Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Milagros Sánchez, coordinator of the urban biosystem that operates in a community soup kitchen in Ciudad Oculta, a poor neighbourhood on the south side of the Argentine capital, shows the vegetables and mushrooms grown using waste products in crates and drawers on the roof. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 29 2019 (IPS)

On the outer edges of Buenos Aires proper, where the paved streets end and the narrow alleyways of one of Argentina’s largest shantytowns begin, visitors can find the En Haccore soup kitchen.

The community endeavor is using renewable energy and the circular economy in an effort to improve quality of life for local residents.

“We were overrun by trash, because the garbage trucks don’t always come. Thanks to a biodigester we are now converting that waste into biogas, which enables us to spend less on energy for cooking. It’s a dream come true,” Bilma Acuña, the founder and head of the soup kitchen, told IPS."In our view, the main environmental problem is the exclusion of the poor, and we can help take care of the environment by improving people's quality of life and facilitating their access to energy and healthy food.” -- Gonzalo del Castillo

She explained that she started the soup kitchen in 1993, after losing her job at a meatpacking plant, at a time that many others in the neighbourhood also became unemployed during the government of neoliberal president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), when the unemployment rate climbed to almost 20 percent.

She named it En Haccore (En-hakkore), the Aramaic name of a spring in the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. The soup kitchen is on the southern edge of the Argentine capital, a 15-minute drive from downtown, at the entrance to the overcrowded shantytown of 25,000 people known as Ciudad Oculta (Hidden City).

Today, in a country of 44 million people where 2.65 million have fallen into poverty since last year, according to official data, Acuña says there are more unmet needs than ever in her neighbourhood.

That becomes clear after walking with her for just a few minutes: local residents come up to her and ask for milk, rice, noodles or any food that they can take home. The soup kitchen serves lunch and a tea-time snack to 300 people Monday to Friday, but every day new people show up, asking for a meal.

Since 2017, an “urban biosystem” has been operating in En Haccore, whose aim is to replicate in an urban setting the workings of nature, where everything that is consumed is generated within the system itself and all waste is reused, as part of a circular economy.

Thus, the biodigester, which is an airtight container where the lack of oxygen leads to the appearance of bacteria that decompose organic matter, is not only used to produce biogas from the peels of dozens of kilos of potatoes or carrots that are consumed every day in En Haccore.

View of the biodigester that produces biogas, used for cooking in the En Haccore community soup kitchen in a Buenos Aires shantytown. The leftover waste is used as fertiliser and compost in the urban garden on the facility’s rooftop. Credit: Courtesy of CeSus

The waste is also used to produce compost and fertiliser for the urban garden growing on the rooftop of the soup kitchen.

In addition, there is a solar collector that heats water using thermal energy, making it possible to purchase less bottled gas, since in this poor part of the city there is no connection to natural gas pipes.

“In our view, the main environmental problem is the exclusion of the poor, and we can help take care of the environment by improving people’s quality of life and facilitating their access to energy and healthy food,” Gonzalo del Castillo, who is ultimately responsible for the initiative, told IPS.

“We want to debunk the idea that only those who already have their basic needs met can take care of the environment. On the contrary, we believe that increasing environmental quality helps people who face greater obstacles to develop their resilience, which is the ability to adapt to the problems of the environment,” he adds.

Del Castillo is the director of the Argentine Chapter of the Club of Rome, an international organisation founded in Italy in 1968 that brings together people from different backgrounds and areas and was one of the first voices to raise the challenges to human welfare caused by the destruction of the environment.

In Argentina, the local branch of the Club of Rome created the Centre for Sustainability for Local Governments (CeSus), which provides technical assistance to municipalities on environmental and social issues and was invited by the Buenos Aires city government to work in Ciudad Oculta.

Bilma Acuña is the founder and director of the En Haccore soup kitchen, located on the border between the city of Buenos Aires and the shantytown of Ciudad Oculta. The facility also has a network of mothers who fight drug use among young people. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The project seeks to counter the system by which food and fuel produced in rural areas are consumed in urban areas, while the resulting waste is often dumped back in the countryside.

Del Castillo explains that the idea in En Haccore was to build “an integrated system, where solar energy reduces the consumption of gas for cooking, while the waste produced in the soup kitchen feeds the bidiogester and this generates new energy in the form of biogas, while leaving other waste that is used to fertilise the organic garden and the machine that makes compost.”

The garden is simply crates and drawers filled with soil on the cement roof, where vegetables and mushrooms are grown using waste like coffee grounds, as well as hydroponic crops, which do not use soil but depend on the efficient use of water.

There is also a collection point for used vegetable oil, which is periodically picked up by a foundation that uses it to make biodiesel.

“Cooking oil was a very serious problem here, because it was often dumped into pipes or wells and altered the entire system, due to the precariousness of the sanitation infrastructure, which is informal,” the coordinator of the project in Ciudad Oculta, Milagros Sánchez, told IPS.

View of the entrance to the Ciudad Oculta shantytown, within the larger informal neighbourhood of Villa Lugano on the south side of the Argentine capital, a 15-minute drive from downtown Buenos Aires. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The experimental project includes key participation by the community through training workshops, because the aim is for it to continue when CeSus pulls out.

“Now I dream of having a biodigester and a solar collector to produce my own energy in my house,” said Alejandra Pugliese, a local resident who told IPS that her participation in workshops where she learned about urban gardening changed the way she sees life.

“I became aware that if you connect with the cycles of nature it is possible to improve quality of life even with few resources,” added Pugliese, who works caring for children and the elderly and has recently seen a drop in her income due to the recession that began in Argentina in 2018.

The urban biosystem is also being developed in another soup kitchen in Ciudad Oculta and in another shantytown in the south of Buenos Aires, Villa 21.

Some three million people live in more than 4,000 shantytowns or slums, known as “villas”, in this Southern Cone country, according to a survey carried out last year by the government in conjunction with social organisations.

CeSus is seeking support from the public sector to demonstrate that it is possible for urban communities, not only in “villas”, to apply the circular logic of natural ecosystems in order to become self-sustainable.

The circular economy consists, precisely, of replacing a model based on producing-consuming-disposing with one based on producing-consuming-recycling, and includes a transition to clean energy, with the aim of coexistence with the environment.

Related Articles

• Solar Energy Provides Hope for Poor Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires
• Solar Collectors and Solidarity Change Lives in Argentina
• Buenos Aires Shantytowns, Caught Between Exclusion and Hope

The post Using Renewable Energy and the Circular Economy to Fight Poverty in Argentina appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says that the Rohingya should be treated as Myanmar nationals or be given a chance to form their own state. In this photo, he speaks during the opening ceremony of the 20th Asia Oil & Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on June 24, 2019. File photo: Reuters

By The Star Online, Kuala Lumpur
Jul 28 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The Rohingyas should be treated as Myanmar nationals or be given a chance to form their own state, said Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He said even though Malaysia generally does not wish to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, it does so in this case due to the massacre or genocide that is happening in Myanmar.

“Myanmar, of course, at one time was made up of many different states. But the British decided to rule Myanmar as one state – and because of that, many of the tribes (were) included in the state of Burma.

“But now they should either be treated as nationals or they should be given their territory to form their own state,” he said in an interview with Turkey’s Anadolu Agency in Ankara during his four-day visit to the country. In 2017, more than 700,000 ethnic Rohingya were driven from Rakhine state following a military-led crackdown that a United Nations’ report said included mass killings and gang rapes.

Meanwhile, asked to comment on the plight of the Uighur in China, Dr Mahathir said Malaysia has always advocated for the settlement of conflicts through negotiation, arbitration or court of law.

“We should tell China (to) please treat these people as citizens. The fact that they have a different religion should not influence the treatment towards them. When you resort to violence, then it’s very difficult to find a good conclusion because there has been no case where violence has achieved the objective,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Turkey’s fight against the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO) both inside and outside the country, Dr Mahathir said Malaysia does not support insurrection in any country.

“It is our policy not to be used as a base for action taken against other countries. It is for that reason that when we find that there are some attempts to make use of Malaysia as a base for dissent against the Turkish government, we have taken action to close these (FETO-linked) schools” he said.

Copyright: The Star Online / Asia News Network (ANN)

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Rohingyas should be given citizenship or their own state: Dr Mahathir tells Myanmar appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

Gender inequality is about power asymmetries. In the late 1970s, Robert Putnam reflected on the status of women in policy decisions in his comparative study on political elites. Quoting Elizabeth Vallance, he concluded that, “where power is, women aren’t.”.

The challenge for achieving gender equity by rebalancing power has to be addressed in different spheres: the household, the market, and society at large.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

At the household-level, for example, women’s ability to make decisions about resource allocation or family planning are critical dimensions of empowerment; in the market, women’s access to economic opportunities, career advancement, and fair wages are of fundamental concern; at a society level, the main focus of this #GraphforThought, women’s capacity to influence decision-making is paramount to progress in terms of equity.

Fortunately, over the past several decades the face of politics has changed in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not only have women been elected to the highest office many times in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1990—but women representation is also expanding across multiple policy arenas from the national to the local level.

As shown in Graph 1, from (circa) 1997 to (circa) 2019 the share of women in important policy arenas, such as parliament, ministerial cabinet, and the supreme court, has nearly tripled.

However, as the graph shows—despite progress on average in LAC (the solid line) we are still well below parity level (the dotted horizontal line) and heterogeneity across countries within LAC remain substantial (by the individual country dots).

Moreover, it is important to note that while women’s representation overall has been increasing, minority women such as Afro-descendants and indigenous women remain systematically excluded from the policy arena.

Graph 2 shows that only fifteen countries in LAC achieved “gender parity” at some point in time in at least one policy arena in the past two decades. For example, two countries in LAC (Nicaragua and Grenada) have had gender parity in the Ministerial Cabinet; two countries (Suriname and Cuba) have had gender parity in the National Parliament; while only Dominica has had gender parity in terms of Local Mayors over the past two decades.

Why does it matter to have women in political leadership? Support of women’s leadership has a normative value in itself and should be a guiding principle in our societies. However, it also has instrumental value by helping to make the system more responsive to women’s demands and aspirations.

Evidence suggests that enhancing women’s representation in the policy arena can help to bring a gender-lens to policy—for example in issue areas such as travel mobility, starting a job, equal pay, marriage and divorce, parental leave, running a business, asset management and inheritance, and pensions.

For example, research on Brazil finds that women’s representation in municipal government leads to the adoption of more “women-friendly” policies in areas such as domestic violence and childcare.

Given the importance of women’s representation in the policy arena both intrinsically and instrumentally—what can be done to accelerate its progress?

Gender quotas (laws stipulating a required share or number of women in political positions) are an increasingly common solution, and perhaps one of the main drivers of why political representation has increased.

However, even where quotas exist, informal norms may clash with formal legal structures—leading to situations in which quotas remain unimplemented or strategically circumvented.

For example, in our region, we saw this in the case of the “Juanitas” and, more recently, the “Manuelitas” in Mexico, where women ran for office on the ballot in compliance with gender quotas—only to later renounce their position and cede it to a man. Cases such as this reveal the deeply entrenched discriminatory norms and beliefs still held by so many about women’s ability to lead.

Moreover, according to the World Values Survey, on average in Latin America, 23% of people still believe that “men make better politicians than women” reflective of the region’s historical machista culture.

While women continue to face both formal and informal barriers to entering the policy arena in Latin America and the Caribbean—the region represents a positive example of change in many ways.

Not only has the share of women in politics increased, but it has coincided with the improvement of more gender-equitable development outcomes (such as women’s attainment of higher education) as well as more gender-equitable rules of the game (such as gender quota laws).

These achievements have in turn respectively helped to redistribute greater de facto and de jure power to women, which further strengthens their voice in the policy arena and subsequently their ability to make the system more responsive to women’s demands and aspirations.

The post Women, Power, & Changing Face of Political Representation in Latin America & the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Luis Felipe López-Calva is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

The post Women, Power, & Changing Face of Political Representation in Latin America & the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Lucky Choolwe, a field facilitator for Grassroots Trust in Zambia, which engages with land owners and policy-makers to regenerate eco-systems, conducts a practical session with farmers on FMNR. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

Jennifer Handondo, a small scale farmer of Choma district in southern Zambia, plants food crops such as maize mostly for her family’s needs. Because of uncharacteristically high temperatures and low rainfall during the planting season in March, the divorced mother who single-handedly supports her three children, has not been able to harvest as much as she usually does. So she has diversified into selling seedlings of neem, Moringa and other medicinal trees.

“For me, trees represent money and a livelihood, but not in the wrong way through charcoal production but through these seedlings,” she told IPS. As a value add, she recently diversified into selling leaf powders such as Moringa Oleifera—a scientifically proven food and medicinal tree.

While she earned on average about 78 dollars from selling the excess crop her family did not use, she said she earns as much as 5,400 dollars a month currently from sales of the Moringa powder. She receives orders for the powder from large local institutions and explained that she usually has to collaborate with other farmers to fulfil these orders.

“My livelihood is based on trees,” she said.

Zambia’s rising deforestation threat

Zambia has a forest coverage of 49.9 million hectares, representing 66 percent of the total land area in this southern African nation and boasting at least 220 different tree species. However, with a deforestation rate of between 250,000 and 300,000 hectares per annum, this rich biodiversity is at risk of being wiped away.

A recent environment outlook report by the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) showed that the country’s high levels of deforestation are not slowing down. The report points to various causes for this, among them illegal indiscriminate cutting of trees and the reckless collection of wood for fuel, charcoal burning, the harvesting of timber, clearing of large tracks of land for agriculture through slash and burn methods, urbanisation and new human settlements.

In addition, the country’s renewable energy connectivity figures are not impressive. It is estimated that only about 25 percent of the population of 17 million is connected to renewable energy sources.

Handondo’s story is different though. A grade nine dropout, she has returned to school and graduated in General Agriculture from the Zambia College of Agriculture. She is passionate and active in forest conservation, participating in tree-planting campaigns and awareness programmes since 2016.
So for her the link to selling seedlings and products from trees as a source of income was an easy one.

She is also a change agent and champion for the World Vision Zambia supported farmer-managed forest regeneration (FMNR) project, which is being implemented in southern Zambia. FMNR is the active regeneration and management of trees and shrubs from felled stumps, sprouting root systems or seeds with the goal of restoring degraded farmland and soil fertility, and increasing the value and/or quantity of woody vegetation on farmland.

“The main objective of FMNR is to empower the community with knowledge to reduce deforestation which has been very rampant in this country,” Shadrick Phiri, World Vision Zambia Agriculture and Natural Resource Specialist, told IPS.

According to Phiri, the technique is highly appropriate for rural communities and land that has been degraded to a point where the loss of perennial vegetation cover, biodiversity and soil fertility on farmland is diminishing livelihoods and quality of life.
“FMNR can take place either as an on-farm activity practiced by individual farmers, or in forest areas protected and managed by the community,” Phiri said, adding that the practice is also relevant to the regeneration of grazing lands.

“We have chosen to use a cheap but robust system of regenerating our forests naturally. We currently have 600 farmers under the four area development programmes in Southern Province currently practising FMNR. The figure currently stands at 2,600 households nationally across the 25 area programmes where World Vision is currently working.”

The FMNR project is one of several initiatives in Zambia targeting the restoration of degraded land. Other projects include:

•  the Community Based Natural Resources Management in Zambia with the World Wildlife Fund for Nature serving as secretariat;
• the Zambia Community Forests Programme implemented by Bio Carbon Partners;
• the Promoting Climate-Resilient, Community-Based Regeneration of Indigenous Forests in Zambia’s Central Province project by ZEMA;
• and the Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project supported by the World Bank.

Another intervention working to improve local livelihoods of farmers by revitalising degraded lands, is Plant A Million (PAM). Launched last year, PAM is a United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification-supported project under the Africa-led 3S initiative. It aims to plant at least two billion trees by 2021.

Emanuel Chibesakunda of Munich Advisors Group, a business and investment consultancy firm that developed the concept and is implementing the initiative, told IPS that since the launch an important milestone for rural farmers has been the partnerships with like-minded stakeholders.
Musika Development Enterprise, a non-profit company with a mandate to stimulate and support private investment in the Zambian agricultural market with a specific focus on the lower end of these markets, has been one of these partners.

“Musika provided both technical and financial support to PAM to set up a commercial nursery in order to strengthen rural livelihoods through domestication of indigenous fruit and non-fruit trees in Zambia. This proposed intervention will enhance Musika’s efforts in testing the ‘trees on farms’ concept as a business for the smallholder economy that has the potential to generate socio-economic return on investment and enhance environmental sustainability,” Reuben Banda, Musika’s managing director, told IPS.

The nursery sells readily-available seedlings at an affordable price.

Community centred approaches
At the Global Landscapes Forum held last month in Germany, leaders, experts and indigenous communities deliberated and adopted a rights approach to sustainable landscapes management and conservation.

The forum showcased evidence from around the globe that when the authority of local communities over their forests and lands, as well as their rights, are legally recognised, deforestation rates are often reduced.

In recognition that it is this generation who can and must recover the damaged land, governments, civil society and traditional leadership, are using community-centred approaches to achieve land degradation neutrality.

A unique feature of FMNR in Zambia is the targeting of traditional leadership as an entry point.

“As custodians of vast traditional land where most of deforestation activities take place, we believe their involvement is very important in reversing the damage,” said Phiri.
He explained that the community approach has been successfully implemented in Niger and Ethiopia, with millions of hectares of forests under regeneration, while Malawi is equally making steady progress.

At a recently-held community meeting in Zambia, traditional leaders resolved to form Community Forest Committees to enforce FMNR and all related forest management activities in their chiefdoms.

But to achieve this, they requested that the government consider strengthening their authority by giving them powers of enforcement with regards to laws that govern local offences and penalties.

“As traditional leaders, we are of the view that section 19 of the Village Act on offences and penalties be strengthened to give more power to traditional leaders to sternly deal with offenders in our local jurisdiction,” said Tyson Hamamba, a representative of Chief Choongo from Southern Province.

Hamamba said this was the only way to deter rampant charcoal making and deliberate bush fires among other destructive practices leading to alarming forest and land degradation.

According to current laws, chiefs cannot issue a penal sanction against offenders. Their only role is to facilitate arrest of offenders by state police and/or other legally authorised law enforcement agencies.

For Handondo, FMNR is important for the future of the country’s forests. She credits it as being key to the lush growth of her seedling business.
“As a small scale farmer, and a seedling grower for that matter, I have found this practice cheap and easy to undertake. I have noted that we have a lot of stagnant bushes that are not growing because they are overcrowded but when we prune through the practice of FMNR, we have seen that these shrubs quickly grow into trees forming the much needed forest cover because nutrient competition is reduced.”

Related Articles

• Poverty-Stricken Communities in Ghana are Restoring Once-Barren Land
• Experts Decry Exclusion of Africa’s Local Farmers in Food Security Efforts
• VIDEO: World Day to Combat Desertification – Land Has True Value. Invest In It
• Report Reveals Mounting Pressure on Zambia’s Environmental Resources

The post Money Grows on Trees–Don’t Uproot Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

The United States is no exception to the practice of modern day slavery—a crime for which it is rarely held accountable at the United Nations.

A rash of hidden crimes widespread in US inner cities and border towns include forced migrant labour, human trafficking, sexploitation of minors and domestic servitude.

In its 2018 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the US State Department said that despite its global reach, human trafficking takes place locally — “in a favorite nail salon or restaurant; in a neighborhood home or popular hotel; on a city street or rural farm”
But four recent high profiles cases of human trafficking and commercialized sex have laid bare the growing problem in big cities and far corners of the US.

First, there is the ongoing investigation of a mega millionaire facing federal charges of running a sex trafficking operation luring dozens of underage girls, some of them as young as 14.

Second, the case of an African-American singer accused of engaging in illegal sex activities involving 10 women, eight of whom were minors, and paying them hush money to remain silent. But both have pleaded not guilty.

Third, the arrests July 25 of 16 marines from the US Marine Corps, one of the elitist services in the American armed forces, who are under investigation on charges of human trafficking, drug smuggling and transportation of undocumented Mexican migrants.

And last February, the New York Times ran a frontpage story about a billionaire-owner of a famous American football team who was charged on two counts of soliciting sex as part of a wide-ranging investigation into prostitution and suspected human trafficking in the US state of Florida.

These stories have been splashed across US newspapers triggering the question: how widespread is modern slavery in the US, a country frequently described by President Donald Trump “as the greatest in the world.”

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says every year, “millions of men, women, and children are trafficked worldwide – including right here in the United States”.

And trafficking can happen in any community while victims can be any age, race, gender, or nationality, says DHS.

In an interview with IPS, Romina Canessa, a human rights lawyer and program officer at Equality Now’s “End Sex Trafficking” team, said: “Unfortunately, we do not have any exact numbers on how widespread sex trafficking is in the USA”

“We do know that America is a source, destination, and transit country for trafficking. We also know that the majority of trafficking victims in the USA are from within the country and that the most prevalent form of trafficking is sex trafficking of women and girls,” she added.

Writing in the New York Times July 19, Elizabeth Melendez Fisher, co-founder and chief executive of Selah Freedon/Selah Way Foundation, says the sexual abuse and exploitation of vulnerable women and children have always occurred (in the US).

The positive aspect of recent cases in human trafficking “is that we as a society are finally no longer turning a blind eye.”

Urmila Bhoola of South Africa, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, told IPS last March that slavery was the first human rights issue to arouse wide international concern.

But it still continues today—“and slavery-like practices also remain a grave and persistent problem”.

She said “traditional forms of slavery have been criminalized and abolished in most countries, but contemporary forms of slavery are still prevalent in all regions of the world”.

In an oped piece for IPS last December, Romy Hawatt, a Founding Member of the Global Sustainability Network (GSN ) pointed out that a 2018 report by the Global Slavery Index estimated some 403,000 people being trapped in modern slavery in the U.S. – seven times higher than previous figures.

He said the pernicious persistence of modern day slavery is one of the reasons it is addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by the UN General Assembly in 2015 building on many of the accomplishments of the original Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)– but which did not address human rights, slavery or human trafficking and were often criticized for being too narrow.

In particular, Goal 8 of the 17 SDGs is the goal to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, whilst Goal 8.7 specifically addresses modern day slavery and human trafficking, he added.

And it is worth noting, he argued, that SDG 8.7 is also supported by two other SDG goals. SDG 5 for example aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, while SDG 16 seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Canessa of Equality Now said currently, there is no official estimate for the numbers of victims in the USA, nor are there reliable resources. There are statistics, for example, on the number of federal sex trafficking cases but this isn’t an accurate representation as many cases aren’t prosecuted or are prosecuted under different laws for various reasons.

She said cases frequently go undetected or unreported. “Many sex trafficking victims are prevented from seeking help, and it is also common for people not to self-identify as someone who has been trafficking”.

They may perceive themselves as offenders and fear being prosecuted by the authorities. This is one reason why Equality Now advocates against criminalizing people who sell sex, said Canessa, who served as an expert on developing global access to justice mechanisms, most notably helping to launch and implement the first alternative dispute resolution center in Kabul, Afghanistan

“There is just no good data on the true scale of sex trafficking anywhere in the world. Although accurate numbers aren’t available on what is occurring in the USA, we know the majority of victims are domestic, thanks to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and US TIP reports, which are both excellent resources.”

Under both international and US law, she said, movement is not required for trafficking although it can be included as one of the elements.

“All that is required is the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion”. So, a person can be trafficked in their own hometown or even in their own home.

Any commercial sex act involving a child is trafficking, so no force, fraud or coercion is required, said Canessa, who has worked in Peru on anti-corruption, judicial and electoral reform projects, including promoting the role of women in politics.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: To what extent does sex trafficking involve migrants and refugees in the US?

CANESSA: Sex trafficking in the USA can involve migrants and refugees, and traffickers will often use an immigrant’s legal status as a tool for coercion. Trafficking can involve nail salons, spas, farms, but also involves a wide range of other industries, including: hospitality; traveling sales; janitorial services; construction; restaurants; domestic work; childcare and looking after persons with disabilities; retail; fairs and carnivals; peddling and begging; drug smuggling and distribution, amongst others.

Trafficking can affect anyone but certain dynamics can place people at higher risk. Factors that can increase someone’s vulnerability include being in foster care, a runaway or being young and homeless. Living in poverty, problems with immigration status, and being LGBTI are also risk factors.

IPS: Are there any international treaties or conventions against human trafficking?

CANESSA: Yes, the main international convention against human trafficking is the Palermo Protocol, which provides the definition of trafficking that is used in international law and the laws of many countries.

Most importantly, the Palermo Protocol establishes that any exploitation of anyone under 18 is considered trafficking (the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons”).

Under both international and US law, a person under 18 who is exploited for sex is a victim of trafficking and rape and not a “child prostitute.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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

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

The post How Widespread is Human Trafficking in the US? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post How Widespread is Human Trafficking in the US? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Access to education is key to facilitate the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies. Photo credit: Getty Images

By Blerim Mustafa
GENEVA, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

Education constitutes an important building block to enhance inter-faith dialogue, cultural exchange between ethnic and linguistic groups, counter violent extremist narratives and promote peaceful and inclusive societies. The founder of Modern India, Mahatma Gandhi, once said:

“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”

Yet current trends tend to be in denial of this reality. At no time has there been greater need than now for sensible strategies aimed at lifting the veil of ignorance that shapes public opinion. Ignorance and fear are leading to violence and social fragmentation. disrupting the harmony of diverse, multi-ethnic societies. The world is currently witnessing the proliferation of xenophobic populism and white supremacists in advanced societies, but also the rise of Islamophobic demagogery. There is also a wave of extremist violence in all parts of the world. The cause of these phenomena may differ but all feed on the rejection of the Other.

Of great concern is, of course, the exposure of frustrated or marginalised youths to terrorist and violent extremist groups. They lack religious or ideological awareness and fall easy prey to media and social media manipulations. The doubts and frustrations that they experience are not being addressed adequately and hit the wall of unresponsive societies. And, as in all social movements, there are individuals or groupings which take advantage of this latent anger for their own vested interests. They harness it with the objective to achieve positions of power through violence or through undermining national unity.

How can one counter extremist narratives through education? Is the latter the ultimate silver-bullet to address prevailing toxic narratives fuelling extremist and violent ideologies?

Indeed, moving towards social harmony starts with a first step: that of educating our youth. In times of community fragmentation, equal access to education can open vital spaces for inclusiveness, reconciliation and dialogue. Education is a particularly effective means for promoting inclusive and equitable societies, as it targets one of the most receptive and unbiased audiences: the youth. Mrs. Irina Bokova, the former Director-General of UNESCO, noted in this sense that “the risks and opportunities we face call for a paradigm shift that can only be embedded in our societies through education and learning.”

There are numerous paths for addressing this social ill that spreads in both advanced and developing countries. In countries affected by the surge of populism and extremist violence, special efforts should be made to improve the education system. Through education, youth and other vulnerable social segments of societies can be empowered to move beyond biases and preconceptions that they may have inherited. This will help to promote the immunity of youths against the rise of extremist forces that we see at present times. It will help the traumatized among them to come to terms with the horrors witnessed from foreign invasions or extremist violence. In rich and advanced societies, it will aim at rolling-back the devastating impact of hate speech. At the same time, we must recognize that the rise of populism responds in part to the inertia of established political parties that for much too long have failed to address social issues.

Communities should likewise celebrate both the commonality of values and the specificities of practices of diverse faiths as expressions of enrichment through pluralism. It is necessary therefore to explore models of education rooted in religious teachings and in inclusive secularity. Through their thoughtful intertwining, one can contribute to the emergence of a society that embraces religious plurality and harnesses unity in diversity. Archbishop and former Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu once said: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”

Moreover we should call on religious authorities and lay leaders of different faiths and cultures who bear the responsibility to correct the unscrupulous misrepresentations of values and beliefs. They must unite and harness the collective power of religions and creeds for peace-building. Religious leaders can play an important role in providing counselling to address radicalist thoughts and to promote the values of tolerance, coexistence and dialogue. They must refute the stereotyping of caricatural differences between religions and cultures that breed hatred.

For a variety of historical and modern-day political reasons, emphasis has been put on the differences existing between faiths and value systems. It remains the duty of religious leaders to show that, in themselves, religions are not problematic. What is problematic is their distortion to serve political purposes and vested interests. The synergies of providing access to education built on common universal values makes a strong contribution towards the realization of social stability and peace. In the joint declaration on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together signed on 4 February 2019 in Abu Dhabi by HH Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar His Eminence Ahmed el-Tayeb, we are reminded of the “importance of awakening religious awareness and the need to revive this awareness in the hearts of new generations through sound education and an adherence to moral values and upright religious teachings.”

Indeed, the great religions of the world bear a unique fundamental message of peace, tolerance and compassion. Only through dialogue between populations and regions of all cultures and religious faiths can the bridges of understanding and tolerance be built.

Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).

The post The Role of Education in Breaking down the Walls of Ignorance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Promoting peaceful and inclusive societies through education

The post The Role of Education in Breaking down the Walls of Ignorance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

The darkest underbelly of human existence hides right in front of us – modern day slaves are the foundation of the third largest criminal economy on the planet.

As media consumption in the West is drawn to negative, sensational and explosive headlines, sinister realities escape our attention. This applies to reporting on human trafficking in the developing world, where stories center around organ trafficking, sweat shops and the sex industry.

The International Labour Organization estimates that 21 million men, women and children are enslaved and trafficked around the world today. Close to 70% of these people are exploited in industrial sectors like mining, construction, agriculture and domestic work, creating profits of $150 Billion annually.

3.7 million people are victims of of forced labour in Africa, but the Asia-Pacific region accounts for the largest number of modern day slaves in the world, at 11.7 million people.

 

 

In a digitally desensitized society, we fail to comprehend the scale of a problem that exists in plain sight.

According to the U.S. State Department, “human trafficking can be found in a favourite restaurant, a hotel, downtown, a farm, or in [a] neighbour’s home.”

In the United Kingdom, an estimated 136,000 people are exploited with poor wages and atrocious living conditions. The National Crime Agency finds victims predominantly from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, working in car washes, construction, farming and food processing. Disturbingly, it suggests that someone going about their normal day in the UK will come across a victim of human trafficking but will never recognize them as such.

A 2018 report by the Global Slavery Index found that almost half a million (403,000) people are trapped in modern day slavery in the United States – seven times more than previously reported. The index also highlights forced marriages, noting that women and girls make up 71% of people trapped in modern-day slavery today.

The persistence of this tragedy is at the root of its being addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. The Global Sustainability Network, an international consortium that works closely with the Vatican and Church of England, is one of many organizations attempting to bring a seismic shift in awareness and a willingness to act to save human dignity.

With individuals, educators, charity institutions, businesses and Governments each taking incremental steps towards realizing The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, it will be possible to curb this nefarious business.

The post VIDEO: World Day against Trafficking in Persons appeared first on Inter Press Service.

(From left) African Union chairperson and president of Rwanda Paul Kagame, president of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou and African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat at the launch of AfCFTA in Kigali in March 2018. Credit: Office of President Paul Kagame

By Paul Okolo
ABUJA, Nigeria, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

On 7 July 2019, Nigeria finally threw its weight behind the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) when President Muhammadu Buhari signed the treaty at a summit of African heads of state in Niamey. In normal circumstances, that shouldn’t have been big news.

But Nigeria sent shockwaves through the continent when it withheld approval for AfCFTA in March last year at a summit in Kigali. Nigeria’s action surprised many as the country was initially one of the drivers of the single African market idea. 44 African countries had signed the agreement nonetheless.

It’s obvious why Nigeria’s participation and endorsement matters. It’s not just Africa’s most populous country with some 200 million people; it’s also the continent’s largest economy with a GDP of more than USD 405bn. Based on that and its stature in international relations, Nigeria’s support was indispensable for its success.

The free trade area of about 1.2 billion people and a GDP of around USD 2.5 trillion promises to be the largest trading bloc in the world. Its advocates also say it gives hope of growing intra-African trade beyond its currently low level of around 17 per cent.

Tariff and non-tariff barriers (the many documents exporters must carry cause long delays at African borders) make intra-African trade costlier than Africa’s trade with other regions. In comparison, the levels of Africa’s trade with other continents have historically been much higher.

If the continent wants to achieve the socio-economic development encapsulated in the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030, AfCFTA could be a game changer.

A win-win situation?

“There is no doubt that AfCFTA will reduce or eliminate barriers to trade and harmonize standards on the continent,’ said Yinka Adeyemi, a senior adviser at the United Nations

Economic Commission for Africa. ‘It will also provide an overarching framework within which regions can address their peculiar challenges in a specific manner.’

For Nigeria, this could be a win-win. Some of the country’s banks are already doing business in more than a dozen African countries. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, has multi-billion dollar cement plants operating across the continent.

Its booming movie industry, known as Nollywood, is already a household name across Africa. The country’s music industry too stands to gain from a single African market. The logic is that, when businesses thrive, more workers are hired who will then plough back their wages into the economy, thus boosting growth. That would ensure prosperity for millions of Nigerians working in those sectors.

But major Nigerian stakeholders, including the leading workers’ union and representatives of local chambers of commerce, are not convinced that these potential benefits would materialise, and asked the government to first consult at home before proceeding.

With presidential elections looming early in 2019, the government hesitated, not willing to risk losing the votes of millions of workers and unemployed people who fear more jobs could potentially be moved elsewhere.

“We at the Nigeria Labour Congress are shocked by the sheer impunity and blatant lack of consultation in the process that has led to this,’ Ayuba Wabba, president of the Congress, said early last year when it was apparent that the government was planning to sign the agreement alongside other African countries. He thinks that AfCFTA is an ‘extremely dangerous and radioactive neo-liberal policy’, inimical to the fortunes of Nigeria’s workers.

The workers’ body’s key objections were that AfCFTA would open the country’s borders to an influx of goods that would kill local industries. Nigeria’s porous borders have been a burden on the economy for decades.

In the once boisterous textile industry, more than 100 factories have collapsed, resulting in the loss of 500,000 jobs from the 1990s onwards because of cheap textile imports from China and other Asian countries. At its peak in the 1980s, the Nigerian textile industry was the second largest employer in the country after the government.

Will the implementation work?

For this reason, Nigerians want to ensure that under AfCFTA, foreign products will not be re-labelled as originating, for example, from the neighbouring Republic of Benin when, in reality, they have been shipped into the country from Asia.

Nigerians are worried that there may not be enough safeguards in the continental trade agreement to stop smuggled cars, motor bikes, vegetable oil, fruit juices and wines, imported through Benin’s port of Cotonou into the country for decades, from hurting the economy.

Yet, AfCFTA promises immense benefits for Nigeria in the manufacturing sector if it can improve infrastructure such as energy, roads, rail and air transport. Improved power supply to industries as well as its small and medium-scale enterprises will put Nigeria in a position to compete with producers from other countries. With a thriving manufacturing sector, Nigeria’s economy would also be diversified away from crude oil.

Finally, African countries must see that the anxiety caused by Nigeria’s initial delay in endorsing AfCFTA should be avoided in future. Under the democratic system that many of the countries now practise, wide consultations and consensus-building should be the norm.

There must be room for robust debates and the canvassing of ideas before any decisions are taken in the countries to ensure the buy-in of all. Ordinary citizens, the media, civil society and the legislature all must have their say in the process. No single group has the monopoly of wisdom to decide for everybody.

Now, signing the treaty is the easy part. Ensuring that it works is the hard one. Africa doesn’t have a good track record in implementing agreements made in the past. But what prevented earlier treaties from working must not be allowed to frustrate the implementation of AfCFTA.

*This article originally appeared in International Politics & Society, published by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

The post Nigeria Finally Throws its Weight Behind African Continental Free Trade Area appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Paul Okolo is a freelance journalist and communications consultant based in Abuja, Nigeria. He has worked for several news organization, including Voice of America, Bloomberg, Reuters and Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, among others. He has a Master’s in Journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K.

The post Nigeria Finally Throws its Weight Behind African Continental Free Trade Area appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Idriss Jazairy and Alfred de Zayas
GENEVA, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

On 22 July 2019, Kenneth Roth published an article in Publico, Lisbon, entitled: “UN Chief Guterres has disappointed on Human Rights”.

This essay lampooning Antonio Guterres is not a voice “against the tide” but very much mainstream – and demonstrably skewed. Major NGOs headquartered in rich advanced countries and enjoying generous funding from the Establishment may not always think “out of the box” and are as likely, as are the interest groups which support them, to politicize human rights and therefore to disappoint rights holders in smaller or weaker countries. While they do contribute to exposing situations of human rights violations worldwide , they are not exempt from biases which reflect the structure of their central governing bodies or the cultural environment within which they operate. They cannot arrogate to themselves the sole legitimacy to speak in the name of the civil society of many countries , and when they claim to do so, they may disappoint rightsholders, particularly in the developing countries, whose priorities are frequently different from theirs.

Sober analysis and stocktaking are necessary to determine whether and to what extent the priorities and agendas of NGOs’s like HRW are set by the overall interests of the established power-structures and multiple elites in many countries. Kenneth Roth’s article expressing disappointment at the human rights performance of Secretary General Antonio Guterres fails to identify the root causes of human rights violations. His admonitions have little or no preventative value, and do not formulate constructive recommendations such as, for instance, the provision of advisory services and technical assistance to many countries that need it and have asked for it.

HRW’s “naming and shaming” strategy has been inconclusive at best because “naming and shaming” depends on the authority of the “namer” and the impartiality of the methodology. Kenneth Roth’s bludgeoning of the UN Secretary General in this regard is yet another expression of grandstanding and even of a measure of arrogance. HRW’s criticism of China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, would be more persuasive if the organisation addressed with the same intensity the egregious violations of human rights in many other countries. For instance, Mr. Roth does not mention the denial of the right of self-determination to millions of people, the retrogression in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights (prohibited by the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), the looting of natural resources and degradation of the environment by transnational corporations and their neocolonial schemes, the impunity enjoyed by politicians who engage in aggressive wars and by paramilitaries and private security companies, the devastating human rights impact of blockades by source countries and economic sanctions on the populations of Gaza, Syria, Iran and Venezuela, which have caused and continue to cause tens of thousands of deaths.

The politicization or as we now witness with concern, the“weaponization” of human rights is taking the world on a slippery slope. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)was adopted in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Malik, René Cassin and others spoke of human dignity and the inalienable rights of human beings, but article 29 of UDHR also reminded us that “everyone has duties to the community”. Indeed, what is most necessary is global education in human rights, including the human right to peace, education in empathy and solidarity with others – compassion, not predatory competition in “the human rights industry” on a “holier than thou” ticket.

Meanwhile, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should not be expected to act as a Human Rights NGO. This high office is not that of an unaccountable activist. It is neither that of a general that can blast any state at will nor is it a secretary that has to be subservient to the prevailing powers that be. That high official must recognize the reality of the power balance that he cannot fundamentally alter but must strive with obduracy and at times courage to stretch the international community towards more compliance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Most importantly this means the promotion of peace through conflict-prevention, good offices, impartial mediation, disarmament and yes, human rights. When all diplomacy fails and only then may “naming and shaming” become an option. But it is a default option and a sign of diplomatic failure.

In the experience of both of us as Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council, we have delivered on our mandates, not by openly challenging the authority of states or claiming to teach them lessons in human rights but by giving quiet diplomacy a chance . This is how one of us together with another Independent Expert facilitated a lifting of the sanctions on Sudan and this is how we are again currently engaging with protagonists of other conflicts. We have succeeded in confidence-building and contributed to the release of detainees. Persevering and discrete advocacy bears fruit.

We want a SG that puts values above politics in human rights matters and this is, in our opinion, what Guterres is doing. We have a Secretary General that can speak for truth and can at least listen to the narratives of the smaller and weaker states who have no access to the world media and whose action is distorted by biased reporting. Of course the murder of Khashoggi is a tragedy because beyond the tragic loss of a human life, it is the freedom of expression that is targeted. But Kenneth Roth does not mention the thousands of migrants whose lives end in the liquid graves of the oceans because saving them at sea is becoming a criminal offence in some « enlightened » nations. Are there different values attached to life according to the « exploitability » of its loss for political aims? We do not think that the Secretary General should go down along this road, even if this may cause disappointment in some quarters.

We would be really concerned if the Secretary general were to follow the path of selective indignation advocated implicitly by Mr Roth, because he would lose the moral leadership that we all, people of good will, can identify with across the world. THAT would be a major disappointment.

We welcome in Antonio Guterres a Secretary General who does not hesitate to call a spade a spade, a SG who promotes peace and does not stoke conflict, who challenges unilateral economic sanctions, who supports the Right to Development1 and places the Secretariat of the United Nations in its service. We welcome a SG who, together with the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, are engaging all of humanity in the noble task – day by day – of implementing civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights in larger freedom – and in good faith.

Idriss Jazairy Special Rapporteur, UN Human Rights Council
Alfred de Zayas Former Independent Expert, UN Human Rights Council

The post Human Rights Watch Disappoints on Human Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Amina Mohammed, right, the deputy secretary-general of the UN, signed a partnership agreement with the World Economic Forum, led by Borge Brende, left, to speed up progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general (behind Mohammed) and Klaus Schwab, the Forum’s chief executive, joined the ceremony in June.

By Barbara Crossette
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in trouble. United Nations officials are concerned and say so publicly. Secretary-General António Guterres joined in raising an alarm in mid-July when he introduced the most recent official UN report.

“It is abundantly clear that a much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals,” he wrote. Separately, a mammoth, 478-page study by independent experts drove the message home with extensive data to illustrate the crisis.

The experts’ report, a joint project of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Germany and Sustainable Development Solutions Network in New York, reveals some bleak findings: progress has been uneven at best, and in some cases has been reversed.

The study found that all nations were performing worst on addressing climate change, and no country has achieved a “green” rating. Many obstacles to success or the causes of reversals included tax havens, banking secrecy, poor labor standards, slavery and conflict.

Half the nations of the world are not on track to eradicate extreme poverty, a major — if not the primary — objective of the goals, the report found. Action on the SDGs, which were adopted in 2015 as the 2030 Agenda, are nearing their fifth year of implementation.

The most striking prediction of potential failure has, perhaps surprisingly, come from the top UN official in Asia. On July 18, the head of the Bangkok-based regional commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana of Indonesia, warned in a UN News radio interview while attending a high-level UN forum on development in New York that her region was on track to miss all the goals.

The area covers a vast swath of the globe, stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Pacific rim, home to 60 percent of the world’s 7.7 people. China, India and Indonesia alone account for nearly three billion people. Alisjahbana, a UN under secretary-general, said that Escap’s latest survey showed some evidence that the region is going backward, particularly in water resources and environmental sustainability.

At UN headquarters, one controversial and much-debated response to the crisis has been to team up in a “strategic partnership” with the World Economic Forum. This institution, founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German economist and engineer, is best known for its annual star-studded, invitation-only get-togethers in Davos, a Swiss mountain resort, which attracts government officials, business leaders and celebrities.

In announcing the partnership with the UN in a broad statement of intent with few details, the World Economic Forum claimed that it can “accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

It defines itself as “the international organization for public-private cooperation” and lists six areas where the UN partnership can boost the development goals: in financing the 2030 Agenda and in addressing climate change, health, digital cooperation, gender equality and education.

The Forum has been steadily expanding its international presence through convening “thought leaders” around the world on topical issues, to exchange ideas and build influential networks on economic, industrial and social initiatives.

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed signed the joint framework agreement for the UN with Borge Brende, the Forum’s president. Guterres and Klaus Schwab, the Forum’s executive chairman, were onlookers at the ceremony on June 13.

Mohammed, who led the formulation of the SDGs, has dominated the UN’s development agenda, sidelining the UN Development Program.

She was a strong proponent of creating the SDG package on the advice and consent of governments — bottom-up from the field, not top-down as the Millennium Development Goals were written in 2000 by international development specialists in and around the office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Through the new UN-World Economic Forum, Mohammed is increasing her international roles. She will be taking part in numerous Forum initiatives and will review the possibility of linking the UN’s resident development coordinators in national capitals with Forum programs.

The theory underlying the creation of the SDGs, with governments as the key decision-makers, was a gamble. Human rights received no significant attention in the SDGs, reflecting numerous governments’ attitudes or demands on these issues.

Rapid social changes and their place in development were ignored: the burgeoning international movement for LGBTQ recognition and rights, new diversity in what may constitute a “family” and the rising tide of activist women challenging male domination in politics and society, to name a few.

The SDGs are unwieldy, as critics have pointed out since the adoption of the 2030 agenda. The 17 goals are burdened with 169 targets and 230 indicators for measuring progress.

The strategic partnership with the World Economic Forum is not the first UN approach to the private sector.

Stephen Browne, the author of a book that will be published later this year, “UN Reform: 75 Years of Challenge and Change,” worked for more than 30 years in the UN development system, including in Africa and Asia.

He has observed the trajectory of UN/private-sector cooperation, which has had some positive effects, he writes in the new book. With the creation of the Global Compact (which Annan introduced at the World Economic Forum in 1999), “relations with the private sector took on another dimension.”

Browne writes: “The timing was germane. Globalization was already raising anxieties about its inclusiveness and it was appropriate for the UN to be shown conveying some concern to the private sector. . . . Galvanizing private sector interest in UN goals has had the positive effect of enhancing interest in and comprehension of the world body, helping to improve its public image in commercial circles.

The UN has also become better known to the private sector through the many GC local networks which have been established in all the major emerging economies.

“But the GC [Global Compact] has also carried risks for the UN, leaving it open to accusations of associating with companies indulging in corporate malpractice. . . . The Global Compact cannot wholly avoid ‘blue wash’ [the UN equivalent to whitewash in the eyes of critics] but it restricts the use of the UN logo and establishes conditions for the selection of commercial partners. . . . Companies are in a large majority on the GC Board and are the principal contributors to the trust fund which supports the GC secretariat. Critics have claimed that the GC serves as a platform for the promotion of corporate interests at the UN, and not the other way round as originally intended.”

Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-moon, who asked all UN agencies and projects to stress overarching human-rights criteria in their work and publications, created several more narrowly targeted partnerships in, for example, stressing women’s importance in development, advancing sustainable energy and improving nutrition.

“There is a sense, however,” Browne writes in his forthcoming book, “that the UN perceived these initiatives as ends in themselves: any partnership being better than none. There has never been a rigorous attempt to evaluate the UN’s [multistakeholder partnerships] and determine whether they actually add significant value. . . . It is not even clear to what extent they have succeeded in mobilizing additional funding.”

Partnerships with corporations and rich foundations have drawn sustained criticism from various civil society sectors, especially when companies are producing and promoting goods — foods, for example — that are considered to have harmful effects on children or the general population.

In a message from Geneva, where he lives, Browne described his persistent qualm about reliance on private-sector agreements and compacts: “My real contention,” he wrote, “is that the UN goes into partnerships as if they are a desirable end in themselves, without having determined what real net human development benefits have flowed from them, or could flow.”

The post As the SDGs Falter, the UN Turns to the Rich and Famous appeared first on PassBlue.

The post As SDGs Falter, the UN Turns to the Rich and Famous appeared first on Inter Press Service.

United Nations are warning of another drought in the Horn of Africa. Eight years ago famine left more than 260,000 dead. Pictured here is a child from drought-stricken southern Somalia who survived the long journey to an aid camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu during the 2011 famine. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

Humanitarian groups and the United Nations are warning of another drought in the Horn of Africa, threatening a repeat of the deadly dry spell and famine that claimed lives in Somalia and its neighbours eight years ago.

The British charity Oxfam said Thursday that more than 15 million people across drought-stricken parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia now needed handouts and warned of a hefty death toll unless donors stumped up cash fast.

“We cannot wait until images of malnourished people and dead animals fill our television screens. We need to act now to avert disaster,” said Lydia Zigomo, Oxfam’s regional director for the Horn of Africa.

According to an Oxfam report, donors were quick to dig into the pockets for a drought in 2017, helping to stave off a famine that could have been as deadly as the 2011 dry spell that left more than 260,000 dead, and many more hungry and sick.

But while the humanitarian response was well-funded back in 2017, donor governments have not raised enough cash yet this time around, added Zigomo, a human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe.

“We learned from the collective failures of the 2011 famine that we must respond swiftly and decisively to save lives. But the international commitment to ensure that it never happens again is turning to complacency,” said Zigomo.

“Once again, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are bearing the brunt.”

Halima Adan, Deputy Director of Save Somali Women and Children, said in the Oxfam report that the slowness of the response to the drought “mean[s] women’s burdens and vulnerability are increasing. In often hostile environments, local actors are best placed to reach those most in need, where emphasis must be on reaching women and children”.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has also sounded the alarm. Somalia’s recent April-June and October-December rainy seasons were drier than expected, worsening an arid spell that was already hitting farmers and herders across the turbulent country. 

Some 5.4 million Somalis were expected to be facing food shortages by September, and 2.2 million of them would need “immediate emergency assistance” UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch warned last month.

Donors had only handed over one fifth of the 711 million dollars that was requested in an appeal in May, added Baloch.

“The latest drought comes just as the country was starting to recover from a drought in 2016 to 2017 that led to the displacement inside Somalia of over a million people,” Baloch told reporters in Geneva.

“Many remain in a protracted state of displacement.” 

Last month, the European Union launched a 3.2 million euro scheme to manage water sources and agriculture and lessen the impact of drought, in cooperation with officials in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and the northern breakaway region of Somaliland.

“Water and land are critical resources for the Somali economy and people’s livelihoods but are also extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change,” said EU diplomat Hjordis D’Agostino Ogendo.

“While access to water needs to increase, needed infrastructures are to be designed and managed in a sustainable way.”

Somalia has seen little but drought, famine and conflict since dictator Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. The country’s weak, U.N.-backed government struggles to assert control over poor, rural areas under the Islamist militant group al Shabaab.

Droughts are getting worse globally, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than cyclones, earthquakes and other types of natural disaster, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

“With climate change amplifying the frequency and intensity of sudden disasters … and contributing to more gradual environmental phenomena, such as drought and rising sea levels, it is expected to drive even more displacement in the future,” added Baloch.

But U.N. experts say there is hope. By managing water sources, forests, livestock and farming, soil erosion can be reduced and degraded land can be revived, a process that could also help tackle climate change.

Related Articles

• Drought, Disease and War Hit Global Agriculture, Says U.N.
• Desertification ‘More Dangerous and More Insidious than Wars’

The post Horn of Africa Drought Threatens Re-run of Famines Past appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Seventy-two percent of trafficked victims in Canada are under the age of 25, and 51 percent of trafficked girls have been involved in the child welfare system. Courtesy: Dmitry Schemelev/Unsplash

By Nadia Kanji
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation has been steadily increasing in Canada. The most recent statistics indicate that 2016 had the highest recorded rate of human trafficking, with one police-reported incident for every 100,000 people in Canada. Despite these staggering numbers, reported cases make up just a small part of a larger, secretive industry where most incidents of sex trafficking fall under the radar.

The effects of this are relatable for Rhonelle Bruder who, after facing discrimination and bullying in her small hometown outside of Toronto, Ontario, decided to drop out of high school and move to the city.

When she ran out of money, she started living in youth shelters and was later on introduced to a man who would become her trafficker.

Bruder told IPS that initially he was kind and attentive, and provided her with a sense of belonging. When the conversation came up about how she could make money to get back on her feet, he told her she would be able to buy a condo and travel if she danced for just a couple of months.

“He was pitching a dream, a dream I was desperate to believe because the reality of my life was unbearable. I was willing to believe almost anything he said because he provided me with both a sense of belonging and was a protective figure in my life,” she said.

Once women are trafficked, pimps typically enforce a debt trap, telling girls and women that they need to pay off their debt to them for things like entering the country or paying for motels.

This was true for Timea Nagy, another survivor of this industry. At the young age of 20, while living in poverty in Hungary and facing a large amount of debt, Nagy responded to an advertisement in the newspaper to work as a babysitter in Canada. What looked like a legitimate recruitment agency was, in fact, a way to lure her into the sex industry against her consent. 

“We were starved, sleep deprived, and threatened constantly,” she states in her newly-released memoir Out of The Shadows. 

Nagy also states that she was frequently sexually assaulted until she managed to escape with the help of two people at the club where she worked. Her trafficker was eventually charged with sexual assault but was found not guilty.

Law Enforcement

Nagy, now a social advocate who works to bring about changes in the Canadian Justice System around human trafficking, says that law enforcement is more lax in Canada compared to the United States. Convicted traffickers in the U.S. are given 155-year sentences, whereas in Canada, traffickers will get an eight-year sentence at the most for the same crime. 

Human trafficking is currently the third-largest crime in the world.

Both Nagy and Bruder state that there is too much of a focus on law enforcement to deal with this issue, and not enough on preventative measures and reforming services in vulnerable communities.

“A lot of the focus is on helping survivors which is important. But we also need to be educating young people so that they aren’t vulnerable to traffickers,” Bruder told IPS. “Had there been someone to talk to, or if I had guidance, maybe I wouldn’t have left home. There need to be interventions in young people’s lives before they go down these paths.” 

Many pointed to the child welfare system as being one of the most targeted places for sex traffickers. 

“The child welfare system is a trafficker’s Costco,” Nagy told IPS. “They know where the group homes are and that children don’t feel welcome. No one reaches out to them the way pimps do.”

Traffickers typically wait outside of youth shelters and target them as soon as they age out of the child welfare system, knowing that they are often vulnerable. Seventy-two percent of trafficked victims in Canada are under the age of 25, and 51 percent of trafficked girls have been involved in the child welfare system.

Bruder added that social media sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, and MeetMe are new recruiting grounds for traffickers.

“Young people post everything about their lives online, so it’s not hard for traffickers to identify the most vulnerable victims and begin the grooming process,” she said.

First Nations Women and Girls

This is especially true for Indigenous youth in Canada, where there exists a colonial legacy of separating First Nations children from their families and placing them in residential schools to forcibly assimilate them into a settler culture. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged and apologised for this cultural genocide, but a closer look reveals that this has taken on a new form.

“There are currently more Indigenous children in the welfare system than there were in residential schools,” said Elana Finestone of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. “These are the intergenerational effects of residential schools, [basically] colonialism passed on through generations,” she told IPS.

Traffickers target First Nations youth in this way, by waiting outside shelters and nearby bus stops. Finestone added that First Nations’ communities are often over policed and under protected.

“If women report physical violence, the police might not take it seriously, assuming they are homeless and alone and no one cares.”

Canada’s National Inquiry to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women was released this past June and demonstrates the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Indigenous youth. In 2016, nearly half of the trafficking victims were Indigenous women and girls, although they make up only four percent of the population. 

“The focus needs to be on accessible services for Indigenous women and girls, with Indigenous-led community services,” Finestone said. “We cannot forget the feminisation and radicalisation of poverty [and how it intersects with this issue]. People need more choices to earn an income.”

Other efforts have focused on providing resources to front line service providers. The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking launched a multilingual hotline for trafficking victims across Canada this past May.   

The centre’s CEO Barbara Gosse said law enforcement is currently maxed out on this issue and under-resourced, which needs to change. The hotline, which is strictly confidential, was created to collect data on the incidence of human trafficking in Canada and assist victims and survivors with a localised response. 

Moving Forward

Through therapy, meditation, and mindfulness, Bruder says she is finally able to speak out about her experience. She is the founder of a grassroots organisation called the RISE Initiative which supports at-risk youth.

Nagy worked as a mobile care worker for six years with Walk With Me Canada Victim Services to help law enforcement approach victims. She left that position and is now focused on rehabilitation of survivors through a social enterprise called Timea’s Cause. She believes there needs to be a national trauma-informed employment program for survivors. 

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

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

Related Articles

• As Fathers Die, Kashmir’s Children Become Breadwinners
• West Africa’s Fine Line Between Cultural Norms and Child Trafficking
• Women and Girls “Preyed on as the Spoils of War”

The post Hidden in Plain Sight: Sex Trafficking in Canada appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post Hidden in Plain Sight: Sex Trafficking in Canada appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ambassador of Switzerland to Kenya Mr. Ralf Heckner (right) with UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya Mr. Siddharth Chatterjee sign the agreement for Switzerland’s support to strengthen the capacity of the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Kenya - Photo credit: UN Kenya

By PRESS RELEASE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 24 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The Government of Switzerland is pleased to announce support for the ongoing UN reforms implementation in Kenya through a two-year cost-sharing arrangement that will strengthen the capacity of the Resident Coordinator’s Office, with focus on coordination of the integrated cross-border initiative and the SDG Partnership Platform, expanding partnerships and diversifying financial modalities for realising the SDGs.

Switzerland is one of the strongest supporters of the push for reforms in the UN development system and we acknowledge the leadership of the Resident Coordinator system in helping UN Country Teams to become much more field-focused, well-coordinated and accountable,” said the Ambassador of Switzerland Mr. Ralf Heckner when he announced the support.

The United Nations Resident Coordinator Office supports the work of the UN country team in the UN’s strategic response to the Government’s development priorities as captured in the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF). The UNDAF describes how the UN country team will contribute to the achievement of development results based on a common country analysis and the UN comparative advantage.

The Resident Coordinators Office capability to spearhead UN reform in Kenya, continue lead and advance coordination, innovation and communication of results is essential for UN’s effective delivery of its total contribution to Kenya, the United Nation Development Assistance Framework, UNDAF, 2018-2022, signed by Government of Kenya and 23 UN Heads of Agencies, with an estimated budget close to USD 1.9 billion for the current 4-year period.

The Swiss Government support is in furtherance of UN member states’ desire to ensure that Resident Coordinator offices have sufficient capacities for coordination and strategic planning, economics, tailored policy support, results monitoring and evaluation, strategic partnerships and communications capacity.

Ralf Heckner
Ambassador of Switzerland

 

Reference from the UN

The Resident Coordinator’s Office leads, coordinate and incubate UN wide and joint actions on strategic policy, innovative approaches, expanded partnerships and diversification of investments, advancing the UN SG reform agenda and Kenya’s development strategies, at national and devolved levels, including a new partnership platform for expanding private sector and philanthropy in realizing SDGs and the Presidential Big 4 Agenda in Kenya. The platform under the Resident Coordinator coordinates efforts to diversify development financing tools, invest in SDG data development and nurture public, private partnerships, across the SDGs and UN agency mandates.

The Switzerland Government support will specifically strengthen the coordination of the ongoing cross-border initiatives between Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, whose objectives are to prevent and mitigate the impact of violent conflict in these borderland areas, and to promote economic development and greater resilience.

The United Nations Country Teams (UNCTs) in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, in cooperation with the Governments of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and with the financial support of EU and other development partners, have embarked on an innovative and area-based Cross-Border Integrated Programme for Sustainable Peace and Socio-Economic development and strengthening resilience of communities in Marsabit/Borana, and Omo/Turakana Clusters and Mandera Triangle. The geographical scope of the project is along three cross-border areas, including the Ethiopia and Kenya border, as well as Somalia. This encompasses the cross-border area of Southwest Ethiopia and Northwest Kenya (South Omo in Ethiopia, and Turkana in Kenya) and Kenya-Somalia-Ethiopia (encompassing Mandera, Gedo and Doolow). The project will also contribute to an already-existing UN-managed programme encompassing Marsabit County in Kenya and Borana and Dawa Zones in Ethiopia. The programme will also build on the experiences and lessons learned from the Marsabit/Borana Zone cluster and improve the design and implementation of intervention polices in the other two clusters.

Switzerland is also supporting the SDG Partnership Platform, a UNDAF flagship initiative that takes leadership on overarching facilitation, coordination and demonstration of how public private collaboration can effectively translate the SDGs into action on the ground and thereby guide and accelerate innovations, impact, maximize investments and optimize resource utilization in support of the realization of Kenya’s Vision2030 and the “Big Four”. Maximizing investments through innovative financing: support to raise required investments for the large-scale partnership initiatives through optimizing blended financing instruments and redirection of capital flows towards SDG implementation.

The post Switzerland announces support to UN Resident Coordinator function in Kenya to advance UN Reforms and contribution to national development priorities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nancy Lee is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) & Asad Sami is a research assistant at the Center for Global Development.

By Nancy Lee and Asad Sami
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

In a world of stagnating public aid, limited fiscal space, and rising public debt in low-income countries (LICs), can they realistically expect to rely more on private finance from foreigners? What does the evidence suggest?

Our new paper looks at recent cross-border private capital inflows to LICs. You might be surprised at what has happened since the global financial crisis.

Foreign private investment has caught up to foreign aid as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) for the median LIC.

For individual LICs, external private capital is an important and growing source of finance (Figure 1). The global financial crisis has not had a lasting, dampening effect on private inflows to LICs—quite the opposite.

The median ratio of inflows/GDP reached new highs—over 6 percent from 2011 on—with the exception of 2015 and 2016 when the downturn in global commodity prices and tightening US monetary policy pushed short-term capital inflows lower.

Foreign direct investment (FDI)—which makes up most of the inflows to LICs—has been stable and resilient throughout the post-crisis period. In contrast to higher median private capital inflows and tax revenue as a share of GDP, median foreign development aid has dropped by almost half as a share of GDP since 2006.

It’s not all about natural resources

Inflows are not all captured by resource-rich LICs (Figure 2). In 2017, more than half of capital inflows to LICs went to non-resource-rich LICs (Figure 2.1). Commodity prices appear to have influenced total inflows into both set of countries.
But zeroing in on FDI alone shows more volatility in flows to resource-rich LICs. FDI to non-resource-rich countries shows a steady upward march throughout the period (Figure 2.2).

The top 10 LIC recipients of FDI in 2017 are equally divided between resource-rich and non-resource-rich countries (Figure 3).

Policies make a difference

Investment climate policies have a stronger association with inflows in non-resource-rich than resource-rich LICs. Figure 4 shows a significant positive relationship in non-resource-rich LICs between capital inflow ratios and a broad measure of investors’ perceptions of regulatory quality that covers policies for taxes, trade, starting a business, price controls, competition, and labor markets.

The relationship is not significant for resource-rich LICs, where investment decisions are more likely driven by policies specific to resource extraction. Non-resource-rich countries are showing that their resource endowments no longer determine their destiny. Their policy choices matter.

China is a growing investor, not just a lender

We also see an interesting shift in the sources of FDI over a relatively short period of time. China more than doubled its stock of FDI in Africa between 2011 and 2016 (Figure 5)—and the amount is now closing in on that of large traditional direct investors like the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Much attention has been paid to China’s role as a creditor to Africa; its role as a rapidly growing direct investor has received less attention.

LICs need to think about how to spread the benefits of foreign investment more widely in the economy

Given the importance of private capital inflows in LIC economies, it is worth examining whether higher inflows are positively related to domestic private investment. Private inflows might spur complementary domestic private investment, as in the example of FDI by a foreign auto company catalyzing the growth of domestic parts manufacturers and auto sales companies.

We find that foreign and domestic private investment do not necessarily reinforce each other (Figure 6). That raises concerns. It contrasts with lower-middle-income countries where private foreign and domestic investment/GDP ratios are significantly and positively correlated.

The apparent lack of complementarity between foreign and domestic private investment may point to problems related to investment enclaves. Or, in cases where the state dominates LIC economies, the state could be crowding out local private investors.

Country per capita income is not a good predictor of private capital inflow ratios

Figure 7 shows no relation between median inflow ratios and median country income levels, meaning that as LIC move into higher income categories, it should not be presumed that private inflow ratios will also rise.

That has important implications for donor policies on graduation from concessional resources, which often assume private finance will replace declining aid.

In short….

Much of the news for LICs is encouraging, and some of it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. For LICs, private inflows are an important and growing source of finance. The inflows are not all captured by resource-rich LICs. Increasingly, policies, not just resource endowments, shape LIC destinations for foreign capital.

The relation between median capital inflows/GDP and median regulatory quality is significantly positive for non-resource-rich LICs. While many have focused on China’s role as a LIC creditor, China is also playing a key role in diversifying sources of FDI in Africa.

But there is also not-so-good news. More private foreign investment does not necessarily mean more private domestic investment in LICs. And private inflow ratios do not predictably rise with country per capita income. That means that donors reducing concessional finance as countries move out of LIC status should not assume private inflows will take up the slack.

The post Foreign Private Investment in Low-Income Countries: More Important Than You Think appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nancy Lee is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) & Asad Sami is a research assistant at the Center for Global Development.

The post Foreign Private Investment in Low-Income Countries: More Important Than You Think appeared first on Inter Press Service.

It can take anywhere between a few months and a year for individuals to learn permagarden techniques. Credit: Rebecca Root

By Rebecca Boot
KAMPALA, Uganda, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

As the rain hammers down, Aparo Dorin sits on the damp floor of her one-room hut in zone 12, block 5A, of the Palabek refugee camp in northern Uganda.

A young widower and caregiver to nine children — six of her own and three orphans she’s taken in — Dorin fled from South Sudan following attacks on her village.

While the others are at school, three of the children sit around Dorin, visibly weary. They stare at the rain and yawn almost in synchronization before succumbing to slumber.

Maybe it’s the rain or a lack of sleep in such cramped conditions that is leaving them lacking in energy at 2 p.m. Or perhaps it’s the food deficit.

While the World Food Programme (WFP) provides monthly food packages consisting of maize, oil, salt, sugar, and beans to the camp’s residents, portions are inadequate due to a lack of resources and the ever-rising number of new arrivals.

Toward the end of the month, supplies start to wane. If the next delivery is late — as it was this month — starvation looms. Dorin recalls a period of five days when the family had almost nothing to eat.

“Coordinating and ensuring that product is getting out when it should is really critical for the survival of everybody in the settlement,” said Robert Ackatia-Armah, head of nutrition at WFP Uganda, adding that malnutrition is an issue particularly in camps where new people, severely malnourished, continue to arrive.

Aneno Lily, just a few huts over, is in the same situation as Dorin. She travelled across the border 18 months ago with two small children after her husband was killed.

The prospect of returning home seems far away. South Sudan has been plagued with civil war — and food shortages — since 2013, forcing many to flee and making the situation at the border with Uganda one of the largest refugee crises in Africa.

Aneno Lily and her two children came to Uganda 18 months ago. Credit: Rebecca Root

Palabek camp alone — just one of 14 others in the area — hosts more than 38,000 refugees. The prevalence of acute malnutrition is higher than any of the region’s other camps at 12%. Anemia among those aged 6-59 months old sits at 46%.

Globally, malnutrition contributes to half of child deaths, said Mesfin Teklu Tessema, senior director of health at the International Rescue Committee. But the situation is exacerbated in humanitarian settings.

With limited funding, a lack of access to health care facilities in camps, and the short-term approach of humanitarian aid, the international community is yet to find a long-term solution to the issue.

Alongside many of the experts who spoke to Devex, Tessema stressed the need to find new solutions and innovative ways of tackling nutritional needs for those living in displacement camps.

Amid the mud and rain of Palabek camp, one innovative approach is already proving to be a lifeline for many.

“Permagardens” are 30 by 30 meter plots of land, or minigardens, that are allocated per household and managed by refugees themselves following training.

Introduced to the camp in 2017 by African Women Rising — a nonprofit organization that works to empower women after war — the gardens are cultivated in a way that maximizes the amount of crops, trees, and plants grown throughout that site.

The idea is to have a small, intensive garden that can produce a lot of food, said Linda Eckerbom Cole, executive director at AWR, explaining that the permagardens need little space but are only present in the blocks and zones that AWR have been assigned to work in.

Even in the dry season when the harvest might not be as strong, Dorin said she has been able to dry the produce out and store it. Credit: Rebecca Root

Permaculture — a type of agricultural ecosystem designed to be sustainable and self-sufficient — and biodynamic farming techniques that focus on adding vitality to the produce enable food to grow in a 12 to 14-day cycle.

The approach was designed by Eckerbom Cole’s husband, Thomas Cole, a senior technical adviser at AWR who specializes in this type of agriculture.

It was originally part of their work with local residents to address post-conflict recovery, but AWR adapted it to additionally focus on the nutritional needs of refugees as they began arriving at Palabek two years ago.

The Ugandan government has a decades-old policy of allotting a small plot of land to refugees, which they typically use to build a home or attempt to farm — but traditional farming requires more space.

“Refugees don’t have a lot of space, so it’s important that the space they do have is used as effectively as possible,” Eckerbom Cole said.

The first step in the program is to show those selected to take part — determined by levels of vulnerability within AWR’s designated zone — what a permagarden looks like, before putting the group through three phases of training: basic permagardening techniques, pest control, and post-harvest handling that demonstrate how to use the natural resources to yield food.

“Food is a huge issue in the camps, so one of the main things we’re looking at is helping refugees produce more food and providing them with skills they can bring with them when they go back to South Sudan,” Eckerbom Cole said.

“We look at water and soil conservation to make sure the gardens use the rainfall as much as possible.”

This means that while the rain has the family cooped up inside, it marks much-needed nourishment for the okra, onions, and peas emerging from the soil.

The total cost of developing, training, and supporting a permagarden is $85. AWR’s community mobilizers continue to visit and support the 2,000 households with permagardens over a period of three years to ensure they remain in optimum condition.

Each of the families is then able to harvest greens three to four times a week, as well as a variety of other fruits and vegetables. The gardens aren’t about growing calories, but provide a range of micronutrients and vitamins that aren’t found in the food aid rations they receive each month.

“One of the main things we’re looking at is helping refugees produce more food and providing them with skills they can bring with them when they go back to South Sudan,” says Linda Eckerbom Cole, executive director at African Women Rising

Even in the dry season when the harvest might not be as strong, Dorin said she has been able to dry the produce out and store it. She’s also able to sell anything that’s left over at the camp’s market, giving her some money to buy other essential items.

AWR plans to scale the project and has already been approached by other agencies, including the United Nations, looking to replicate the model.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is promoting the permagarden approach across many of the countries in its Food for Peace portfolio, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Nepal.

The Danish Refugee Council is also implementing it in some of the other West Nile refugee camps in Uganda, seeing it as a real solution to malnutrition in the face of ever-changing climate conditions and fluctuating food aid.

The most important thing to recognize is that teaching the skills is not a quick process, Eckerbom Cole said, explaining that it can take anywhere between a few months and a year for individuals to learn the techniques and implement them successfully.

“Even though all these people are farmers, this is a completely new way of farming, and if you want it to be successful, you have to give it the time it needs,” she said.

There can also be challenges in mobilizing participants who often have to spend days walking back and forth to the distribution center waiting to collect their food package for the month.

Ackatia-Armah explained that such programming also requires a multisectoral approach, and the involvement of different partners in the areas of water, sanitation, livelihoods, agriculture, and nutrition.

“These have different donors and planning calendars and it’s been difficult to bring them together,” he said, but it is being realized under the office of the Prime Minister which leads the coordination of all activities in refugee settlements.

While Lily and Dorin hope to one day return home, dejected by the poor prospects of peace, they say they expect to stay put for the foreseeable future.

But Lily, who sits beside her thriving garden watching the rainwater trickle into the beds, explained that while they had previously been struggling to find vegetables, she has at least found relief in watching the health of her family improve.

To learn more, visit African Women Rising.

The post Malnutrition in Humanitarian Settings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Rebecca Root is a Reporter and Editorial Associate at Devex

The post Malnutrition in Humanitarian Settings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

BANGLADESH: Dose of Vigilance Helps Manage HIV, AIDS DHAKA, Nov 3, 2010 (IPS) - It is one of the poorest countries in the world, has a low literacy rate, and is next door to at least two countries that have a considerable portion of their respective populations with HIV and AIDS. Yet even having a large migrant population has not made Bangladesh a hot spot for HIV and AIDS. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53443

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2019 (IPS)

The global fight against Aids is floundering amid cash shortfalls and spikes in new HIV infections among marginalised groups in developing regions, Gunilla Carlsson, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said Tuesday.

Speaking with reporters in New York, Carlsson, head of U.N.-led efforts against the pandemic, warned that gains over recent years were under threat, particularly in parts of eastern Europe, central Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

“We are at a precarious point in the response to HIV. Some countries are making impressive gains, while others are experiencing rises in new HIV infections and even Aids-related deaths,” Carlsson said at U.N. headquarters.

“Annual gains are getting smaller and the pace of progress is slowing down.”

More than half of all new HIV infections in 2018 were among drug users, sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these groups, said Carlsson.

Many of those at-risk groups do not get the treatment they need, she added.

A UNAIDS report released Jul. 16 noted “worrying increases” in these new infections in eastern Europe and central Asia, where HIV cases rose by 29 percent, as well as in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.

Global funding for the fight against Aids dropped off markedly in 2018 — by nearly one billion dollars— as international pledges dried up and domestic investments did not grow fast enough to fill the gap.

Only around 19 billion dollars was available for the Aids response in 2018 — some 7.2 billion dollars short of the total 26.2 billion needed by 2020, said Carlsson, describing a “deeply concerning” development.

“Ending Aids will not be possible unless we are investing adequately and smartly, focussing on people first, not diseases, and creating roadmaps for people who are left behind,” said Carlsson.

Some 770,000 people died of Aids globally in 2018 and almost 38 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it. The disease is transmitted via infected blood and other bodily fluids.

HIV cannot be cured but the infection can be kept in check by Aids drugs known as antiretrovirals. Around 23.3 million of the 37.9 million people with HIV globally currently get the Aids drugs they need.

Around 1.7 million people were newly infected in 2018, a 16 percent decline since 2010, driven mostly by steady gains in parts of eastern and southern Africa, according to the latest UNAIDS report.

South Africa, for example, has cut new HIV infections by more than 40 percent and Aids-related deaths by around the same proportion since 2010. But the report warns that the disease is still rife in other parts of eastern and southern Africa.

Earlier this month, the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that efforts to fight Aids were “stagnating” and that many of the disease-related deaths could be prevented if better care was available.

Dr. Gilles Van Cutsem, head of MSF’s team on HIV and Aids, said that many HIV sufferers turned up at clinics in Congo, Guinea, Malawi and elsewhere with advanced symptoms of a condition that their immune system was unable to fight.

“People arrive very ill, often with severe opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, or Kaposi’s sarcoma,” Van Cutsem said in a statement.

“When they arrive, sometimes it’s too late to save them. They might not have been diagnosed on time or they failed to get access to lifesaving treatment.”

Related Articles

• US Leads Donor Funding to Fight HIV/AIDS Amidst Overall Decline
• US Defunds UNFPA for Third Consecutive Year– on Misconceived Assumptions

The post Global Aids Fight Running out of Steam, U.N. says appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

By IPS World Desk
GUTHAIL, JAMALPUR, Bangladesh, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

Floods are quite common in Bangladesh – blame it on climate change, the control and discharge of river waters at source or poor disaster management. The damage to property to livestock is colossal.

These pictures sent by Dewanganj (Jamalpur) based journalist Tarek Mahmud explain it all. Some of the government offices, schools, hospitals and large areas of farm land are under water. The damage to property & chattel is estimated to be in millions of Taka (Bangladesh currency). Rehabilitation of these displaced people will take months.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

 

The post Floods Havoc in North Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lyndsay Walsh
DUBLIN, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

Do you prefer to hear good news or bad news first? I will begin by giving you the (unsurprisingly) bad news. Today’s world is an unequal place. Standards of living vary massively both between and within countries.

To narrow it down to its most blunt statistic, if you were born in Hong Kong your life expectancy is nearly double that of someone born in Swaziland, 84 and 49 years, respectively.

The good news is that in recent decades many global indicators of living standards have improved. The Millennium Development Goals, a group of targets aimed at reducing poverty and raising living standards, were largely successful.

Those living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, the proportion of undernourished people in low-income countries fell from 23 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2014, and worldwide primary school enrollment has reached 90 percent.

These statistics offer hope for a trajectory toward an equal world. There is more bad news, however, in that climate change threatens to undo this progress and create further inequity.

Climate change will be the definitive challenge of the 21st century, yet it is largely pushed aside in discussions of policies to address inequality. If warming is not limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels the results could nullify most, if not all, the progress made in reducing inequality.

Climate change will further magnify existing inequality as low- and middle-income countries will bear the brunt of its impact. As rainfall patterns become more unpredictable, sea levels rise, and storms become more intense, the expected impacts on low-income countries are severe.

An integral problem of advocating for action is that people perceive climate change as a distant threat, but its ramifications are already being witnessed in many parts of the world. Cities such as Dakar in Senegal are flooded annually.

The semi-arid Sahel region is encroaching on once fertile farmland. California was subjected to the deadliest wildfires in its history last year, with record amounts of land burnt to ash.

Climate change is an exemplary illustration of inequality in the 21st century. The United States is responsible for 26 percent of global cumulative greenhouse gases, and Europe is responsible for an additional 22 percent. In contrast, the entire continent of Africa contributes just 3.8 percent.

While high-income countries are responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, it is the low-income countries that will face the repercussions. Many low-income countries are located in the tropics, which are far more vulnerable to rising temperatures than high-income temperate countries such as the United Kingdom.

Entire agricultural systems will be lost, famines will hit numerous areas, and diseases such as malaria are predicted to become more widespread. Already we are seeing pastoral farmers in Chad struggling to survive due to a lengthening dry season. The largest lake in the country, Lake Chad, has shrunk 90 percent in the past 50 years.

Nevertheless, this division is not solely between high- and low-income countries, it will also prevail within countries. Last year Harvard researchers coined the term “climate gentrification”: properties at higher elevations in inland Miami were becoming more expensive due to flooding risks associated with climate change. Again, it will be those who cannot afford to buy their way to safety who are left in at-risk areas.

Along with creating new problems for low-income countries, climate change will exacerbate existing inequalities. Low-income countries do not have the fiscal capacity to deal with severe disruptions to infrastructure. Increased flooding will lead to the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery due to damaged water provisioning services.

Cases of malnutrition are expected to rise dramatically as droughts in tropical areas result in lower crop yields. In countries such as Madagascar, where over 70 percent of the population are rural farmers, this will be devastating.

Due to the complex and far-reaching nature of climate change, the knock-on effects for low-income countries are multitudinous. It will make receiving a quality education more difficult, intensify existing gender inequalities, provoke conflict, destabilize governments, and force people to leave their homelands. These countries do not have the funds or support to deal with the scale of the problems climate change will bring.

“Climate migrant” is a term we will hear frequently; the World Bank predicts there may be up to 140 million such migrants by 2050. In Europe, the media often refer to refugees seeking security as a “crisis,” yet 84 percent of refugees are currently within low-income countries, and people in poorer countries are roughly five times more likely to be displaced by weather events.

This is yet another burden low-income countries are left to deal with. Even high-income countries threatened by climate change are far more able to deal with its consequences. Shanghai, one of the cities most vulnerable to flooding, has been building flood-defense infrastructure since 2012; one such project is expected to cost £5 billion. Low-income countries do not have such capital to invest.

This brings us to the main question: what can be done to tackle the problem? Many things, actually. The two main aspects of dealing with climate change are mitigation and adaptation. As high-income countries produce the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, the onus is on us to minimize them.

It seems that climate scientists are finally winning the battle of awareness, as a recent poll found that 73 percent of Americans now believe that climate change is occurring, a record high. Furthermore, 72 percent said it was personally important to them.

This is significant because it puts the onus on governments and companies to act in citizens’ interests. Mobilizing the public to put pressure on these groups will be the true turning point, and there are already signs of this happening.

Over 70,000 people marched in Brussels in January demanding better climate action from the government, and citizen groups all over the world—including in Ireland, where I am writing this—are taking their governments to court over lack of action on climate change.

The key point is that minimizing emissions sooner rather than later is an imperative as it is ultimately the cheaper and easier option. While there has been a focus on individual actions in reducing emissions, such as choosing low-emission transportation and buying seasonal produce, it is about time that governments and the private sector stepped up to the plate.

The 2017 Carbon Majors Report found that just 100 companies have produced over 70 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. This statistic gives us an opening to create proper, systemic change through demanding better practice from these corporations.

The private sector has a great ability to bring about lasting change not only by mitigating climate change but also by bringing people out of poverty through employment. As many countries turn toward nationalism, the private sector is one of only a few candidates in the search for a climate leader.

That said, climate change will not be mitigated without governmental cooperation through environmental policies such as carbon taxes, national adaptation plans, and participation in multilateral treaties.

Economic activity in the 20th century was largely based on fossil fuels, and carbon taxation will speed up development and adoption of alternative fuel sources. Climate change is a transboundary issue and requires global collaboration to both mitigate its effects and assist lower-income countries with adaptation.

Mitigation and adaptation are not a silver bullet for tackling existing inequalities across the world. This will be achieved through policymaking and reform of tax systems in conjunction with tackling climate change.

However, I chose to write about climate change as I found it was largely sidelined in discussions surrounding inequality. Until climate change is mitigated and vulnerable countries are helped to adapt to its impacts, no true progress can be made in the quest to tackle inequality.

If inequality is truly an issue that high-income countries care about, as they claim to, then they will not let climate change continue on its current pathway to devastating low-income populations.

At present we are certainly not on track to limit atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of this century. We are not even on track to limit it to 3 degrees. According to current estimates we will reach 4 degrees warming by 2100, a year that babies born today in places like Hong Kong (but not Swaziland) will live to see.

With young activists like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old who gave an impassioned climate advocacy speech at Davos, I have hope that future leaders will act on this issue, but we cannot afford to wait for them. We need climate leaders now.

*Following a global essay competition for graduate students on how best to tackle inequality, Lyndsay Walsh’s submission was selected as the winner. Her essay will also appear in the December print issue of Finance & Development (F&D), which will focus on climate change. F&D is a publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The post How Best to Tackle Inequality in the 21st Century? Start with Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lyndsay Walsh of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, is currently studying for a Master's in development practice, and received her Bachelor’s degree in natural sciences with a focus on zoology*

The post How Best to Tackle Inequality in the 21st Century? Start with Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

International financial institutions (IFIs) have typically imposed wide-ranging policy reforms – called ‘conditionalities’ – in exchange for country governments to secure access to financial assistance.

While IFIs may demand anti-corruption policies, other IFI policy conditionalities, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), can create new rentier opportunities, undermining government will and capacity to curb corruption.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

IMF cure worse than disease?
Statistical analysis of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities on 141 developing countries from 1982 to 2014 has found that requiring privatization of SOEs has undermined anti-corruption efforts.

The study finds that IMF conditions requiring SOE privatization undermine anti-corruption efforts, both in the short-term, i.e., up to five years, and especially in the longer-term. Other IMF interventions have not effectively deterred corruption, which has clearly risen following privatization, especially in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

Meanwhile, studies of IMF policy paradigms after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, suggest changes in rhetoric, rather than actual policies, as IFI leaderships have many reasons to maintain old practices.

IFI imposed reforms typically require governments to cut public expenditure, privatize state-owned assets, liberalize markets and deregulate prices, ostensibly to foster economic growth, promote ‘good governance’ and counter corruption.

Despite weak and ambiguous evidence, IFI advisers presume that market-liberalizing reforms will counter corruption. IFIs seek to privatize SOEs, presuming they have ‘governance structures’ liable to ‘political interference’ undermining development.

While some claim that free markets are associated with less corruption, others argue that SOE privatization has induced corruption, e.g., those with good connections successfully appropriate former SOEs, often for ‘asset-stripping’ and other such ends.

Powerful IFIs successfully promoted their reform agendas in developing countries when governments lacked the capacity to resist. IFIs thus served as agents of policy reforms desired by powerful governments, rather than those needed for national progress.

IFIs pushed for privatization, without considering conditions needed to avoid abuse. They transplanted ‘regulatory innovations’ from the developed world onto developing countries, often regardless of local contexts. Hence, the IFIs rarely facilitated, let alone required responsible regulation.

Insider information for corruption
Privatization induces corruption by creating new rents and unleashing processes that undermine anti-corruption efforts. While privatization generates rents to be captured, especially by ‘insiders’, rent-seeking undermines safeguards against such abuses.

Different modes of privatizing state-owned assets create economic rents, e.g., by putting public assets up for sale to be more easily appropriated privately. Corruption opportunities arise from privatization processes, especially from the sale of public assets, especially when managed by former SOE managers.

Information advantages enable rent appropriation, encouraging corruption to secure advantage. Outsiders have less access to information than ‘insiders’, such as managers and public officials, who use it to enrich themselves.

Greedy managers may fake accounts and undervalue firms in order to buy them cheap. Bidders may also try to influence key decisionmakers to secure rents from privatized SOEs.

Undermining anti-corruption
Once ‘privateers’ have acquired assets, they try to protect these acquisitions and related incomes, and to avoid detection and punishment, e.g., by bribing key public officials to get favourable treatment.

Privatization tends to weaken anti-corruption efforts as institutions deteriorate. Even if most people are not corrupt, such efforts weaken institutions, and consequently enable corruption. Thus, corruption associated with privatization reduces anti-corruption efforts.

Evidence on conditionalities said to reduce corruption is less conclusive. While they may reduce corruption in the short term, such reforms are likely to be detrimental in the longer term.

‘Insiders’ use their advantages to acquire newly privatized state assets, seizing new opportunities engendered by privatization. As favourable treatment in exchange for inducements to decision-makers is illegal, those involved cover up their corrupt activities.

Privatization generates massive rents that increase corruption, while motivating rentiers and rent-seekers to weaken state capacity. The resulting vicious circle of weakening institutions and increasing corruption is difficult to end.

No neoliberal solutions
IMF conditions seeking to eliminate rents are rarely effective because governments and insiders find other ways for the influential to capture rents. Reduced government capacities and capabilities also compromise the efficacy of anti-corruption efforts, even if serious.

Privatization thus undermines anti-corruption efforts, while privatization and market liberalization do not reduce corruption, as claimed by neoliberals. Thus, reduction of the state role in the economy, market liberalization and privatization have worsened corruption.

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

The post Privatization Increases Corruption appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

Roberto Savio

A survey in Brazil found out that 7% of citizens believe that the earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilisations) Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who seem likely to elect Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favour of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win election, US president Donald Trump has made racism one of his banners and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euro a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87% of people need 90% of their salary just to rent a house.

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratise communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda which accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to lower the level of news from the level of 22 years to that of 17 years. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22% (in the United States it is now 10.5%). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40% of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13% of libraries have closed in the last ten years. A very popular transmission in Spain was ”59 seconds” which saw a number of people debate round a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over forty. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83% of Internet users (80% under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All US newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (ten million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take Trump’s tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80% of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, and the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last US elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube”, where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production, but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach 40 trillion dollars. Jeff Bezos ‘s divorce gave his wife 38 billion dollars. That is equal to the annual average income of 20,000 dollars of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, accepted riding a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at individual level, at state level and at international level. It took twenty years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent 12 trillion dollars (the United States alone, 4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of 800 billion dollars in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defence of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who has made able Jeff Bezos to give 38 billion dollars to a former wife? Who has elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarisation, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Today, there many “points of light“ appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilisation in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

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

The post The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times appeared first on Inter Press Service.