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By Matilde Mordt
QUITO, Ecuador, Jun 5 2019 (IPS)

As the UN commemorates World Environment Day, UNDP would like to take this opportunity to commend Ecuador’s efforts to address climate change and its commitment to raising its climate ambition.

Ecuador is at the forefront of delivering climate action, and in the frontlines of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) design. It has gone from an Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) presented in Paris, that defined targets for only two sectors: Energy and Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, to a revised NDC 2020-2025 which includes both mitigation and adaptation.

This ambitious NDC is one of the first registered before the UNFCCC for the 2020 round, and the first to fully use the guidelines for NDCs agreed in Katowice at the end of 2018. It has several features worth highlighting:

Firstly, it has been formulated in a way that is fully aligned with national priorities as defined in the National Development Plan. It is likewise aligned to the 2030 Agenda, contributing to numerous SDGs;

Secondly, it has been developed in a highly participatory manner, gathering more than 150 institutions from public and private sectors, academia, and civil society, including over 1,000 participants.

Matilde Mordt

It is important to note that all relevant ministries were involved in the process, including also the national disaster risk reduction system, municipal and provincial governments, to ensure a whole of government approach and coherency between interventions;

Finally, UNDP´s NDC-Support Programme developed and applied a methodology for a gender-sensitive formulation of the NDC. This not only ensured equal participation of men and women in the process, but also provided tools to identify gender gaps, and proposed solutions to reduce inequalities and ensure a fair distribution of benefits.

This is also a first for the NDCs globally, and we would like to congratulate the Government of Ecuador for embracing this approach.

Throughout the NDC preparation process, UNDP provided a platform for integrating public and private sector, academia, and civil society in discussions, and we developed and applied innovative methodologies such as design thinking to enhance the contributions of participants.

We also integrated the support of sister UN Agencies during the process; reaching out to UN Women for gender mainstreaming and to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for technical assistance on agriculture, forestry and land use.

UNDP’s vast network of experts, knowledge and resources was used to facilitate the NDC preparation, including national level projects and global programmes such as the NDC Support Programme, REDD+ and BIOFIN. This is an example of our Global Policy Network in action.

The process would not have been possible without the continuous backing of our main donors, European Union, Germany, Norway, Spain and Italy, as well as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Global Environment Facility (GEF).

UNDP has already been actively involved in the implementation of concrete climate actions in Ecuador for the last 20 years. Ongoing efforts will constitute building blocks for its NDC implementation going forward.

For instance, we support Ecuador to implement a combined GCF and GEF project in the forestry/REDD+ sector in the Amazon, that not only helps Ecuador comply with international climate and environmental commitments, but also supports communities – indigenous peoples and rural populations, men and women – to improve their livelihoods.

We are uniquely positioned to work in the intersection between environmental sustainability and poverty reduction, aiming precisely at leaving no one behind.

Ecuador´s NDC will now be implemented through an Action Plan, complemented with a Financial Strategy and Monitoring, Reporting and Verification system as the tracking tool. Sustained support from the international community to maintain this progress is key for allowing Ecuador to advance on this path. At UNDP we stand ready to continue supporting these efforts.

This links to the upcoming Climate Summit, to be celebrated in New York this September. We know that unprecedented efforts are required from all sectors of society to tackle the climate emergency – and we know that the task is urgent.

Ecuador has increased its level of ambition and will be pleased to continue sharing its experience and contribute to lessons learned and good practices.

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Excerpt:

Matilde Mordt is UNDP Resident Representative in Ecuador

The post Ecuador in Frontline to Address Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Niklas Hagelberg
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 5 2019 (IPS)

Fossil fuels—oil, gas, coal and their derivatives—pollute the atmosphere and emit the greenhouse gases that are ramping up global heating to dangerous levels. But did you know that governments around the world are subsidizing this pollution?

Historically, governments around the world have used fossil fuel subsidies for a variety of reasons, including to promote energy independence, encourage industry and cushion the poorest in society.

But they never took sufficient account of what economists call “externalities” such as air pollution and the resulting impacts on our health.

There is a special kind of madness in a system that funds the healthcare burden from asthma, respiratory diseases and lung cancer, and at the same time funds companies that pollute the air and contribute towards these health issues in the first place.

Niklas Hagelberg

Ordinary people pay the price three times over—taxes for healthcare, taxes to support fossil fuel subsidies, and then the ultimate price of compromises to their health.

Air pollution claims the lives of one in nine every year and is the single biggest health risk facing people across the world. Fossil fuel subsidies often fail to benefit targeted groups and are a significant drain on national budgets.

Global fossil fuel subsidies cost taxpayers about US$400 billion. Imagine if these public resources were directed to finance sustainable development, clean energy and climate action.

Fossil fuel subsidies disproportionately benefit the top oil majors, help their profit margins and serve as a powerful disincentive to develop renewable energy. They also reduce the available pot of resources for investment in renewables.

Countries that heavily subsidize these fuels of the past are stifling the current and future business and economic opportunities that renewable energy provides.

Redirecting the money used for fossil fuel subsidies has the potential to accelerate our ability to address the global climate crisis, and ensure a just decarbonization. The additional resources could also be used for other development priorities such as health, education or infrastructure.

The planet can no longer afford these subsidies. We should move to scrap them as soon as possible and make the switch to a green economy.

The energy landscape is changing quickly

The energy transition is happening now, all around us. The growth rate of renewables is three times faster than fossil and nuclear fuel, with record growth rates in solar and wind power. The United Kingdom just went 100 days on 100 per cent renewable energy sources, and no one noticed.

However, despite the rapid pace of change, the bulk of all our power for heating, lighting, cooking, transport and industry still comes from fossil fuels.

A major way to reduce air pollution, which is above World Health Organization safe levels in many cities around the world, is to switch more quickly away from fossil fuels. We should eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, except for liquefied petroleum gas cooking programmes.

UN Environment, in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Institute for Sustainable Development Global Service Initiative, has developed a methodology to measure fossil fuel subsidies, providing comparable data to allow the tracking of national and global trends.

The report helps governments to understand the extent of the problem (for example what percentage of their Gross Domestic Product they spend on fossil fuel subsidies) and take action to reduce or abolish these subsidies.

Air pollution is the theme for World Environment Day on 5 June 2019. The quality of the air we breathe depends on the lifestyle choices we make every day. Learn more about how air pollution affects you, and what is being done to clean the air. What are you doing to reduce your emissions footprint and #BeatAirPollution?

Further resources:
Calling time on fossil fuel subsidies
Measuring Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals

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Excerpt:

Niklas Hagelberg is Coordinator, Climate Change Programme, UN Environment

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By Mahamadou Tounkara
Jun 5 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(GGGI) – Air pollution has become the number one environmental problem affecting people’s health, impacting 300 million children worldwide and contributing to the premature death of 600 thousand children every year.

Indoor air pollution from cooking on open fire using firewood or charcoal is a major problem in many developing countries. In Ethiopia, for example, biomass fuel, used by 95% of the population for cooking, is responsible for 50,320 annual deaths of children under-five year, accounting for 4.9% of the national burden of disease in Ethiopia. Acute respiratory infections are the leading cause of mortality among children in Ethiopia.

Air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to public health and 9 out of 10 people in the world breathe air containing high levels of pollutants

Air pollution has been getting worse in recent years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to public health and 9 out of 10 people in the world breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. Traffic is a contributor to bad air quality, but another factor is “brown” electricity generation. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity releases dangerous pollution that contributes to poor air quality and health issues. Green growth can minimize air pollution through investment in areas such as cleaner forms of energy generation and transport, better management of traffic congestion, adoption of cleaner manufacturing, agricultural and construction practices, and clean cooking.

 

GGGI and its work

At GGGI, we work directly with governments to tackle the growing concern of air pollution, as it has become the largest cause of premature death in many nations. GGGI has 32 Member countries and works across the thematic priorities of sustainable energy, green cities, sustainable landscapes and water and sanitation to deliver impact through six strategic outcomes which are aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, GGGI’s 70 projects contribute to all of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

 

GGGI’s country examples

GGGI’s Mexico team has developed a tool to measure and quantify health effects on transport-related air pollution and supported the government of Mexico in the creation of a governance system, involving Mexico City and five other surrounding states to help improve air quality in the central region of the country. Three-wheelers are an important form of public transport in Vientiane, Laos, but it is also the biggest source of air pollution. The three-wheeler project has been replaced by an e-bus and an e-motorbike project, as the government wants to phase out the three-wheelers. A growing number of countries are shifting its perspective to focus on basic public services that need to be more sustainable, inclusive and now, more emphasis is placed on helping to improve the quality of life for the citizens.

 

Photo: San Vicente, Philippines

Electric tricycles (e-trikes) have already started to roam the streets of San Vicente, Philippines. GGGI provided technical assistance to San Vicente and the implementation of e-trikes will not only mitigate the effects of climate change, but also create jobs and improve mobility of its residents, without the pollution and noise. GGGI is also working with the governments of Jordan and local and international partners and stakeholders to help the Jordan achieve its goals of reaching 14% greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030, improving urban air quality, and catalyzing electric mobility to improve the country’s energy efficiency and reduce its dependence on oil imports.

 

Photo: Meeting with KP Sharma Oli, Prime Minister of Nepal

 

Nepal launched its National Action Plan for Electric Mobility, developed by the Government of Nepal and GGGI in 2018. GGGI’s Nepal team has been working closely with the Ministry of Forests and Environment since 2017 to advance clean, sustainable transportation and support the Government to get electric buses on the road. Peru is in the process of modernizing its vehicle fleet and eliminating the vehicles that pollute the most. GGGI’s Peru team is currently supporting the Ministry of Transport and Communications in the design of its freight vehicle scrapping program.

 

Air pollution in Asia

In the last few decades, there has been incredible economic growth in Asia, during which the environment took a back seat, but now people are confronting air pollution and other impacts and so the mindset is changing. In the Republic of Korea, the Moon Jae-in government has changed its perspective on energy policy and has increased its renewable energy target from 4% to 20% and this has led to a lot of societal discussion in the Republic of Korea. The United Kingdom started such a discussion 10 years ago, when it had close to 50% of its energy coming from coal but in 10 years it has gone down to almost zero. People were worried about energy security but now wind energy has become cheaper than coal and building wind turbines has generated a lot of jobs. A rapid transition took place in 10 years.

In Asia, the primary driver for green or clean tech may not be climate change but air pollution, which causes asthma and kills people all over Asia. Beijing had more blue skies this year than in previous years, as coal mines have been closed and more electric buses are on the roads. China has become a leader in certain areas of clean technology and is commercially exploiting these opportunities, for example in constructing solar panels. In Europe, wind energy provides a thriving industry and many commercial opportunities. Japan is pushing for a hydrogen economy, and various countries are finding out that these could bring a new generation of prosperity

At the opening ceremony of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) in Beijing, President Xi Jinping gave a remarkable speech on China’s commitment to multilateralism, opening up the country’s economy, breaking down subsidies and tariffs, and promoting high quality green development in the interest of peace and prosperity across the world. At GGGI we are exploring how that commitment can translate in acceleration of renewable energy uptake in developing countries, using Chinese expertise and technology.

Air pollution is virtually everywhere in Asia in the big cities because of transport, coal-fired power plants and industry. Even in less-developed rural areas where you don’t expect the level to be as high. Eighty percent of people in Cambodia are still cooking food on an open fire and using coal for heating and as a result, indoor air pollution is a huge problem for them. Pollution is the largest cause of premature death now, even more than smoking. It is something that worries us a lot and plays a large part in green growth.

Air pollution is the second-largest cause of premature deaths for children in Mongolia. But there is also cause for alarm in countries where it is not as clearly visible and people are not so aware of the problem. Inefficient energy use in households, industry, agriculture and transport sectors, and coal-fired power plants were the major sources attributed to outdoor air pollution, while the lack of access to clean cooking fuels and technologies contributed most to indoor pollution. The latter puts women and children as the biggest group at risk. As a result, two-thirds of Southeast Asian cities saw a five percent growth in air pollution between 2008 and 2013 according to a WHO report in 2016. However, the report noted that more governments were increasing their commitments to reduce air pollution.

Small individual decisions such as walking, using bicycles, opting for public transport or sharing car trips have significant impact, and go hand in hand with ambitious public policy decisions. The world needs to take action and commitment to get the clean air we want to breathe in our bicentennial.

 

Mahamadou Tounkara, Director, Strategy, Partnerships and Communications, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

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Excerpt:

Mahamadou Tounkara is Director, Strategy, Partnerships and Communications, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

The post Standing up for the clean air we deserve! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In 2011 Somalia also experienced severe drought and many were forced to leave their homes and make the long journey to an aid camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 5 2019 (IPS)

Climate-related displacement and food insecurity is not a future possibility, but it is already happening and it’s only projected to worsen without urgent action in coming years.

Yesterday, ahead of World Environment Day, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) sounded the alarm on the growing impacts of drought in Somalia.

“UNHCR and humanitarian partners fear that severe climatic conditions combined with armed conflict and protracted displacement could push the country into a far bigger humanitarian emergency,” said UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch.

As a result of below average rains and a worsening drought, an estimated 5.4 million people are likely to be food insecure by September in many parts of the Horn of Africa nation. Of those, over two million will be in severe conditions and in need of immediate emergency assistance.

The drought has also forced nearly 50,000 people to flee their homes in search of food, water, and aid. More than 7,000 were displaced last month alone.

“People who are already displaced because of conflict and violence are also affected by the drought, at times disproportionally,” Baloch added.

The latest crisis is occurring at the wake of a two-year drought that ended in 2017, which displaced over one million.

According to UNHCR, weather-related hazards such as storms, droughts, and wildfires displaced 16.1 million people in 2018.

Climate-related crises are only expected to occur with greater frequency across the world.

In a new, terrifying report, Australian think tank Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration warned that climate change poses a “new-to-mid-term existential threat to human civilisation.”

“This policy paper looks at…the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on earth may be on the way to extinction, in the most horrible way,” said Admiral Chris Barrie in the foreword.

The assessment warns that the world’s currently on its way to least 3° Celsius of global warming and projects that by 2050, one billion people in regions such as the Middle East and West Africa will have to relocate due to unliveable climate conditions.

There will also be severe decreases in water availability and a collapse in agriculture and food production.

“The scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end,” the report states, noting that such climate impacts will accelerate conflict and instability.

But not all hope is lost.

The report urges governments to have strong leadership and mobilise resources “akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilisation” in order to quickly build a zero-emissions industrial system.

“A doomsday future is not inevitable! But without immediate drastic action our prospects are poor. We must act collectively,” said Barrie.

UNHCR similarly called on more international action to prevent climate-related disasters, increase efforts to strengthen resilience, and protect those already affected by climate change.

Last month, aid agencies launched a 710-million-dollar appeal in response to the drought in Somalia. Only 20 percent has so far been funded.

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

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Handpumps, participatory rural appraisals, wadi programmes, and so on, all came from an innovation or technology developed by civil society | Picture courtesy: Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)

By Apoorva Oza
AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, India, Jun 4 2019 (IPS)

When we look at some of the things we take for granted in India today, there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated from civil society.

People hear the word civil society and react differently; and it depends on where they come from. For the business leader, social and environmental concerns are impediments to business. “Environment ke liye poora project band hojata hai, what about growth, what about the economy?” (Entire projects have to be shut down for the sake of the environment).

I’ve also been in conversations with some government officers who say, “woh kaam chhota karte hain aur credit bahut le lete hain. Kaam toh hum karte hain paisa toh hamara hai.” (The nonprofits hardly do any work but take all the credit. We are the ones who do the work, the ones who put in the money).

But nothing is farther from the truth. When we look at rural India, and look at some of the things we take for granted today—be it women self-help groups (SHGs), ASHA workers, biogas plants, RTI applications, and so on—there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated as innovations in civil society.

 

Our largest government programmes were born in civil society

 

1. National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and Self Help Groups (SHGs)

When we look at rural India, and look at some of the things we take for granted today—be it women self-help groups (SHGs), ASHA workers, biogas plants, RTI applications, and so on—there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated as innovations in civil society.

One of the largest programmes of the government—the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM)—is based on women self help groups (SHGs). And the concept of an SHG was developed by Aloysius Fernandes and his team at MYRADA.

In the 1970s, MYRADA was working with large primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS), all of whom seemed to be failing. In some of the geographies however, while the cooperatives had collapsed, there were some villages where small groups were saving and giving credit to each other.

Aloysius and the MYRADA team saw this, identified them as empowered groups that the banks could lend to, gave it form and structure, and took it to NABARD.

NABARD realised the value of what MYRADA was helping build, because they themselves were trying to reach out to the poor and their existing institutional portfolio was failing because the cooperatives weren’t functioning. They supported MYRADA and then pushed the banks to lend to these groups of poor women who saved regularly.

So, in a sense the SHG movement was started by MYRADA and to some extent, NABARD. The state was not in the picture at that time.

Then the first SERP programme came up in Andhra Pradesh. They used the base created by NABARD and MYRADA and they promoted the SHGs. And because the SERP programme worked, and because the World Bank was funding SERP, when the government created the NRLM, they used the same principles and structures.

Today the NRLM, which rides almost entirely on the SHG infrastructure, is the only large-scale institutional arrangement that the government has to reach out to poor. Every government uses it, regardless of what end of the political spectrum they occupy. It is pro-poor and still has elements of the market—the state can extend its entitlements directly to the people, while also enabling them to be self-reliant by promoting enterprises. But if there hadn’t been MYRADA, we probably wouldn’t have had NRLM today.

 

2. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 

India’s most talked about government programme MGNREGA came about because Jean Drèze and others in civil society drafted it, and advocated for it.

The idea of MGNREGA did borrow from an earlier employment guarantee programme that was started in Maharashtra by Mr Vitthal Sakharam Page—chair of the Maharashtra State Legislative Council, and a social activist—who wrote the first draft in 1965. But it was only when several civil society activists fought for it in the early 2000s, that it became something that the Central government took seriously and passed into national law.

 

3. Integrated Water Management Programme (IWMP)

The early work around watershed management was done in Sukhomajri in Haryana. A more integrated approach was later piloted at Ralegan Siddhi by Anna Hazare. This, and the Hiware Bazar model by Popatrao Pawar became models to emulate, and the IWMP guidelines that are in place today are a result of contributions from many nonprofits.

These are just few examples but the story repeats itself again and again regardless of the sector. Consider these two others examples; one old and one relatively recent:

• ASHA workers: The concept of ASHA workers was born in Jamkhed. The Aroles—Dr Mabelle and Dr Raj—started a programme in 1970 which involved semi-literate women delivering home-based care to mothers and newborns. It was taken to scale by the government, and our country now has over six lakh ASHA workers.
• 108 Service: The 108 service that everyone lauds as a model of efficiency and scale was started as a service by EMRI—a nonprofit in Andhra Pradesh under the aegis of Satyam Foundation (EMRI was later taken over by the GVK Foundation). It was handed over to the Andhra Pradesh government, and later, other state governments implemented it. Today it runs across 15 states and two union territories.

The list continues—handpumps, participatory rural appraisals, wadi programmes, and so on. Essentially, almost any government programme worth its salt came from an innovation or technology developed by civil society. This is not to belittle the role of the state, which is by far the major development actor, but to emphasise the role of civil society in nation building.

Despite this, we are seeing a marginalisation of the civil society sector by markets and the government because we haven’t told our story well enough.

 

Civil society is too self-effacing

What is the philosophy of a civil society? We believe that we will develop solutions which over time the community will own and the state or market will support. When that happens, we believe our work is done.

In a way, it’s a very phoenix-like approach—you create and you disband. And you start all over again on some other problem. We don’t patent anything; we don’t take credit for anything.

And perhaps this is because we know that something as complex as social change requires the contribution of many people—communities, grassroots organisations, the state, funders, and so on. But we have gone to the other extreme. We don’t even acknowledge our role in the change; in fact, we undermine it.

When people ask us if we have successfully run a programme, we say “Nahi humne toh kuch kiya nahi hai, ye toh sab gaonwalon ne kiya hai” (No, we didn’t do anything, it was the villagers who did everything). And while it might be politically correct to say that we are only the catalysts, and the real work is done the community; it’s not always an accurate representation.

Civil society is more than the catalyst; we are innovators—technical innovators and idea innovators. We take really complex problems and come up with new ways to address them. We do effective work but refuse to take credit for it. And our refusal to take credit only feeds into the government’s view point—if the community is doing everything and civil society isn’t doing anything, then we will deal with the community directly.

 

People don’t understand our unique proposition

Because we have undermined ourselves, our unique proposition is not known. Our value to society is not only what we do or how we do it, but also at what cost we do what we do.

Many of us work at ridiculously low costs but we don’t document it, and we don’t measure it. So, some corporates, who want to work on social programmes, believe that they don’t need nonprofits. All they have to do is take the nonprofit’s staff and implement it on their own because it seems easy and cheap to do so.

The reality is different. Running a programme is complex. It takes years to build trust. And it requires humility, rigour, and persistence. It requires training, all-weather support, and hand-holding—all things that lead to an enabling ecosystem that a good nonprofit creates.

But some corporates don’t know this; they just want to take on the programmes because they believe they can do it better on their own rather than share space with nonprofits. It’s we who are at fault because we allowed this to happen.

 

The assumption is that nonprofits cannot scale

Scale is the new measure of ‘success’, where others find civil society wanting. Small, local and specialised civil society organisations are disappearing, and are not considered relevant in this new India which is in a hurry.

If one studies what has worked in the past, one realises that many, relatively small organisations have transformed the country. Consider MKSS, which started its work in a small village in Rajasthan, and even at its peak, worked largely in Rajasthan for the citizens’ right to information. That the RTI Act eventually became one of the most effective legislations by the state to hold itself accountable to its citizens, is a story of how impact is not necessarily a function of size.

We are constantly told by corporates and governments that we can’t scale. But then I reflect on what is it that a large corporate that has scaled typically does? They pick one slice of a human being’s life, for instance, the fact that people might like to drink cold sweet water in summer. It is one need—one would think a very unhealthy need but nevertheless a need. And then a multi-billion-dollar soft drink industry gets created around this need. You serve nothing; in fact, you take a poor man’s good water and convert it into this sweet water and charge him INR 20 for it. That is your net value addition to society. So that is all you know. To understand one very small slice of a human being’s need and address it.

Now compare that to what civil society is trying to do. We are trying to transform the conditions in which human beings live. This is dramatically different from creating a market for one small need of an individual.

It’s easy to scale a product that is uni-dimensional, serves a very specific micro-need, to which you can throw a ton of resources—money, talent, technology. But can you do it when it involves changing entrenched social norms across all aspects of a person’s life and livelihood?

The problem is while we in the sector might know how to do some of this, we don’t know how to articulate it and how to measure it.

And because we haven’t articulated it, we cannot argue for resources, for space, for anything really.

 

Even if the state hasn’t failed, we will always need civil society

Civil society is that critical third pillar of the samaj-sarkar-bazaar (society-government-market) triangle. Without it, no society can function. Even in most successful countries across the world there will always be people who are marginalised, and issues that are not on government or company radars.

There will always be a human problem which the market will never take up and the state will not realise either, because it is too buried, or too out there in the future. Even in its best form, the government is not designed to look at these things. And countries that have a majoritarian democracy will ignore those who are not a part of their majority. It’s a design problem.

So, who will look out for these people, who will help change entrenched social norms, who will build awareness of issues that matter?

 

Apoorva Oza is the chief executive officer of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India). He is also actively involved in founding and supporting nonprofits and nonprofit networks, as well as influencing government policy. A mechanical engineer with a diploma in rural management from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, he has also completed courses from Cranford University, United Kingdom, and Cornell University, USA.

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

 

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By Michael Lim Mah Hui and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
PENANG and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 4 2019 (IPS)

Finance has not stopped at dominating the real economy. The tentacles of finance have reached into significant, if not most parts of society.

Gerald Davis characterises modern society, where finance is dominant, as a ‘portfolio society’, in which aspects of social life have been securitized and transformed into a kind of capital or investment to be managed.

Michael Lim Mah Hui

Social insurance
One area that affects many is ‘social insurance’, with state-organized social protection being replaced by market options for individuals. US social security was introduced as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide adequate economic protection to workers after retirement.

This program has been compulsory, universal, and managed by the state. This was often supplemented by private pension funds provided and managed by companies for their workers.

Under President Reagan, the ‘401K’ was introduced in 1981 to allow and encourage employees to manage their own retirement funds and plans. Companies were only too happy to replace their pension plans with 401K as many had unfunded pension liabilities.

The responsibility of investment and management of retirement funds now rests with employees, most of whom are poorly equipped to do consistently well with their market investments. Asset management funds have since mushroomed, with some becoming big business.

Housing
Two other areas where financialization has penetrated social life through securitization are housing and education, with illiquid assets transformed into liquid ones to be bought and sold.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Thus, financialization has sought to marketize all products and services. Banks are supposed to provide credit for the wheels of industry and trade. But more and more banks have moved away from this to instead provide credit for personal consumption and investment or speculation.

Financing home mortgages is big money. Bank lending to the property sector in developed economies accounts for between 60% to 70% of total credit. Traditionally, banks provide collateralized long-term loans to finance housing. These loans sit on the books of banks until the mortgages are paid off.

Financial innovation
From the 1980s, with financial liberalization and deregulation, ‘innovative’ new products were introduced, with the most impactful being loan securitization. Illiquid bank loans were consolidated and packaged as securities to be traded, making illiquid assets liquid.

Banks could then sell off these securities to investors, thus reducing illiquid assets on their balance sheets and freeing up capital to book more loans to be repackaged and sold off. This process can be repeated ad infinitum.

Non-market finance has thus been transformed into market-based financing involving ‘slicing and dicing’. One option to increase profitability is by ‘slicing’ loans by credit quality into tranches to be sold to investors with different risk appetites.

In this structure, loans with weaker credit quality are mixed with better ones before ‘dicing’ them to be sold on, betting that defaults will only be limited to tranches with weaker credit ratings and by understating the problem of contagion. All these became known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)

In other words, ethereal financial products with weak or vague links to actual underlying assets have been created. CDOs have been used as underlying assets, and even repackaged for the next level of CDOs, referred to as CDO2, or CDO-squared, and after another round, as CDO3.

The CDOs business soon proved lucrative and quickly became popular. The total volume worldwide increased 23-fold in eight years from US$23 billion in 2000 to US$544 billion in 2007, when they imploded; the rest is history.

Besides CDOs, there are credit default swaps (CDSs). These CDSs are ostensibly innovative new forms of insurance written by financial institutions and sold to buyers who take a different view of the default risk of the CDOs. For an investment banker, it is all about “taking a view”, i.e., betting on a financial product that has been created.

Human ‘capital’
The same story goes for education once principally provided by the state to all citizens, often free of charge at elementary and secondary levels, and sometimes or partly at tertiary level. But more and more education is now seen as ‘human capital investment’.

With cutbacks in state funding, expansion of private schools, and fee escalation, education has become an expensive investment, with many forced to take student loans. Student loans form the second largest category of loans just behind housing mortgages. This again offers opportunities for profit making.

Many student loans have been securitized into student loan asset-backed securities (called SLABS) to be traded. In 2019, total US student debt amounted to US$1.5 trillion involving 44 million borrowers. The average US college student now has US$34,000 debt hanging over his or her head.

Dr Michael LIM Mah Hui has been a university professor and banker, in the private sector and with the Asian Development Bank.

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

The post Transforming Society, Financialization Destroys Social Solidarity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rhoda, 23, speaking on behalf of her community, at the Joint Parliamentarian Committee meeting in Kasungu, Malawi. This work was made possible with UK aid from the British people. Credit: WaterAid/Dennis Lupenga

By Mercy Masoo
LILONGWE, Malawi, Jun 4 2019 (IPS)

Giving birth is a life changing moment for women. It can be – when women have a safe and caring environment, positive and empowering – a moment to find a previously untapped inner strength.

But for too many women around the world, a lack of basic facilities mean that their lives and those of their babies are put at risk, risking death when they are bringing life into the world.

My fellow Malawian Rhoda, from Kasungu used her own lifechanging birth experience to help fight for the lives of future mothers and babies.

She was one of the women who bravely stood up and delivered an emotional speech at a community gathering attended by local politicians about her experience of giving birth on a roadside during the 25 kilometre walk to her nearest health centre.

Through co-ordinated advocacy, Rhoda and women like her succeeded in making their voices heard and convinced their elected representatives to dedicate resources to open a local hospital in their area.

She is one of a growing number of women who together are claiming their right to health and commit to challenging the status quo. With this growing momentum, things can really change for the better.

Rhoda said: “My experience giving birth on the way to the hospital was the last straw that made us demand this health centre. It was a frightening experience. We told the Member of Parliament that we were tired of empty promises. It was time to deliver.”

Rhoda’s experience could have so easily seen her join the heartbreaking maternal death statistics of Malawi where, 634 women die during or after birth for every 100 000 babies born alive. This is nearly three times the global average of 216 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.

Mercy Masoo, WaterAid Malawi Country Director at the Joint Parliamentarian Committee meeting with the people of Kapyanga, Kasungu, Malawi. Credit: WaterAid/Dennis Lupenga

Fortunately, both survived the traumatic, dangerous and undignified experience but many others who also have to give birth in unhygienic conditions are not so lucky. Even those who manage to reach a midwife and a healthcare facility often face appalling infection risks.

Recent UNICEF-WHO data showed that 45% of healthcare facilities in least-developed countries (LDCs) do not have a source of clean water on site. Without clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene, it’s impossible for medical staff to deliver quality care.

A lack of these necessities results in the lives of patients being put in danger and contributes not only to the spread of diseases but also the rise of drug-resistant infections as more antibiotics are needed to battle illnesses that good hygiene might have prevented.

Life is changing for many communities here in Malawi as more and more raise their voices, share their experiences of hardship and discrimination with those in power and demand provision of basic needs such as accessible health centres with clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

Shockingly, one in nine people around the world still don’t have access to clean water close to home and one in three don’t have a decent toilet of their own. It is no secret that in areas where water is scarce it’s nearly always women and girls who face the hardship of walking long distances to collect what little water they can find.

A situation that makes them miss out on education and economic opportunities, and sometimes leaves them at risk of sexual assault and harassment. I know it’s possible for these shocking statistics to be turned around.

We need to hear women’s voices calling for water and sanitation in part because not having these basic rights disproportionately impacts women and girls

Without toilets, women’s freedom and dignity is compromised. Many spend their days worrying about where they will be able to find a toilet, often resorting to the bush or waste ground.

That is why, this week, WaterAid is joining with over 8,000 others at the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver. We want governments, the corporate sector and civil society to know that the voices and lives of women and girls matter.

We can’t and won’t achieve gender equality without addressing the lack of access to the basic human right that is water, sanitation and hygiene which millions of women and girls face worldwide.

Women like Rhoda are shining examples. And it is my hope that we will see more and more women standing in their power and advocating for their rights, despite unspeakable difficulty. Because when women and girls are given an active role in decision-making, transformation happens.

The post We Won’t Achieve Gender Equality Until We Address the Lack of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mercy Masoo is Country Director, WaterAid Malawi

The post We Won’t Achieve Gender Equality Until We Address the Lack of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

The terrible feeling I had on waking up and seeing the Italian voting results at the recent European elections was that my country was suddenly full of strangers. How could the majority of Italians reconfirm a government which has been the most inefficient in history, quarrelling on everything every single day and looking with total indifference to the looming problem of how to establish the next budget without clashing with the European Union or squeezing Italian citizens? Its irresponsible debate on the Italian finances has now led to a spread (difference of value) of 290 points with the Germans.

Roberto Savio

What is more, the results have rewarded Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has spent a grand total of 17 days in nearly a year in his office (not of a marginal ministry … should it now be abolished?) and all the rest in an electoral campaign? Well, Italians doubled his votes, from 17% to 34%, while halving those of messy government partners the 5 Star Movement (whose leader Luigi Di Maio came to the post of Deputy Prime Minister with the only a job on his CV that of steward at the Naples football stadium). What has Salvini done concretely, beside blocking ports to immigrants, displaying rosaries, bible and crucifix in rallies, and mimicking Mussolini’s body language?

Then, of course, you realize that Salvini is not alone, and that probably my generation, which is based on the values enshrined in the Constitution (solidarity, social justice, equity, peace and international cooperation) is unable to understand today’s times. On October 31, 2017, Corriere del Trentino published an interview in which I claimed that we needed populists in government in Europe as soon as possible, so it would soon become evident that while their denunciations are correct, they would have no answer to the problems. And when the interviewer observed that the next elections to come were the Italian elections, I replied that as an Italian I was sad, but as a European I was happy, because the Italian populists would fail miserably.

Well, under normal logic, they have failed. The chaotic government has realised few points of its programme, and Italy is the European country close to 0% growth. But the majority of the Italian population has seen things otherwise … so this opens up a crucial question.

Those who are fighting for democracy (look at Poland and Hungary with the progressive elimination of checks and balances, courts, media, teaching system, etc.); for transparency and accountability (think of US President Donald Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax declarations); for social justice (today just 80 billionaires own as much as 2.3 billion people), peace (the arms race reached an unprecedented 1.7 trillion dollars in 2018), and so on, do they really understand why we are becoming a minority in many countries and globally?

Looking at Trump’s very probable re-election, at Marine Le Pen’s gains over Emmanuel Macron in France, are we sure that we understand the new politics, and that we can provide a valid answer? The question is all the more important because the tide is impressive. In the wings behind those in power (the Trumps, Orbans, Kaczynskis, Erdogans, Putins, Salvinis, Bolsonaros, Dutertes and so on) are those in waiting (like Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Jussi Halla-aho and so on).

Of course, all those respond to different realities. If we call the new wave nationalists, we should then add Narendra Modi, Shinz? Abe, Xi Jinping and the very large majority of the world’s citizens.

But, at least in Europe, they call themselves sovereigntists. This makes it easier to understand them, as they basically share a number of points: a) nationalism, tinged with racism); b) xenophobia, within which they include minorities and LBGTs); c) use of moral superiority to depict the adversary as an enemy of the people, whom they represent; d) fight against any international treaty and structure, which they claim have taken away the sovereignty of their country; and e) echoing Trump: my country first. So, the fight is not between left and right, it is between those who are for their nation and those who are associated with globalisation.

This, by the way, is a gross manipulation. Nations are the basis on which we build international relations and are the basis for our identity. Nationalism is an extremism built on a legitimate concept. And the principles on which United Nations, for instance, was built was the concept of development, which is exactly the opposite of globalisation; the concept and strategy for eliminating national sovereignty to make the maximum use of free flow of capitals and investments and support the transnational system. Development was a concept based on the idea that, in the end, everybody taking part in it was going to be more: globalisation on the idea that, in the end, everybody would have more.

A world in which the cost of advertising per capita surpass that of education, and the financial system reaches volumes 40 times superior to those of production of good and services, is a world clearly against the concept of development. To have fiscal paradises with at least 40 trillion dollars, whose taxes – if paid to nations – would be more than the total cost of all long-term programmes of the United Nations, clearly does not fit with sovereigntism.

And let us also remember that before the economic crisis of 2008, created by a corrupt banking system, there were no sovereigntist parties in sight anywhere, except for that of Le Pen in France. Yet, the new political system has hardly fought against the dramatic power of finance: Trump’s first year of government had a cabinet with the largest participation of bankers in American history (later replaced by military figures).

But we have no space here for a conceptual debate. Just let us call the attention to the fact that voters seem to have reached a point where they disregard the most basic element of political action: do not trust those who have lied to you, regardless of any political inclination. I will take just three examples: Italy, Great Britain and Lithuania.

As already said, Italy is now in recession, with no growth in sight. The government has already tried to ignore the limit imposed by the European Commission that deficits should not surpass 3% of the budget deficit. This was in fact imposed by the Council of Ministers. It is worth recalling that the Council, formed by governments, is the body which takes the decisions, which are left to the European Commission to implement. The European Parliament was created to introduce the much-needed principle of checks and balances. But politicians from every side conveniently presented unpopular measures and law that they approved in the Council’s meeting as coming from the Commission.

Salvini and Di Maio have already had to make an ignominious retreat and cut the deficit of the Italian budget after trying to force the Commission to accept an unbalanced budget. Now Salvini claims that, siding with the other European sovereigntists, he will force the Commission to change the rules, to accept the next Italian budget, which ignores not economics but mathematics.

There was a recent TV debate between the recently appointed Deputy Minister of the Economy Laura Castelli, a young business administration graduate, and Carlo Padoan, a respected economist, university professor, member of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the World Bank. When Castelli said that she would not fear it if the spread between Italy and Germany continued growing because that had no impact on the real economy and the growth of interest on the enormous Italian debt, a startled Padoan tried to correct her. After a while, the moderator tried to change the subject, observing that Padoan was a world authority on the subject. Castelli’s answer was emblematic of the distrust of the New Politicians with the elites: Why? Because he has studied more, does that mean he knows more than me?

Well, it seems Italians trust Castelli more than Padoan. After the elections, Salvini announced that he is going to allocate 30 billion euro for tax reductions, a clear gift to the northern Italy’s business sector. That means find at least 80 billion euro of income for the next budget. This is clearly impossible, without an increase in taxes and a serious cut in current expenses. As usual, education, research and health will be affected, unless the European Union agrees that the 3% rule be put aside.

Well, here is an easy prediction: Salvini will find out that his fellow travelling companions, the sovereigntists of Austria, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, not to forget Germany, will not agree to put their money to save the Italian budget. Will that show Italians that living in mythologies instead of realities is not helpful?

Salvini won on the fear of immigration. Well, according to the United Nations, the Italian population has been in decline since 2015. Last year, it lost 160,000 people, and projections say it will lose 1.8 million people by 2025. Italy now has 5 million foreigners, which includes 500,000 students, Italians born of foreign parents. There are an estimated 670,000 illegal foreigners, against whom Salvini took no real action: his winning electoral card was to close ports to immigrants. Yet, under the previous government, immigration was as low as 119,000 people in 2017 and 20,120 at mid-September 2018. Immigrants make up 7.5% of the total Italian population, which was estimated at 59.9 million (of which 71.8% urban) in 2018. According to the official statistics, Italy has 1,673 deaths per day and 1.353 births … and 22% are 65 or over, with only 13.5% under 15.

African and Arab immigrants account for 1.5% of the Italian population, and 2.5% are Europeans. Yet, according to a poll, Italians think that immigrants make up between 15 and 25% of the population. And they believe that the large majority are Muslim, when they are orthodox.

Clearly, without immigration, the Italian economy and the pension system are not viable. But this is unacceptable to say … and it does not help to say that in Japan, the country where identity and culture are defended as untouchable, the aging population and loss of productivity has obliged Abe to accept 230,000 immigrants this year.

The second example is Great Britain, home of the mother of parliaments, considered a politically civilised country. Well, everybody knows the Brexit saga. But what is impressive is that in the recent European elections Nigel Farage won more votes than the Conservative and Labour parties together. He created the Brexit Party just six months ago. He was fundamental in forcing the famous Brexit referendum in 2016. That referendum was based on much clearly false information, and Farage admitted so after winning. Among them, one made by Farage was that 76 million Turks were joining Europe and would invade Great Britain: Turkey has no chance of joining the European Union. Boris Johnson claimed that every week Great Britain was giving the European Union 350 million euro, which should go instead to reinforcing the country’s National Health Service: another figure that was so false he is being brought to court. The British gave Farage 31.6% of the votes (Labour 14.1% and Conservatives 9.1%) and Boris Johnson is in pole position to be the next Prime Minister. Of course, there are many explanations for that, but all exclude any consideration of the eligibility of proven liars.

The third example is Lithuania, which had general elections just before the European elections. Lithuania had 3.7 million people at the end of the Soviet Union. By 2018 this was down to 2 million because of steady emigration, especially by young people. The Farmers and Greens Union party brandished the anti-immigration flag and won easily. Last year, the “invasion” was in fact of 54.000 people, of whom 69% were returning Lithuanians. Of the real immigrants, all basically from Eastern and Central Europe, the Arab-Africans were a grand total of 208, of whom 120 have already left the country. As an excuse for the Lithuanians, we can say that they have a history of invasions, repression and resistance, and identity is a strong feeling, like elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe.

By the way, eastern Germany is the heartland of the extreme Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and it has few immigrants, unlike western Germany where the AfD did poorly). But, from any logical viewpoint, it is hard to believe that feelings and not reality could play such primary role. Of course, there are many difficult questions. Look at Ukraine, where 73% of the voters elected an untested comedian, Volodymyr Zelenksy. That shows that feelings are in fact reality. But then why in the United States, cradle of feminism, were 43% of Trump’s voters women, who elected a clear champion of misogyny and a well-known womaniser?

In other words, reality is no longer a factor in elections. Other factors like feelings are more important. And while we have no space to present a serious analysis of this, let us just offer some considerations on which to reflect.

1) Historians agree that greed and fear are probably the most important elements of change. If that is so, let us remember that with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and ideologies declared dead, the winners introduced globalisation as the route for which there were no alternatives (TINA, Margaret Thatcher). This was embedded in the so-called Washington Consensus, which reduced the role of the State as much as possible to give free way to the movement of capital. Social costs were considered unproductive, then came elimination of the difference between deposit banks and investment banks (Clinton 1999), which gave birth to the finance that we now suffer from. Among other changes for unregulated greed, let us not forget Tony Blair’s Third Way, an acceptance of globalisation from the left, to give to it a human face and make it less damaging. The result has been a separation of the European left from its base, and the progressive disappearance of a value-based debate, which put humans at its centre, in favour of the new values: competition, individual success, wealth as the basis of social relations, markets as the centre of the international relations.

2) That was accompanied by a decline of multilateralism, peace and international cooperation. The United States was the main engine for the creation of the United Nations, with an engagement to provide its headquarters and pay 25% of the budget. But, in 1981, Ronald Reagan took a distance, declaring that his country could not accept having one vote like others, and it would not accept binding resolutions from a majority of smaller countries. And then Trump came with the last straw, with the ‘America First’ campaign, which means in fact ‘America Alone’, preaching that the United States had no friends or allies to limit its action. This was the final act against multilateralism.

3) In 2008, a world economic crisis spread worldwide from the US banking system, creating a wave of fear, unemployment, reduction in salaries, loss of jobs and precarity that the political system was largely unable to address because its global dimension went beyond national capacity of response, accompanied by a sharp decline in political competence. This was accompanied by a rise in corruption, as politics became short-term and directed towards administrative problems, without any ideological framework.

4) Trump has created a ripple situation, with the New Right (or Alternative Right, as Steve Bannon calls it), free from the moral and ethical considerations that emerged from the Second World War. The New Right can conduct politics based on greed, and much more fear, using immigrants and minorities as the enemy to fight, for defending national identities and histories. This narrative has created new divides: rural against urban, elite the enemy of real people, any international agreement as a straitjacket of the nation, recovery of a glorious past as the basis for the future. Trump has legitimised behaviour previously considered unacceptable, and during his very probable second term he will change even more the world that we have created from the ruins of the Second World War.

5) Internet has gone wrong. Instead of being the new instrument for horizontal communication and sharing, it has become a creator of fragmented and virtual worlds, where people group along partisan lines, no longer exchange views and ideas. It is an arena for insults and hate, run by false identities with fake news, and where citizens are sold as consumers by a number of logarithms, based on maximisation of profit. It has created the largest fortunes in human history, multibillionaires who do not feel accountable to social values and interests. This has helped to create the loss of quality in the political debate, and the use of feelings and guts, instead of political rationality. Trump has 60 million followers on Twitter, more than all American media combined. They do not buy newspapers, and believe whatever Trump says. This will lead to his re-election, unless some serious blunder occurs, but with the bar of tolerance being raised continuously.

Let us stop here. There are, of course, many more points of reflections. But whatever reflection we make, let us remember that political ideas come and go in history. Certainly, sovereigntism is not as structured as communism or fascism. It was normal for politicians to write books. Now, Trump even brags that he does not read them, to avoid having his ideas influenced. The New Right is basically content free, although expert in mobilising people’s feelings. So, this wave will also finish.

The question is: will humankind be able to create a values-based political system again? And, before that happens, will the New Right with its extreme nationalism lead to wars and blood? Looking at the mobilisation on climate change, led by a young girl from Sweden, a winning card in the European elections, there are reasons for hope (but now climate change has become a left-wing issue).

We face a dramatic risk: if we fail, once the mythology of sovereigntism collapses in the face of an unsolved dramatic reality, people who have lost hope and trust in politics will tend to look for the way out of chaos in a Man of Providence, as Pope Pius XI called Benito Mussolini.

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

The post The World Has Lost Its Compass appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A demonstrator in Buenos Aires wears a T-shirt with the slogan "my body, my rights," one of the slogans of the so-called green tide - the colour adopted by the movement for the legalisation of abortion, which is beginning to spread to other Latin American countries. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

Abortion has long been a contentious issue across the world, and the debate is only heating up, prompting women to stand up and speak out for their reproductive rights.

In response to increasingly restrictive policies, civil society is taking action to help protect abortion rights.

“The failure of states to guarantee reproductive rights is a clear violation of human rights,” said President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) Nancy Northup.

“The centre is committed to using the power of law to ensure that women and girls…are guaranteed access to sexual and reproductive health rights and services,” she added.

Human Rights Watch’s Senior Researcher Margaret Wurth echoed similar sentiments, stating: “No rape survivor should be forced into motherhood without the chance to consider a safe and legal abortion.”

Girls, Not Mothers

Latin American countries have some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. For instance, Nicaragua has a complete ban on abortion while Guatemala has an exception only when a girl or woman’s life is at risk.

Though the risk of maternal mortality increases when pregnancies occur in girls younger than 14, still many girls are forced to give birth.

According to CRR, over 2,200 girls between the age of 10 and 14 gave birth in 2018 in Guatemala.

In Nicaragua, eight of 10 sexual violence survivors are girls under 13 and the country has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America with 28 percent of women giving birth before the age of 18.

Fatima was only 12 years old when she became pregnant after being raped by a man in her community in Guatemala. Though the pregnancy was risky, health care providers never offered her a legal abortion.

After more than a year of abuse by her priest, Lucia became pregnant at the age of 13 in Nicaragua.

Fatima and Lucia are now young women and two of four women who have brought their cases to the United Nations Human Rights Committee with the support of organisations such as CRR and Planned Parenthood Global in order to seek justice and demand access to safe and legal abortion.

“Too many young girls in Latin America, and around the world, have been put in situations that threaten their rights and put their lives at risk because they are not able to access abortion care,” said head of Planned Parenthood Global Leana Wen.

“Forcing young girls to continue a pregnancy no matter their circumstances or wants, is not only cruel, but will have devastating impacts for them, their families, and their communities,” she added.

People around the world have since showed solidarity the four women, posting #NinasNoMadres—they are girls, not mothers.

U.S. regresses

Access to abortion has also become a point of contention in the United States as a total of 27 bans have been enacted across 12 states so far in 2019.

Most recently, Louisiana signed a bill banning abortions once a heartbeat is detectable, known as a “heartbeat bill.”

A foetal heartbeat can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, often before many women know they’re even pregnant. The legislation does not include exceptions for rape or incest.

If the bill becomes law, any doctor who performs an abortion could face imprisonment for one to 10 years and/or a fine ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 dollars. 

Missouri has passed a similar bill with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and the loss of a doctor’s professional license.

Missouri’s last and only abortion clinic was expected to close on Friday, but a judge granted a restraining order that temporarily allowed the clinic to continue. If the clinic had closed, Missouri would have been the first state in 45 years without access to abortion.

While abortion is still legal at the federal level, such moves threaten safe, accessible and affordable abortion care across the country.

“We are very concerned that several U.S. states have passed laws severely restricting access to safe abortion for women, including by imposing criminal penalties on the women themselves and on abortion service providers,” said UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani.

“We are calling on the United States and all other countries to ensure that women have access to safe abortions. At an absolute minimum, in cases of rape, incest and foetal anomaly, there needs to be safe access to abortions,” she added.

Not only does a complete ban on abortion drive women and girls to seek unsafe “back street” methods of termination, but a study found that women and girls are also more likely to experience short-term anxiety and loss of self-esteem, economic insecurity and poverty, and continued exposure to intimate partner violence.

But there is hope yet.

Organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal have filed lawsuits to help protect abortion rights in the U.S.

And the UN can play a role globally too.

In 2001, a 17-year-old Peruvian girl know only as K.L. was denied an abortion after being diagnosed as having a foetus with anencephaly at 14 weeks.

The refusal had serious mental and physical consequences on her health as she was forced to continue her pregnancy and her baby, once born, only survived four days.

Working with human rights lawyers, K.L. filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee, which concluded that Peru violated international human rights law and its actions constituted “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”

It was the first time a UN Committee held a country accountable for failing to ensure access to safe, legal abortion.

The committee also ordered financial compensation to K.L, who finally received it a decade later in 2015.

“In seeing justice delivered in K.L.’s case—watching it go from A to Z—we are part of an inspiring historic moment,” said Lilian Sepúlveda who directs CRR’s global legal programme and was one of the attorneys involved in the case.

“We are witnessing the results of advocates’ dedicated perseverance and the power of the UN and other international bodies to ensure our basic human rights to dignity, health, and freedom from ill-treatment,” she added.

Such efforts are more urgent than ever to ensure access to justice as well as safety and health for women and girls.

Related Articles

• The Fight for the Right to Abortion Spreads in Latin America Despite Politicians
• Draconian Ban on Abortion in El Salvador Targeted by Global Campaign
• Trump’s Global Gag a Devastating Blow for Women’s Rights

The post An Escalating War on Reproductive Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Plant Biosecurity 'Champions' with facilitators in Brisbane this week for Crawford Fund Master Class in Communication after 4 weeks of biosecurity placements around the Australia.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

The plant-life on the Pacific Islands is currently under threat as protections against diseases and pests are left in the hands of under-trained personnel with limited facilities.

Talei Fidow-Moors, the Principal Quarantine Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Samoa, warned in a statement to IPS of an “increased potential of introducing regulated pests and diseases that pose a serious threat to agriculture, livelihood and fragile ecosystems.”

Plant biosecurity aims at protecting plants from these diseases and pests that non-native species bring into a region. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls biosecurity an “essential of sustainable agricultural development.”

Despite its importance, over a five-week training course with the Pacific Plant Biosecurity Partnership (PPBP) that finished on May 31, biosecurity ‘champions’ from countries across the Pacific Islands noted biological threats largely due to a lack in knowledge of biosecurity, which the training program attempted to begin to address.

IPS spoke with three biosecurity ‘champions’ from Kiribati, Samoa, and Vanuatu who were in training with the PPBP to increase biosecurity provisions.

Each representative identified a lack in knowledge as the main obstacle on the Pacific Islands that has thwarted attempts to achieve biosecurity aims.

The Pacific Islands have been experiencing an on-going increase in trade and tourism, but with this increase comes an increase in potential pests and diseases crossing the borders. These pests and diseases pose a serious threat to natural plant-life on the islands.

Tekataake Oromita, a representative from the Biosecurity and Plant Health Section of the Agriculture and Livestock Division of Kiribati told IPS that plant biosecurity is the “first line of defence against biological threat,” but one that often gets swept under the rug.

For Oromita, the main issue is in “the lack of appropriate facilities and specialised people in the Biosecurity field.”

Without proper training and facilities, the importing of diseases and pests becomes all too easy.

Sylvie Boulekouran, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, Fisheries and Biosecurity (MALFFB) in Vanuatu, told IPS that she worries that, “due to staff limited knowledge on inspection and early detection of weed seeds, imported machineries tend to enter the country without proper inspection.”

Boulekouran identified coconut rhinoceros beetles as a significant threat to biosecurity in Vanuatu.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Vanuatu states that at least 75 percent of the population lives in rural areas and lists copra (dried kernels from coconuts) as the main cash crop of the region.

Coconut rhinoceros beetles cause damage to the palm trees that produce that cash-crop, and if not controlled, this could have severe effects for rural populations, and for the country’s economy as a whole.

She told IPS of her concern that combating coconut rhinoceros beetles and weeds proves difficult when “biosecurity Vanuatu plant health staff have limited skills and knowledge to carry out diagnostics and identification of pests intercepted at the Vanuatu borders.”

Not only are diagnostics difficult with limited training, but also with limited facilities.

Currently in Vanuatu, there are no facilities for identifying threats. Samples are sent to neighbouring countries like New Zealand, making the interception of pests and diseases time-consuming, and they often fail to do so quickly enough.

Oromita sees similar issues at the border of Kiribati.

She told IPS she would like to see “robust import conditions [that] will ensure that imported commodities are free from pest and diseases and enhance safe trade.”

She added that there is a need for “establishing and incorporate[ing] changes at borders to facilitate effective biosecurity inspection and identification of infested consignments.”

Adding to limited training and limited facilities is the major difficulty facing all three countries: climate change.

Climate change has been a constant difficulty for maintaining biosecurity in the region. In Samoa, increases in tropical cyclones and rising sea levels have added to food insecurity.

In Kiribati, Oromita noted that climate change makes plants even “more vulnerable to the impact of pest and diseases, hence threatening food security and the environment.”

With the forces of climate change bearing down on their countries, the representatives see a need to push for more training in identification of biosecurity threats, and more facilities with which to identify.

The representatives from the Pacific Islands all believe in the need for a conversation to take place at a global level about plant biosecurity.

Oromita said to IPS that at “an international level it would be helpful if we all take Biosecurity as [a] serious matter, whether we are making policies or providing financial grants.”

When asked by IPS what international bodies, like the United Nations, can be doing to help, Fidow-Moores replied: “The UN and its citizens can motivate countries of the world and people from all walks of life, providing everyone with a deeper understanding of nature, society, a better quality of life and a sustainable and healthy environment for present and future generations.”

But the representatives are not without hope.

While each biosecurity representative sees the difficulties in increasing provisions, they all return to their countries after the training session with optimistic minds.

Fidow-Moores told IPS: “It is a challenge which I believe is worth attempting to overcome, so as to exert positive changes for our small island nation.”

The post Limited Knowledge of Plant Biosecurity Increases Biological Threats appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

Perhaps the most direct way to introduce this tough issue is what the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated just one week ahead of the 5 June World Environment Day, which focuses this year on air pollution, caused chiefly by the use of fossil fuels both in transport, industry and even household cooking, heating, etc.

“Subsidising fossil fuels means spending taxpayers’ money to “boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals: to destroy the world,” the UN chief warned, adding that “We need to tax pollution, not people.” “End subsidies for fossil fuels.”

 

4.7 trillion dollars in global subsidies?

“Subsidising fossil fuels means spending taxpayers’ money to “boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals: to destroy the world,”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres

A corporation that knows much about money –the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that, globally, subsidies remained large at 4.7 trillion dollars (6.3 percent of global GDP) in 2015 and were projected at 5.2 trillion dollars (6.5 percent of GDP) in 2017.

Its 2 May 2019 Working Paper Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large, updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

“The largest subsidisers in 2015 were China (1.4 trillion dollars), United States (649 billions), Russia (551 billions), European Union (289 billions), and India (209 billion dollars),” it reports.

And it adds that “about three quarters of global subsidies are due to domestic factors—energy pricing reform thus remains largely in countries own national interest—while coal and petroleum together account for 85 percent of global subsidies.”

For its part, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that the value of global fossil-fuel consumption subsidies in 2017 is estimated at more than 300 billion dollars, higher than the estimate for 2016, which was around 270 billions.

The Energy Agency also alerts that “higher oil prices led to a partial rebound in total subsidy value in 2017, but the 12% rise in subsidies was considerably less than the 25% rise in oil price.”

The IEA provides this breakdown:

•  In 2016, subsidies to electricity had overtaken those to oil, but in 2017 oil returned as the most heavily subsidised energy carrier.

• Oil subsidies accounted for 45% of the total, or nearly 137 billion dollars, covering an estimated 11% of global oil consumption.

• Natural gas subsidies were also significant, amounting to around 57 billion dollars, affecting the price paid for 23% of gas consumption.
• Coal subsides are relatively small, at 2 billion dollars in 2017.

 

The UK, Europe’s champion

Meantime, Sam Morgan on 15 January 2019 reported in EURACTIV.com that “the United Kingdom spends the most in the EU on subsidising fossil fuels, according to a new report by the European Commission, which also found that EU-wide payments have failed to decrease despite the bloc’s commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change.”

“In 2016, the UK pumped more than 12 billion euro into fossil fuel support, closely followed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain. However, those countries actually then spent more on renewable energies like wind and solar than on coal, gas and oil.”

All in all, “fossil fuels enjoyed an estimated 55 billion euro in public funding across the EU, with the energy sector the biggest recipient, followed by the residential sector, industry and transport.”

 

Women and children are the primary victims of indoor air pollution in poor, rural areas of India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

 

The air we breath

In addition to diverting such huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to sustain major causes of greenhouse gas emissions –at the very cost of devoting them to public health, education and vital social services– there is the dramatic fact that air pollution levels remain dangerously high in many parts of the world.

New data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that 9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants.

Updated estimations reveal an alarming death toll of 7 million people every year caused by ambient (outdoor) and household air pollution, the world top specialised body reported ahead of the 5 June World Environment Day.

“Air pollution threatens us all, but the poorest and most marginalised people bear the brunt of the burden,” says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO.

“It is unacceptable that over 3 billion people – most of them women and children – are still breathing deadly smoke every day from using polluting stoves and fuels in their homes. If we don’t take urgent action on air pollution, we will never come close to achieving sustainable development.”

 

Key findings

On this, the World Health Organization provides the following data:

• The highest ambient air pollution levels are in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and in South-East Asia, with annual mean levels often exceeding more than 5 times WHO limits, followed by low and middle-income cities in Africa and the Western Pacific.
• Africa and some of the Western Pacific region have a serious lack of air pollution data. For Africa, the database now contains PM measurements for more than twice as many cities as previous versions, however data was identified for only 8 of 47 countries in the region.
• Europe has the highest number of places reporting data.
• In general, ambient air pollution levels are lowest in high-income countries, particularly in Europe, the Americas and the Western Pacific. In cities of high-income countries in Europe, air pollution has been shown to lower average life expectancy by anywhere between 2 and 24 months, depending on pollution levels.

Add to all the above that UN Environment reports that 92 per cent of people worldwide do not breathe clean air, that air pollution costs the global economy 5 trillion dollars every year in welfare costs, and that ground-level ozone pollution is expected to reduce staple crop yields by 26 per cent by 2030.

 

Death

WHO also estimates that:

• Around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine particles in polluted air that penetrate deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system, causing diseases including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia.

• Ambient air pollution alone caused some 4.2 million deaths in 2016, while household air pollution from cooking with polluting fuels and technologies caused an estimated 3.8 million deaths in the same period, it explains.

• More than 90% of air pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, followed by low- and middle-income countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region, Europe and the Americas.

• Around 3 billion people – more than 40% of the world’s population – still do not have access to clean cooking fuels and technologies in their homes, the main source of household air pollution.

• Air pollution is a critical risk factor for non-communicable diseases, causing an estimated one-quarter (24%) of all adult deaths from heart disease, 25% from stroke, 43% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 29% from lung cancer.

 

 

Now, where does air pollution come from?

Regarding the major causes of air pollution, the United Nations reports that

• Household – The main source of household air pollution is the indoor burning of fossil fuels, wood and other biomass-based fuels to cook, heat and light homes. Around 3.8 million premature deaths are caused by indoor air pollution each year, the vast majority of them in the developing world.
• Industry – In many countries, energy production is a leading source of air pollution. Coal-burning power plants are a major contributor, while diesel generators are a growing concern in off-grid areas.
• Transport – The global transport sector accounts for almost one-quarter of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and this proportion is rising. Transport emissions have been linked to nearly 400,000 premature deaths.
• Agriculture – There are two major sources of air pollution from agriculture: livestock, which produces methane and ammonia, and the burning of agricultural waste. Around 24 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted worldwide comes from agriculture, forestry and other land-use.
• Waste – Open waste burning and organic waste in landfills release harmful dioxins, furans, methane, and black carbon into the atmosphere. Globally, an estimated 40 percent of waste is openly burned.
• Other sources – Not all air pollution comes from human activity. Volcanic eruptions, dust storms and other natural processes also cause problems. Sand and dust storms are particularly concerning.

This scary information does not mean that taxpayers should stop contributing—everybody should continue doing it, sure.

But what about voting for those politicians who can hopefully show real, honest commitment to put an end to this mad practice of using public money to fund death?

 

Baher Kamal is Director and Editor of Human Wrongs Watch, where this article was originally published.

 

The post Watch Out: Your Money Is Being Used to Destroy the World! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

How governments spend taxpayers money to subsidise fossil fuels that cause deadly air pollution – A reminder to mark 5 June World Environment Day.

The post Watch Out: Your Money Is Being Used to Destroy the World! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Minik, New York 1897.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

There are several means to make profitable use of other human beings, an endeavour that tends to turn others into tools by depriving them of their roots and self-respect. This happened in concentration – and work camps, where individuals were reduced to mere numbers.

Another form of objectification of fellow human beings has been to gain money by exhibiting them to paying audiences. The fate of Ota Benga is an example of this. He was a Mbuti man who in 1904, together with other “primitive people”, was exhibited at the Lousiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and later in the Monkey House at Bronx´s Zoo in New York. Ota Benga had by the missionary Samuel Phillips Verner been purchased from slave-traders in the Belgian Congo, while Verner was searching for “exotic Africans” to be exhibited in St. Louis.

After newspapers had exposed the mistreatment of Mr. Benga, he was after six years released from the zoo. A supervisor of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn arranged to have Benga´s filed teeth capped while providing him with basic education and ”decent” clothes. Benga planned to return to his Congolese home, though when the outbreak of World War I ended cross-Atlantic passenger traffic, Benga did at the age of 32 build a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol.1 By the beginning of the last century, Benga´s tragic fate was far from unique, people like him were brought from other continents to be exhibited at museums, circuses, and fairs. During the last decades, several books and movies have paid attention to some of these unfortunate individuals.

One example is the French film Black Venus from 2010. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche it tells the true story of Sara Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa who in the early 19th century was exhibited in several European countries. At that time, as well as after her death when her skeleton and a painted plaster model of her naked body until 1974 were exhibited at Musée de l´Homme in Paris, Ms. Baartman has figured in novels, poems, and artworks. She suffered from steatopygia, abnormally big buttocks, as well as protruding genitals. When she was exposed naked, both alive and as a plaster model, Sara was presented as a representative of the ”abnormality” and ”hypersexuality” of the ”black race”, an outcome of its ”unique physique”. Ms. Baartman died from ”inflammation” at the age of 25. 2

Another representative of abused indigenous people is Minik, who seven years old together with his father Qisuk and four other Inghuits, in 1897 by the US explorer Robert Peary were brought from the village of Uummannaq in northern Greenland to New York, to be exhibited at shows and at the American Museum of Natural History. However, all of them soon died of tuberculosis, except for one man who succeeded to return to Greenland and Minik who was forced to remain in New York.

Minik suffered from his father´s death and pleaded for a proper Inghuit burial. For the benefit of Minik, the museum staff staged a fake burial. Unknown to Minik the coffin had been filled with stones, while his father´s corpse was de-fleshed, his skeleton mounted and publicly displayed together with painted, plaster models. Through his classmates, Minik found out that his father´s skeleton was exposed together with casts of his and his father´s naked bodies. The press got hold of the story and after almost ten years in New York, Minik was brought back to Uummannaq. He had by then forgotten his mother language and much of Inghuit culture and skills. In spite of being welcomed by his people, reintegrated in their culture and becoming a skilled hunter, Minik never felt at home. In 1916 he returned to New York, where he after a few months died of pneumonia.3

Minik had been kept in New York under the pretext of acculturation, a process of social, psychological and cultural change through which a dominant society incorporates individuals from a differing culture. Forced assimilation remains a common violation of minority rights.

A Danish movie, premiering the same year as Black Venus – The Experiment by Lousie Friedberg – deals with the perils of acculturation. In 1951, with the intention of transforming them into “small Danes” by adapting them to “modern” society, Danish colonial authorities removed twenty-two, six to eight years old Inuit children from their parents. The children were “relocated” to Denmark and the movie follows their fate as they lose their original language and culture, while suffering the trauma of being separated from their families. More than half of them died before reaching adulthood.

There are several examples of such tragedies, disguised as benevolent efforts to secure a bright future for “native” children, one was the Canadian Indian residential school system, a network of boarding schools administered by Christain churches. During its hundred years of existence (1869 to mid-1960s) 30 percent of Canada´s indigenous children, around 150,000 individuals, were separated from their parents and placed in residential schools. Due to incomplete historical records, the number of school-related deaths remains unknown, though estimates range from 3,200 upwards of 6,000. 4

Acculturation has occurred in the other direction as well. Children and youngsters captured during raids by Native American warriors quite often received the name of a deceased member of their captor´s tribe, receiving his/her social status while becoming a member of the deceased person´s family. White settlers became astonished to find that “rescued” captives often preferred to return to their captors. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin observed:

… when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, though ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them, to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. 5

Captivity Narratives soon became a sub-genre of American biographies, novels and movies. The phenomenon of settlers preferring to remain with their captors is as old as the first encounters between Westerners and Indigenous people.6 In his magnificent eye-witness account of Hernán Cortés´s conquest of México, the Spanish soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo described a meeting between the priest Jerónimo de Aguilar and the former sailor Gonzalo Guerrero.

Eight years before the arrival of Western warriors these two men had been shipwrecked on the Mayan coast of México. Other members of their crew were almost immediately ritually sacrificed, while de Aguilar and Guerrero escaped. After being re-captured, they were instead of being sacrificed turned into slaves. de Aguilar kept his faith and remained a slave, while Guerrero became a ”war leader” in the service of Nachan Can, Lord of Chactemal and married his daughter, Zazil. When Cortés heard about the two Spaniards he paid ransom for them. His Mayan owner freed de Aguilar, who joined the Spanish troops, becoming their translator. When he arrived among the Spaniards, de Aguilar told Cortés that he had failed to persuade Guerrero to join him. Guerreo, who was not a slave, had answered his friend:

Brother Aguilar, I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a Cacique [lord] here, and a captain in time of war. Go, and God´s blessing be with you. But my face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What would the Spaniards say about me if they saw me like this? And look how handsome these children of mine are. 7

Cortés soon learned that Guerrero led Mayan warriors in attacks on Spanish troops and he eventually died fighting his former compatriots. Guerrero´s story is proof of the fact that you are at home where you feel you belong and that no one can force such a feeling upon you.

1 Newkirk, Pamela (2015). Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. New York: Amistad.
2 Crais, Clifton and Pamela Scully (2009) Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. It was common that indigenous individuals, brought from isolated areas to big cites in the US and Europe, died from contagious diseaes.
3 Cruchaudet, Chloé (2008). Groënland Manhattan. Paris: Delcourt.
4 Réaume, Denise G. and Patrick Macklem (1994) Education for Subordination: Redressing the Adverse Effects of Residential Schooling. Toronto: University of Toronto.
5 Isaacson, Walter (2005) A Benjamin Franklin Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 157.
6 Turner III, Frederick W. (1977) The Portable North American Indian Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 310-311.
7 Díaz, Bernal (1965) The Conquest of New Spain. Harmondsworth; Penguin Classics. p. 65

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 Exploitation and Acculturation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong, or I'm right.
Where I belong I'm right,
where I belong.
                                           The Beatles: Fixing a hole

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Siva Sivapragasam is Executive Editor, Toronto-based ”Monsoon Journal”

By Siva Sivapragasam
TORONTO, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

The boy who sold tea at railway platforms for a living has become the Prime Minister of world’s largest democracy for the second time. Narendra Dhamodaradas Modi, incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the BJP secured a second chance to be the Prime Minister at Indian elections which took place recently. The election was perhaps the largest held in any part of the world with 39 days of polling and involving as many as 900 million voters.

Narendra Dhamodaradas Modi

As the counting was nearing its end, it was crystal clear that Modi’s BJP and its allies were heading for a landslide victory and expected to have a clear majority in the Lok Sabha

Modi expressed confidence that the BJP victory was the common man’s victory. In his victory speech, he remarked that the win was “a guarantee of a bright future for the common people of this country. I want to bow my head before the 1.3 billion people of this country. This election was fought by the people. If anyone has won, it is India. We dedicate this victory to the people of India.”

Economic issues such as unemployment, price rise, poverty, wages and salaries, GST and demonetization seem to have not mattered much to the voters during this election. Bread-and-butter concerns seem to have counted for less than they did a few months ago, with priorities shifting from specifics such as unemployment to ‘Vikas’.

Modi was raised in a small town in northern Gujarat, and he completed an M.A. degree in political science from Gujarat University in Ahmadabad. During his time as head of the Gujarat government, Modi established a formidable reputation as an able administrator, and he was given credit for the rapid growth of the state’s economy.

The Congress party’s rule before Modi took over in 2014 was looked upon as a decade of decay. Modi’s criticism of the Congress rule was based on the corruption scandals, rise in prices, a weak foreign policy and family politics.

These allegations combined and contributed to the downfall of the Congress Party. It was Modi’s mix of economic efficiency and hardline nationalism that mesmerized the voters in India in 2014 with a “Modi Wave” when they were looking for a change of leadership and Government.

Modi enjoyed massive support among India’s middle classes and business community who credit him with turning Gujarat into an economic powerhouse.

In the recent elections too, Modi campaigned as a passionate Hindu placing security of India as a top priority. Modi spent Saturday night and Sunday morning, the last day of the election, praying at a Hindu shrine and meditating in a remote Himalayan cave.

Despite economic woes and unfulfilled economy reforms, Indians have assumed Modi is better equipped to fix these problems than any other available alternative. Thus, a vote to BJP became more of a vote to Modi. Mahatma Gandhi once remarked his reason for selecting Nehru as India’s first Prime Minister – “India is safe in Nehru’s hands”. India in her millions have echoed in chorus, “India is safe in Modi’s hands”.

At the elections this time Modi styled himself as a ‘chowkidar’ (or watchman) taking care of the country’s interests Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism, the security of India and the absence of a strong Opposition leadership coupled with a weakened Congress Party seem to have been the factors for the BJP victory.

The Opposition’s efforts to pin down the government on issues like demonetization, GST or the Rafale purchase seemed to have made no impression on the electorate, which backed his second-term campaign.

The voters were determined to support a party that would offer stability to the country and placed their faith in a strong leader like Modi. It is to the credit of Modi that he ended the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty politics to get the country’s top political job.

Although the BJP was able to obtain a landslide win in Northern India the party could not score enough seats in the Southern states where the Congress and regional parties beat the BJP. The Congress-led UDF notched up impressive numbers at the expense of the Left in Kerala, winning 19 of the 20 seats, while the DMK-led coalition demolished the AIADMK-BJP alliance in Tamil Nadu, winning 37 out of 39.

The Modi mantra for the elections was based on unity, integrity and security of India and these slogans paid him considerable dividends in the elections. He re-echoed this chorus at the oath taking ceremony when he remarked “Our Government will leave no stone unturned to safeguard India’s unity and integrity. National security is our priority.”

There is no doubt that these slogans will continue to be used by Modi to maintain the popularity of his government in the future. The election victory indicates that Modi’s political leadership has been accepted by the people of India.

“One thing we know for sure is that Modi remains incredibly popular despite everything that’s happened in the last five years,” says Milan Vaishnav, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The post Modi Cruises with Ease as Prime Minister of India for a Second Term appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Siva Sivapragasam is Executive Editor, Toronto-based ”Monsoon Journal”

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The Amadiyya community centre in Pasyala hosts refugees and asylum seekers forced to leave their homes since the April 21 attacks in Sri Lanka. Credit: UNHCR/Caroline Gluck

By Caroline Gluck
NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 31 2019 (IPS)

Thirteen-year-old Bariea, a Pakistani asylum seeker in Sri Lanka, is taking shelter at a mosque in the city of Negombo, where an uneasy mix of high anxiety and extreme boredom hover over the room.

“We just have a few small bags, mostly clothes,” said Bariea. “We thought we would only be here for a few days. But now it’s been weeks.”

“We want to leave. We don’t feel safe. Pakistan wasn’t safe either …. I know many people were killed and injured. But it was not our fault.”

Around 1,000 refugees and asylum seekers like Bariea, most from Pakistan, some from Afghanistan, have sought shelter in mosques and police stations in Negombo and Pasyala, near the capital Colombo, for the past month.

While many from the local community stepped in to try and help, they were driven out of their rented homes by others who accused them of being connected to bomb attacks on churches and hotels around the country on April 21 that killed 250 people and injured many more.

As they shelter in the city, which was the site of one of the church attacks, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is working closely with Sri Lankan authorities to find more suitable, temporary places to move the families so they can live in dignity and safety during this difficult time. But in the climate of fear following the attacks, it has not been easy.

Some of the people displaced from their homes in Negombo have already moved to safer areas. More will be relocated in the coming days.

Family’s like Bariea’s, who sought safety in Sri Lanka after fleeing violence, persecution, and extremism in their own countries, say they were made scapegoats. Bariea has not only had to leave her home with her family to shelter in the crowded mosque but, with her two brothers, forced to drop out of class.

“I really miss school; I worry about getting behind in class. Education is my future. I don’t think I can go to school now,” she says.

Afghan mother Anisa and family shelter with over 100 other refugees and asylum seekers at the police station in Negombo, Sri Lanka. Credit: UNHCR/Caroline Gluck

Her mother, Sehrish, 34, has many other worries. Her children have all been sick with coughs and fevers, and she is six months’ pregnant, like several women in the mosque and she is unable to sleep properly in the confined space.

She said she was grateful for the help they have received from UNHCR, its partners and local Sri Lankan groups, but also worried about what will happen next. “We are getting assistance but we cannot live here for much longer,” she says.

“People have been generous. Some groups have come and provided us with food and clothes.”

UNHCR’s head of office in Sri Lanka, Menique Amarasinghe, said: “Our top priority is to make sure these people are safe and well-protected, and to ensure they can access basic services.

“We’ve been extremely grateful to the Sri Lankan government who have acknowledged their responsibility to care for these people and have been doing everything they can in really very difficult circumstances.”

UNHCR has reinforced its staffing in Sri Lanka to respond to the emergency. It is working with the authorities and partner agencies to provide food, medicine, hygiene material, water and sanitation, and other basic support to refugees and asylum-seekers.

A short drive away from the Amadiyya mosque, around 100 Pakistanis and Afghans are sheltering in the semi open-air car park at Negombo’s police station. The police have provided security and assistance, but facilities are inadequate, with just a handful of toilets shared by the police and new arrivals.

It is so hot, that most people have broken out in skin rashes and their arms and legs covered in infected mosquito bites.

While some in the local community reacted in anger after the attacks, other Sri Lankans have rallied round the refugees and asylum seekers who they counted as neighbours.

“People have been generous. Some groups have come and provided us with food and clothes. Sri Lankan people have helped us,” said Anisa, an ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan, nursing her six month old daughter.

She has lived in Sri Lanka for four years and says people were friendly – but the attacks changed everything. “The owner of our house told us we could stay, but the neighbours said no. He said he wouldn’t be able to protect us, so we came here, a safe place.” Her niece, a confident English-speaker, 12-year-old Sadaf, chimes in.

“After the blast, people blamed us and hated us. It made us really upset.”

Sadaf used to study at a school supported by UNHCR. But right now she cannot go back to class. “I learnt lots of things. I need school for a better future and now I can’t go … it makes me sad. I think I won’t have a good future. Children like me are worried.”

The post Pakistani and Afghan Refugees Seek Safe Haven in Sri Lanka appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Caroline Gluck is Senior Regional Public Information Officer, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. She is based in Bangkok, Thailand

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Rana Javadi, Never-Ending Chaos, 2013.

By Vijay Prashad
May 31 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Tricontinental) – Word comes from friends in Iran of foreboding, a general sense of fear that the United States might bomb the country at any time.

A friend in Tehran asks me to read Simin Behbahani’s The World is Shaped Like a Sphere, a poem for our times. Behbahani (1927-2014), a superb lyricist, wrote this poem in 1981 (translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa):

It was our agreement to call this the East,
though we could push it westwards, with ease.
Don’t speak to me of the West, where the sun sets,
if you always run after the sun,
you will never see a sunset.

The world divided by a line is a dead body cut in two
on which the vulture and the hyena are feasting.

Iraq – at the behest of the Arab Gulf and the United States – had attacked Iran in 1980, inaugurating a futile war that would go on till 1988. Angry that the Gulf Arabs had not properly financed the war nor honoured the sovereignty of Iraq’s oil fields, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in August 1990. It is worth recalling that in the summer of 1990, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – set up out of anxiety for the Iranian Revolution of 1979 – hastened to normalize relations with Iran. Kuwait resumed flights to Iran and linked investment and shipping deals with Iran. The GCC, which had egged Saddam to attack Iran, now seemed to curry favour with Iran against Iraq. The blood of Iraqis and Iranians stained the long border between those two countries; the people of both countries had been treated as pliable marionettes by the Gulf Arabs and the West. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait started the Gulf War, which does not seem to have ended. Today, the Gulf War manifests itself in the fierce siege against Iran.

Gohar Dashti, Today’s Life and War, 2008.

Iran sits at the precipice of disaster. US President Donald Trump’s harsh sanctions and his threats of war send shockwaves through the region. Buyers of Iranian oil have decided to wait and see how the situation unfolds. The key player here is China. How China will react defines the next stage, as I write in my column. All is tense. Shahram Khosravi, an anthropologist, wrote a moving account of a conversation with his friend Hamid – a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. Our newsletter this week features Shahram’s account, a window into the life of one Iranian rattled by the sanctions and by the premonition of war. It is below:

Shahram Khosravi, Hamid, 2018.

In Iran, the term ‘war’ is often used in reference to the US sanctions. ‘Why don’t they [the US] leave us in peace?’, asked my friend Hamid late last year.

Hamid and I were both born in 1966 in the same village along the Zagros mountains in the Bakhtiari region of southwestern Iran. At nineteen, Hamid was sent do to two years of compulsory military service. The Iran-Iraq War was in its fourth year. Hundreds of thousands of young men, many teenagers, had already been killed. After ten days of training, Hamid went – Kalashnikov in hand – to the front. On a cold February day in 1986, the gates of hell opened. Saddam Hussein’s forces unleashed mustard gas on the Iranian troops. Twenty thousand died immediately, while an additional 80,000 survivors suffered—and many continue to suffer— the impact. Hamid’s lungs were badly damaged; he cannot talk without coughing. His skin is burnt in many places. He suffers from depression.

Hamid blames the US and the Iraqi government for his injuries. He is right. Recent CIA documents confirm US complicity in the use of mustard gas on young people like Hamid. Now the US sanctions have become harsher. As a temporary labourer, Hamid can barely tolerate the unbearable economic pressure of the sanctions on his weak shoulders.

Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. Three months later, the first shockwave hit Iranians. Iran’s currency collapsed by 70%, causing high inflation. The cost of basic needs went up. Workers’ purchasing power dropped by 53%. A kilogramme of meat costs more than the entire day’s wage of a worker.

Sanctions have shrunk the official corridors of trade, opening up space for informal trade networks and various forms of smuggling. The weak Iranian currency has meant the widening the price of goods inside and outside of Iran. Livestock is increasingly being smuggled into Iraq, which is a key factor in the rising price of meat. As sanctions increased, so did cross-border smuggling. One study suggests that this smuggling has increased by thirty-seven times its pre-sanctions frequency.

Medicines are exempt from the sanctions, but they are nonetheless scarce and expensive. Companies that sell medicines to Iran shy away from the unstable economic situation and fear retribution from the United States. Sanctions target shipping and banking, making it hard to get the medicines to the country and pay for them. Insecure markets are a good business environment for speculators, who buy and hoard medicines, forcing prices upwards.

Foreign investments collapsed, and capital fled the country. An official source says that since the summer of 2017, about US $20 billion has left Iran. Companies have also fled, which means that parts for machinery and cars cannot be easily sourced. Production of vehicles has fallen by 72%.

Unemployment has increased. Workers are often told by their employers that they cannot get paid because ‘there is no money anywhere’. The informal sector has grown, with precarious jobs without health and unemployment insurance becoming the norm.

Hamid has been in the informal sector for decades. He rarely gets paid in time. Not getting paid on time is now normal – often with six months of salary in arrears. Each week, workers somewhere in Iran go on strike to demand their salaries. Delayed salaries mean workers have to take out loans to meet their basic needs. Less fortunate people turn to usurious moneylenders (who charge interest rates at 70%). The interest eats into their unpaid salaries. The US sanctions have cut their lifeline. They are drowning.

While Hamid – in a small village – struggles to survive, middle-class Iranians seek a way to flee the country. I have never seen such widespread desire to leave the country. People from the middle-class do not see any future in Iran. Lines outside European embassies are getting longer and longer, as announcements of property auctions ‘due to emigration’ are getting more common. Buyers are few. The ‘bazaar is sleeping’, people say. ‘Nothing happens now. No one sells, no one buys’.

Hamid says, ‘When the dollar’s price goes up, the price of everything goes up: tomato, rice, meat, medicine– everything. They never come down, even if the dollar’s price goes down’.

‘Iranians’, it is said, ‘have become like calculators’. Life is filled with numbers. Following the exchange rate of the dollar has become an obsession. Everyone waits to find out where the Rial – Iran’s currency – will settle. The structure of social life is suspended. Hamid checks the dollar’s price each day. Far from his village, Donald Trump tweets about the war against Iran. On 19 May, Trump threatened Iranians with an ‘official end’ – a threat of extermination. When he does so, the Rial responds and Hamid sees and feels the impact. Sanctions and Trump’s threats cast a shadow of death, even as no gun has yet been fired. Premature death is so frequent that it is now seen as normal. Iran has become preoccupied with death due to the sanctions and the rhetoric of war. Shortages of medicines have already killed people.

So have plane crashes. In 1995, US President Bill Clinton put sanctions against Iran’s civilian aviation industry. This prevented Iran from buying new aircraft and spare parts. Iran’s dozen airlines have the oldest fleets in the world. In February 2018, an Aseman Airlines flight with 66 on board crashed in the Zagros mountains – not far from Hamid’s village.

Hamid worries for his son, Omid, now age 19. ‘If they start a new war….’, he says, and then stops, his eyes down, coughs overcoming him. He has seen how wars break bodies and souls. If the US felt no compunction in providing Iraq with chemical weapons to use against Iran in the 1980s, why would they not allow Saudi Arabia and Israel to do the same now? Our generation was gassed by the US-backed Saddam Hussein. Is it now Omid’s generation turn to break down under the harsh sanctions and the shadow of American bombers?

Kiarash Eghbali, Old woman at Shariati Hospital, Tehran, 2016.

A war against Iran – as Hamid says – will be catastrophic, not only for Iran but for Eurasia. It would divide the world into two, vultures and hyenas feasting on both halves.

The post The World Divided by a Line Is a Dead Body Cut in Two appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A fisherman of the Abume community, Lake Volta, Ghana. Credit: Nana Kofi Acquah/International Water Management Institute

By Claudia Sadoff
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 31 2019 (IPS)

Global biodiversity loss has reached critical levels. One million species of plants and animals are now estimated to be at risk of extinction. The window for action is closing, and the world needs to urgently take note.

Countries would do well to consider this: our ability to preserve species hinges to a great extent on the actions we take to protect freshwater ecosystems. Safeguarding water for the environment is critical for biodiversity and for people.

Freshwater ecosystems are major biodiversity hotspots. We derive much value from them, even though we may not realise it. Wetlands purify drinking water; fish is one of the most traded food commodities on the planet; and floodplains can provide vital buffers that lessen the impacts of flooding.

The people who depend most on the services provided by aquatic ecosystems are generally the poorest and most marginalized in developing countries and consequently those hardest hit by biodiversity loss.

However, all of us, both rich and poor, depend on healthy ecosystems, so degradation of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity pose an enormous threat for everyone.

About 35 per cent of the world’s biodiversity-rich wetlands, for example, have been lost or seriously degraded since 1970. The annual value of the benefits these wetlands (freshwater and coastal) provide is estimated at a staggering USD 36.2 trillion; nearly double the benefits derived from all the world’s forests.

Sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems (and of water resources in general) must aim to ensure that ecosystems continue providing these services.

A key approach for reversing this trend centres on ensuring that water continues to flow in a way that will sustain aquatic ecosystems, thereby supporting populations, economies, sustainable livelihoods, and well-being.

Pumping water by hand in mid-Western Nepal. Credit: Satyam Joshi/USAID

This means maintaining the right quality, quantity and timing of water flows – which scientists call “environmental flows”, or “E-flows” for short.

Managing tradeoffs

Water, through contributions to economic growth, environmental health and human well-being, plays a critical role in many of our broader sustainable development goals. It will therefore be necessary to consider some inevitable tradeoffs when planning for the sustainable management of water.

Take the expansion of irrigation for more intensive crop production, for example, which is essential for ending hunger. The alternative to increasing irrigation would be massive encroachment of agriculture on forests and other fragile ecosystems, thus undermining the protection of biodiversity.

At the same time, increased irrigation will, by removing water from rivers and aquifers, inevitably have some negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

The challenge is to maximize synergies and minimize tradeoffs, and to do so in ways that are transparent and equitable, based on scientific evidence. Undertaking detailed assessments of E-flows helps make the tradeoffs explicit.
The information derived from E-flow assessments can contribute to important discussions between different sectors and actors, helping to determine which outcomes are acceptable to society and likely to be sustainable.

E-flows assessment in action

For more than a decade, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has been devising and steadily improving methods for E-flow assessment. In a 2007 project, IWMI partnered with World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF-India) to carry out the country’s first-ever holistic environmental flow assessment, focused on the iconic Ganges River.

The Indian government subsequently incorporated the concept of E-flows into the aims and objectives of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, the implementation arm of the National Ganga River Basin Authority.

Working with partners, IWMI researchers have now developed E-flow calculators, a family of software formaking rapid, assessments anywhere in the world from a computer.

More recently, IWMI researchers have further adapted their E-flow calculator for specific river basins, such as those in western Nepal. As a result of those developments, E-flow assessment is now poised for wider application in diverse settings.

In support of national efforts to better manage tradeoffs in water management, information provided by E-flow calculators can also contribute to tracking “water stress”.

For instance, how much freshwater economic activities withdraw compared to the total renewable supply, and how much water should be left in rivers to maintain basic ecological functions and ecosystem services.

Too much of our biodiversity depends on water for us to overlook sustainable water management as a key part of the solution to species extinction. The time has come for a more concerted effort to stem the loss of aquatic ecosystems and of the myriad species that inhabit them.

The post We Can’t Halt Extinctions Unless We Protect Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Claudia Sadoff is Director General, International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

The post We Can’t Halt Extinctions Unless We Protect Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Artem Beliaikin_Unsplash

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 31 2019 (IPS)

Do not panic! This is not about telling you how bank accounts and pension funds have been used to finance the production of nuclear bombs (they call it ‘investment’).

Nor is it about the four dozens of major and minor wars that the so-called “traditional weapons,” which are being manufactured and exported by civilised, democratic countries, continue to systematically fuel.

It is not about the irrational depletion of natural resources, the destruction of forests, the massive provision of arms to “rebel groups’ to burn entire villages, rape girls and women, and recruit child soldiers in more than one African country, for the sake of ‘cleaning’ the mines area for big multinationals to continue extracting precious minerals which serve to produce more (and more expensive) smartphones.

Not even it is about how today’s youth will see more plastic than fish in all seas.

More: this article will not focus on the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of so many mediocre apprentices of self-called ‘politicians’, who embrace dangerous fanaticisms while, in some ‘very democratic’ countries, calling their own selves “centre-right” (some dare saying they are simply “centre”), slipping further into ‘dictato-cracy.’

The term "globalisation" has been systematically given positive connotations, while it could be rightfully interpreted as a process of gradual “monetisation” and even “dollarisation” of livelihoods, and soon became an aggressive ‘massification’ of imported habits, blind consumption, hysterical greed, irrational imitation, the death of what used to be considered ‘truth’ (the post-truth era), the dominance of disinformation and misinformation (the ‘fake news’).

Nor it is about those so many States which were once net exporters of emigrants (Italy, Spain, Greece, etc), but which now stand as die-hard enemies of immigrants… all under the pretext of the “crisis” they have created and the resulting high unemployment rates, and “national security,” post-truth arguments.

Let alone big powers such as the United States, which have been entirely built up by migrants at the easy cost of exterminating the original, native populations. What to say about Canada? And Australia…?

Now those migrants who are forced to flee created armed conflicts, impoverishment, climate change (which they did not contribute to generate), are easy prey to arbitrary measures – walls, fences, and shame pacts to send them to detention centres and slavery markets in countries like Libya.

 

So What?

So, what the hell is this article all about? Well, it is about a scarce handful of examples on the biggest damages the so-called globalisation has caused to human species.

Let’s begin with the term globalisation itself, a process that was somehow formalised in the beginning of the 80’s with the performance on power stage of British “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher and US actor who became President, Ronald Reagan.

The Iron Lady-Premier and the Actor-President represented the visible face of the also so-called ‘neo-liberalism’, which in poor, simple words has led to the steady dismantlement of all aspects of painfully gained social welfare services – from public healthcare, to retirement pensions, through the suppression of workers rights, labour unions, public education and a very long etcetera.

Instead, neo-liberalism rapidly paved the way to a wild wave of privatisation, the supremacy of the uncontrolled marked rules, record-high youth unemployment rates, abysmal inequalities…

Let alone infinite greed, including the unleashing of endless wars, for the sake of keeping happy gigantic weapons industry and the business of ‘reconstruction’ of destroyed countries, all in exchange of their generous funding for electoral campaigns.

This Anglo-saxon neo-liberal hegemony soon spreat through European States, which rapidly adapted their ‘values’ to those new ones coming from Washington and London. Business as usual for Europeans, some would say.

Rather than providing a longish list of documented, figure-supported examples of what such process has meant at the macro and micro-economic levels, this quick, chaotic tale modestly pretends to focus on some of its biggest impacts on human beings. Human beings that are now considered as mere numbers of ‘voters’ (mind you not any more ‘electors’).

 

Voracity

One point is that the term “globalisation” has been systematically given positive connotations, while it could be rightfully interpreted as a process of gradual “monetisation” and even “dollarisation” of livelihoods, and soon became an aggressive ‘massification’ of imported habits, blind consumption, hysterical greed, irrational imitation, the death of what used to be considered ‘truth’ (the post-truth era), the dominance of disinformation and misinformation (the ‘fake news’).

In the course of this process, the so-called “low classes” have been provided with easy bank credits to purchase houses, latest model of cars, travel across the world… Psychologically, this led them to believe that they had become “middle class” and later on “high middle class”, thus approaching the enviable status of “high class.”

Then came the crisis. With it, the most vulnerable groups, falsely transformed in privileged groups, lost everything—the loans, the houses, the cars, travelling, etc.

 

The result

One of the most dramatic consequences is the loss of identity—both individual and collective identity. Simply, identity has become ‘virtual.’

Such a dangerous consequence is now being rapidly aggravated by the arrival of hi-tech products—robots replacing humans.

Sorry for this quick, chaotic tale about some of the most perilous impacts of the globalisation process that, according to some interpretations, would be now dismantled. The fact is such massification appears to have no end.

In exchange, the ‘voters’ hare now being told that they will receive, sooner or later, a basic income (also called unconditional basic income, citizen’s income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income or universal demo-grant), which implies that all citizens or residents of a country will regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.

According to its defenders, this would be financed by the profits of publicly owned enterprises. A difficult exercise given that the private sector has been taking over the roles of the states, which have been gradually dismantled.

This way, the citizens will be kept alive, will complain less about the evident failure of governments to create job opportunities, while doing what they are expected to do: that’s to consume all what industries produce and, by the way, continue playing their role as ‘voters’ (not electors, mind you again!).

 

Baher Kamal is Director and Editor of Human Wrongs Watch, where this article was originally published.

The post Lost in Globalisation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

There are 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 to 24 and it has become more essential than ever for young people to mobilise in order to achieve the change they want and need in their communities and the world. Thousands of youth gathered in Rome on Friday, Mar. 15, to join the climate strike, a global movement that aims to make governments and institutions aware of taking serious steps to implement the Paris Agreements and save the planet. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 2019 (IPS)

Rather than waiting for adults to act, more young girls and boys are standing up and speaking out on the world’s pressing issues.

In recent years, the international community has seen a rise in youth engagement from education activist Malala Yousafzai to climate change warrior Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez.

“More often than not, young people in our world today are a lightning rod for change. You show the courage and persistence that is often lacking among older generations,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during the recent Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum.

“Because it is your future, your livelihoods, your freedom, your security, your environment, you do not and you must not take no for an answer.…engaging youth globally is essential for the well-being of the entire world,” he added.

According to the UN, there are 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10-24, 90 percent of whom live in developing countries. These figures are only expected to grow as closer to 2 billion young people are projected to turn 15 between 2015 and 2030.

It is therefore more essential than ever for young people to mobilise in order to achieve the change they want and need in their communities and the world.

Most recently, youth walked out of classrooms and onto the streets, demanding political action on climate change. On May 24, there were over 2,300 school strikes in more than 130 countries.

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish student who sparked the global youth climate movement stated: “We proved that it does matter what you do and that no one is too small to make a difference.”

“Your voices give me hope,” said Guterres in response to the climate strikes.

In Northern Bangladesh, Kumar Bishwajit Barman has also worked to improve his community and those who live there.

At just 18 years old, Barman and his friends established the Ashar Allo Pathshala school to help stop child marriage and drug abuse.

According to the UN Children’s Fund, Bangladesh has the fourth-highest prevalence rate of child marriage in the world and the second-highest number of absolute child brides.

Approximately 59 percent of girls in the South Asian country are married before their 18th birthday ad 22 percent are married before the age of 15.

In 2010, Barman saw that an 11-year-old student was going to drop out of school to be married off and decided to act.

“She is one of many such girls who are made to tie the knot before getting done with primary education…one can only imagine how ruthless I had to be at that time to stop the marriage and get her back to education,” said Bishwajit.

“We went to her house and promised to bear all the expenditure required for her study. That was the beginning of our movement against child marriage,” he added.

Since then, Bishwajit has helped save at least 1,000 girls from child marriage and provides free education, helping girls pursue higher education.

But such feats were not easy. Barman often received threats whenever he tried to stop an early marriage and struggled financially to sustain operations.

“While we had to survive on tuition jobs, we provided all financial supports for their study…now we have 1,800 volunteers in the entire district to oversee the issues of education and stopping child marriage,” he said.

The Ashar Allo Pathshala school also provides education and vocational training to adults, including more than 450 women.

Earlier this year, Bishwajit established a mini-garment factory for women to help create employment.

In 2015, Bishwajit received the Joy Bangla Youth Award for his work in community development and was recently awarded Zonta Club’s Centennial Anniversary Award for contributions to women’s empowerment.

“All my vision and efforts now center around students,” Bishwajit said, who turned down university to continue his work.

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The post The New Face of Activism: Youth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Colin Mayfield and Hamid Mehmood
HAMILTON, Canada, May 30 2019 (IPS)

Post-secondary education relevant to the global water crisis is concentrated in wealthy countries rather than the poorer, developing places where it is needed most.

Meanwhile, water research is largely assessed by counting the number of papers published and their citation by other researchers rather than whether the work actually leads to successful, practical solutions.

Twin papers from UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health highlight and document these weaknesses in the global effort to address inadequate water supply and sanitation, problems that rank among the top-10 global risks.

There’s no global source of information on water-related academic activities. To uncover trends in water-related publications, therefore, we had to devise indirect measures using several databases, including one that indexes 22,800 journals, magazines and reports from more than 5,000 publishers.

Nor is there a list of water resource-related post-secondary programs. Similar detective work was required, therefore, to locate the world’s 28,000 or so universities that offer degrees in water-related programs.

Our most troubling finding at the end of the day: altogether too little training and research takes place where water problems are most acute. Instead, global water research relies on Western – particularly US – scientific outputs.

Globally, we found, water-related research is published in 88 countries but just two of them — the United States and China — accounted for 33% of the 1.2 million papers published between 2012 and 2017.

About 70% of the academic journals that publish water research are based in just four countries — the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands; 2% are in China.

All 15 countries leading in publications per million population are among the world’s wealthiest, suggesting water research does not emerge as a reaction to water scarcity but, instead, to some economic value in a supply and sanitation industry expected to be worth $1 trillion (US) in 2020.

The average number of citations for any given paper dropped precipitously, from 22 in 2012 to just three in 2017. This suggests, at least in part, that lower quality papers are being written to conform with government sponsored policies on publication, or reflects increasing pressure in academia to produce research — publish or perish.

This pressure might be critical for researchers to survive, but it is hardly conducive from a development perspective.

Meanwhile, most universities offering water-related courses are in North America, Europe and parts of Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, which faces severe water shortages, very few postgraduate institutions offer recognised programs on water.

And many students from water-stressed countries who attend university in North America or Europe don’t return home after graduation, depriving their countries of badly needed expertise.

Any incentive, process or practice that encourages the return of these highly-qualified students to jobs in the water sector could benefit the home country.

Given the highly autonomous nature of universities and their faculty members, it’s unreasonable to expect widespread cooperation in curriculum design and delivery but some sharing of materials would be very beneficial.

We suggest that a consortium of universities offer large-scale water studies, courses or programs using the specific expertise of their combined faculty members.

Other recommendations: encourage more women to enter the water-resources field. And find better ways to convey in a practical way the research findings, learning and knowledge in research publications to actual users in need of the knowledge.

Teacher and teaching ratings should likewise be based on outcomes — including assessments by previous students at different intervals since graduation about the quality, content and relevance of their programs.

The bottom line: When it comes to water research, the publish or perish philosophy that drives many researchers must take second place to the goal of on-the-ground results, especially in the developing world, where there also must be a more structured focus on water education.

The UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) sets ambitious targets for improvement in water supply and sanitation. To achieve the water-related SDGs, however, we need to use insights into academic shortcomings to make reforms, and soon.

*Their papers, “Higher Education in the Water Sector: A Global Overview” and “Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot,” are available at www.inweh.unu.edu. UNU-INWEH is supported by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada and hosted by McMaster University.

The post Water Research & Education Needs to Flow Towards Developing World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Colin Mayfield, is Senior Advisor, Water Education and Knowledge Management at United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), and Hamid Mehmood is a Senior Researcher*.

The post Water Research & Education Needs to Flow Towards Developing World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Princess Sarah Zeid
AMMAN, May 29 2019 (IPS)

On the eve of the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver June 3-6, Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan interviewed Dr. Olfat Mahmoud, a Palestinian refugee and women’s rights advocate.

Princess Sarah spoke with Dr. Olfat about what the humanitarian system would look like if organizations like hers could help shape it, and the messages she hopes to bring to Women Deliver.

Excerpts from the interview:

Princess Sarah: Tell me a little about yourself. What drew you to your work and why does it matter?

Dr. Olfat: I was born a Palestinian refugee, so witnessed injustice all my life. Yet what defines me is not that I grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon, or that I spent most of my life in a war zone, but that I am a nurse and advocate in my community.

Even amid crisis, my parents were open-minded and encouraged me to be independent, so that is exactly what I set out to do. I studied and practiced nursing during the Lebanese civil war, and through that work witnessed the overlooked hardships faced by refugee women and children.

As a medical practitioner, I saw how essential services for girls and women of all ages – such as psychosocial support and sexual and reproductive health care– were chronically overlooked. And as an advocate in my community, I found that supporting women empowered me as well.

I established the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organization (PWHO) to fill these gaps and fulfill the needs of refugee girls and women so they can lead better futures. Not a single international organization stepped up to do this important work – so I knew that change had to come from those of us within the community.

Princess Sarah: What are the main challenges girls and women face in your community? What makes women-focused civil society organizations (CSOs) like yours most well-equipped to respond to these challenges?

Dr. Olfat: For girls and women, life in refugee settings require superhuman strength. We are particularly vulnerable when it comes to access to essential health services, information, and education, and disproportionately suffer from gender-based violence.

Women-focused civil society organizations are most well-equipped to respond to these challenges because women are the best experts on our lives. Our lived experiences make us better advocates for ourselves and for others in similar situations.
For example, the PWHO women’s centers – staffed by refugee women themselves– have gained unparalleled trust from the community, and become a second home for many.

With that trust, we can more easily identify what women want and need – like access to non-discriminatory health services, psychosocial support, rights-based education, and leadership skills – and design programs that are tailored for them. We can also negotiate with local leaders to push for a more supportive environment for women’s rights – a key ingredient to driving lasting change in conservative contexts.

UNHCR Patron, HRH Sarah Zeid of Jordan, meets with a women’s group at Doro refugee camp in South Sudan. Credit: UNHCR/Jan Møller Hansen

Princess Sarah: What could the international community – including donors, decision-makers, and practitioners – do more or less of to maximize sustainable positive impact for the populations you serve?

Dr. Olfat: The international community wields a lot of power – especially the power of money and the power of influence. To drive real change in my community, international actors must use those powers more efficiently.

First, there is a critical need to fill funding gaps for programs that are specifically designed for refugee girls and women. With more girls and women displaced today than ever before in global history, their needs are rising – yet funding for them is decreasing.

We need smarter investments in programs that enable refugee girls and women to lead better futures, including through education and quality vocational and life skills training, as well as access to sexual and reproductive health care.

Yet money alone is not enough. The international community must also use their influence to challenge national and regional political barriers that hold us back.

This includes respecting and upholding international agreements, including UN resolutions, which support and protect refugees. It also means addressing legal restrictions that keep refugee women from working, obtaining formal education, and exercising other basic human rights in their host countries.

Princess Sarah: Currently only 3% of humanitarian aid goes to local and national organizations – and even less to those focused on girls and women. What types of concrete investments does your organization need to extend your impact and plan for the future?

Dr. Olfat: Right now, the needs we see are greater than the resources we have. To meet those needs, we don’t just need more funding – but more of the right kinds of funding.

Too often, grants and funding opportunities for women-focused CSOs are designed without consulting us on the types of investments we know girls and women in our communities need the most.

Other times, we aren’t able to access grants because of unrealistic reporting requirements that are either unsuitable or unmanageable for a small grassroots organization like ours.

For example, many grants for vocational programs in Lebanon require organizations to report success by the number of jobs their beneficiaries gain as a result – which isn’t possible in a context where refugees aren’t legally allowed to work. To support women-focused CSOs and the communities they serve, we must be more meaningfully engaged in setting investment agendas at the start.

We also need access to more flexible and sustainable funding opportunities, including core funding. It’s impossible to plan for the future when we rely on six- to twelve- month grants. We’re committed to supporting refugee girls and women in our community for as long as we’re needed – but require the right resources to fulfill that goal.

Princess Sarah: You have also been advocating for the international community to more meaningfully engage women-focused CSOs in humanitarian decision-making. In your view, what concrete steps can the international community take to put more power and influence in the hands of women-focused CSOs like yours, and why should this be an urgent priority?

Dr. Olfat: Women-focused CSOs must be heard in humanitarian policy meetings to ensure decisions reflect realities on the ground. This requires inviting us to important discussions held in New York and Geneva, but it also means making sure we can get there through travel and logistics support. And when we are there, it means carving out spaces for us to safely and honestly share the solutions we need with the assurance that we will be heard.

The alternative – excluding refugee women from decisions that affect their work and lives – isn’t acceptable and isn’t working. When we are engaged, we make humanitarian policy and practice stronger and more effective.

Princess Sarah: What do you hope to achieve at the Women Deliver Conference in Vancouver, Canada? What advocacy asks do you hope to bring forward at this meeting?

I hope to raise awareness to the needs of Palestinian refugee girls and women in Lebanon, to ensure that they are not forgotten. And I want to highlight solutions women-focused CSOs like PWHO need – money, influence, and power – to push for the change I’ve wanted to see all my life.

At the same time, I hope to learn from other advocates around the world, and build networks so we can collectively push for a humanitarian system that puts girls and women at the center. Solidarity is our strength and our power – and we need to be stronger together to achieve a better world for all of us.

The post A Call for Concrete Changes to Achieve a More Gender Equal World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Princess Sarah Zeid is a member of UNHCR’s Advisory Group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection, a Special Advisor to the World Food Programme on Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, and Chair of the Newborn Health in Humanitarian Settings Initiative.

The post A Call for Concrete Changes to Achieve a More Gender Equal World appeared first on Inter Press Service.