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By Fergus Watt and Richard Ponzio
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Despite the polarization and stasis that characterizes so much of the present politics at the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres is betting that the 75th anniversary of the organization, in 2020, will provide an opportunity for the international community to begin to address the “crisis in multilateralism,” and to shape a more robust and effective organization.

On 14 June, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a “modalities resolution” (A/RES/73/299, titled “Commemoration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations”) setting out the framework and practical arrangements for actions by various UN stakeholders to mark the UN’s 75th anniversary.

A growing civil society network, the “UN2020 Initiative,” has campaigned since early 2017 for using this anniversary as an opportunity to involve governments and other UN stakeholders in a process of stocktaking, review and consideration of measures to strengthen the organization.

And prospects for a stand-alone resolution for UN75 gained momentum earlier this year with the active encouragement from the President of the General Assembly, Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador.

The resolution identifies the theme for the 75th anniversary (which is meant to guide all activities, meetings and conferences organized by the United Nations in 2020) as “The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism.”

A Leaders Summit is scheduled for 21 September 2020, while “meaningful observance ceremonies” took place on June 26 (the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Charter) and October 24 (UN Day). A youth plenary will also be organized in the spring of 2020.

An outcome document will be adopted at the Leaders’ Summit. Arrangements for the negotiation of this political declaration are to be determined by the President of the 74th session of the General Assembly, Ambassador Tijani Muhammad-Bande of Nigeria.

Against this backdrop, the Secretary-General has appointed a Special Adviser for 75th Anniversary Preparations, highly-regarded Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond of Chile, who had previously served in the S-G’s Executive Office as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination.

At a meeting June 5-7 hosted by the Washington-based Stimson Center, along with the Global Challenges Foundation, One Earth Future Foundation, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office, Hochschild shared with civil society representatives a draft of the Secretary-General’s ambitious plans for a “UN@75” program of activities.

The Secretariat aims to stimulate a “global dialogue” at the local, national and international levels on “The future we want, the United Nations we need.”

From “classrooms to board rooms, village houses to houses of parliament,” the intention is to employ a mix of intellectual, communications, media, and engagement tools in order to catalyze widespread public engagement on the role of the UN system in addressing global challenges.

All 130 UN Resident Coordinators will be involved, as will UN regional commissions and many UN agencies and programmes. Young people in particular are expected to be drivers of this worldwide dialogue.

The planning document for UN@75 recognizes that an unprecedented confluence of existential threats, systems changes and new actors, including the role of mega-corporations and tech giants, present new governance challenges.

These changes “are occurring faster than public institutions ability to adapt or regulate.” The document calls for “a reflection on successes as well as failures, inviting transformational thinking about the potentially momentous paradigm shifts for how the multilateral system as a whole confronts global challenges.”

More than a simple commemoration, these proposals go far beyond what was organized for the UN’s 70th anniversary in 2015.

Considering the current levels of international hostility and indifference to the very idea of international cooperation and a rules-based world order, the commitment of Mr. Guterres to an ambitious UN@75 program, though commendable, surely faces long odds. Many public officials in similar circumstances would be more risk-averse.

Is there a public appetite for such a far-reaching worldwide dialogue about the United Nations and global governance? We shall see.

The post Will “UN@75” Revive Multilateralism? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Fergus Watt coordinates the civil society-led UN2020 Initiative. Richard Ponzio directs the Just Security 2020 program at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C.

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Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

By Frank Bainimarama
SUVA, Fiji, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

SUVA, Fiji, 27 June 2019 (IPS) — Are the most climate-vulnerable nations of the world right to demand that developed and major economies commit to carbon neutrality by 2050?

Should the poorest nations of the world insist that the “haves” put their significant economic and political resources behind aggressive efforts to combat climate change?

Frank Bainimarama

Do we have the right to expect political leaders to show the courage, vision and will to lead their citizens to responsible action to stem the growth of global warming?

The answer is yes, of course, and the reason is simple: We cannot save the world from climate catastrophe if the largest emitters of CO2 don’t step up now.

And the most vulnerable countries of the world cannot adequately reduce our emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change without economic support from the developed world that is flexible and accessible. Governments, private financial institutions, international financial institutions and foundations must be a part of the solution.

Last week, European Union leaders missed a critical opportunity to develop a more aggressive collective mitigation target by 2020 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Perhaps more importantly, they had a chance to lead the world to carbon neutrality, but they failed to step up at the critical moment.

Their failure was a bitter disappointment to countries, like Fiji, that are doing everything within our means to achieve those same results. Island nations are determined to lead by example.

We have laid the ground work, but unfortunately, our efforts, strenuous though they may be, will not be enough alone. We need developed economies—and advanced developing economies—to make the same strenuous effort.

We are at a critical juncture in this fight, at a point where we know we can still act globally to change the course of human-made climate change or fail to act and face the reverberations of climate, environmental and biodiversity crises for generations to come.

The political and scientific ground has shifted under our feet since we signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. Governments have changed, and populists and climate sceptics have gained ascendancy in some countries.

Then, last October, the IPCC released its Special Report on 1.5 Degrees, which made it clear that time is closing in on us; we simply don’t have the time to turn the tide that we thought we had in Paris.

It was a struggle then for small island states and members of the High Ambition Coalition to win the inclusion in the Paris Agreement of an aspiration to limit global warming to of 1.5 degrees, when the official goal of the agreement was 2 degrees.

Now we find that we are less than 12 years away from dramatic, far-reaching, and possibly irreversible consequences of surpassing 1.5 degrees of warming if we keep going the way we’re going. We simply cannot miss opportunities like the one the EU missed last week, and we must embrace all possible solutions.

There are three things we need to focus on now. First, we need to reduce the amount of carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere. This means that countries need to set much more ambitious targets in their national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement that lead to rapid decarbonisation of high-emitting industries and sectors.

I am encouraged to see that the number of countries that are stepping up to the 2020 deadline is growing, but I’m both proud and concerned that most of these are from the developing world. The names of many developed and major economies are still notably absent from this list.

Second, we need to remove more of the carbon that has already been emitted into the atmosphere and this means massively increasing our investment in nature — developing and implementing natural climate solutions that can be implemented worldwide.

Nature has the incredible power to remove carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere, but we are currently failing to protect this vital resource. We will not be able to achieve 1.5 degrees without dramatically recalibrating how we look after and restore our natural landscapes. Under the leadership of China and New Zealand, we are expecting a big step forward on this front at the upcoming UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit (in New York on September 23 this year).

And, third, developed and major economies should increase the amount — and rapidly deploy — climate finance for developing countries to allow us to achieve and increase our mitigation targets, as well as urgently build our resilience to the impacts of climate change. This means at least $100 billion a year by 2020.

The irony of the EU’s failure of will is that so many European leaders understand fully what is at stake, and many individual European countries—and non-European countries—are beginning to take responsible action.

Still, it is a sad fact that the Marshall Islands and Fiji—two of the most marginal carbon emitters in the world—are the only two countries to have officially submitted long-term plans to the UN for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Paris Agreement committed signatories to achieving net carbon neutrality by the second half of the 21st century, but it was unclear what was intended by the term “second half.”

We know now that the deadline must be the beginning of the second half, not the end. Fifty years of ambiguous wiggle room, 50 years of hesitancy, and 50 years of procrastination will lead us to the catastrophe we fear.

Setting a date for achieving net-zero, matched with boosting short-term action, is critical and that’s where national leadership comes in. It gives all the relevant stakeholders, government departments, businesses and citizens the signal they need to start making concerted changes.

If developing countries can develop robust emissions-reduction targets that truly drive us toward the goals we agreed to in Paris, then other nations can, too.

The EU, and the rest of the developed world, can still change course. The UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September will provide a forum for every country to lay out their climate ambitions before the world and be judged.

I urge developed countries to come to New York with the most aggressive and most ambitious plans they can devise. In Paris, the small island states used our moral weight to push the world to accept the aspiration of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. In New York, vulnerable developing countries must do the same.

We cannot accept that countries with the means to do more will sit on the sidelines and do less.

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Excerpt:

Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

The post We Cannot Save the World from Climate Catastrophe if Largest Emitters of CO2 Don’t Step up Now appeared first on Inter Press Service.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. Courtesy: United Nations Photo/Manuel Elias

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was deliberately killed at the hands of state actors and journalists around the world are increasingly seeing the same fate, said a United Nations expert.

After a six-month investigation, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Khashoggi.

“This killing was a result of an elaborate mission involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned, and endorsed by high level officials and it was premeditated,” she said to the Human Rights Council.

“The right to life is a right at the core of international human rights protection. If the international community ignores targeted killing designed to silence peaceful expression, it puts at risk the protection on which all human rights depend,” Callamard added.

Since it occurred at a consulate in Turkey, the killing cannot be considered a “domestic matter” and violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as well as the prohibition against extraterritorial use of force in times of peace, making it an international crime.

Callamard pointed to the need to establish a U.N. criminal investigation to ensure the delivery of justice, noting that the inquiry undertaken by the Saudi authorities was woefully inadequate.

“The investigation carried out by the Saudi authorities has failed to address the chain of command. It is not only a question of who ordered the killing—criminal responsibility can be derived from direct or indirect incitement or from the failure to prevent and protect,” she said.

The government of Saudi Arabia continues to deny its involvement and rejected the new report, stating that it is based on “prejudice and pre-fabricated ideas.”

While the killing of Khashoggi was brutal, his story is just one of many cases of targeting journalists around the world.

“This execution is emblematic of a global pattern of targeted killings of journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists,” Callamard said.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 80 journalists were killed, 348 imprisoned, and 60 held hostage in 2018, reflecting an unprecedented level of violence against journalists.

Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist who investigated cartels, was killed in May 2017.

Just days after, Valdez’s colleagues and widow began receiving messages infected with a spyware known as Pegasus, which was bought by the Mexican government from Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group.

According to the NSO Group, Pegasus is only sold to governments for the purposes of fighting terror and investigating crime. However, digital watchdog Citizen Lab found 24 questionable targets, including some of Mexico’s most prominent journalists.

The programme has also been used elsewhere by repressive governments such as the United Arab Emirates which targeted and imprisoned human rights defender Ahmed Manor for his social media posts. In Canada, critic of the Saudi regime and friend of Khashoggi, Omar Abdulaziz, was also infected with the spyware by a Saudi Arabia-linked operator.

While a suspect was arrested in 2018 for the murder of Valdez, it is unclear if they are the main culprit.

“The arrest of a suspect in the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas is a welcome step, but we urge the Mexican authorities to identify all those responsible for the killing, including the mastermind,” said Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen.

“Too often, investigations into the murders of Mexican journalists stall after low-level suspects have been arrested, which allows impunity to thrive,” he added.

The Mexican government also launched an investigation into the misuse of such surveillance technology, but as yet no one has been punished.

Callamard urged Saudi Arabia to release those imprisoned for their opinion or belief and to undertake an in-depth assessment of the institutions “that made the crime against Mr. Khashoggi possible.”

She also stressed the need to strengthen laws to protect individuals against targeted killings, including the sharing of information if an individual is at risk.

“There are clear signs of increasingly aggressive tactics by States and non-State actors to permanently silence those who criticise them. The international community must take stock of these hostile environments, it must take stock of the findings of my investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi,” Callamard told the Human Rights Council.

“Denunciations are important, but they are no longer sufficient. The international community must demand accountability and non repetition. It must strengthen protections and prevention urgently. Silence and inaction will only cause further injustice and global instability,” she added.

Related Articles

• Don’t “Whitewash” Khashoggi’s Murder
• Truth Never Dies: Justice for Slain Journalists
• “A Year of Shame” for Middle East and North Africa

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By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The feeling in the air at a recent meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was one of compassion and benevolence.

The focus was on children as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), a subject that everyone at the panel discussion argued is delicate and politically sensitive.

Alexandra Martins, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer at the UNODC, pointed out that “”Nobody is a lost cause, and there is always a possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate children from these groups.”

Two of her words were repeated by almost every speaker: “rehabilitate and reintegrate”.

The meeting was meant to discuss the release of the UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.

The roadmap’s main goal is to provide UN’s 193 Member States with guidance on how to treat children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups. It argues for an approach to rehabilitate those associated with or accused of being FTFs, and to reintegrate them back into their communities.

Though many of the children accused have taken part in terrorism, the UNODC advocates for a change in the way Member States handle the children.

Speaking during the release of the handbook, Dr. Jehangir Khan, Director at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism/Counter Terrorism Centre (UN OCT/CCT), said “children must be seen first and foremost as victims.”

The roadmap was released alongside 4 technical assistance tools: UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups: The Role of the Justice System (2018); the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (May 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Victims of Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (to be released in July 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Justice for Children in the Context of Counter-Terrorism (May 2019).

The documents are based on three years of technical assistance work conducted by the UNODC to Member States that have found children as FTFs.

One country already advocating its support for the Roadmap is Lebanon. Until 2013, children accused of being or associated with terrorist fighters were kept in adult prisons and tried as such.

“It is in prison that I learned the meaning of life” one of the boys, aged 19, remarked in a video played by the representative from Lebanon stated.

A step in the direction of treating children as victims came in 2013, when they were moved to a juvenile prison.

Lebanon’s Head of the Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, Judge Raja AbiNader, said: “By showing them the same respect we showed the rest of the children, things started to change.”

Martins told IPS that there are many such countries, like Lebanon, whose children and communities have already benefited from the guidance offered in the Roadmap.

“As a result of the protocol, children deprived of liberty for association with Boko Haram were released and transferred to child protection authorities to begin a process of reintegration in their communities,” she said.

Martins stated that more than 30 countries have received guidance on child FTFs from the UNODC’s, from 6 different regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia).

Despite the Roadmap offering guidance, at the panel discussion, Martins clarified that “there is no one size fits all approach” on handling children.

There have been different approaches offered on handling the children in general, and specifically when dealing with different genders.

There will be a second event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September that Martins hopes will “promote the guidance further.”

Gender and the Roadmap

But there appears to be some disagreement still on the treatment of boys and girls during the rehabilitation and reintegration processes.

Under international law (Havana Rule 87.d., Bangkok Rules), boys and girls must be held in separate detention facilities. But the Roadmap encourages them to still engage together, to foster development.

The Roadmap also advocates for targeted approaches on the treatment of girls.

Martins told IPS that girls are “considerably more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse and require special attention in this regard.”

She noted that “girls deprived of liberty are exposed to other forms of sexual violence such as threats of rape, touching, ‘virginity testing’, being stripped naked, invasive body searches, insults and humiliations of a sexual nature.”

Given these sensitive issues, and the fact that girls are different physiologically and often psychologically from boys at certain development stages, the Roadmap advocates for an awareness of gender and for specific targeted approaches.

“A section in the manual alludes that girl victims of recruitment and exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist groups require specific approaches to reintegration, because of their increased exposure to violence at multiple levels and from different actors,” Martins said.

But it is not clear yet that this section on gender differences has been implemented.

While Martins says the Roadmap takes seriously the different approaches for girls and boys, Judge AbiNader told IPS that in Lebanon “Very honestly, we’re not working specifically with girls concerning rehabilitation.”

As of June 7th, Lebanon has 10 boys and 2 girls in prison for being associated with or accused of being FTFs.

When asked why there were not specific programs that tackle children of divergent genders differently, he argued that they girls “should be treated the same” during rehabilitation.

“And it hasn’t been discussed because the number [of girls in prison for accusations of being FTFs] is so low,” he added.

Despite the low numbers of accused girls in detention facilities, Martins believes that targeted women’s health education should be provided, and that “Access to age- and gender-specific programmes and services, such as counselling for sexual abuse or violence, has to be given to girls.”

Though the UNODC has advocated a change in outlook on children involved with terrorist organizations, the Roadmap’s release is just the beginning of that change being implemented.

The post A Roadmap for Children as Victims, not Terrorists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Bigstock.

By Esther Ngumbi
ILLINOIS, United States, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green recently concluded a one-week visit to USAID-funded programs at several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique. His goal was to promote sustainable paths to self-reliance, including in the context of food security programs.

Finding sustainable pathways to self-reliance, especially for many African countries whose citizens continue to be affected by hunger and food insecurity, is indeed important. Presently, over 257 million African citizens are hungry. In addition, according to a recent report titled For Lack of Will – Child Hunger in Africa, over 50 percent of all child deaths in Africa are caused by hunger.

Importantly, achieving food security will set the stage and pave way for African citizens to meet their food needs, create surpluses for export and tap on the opportunities that come with urbanization and transition from developing to emerging economies.

There are many strategies and pathways that African countries must implement to attain food security, and this includes learning from countries that have made remarkable progress in this area, including the U.S.

Of course, no country is perfect and hunger and food insecurity is still an issue that affects close to 40 million people in the U.S., (around 12 percent of the population). Still, the U.S. has made remarkable progress and great strides in achieving food security for all its citizens.

As a result, there are lessons African governments can learn from them as they work to attain food security and improve childhood nutrition.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help

Further, many of the initiatives have clear goals, targets, benchmarks and indicators of success. In addition, these initiatives have built-in monitoring and evaluations systems to ensure they achieve the intended outcomes.

Take California, for example, also referred to as the agricultural powerhouse of the U.S. Despite facing drought, one of the extremities that comes with a changing climate, recent Agricultural Statistics Review shows that investing in innovative agricultural initiatives has allowed the State to maintain sustainable agricultural crop production, and, consequently become food secure.

The State of Illinois ranks nationally and internationally in maize and soybean output, and has maintained these rankings despite the many challenges farmers face including a changing climate. By using all the available and recent agricultural technologies and tools such as improved seed varieties, farmers have been to maintain crop yields, translating into food security. Furthermore, the United States Department of Agriculture continuously supports all states and provides detailed reports and resources that farmers can consult.

Importantly, the frameworks that have allowed the U.S. to be food secure have a common backbone — the land-grant university system. Through it, many Land-Grant Universities in the U.S. such as University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Cornell University, Purdue University, consistently carry agricultural research coupled with a functioning extension service arm that delivers discoveries and recent science-based information to farmers and rural communities.

For example, Purdue and University of Kentucky recently collaborated with USDA in an effort to provide research, extension and other assistance to rural communities.  Cornell University has Small Farms program dedicated to supporting farmers.  Other Land-Grant universities with similar programs include Penn State University, Virginia State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Complimenting these efforts have been investments by both the State and Federal governments agencies such as the USDA and advancements in new technologies and equipment, irrigation systems, soil health building systems, access to water and electricity, improved production systems and production practices, infrastructure like roads, and sound policies as well as risk management.

The USDA, for example, recently announced that it would support all U.S. farmers impacted by recent trade disruption. This is in addition to several other programs for farmers that are impacted by other extremities that come with a changing climate.

At the same time, the U.S. also invested in improving its phytosanitary standards, further allowing it to trade commodities, allowing for export-led economy. In addition, U.S. citizens have access to food they cannot produce all the times.

A recent technical brief showed that many African countries phytosanitary standards are not up to date, further limiting African countries from benefiting from exporting and importing food.

Countries in Africa that are the most food secure such as Tunisia, Mauritius, Morocco, Algeria, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa and those which are making progress toward being more food secure such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya have achieved their progress by using some of the same strategies as the U.S, through USAID Feed the Future Initiative, and other USAID funded programs and initiatives such as  USAID Feed the Future Innovation labs .

Other African countries can follow suit. Of course, other foundational frameworks these countries have are stable democracies and export-driven economies.

Building a food secure future can be achieved when countries are open to weighing in on proven strategies.  Time is now.

 

Esther Ngumbi is Distinguished Post Doctoral Researcher, Entomology Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow, Aspen Institute New Voices Food Security Fellow, Clinton Global University Initiative Agriculture Commitments Mentor and Ambassador

 

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Delegates at the International Labor Conference in Geneva which adopted a landmark Treaty last week.

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

Against the back drop of widespread charges of sexual abuse and harassment at workplaces– including the United Nations– the International Labour Conference (ILC) last week adopted a “Convention” and a set of “Recommendations” to protect workers and employees worldwide.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose broad policies are set by the ILC, the Convention will enter into force 12 months after two member States have ratified it. The “Recommendation”, which is not legally binding, provides guidelines on how the Convention could be applied.

Rothna Begum, women’s rights senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Geneva, told IPS the treaty needs to be ratified by a couple of states before it can start to go into effect (and it takes another year after the initial ratification to come into force).

The Convention, she said, is an international treaty that is binding on Member States that ratify it, while the accompanying Recommendation provides more detailed guidance on how to apply the Convention.

“The Recommendation is not binding but it provides the necessary guidance for understanding the obligations set out in the Convention.”

She pointed out that there is also a resolution that once adopted will direct the ILO to have a strategy to have a ratification campaign and to help governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations to implement it.

Paula Donovan, a women’s rights activist and co-Director of AIDS-Free World and Code Blue Campaign, told IPS: “It’s breathtaking to realize that less than a decade ago, few imagined that such a progressive convention could be adopted at the ILO at all, never mind by a landslide”

Ironically, she pointed out, the UN’s unique immunity means that its own workplaces won’t be affected, even in countries that ratify this convention.

“But last week’s victory should inspire the hope that the UN might choose to change with the times, and actually join the revolution it champions,” she declared.

Asked about its implementation, Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS: “The question of whether the ILO convention on violence and harassment in the world of work is mandatory or voluntary would depend on its own provisions”.

Generally, ILO conventions, of which there were 189 as of July 2018, permit states parties to implement their own treaty obligations using their own mechanisms.

In general, he said, treaties are best implemented where the states parties feel obliged to implement them in their own domestic jurisdictions because implementation is in their own best interest.

Voluntary implementation produces the best results. Where a treaty has mandatory provisions, their implementation would require the creation of a range of international implementation mechanisms, which is not easy, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Asked about the effectiveness of the treaty and its implementation by member states, he said this would depend on the convention itself.

If it is a requirement for the Convention to be ratified for it to enter into force for a particular signatory state, until such ratification is effected, the convention would not be legally binding on that state.

There are many examples where states had signed international conventions but not ratified them, he noted.

“In such cases, due to the provisions of the convention itself, non-ratifying states would not be legally bound by its provisions. Other treaties, provide for them to be legally binding on signature alone. This is a choice that the negotiating states must make,” he added.

Asked if ILO should assign the task of monitoring how the treaty is being implemented, Dr Kohona said” “It is not uncommon for the organization, under whose auspices a treaty is negotiated, to be given the task of monitoring its implementation by participating States.

But the treaty/convention must make the necessary provision for this. Environment conventions generally confer this responsibility on the bodies established under them, he declared.

Ma. Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the adoption of the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment is a watershed moment in the struggle to eliminate violence against women in the workplace.

When it is ratified and fully and effectively enforced, this will change the lives of women around the world, she added.

“When women know they are safe, they will be more productive, more inspired and more motivated. That would be beneficial to everyone — to the women themselves, to the labor movement, to the business sector and to governments,” said Cabrera Balleza.

“This also proves that the #MeToo movement is or could be diverse. It’s not only for white women or women in North America and Europe. I sincerely hope that more women –especially in workplaces in developing countries will speak up about the harassment and violence committed against them; that all perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

She pointed out that the new treaty has proven that #MeToo can really be #WeToo! The next step is to get all governments to ratify the treaty.

“Civil society around the world should unite and mobilize to ensure that no government will get away with not ratifying it. Equally if not more important, ensure that the governments, the employers, the unions and workers’ associations are all held accountable for the enforcement of this groundbreaking treaty,” she declared.

Asked if the Convention applies to international institutions like the United Nations, an ILO spokesman told IPS that it applies to Member States that have ratified it, “and could be also used as reference for policies in international organizations.”

The new Convention—the Violence and Harassment Convention – was adopted by 439 votes in favour, seven against, with 30 abstentions. The Violence and Harassment Recommendation was passed with 397 votes in favour, 12 against and 4 abstentions.

After the adoption of the treaty, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the new standards recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

”The next step is to put these protections into practice, so that we create a better, safer, decent, working environment for women and men. I am sure that, given the co-operation and solidarity we have seen on this issue, and the public demand for action, we will see speedy and widespread ratifications and action to implement.”

In a statement released last week the Center for Women’s Global leadership said the progress in moving from widespread awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in the world of work, to a mechanism providing accountability to end it, is the direct result of pressure and support from women’s rights and labor rights advocates around the world, including the 16 Days community who embraced our global call to action #ILOendGBV.

“These new standards recognize a broad definition of “worker” and “world of work,” which has the potential to address the diverse range of work realities for women; and we welcome an acknowledged link between domestic violence and GBV in the world of work”

An intersectional approach will be required in implementation, to ensure these standards are inclusive of marginalized women workers and encompass situations of vulnerability.

This Convention will positively impact billions of women around the world, and provide a strong foundation for continued progress in our effort to secure equality, regardless of identity, the statement added.

“ We will look to states and employers to develop promising practices, so that they not only meet these new standards, but reflect true leadership in honoring women’s rights as human rights, and the right to decent conditions of work as a human right,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, according to HRW, the treaty was adopted at the ILO’s International Labour Conference (ILC) comprising governments, worker representatives, and employer representatives.

ILO members spent two years negotiating the legally binding convention and an accompanying recommendation that provides guidance on implementing the convention obligations.

The treaty would cover workers, trainees, workers whose employment has been terminated, job seekers, and others, and applies to both formal and informal sectors. It also recognizes the impact of domestic violence on work. The ILC is the body that develops, adopts, and monitors international labor standards.

The treaty would require governments that ratify it to develop national laws prohibiting workplace violence and to take preventive measures such as information campaigns and requiring companies to have workplace policies on violence.

The treaty also obligates governments to monitor the issue and to provide access to remedies through complaint mechanisms, witness protection measures, and victim services, and to provide measures to protect against retaliation.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to 3 million tons of carbon annually. Pictured here is a 2012 reclamation project of desertified, sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert road in Wengniute County, China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The international community still has a long way to go to chart a new, sustainable course for humanity. But the upcoming climate change meetings provide a renewed opportunity to tackle climate change head on.

Ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September, governments are gearing up to convene in Abu Dhabi for a preparatory meeting Jun. 30 to Jul. 1. The meeting is expected to have the highest official international participation since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“This summit is a unique opportunity to make sure that climate is not perceived as an environmental issue…the summit allows us to bring climate into the overall agenda of development of a country,” said Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on the Climate Summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba.

“I think that’s the only solution for the climate. As long as we keep climate as an environmental issue, we will never achieve the level of transformation that is needed to deal with the problem and particularly to move to a different way in which we consume and produce as a society,” he added.

During the Abu Dhabu climate meeting, governments will make concrete proposals for initiatives on various climate change related issues from finance to energy. An agenda, recommendations, and draft resolutions will then be presented and adopted during the September summit.

In recent years, the climate change debate has been largely focused on energy, particularly the use of fossil fuels. Most recently, European Union (EU) leaders failed to reach a consensus on how to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050 as coal-reliant countries rejected the proposal. This sparked protests across the continent, including a 40,000-strong rally at a German coal mine.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also called for an end to new coal plants after 2020 as well as fossil fuel subsidies.

While such moves are essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable land management is another crucial aspect that is often overlooked.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the land use sector represents almost 25 percent of total global emissions. As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to three million tons of carbon annually.

Agroforestry could be an essential tool to address land degradation and help communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

A land management system where trees and shrubs are grown together with crops and pasture, agroforestry has been found to provide numerous benefits including improved soil and water quality, increased biodiversity, high crop yields and thus incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased carbon sequestration. 

In Niger, agroforestry has helped restore five million hectares of land through the planting of 200 million trees. This has resulted in an additional half a million tons of grain production each year, improving climate change resilience and food security of an estimated 2.5 million people.

Such sustainable land management is therefore a potential low-hanging fruit for achieving nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.

Already, 40 percent of developing countries propose agroforestry as a measure in their NDCs, including 70 percent of African countries.

However, current commitments for long-term climate action remain insufficient as it covers only one-third of emissions reductions required by 2030.

In fact, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston that even if current targets are met, the world is still at risk of a “climate apartheid” where the wealthy are able to pay to escape heat and hunger while the rest is left to suffer.

“Maintaining the current course is a recipe for economic catastrophe,” the U.N. expert said.

“States have marched past every scientific warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic warming now seems like a best-case scenario. Even today, too many countries are taking short-sighted steps in the wrong direction,” Alston added.

De Alba echoed similar sentiments regarding the uneven commitment to climate action, stating: “If we are dealing and trying to improve the transition of energy, if we are concerned about land degradation and the protection of the forests, if we are all looking into innovation—I think we are all working for climate change whether we label it that way or not.”

Countries must therefore not only scale up their commitments, but also address and close existing gaps.

For instance, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) found that agroforestry is not included in countries’ measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems, including the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) own systems.

If agroforestry remains excluded from MRV, its contributions to national and international climate objectives will remain invisible.

“If agroforestry trees aren’t counted in MRV systems, then in many ways they don’t count. Only if agroforestry resources are measured, reported and verified will countries gain access to the financial and other support they need to effectively include agroforestry in climate change adaptation and mitigation,” CGIAR said in a study, recommending the creation of guidelines for agroforestry reporting.

De Alba stressed the need for the international community to act quickly.

“Fighting climate change is compatible with growth, compatible with the fight against poverty…it is important that we continue the work from Abu Dhabi into the summit to get the best results.”

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By Sivananthi Thanenthiran
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

The increase in world population by 2 billion in the next 30 years will present a serious global challenge especially if we do not find new paradigms of development thought and renewed global political leadership.

Our region, the Asia and the Pacific region is already home to 60 per cent of the world’s population – some 4.3 billion people, with India and China being the most populous countries.

A further increase in population means it will be harder to achieve the 17 SDGs with the 169 different targets – aimed at fighting poverty, reducing inequality, addressing climate change, ensuring quality primary and secondary education for all children, gender equality, and reduced child mortality – to ensure nobody is left behind.

Marginalised populations already suffer deprivations: poor women, women in living in rural and hard-to-reach areas are those who are unable to access to contraceptive services even when they desire to have a smaller family size. This unmet need amongst those left behind needs to be addressed, if we are looking at ensuring that these groups do not get left behind.

We are currently facing heightened conflicts over resources, accelerated effects of climate change, political strife and economic collapse in a world marked by inequalities.

These trends cannot be contained within borders and will spill over and the global community must be aware – that this will raise poverty levels, and give rise to displaced persons, refugees and migrants.

Besides these already well documented impacts, the most affected will be women and girls. In most developing countries, women and girls are already marginalised, and will be further pushed into poverty.

In areas we have conducted research in, we can see that climate change has effects on food security – forcing women and girls into hunger and malnutrition; there is increased incidence of lesser education opportunities and increase child marriages.

This essentially impacts a whole gamut of women’s rights, particularly their sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is why we track and monitor governments’ implementation of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development’s Programme of Action (ICPD POA) that took place in Cairo in 1994.

Signed by 179 countries across the world in 1994, the PoA put human rights as the corner stone to address population and development issues, and called for a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, especially for women and girls.

Governments agreed that reproductive rights, gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment are essential for improving quality of life and achieving sustained social and economic growth and sustainable development.

At the juncture of the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, it is essential for us to look at holistic, rights-based global frameworks to help us get a grip on the challenges we are facing today.

The prediction that the world population will increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years is based on ground realities like high incidence of child marriage and fertility rates. When girls are married younger, they drop out of school and often also get pregnant earlier.

They have little or no access to comprehensive sexuality education which impacts their knowledge of contraception, access and knowledge of abortion services and leads to unwanted pregnancies. Those who are already marginalised, will suffer further deprivations.

Governments in the region should have the political courage to ensure eradication of child marriages, ensure provision of comprehensive sexuality education, and access to sexual and reproductive health services to young people regardless of marital status.

UN data shows that population in the group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs), which includes countries in Asia, is growing 2.5 times faster than the total population of the rest of the world, and is expected to jump from 1 billion inhabitants in 2019 to 1.9 billion in 2050.

It is also predicted that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia.

However, women’s rights are key in slowing down population. It is no coincidence that in many of the above countries in our region as well as others, the status of women and girls is low. It is a fact that sexual and reproductive rights are integral to individual autonomy, to freely decide on matters of sexuality and reproduction, to have the right to consent and bodily integrity. Women need to have control over their bodies and should be able to decide whether or not to have children, when to have children, how many children to have.

In 2016, a study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI) at Shanghai University showed that if the world could achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, it could slow down global population growth to 8.2 to 8.7 billion by 2100.

The Goals 3 and 5 – of good health and well-being and gender equality – help build an enabling environment for the achievement of all other goals. Which is why it is so critical for us to ensure our governments implement the ICPD PoA.

Empowering women is the key to slowing down population. However, population growth cannot be achieved through coercive measures like sterilisation, family planning methods that limit women’s reproductive choices.

Instead, we need to ensure comprehensive sexuality education for in and out-of-school children and youth, eliminate child, early and forced marriage, tackle teenage pregnancies, invest in health care programmes and policies, ensure universal health coverage for all, including the most vulnerable and marginalised, a rights-based approach to family planning where women have access to contraceptive and family planning services of their choice.

Besides these, we need to simultaneously ensure access to safe abortion services to all women and girls and remove all barriers to access abortion so there are no unintended, unplanned or forced pregnancies.

There is also a pressing need to increase investments in girls’ education & address barriers that prevent girls from attending schools. Similarly, we need to increase women’s participation in the labour force, which means addressing gender inequalities inside homes and making work environments safer.

When we shift the focus to people’s development, and enable marginalised women and girls to have choices and exercise decision-making over their life choices, we create the necessary change for the world’s population.

*Sivananthi Thanenthiran is also a SheDecides Champion for Asia Pacific. ARROW has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC) of the United Nations and works closely with many national partners in countries, regional and global networks around the world, and are able to reach stakeholders in 120 countries.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sivananthi Thanenthiran* is the executive director of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a regional feminist NGO based in Malaysia championing sexual and reproductive health and rights in Asia Pacific.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

With growing economic conflicts triggered by US President Donald Trump’s novel neo-mercantilist approach to overcoming his nation’s economic malaises, many voices now argue that bad free trade agreements are better than nothing.

After US withdrawal following Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, there is considerable pressure on signatory governments to quickly ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor to the TPP.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

To ratify or not to ratify
Undoubtedly, freer trade is attractive, especially to consumers desiring lower import prices. Yet, it is now generally acknowledged that no country has ever developed without policy interventions, typically involving trade, to develop new economic capacities and capabilities.

Thus far, the CPTPP has been ratified by 7 of the original 11 signatory countries, with Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Peru holding out so far. Ratification advocates claim that the CPTPP would boost economic growth by greatly increasing exports.

They cite disputed Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) and World Bank studies, both by the same authors, using a dubious methodology even rejected by the US government’s International Trade Council in mid-2016, i.e., under Obama. The reports highlight increased export prospects, but are conveniently silent about the far greater increase in imports.

Dubious gains from trade
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) economist Rashmi Banga’s study of its likely economic impact on Malaysia suggests much need for caution. The original TPP promised Malaysia more exports, mainly to the USA, with such claims grossly exaggerated by the PIIE. Without the USA, export prospects have diminished greatly.

Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari

While exports to CPTPP countries will rise by 0.2%, imports will grow by 6.0%, setting Malaysia’s annual merchandise trade balance back by US$2.4 billion, worsening its balance of payments as its services trade balance has always been in deficit.

As Malaysia already has free trade agreements (FTAs) with other major trading partners in the CPTPP, participation has little to offer. Malaysian FTAs with Singapore, Japan and Australia affect 82% of its CPTPP exports and 84% of imports.

Hence, Malaysia will not lose much to trade diversion by not ratifying, i.e., about 0.09% of current exports to other CPTPP countries. On the other hand, it will retain revenue from its relatively higher import tariffs.

The two largest imported items are automobiles and plastic materials. Banga estimates that imports of vehicles, mainly from Japan, will rise by 36% if customs duties come down to zero. This is likely to wreak havoc on Malaysia’s already fragile automotive industry.

Over a quarter century ago, then World Bank vice-president Larry Summers infamously suggested that toxic waste might be dumped in poor countries in Africa owing to the lower opportunity costs involved.

On the cusp of becoming a high-income nation, the last Malaysian administration belatedly took his advice by licensing ostensible plastic waste recycling plants. The CPTPP will enable much more imports of plastic materials, including waste and scrap, by around 35%.

21st century gold standard?
Advocates also claim that the CPTPP represents a ‘cutting edge’, ‘state of the art’, ‘gold standard’, ‘21st century FTA’. In fact, it will mainly benefit transnational firms at the expense of consumers, workers and the public in participating economies.

With the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, for example, foreign investors will be able to sue the government for loss of revenue and profits if government policies are changed, or if contracts are renegotiated, even if in the public interest, e.g., by banning toxic or carcinogenic chemicals.

ISDS involves binding ‘private’ arbitration bypassing national judicial systems, significantly strengthening foreign investors at the expense of governments with typically more modest means to litigate cases, thus exercising a ‘chilling effect’ on governments to comply with foreign corporate demands. Government ability to improve public policy will thus be restricted.

Ironically, the Trump administration is now opposed to ISDS. TransCanada sued the US government, under North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) ISDS provisions, for US$15 billion after the Obama administration cancelled its Keystone XL pipeline project. The case was dropped after Trump revived the project.

CPTPP proponents insist that strengthening intellectual property (IP) laws will benefit everyone as it will incentivize research and innovation, a claim for which there is no evidence. The TPP agreement would have lengthened monopolies on patented medicines, kept cheaper generics off the market and allowed natural biological materials and processes to be patented.

The Third World Network has long highlighted many such CPTPP dangers, for instance, citing the Malaysian government’s procurement of an Egyptian generic treatment of Hepatitis C for RM1300, instead of the patented US treatment costing almost RM300,000.

Encircling China
The TPP was originally a minor plurilateral regional trade agreement involving four countries. The Obama administration decided to use it to check China’s growing economic influence.

With the recent escalation of tensions between China and the USA, many in East Asia are understandably concerned about how the growing economic conflict will affect economic prospects. Ratifying the CPTPP is likely to be seen as taking sides, even without the USA in it.

To secure broad public support in the face of growing scepticism about the benefits of trade liberalization associated with globalization, the Obama administration involved over 700 advisers, mainly representing corporate interests, to be involved in drafting the 6350-page TPP.

Ironically, the USA is no longer party to an agreement largely drafted by US corporate interests. A few of the most onerous clauses of the TPP have been suspended in the CPTPP, but if Japan, Australia and Singapore succeed in bringing the USA back in, the White House will insist on their re-inclusion.

Withdrawing from the CPTPP would send a clear message that a government is determined to put the needs of its people over the interests of powerful transnational corporations or geopolitical considerations. In any case, there is no requirement, obligation or deadline for any signatory government to ratify.

Other governments will need to carefully consider their navigation options in the difficult times ahead as countries seek to recover and sustain economic progress. Bad FTAs are not better than no FTAs, and as the map of the world economy has changed, options are different.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Senior Adviser at Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) in Malaysia. Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari has a law degree and is currently with the KRI.

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Cooking by candle light. Credit: Tomislav Georgiev / World Bank

By Pinelopi Goldberg
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

After participating in two events on inequality at the Spring Meetings – Making Growth Work for the Poor and Income Inequality Matters: How to Ensure Economic Growth Benefits the Many and Not the Few, I received a surprising number of emails asking whether my remarks on the importance of addressing rising inequality meant I had abandoned growth as the main priority for developing countries.

One thing I certainly took away from this correspondence: Inequality is too complex a phenomenon to address in a brief session at the Spring Meetings.

This is why the Institute of Fiscal Studies in London (IFS) has put together an ambitious, multi-disciplinary project, headed by Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, the so-called Deaton Review, to understand the multiple aspects of inequality and propose appropriate policies. Pointedly, the project is called “Inequalities in the twenty-first century” – note the plural.

Pinelopi Goldberg

The multi-disciplinary project brings together experts from Economics, Political Science, Sociology, and Public Health aiming at a comprehensive yet nuanced, and most importantly balanced discussion of “inequality.”

Recognizing the complexity of the issues, the project has a four-year timeline. I hope by its completion, we will have a better grasp of why “inequality” (I am going back to the singular following convention) is such an important concern today, both among policy makers and the public, and what we can do to address it. But, for those of you who may not want to wait that long, here are my two cents.

Both theoretically and empirically, we expect growth and changes in the income distribution to go hand in hand. But this positive relationship neither means an increase in income inequality is inevitable nor implies that it is desirable.

Growth is simply the size of the pie increasing. In principle, a bigger pie makes it feasible to give everyone a piece of at least the same size as before, and possibly more.

This is the essence of the so-called Pareto criterion invoked by economists. But markets do not guarantee that as the pie grows, all its slices will increase – some can get smaller. Policy is needed to encourage inclusive growth.

Why should we care about equal distribution of the pie? I have three responses.

First, people care about “fairness”. Large inequalities in income or wealth are often viewed as unfair. To be clear, I am not advocating complete equality where everyone receives exactly the same piece of the pie independent of competence, effort and the demands of the market.

This would create the classic moral hazard problem economists worry about. But the vast inequalities observed today are hard to justify based on these factors alone.

Conversely, there is little evidence that a more equal distribution of income or wealth by itself reduces incentives to work and contribute to society.

Second, even if one does not care about inequality at all, in practice large inequalities create social unrest. We do not need to go as far as invoking the French or October revolutions.

In recent years, sound economic policies that produced large aggregate gains have also generated considerable backlash where they generated winners and uncompensated losers. And this backlash can impede further growth when those left behind block further change.

Trade reforms and the hyper-globalization of the past three decades are prime examples. The backlash against globalization we currently experience in many advanced economies shows not only that inequality matters to people, but also that the perception of being left behind interferes with policies that would promote growth.

Lastly, big inequalities in income and wealth often translate in inequalities in opportunity. There is evidence that rising income and wealth inequality in many advanced economies is driving disparities in health and education (which is why the Deaton Review is devoting particular attention to these aspects of inequality).

People who emailed have asked me why focus on inequality in a developing country where 70% of the population live on less than $1.90 per day? But a country will not grow rapidly unless it utilizes its productive potential.

Stunting, poor health, and inadequate education among the poorest segments of a society mean that people will be unable to realize their potential and contribute to the economy.

Countries where women have limited rights and cannot contribute to the economy on equal terms not only miss the opportunity to draw on the labor and talent of half of their population, but also tend to face demographic challenges due to high birth rates.

This points to the importance of a different dimension of inequality, gender inequality, and may serve a reminder that inequality goes beyond disparities in income and wealth.

So, “inclusive growth” is not an oxymoron. Rather, inclusiveness may be the only way to achieve growth today, in developed and developing economies alike.

The post Is Inclusive Growth an Oxymoron? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pinelopi Goldberg is Chief Economist, World Bank Group

The post Is Inclusive Growth an Oxymoron? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Financial inclusion services can help boost the productivity of smallholder farmers in Africa. Pictured here is maize farmer Senamiso Ndlovu, from Nyamandlovu District, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

A Jamaican start-up has an innovative solution to help smallholder farmers—many of whom do not have the collateral demanded by financial institutions to access loans—build a track record of their production that is proving better than collateral.

FarmCredibly creates a record for farmers based on their production and they do not even need to leave the work on their farms to create this, founder Varun Baker tells IPS.

Blockchain is a decentralised, digital ledger initially developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. It works through a series of digitally connected records where information can be shared openly and publicly verified through a cluster of computers.

The decentralised nature of blockchain means that information is not stored in one place but on many computers or databases. The information is also time stamped. As such, if information is changed it has to be done through the system and cannot be deleted or changed at one point without the other databases of the information also being updated.

Using the block chain technology, farmers can plan their production based on the actual market demand. Distributors in turn safely source produce from many farmers with a reliable track record, says Baker.

Banking the under banked

In 2017, Baker and his team won a blockchain Hackathon competition organised by international IT company IBM and NCB, a major commercial bank in Jamaica for their idea of developing a tool which enables under banked farmers access loans and micro-investments.

In 2018, FarmCredibly entered the AgriHack competition organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and they emerged winners.

“Our strength is in technology and one big part that excites me about now and the future is the adoption of blockchain technology which can be a complicated subject for people,” Baker admits. “In our pitch, we simplified the value in using blockchain which is in enforcing the integrity in information. This still sounds really complicated, but the same idea is put more eloquently by a Jamaican songwriter who said ‘you so can fool some people some time but you cannot fool all the people all the time,’ and this is the value we want to bring to agriculture.”

Working with farmers 10 years ago, Baker had encouraged them to use mobile applications for good record keeping and documenting their work on their farms. But in many cases farmers were reluctant to use any online or mobile device in the field.

Today Baker sees the potential of using blockchain technology to release farmers from the burden of using apps themselves.

The technology is designed in a way that farmers can build a profile on themselves based on the data that other people have so they do not have to change anything about what they are doing, Baker explains.

Through FarmCredibly, Baker forms partnerships with companies that farmers already do business with. Input suppliers, buyers, agro-processors, hotels and supermarkets have valuable information on farmers that helps support their production record.

“We use this information to build up a profile on behalf of the farmer, which means once a farmer is ready to get a loan at the bank, it is an easier process for them because suddenly they have a track record. This is something that can work for even unbanked people who have no credit history at all,” Baker says as he takes on the challenge of convincing lenders that this is valid information that reduces risk when it comes to providing loans in agriculture.

“In my experience lenders find agriculture a risky business and we are trying to convince people that we are lowering risk in this area which provides massive economic value across the world,” says Baker who is currently using funding from the CTA and Development Bank of Jamaica to run a pilot project in Jamaica to facilitate loans for farmers to be more productive.

For many years, smallholder farmer, Kevin Buchanan from Clarendon Parish, south of Jamaica, battled to obtain loans because he did not have the collateral demanded by banks. Thanks to a digital profiling of his production he recently received a 385-dollar micro loan through FarmCredibly to buy nursery supplies to start growing his own seedlings.

“I believe in the use of technology as it helps greatly in doing the same thing better and more efficiently,” Buchanan tells IPS. “That way with the same amount of resources more can be done. This is very good also as it increases my income and makes success more sure.”

Buchanan grows hot and sweet peppers, corn and sweet potatoes on part of his 10 hectare farm. With funding, he would be able to transition his produce and mostly grow hot peppers, which have a guaranteed market.

“My limiting factor is access to funding,” Buchanan laments. “I am not alone…this is the dilemma of so many farmers. Before the blockchain intervention I could only put a quarter of a hectare of sweet potatoes in production…now I have 1.11 hectare. Because of this too I am working on the capacity to supply other farmers with seedlings. The income from this will be used back in the farming operation to assist me with buying irrigation supplies to establish a block of hot peppers.”

While financial inclusion is on the rise thanks to mobile phones and the internet, nearly two billion people globally remain unbanked while two-thirds of them own a mobile phone that could help them access financial services. This is according to a World Bank 2018 report on the use of financial services. It also finds that men remain more likely than women to have a bank account.

Digital technology can take advantage of existing cash transactions to bring people into the financial system, the report finds. For example, paying government wages, pensions, and social benefits directly into accounts could bring formal financial services to up to 100 million more adults globally, including 95 million in developing economies. Currently, 86 percent of Jamaica’s population is under banked, meaning they do not have access to loans.

A technology for agriculture development

Researchers at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Spain argue that blockchain promises ubiquitous financial transactions among distributed untrusted parties, without the need of intermediaries such as banks.

In particular, blockchain is suitable for the developing world, where it can support small farmers by providing them with finance and insurance and facilitate transactions. Although small farmers supply 80 percent of food in developing countries, they rarely have access to insurance, banking or basic financial services.

In a 2018 report published by the CTA, researchers Andreas Kamilaris, Francesc Xavier Prenafeta-Boldú and Agusti Fonts say ongoing projects and initiatives now illustrate the impact blockchain technology on agriculture. The researchers suggest blockchain has great potential for the future. For example, in December 2016 AgriDigital, an Australian company founded a year previously, successfully executed the world’s first sale of 23.46 tons of grain on a blockchain. Since then, over 1,300 users have been involved in the sale of more than 1.6 million tons of grain over the cloud-based system, involving 360 million dollars in grower payments.

Blockchain best but

While blockchain technology offers many opportunities for farmers, there are various barriers and challenges for its wider adoption, researchers worry.

There is lack of expertise by smallholder farmers to invest in the blockchain by themselves, researcher say. Besides, there is a lack of awareness about the blockchain and training platforms are non-existent and there are regulation barriers too.

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• Changing the Gender Bias in Agriculture

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Teenagers hanging out in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan the lack of sexuality education has led to 91 percent of young people aged between 15 and 19 not having accurate and full knowledge on HIV and AIDS. Courtesy: Gulbakyt Dyussenova/ World Bank

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

Young people around the world are facing increasingly insurmountable, persistent barriers as they try to achieve their full potential and secure a prosperous future. However, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific have already begun working to ensure that no one is left behind.

In collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), parliamentarians across Asia gathered to address and act on the pressing issues that youth face today, including access to health and employment.

“The demographic dividend in countries in the region provides an opportune moment to continue to invest in youth for the benefit of all society,” UNFPA’s Representative in Kazakhstan Giulia Vallese told IPS.

Approximately 60 percent of the world’s youth live in Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Discussing sustainable development issues such as health care and employment access, parliamentarians met in a series of two meetings; the first being the “Leaving No One Behind” meeting in Kazakhstan in October 2018 and the “Act Today, Shape Tomorrow” gathering in Tajikistan in March 2019.

It is through such multi-stakeholder platforms and collaborations where success can be achieved, noted Vallese.

“It was important to bring together these different stakeholders to promote a shared understanding of closely interlinked root causes of issues and challenges faced by young people and increase appreciation of the urgent need for cross-sectoral, inter-ministerial, and multi-stakeholder approaches to help resolve the issues and challenges faced by young people in the region,” she said.

“Both conferences demonstrated the positive impact and the catalytic effect of multi-stakeholder partnerships for development. They allowed under the leadership of the respective host countries, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, for the exchange of ideas on the role of national multi-stakeholder partnerships, which actually is the essence of implementing such a complex agenda as the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) programme of action and contribute to delivering on Agenda 2030,” she added.

Adopted by 179 governments in 1994, the landmark ICPD agenda marked the first paradigm shift which put people’s rights at the heart of all sustainable development.

In Kazakhstan, among the major issues discussed by participants was access to health information and services.

For instance, the lack of sexuality education has led to 91 percent of young people aged between 15 and 19 not having accurate and full knowledge on HIV and AIDS.

UNFPA also found that among those who reported having had symptoms of sexually transmitted infections, only 37 percent sought medical help.

Adolescents younger than 18 require parental consent to receive medical services.

In Tajikistan, access to employment and education particularly for youth and women remain limited.

According to the World Bank, inactive youth who are neither employed nor in school make up approximately 40 percent of the total youth population. Almost one third of those who are employed are in unpaid, informal jobs compared to 15 percent of adults.

Women have not fared well either as the female labour force participation rate was just 27 percent compared to 63 percent among males in 2013. Almost a quarter of women are in unpaid employment compared to 13 percent of men.

While education can help determine job outcomes, completion rates of secondary education may be falling in the Central Asian nation. For instance, more young women are not completing secondary school or technical education, the World Bank found.

Speaking to IPS, Deputy Speaker of Tajikistan’s Parliament Honorary Khayrinisso Yusufi said that youth are the “main creative force of the future” and stressed the need for investments to develop their potential.

“Developing the potential of young people, shaping their public engagement, strengthening their quality of education and health care, their participation in labour markets, and engaging in development processes reflect the aspirations of peoples and the policies of our countries to achieve the SDGs and create a better world for everyone,” she said.

And Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are already on their way to empower youth.

During the conference in Dushnabe, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Tajikistan Dr. Latofat Naziri told participants of the importance of actively engaging youth in order to help build their envisioned futures and involvement in society. With that in mind, study groups and clubs are being organised at the school level aimed at developing youth’s entrepreneurship skills.

Others, including Yusufi, pointed to the focus on strengthening the status of young people, especially girls. Among Tajikistan’s priorities are presidential quotas for girls’ higher education, and already the number of young parliamentarians and women in the country has increased, Yusufi told IPS.

After the meeting in Astana, participants adopted the Astana Declaration which promises to make primary health care, especially sexual and reproductive health services as well as sexuality education, more youth-friendly and accessible.

UNFPA has already begun working on this front, establishing Youth Peer Education which trains youth to help their peers and share accurate information about healthy life skills. Youth-friendly health centres have also been established in order to provide comprehensive and confidential services.

Vallese urged that such work should continue, and protective laws and policies are essential to support human rights of youth.

“Young people need to be part of the national dialogue for sustainable development…investing in young people is critically important to ensure future societies are economically dynamic and vibrant, as well as peaceful, inclusive and sustainable while providing opportunity for all,” she told IPS.

Yusufi also highlighted the role of parliamentarians, legislation, and collaborations to achieve such a vision.

“I am sure that the activity shown by the forum participants in discussing the problems and prospects of youth policies in our countries will be productive in the legislative field. We will be able to more effectively pursue a policy of modernisation, improve education, health, protect the environment, effectively apply technologies and support youth initiatives,” she said.

“We parliamentarians, reaffirmed the key role of parliaments and parliamentary networks in establishing a multi-state partnership with a view to sustainable development and a better future for humanity,” Yusifi concluded.

As this year marks the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, civil society and governments will gather in Kenya for the Nairobi Summit to advance the ICPD’s goals.  

Related Articles

• Parliamentarians Promote Youth Investment in Kazakhstan
• Investing in Arab and Asian Youth For a Sustainable Future
• Declining Birth Rates Not Exclusive to Wealthy Nations

The post Partnering for Youth in Central Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Inna de Yard, a documentary about reggae music, opened across Germany on Jun. 20. Courtesy: Inna de Yard

By A. D. McKenzie
KINGSTON/PARIS, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

Dogs barking in the distance. Birds chirping nearby. A man walking through the mist, surrounded by lush vegetation. A distinctive vibrato singing “Speak Softly, Love” over it all.

So begins Inna de Yard, a documentary that can safely be called a love poem to reggae music, or the “soul of Jamaica”, as the film is sub-titled with an obvious play on words.

Directed by Peter Webber (whose first feature was the acclaimed Girl with a Pearl Earring), the documentary comes at a timely moment: reggae was inscribed last November on United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Before opening across Germany on Jun. 20, the film was screened in Paris at the U.N. agency’s headquarters to a full house of spectators, many of whom seemed to know the artists and the songs. Several stood up to dance when the musicians performed after the projection.

Inna de Yard takes us into the lives of pioneer reggae musicians who have come together to record music in a hilltop studio. This is a weathered, old house that offers breath-taking views of the capital Kingston. It is filled with stacks of vinyl records spilling out of their decaying jackets, while an ancient piano sits on the porch.

The man walking through the mist at the beginning is a piano tuner, who tells viewers that the instrument is sometimes infested with insects, but he needs to get it ready for the musicians. We watch as he takes bits of wire and other objects to do just that.

Then the music begins in earnest. We are introduced to the artists – Ken Boothe, Kiddus I, Winston McAnuff, Cedric Myton, The Viceroys and Judy Mowatt – as Boothe’s vibrato accompanies spectacular aerial shots of the landscape.

Kiddus – who appeared in the 1978 cult film “Rockers”– explains in his deep, pleasant voice that the project is “an amalgamation of elders playing acoustic music”, and McAnuff adds that the aim is to capture the music “in its virgin state”.

Mowatt, looking like an urban goddess in her patterned robe, says that the house up in the hills “felt like heaven” when she first visited.

In a previous era, Mowatt performed with the I-Threes, the trio of backing vocalists for Bob Marley and the Wailers. But beyond her presence, the extended Marley clan is not in focus here. This documentary is about the other trailblazers and the source of the music.

“Some countries have diamonds. Some countries have pearls. Some countries have oil. We have reggae music,” says bass player Worm in the film.

With footage from the 1960s and 1970s, the documentary takes us to the beginning of ska and rocksteady, showing how the music developed, influenced by American rhythm and blues.

“We paid attention to what was happening outside our shores and we amalgamated that with what was happening here,” Mowatt tells viewers. “The 1960s was the romantic era, but the 1970s was the conscious era.”

She says that reggae “talked about the realities of life” and that “all of Jamaica was living the songs that were being sung”– songs about political violence, hardships, and police repression of Rastafarians, for instance. It was the “golden age” of the music.

The documentary gives each of the artists space to reminisce even as it describes their lives now. “We miss everything about those days,” says Cedric Myton, a playful, lively spirit in the film who said he’s “going up the ladder” at 70-plus years old.

During one of the film’s most memorable scenes, we see him heading out in a boat and joking around with fishermen as he sings “Row, Fisherman, Row”, in his iconic falsetto. The film cuts from the sea to the studio in the hills, to Myton enlightening viewers on the origins of the lyrics.

Like many of the others, Myton started out in the music business with what seemed a bright future, but troubles in the United States – related to “herb charges”– meant he couldn’t perform there. In addition, all the musicians have had experience with unscrupulous record producers, or “thieves” as Myton calls them.

“We’re not giving up because we know there are better days ahead,” Myton says. “But financially it’s been a struggle.”

Some of his peers have had more personal struggles. McAnuff lost his son Matthew, also a singer, in 2012, and his description of the “senseless” death is among the most moving sections of the film. So is the story of younger musician Derajah, who lost his sister to gun violence. We see them working through their grief via the music.

“It’s a message for healing,” Kiddus says.

The Inna de Yard project puts the pioneers in contact with younger musicians who perform with them in the studio and on tour, and the film profiles these artists as well. “We learn from the younger guys and they learn a lot from us,” Kiddus comments.

Mowatt also records with two younger singers, the fiery Jah 9 and her colleague Rovleta. Speaking passionately, Jah 9 gives an introduction to the history of the island and the role that the Maroons and their legendary leader Nanny played in fighting against slavery.  Then she joins Mowatt and Rovleta in the studio to sing Mowatt’s “first solo anthem”– an intense track called “Black Woman”.

“It’s a love splash,” Mowatt characterises the session, describing the affection and solidarity between the three.

Accompanying individual musicians, the film also takes us through unspoilt areas of Jamaica – waterfalls, natural diving pools, forested Maroon country – but it doesn’t shy away from showing poor sections of the capital Kingston where the music was born, or the environmental degradation of some beaches. We also get a glimpse into eroticised dancehall culture, during a segment in a bar.

Film director Webber was, however, not interested in showing scenes “that would cause eyes to pop in the West,” as he said in an interview following the screening in Paris. Webber added that the restraint in filming certain aspects of the culture was “deliberate” as he didn’t “feel the need to labour the point”.

Because of this approach, viewers get a sense of the love of and respect for the music, unlike some sensationalist portrayals of Jamaican arts.

Webber said he was first introduced to the island’s music as a teenager in London and became “a huge fan of reggae”. Years later, he was working with French producer Gaël Nouaille on a Netflix project when Nouaille told him about the Inna de Yard musicians and recordings.

“I had never been to Jamaica before, partly because I had a Jamaica in my head, and I knew that if I got on a plane, I would have a touristic experience and it wouldn’t live up to what I imagined,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend two weeks on a beach in Negril. But this was a different way to go.”

When he got to the island and met the musicians, he initially wasn’t sure there was a feature film to be made, and he questioned whether he could produce a documentary that would “appeal to a more general audience” than traditional fans of reggae or dub.

He said it was also important to meet younger musicians. I was wondering, “Are these guys like the last of the Mohicans?”

Asked why he was the one to make this film, Webber said: “I did it because of my love and enthusiasm and because I had an opportunity to do it. You may wonder if the world needs another middle-aged white man dropping into Jamaica, but I see myself as a medium. I’m a channel, and I basically put my technical skills and my creativity at their disposal to tell their story. It’s not a film of cultural appropriation.”

He said the documentary developed based on the “spine of the story” – the musicians recording an album “up in this house in the hills”.

The house is indeed at the centre of the documentary, but from there, Webber and the musicians take us on a journey: back to the past, around the island, to concerts in Paris, and into the soul of reggae and Jamaica. And Webber does so with an artist’s touch, reflecting his background as a student of art history.

This article is published in an arrangement with Southern World Arts News. Follow on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

The post ‘Inna de Yard’ Delves into the ‘Soul’ of Jamaica appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A U.S. soldier stands watch at the Kindi IDP Resettlement Center near Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 16, 2009. Credit: U.S. Navy Photo

By Leila Yasmine Khan and Daud Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

As China rapidly replaces Europe and the USA as the key player in developing countries, the Western press is full of articles about the dangers of dealing with the Chinese.

China, it is said, is not liberal and not democratic and hence is not a trustworthy partner in strategic and economic matters. An often cited example is that of Hambantota – a strategically located port that was handed over by the Sri Lankan Government to the Chinese in lieu of repayment of loans.

Of course closely corresponding examples of what was done by western countries is not mentioned such as Diego Garcia. This is a strategically located island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In the late 1960s the USA and United Kingdom forcibly removed the local population and established a miltiary base.

Acts like that of Diego Garcia are justified by the excuse that they were necessary to dafeguard democarcy and liberalism. The most glaring recent example for western countries going to war to defend democracy is in Iraq.

Diplomatic pressure, collusion, corruption and, when necessary, war are justified by the fact that these other societies have systems and values distinct from the liberal ones

The USA invaded Iraq to save democratic countries (read Israel) from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people from an undemocratic regime. This narrative had strong resonance in Congress, in the Senate, in the popular media and among the general public and created a groundswell of support for the Shock and Awe campaign.

In a few weeks over 1,500 air strikes were launched against Iraq and almost 7,000 civilians were killed. A triumphant President Bush was able to proudly announce “Mission Accomplished” to an adulating public and pave the way to a second term in office.

An important question for developing countries is:  are these patterns of behavior aberrations in what are otherwise free, peaceful and caring societies; or are they an integral part of the political systems of these countries?

Would things be different if more leaders of the western world were like Justin Trudeau? Would things be different if Hilary Clinton had won the election instead of Donald Trump? Will things be different if the aggressive tendencies of the deep state and occult elites, such as the military-industrial complex, are harnessed by more democratic institutions? In order to answer this we need to look a little into the political philosophy and social consensus that underpins these societies.

Over the last two to three centuries, the values espoused by the Enlightenment – freedom, equality, dignity and independence – have come to dominate the political and socio-economical mainstream in Europe and the USA.

This classical liberalism was complemented by shared views on social justice, the welfare state, and a reliance on the free market for the allocation of a society’s resources.  The view that the liberal, democratic, free-market system is the best way to organize society is now widely shared in the West.

A somewhat deeper look suggests that aggression and exploitation are not an aberration but are very much part of western liberalism. In their critique to John Rawls’ liberal theory, modern political philosophers such as Charles W. Mills, Leif Wenar and Branko Milanovic point out that a liberal society is “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage” regulated by rules for advancing the interests “of those taking part in it”.

The practical manifestation of this is that the social commitment to liberal beliefs often tends to translate into a belief that if the system is under threat, or perceived to be under threat, it is legitimate to defend it against others – by violence when necessary.

As a result the values of peace, freedom and liberty, which are the pillars of western liberal society, tend not to be extended to countries outside this system. Diplomatic pressure, collusion, corruption and, when necessary, war are justified by the fact that these other societies have systems and values distinct from the liberal ones.

As in the case of the Iraq war, the 9/11 attacks and the perceived threat to democracy, and the western way of life, created an unprecedented wave of popular indignation.  It was considered more than sufficient cause to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone-age and to threaten other countries with a similar fate.

History abounds with similar examples where liberal societies have had no qualms about going to war with the excuse of bringing civilization, trade or democracy to other countries. In the same vein, western democracies have no second thoughts about making alliances with repressive and undemocratic regimes whenever it suited them.

The fact that western liberal societies are capable of colonialism and war does not mean that China is going to be a heaven-sent, or that developing countries should abandon our progress towards liberal values such as tolerance, freedom and equality. However, it does mean that they should not get swayed by the anti-China rhetoric of the western press but take a pragmatic approach way for the good of the country.

 

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s in Philosophy and a Master’s in Argumentation and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

Daud Khan a retired UN staff based in Rome. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

The post Liberalism and Developing Countries appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

Being a frequent visitor to the Dominican Republic, where I occasionally have enjoyed the high standard, security and excellent service of its resorts, I became puzzled by recent, quiet excessive media reactions to statistically insignificant cases of deaths in these resorts. The number of demises in Dominican resorts have been more or less the same over the years and do not at all differ from those of most other tourist destinations. People die in hotels all over the world. There may even be specific reasons for this and they are far from being unique to the Dominican Republic.

Hotel rooms are liminal spaces on the borderline between everyday life and something different. Unknown people have lived there before us, while strangers will occupy the rooms when we have left. During the Edo-period (1600-1867 CE) the red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo) was called Ukiyo, the floating/transient world. Several modern hotels can be described as Ukiyoes, where people tend to behave quite differently from what they do at home. Drugs, excessive sex and other forms of “misconduct” are temptations in places you can leave without cleaning up after you. Furthermore, abnormal behaviour may be fostered by “all-inclusive” drinking and eating binges. Within the unfamiliar and secluded confinement of a hotel room you and your traveling companion/s may furthermore be prone to complaints and abuse you otherwise would refrain from. Our mind and bodies may also be exhausted after intensive day trips, heat and sunburn, conditions worsened by the content of ”private pharmacies” tourists tend to bring with them. To sum up – reasons for suffering sickness and even facing death in hotel rooms may be numerous.

In fictitious tales, hotel rooms provide the stage for horrific events and have been part of literary genres ever since the mythological villain Procrustes invited travelers to spend a night in his inn, where he stretched out, or cut off, their limbs to make them fit into his beds. A Victorian horror writer like William Wilkie Collins excelled in tales about hotel horrors, like The Dream Woman, A Terribly Strange Bed and The Haunted Hotel, the last one dealt with English tourists in Venice. Many of the murder mysteries in Agatha Christie´s 66 detective novels have hotel rooms as their main setting and they are also a common ambiance in Stephen King´s horror stories, whose The Shining and 408 became successful movies, together with other hotel horror blockbusters like Psycho, Vacancy and No Country for Old Men.

In Disney´s amusement parks in Orlando, Paris, and Tokyo you might enjoy a ride within The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, a skyscraper hotel inspired by a famous TVSeries. Several ”documentaries” like the popular America´s Haunted Hotels have presented mysterious happenings referred to by employees and guests working and staying in frightening hotels. Prominent among haunted US hotels is the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, which since its opening in 1931 gained a reputation for suicides and violent crimes. That this hotel changed its name to Stay on Main did apparently not distance it from its tragic reputation. Another ”haunted hotel” is The Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. It has not changed its name and seems to thrive on its lugubrious fame.

Las Vegas may be described as an Ukiyo, a ”Floating World” where people come to indulge in gambling and entertainment. The town´s many hotels appear to confirm the rumour that such places cause both ”natural” and violent deaths. Not only do elderly people die in their rooms from heart attacks and respiratory problems, but people are committing suicide, die from overdoses and/or suffer crime related deaths and violent attacks. Last year, 205 murders and 1 296 rapes were reported in Las Vegas, a rate of 12 murders and 80 rapes per 100 000 people, while in New York 3 murders and 27 rapes were committed per 100 000 people.2 The Las Vegas death toll was considerably higher in 2017, when on October 1 a certain Stephen Paddock fired more than 1 100 rounds of ammunition from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Manadalay Bay Hotel into a crowd of concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip. He killed 58 people and wounded 422. Mr. Paddock´s motive remains undetermined. He was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Hotel related fatalities have not affected Las Vegas´s popularity as a tourist destination and do seldom figure in descriptions of this renowned resort city.3 Nevertheless, hotel deaths have recently gained prominence while describing another tourist destination – the Dominican Republic. After Tammy Lawrence-Daley on May 29 posted an account on her Facebook about the attack she suffered on the grounds of The Majestic Elegance Resort,4 accounts of deaths at Dominican resort hotels have gone viral and are currently being reported on the web, by major TV networks and daily newspapers around the world.5

During the past 12 months, six cases of sudden deaths of US citizens at hotels in the Dominican Republic have been reported. In July last year, a 45-year-old man died in his hotel room after a heart attack and in April this year a 67-year-old man died at the same resort after “drinking a Scotch from the minibar”. In June 2018, a 51-year-old woman died in another resort. She had also “had a drink from the minibar”. On May 24 this year, a woman died from a heart attack in another Dominican resort, she was 41 years old. A few days later at another resort, a 63-year-old man and his 49-year-old wife died from “respiratory failure and pulmonary edema.”6 Since these cases were revealed, numerous reports are appearing from people claiming to have become sick at hotels in the Dominican Republic, among them a couple who recently filed a lawsuit against a resort asking for $1 million after they had been refused a refund after claiming an insecticide had made them sick.7

More than two million US citizens visit the Dominican Republic every year, making up about a third of the country’s tourists. Several question marks may be added to the recent reports that already have had damaging effects on the Dominican tourist industry. Foremost among them are – Why is there suddenly such an intense reporting about six resort related deaths among 6.5 million visitors to the Dominican Republic? Particularly since deaths at hotels are not entirely uncommon, not the least in the US. The Dominican Republic is furthermore known to be comparatively safe for tourists, at least considerably safer than Las Vegas.

Reporting of Dominican tourist deaths was triggered by Tammy Lawrence-Daley´s not entirely crystal clear story. She did not place her account on Facebook until three months after the event, stating she had been attacked around 11 PM by a man wearing a Majestic Elegance uniform. Her husband did not report his wife´s disappearance until three and a half hours later and she was found by 6:40 in the morning “at a restricted area of the hotel”, showing bruises on her face and with a broken fingernail, though without the signs of the brutal violence evident on the photos she revealed on Facebook.

I cannot assess the veracity of Mrs. Lawrence-Daley´s statement, though I am inclined to question if her misfortune and six resort deaths within a year are reasons enough for placing the entire tourist industry of a country in jeopardy. A horror tale affecting not only hotel owners, but the hundreds of thousands Dominicans whose livelihood and that of their families depend on tourists visiting their island.8

1 Fulton, Robin (2006) Thomas Tranströmer: The Great Enigma, new collected poems. New York: New Directions.
2 https:/www.areavibes.com/las+vegas-nv/crime and https://www.areavibes.com/new+york-ny/crime
3 A famous exception is Hunter S. Thompson´s outrageous novel from 1971: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
4 Woods, Amanda (2019) “Dominican Republic resort claims Tammy Lawrence-Daley demanded $2.2M before going public”, New York Post, June 6.
5 Martinez, Gina and Josiah Bates (2019) “9 U.S. Tourists Have Died in the Dominican Republic in 2019. Should You Cancel Your Trip?” Time Magazine, June 18.
6 Mzezewa, Tairo (2019) “What Do We Know About the Dominican Republic Tourist Deaths?” The New York Times, June 12.
7 Salo, Jackie (2019) ”Couple recounts nightmare illness at the same Dominican resort where 3 died,” New York Post, June 6.
8 In 2018, The Dominican Republic was visited by 6.5 million tourists, spending $7.6 billion, an increase of 6 percent over the year before, when the tourist industry supplied more than 332,580 jobs, or 8.5 percent of the country´s total workforce. https://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/dominican-republic-s-economy-grows-by-7-pct-in-2018/50000262-3853232 and https://dominicantoday.com/dr/economy/2017/10/03/44886/

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

The post Are Hotels Dangerous? Putting in Context Dominican Republic Tourist Deaths appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

I stayed overnight at a motel by the E3.
In my room a smell I’d felt before […]
I stayed overnight in the echoing house.
Many want to come in through the walls
but most of them can´t make it:
they´re overcome by the white hiss of oblivion.
Anonymous singing drowns in the walls
Discreet tappings that don´t want to be heard
drown-out sighs
my old repartees creeping homelessly.

                                              Thomas Tranströmer The Gallery 1

The post Are Hotels Dangerous? Putting in Context Dominican Republic Tourist Deaths appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

With a new report projecting a rise in population, specifically in Asia and Africa, the United Nations has warned that continued rapid population growth presents enormous challenges for sustainable development in the world’s 134 developing nations.

Among them, the heaviest impact will be on the 47 least developed countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the world’s poor, and the 57 small island developing states (SIDS), including 20 “territories” which are non-UN members, largely vulnerable to continued economic hardships and environmental hazards.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/publication/ldc_list.pdf

In an interview with IPS, Dr Benoit Kalasa, Director Technical Division at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said LDCs are among the world’s fastest growing – and many are projected to double in population between 2019 and 2050 – putting pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies that aim to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensure that no one is left behind.

For many countries or areas, including some Small Island Developing States, he pointed out, the challenges to achieving sustainable development are compounded by their vulnerability to climate change, climate variability and sea-level rise.
http://unohrlls.org/about-sids/

In sub-Saharan Africa, the region that is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth over the coming decades, the number of babies projected to be born between 2020 and 2050 (nearly 1.4 billion) exceeds the number born between 1990 and 2020 by more than 50 per cent.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: Will the projected increase in population have an impact on the implementation of the 17 SDGs which have a 2030 deadline?

Dr KALASA: A rapidly increasing number of births poses particularly significant challenges for countries striving to expand services for mothers and newborns (SDGs 1, 3 and 5).

A growing number of infants foreshadows growing numbers of school-aged children and adolescents and youth in the future. In the 47 LDCs, the number of adolescents and youth aged 15 to 24 years is projected to grow from 207 million in 2019 to 336 million in 2050.

Leveraging the opportunity presented by the demographic dividend depends critically on investing in the health and education (SDGs 3 and 4) of the young people who will soon join the labour force, and on ensuring their successful integration into the labour market, with full and productive employment and decent work for all (SDG 8).

Many of the countries with the highest levels of maternal mortality and the greatest unmet need for family planning continue to experience growth in the number of women of reproductive age.

Programmes to expand access to family planning must keep pace with population growth just to maintain current levels of coverage.

In all countries and areas, achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women requires eliminating all forms of violence and discrimination against women (SDG 5), promoting female education (SDG 4), and ensuring that women have access to safe and effective means of family planning (SDG 3), as well as equal access to the labour market (SDG 8), social security and the political process (SDGs 8, 5 and 16).

Persons aged 65 or over make up the world’s fastest-growing age group. Virtually all countries are anticipating an increase in the percentage of older persons in their populations.

Countries need to plan for population ageing and ensure the well-being of older persons by protecting their human rights and economic security and by ensuring access to age-appropriate health care services, lifelong learning opportunities, and formal and informal support networks (SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 and 16).

IPS: Is the anticipated increase in world population by 2 billion in the next 30 years a positive or negative factor?

Dr KALASA: While the projected addition of two billion people in the next 30 years poses challenges to the implementation of the 2030 agenda, it also brings a tremendous opportunity.

With human rights-based, quality sexual and reproductive health service provision, sufficient investment in education and health of young people, and gender equality, and promotion of the rights choices and well-being of older persons and immigrants, we will realize the demographic dividend and ensure the rights and choices of a new generation.

IPS: How reliable is the UN’s population estimates?

Dr KALASA: The UN Population Division has been estimating and projecting the world’s population since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 235 countries or areas.

For each revision, any new, recent but also historical, information that has become available from population censuses, vital registration of births and deaths, and household surveys are considered to produce consistent time series of population estimates for each country or areas from 1950 to today.

For the 2019 revision, the latest assessment, 1,690 population censuses conducted between 1950 and 2018, as well as information on births and deaths from vital registration systems for 163 countries and demographic indicators from 2,700 surveys were considered.

The availability of new information contributed to revising recent, as well as past, population estimates and demographic indicators.

It is worth mentioning that the quality of population estimates and projections hinges on the collection of reliable and timely demographic data, including through civil registration systems, population censuses, population registers, where they exist, and household surveys.

The 2020 round of national population censuses, which is currently underway, will provide critical demographic information to inform development planning and to assess progress towards the achievement of the SDGs.

IPS: What is the impact of international migration?

Dr KALASA: International migration can be a transformative force, lifting millions of people out of poverty and contributing to sustainable development in both countries of origin and countries of destination.

Facilitating safe, orderly and regular migration, while reducing incentives for irregular migration, is the best possible way to harness the full development potential of migration (SDGs 8, 10 and 16). Addressing the adverse drivers of migration, such as poverty, insecurity and lack of decent work, can help to make the option of remaining in one’s country viable for all people.

IPS: Whatever happened to the 1960s concept of Zero Population Growth (ZPG)?

Dr KALASA: The ICPD Programme of Action (the International Conference on Population and Development) called for voluntary and rights-based family planning. At UNFPA, we counter any notion of “population control” and warrant that future generations never take a hard-won human right for granted.

Ensuring women’s right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children is at the center of our agenda.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By IPS INTERNATIONAL DESK
ROME, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

Qu Dongyu, China’s vice minister for agriculture and rural affairs, was elected to be the next Director-General of FAO, winning a majority of the 191 votes cast in the first round of an election held Sunday.

Qu said he will be “committed to the aspirations, mandates and missions of the Organization” and pledged to lead “all of FAO’s staff in working for member countries and for the world’s farmers.”

The new Director-General of FAO will be in office for the period 1 August 2019 to 31 July 2023. He will be eligible for only one additional mandate of four years.

Qu Dongyu succeeds José Graziano da Silva, who was first elected in 2011 and has served two consecutive terms.

These are some excerpts from a presentation he made over the weekend to the FAO Conference.

The post Chinese DG To Lead FAO For 4 Years From 1 Aug 2019 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jun 21 2019 (IPS)

Social Democrats, who had been steadily disappearing following the crisis of 2008, have been making a small comeback in the last year. Now they are in power in Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and, most recently, in Denmark.

But the statistics are daunting. The recent European elections gave members of the Socialist group 20% of the vote, against 25% in 2014, and the erosion from the 34% achieved in 1989 and 1994 is clear. The latest success, in Denmark, with 25.9% of the vote, was lower than in 2015. In Finland, they received 17.7% of the vote, just two-tenths more than the Alt-Right. And in Sweden, Stefan Löfven won his mandate with the lowest vote in decades. In countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, they are becoming irrelevant.

Roberto Savio

It is interesting to note that they did not lose votes to the more radical left. The two European groups that bring together Syriza (Greece), Podemos (Spain), La France Insoumise (France) and Die Linke (Germany) received just 5% of the vote, against 7% in 2014. The votes they lost went basically to the Alt-Right. Today, the Social Democrats have popular support only in Spain (PSOE, 33%) and Portugal (PS, 33.4%). From the Scandinavian cradle of Social Democrats, there has been a shift to the Iberian Peninsula. Today, Portugal is what Sweden was twenty years ago: a model of civic values, tolerance and inclusion.

There is now a debate about the Danish model. Mette Frederiksen, leader of the Social Democrats, has adopted a very radical approach against immigrants, practically identical to the vision of the Alt-Right: deportation of immigrants to a desert island (a la Australian); confiscation of jewels and other valuables they bring with them; the prohibition of burkas and niqabs in open spaces. In 2015, nearly 60,000 migrants reached the country, but only 21.000 were given asylum; in 2017, just one-quarter of those who applied received asylum. At the same time, Frederiksen promised, among others, to increase welfare, subsidies to the poorest part of the population and incentives for young people (whom she wants to stop smoking: she has promised to increase the cost of cigarettes radically).

The Danish model is based on a simple fact. Today Europeans are governed by fear. Fear about the future, the arrival of Artificial Intelligence and robots , which could lead to the disappearance of 10% of current jobs: just the automation of cars would leave millions of taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers and so on jobless (something that immigrants could never be responsible for). The so-called New Economy openly declares that labour is a small component in industrial production. The excess of available workers means that the days of a fixed job are over. This, of course, contradicts the fact that the population is in steep decline. According to the International Labour Organisation, Europe will need at least 10 million more people to remain competitive in 2030.

When feelings, and not ideas, become the basis of politics, and it is the gut and not the brain that decides, we have entered the realm of mythologies and left reality out of the picture.

Take Italy. The large majority of Italian workers now vote for Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League and deputy prime minister and Minister of the Interior. Salvini has made fear the central theme of his permanent electoral campaign. As Minister of the Interior, he has spent just 17 days in his ministerial office and the rest on the road. He has defined immigrants as the main threat to the security of Italians. He holds mass rallies, kissing the rosary or the Bible, and explaining that Italy is a slave of the European Union. He has introduced new security laws, which make it easier to possess a weapon. And he has launched an open campaign against the Pope and his calls for solidarity and inclusion. He suggests that the Pope could take all refuges into the Vatican, and he has made an alliance with the conservative wing of the Church, asking Pope Benedict to come back. He has doubled his votes, and he is on the way to becoming Italy’s next Prime Minister. He is now challenging the European Union with the declaration that he will not accept the 3% limit to the budget deficit and claims that he is acting on behalf of the Italian people, that Italians come first and Eurocrats seconds. This is a battle that he is going to lose. The European heads of governments, not the Commission, established the limit to the budget deficit. And his fellow sovereigntists, like Sebastian Kurz of Austria or Viktor Orban of Hungary, will never agree to making any sacrifice to allow Italy to run a budget deficit.

Italy is a good example for understanding how reality is no longer important and is not the basis for politics. Tito Boeri, an international economist and outgoing Director of the National Institute of Social Security (a well-respected institution), has just published an article entitled ‘The managers of fear’. Italians are now convinced that there is one immigrant for every four Italians: actually, there is one for every twelve. Polls show that Italians (and this is valid by and large for all Europeans) are convinced that there are four problems with immigrants: 1) they will take over their work: 2) Italians have to finance the welfare of immigrants that do not work out of their own pockets; 3) they make towns less secure; and 4) immigrants bring contagious diseases with them. Well, says Boeri, nearly 10% of immigrants have creates companies. Every immigrant who is an entrepreneur employs 8 workers, and the labour of immigrants is highly concentrated in activities that Italians have abandoned. They provide 90% of the workforce in rice fields, 85% in the garment sewing industry and account for 75% of fruit and vegetables pickers. Wages in these sectors have not increased in the last 20 years: they were low, and they remain low.

But the most important fact (and this is also true for all of Europe) is that today one Italian in four is over the age of 65, compared with one immigrant in 50. In Italy, there are 2 pensioners for 3 people who work. How could the pension system survive without immigrants? Yet the over 65s are now those who vote for the Alt-Right. This imbalance is destined to grow. To maintain the current system, 83% of a salary goes to the pension system. In the future, how much will it cost the falling number of workers to sustain those who have retired? Already 150,000 young people, most highly qualified, are leaving Italy every year.

What about crime? Statistics show that crime has been diminishing at the same time as the number of immigrants has been growing. And what about contagious diseases where we have statistics from the World Health Organisation: Turkey is the country that has received most immigrants (over four million) in a short period of time. No data exist that show an increase in contagious diseases. In Europe, Germany has been the nation that received most immigrants in a short period of time, yet there are no data showing any increase in contagious diseases.

Fear, according to historians, together with greed, is one engine of change of the course of history. When did fear start? With the economic crisis of 2008, brought about by irresponsible finance, the only global sector of the world without control. The crisis made clear that globalisation was a failure. Instead of lifting all boats as its propagandists proclaimed, it lifted few boats, and made those unprecedently rich: now 80 individuals possess the same wealth as 2.3 trillion people. In fact, greed preceded fear. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world embarked on an orgy of private over public. The State was considered the enemy of growth. All social costs were slashed, welfare and education in particular, because they were considered non-productive. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil is still doing the same: he has cut the budget of universities and has announced that he wants to “discourage” philosophy and sociology, in favour of “practical studies” like business, engineering and medicine. Gain came to be considered a central virtue. Companies were allowed to seek maximum profit by delocalising in cheaper countries, large companies to put local shops out of business, salaries were reduced, and trade unions marginalised. On its neoliberal path, globalisation was considered unstoppable.

The tide was so strong that it was called pensée unique. At first, the left had no answer. But then British Prime Minister Tony Blair came up with an alternative proposal in 2003. Given that globalisation is unstoppable, let us ride it and let us try to tame it: the Third Way. That, in fact, meant accepting globalisation. The result was that the social democracy tamed very little, and the losers of globalisation no longer felt defended by the left. Globalisation made all that was remunerable mobile: finance, trade, transportation. The State was left only with responsibility for what was not movable: education, health, pensions and all social costs.

This was accompanied by a considerable reduction of national incomes, as globalisation was able (and is still able) to hide profits from national tax systems. According to some estimates, there are 80 trillion dollars in fiscal paradises, one of the main reasons for the decline of national incomes. There was much less money to distribute. The public debt started to pile up. As I write, it now stands at 58,987,551,309,132 dollars (see the Economist debt clock for today’s figure). That has increased the debt servicing to pay and reduced the amount available for current expenses. Nobody talks of this Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of countries and their citizens. No wonder the European Union introduced a measure to limit national deficits. Italy must already pay 30 billion euro every year for its deficit. To increase the deficit, as the government proposes, in order to gain votes is utterly irresponsible.

It is worth noting that before the crisis of 2008, there were no Alt-Right parties in Europe, except for that of Le Pen in France. However, it was just a matter of time before somebody started to ride fear in every country, that the decline of the traditional parties started and that there was no answer to the massive tide of neoliberal globalisation. Immigrants began to come in handy for stoking fear, and all the victims of globalisation switched to the new champions.

Now, it is a commonplace to say that right and left no longer exist. In fact, the fight is between sovereigntists – which means nationalists tinged with xenophobia and populism – and globalists, or those who still believe that international cooperation and trade are vital to growth and peace. This debate on the present ignores that the left is an historical process, that began with the first industrial revolution at the beginning of the 19th century, An incalculable number of people gave their lives in order to have social justice, curb the exploitation of workers and introduce the values of a modern and just society: equity, participatory and transparent democracy, human rights, and peace and development as values for international relations. These were the banners of the left. This historical treasure needs to be linked to present times.

The right- left dialectic has not disappeared. Just look at the growing environmental movement today which has gone into that divide. From Trump to Bolsonaro, climate change is a left-wing operation while, if you read ‘Laudato Si’, the encyclical of Pope Francis (which few do, unfortunately), you will see that the fight against climate change is above all a question of social justice and human dignity. In that sense, the Green parties are taking over part of the battles of the historical left.

And this brings us to a central issue: is solidarity an integral part of the legacy of the left?

I ask because Frederiksen obtained victory in Denmark, abandoning solidarity and using nationalism and xenophobia. Of course, she is giving her voters ample assurances that she will restore privileges for her citizens, and it is clear that this is now a winning formula, like the Third Way was for Tony Blair in the British elections in 1997. Except that it bows to globalisation, as the Third Way did. It bows to nationalism, populism and xenophobia, the new pensée unique for so many people in the world. Will it have a durable effect for those who call themselves left-wing?

Roberto Savio is 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.

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By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 2019 (IPS)

A recently-released report by the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD) shows that generic drugs, like omeprazole (used to treat heartburn), can cost 20-30 times more in low and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.

Rachel Silverman, a researcher with CGD who worked on the report, told IPS that “There is a lack of competition at the country level, even for basic, off-patent generic medicines. One firm can sometimes control 85% or more of the market share for specific drugs or therapy classes in some countries.”

The report also points out that low- and middle-income countries purchase more expensive branded medicine. Often, these unbranded drugs are not as trusted to be real.

There are laws to regulate unbranded medicine and ensure its quality, but Janeen Madan-Keller, a researcher at CGD, alongside Silverman, told IPS that it’s more an issue of a lack in enforcement.

“There are typically laws on the book about the quality of medicines…but regulatory agencies in many countries are ill-equipped and under-resourced to effectively enforce quality standards,” said Madan-Keller.

Silverman points to the private sector and calls upon them to ensure quality control. “Pharmaceutical companies have an ethical responsibility to ensure that their products are safe and effective,” said Silverman.

But for Silverman, the problem is bigger than the private sector alone can handle.

“Health product markets are extremely susceptible to market failure—from asymmetric information, barriers to entry, and forms of anticompetitive behavior, among other issues,” Silverman said.

Silverman and Madan-Keller think the solution lies in a combination of an expansion of programs already in place and the introduction of resources from institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) already aims to counteract some of the problems addressed in the report through the Collaborative Registration Procedure (CRP).

According to the WHO, the measure aims to accelerate the registration of finished pharmaceutical products (FPPs) thus “ensur[ing] that much-needed medicines reach patients more quickly.”

But the CGD report sees this program as only being a step in the right direction. The report explicitly calls for a “reform [of] WHO guidance and policy to support modern and agile procurement policy and practice.”

Silverman believes that an expansion of the CRP by the WHO would be “a global fix to the problem of burdensome country-by-country registration processes that impede market entry and competition.”

Asked for a comment, Fadela Chaib, of WHO told IPS, “We have not seen the report so we cannot comment at this stage.”

Financing of Health Products

The report also analyzed the different forms of funding for health products across countries. The three forms considered in the report are donor financing, the private sector, and government funding.

Donor financing takes first place in the level of funding for health products provided in low-income countries.

But donor financing contains both good and bad elements. It has been beneficial in providing a reduction in cases of HIV and malaria, but the large-scale politics behind donor financing has had some ill-effects.

“In countries like the US and UK, domestic politics drives a lot of uncertainty about the level of aid year-to-year,” says Silverman.

She worries that this uncertainty “trickles down to the recipients of donor-based medicine, limiting their capacity for accurate medium- to long-term planning.”

Silverman points to the concentration of purchasing power in only a few hands as another potential problem of donor financing.

It can lead to a lack in access to necessary supplies that can have detrimental effects, sometimes leading to deliver delays of life-saving medicines.

This is a potential shortcoming of a method called pooled purchasing, which combines several small buyers into one larger entity (giving it more power) which then purchases things, like medicines, on behalf of those small buyers.

But the researchers at Toulouse School of Economics and CGD think that, when done well, pooled purchasing can be beneficial because it drives down costs.

With small buyers making small purchases, Silverman says “This can introduce large transaction costs, that are typically passed down to the consumers; it also reduces purchaser negotiating power to secure better prices.”

The report argues that at a national level, pooled purchasing would be able to reduce drug prices by up to 50 – 75 percent because small buyers can have more purchasing power, which in turn drives down the prices of health products.

While in low-income countries, donor financing accounts for half of procured health products, in higher income countries, there is a stronger reliance on government procured products.

The transition between donor financing and government procured health products can be rocky, with middle-income countries often seeing limited financing from donors or the government.

Silverman says that in these countries, “Most families turn to the private sector where the quality of medicines can be unreliable and prices can be very high—and they often pay out of pocket.”

In low-middle-income countries, the private sector procures around 80% of all health products.

“This is sometimes called the “missing middle” problem; countries are “too wealthy” to receive substantial donor resources, but they have not yet built robust universal health coverage systems to provide health services and financial risk protection to their citizens,” Silverman says.

The transitions countries go through levels of funding that could be smoothed over if donor financing was not cut off as soon as a country has enough income. The researchers as CGD believe that there should be continued support for low-middle-income countries, even after government funding increases.

Finding this balance of funding during transition periods and the expansion of protections for those in need of life-saving medicines is now left open to the global health community, and to UN agencies like the WHO.

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By Geneva Centre
VIENNA, Jun 21 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Societies must work together to build more tolerance, solidarity and peace within and between nations, said the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, during the 19 June international conference on “From Interfaith, Inter-Civilizational Cooperation to Human Solidarity.” He emphasized that all such societies are built on shared aspirations and not shared ethnicity.

This Geneva Centre was one of the organizers of this major event together with the Baku International Centre for Interreligious and Inter-Civilizational Cooperation and the KAICIID Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue Centre.

It gathered over 200 high-level experts from 30 countries and 10 international organizations. A special message of greeting was extended to the co-organizers of the conference and the participants by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan HE llham Aliyev during the inaugural ceremony.

As the moderator of the opening and the first plenary sessions, Ambassador Jazairy stated that although the Berlin Wall was demolished in 1989, new physical and virtual walls were being erected which were breaking up societies and multilateralism.

“It is one of the greatest paradoxes of the contemporary world that major world faiths and creeds that all preach human fraternity are being perverted to justify hatred and exclusion. The threat to peoples is not diversity, but poverty. Terrorism has no religion, denomination or nationality. It is a social cancer that affects the whole world,” he said.

To overcome this situation, Ambassador Jazairy highlighted the importance of promoting awareness of both the commonality of values and the specificities of practices of diverse faiths as expressions of enrichment through pluralism. He emphasized that all faiths supported God-given dignity to human beings and the duty of all to uphold it in particular for women and girls and vulnerable groups. Likewise, he recalled that all such faiths equally advocate the love of one’s neighbor.

The Executive Director of the Geneva Centre praised the outcome of the 25 June 2018 World Conference on religions and equal citizenship rights, the World Tolerance Summit organized in November 2018 in Dubai, the historical meeting of 4 February 2019 between the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar held in Abu Dhabi, and the Fifth World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue held in-May 2019 in Azerbaijan.

In his concluding remarks, the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director underlined that the promotion of equal citizenship rights is the silver-bullet to promote successful societies that manage diversity and stimulate empathy towards the other.

Ambassador Jazairy added: ‘Ethnicity, religious or political affiliations do not convey more rights on some groups than on others. As the US Congress affirmed already in 1782 ‘E pluribus unum.’ This diversity needs to become again the subject of cultural celebration and lay the foundation for social cohesion and the promotion of inclusive societies. There can be no sustainable pursuit of happiness in islands of prosperity surrounded by oceans of poverty.”

The Executive Director of the Geneva Centre concluded his statement by appealing to countries from the Global North and the Global South to jointly promote empathy between different cultures and civilizations and to “speak up together so that the conference message comes out loud and clear and is picked up by politicians who can make it become a reality.”

In the concluding session of the conference, the co-organizers endorsed an outcome declaration welcoming, inter alia, the adoption of the 25 June 2018 World Conference 10-Point Outcome Declaration on “Moving Towards Greater Spiritual Convergence Worldwide in Support of Equal Citizenship Rights” which was sponsored by the Geneva Centre and its partners last year.

The co-organizers likewise adopted a joint message to the President of Azerbaijan HE Ilham Aliyev and to the President of Austria HE Alexander Van der Bellen appealing to both countries to address obstacles to sustainable peace and development, promote inter-civilizational dialogue and to make this conference format replicable at regular intervals in the future.

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