donors, contributing a cumulative 40 per cent of the Agency’s overall funding. The United Kingdom and Sweden were also among the top five donors.

Rabbani told IPS the proper thing for Krahenbuhl to do is to immediately resign if he knows these accusations to be substantiated, or, in view of the severity of the accusations, which cannot be dismissed as frivolous complaints by a hostile external party, to immediately step aside pending the conclusion of the OIOS investigation if he believes he is being falsely accused.

Should he refuse to do so, as seems to be the case, Secretary-General (SG) Guterres should exercise his responsibility and place Krahenbuhl on administrative leave with immediate effect until the matter is resolved.

“This is what would one would expect to transpire, and in fact often does, in both the public and private sectors. The removal of several of Krahenbuhl’s subordinates and appointment of an acting Deputy Director for UNRWA is an insufficient response that arguably serves only to deepen the crisis and increase the damage to both UNRWA and the UN,” he noted.

It additionally does the UN no favours, Rabbani said, that the ethics report and accusations against Krahenbuhl were communicated to the SG’s office in late 2018, and no significant action was undertaken until the report was leaked to the press over the summer.

This point is underscored by the decision of several key UNRWA funders (Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland) to suspend contributions to the agency and the prospect of similar measures by other states.

From a political perspective, he said, it is vital to note that this crisis has erupted at a critical time for UNRWA. UNRWA’s very existence is under attack by the Trump administration, which hopes to leverage its campaign against the agency to liquidate the Palestine refugee question altogether.

Additionally, UNRWA’s mandate is up for renewal later this year. Many people will and in fact are raising questions about the confluence between the timing of these leaks and the intensification of the US campaign against the agency and Palestinian refugees.

The political context makes decisive action by the UN all the more urgent. CG Krahenbuhl’s mandate, which he has held since 2014, is to serve the needs of the Palestinian refugees, who are the most vulnerable sector of the embattled Palestinian people, Rabbani noted.

“This crisis, and his response to its eruption, is the ultimate test of his commitment to this mandate, and if he fails it UN senior leadership should intervene decisively and without further delay in the interests of both the UN, UNRWA, and the Palestinian refugees it serves”.

Without prejudice to the severity of the accusations being discussed, it is important to note that a) These accusations have been levelled against individuals within UNRWA rather than the agency itself; b) The UNRWA ethics report itself notes that the decision by the US to terminate contributions to UNRWA and campaign to seek the agency’s elimination, and the resultant crisis at the agency, forms the context in which these abuses of authority transpired; c) The abuses of authority and other misconduct detailed in the report are hardly unique to UNRWA, and similar and arguable more serious abuses have been documented at other UN agencies over the years; d) the accusations primarily concern expatriate senior officials (Krahenbuhl is Swiss and his former deputy an American) rather than Palestinian staff – the sole Palestinian staff member implicated has already been dismissed, Rabbani declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Credit: Donald Trump/Twitter

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

Trying to teach and inspire youngsters is a daunting task. Many teachers tend to suffer from a harrowing, bad conscience, obliged as they are to follow routines, rules, and regulations set down by their employers while knowing that these are difficult to apply and provide with desired results. Worst is a nagging feeling of inability to reach out to the students. Most teachers want their pupils to be good learners, critically thinking individuals who feel gratified and keen to change things for the better.

Occasionally, I return to my original profession as a high school teacher. Long intervals between such experiences make it possible for me to perceive attitude changes among students and myself. When I two years ago had another stint of teaching in Sweden I found a new obstacle to students´ interest in direct social interaction and learning – smartphones. In many schools, they are now banned from lessons, though not from the one where I was working. Many of the teachers were quite young and belonged to the mobile phone generation. They explained that smartphones had become an essential part of their lives and instead of being banned they ought to be integrated into education.

Smartphones infringed on many students´ attention. Several felt forced to look at them over and over again – texting, checking things on the web, playing games, doing selfies, nothing of which had anything to do with school work. I found some of my pupils to be incapable of concentrating on a specific task, listening to me or even watch a movie for more than five minutes. No matter how exciting they originally had found the film, they soon felt an uncontrollable urge to switch on and check their smartphones. When I asked what could be so extremely urgent, they generally lied and said it was their mother calling, or that they had been alerted about some kind of emergency. However, I soon found out that several of the girls were checking out Kim Kardashian´s website, while boys often had become absorbed in some inane game, like directing a rolling ball through meandering tunnels.

Before my latest teaching experience, I had been happily unaware of Kim Kardashian´s influence on women’s´ lives, but now I know that she and other members of her family have a combined Instagram-following of more than 536 million and that Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a reality television series following the lives of Kim and her four sisters, is running on its 16th season. However, Kim´s coffee table book Selfish from 2015, presenting selfies she had taken over the time of nine years, ”flopped” – selling ”only” 125,000 copies. Apart from ”acting” in a reality show and posting entries on Instagram, Kim has a line of clothing and other items mirroring the Kardashians´”aspirational and over-the-top lifestyle”, celebrating a body image of slim waists, large breasts and hips, ”a hyper-feminised, high-glamour look that seems calculated to entice the male gaze, sexy rather than being fashionable,”1 while Keeping Up With the Kardashians pays hommage to a fake existence of staged worries, petty concerns and idle gossip, where ”having fun” equals expensive activities at luxury resorts and spas, or the planning of and participation in clamorous, superficial and glittering parties. Kim Kardashian´s influence cannot be ignored, her fame and wealth make even a notoriously bad listener like U.S. President Donald J. Trump willing to lend her an ear.

The Kardashian style, as the family´s approach to life is called in the TV-series, is reflected by an app that was immensely popular among many of my female students. It is a role-playing game in which participants are invited to impersonate an ”up-and-coming” Hollywood celebrity climbing a status ladder passing ”levels of stardom” from E to A, completing tasks like posing for magazines and going on dates. This while the more enterprising among my school-tired male students were engaged in complicated and violent role-playing video games like Grand Theft Auto V and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. It felt as if the entire school system was under a massive attack from commercial interests, which apart from being mind-numbing are cementing prejudicial gender roles.

Antiquated attitudes about gender roles among several of my students made me doubt if they had participated in an obligatory subject of the Swedish elementary school system – home and consumer knowledge, which for several years train boys and girls in managing household chores and childcare. No one who has received that training might claim to be unknowledgeable about elementary household chores. Furthermore, in Swedish schools, both boys and girls are trained in needlework, as well as metal- and wood handicraft. I find this approach highly commendable as it benefits a sense of responsibility and gender equality. However, these admirable gains may be counteracted by mass communication supporting bigoted gender roles that limit and predispose abilities and perspective of both girls and boys.

If human development is to be achieved, the best resolution of any nation would be to promote general wellbeing and prosperity by providing effective and affordable health care and education to all of its citizens, irrespective of gender, wealth and social standing. Furthermore, such education has to benefit gender equality and encourage personal accountability. Most of my students were well aware of the concept of human rights, i.e. their own rights, though they were often unaware that this concept includes human duties, i.e. concerns about the welfare of others.

I recently came to think of this after reading a well-written Italian novel Sei Mia: Un amore violento by Eleonora de Nardis, which describes the suffering of a mother of three under the brutal and degrading regime of a spouse, who furthermore is married to and sharing a family with another woman. I am convinced that this novel illustrated the suffering of women all around the world. Women who on their own carry the entire responsibility of running a home and taking care of children engendered together with an irresponsible man, who furthermore, as in Sei Mia, abuses, maltreats and controls the mother of his own offspring under the feeble pretext that this is his right as a man, assuming that his gender excludes him from cooking, childcare, and expressions of emotional care for his family, as well as compassion and responsibility for the wellbeing of others.

It is scientifically proven that domestic violence generally occurs when an abuser assumes he is entitled to behave as a selfish tyrant. A male perpetrator of domestic violence is often supported, accepted and even justified by his socio-cultural upbringing and ambiance. A background and attitude that tends to be shared by his victims, who are unlikely to report this kind of violence to authorities that often condone the abuser´s behaviour. Several legal systems make a difference between ”domestic” and ”common” law and it is quite common that it is up to a victim to report domestic violence, under the pretext that this cannot be done by an ”outsider”. An absurdity considering that it often proves to be fatal for a victim to even consider accusing a violent, capricious abuser who exercises total control and to whom she is entirely dependent.2 Such a state of affairs produces an intergenerational cycle of abuse in children and other family members, who are brought up to consider such abuse as acceptable. Attitudes that may only be changed through an obligatory education, which breaks down gender inequalities. Efforts that have to be combined with the strict application of laws penalizing domestic abuse, while safeguarding male responsibilities for support of their households, making it obligatory to participate in the care of their children, for example by guaranteeing not only maternal leave from work but paternal leave as well.

There is a direct correlation between a country´s level of gender equality and rates of domestic violence, where countries with less gender equality experience higher rates of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is an abominable crime that not only cripples the ability for victims to participate ihe creation of genern tal, social wellbeing, it also tends to destroy or frustrate children´s development as compassionate and progressive human beings. Apparently, has Swedish education had a beneficial impact on gender equality and when it comes to the condemnation of domestic violence. However, I hope the impact of stereotyped gender roles propagated by trendsetters and some influential video game developers will not be able to diminish such achievements.

1 Sile, Karin (2019) “´They can sell anything´: how the Kardashians changed fashion”, The Guardian, 28 January.
2 Jackson, Nicky Ali (ed.) (2007) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. New York: Routledge.

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

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By Natalia Gomez
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

For the family of indigenous Guatemalan activist Jorge Juc, the announcement last week by US President Donald Trump of an agreement declaring Guatemala a “safe third country” could not be more bitterly ironic.

The deal requires central American migrants who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the US border – a move immigration advocates have called cruel and unlawful.

Juc, a 77-year-old indigenous Maya Q’eqchi community leader, was killed in a machete attack in July as he tended his cornfield. He was president of the village chapter of the Campesino Development Committee (CODECA), a national indigenous-led social movement fighting for indigenous, land and environmental rights that are being threatened by harmful mining projects.

For Guatemalan human rights defenders, particularly those who are indigenous – as for migrants and other Guatemalans – the words “Guatemala” and “safe” could never belong in the same sentence.

Their country is considered among the world’s deadliest for environmental activists, particularly those from indigenous communities fighting to protect their land, lives, livehoods and rights.

A new report by independent rights watchdog Global Witness – coming just days before the commemoration of International Day for the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9 – found that murders of land defenders in Guatemala skyrocketed by a shocking 500% between 2017 and last year, making it the deadliest country per capita for such activists. And most of the land and environmental activists killed were indigenous – many, leaders of the country’s campesino (peasant farmer) movement.

Four CODECA-affiliated community leaders were killed last month alone, all in Guatemala’s western Izabal department. Izabal is home to mining operations, oil palm plantations and the Maya Q’eqchi’ community, which has suffered decades of displacement as a result.

Isidro Perez and Melesio Ramirez were murdered on July 5 when armed men opened fire on a land rights protest. Julio Ramirez was shot multiple times a week later and died of his injuries.

Last December, the bodies of brothers Neri And Domingo Esteban Pedro – both vocal opponents of a hydroelectric power project in the Ixquisis region of western Guatemala – were found slumped on the banks of the Yal Witz River near the San Andres hydroelectric with bullets in their heads.

In Guatemala – as across Latin America – when indigenous rights defenders are not murdered for activism, they are criminalized and imprisoned on trumped up charges.

A 2018 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People about the rise in criminalization of indigenous Guatemalans found that people who filed legal petitions to demand protection of their rights are being falsely charged with crimes like robbery, kidnap and even murder. In a number of cases, the report claimed, companies or landlords allegedly colluded with local prosecutors and judges.

Earlier this year, The prestigious Goldman Prize – widely regarded as the environmental Nobel Prize – was awarded to indigenous Mapuche leader, Alberto Curamil, who was incarcerated after leading his community to stop two hydropower projects threatening the sacred Cautin River valley in Chile.

Ironically, while Chile preparing to host the world’s largest environmental summit – the UN’s climate change conference COP25 – in December, it has yet to sign the Escazú Agreement, a historic, regional treaty committing Latin American and Caribbean nations to protecting environmental defenders and their rights.

And in another twist of irony, Guatemala was among the first group of 14 countries to sign the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters for Latin America and the Caribbean (as the Escazú treaty is officially known) in an emotional ceremony last March.

Under the agreement, states commit to ensure a safe environment for defenders to act, take appropriate and effective measures to recognize and protect their rights, and take measures to prevent, investigate and prosecute attacks against environmental defenders.

Guatemala’s crisis for indigenous environmental defenders stretches back decades, the Global Witness report explains. New economic integration policies that emerged after the end of long running civil war in 1996 led to a boom in private and foreign investment.

As a result, large swatches of land were handed out to plantation, mining and hydropower companies, ushering in a wave of forced and violent evictions, particularly in indigenous areas.

A joint 2019 report by Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that industrial projects were routinely being imposed on communities without their consent.

Regardless of risking their lives and freedoms, environmental defenders continue to inspire us every day step up and act. Governments around the world should increase their commitment to the protection of defenders and ensure that they can develop their role without risking their life and integrity.

Specially in Latin America, the most dangerous region for defenders in the world, environmental activists have a fundamental role representing the voices of millions of people suffering the pollution of their waters, the lost of their forests and violations to their rights to health and to life.

Just in the last years two Goldman Prize recipients from this region have been murdered. Bertha Caceres an indigenous leader working to protect her community in Honduras and Isidro Baldonegro an indigenous activist who worked for the protection of forest in the Sierra Madre en Mexico.

The violent reality faced by environmental defenders in Latin America has already made some States in the region to commit to their protection. On 4 March 2018, 24 states from Latin America and the Caribbean adopted the agreement that responds to the region’s need for a stronger environmental democracy and was inspired by the Aarhus Convention adopted in Europe in 1998, rests on three substantial pillars for environmental democracy: the right to access information, the right of participation and the right to access justice in environmental matters and adds a new pillar with a regime of protection for environmental human rights defenders.

Under Escazú, States commit to ensure a safe environment for defenders to act, take appropriate and effective measures to recognize and protect their rights, and take measures to prevent, investigate and prosecute attacks against environmental defenders.

The post Your Life or Your Freedom? The Ultimate Price to Defend the Environment appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A borehole in Kenya's Turkana County. Experts say that groundwater in drylands is recharged through extreme floods. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
TURKANA COUNTY, Kenya, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

Extreme rainfall and heavy flooding, often amplified by climate change, causes devastation among communities. But new research published on Aug. 7 in the scientific journal Nature reveals that these dangerous events are extremely significant in recharging groundwater aquifers in drylands across sub-Saharan Africa, making them important for climate change adaptation.

According to the research, which was led by the University College London (UCL) and Cardiff University, this vital source of water for drinking and irrigation across sub-Saharan Africa is resilient to climate variability and change.

“Our study reveals, for the first time, how climate plays a dominant role in controlling the process by which groundwater is restocked,” Richard Taylor, a Professor of Hydrogeology from UCL, told IPS. Taylor is the co-lead on the new study, which was conducted with a consortium of 32 scientists from different universities and institutions from Africa and beyond.

Researchers reviewed data sets of water levels from 14 wells across the region that are not generally used by people.

“Our data-driven results imply greater resilience to climate change than previously supposed in many locations from a groundwater perspective and thus question, for example, the model-driven [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC consensus that ‘Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions,’” Taylor said in a statement.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report states in contrast that “climate change over the twenty-first century is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions, intensifying competition for water among sectors”.

Groundwater plays a central role in sustaining water supplies and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa due to its widespread availability, generally high quality, and intrinsic ability to buffer episodes of drought and increasing climate variability.

So the finding comes as good news for communities and governments across Africa where livelihoods are becoming more and more dependent on groundwater.
“In our current budget, we have allocated over Sh164 million (1.64 million dollars) to irrigation projects, and most of the water already being used is from boreholes,” Chris Aleta, Kenya’s Turkana County Minister for Water and Irrigation, told IPS.

Turkana is a pastoral county and one of the driest in Kenya. Research has revealed that between 1977 and 2016, cattle, which is the main source of livelihood in this county, reduced by 60 percent.

Currently thousands of households are producing horticultural crops that are sold locally in major towns and even overseas.

“Some of us do not have a single cow to graze,” Paul Samal, a pastoralist-turned-farmer from Kaptir Ward, Turkana County, told IPS.

“I had over 200 goats and a herd of 50 cattle, but most of them were consumed by the drought in 2011, and the remaining stock was stolen in 2015,” said the father of five.
So in 2016 he began using groundwater to grow tomatoes, watermelons and indigenous vegetables.

Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, depends heavily on groundwater to supplement the main source from the country’s Dakaini dam, whose recharge mainly depends on unreliable rainy seasons.

Kenya’s neighbour Tanzania will also benefit from the findings.The country’s capital city Dodoma relies solely in groundwater from the Makutapora well field.

According to Lister Kongola, a retired hydrologist who worked for the government of Tanzania from 1977 to 2012, the demand for water in Dodoma City has been rising over the years, from 20 million litres per day (l/day) in the 1970s, to 30 million l/day in the 1980s and to the current 61 million l/day.

The World Bank estimates that at least 70 percent of over 250 million people living in southern African countries rely on groundwater as their primary source of water for drinking, sanitation and livelihood support through agriculture, ecosystem health, and industrial growth.

According to scientists, understanding the nexus of climate extremes and groundwater replenishment is vital for sustainability. This improved understanding is also critical for producing reliable climate change impact projections and adaptation strategies.

The new study also found that unlike drylands, where leakage from seasonal streams, rivers and ponds replenish groundwater, in humid areas groundwater is replenished primarily by rainfall directly infiltrating the land surface.

“This finding is important because model-based assessments of groundwater resources currently ignore the contribution of leaking streams and ponds to groundwater supplies, underestimating its renewability in drylands and resilience to climate change,” said Dr Mark Cuthbert, a research scientist from Cardiff University.

According to Michael Arunga of World Vision, an international humanitarian agency that sometimes supports communities during extreme climate events, the findings are vital for spatial planning for governments in Africa.

“The good thing is that extreme droughts and rainfall seasons are predictable, and the patterns are the same across Africa,” Arunga told IPS.
“These findings will therefore make it easier for governments to draft policies for sustainable groundwater use based on knowledge.”

Since extreme floods can easily be predicted up to nine months in advance, the researchers say that there is a possibility of designing schemes to enhance groundwater recharge by capturing a portion of flood discharges via a process known as Managed Aquifer Recharge.

According to Prof Daniel Olago, a senior lecturer at the Department of Geology, University of Nairobi, groundwater in Africa remains a hidden resource that has not been studied exhaustively.

“When people want to access groundwater, they ask experts to go out there and do a hydro-geophysical survey basically to site a borehole without necessarily understanding the characteristics of that particular aquifer,” he told IPS.

However, in the recent past, the United Kingdom research councils (Natural Environment Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the Department for International Development (DFID) and The Royal Society have been supporting studies that seek to understand the potential of groundwater resources in Africa, and how it can be used to alleviate poverty.

“Moving into the 21st century with climate change, with growing population, with rapid growing urban centres, groundwater is going to be very important,” said Olago.

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Special Envoy for Syria Geir O. Pedersen during a visit to Syrian refugees in Mafraq and Zaatari camp in Jordan. May 2019. Credit: UN Photo

By Teresa Whitfield
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2019 (IPS)

“It is all about orchestration”, was Martin Griffiths’, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, response to the question of what mediation in Yemen looks like today.

Mediation has always been about orchestration – two decades ago, in their seminal volume Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela All recognised the value of “the mediator’s dexterity with the materials at hand”.

As Jeffrey Feltman argues, there is much to be said for the equation of a mediator with an orchestra’s conductor. But in the current environment of international, national and local fragmentation and multi-level external engagement, the orchestration of relationships with and inclusion of a wide array of actors has taken on new characteristics.

Mediators or envoys in strategic conflicts such as Libya, Syria and Yemen are faced with multiple demands and constraints, yet considerable latitude in the most critical issue of all: how they spend their time.

The three UN envoys charged with leading these processes work under mandates of the Security Council, and the strategic direction of the Secretary-General. Yet in leading the peacemaking effort, they take daily decisions on what they will prioritise that have profound implications for the political direction and impact of their efforts.

These decisions span at least three areas: how to balance building relations with conflict parties with the necessity for diplomacy with regional and international actors?; how to maintain attention to the central political conflict whilst also engaging on other vital, but more localised, issues?; and how, and how much, to engage on the important question of inclusion?.

This is all in addition to the internal attention which needs to be paid to process design and preparation on a range of substantive issues including ceasefires, demobilisation and reintegration programmes, power-sharing arrangements, transitional justice or constitutional reform.

Teresa Whitfield

A mediator’s personal involvement and credibility with the parties is essential to the kind of progress seen in reaching the Stockholm agreement on Yemen in December 2018 for example, where Griffiths’ efforts were bolstered by the last minute presence of Secretary-General António Guterres.

But such efforts, as those by the UN envoy Ghassan Salamé to mediate between Libyan Prime Minister Faiez Serraj and the National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar, and other less visible conflict prevention engagements, take place in parallel to quiet consultations with regional and other actors with leverage and a stake in the conflict as well as more public meetings.

These include Security Council consultations; but also meetings in and around distinct negotiating fora such as the Astana process for Syria; or, in the case of Libya, ad hoc conferences in Paris and Palermo or interactions with the African Union and the League of Arab States.

In each case, multiple agendas are at stake. Mediators will therefore be mindful of the risk that their efforts may be derailed, or the overarching effort undermined by competing processes.

A separate but related consideration is the balancing act between time spent on smaller, short term agreements (local agreements, humanitarian pauses or confidence-building measures) versus thinking and engagement on the central political process.

Evolving military dynamics in Syria have, over the years, necessitated multiple points of focus for international efforts. More recently, in Yemen, time and effort spent forging and trying to implement a fragile agreement between local military actors in Hodeidah was imperative.

But it was also in some respects both a distraction from the core conflict, and perilous: success rested on negotiations between military actors with great potential to spoil the outcome, and its travails held progress on the larger political process hostage.

What inclusion means in today’s mediation processes deserves some pause. Research has drawn attention to the centrality of elite bargaining when stabilising violent conflict, as well as the need for a hard-headed look at the web of political, economic and predatory interests that together form what Alex de Waal termed “the political marketplace.”

Yet the dramatic combination of external and internal fragmentation in contemporary conflicts erodes the possibility of reaching agreement with political and military elites alone. It also informs a broad international consensus on the benefits of inclusion evident, for example, in the twin resolutions on “sustaining peace” adopted by the UN General Assembly and Security Council in April 2016.

Significantly, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals are anchored in a commitment to “leave no one behind.” In 2018, the UN-World Bank study Pathways for Peace also put strong emphasis on inclusion as a tool for preventing conflict and building sustainable peace.

However, as Christine Bell has argued, there nonetheless remain practical and substantial differences among and between development actors, peacemakers and the human rights community on who is to be included, in what, and how.

Mediators have long recognised the benefits of inclusivity, but with important differences regarding the extent to which it applies to politico-military elites, whose commitment is required to stop the killing, or broader constituencies whose inclusion might contribute to the legitimacy and durability of an agreement but whose direct involvement the conflict parties frequently resist.

Human rights defenders, meanwhile, emphasise norms such as equality and the need for group participation – most visibly that of women, but also other groups such as minorities, indigenous people and youth.

Mediators have adopted specific strategies to promote the inclusion of women when – as is frequently the case – the conflict parties themselves have not favoured either a prominent role for individual women within their delegations, or a means by which a broader range of voices can be heard within a peace process.

In some instances, mediators have created access for existing structures (leading the mediation effort in Liberia in the early 2000s, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) included the Mano River Women’s Peace Network as an observer to the talks).

In others, they have established new mechanisms to access a diverse range of perspectives and advice. Notable in this respect were the efforts of the former UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who in early 2016 created both a Syrian Women’s Advisory Board and a Civil Society Support Room with whom he engaged regularly and visibly throughout his tenure.

Such inclusion mechanisms – replicated, with modifications, in Yemen with the creation in mid-2018 of a Yemeni Women’s Technical Advisory Group – have been criticised for entrenching women’s “second tier” participation in negotiations.

However, their potential to broaden the base of a political process if and when it advances is significant, especially when complemented by other forms of outreach and engagement.

Even in the absence of formal talks, an envoy’s understanding of the conflict and legitimacy as an interlocutor will be enhanced by consultation with as wide a range of actors as possible.

This point was underlined by de Mistura’s successor, Geir O. Pedersen, who in his first briefing to the Security Council in February 2019 placed emphasis on the wide range of Syrians with whom he had already consulted, while underlining that “there will be no sustainable peace in Syria unless all Syrians are included in shaping the future of their country.”

Delivering this in practice, in Syria as elsewhere, remains extraordinarily difficult. Demands for inclusion in the evolving peace process in Afghanistan, for example, come from women who fear the erosion of hard-won rights, but also youth, victims, representatives of affected regions, ethnic minorities and others.

Meanwhile, mediators will be acutely aware that, while necessary, inclusion in the absence of buy-in from national elites and their regional and international backers will not, on its own, bring peace.

*This article was originally published in the online magazine of UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

The post Mediating Peace in a Complex World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Teresa Whitfield is the Director of the Policy and Mediation Division at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Prior to her appointment in 2016, she was Senior Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group.

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The Atomic Bomb Dome
was the only structure left standing
in the area and was added to
the UNESCO World Heritage
List on December 7, 1996.
  Its marker reads
As a historical witness that
conveys the tragedy of suffering
the first atomic bomb in human
history and as a symbol that vows
to faithfully seek the abolition of
nuclear weapons and everlasting
world peace.

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2019 (IPS)

It has been 74 years since a nuclear devastation took place. But a clear message stands — that nuclear weapons must go and peace and love must reign.

“Because if we forget the horrific consequences of the use of these devices, the likelihood of repetition is increased.” Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute told IPS, as the United Nations marked the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Art piece From the Love to Hiroshima- Love to Nagasaki Peace Pals Art Awards by artist
Petrov Andreea Eliza – Age 15, Romania

The event took place August 6 at the Japan Society, and featured several performances, an interfaith prayer, and guest speakers.

On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, immediately killing 80,00 people. Three days later, Allied forces unleashed another explosive, and an estimated 40,000 people perished.

Japan surrendered, marking the conclusion of World War II. However, Japan was left to face with dead bodies, illness induced by radiation, and over 70% of buildings extinguished.

Today, both cities are prospering, with Hiroshima’s population exceeding 1.1 million, and radiation levels have officially been deemed low and safe. However, the scars of the attacks linger on in the form of survivors, known as hibakusha.

“I was only 13 then, so I talked back to my mom and slammed the door and I left, and I never saw her again,” Tomiko Morimoto West, survivor of the bombings, recalled at Monday’s event.

Yet, West retained a vehement sense of gratitude citing that “Every day I wake up, I am very grateful.” She then stressed the importance of making sure loved ones know they are loved.

“When you leave home, please hug your family”, West said, concluding that “sometimes that’s the last time you may see the family”.

Against the backdrop of the anniversary, the United States last week abandoned the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

“We have never had a nuclear war. Arms control treaties have helped enormously in building trust and taking the arsenals down by over 75%. It is irresponsible to undermine the legal tools, the diplomatic tools, in favor of increased threats,” Granoff said.

That said, “the existing United States policy seems to contemplate the actual uses in war, Granoff noted during his keynote speech, going on to read an official statement by the Joint Chief of Staff of the U.S. Military.

“The scale of Hiroshima & Nagasaki is primitive. If even one current nuclear weapon was used, the damage that one atomic bomb would do is more than 1,000 times powerful than Hiroshima & Nagasaki. It will happen in a future. Mistakes are human character, so it will happen,” Reverend Doctor T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki, President and Founder of the New York HEIWA Peace and Reconciliation Foundation told IPS, when asked if something like Hiroshima and Nagasaki could occur, if nuclear weapons are not abandoned.

Interfaith Prayers and Messages

However, there is hope. “We will learn a new technology- not the technology that melts the polar ice caps, but the technology that can melt the human heart. May we receive that blessing to melt our hearts and melt the hearts of others.” Granoff concluded in his speech.

Nuclear bans also have the support of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“The only guarantee against the use of nuclear weapons is the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” he remarked, in an address, assuring that he is fully committed to working with the hibakusha and all others to realize the shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is up to the young generation as well to help ensure the termination of nuclear weapons as well.

“We have a continuing duty to communicate to future generations and the world the inhumanity of nuclear weapons.” Tomihisa Taue, Mayor of Nagasaki urged in a letter, assuring that the government of Japan will steadily press forward with efforts to have the youths of today pass on the stories and experiences handed down to them, concluding that the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never be repeated, and that instead, “we must gravitate towards a more peaceful world”.

When asked what message he had for the future generation, Granoff said: “If we get every issue other than controlling and eliminating nuclear weapons right, it simply will not matter.”

“Young people should demand right knowledge. Critical learning is essential, always see pro and con. Maybe they can write articles and publish it. For me, it is important to realize the precious value of all the lives equally. Some value should be able to change people’s life.” Nakagaki said. He noted that young people should be made aware of the current conditions of nuclear weapons, and thus share what they think on social media.

The post Nuclear Weapons Must Go: Lessons of Hiroshima & Nagasaki appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The Atomic Bomb Dome
was the only structure left standing
in the area and was added to
the UNESCO World Heritage
List on December 7, 1996.

 
Its marker reads
As a historical witness that
conveys the tragedy of suffering
the first atomic bomb in human
history and as a symbol that vows
to faithfully seek the abolition of
nuclear weapons and everlasting
world peace.

The post Nuclear Weapons Must Go: Lessons of Hiroshima & Nagasaki appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Aug 7 2019 (IPS)

There are an estimated 370 million indigenous people in the world, living across 90 countries. They live in all geographic regions and represent 5000 different cultures. These people are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to others yet are being forced to give up their ways of life.

In Latin America, for example, 40% of all indigenous peoples now live in urban areas – they account for 80% of those populations in some countries. Globally, they represent 5% of the world’s population, yet account for 15% of all of those in poverty.

Indigenous people speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s 7000 languages. These languages are extensive and complex systems of knowledge that are central to their identity, their cultures, worldviews and expressions of self-determination.

Tragically, many indigenous languages are under threat, as we lose one of these languages every two weeks. According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 230 languages went extinct between 1950 and 2010. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left.

The 9th of August commemorates the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. This year’s theme will focus on the current situation of indigenous languages around the world, aiming to highlight the critical need to revitalize, preserve and promote indigenous languages to safeguard the life of indigenous cultures for future generations.

The post International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2019 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 7 2019 (IPS)

According to their own internal evaluations, both the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have huge credibility deficits due to the policy conditionalities and advice they have dispensed to developing countries in recent decades.

Anis Chowdhury

Washington Consensus
Taking advantage of debt distress in many developing countries early in the 1980s, the WB championed neoliberal reforms, telling countries to ‘privatize, liberalize and globalize’. The IMF added ‘stabilization’ – primarily cutting government expenditure to contain inflation and balance of payments deficits – to the list of conditions for countries to qualify for BWI financial resources.

Accepting these packages of WB advice for economic restructuring, known as ‘structural adjustment programs’ (SAPs), became a condition for access to concessional credit. These claimed to reflect agreement on ‘good’ and necessary policies between the two Washington based BWIs and the US Treasury Department, later dubbed the ‘Washington Consensus’.

WB research later admitted the failure of IMF-WB inspired policy reforms, acknowledging that “…the expected growth benefits failed to materialize, at least to the extent that many observers had forecast. In addition, a series of financial crises severely depressed growth and worsened poverty… both slow growth and multiple crises were symptoms of deficiencies in the design and execution of the … reform strategies that were adopted in the 1990s…”

BWIs’ lost decades
Assessing SAPs in Latin America, where they were first imposed, Sebastian Edwards concluded, “The adjustment process has been quite costly, generating drastic declines in real income and important increases in unemployment. In fact, … in a number of Latin American countries in 1986 real per capita GDP was below its 1970 level!”

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

William Easterly, then a senior WB economist, noted that during 1960-1979, median per capita income growth in developing countries was 2.5 per cent, compared to zero per cent during 1980-1998. With SAPs including trade liberalization, Africa de-industrialized and turned from a food exporter into a net food importer.

By advising developing countries to liberalize their capital account and financial market, the BWIs also advanced the interests of big finance. Professor Jagdish Bhagwati argued that this ‘Wall Street-Treasury complex’ was responsible for the 1997-1998 Asian crisis. The WB and the IMF have provided credit as a means of influencing government policies.

Worsening financial crises
Evaluating the IMF’s role in two 1997-1998 Asian crisis countries, namely Indonesia and South Korea, its Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) observed that Fund surveillance failed to ‘adequately appreciate’ the implications of their financial sector weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The IMF also mishandled the crises, deepening some of their worse consequences.

Raghuram Rajan, then IMF chief economist, is often credited with having warned of the imminence of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis before he left the Fund. If so, the IMF ignored his advice, failing to alert its membership of the coming 2008-2009 financial crisis, leading to the Great Recession and its ongoing aftermath.

In July 2007, a month before the first tremors of the US ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis, the IMF updated its World Economic Outlook, claiming: “The strong global expansion is continuing, and projections for global growth in both 2007 and 2008 have been revised (upwards)”!

The IEO attributed IMF inability to recognize risks to “a high degree of groupthink, intellectual capture, a general mindset that a major financial crisis in large advanced economies was unlikely, and inadequate analytical approaches, [w]eak internal governance, lack of incentives to work across units and raise contrarian views…”

Beware BWI policy advice
The IEO found member countries wary of IMF involvement in policy advice due to its “inadequate knowledge of country-specific circumstances, frequent changes of mission chiefs and teams, a perceived lack of even-handedness… and insufficient use of cross-country perspectives or cross-cutting analysis.”

The IMF also displayed double standards, exposing its developed country and other biases. After then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised over US$800 billion in additional IMF funding at the London G20 summit in April 2009, Eurozone bail-outs accounted for four-fifths of total IMF lending between 2011 and 2014, even though the currency bloc had the means to look after itself, with its lower aggregate debt ratio than in the US, the UK and Japan.

Greece, Ireland and Portugal were allowed to borrow twenty times their quotas, thrice the normal limit; such generosity has never been available to Asian, Latin American and African countries in trouble. For the global South, the IMF has imposed fiscal austerity, causing large-scale destitution, distress and malnutrition, according to the Lancet medical journal.

Meanwhile, even The Economist, usually a neoliberal cheerleader, pointed out several flaws of the WB’s most influential publication, the Doing Business Report (DBR). It considered DBR ranking unreliable as countries might amend regulations, as urged by the BWIs, only to improve their rankings to impress foreign investors and donors.

Dubious track record
After two decades of IMF-WB promoted fiscal contraction, liberalization and privatization, then WB President James Wolfensohn acknowledged, “… if we take a closer look, we see something alarming. In developing countries, excluding China, at least 100 million more people are living in poverty today than a decade ago. And the gap between rich and poor yawns wider.”

China, which has contributed most to reducing global poverty in recent decades, has gone its own way during this period, constantly revising development policies to accelerate economic growth and social progress, instead of simply implementing Washington Consensus prescriptions.

More recently, especially under its last President Jim Yong Kim, the WB has reinvented itself yet again, from a creditor for major development projects, to a broker for financialized private sector investment, a “creature of Wall Street”, according to The New York Times. Kim left the Bank early in his second term to join a private investment firm figuring in its proposed new reorientation.

The post Bretton Woods Institutions: Enforcers, Not Saviours? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Horrific violence against women is unabated and rising in South Asia.

By Farhana Haque Rahman and Raghav Gaiha
ROME and NEW DELHI, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

On a cold night in December 2012, a ghastly crime was committed in New Delhi which stunned the world. Six men dragged helpless Nirbhaya-a 23-year-old female physiotherapy intern- to the back of the bus and raped her one by one. As she kept fighting off her assailants by biting them, one of the attackers inserted a rusted rod in her private part, ripping her genital organs and insides apart. She died a few days later. One of the accused died in police custody in the Tihar Jail. The juvenile was convicted of rape and murder and given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility, and subsequently released. The Supreme Court awarded the death penalty but legal complications have prevented its execution.

Farhana Haque Rahman

A gruesome case occurred in Rohtak, a town in the northern state of Haryana (India). In 2017, a 23-year-old woman was gang raped by seven men, killed and smashed in the face with stones to conceal her identity. Her mangled body was found with stray dogs picking at the remains.

In January, 2019, a 16-year-old girl had simply decided to go to her boyfriend’s birthday party. A week later, her body was found along a highway, her head and one of her arms chopped off. Her face may have been burned with acid. In her small town in eastern India, it is forbidden for a teenage girl to date, and the police believe the girl’s father arranged for her to be killed — supposedly to protect the family’s honour.

Just as gruesome is the story of the 30-year-old Fatima who reported to UNFPA in Cox’s Bazar in southeast coast of Bangladesh in 2017, “My sister was killed after gang rape in front of me, and they threw hot water on my body. I can’t sleep, my life is a nightmare, I can’t bear the pain of losing my sister.”

Worse, minor girls remain highly vulnerable to brutal rapes and murder. In May, the same year, a ten-month-old baby girl was allegedly raped by a family member in Jamnagar district of the western state of Gujarat. Cases of brutal rapes of minor girls abound in Bangladesh too. The rape and murder of 13-year-old Ayesha Siddiqua Sumaiya, living in Rangpur, is a case in point. A student of Class VII, she was alone in her home – her parents were at a religious function – when a gang swooped on the minor, raping and then strangling her to death.

Raghav Gaiha

Rapes reported to the police as sexual violence surged from 39 per day to 93 per day in India in 2013. In Uttar Pradesh alone, five rapes occurred in 36 hours. Even these are underestimations, for two reasons. One is the exclusion of marital rapes, which are not a prosecutable crime. No less important is the fact that barely 1 per cent of victims of sexual violence report the crime to the police.

Report on Violence Against Women (VAW) Survey 2015, Bangladesh, paints in vivid detail high incidence of different forms of violence against women. During 2014, the most common form of partner violence was controlling behaviour, experienced by more than one third (38.8%) of ever-married women, followed by emotional violence (24.2%), physical violence (20.8%), sexual violence (13.3%) and economic violence (6.7%). Rates of lifetime partner violence (any form) were highest in rural areas (74.8% of ever-married women) and lowest in city corporation areas (54.4%). Rates in urban areas outside of city corporation areas were 71.1%, slightly lower than in rural areas.

More than one quarter (27.8%) of women reported lifetime physical violence by someone other than the husband (non-partner) and 6.2% reported experiencing such violence during the last 12 months. Rates were highest among adolescents for both lifetime (30.9%) and last 12 months (11.2%) non-partner physical violence.

Most sexual violence in India occurs in marriage; 10 percent of married women report sexual violence from husbands. The reporting percentage is low in part because marital rape is not a crime in India. Adolescent wives (13–19 years) are most vulnerable, reporting the highest rates of marital sexual violence of any age group. Adolescent girls also account for 24 percent of rape cases in the country, although they represent only 9 percent of the total female population.

Barely 1 percent of victims of sexual violence report the crime to the police in India. Similar evidence is found for Bangladesh. Notions of honour are central to the discourse on rape. The rape of a daughter, sister or wife is a source of dishonour to males within the family structure. This deters the reporting of rape to the police, reinforced by a belief in the impunity of perpetrators, the fear of retaliation, and humiliation by the police through physical and verbal abuse.

The consequences of domestic violence are grave and intergenerational: physical trauma, repeated physical assaults result in chronic disease (e.g. chronic pain); acute neurological (e.g. fainting) and cardiopulmonary (hypertension) symptoms; life-style risk behaviours (substance misuse); psychiatric disorders (depression); and children and adolescents adversely affected by witnessing domestic violence (post-traumatic stress disorder). Besides, domestic violence also results in malnutrition among women and children.

One major problem with anti-rape laws is that their enforcement is feeble and painfully slow, and thus largely inconsequential as a deterrent to sexual violence.

Dominance and control over women are set in male attributes and behaviour (“masculinity”), regarded as a shared social ideal. Violence is not necessarily a part of masculinity, but the two are often closely linked, mediated by class, caste and region.

Interventions that address masculinity seem to be more effective than those that ignore the powerful influence of gender norms and systems of inequality. Effective women-focused initiatives strengthen resilience against violence by combining economic empowerment with greater awareness of rights and women’s relationship skills. Behavioural changes are, however, slower than changes in male attitudes.

In conclusion, although rise in sexual violence against women and girls is scary and abhorrent, there are grounds for optimism.

(Farhana Haque Rahman is Director General of IPS Inter Press Service; she is a communications expert and former senior United Nations official. Raghav Gaiha is (Hon.) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England, and Visiting Scholar, Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania, USA).

The post On Brutality of Violence Against Women appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Horrific violence against women is unabated and rising in South Asia.

The post On Brutality of Violence Against Women appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

More than 24,000 violations have been committed against children across the globe, including recruitment into armed forces, abduction, sexual violence, deprivation of basic needs, attacks on schools and hospitals– and even murder.

To tackle this, Canada has launched a set of 17 principles focusing on child protection in peacekeeping, incorporating all stages of a conflict.

“These principles are motivated by an understanding that preventing the use and recruitment of child soldiers is not peripheral to UN peacekeeping, but rather it is critical to achieving overall mission success and setting the conditions for lasting peace,”
said Richard Arbeiter, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations.

He was speaking at an event last week, organized by the Permanent Mission of Canada, and included guest speakers from Watchlist, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Canadian Defense Academy (CDA), and the Department of Peace Operations (DPO).

“In June, Canada’s Minister of National Defence announced the establishment of the Roméo Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security, within the Canadian Defence Academy,” Dr. Simon Collard- Wexler, First Secretary, Political Affairs, at the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations, told IPS.

The Centre’s initial focus, he said, “will be to support our forces’ implementation of the Vancouver Principles”.

Canada will also be providing the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative with a contribution of over $1 million over five years “to conduct research and identify lessons learned and best practices regarding the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers.”

Over 40% of the worlds armed forces use children and are known to be fighting in at least 14 countries around the world. Children are vulnerable because they are easier to manipulate than adults, do not require pay, and their cognitive sense of danger is low.
They also might become soldiers due to societal pressure and are led to believe that volunteering will provide security.

“The Vancouver principles identify key ways that peacekeeping can contribute to and enhance efforts to end child recruitment,” said Adrianne Lapar, Program Director at Watchlist.

When asked what role Watchlist will have, going forward, Lapar told IPS: “Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, which represents a network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), will continue to push governments and the United Nations to improve programs and policies to protect children in armed conflict.”

“We would like to see more governments endorse the Vancouver Principles, along with the Paris Principles and Commitments and the Safe Schools Declaration, as a mutually enforcing package of commitments to protect the rights of children in war,” she added, but noted that “commitments mean nothing until they are put into practice”.

“For that, we urge governments to integrate these principles into their military doctrine, trainings, and operating procedures. They need to ensure accountability of their forces for any violations of children’s rights; this includes investigating any allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, holding those responsible to account, and providing reparations and support services to survivors.”

So far, over 89 countries have endorsed the Vancouver principles. With that in mind, peacekeeping workers need to be equipped and trained appropriately as well.

“Peacekeepers have an important role in ending and preventing child recruitment, as well as other grave violations against children in armed conflict” Lapar said at the panel discussion, adding that “often times, they may be the first to identify children associated with armed forces or those at risk of being recruited.”

Thus, peacekeeping forces are extremely beneficial, coupled with the principles. However, to do that, Lapar noted “they need to mandate directives and appropriate training to do so effectively.”

She pointed out that the Vancouver principles illustrate this very sentiment. However, there are other tools than can be used to help combat child recruitment.

“The first Vancouver principle highlights the importance of integrating child protection provisions including the prevention of child recruitment into all peacekeeping mandates.” Lapar stated.

“By clearly articulating appropriate child protection tasks into peacekeeping mandates, the security council can bolster the protection of the children and enable efforts to end and prevent recruitment and other grave violations,” she elaborated.

She pointed out Principle 15 which examines the use of sanctions against those that use and recruit children. That said, sanctions are a tricky maze to maneuver.

When asked about ensuring that the sanctions would harm the targeted parties and not the civilians, Lapar said: “I want to reiterate that sanctions are just one of many tools available to the Security Council and UN Member States, to put pressure on perpetrators who commit child rights violations and to deter future violators.”

“They should be used as a last resort, after other measures have failed, and carefully considered, with attention to the context and potential impacts on civilian populations, to avoid causing greater harm,” she added, pointing out that “there are a number of Security Council sanctions regimes in place already, but only some of these include among their designation criteria grave violations against children, including the recruitment and use of children, targeting children, and attacks on schools and hospitals.”

“And yet we need to do more as children continue to be excluded from most peace discussions around the world,” Lapar pointed out.

Indeed, as since 2016, children have been used in hostilities by both armed and non-armed groups in at least 18 conflicts, and 27 countries operating “military schools, where children, as young as 15 are deemed members of the armed forces and thus are compelled to enlist upon graduation.

“Children should be protected and never recruited and used in war,” Lapar concluded.

The post Canada Effectively Addresses Children in Armed Conflict appeared first on Inter Press Service.

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there. Courtesy: Iranian Red Crescent Society

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

Two major humanitarian groups have warned that United States sanctions on Iran are stopping cash flows for vital humanitarian work in the country, adding another complication to the growing rift between Washington and Tehran.

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the NRC and a former United Nations official, warned that support to some 82,000 people in Iran could be cut off by mid-August because his group cannot get funds in to the Islamic Republic.

“We have now, for a full year, tried to find banks that are able and willing to transfer money from Western donors to support our work for Afghan refugees and disaster victims in Iran, but we are hitting brick walls on every side,” said Egeland.

“The sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Iran are so comprehensive that banks are unwilling to facilitate transfers for humanitarian work. If all bank channels are blocked, then so is the delivery of critical aid to vulnerable people.”

Meanwhile, the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has collected funds from a global flood appeal that it cannot transfer to its local outfit, the IRCS.

“Due to the U.S. sanctions, IRCS has not been able to receive three million euro cash contributions that the Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, governments and organisations have donated to Iran’s flood-hit people through the IFRC emergency appeal,” it said in a statement Sunday.

Last year, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal with Iran and key world powers that had been agreed in 2015, and then ramped up sanctions to pressure Tehran and to lock it out of the global economy.

Trump said the landmark accord negotiated by his predecessor did not go far enough in preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons or do anything to halt its support for foreign militias and ballistic missile development.

White House officials say the sanctions are aimed at Iran’s energy sector and regime hardliners, and do not apply to essential items like food, medicine and humanitarian relief, even while these may have been indirectly affected.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France have taken steps to resist Washington, including setting up a barter-based trade scheme called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) to allow business between Iran and Europe that is beyond the U.S. financial system.

However, reports indicate that fears over U.S. sanctions have caused western financiers to shy away from Instex and just a trickle of money has flowed in from European firms, leaving Iran scrabbling for revenue. 

According to Egeland, Europe’s bankers are just too scared to move money to Iran despite carve-outs to the sanctions regime.  

“Norwegian, European and other banks are too afraid of U.S. sanctions to transfer the money that European governments have given for our vital aid work,” Egeland said in a statement that was released Monday.

“We will run out of cash in two weeks and will no longer be able to provide relief to poor Afghan families,” he added, referencing the more than three million Afghans who fled conflict, poverty and natural disasters at home to neighbouring Iran. 

The potential shutdown of aid operations in Iran is just the latest spill-over from an escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran, amid widespread fears that it could spiral into a military showdown.

At the peak of the crisis, Trump called off air strikes against Iran at the last minute in June after the Islamic republic’s forces shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone in the Gulf with a surface-to-air missile.

Trump has said publicly several times that he is willing to hold talks with the Iranians even as he bashes the cleric-run government as incompetent, graft-ridden, dangerous and a threat to Israel, regional security and U.S. interests.

The post U.S. Sanctions Imperil Aid to Iran’s Flood Victims appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dina Ionesco
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

The Atlas of Environmental Migration, which gives examples dating as far back as 45,000 years ago, shows that environmental changes and natural disasters have played a role in how the population is distributed on our planet throughout history.

However, it is highly likely that undesirable environmental changes directly created by, or amplified by, climate change, will extensively change the patterns of human settlement.

Future degradation of land used for agriculture and farming, the disruption of fragile ecosystems and the depletion of precious natural resources like fresh water will directly impact people’s lives and homes.

The climate crisis is already having an effect: according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 17.2 million people had to leave their homes last year, because of disasters that negatively affected their lives.

Slow changes in the environment, such as ocean acidification, desertification and coastal erosion, are also directly impacting people’s livelihoods and their capacity to survive in their places of origin.

There is a strong possibility that more people will migrate in search of better opportunities, as living conditions get worse in their places of origin:

There are predictions for the twenty-first century indicating that even more people will have to move as a result of these adverse climate impacts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the main UN authority on climate science, has repeatedly said that the changes brought on by the climate crisis will influence migration patterns.

The World Bank has put forward projections for internal climate migration amounting to 143 million people by 2050 in three regions of the world, if no climate action is taken.

However, our level of awareness and understanding of how environmental factors affect migration, and how they also interact with other migration drivers such as demographic, political and economic conditions, has also changed. With enhanced knowledge, there is more incentive to act urgently, be prepared and respond.

The Global Compact for Migration: a roadmap for governments

In the past decade, there has been a growing political awareness of the issues around environmental migration, and increasing acceptance that this is a global challenge.

Herders take their animals to drink water in Niger., by FAO/Giulio Napolitano

As a result, many states have signed up to landmark agreements, such as the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Global Compact for Migration, which marks a clear way forward for governments to address the issue of climate and migration.

The Compact contains many references to environmental migration including a whole section on measures to address environmental and climate challenges: it is the first time that a comprehensive vision has been laid out, showing how states can handle – now and in the future – the impacts of climate change, disasters and environmental degradation on international migration.

Our analysis of the Compact highlights the priorities of states, when it comes to addressing environmental migration. Their primary concern is to “minimize the adverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their country of origin”, in particular the “natural disasters, the adverse effects of climate change, and environmental degradation”.

In other words, the main priority is to find solutions that allow people to stay in their homes and give them the means to adapt to changing environmental conditions. This approach aims to avoid instances of desperate migration and its associated tragedies.

Rohingya refugees make their way down a footpath during a heavy monsoon downpour in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Cox’s Bazar district. 2018. Credit: UNHCR/David Azia

However, where climate change impacts are too intense, another priority put forward in the Compact is to “enhance availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration. States are thus looking at solutions for people to be able to migrate safely and through regular channels, and at solutions for those already on the move.

A last resort measure is to conduct planned relocations of population – this means organizing the relocation of entire villages and communities away from areas bearing the brunt of climate change impacts.

Humanitarian assistance and protection for those on the move already, are also tools states can use. Finally, states highlight that relevant data and knowledge are key to guide the decision-making process. Without knowing more and analyzing better, policies run the risk of missing their targets and fade into irrelevance.

A range of solutions to a complex problem

Responding to the challenges of environmental migration in a way that benefits both countries and communities, including migrants and refugees, is a complex process involving many different actors.

Solutions can range from tweaking migration practices, such as visa regimes, to developing human rights-based protection measures. Most importantly, they involve a coordinated approach from national governments, bringing together experts from different walks of life:

There is no one single solution to respond to the challenge of environmental migration, but there are many solutions that tackle different aspects of this complex equation. Nothing meaningful can ever be achieved without the strong involvement of civil society actors and the communities themselves who very often know what is best for them and their ways of life.

I also think that we need to stop discourses that focus only on migrants as victims of tragedy. The bigger picture is certainly bleak at times, but we need to remember that migrants demonstrate everyday their resilience and capacity to survive and thrive in difficult situations.

The post Environmental Migration a Global Challenge appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dina Ionesco is the head of the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division at the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been at the forefront of efforts to study the links between migration, the environment and climate.

The post Environmental Migration a Global Challenge appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Greg Benchwick
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

Over 100 years ago a little brown passenger pigeon named Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoo. She was the last of her breed. Just like that, in an instant, a bird species that had once numbered in the billions was wiped out forever.

I’ve been researching Martha and other endangered species for the past five years in my efforts to write a book that children can relate to on the importance of conservation and environmental protection.

Greg Benchwick

What’s become perfectly clear to me as I wrote and rewrote my new book, is that if we don’t educate our children on the importance of conservation today, we are likely to experience a catastrophic loss of biodiversity that will alter the course of human and natural history forever.

Think about how the lessons of Martha connect with our current disastrous state of affairs. Martha lived through a seminal time in American history that included the expansion West, industrialization, the Gilded Age (an age of decadent consumption), huge population growth, several wars (nothing new there), and the heady legacy of Manifest Destiny.

In the US, we burned coal, we raped the land, we expanded our economies, and we became, before long, the greatest industrial empire the world had ever seen. “Martha is a remarkable tale set against a vibrant historic backdrop. The story masterfully weaves together true historic elements and parables on conservation and environmentalism in a magical world that young readers will love exploring. Truly a must read for children and adults alike, this book is a wake up call. If we don't act now, we risk losing close to half of our global biodiversity by 2050. Our planet is in crisis. In the tradition of Dr. Seuss's 'The Lorax,' this new book by Greg Benchwick should be taught the world over. We can only hope it's not too late." - Alan Miller, RT World Bank Principal Climate Change Specialist and globally recognized expert on environmentalism, climate change and conservation.

But at what cost?

Facing habitat loss and other environmental impacts, passenger pigeons began to drop like flies. In just a few short decades, the bird flocks that had once stretched for miles across the American Heartland as they made their northern migration, were no more.

Our children need to know the story of Martha. They need to know the story of George the Snail, who died in Hawaii at the ripe old age of 14 earlier this year, and was the last Achatinella apexfulva snail on the planet. They need to know the story of the Dodo and how scientists are working today to restore coral reefs and protect natural habitats in its native Mauritius.

Children need to learn about the dire consequences of Planet Earth’s sixth mass extinction. At our current unchecked and unbridled rates of conspicuous consumption, pollution, habitat loss, population growth, heating oceans, rising temperatures and melting ice-caps, an estimated 1 million species could follow Martha into the history books.

An entire generation will miss out on the majesty, power and grace of wild gorillas, sea turtles, Bengal tigers and polar bears. They will miss out on swimming in the technicolor wonderlands of the Great Barrier Reef. They will miss out on the endless possibilities that our world’s insects, birds and plant life could bring to science and humanity.

In the developing world, they will miss out on much more. Climate change, species loss and environmental degradation is already triggering violent conflict and mass migration. It’s pushing children and their families to leave their homelands. It’s disrupting entire economies. This means more children go hungry, more children are forced out of an education, and more children will never get the chance to learn and grow and one day be the change we need to save planet earth.

Yes, children need to learn about these dangerous and inconvenient truths. And they need to learn about our history so we don’t repeat our mistakes.

Failing to do so puts our very existence at risk.

Think about it this way. More than 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs will die by 2050.

This is certainly bad for people that rely on fish for food. But it’s also really, really bad for our economy. With violent storms and rising sea levels, entire communities could be wiped out without the protection barrier reefs provide. Oceanic ecosystems will fall apart and coastal peoples will be forced to move.

So what does true environmental education look like?

First and foremost, we need to stop talking about the possibilities of climate and environmental disaster. We are in it!

Everyday we lose a dozen or more species, and we are still fretting about teaching subjects like climate change and conservation in public schools. In fact, more than half of US teachers do not teach climate change in their schools. I thought we had gotten past that with the Scopes Monkey Trail, but apparently not.

Second, we need teach children about history, and we need to include lessons on conservation in our art, science, reading and even mathematics lessons. Think what understanding the real social and economic facts behind Martha could teach a child about our current situation?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to get children out in nature. This means putting the iPad down (you’re probably reading one right now), and going out for a hike in any local park or preserve. Along the way, you will probably spot dozens of species with your son or daughter, niece, nephew, or favorite student. One of these animals will probably go extinct in that child’s lifetime. Don’t they deserve better?

 
VIDEOS:
1 – https://youtu.be/6BndONsPY38

2 – https://youtu.be/UQD0Nl4o_nE

 
About the Author

Greg Benchwick is the author of the new children’s book Martha. The new mid-grade chapter book is available for pre-sales today on Publishizer. When he’s not writing stories about passenger pigeons, Greg works for the United Nations Development Programme to tell the story of climate change and environmental protection, shares stories on sustainable travel for Lonely Planet, and writes about the pressing need to fund education for children living in crisis at Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies hosted by UNICEF.

The post What a Little Pigeon Could Teach Our World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

It’s time we teach our children about conservation – before it’s too late

The post What a Little Pigeon Could Teach Our World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Japanese troops rest in the Hiroshima railway station after the atomic bomb explosion. Photo: Us national archives

By Ramisa Rob
Aug 6 2019 (IPS-Partners)

In the summer of 1945, a jittery premonition marked the lives of the citizens of Hiroshima, as B-29 super fortresses—planes that the Japanese locals called B-San or Mr.B—had been stationed in the northeast corner of the fan-shaped city. Americans had been bombing Japan for months except in two key cities: Kyoto and Hiroshima. A rumour was lurking around, however, that the Americans were saving something special for Hiroshima. The prefectural government, sensing impending attacks, had ordered completion of wide fire lanes, hoping it would contain fire caused by raids. The depraved radioactivity of the fire to come was something that no one had comprehended.

August 6 started out as a tranquil day until at exactly five minutes past eight, a titanic flash of light cut through the sky: the Enola Gay. The rumour now manifested a deafening reality of hell on earth: a lethal “Little Boy” that killed 100,000 people. For Hatsuyo Nakamuro, a Hiroshima resident, the atomic bomb reflected that unlucky split second that buried her children in debris, and somewhere nearby, her mother, brother and sister too. The horrid aftermath unfolding around her reached so far behind human mind that it was impossible to think it was caused by human beings, like the scientists who designed the disaster, the pilot of Enola Gay, or President Truman, or even Japanese militarists who had helped to fill her surviving lungs with the aftermath of radiation, who had brought the spoils of war to her weak and destitute bones.

“The bombing almost seemed a natural disaster—one that it had simply been her bad luck, her fate (which must be accepted), to suffer,” wrote the New Yorker journalist John Hersey in his article “Hiroshima: The Aftermath” in July 1985, narrating Nakamuro and other survivors’ stories four decades after the nuclear nightmare. Almost 39 years earlier, in August 1946, a year after Japan’s surrender, Hersey had published his first coverage of Hiroshima––a 30,000-word account of six survivors. Ominously titled “Hiroshima”, it birthed a new kind of journalism—non-fiction story-telling with the elements of fiction—and changed the construction of historical narratives by extrapolating from underneath the cataclysmic mesh of politics and militarisation in war, the simplest yet omniscient cost and witness to it all: human lives.

Today, 74 years after the worst apocalyptic human actions, Hersey’s Hiroshima seems more relevant than ever, as possession of nuclear weapons has become a modicum of economic superiority, and global and regional domination.

On February 2, 2019, first the United States and then Russia announced a formal suspension of their obligations to their Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which forbade the US and the then Soviet Union from producing, testing or deploying mid-ranged, ground-launched weapons. The exit is to officially take place on Friday, August 10. One of the reasons stated by President Trump included his frustration that China was not involved in the treaty. Arms control advocates have been warning that the termination of the INF along with trade tensions can provoke a nuclear arms race. And that seems to be a very near reality: on August 3, 2019, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters that the US was considering deploying new missiles in Asia, a move likely to anger their Chinese competitors, which also have been known to conceal and manoeuvre production of ballistic missiles.

There are plenty of other examples of nuclearisation in today’s world, painted all across world politics this year, such as the Iran-US relations that teetered on the knife edge of an imminent nuclear war, after the US imposed sanctions on Iran in May 2018. While the turbulence has subdued, it is nowhere near over. Last Wednesday, the US imposed sanctions on Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and according to the parliamentary news agency Iceana, Zarif said this Saturday that Iran will take further steps to reduce its compliance with the landmark nuclear deal from 2016. On the other hand, following President Trump’s historic visit to North Korea, Wall Street Journal’s intelligence analysts concluded that “the secretive state is accelerating its production of long-range missiles and fissile materials, both key components in nuclear weapons.”

Despite these ongoing issues between the nuclear states, India and Pakistan—closely backed by the US and China, and with 140 and 150 nuclear weapons that each possesses respectively—are the only two nuclear powers to have “bombed” each other in history, earlier this year in February, after a Kashmiri suicide-bomber, allegedly belonging to the Pakistani-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, killed 40 Indian troops. India’s subsequent launch of airstrikes—and as long as the diplomatic negotiations were being eschewed and threats of “all eventualities” were being fired, the threats of the age-old border conflict spiralling towards a flashpoint for a future nuclear war—was certainly real and deadly. The current global situation reflects the proliferation risks of nuclear power, which arguably reconstructs the chances of history repeating itself, in the midst of a regional or international crisis.

That’s precisely why revisiting the destructive birth of the nuclear age is crucial. But this commonly means fixating ourselves on the planned Hiroshima attacks, and narratives that stress the overbearing power of science that ended hundreds of thousands of human lives in a matter of minutes. But the massive human cost was rendered boundless and innumerable not only by the atomic chemicals, but the war-numbed heartlessness of those who, three days after Enola Gay wiped out Hiroshima, continued on the second mission of Operation Centerbomb II to bomb the urban and industrialised Japanese city, Kokura. The atomic payload used this time, called Fat Man, was signed by the pit crew who had assembled it, some had even written messages—“Here’s to you” and “a second kiss for Hirohito.” (Similar distasteful nationalism at the expense of war undergirded people’s reactions on social media to the Kashmir turmoil this year.)

For reasons still debated upon by historians, the visual bombing of Kokura couldn’t be managed, and in forty-five minutes or so, a secondary target was decided and destroyed: Nagasaki, where nearly twice as many were killed and injured. President Truman himself had been surprised by the second bombing, coming as it did so soon after the mass destruction of the first. The day after Nagasaki, Truman issued his first affirmative command regarding the bomb: no more strikes without his express authorisation, one he failed to give earlier. Even if Hiroshima—as the first devastating planned nuclear attack in human history—remains the most prominent deterrent example, Nagasaki, with greater consequences, saw the first use of a nuclear weapon to wage raw anger. Nations today must ensure it will be the last.

Ramisa Rob is a master’s candidate in New York University.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Spiralling anger and nuclear dangers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Marian Casey-Maslen is the Executive Director of CDAC Network, a platform of more than 30 humanitarian, media development, social innovation, technology, and telecommunication organisations, dedicated to saving lives and making aid more effective through communication, information exchange and community engagement.

By Marian Casey-Maslen
LONDON, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

The term ‘safeguarding’ has been squarely in the spotlight in recent times and is now used to refer to all areas relating to prevention of and protection against sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment and bullying. Heightened use of the word is a direct result of the abuses that came to light in the last few years, which shook the sector and prompted an overhaul of systems, policies, procedures and entire organisations.

In the past month, 30 donors met to agree on a new safeguarding standard put forward by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee, which, although not legally binding, does put in place a formal peer review process. According to the Committee’s chair, Susanna Moorehead, this represents a “first critically important step”.

Marian Casey-Maslen, Executive Director, CDAC Network

While change is slow at the global level, groups, individuals and whistleblowers have been pushing for some time for a victim- or survivor-centred approach to support people to report abuses without fear of reprisals, cover-up or inaction and for open, robust mechanisms for this to happen. Last year, DFID organised a global summit in London and introduced enhanced standards. Since then a lot has changed within aid organisations and in the public arena where powerful movements such #Aidtoo and #Metoo are prompting action and driving frank discussion.

But for many, the word ‘safeguarding’ does not mean very much. It does not necessarily capture people’s experience or understanding of these issues. This word, coined in the UK, is hard to translate into other languages. So what’s being done to communicate all that safeguarding has now come to mean to these audiences? Are we doing enough to get vital information across for people to understand what needs to be done to put adequate measures in place, and, importantly, how to report abuses?

Upgrading policies and procedures is only half the battle. More needs to be done to communicate what all this means to different audiences with different information needs in different contexts. Humanitarian action is evolving in technological advancement and in its realisation people should have a say in decisions that affect their lives. Such developments mean new actors from outside the sector or indeed local partners are taking the lead but have not necessarily had adequate training to understand how to create ‘safe’ programme  environments or promote and support the right behaviours.

Along with experts, Safer Edge, and DEPP Innovation Labs, the CDAC Network identified a big gap in resources to put in place basic building blocks for good safeguarding practice, based on the principle it is everyone’s responsibility.

Download and test these tools to guide good safeguarding practice. Let us know what you think!

The post Communication is Key to Overhauling Safeguarding appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marian Casey-Maslen is the Executive Director of CDAC Network, a platform of more than 30 humanitarian, media development, social innovation, technology, and telecommunication organisations, dedicated to saving lives and making aid more effective through communication, information exchange and community engagement.

The post Communication is Key to Overhauling Safeguarding appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr. Stella Nyanzi (seated with glasses), a lecturer and researcher at Makerere University and feminist and activist, was convicted on Aug. 2 for publishing a poem critical of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. She is pictured here in the dock, surrounded by prison warders. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

The conviction of Ugandan feminist and activist Dr. Stella Nyanzi for publishing a metaphorical poem about President Yoweri Museveni could have a chilling effect of freedom of expression, according to Dr. Peter Mwesige, co-founder of the Kampala-based African Centre For Media Excellence. 

“There are very many people who are going to think twice before they can express themselves in certain terms. I think it narrows the frontiers of the right to free expression. Absolutely it does,” Mwesige, who is also a former group training editor of the Nation Media Group, East Africa’s biggest multi-media company, told IPS.

Mwesige said that going forward those who did not have Nyanzi’s courage would not be able to say certain things in public for fear of being sent to prison.

On Friday, Aug. 2, Nyanzi was found guilty of “cyber harassment” for  posting a poem on Facebook on Museveni’s birthday on Sept. 16, criticising his 33-year rule and his birth. She was given 18 months imprisonment for writing the strongly-worded verse that spoke about oppression, unemployment and the country’s absence of good governance and rule of law.

The post has received over 1,800 likes and 2,000 comments. At the time some people reached out stating that they prayed for her safety as the post was so heavily critical of the government, others criticised her mention of Museveni’s late mother, asking her to allow the woman to rest in peace, and many others praised her poetry, agreeing with her vivid description of the oppression they also felt, and calling her a courageous woman.

One user messaged Nyanzi, who is a lecturer and researcher at Makerere University, saying: “Well, at the end of the day. All your wishes are in vain. None came true”, to which the poet responded, “Wishes are yearnings, desires, aspirations. Words are seeds! Watch my poem grow”. 

The poem took on a new dimension a month later when Nyanzi was charged with violating the Computer Misuse Act 2011 sections on cyber harassment and “obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent” content production. The prosecution had argued that she intentionally harassed and humiliated the president through her post. The academic was also charged with “offensive communication”, but she was found not guilty. 

The Computer Misuse Act 2011 has provisions for offensive communication, which is defined as where a person “disturbs or attempts to disturb the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person with no purpose of legitimate communication”. It also has provisions for cyber harassment, which is defined as the use of a computer for “making any request, suggestion or proposal which is obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent”. A person can also be charged for cyber harassment if they knowingly allow someone to use their computer for the defined purpose.

Nyanzi has used Facebook as a platform to critique Museveni’s regime. Nyanzi’s poetic non-fiction posts on Facebook have won her admiration among some local writers and the academia and she has emerged as the regime’s most serious and profane adversary.  She has also defended her writing stating she pays for her posts on social media and can write what she wishes. Ugandans have to pay a tax to the government for their social media usage under the Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill, paying about 5 U.S. cents a day. 

“For me, I don’t have guns, I don’t have money, I don’t have clout, I have Facebook and I have language. And I think we can continue be polite and continue suffering,” Nyanzi told journalists at court before her conviction.

Her trial attracted huge numbers of supporters and sympathisers, with the magistrate’s court in Kampala usually being filled to capacity for each appearance. She would occasionally plead with her supporters to calm down in court as she continued to speak out against Museveni’s rule while in the dock.

Nyanzi’s lawyer, Isaac Semakadde, told IPS that an 18-month jail sentence for an allegedly obscene post that was allegedly uploaded by Nyanzi is irreconcilable with not only the principals in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—an international human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations of which Uganda is a signatory of—but also Uganda’s bill of rights.  

“The conviction is based on computer misuse admittedly through circumstantial evidence that is what I heard the magistrate say…. It was processed only through political interference,” said Semakadde.

Nyanzi, who was arrested in November and has remained behind bars since then after she refused to apply for bail, will serve out the remaining nine months of the sentence. 

Meanwhile, her lawyer vowed to fight for the repeal of the Computer Misuse Law. 

Responding to the guilty verdict, Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International’s Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, said in a statement: “Stella Nyanzi has been criminalised solely for her creative flair of using metaphors and what may be considered insulting language to criticise President Museveni’s leadership. The mere fact that forms of expression are considered insulting to a public figure is not sufficient ground to penalise anyone. Public officials, including those exercising the highest political authority, are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.” 

Amnesty International said that Ugandan authorities must scrap the Computer Misuse Act 2011 which has been used systematically to harass, intimidate and stifle government critics.

Freedom of speech and expression have been increasingly under attack in Uganda. United States Ambassador to Uganda, Deborah R. Malac, had cited Nyanzi’s arrest as one of those attacks on World Press Freedom Day.  

She said Nyanzi’s trial showed that constitutional rights and freedoms apparently had limits, particularly when those opinions were critical of the country’s leaders. “And when a government constricts the rights and freedoms of its citizens, the future and the development of the country suffer as well,” Malac had stated. 

Nyanzi’s case is just the latest in a series of growing constraints that the media here faces.  

In mid-July, a journalist-turned preacher, Joseph Kabuleta, was arrested and detained for four days after calling Museveni as a gambler, thief and liar in his Facebook postings. 

Media professionals have had their houses broken into, their possessions stolen, their phones monitored, and their lives routinely threatened. The Observer newspaper has on several occasions been attacked by suspected government operatives.

Dr. Danson Sylvester Kahyana, a Ugandan poet and lecturer at Makerere University’s Department of Literature, told IPS that Nyanzi’s arrest and conviction will have a gaging effect on writers with a critical mind and could see more Ugandans withdraw from social media as a medium for free expression. 

Ugandans have recently turned to social media to express their views and opinions, which are not published in mainstream media because of self-censorship. 

Kayhana, who is also the President of PEN Uganda chapter, an activist group pushing for rights of writers and journalists, defended the jailed poet’s erotic, non-fiction style of writing that has caused trouble with the Kampala regime.

 “Most people have said Stella Nyanzi is vulgar, rude and so on. But one thing that they have missed out in is that it is this rudeness, this vulgarity that makes her be heard. If you write in a civil way or in a way that care about your image, chances are that you will be silenced,” said Kahyana.

He made reference to Uganda’s world-renowned associate professor of Literature at Makerere University, and one-time judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Dr. Susan Kiguli, and Professor Timothy Wangusa, a Ugandan poet and novelist who also served as Dean of Arts at Makerere University and Minister of Education for the country.

 “There is nothing new that Stella Nyanzi [has said] that these two writers have not said. Because they have engaged in issues of dictatorship, misrule, corruption in their works.

“But how come the nation knows more about Stella Nyanzi than them? It is because they have chosen to use civil language. That kind of language ends up in the library.”

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The post To Silence a Poet, and a Nation: What Stella Nyanzi’s Conviction Means for Uganda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Claudinei Stein is a farmer who produces biogas using the manure of his 7,300 pigs, which he breeds and sells to a pork processing plant in southern Brazil when they reach 23 kilos of weight. To his right is the biofertiliser pond, with the manure used to produce biogas in a biodigester. At the far left are the pigsties. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
ENTRE RIOS DO OESTE, Brazil, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

Pigs, already the main source of income in this small municipality in southwestern Brazil, now have even more value as a source of electricity.

The mini-thermal power plant of Entre Rios do Oeste, inaugurated on Jul. 24, uses the biogas provided by 18 farms, in a pioneering technical-commercial agreement in Brazil involving pig farmers, the city government, the Paraná Energy Company (Copel), the Itaipu Technological Park (PTI) and the International Center for Renewable Energies-Biogas (CIBiogas).

The project was executed by PTI – the Brazilian-Paraguayan hydroelectric power plant Itaipu‘s centre for teaching and development research – and CIBiogás, a non-profit association of 27 international, national and local institutions, which operates at the PTI headquarters.

The Entre Rios city government will benefit by generating electricity with the biogas it buys from the pig farmers. The electricity is injected into Copel’s distribution network, reducing the energy costs paid by 72 municipal office buildings and schools.

“It will produce savings that we will invest in health and education,” said Mayor Jones Heiden.

His municipality, in the western part of the southern state of Paraná and on the shores of the Itaipú reservoir that separates Brazil from Paraguay, was a natural choice for the project, as there are some 155,000 pigs, or 35 animals for each of the 4,400 local inhabitants.

Rafael González, CIBiogás’ director of technological development, told IPS in his offices that the city government also took an interest in the project and offered the area for the plant to be installed, resources for its operation and support for the pig farmers.

Of the more than 100 pig farmers in the municipality, only 18 who are located where the 20-km network of gas pipelines was installed are participating, after accepting the conditions for financing the biodigester, which converts the waste into biofertiliser while extracting the biogas.

“Some didn’t want to because it would take them more than 10 years to pay off the loan. There were 19 who were going to take part, but one pulled out after deciding to build his own biodigester and generator” in an individual business, taking advantage of the abundant manure produced by his 4,000 pigs, one of the participants, Claudinei Stein, told IPS.

The Mini-Thermoelectric Plant of Entre Rios do Oeste will generate 250 megawatt-hours, 43 percent more than the top consumption of all municipal government facilities. The plant will reduce their energy bill to almost zero in this municipality in southern Brazil, on the border with Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“That was the beginning, the second step will be public lighting,” opening up opportunities for other producers, said the mayor.

The mini-thermal power plant, with a capacity of 480 kilowatts, can generate 250 megawatts/hour per month, 43 percent more than the city government’s maximum consumption. It involves 215 tons of manure and 4,600 cubic metres of biogas produced daily by 39,000 pigs.

Stein has 7,300 feeder pigs which he receives from the Friella company when they weigh about seven kilos, fattens them, and returns them when they reach 22 or 23 kilos.

Friella is the main company in town, with three meat-packing plants where pork is processed and sold fresh or industrially processed, as well as an animal feed factory and its own hogpens.

But it outsources the breeding and fattening of most of the pigs. Stein explained that while it entails transportation costs, the company saves on installations, space and labour power.

Specialising in the second stage, in which each animal produces less than half of the manure from the entire fattening process, Stein estimates that he will earn an income of 1,800 to 2,000 reais (375 to 430 dollars) a month, enough to pay off the credit for the biodigester, which cost him 75,000 reais (19,800 dollars), in eight years.

The Mini-Thermoelectric Plant of Entre Rios do Oeste will generate 250 megawatt-hours, 43 percent more than the top consumption of all municipal government facilities. The plant will reduce their energy bill to almost zero in this municipality in southern Brazil, on the border with Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

But he joined the project for other reasons: to produce biofertiliser and improve the environment. Biodigestion eliminates odors, mosquitoes and contamination of groundwater on his 13-hectare property and improves manure as fertiliser for planting corn and soybeans.

“This way I save money on chemical fertilisers,” he explained. “I also like bold initiatives,” said the 39-year-old farmer, who learned about the benefits of biodigesters at a young age, because there was one on a cousin’s farm where he worked.

But the installation of the Entre Rios plant was plagued by delays, despite the recognised advantages of biogas and its potential for expansion in the western part of the state, due to the heavy presence of pig and poultry farming.

The idea emerged in 2008, Mayor Heiden told IPS.

But the opportunity to bring it to fruition arose in 2012, when the National Electric Energy Agency – the regulator of the sector – outlined strategies and criteria for biogas projects, calling for proposals to be presented.

The projects for Paraná depend on funds that the Copel distributor must allocate to research and development projects, equivalent to 0.5 percent of its turnover.

“We registered the Entre Rios do Oeste project,” but the contract with Copel was not signed until 2016, Gonzalez said.

Difficulties then arose with energy and tax regulations, which blocked the city government from purchasing the biogas, defined as a processed industrial good produced by farmers, the director of CIBiogas explained.

View of a row of gas holders, large containers for storing the biogas that will fuel the mini-thermal power plant of Entre Rios do Oeste, which generates electricity using the gas extracted from the manure of part of the 155,000 pigs raised in this municipality in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, on the border with Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

New regulations were necessary, with a different interpretation, that recognises biogas as an unprocessed agricultural product, in order to design the business model for the mini-thermoelectric plant fueled by biogas, which is in the category of distributed generation by consumers.

The project then took on its definitive shape, with the city government buying biogas from the pig farmers who installed the biodigester.

But opening up credit lines to finance the equipment required more lengthy negotiations, to come up with a model replicable in other municipalities and regions and with different arrangements.

There was a precedent for the construction of a mini biogas power plant in the municipality of Marechal Cândido Rondon, 34 km northeast of Entre Rios. The Agroenergy Condominium for Family Farming of the Ajuricaba River Basin, later called Coperbiogas, emerged there in 2009.

In 2014 it began to generate electricity, as part of another CIBiogas project. But it didn’t last long. Today, only 15 of the 33 members remain in the cooperative, the mini thermoelectric plant was closed down, and the biogas is sold to a neighbouring poultry plant belonging to the Rondon Limited Mixed Agroindustrial Cooperative (Copagril).

“It was a successful project” and not a failure as some people saw it, according to González. “Its objective was not to become economically profitable, but to clean up the environment, clean up the river,” he argued.

In fact, it was part of Itaipu’s Cultivating Good Water Programme, which sought to prevent pollution of rivers from sewage that would end up in the reservoir created by the hydroelectric dam.

The project remains active: 250 cubic metres of biogas are transported daily through the 25-km network of pipelines to three gasometers, while a filtering system removes the hydrogen sulfide that causes corrosion.

The families continue to use gas in their homes and some use the gas for milking, thanks to which at least one of the farms has improved the quality of their milk, using biogas in the pasteurisation process, Daiana Martinez, a biogas information analyst at CIBiogás, told IPS.

In Ajuricaba, unlike Entre Rios, biogas is made from both cattle and pig manure. But the scale of production and the biodigesters are much smaller, which makes electricity generation economically unfeasible, said Pedro Kohler, owner of a local biodigester factory.

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The post Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Freelance journalist Erick Kabendera has been charged with money laundering, tax evasion, and assisting an organised crime racket. Committee to Protect Journalist’s Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo said prosecutors should immediately drop the charges against Kabendera and Tanzania should end its practice of retaliating against critical voices. Courtesy: Amnesty International

By Committee to Protect Journalists
NAIROBI, Aug 5 2019 (IPS)

Prosecutors in Tanzania today charged freelance journalist Erick Kabendera with money laundering, tax evasion, and assisting an organized crime racket, according to a copy of the charge sheet. When he was detained on July 29, the Dar es Salaam police chief said at a press conference that police were investigating Kabendera’s citizenship status.

“It seems that for the past week, authorities have been searching for a way to justify their detention of this critical freelance journalist. First, they claimed Erick Kabendera’s citizenship was in question, today they have levelled drastically different charges, which call into question their motive for holding him,” said CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Prosecutors should immediately drop the charges against Kabendera and Tanzania should end its practice of retaliating against critical voices.”

The charge sheet, viewed by CPJ, alleged that Kabendera committed the offences between January 2015 and July 2019. Under Tanzania’s Criminal Procedure Act, people accused of money laundering do not qualify for bail. Kabendera could remain in detention for the duration of his trial, Jones Sendodo, one of the lawyers representing the journalist, told CPJ. If convicted of assisting a criminal racket, Kabendera could be jailed for up to15 years.

Since his arrest, authorities have searched the journalist’s home at least twice, confiscated his passport and other documents, and questioned his mother,according to media reports. In addition to being interrogated about his citizenship, Kabendera was also questioned on allegations of sedition and cybercrime offences, according to the BBC and other reports.

In a statement last week, the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition said that Kabendera’s rights to due process had been violated, as police moved him from station to station after arrest, denying him access to legal representation and his family. In a video posted to Twitter today, Jebra Kambole, who is also representing Kabendera, said the journalist has not yet been questioned for the crimes on the charge sheet, adding, “It is journalism work that has brought Erick here.”

Kabendera will be detained at Segerea prison in Dar es Salaam until August 19, when the next hearing in his case is scheduled, his lawyer, Sendodo, said.

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The post Tanzania Switches Track, Charges Kabendera with Economic Crimes appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Suad Abu-Dayyeh
AMMAN, Jordan, Aug 5 2019 (IPS)

It comes as welcome news that authorities in Saudi Arabia have taken important steps towards dismantling the repressive male guardianship system, which treats women in the country as minors.

Women will no longer require permission from a male guardian to travel abroad and can apply for a passport without authorisation. They have also been granted the right to register births, marriage, and divorce, giving them greater control over family matters. The law also now stipulates that the breadwinner of the family can be either the father or the mother in relation to minors in the application of this system.

Other changes announced relate to employment regulations that extend work opportunities for women, who represent a big proportion of unemployed Saudis. Under the new ruling, all citizens now have the right to work without discrimination based on gender, disability or age.

Another welcome amendment is that employers cannot fire a woman or give notice to fire her while she is pregnant or on maternity leave.

Changes to the law were announced on Friday by royal decrees and published in the Kingdom’s official weekly Um al-Qura gazette.

Although these important advances in removing long-standing social restrictions are to be applauded, much still remains to be done to protect and promote the rights of women and girls in this deeply conservative Arab state.

Saudi Arabia was ranked 141 out of 149 countries in the 2018 Global Gender Gap, an annual index released by the World Economic Forum that measures how women in countries around the world fare in economic and political participation, education and health.

Women in the Kingdom still require male consent to marry, live on their own, and leave prison or a domestic abuse shelter. In addition, women are barred from passing Saudi citizenship onto their children, nor can they provide consent for their children to marry.

The male guardianship system is extremely repressive, treating adult women as minors under the legal control of their guardians, who could be a husband, brother, uncle, or even a son.

Women require permission from a male family member to do many things including enroll in school, file a lawsuit, open a bank account, and access some medical procedures. Women and girls are also subject to strict dress codes and gender segregation.

This creates an oppressive society, both inside the family environment and within the country as a whole. Such wide ranging restrictions have curtailed the human rights of women, depriving them of the freedom to make essential decisions in their daily lives and preventing them from participating fully in society. Treated as second class citizens, every Saudi woman and girl is impacted from birth to death.

The new laws announced by the Saudi government have been a long time coming and it is unclear when the order will take effect. It is vital that these advances are implemented in a way that complies with the international conventions that the country has committed itself to.

Saudi Arabia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council and has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). As such, it is obliged to uphold the highest standards for the promotion and protection of human rights and to take action that ends discrimination against women in all its forms.

Despite this, Saudi Arabia continues to detain women’s rights defenders who have advocated for an end to the discriminatory male guardianship system, and for changes to the deeply patriarchal society including the right for women to drive, which was finally granted in June 2018 with some restrictions to their access to the driving schools and the fees which are triple the price for by women.

Numerous activists have been imprisoned since mid-2018 solely for peacefully campaigning for the protection and promotion of human rights, including women’s rights, in the Kingdom. This has been accompanied by horrifying reports of torture, sexual assault and other ill-treatment perpetrated by the authorities against those who have been detained.

Whilst some campaigners were temporarily released on bail earlier in the year and are still awaiting trial, others remain in prison. This includes Loujain AlHathloul, the prominent campaigner who this week spent her 30th birthday languishing in a Saudi jail.

In April 2016, Saudi Arabia announced its ambitious ‘Vision 2030’ plan to diversify the country’s economy, reduce dependence on oil, and develop its public service sectors. This included programs to promote and strengthen women’s rights.

However, the arrests of women’s rights defenders by the government have created a toxic environment where many have effectively been silenced by fears that if they express views that could be construed as critical of the state, they could face reprisals by the authorities.

Saudi Arabia’s citizens should be free to exercise their civil rights in their own country including advocating for gender equality without the threat of intimidation, arrest or torture. Calling for greater women’s rights should never be treated as a crime!

This week’s sweeping reforms denote a tangible advance in the dismantling of Saudi Arabia’s deep-rooted system of male domination and are a significant testament to the positive impact that brave activists within the country are having, often at huge personal risk and sacrifice.

The world’s gaze is firmly fixed on the Saudi authorities to ensure that the promised repeal of discriminatory legal provisions translate into tangible improvements for women and girls on the ground, and that all women’s right’s defenders who have been charged and imprisoned are immediately and unconditionally released, all charges dropped, and they face no further persecution.

The post Saudi Arabia Easing Male Guardianship: But More is Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Suad Abu-Dayyeh is Middle East and North Africa Consultant for Equality Now

The post Saudi Arabia Easing Male Guardianship: But More is Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 5 2019 (IPS)

Leaders at the Group of 20 summit last month agreed on the “Osaka Blue Ocean Vision,” which aims to reduce additional pollution by marine plastic litter to zero by 2050. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) stands ready to support Japan and other countries in the region to ensure healthy and sustainable oceans.

Approximately 8 million tons of plastic leaks out of the global economy and into the oceans each year. Asia and the Pacific is responsible for about 60 percent of the increase in global plastic production.

Without action, the world’s oceans will contain nearly 250 million tons of plastic by 2025, further endangering our marine environment with a wide range of toxins and ultimately putting our own food sources at risk.

The commitment of G20 leaders, led by Japan, to tackle the proliferation of plastic litter through the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision aligns with the first target of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life Below Water), which is to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, by 2025.

G20 leaders also reiterated that measures to address marine litter need to be taken nationally and internationally by all countries in partnership with relevant stakeholders. In the Asia-Pacific region, several countries have already adopted plans to combat marine plastic debris by banning single-use plastics and enacting new recycling laws.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s launch of the “MARINE Initiative” (focusing on management of wastes, recovery of marine litter, innovation and empowerment) at the G20 summit to support developing countries’ efforts, including their capacity building and infrastructure development, in waste management is a good demonstration of the kind of regional cooperation on trans-boundary issues where ESCAP can play a key role.

ESCAP’s next annual meeting, in May 2020, will feature the theme “Promoting economic, social and environmental cooperation on oceans for sustainable development.” One possible outcome of our deliberations is the creation of a voluntary “coalition of the willing” to reduce plastic marine pollution.

In a region already under stress from climate change, resource exploitation and population growth, healthy oceans mean jobs, food, identity and resilience for millions, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

The coalition would be a regional multi-stakeholder platform that would provide technical assistance and capacity building support. In line with the G20 approach, governments would be joined in this coalition by the private sector, civil society organizations, research and academic institutions, and representatives of the informal sector. These actors can all play a catalytic role for creative solutions.

Indeed, Japanese innovation can be applied to municipal recycling and composting. State-of-the-art solid waste management systems are being developed, underpinned by strong cooperation between national and local governments.

Even the organizing committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games has gotten into the act: It has a comprehensive sustainability plan inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and includes such measures as extracting materials from discarded smartphones and other small electronic devices to make the Olympic medals.

Japan also is supporting the development of marine litter monitoring technology in cooperation with other Asian countries. Its authorities are working with producers to eliminate single-use plastics and promote biodegradable polymers.

The goal is to reduce the detrimental effects on marine and costal ecosystems on which many livelihoods depend, crucial in a region where 200 million people are reliant on fisheries alone.

Japanese innovation and technology can contribute much to the region’s solutions to eliminate plastics from our oceans. Through ESCAP, we can scale these efforts across the continent, working closely with our countries and partners to build a collective response to stop marine pollution in Asia and the Pacific and reclaim our “blue oceans.”

The post A Call for Healthy, Blue Oceans in Asia and the Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The post A Call for Healthy, Blue Oceans in Asia and the Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.