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Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 29 2019 (IPS)

No, no, no. Nothing to do with what US and Europe’s far-right fanatics now use to vociferate, saying once and again that “migrants come here to destroy our democracy, our civilisation, and our life-style”.

Rather the complete opposite—this is about a major damage that precisely “our civilisation” and “our lifestyle” have been causing: invasive alien species crossing the world chiefly on board of ships, and harming human health, biodiversity and the whole ecosystem.

 

Who are they?

“Invasive alien species are plants, animals, pathogens and other organisms that are non-native to an ecosystem, and which may cause economic or environmental harm or adversely affect human health…

For a species to become invasive, it must successfully out-compete native organisms for food and habitat, spread through its new environment, increase its population and harm ecosystems in its introduced range.

“In particular, they impact adversely upon biodiversity, including decline or elimination of native species -through competition, predation, or transmission of pathogens- and the disruption of local ecosystems and ecosystem functions…

“Invasive alien species, introduced and/or spread outside their natural habitats, have affected native biodiversity in almost every ecosystem type on earth and are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity. Since the 17th century, invasive alien species have contributed to nearly 40 percent of all animal extinctions for which the cause is known.” [2006 data]

This is how the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) defines the alien invasive species.

It warns that this problem continues to grow “at great socio-economic, health and ecological cost” around the world.

“Invasive alien species exacerbate poverty and threaten development through their impact on agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural systems, which are an important basis of peoples’ livelihoods in developing countries. This damage is aggravated by climate change, pollution, habitat loss and human-induced disturbance.”

 

A ship crosses the Paraná River on its way to the port of Rosario, Argentina. Credit: Marcela Valente/IPS

 

Where do they come from?

Globalisation has resulted in greater trade, transport, travel and tourism, all of which can facilitate the introduction and spread of species that are not native to an area, CBD experts the Convention on Biological Diversity explain.

For a species to become invasive, it must successfully out-compete native organisms for food and habitat, spread through its new environment, increase its population and harm ecosystems in its introduced range.

Most countries are grappling with complex and costly invasive species problems. For example, the annual environmental losses caused by introduced pests in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, India and Brazil have been calculated at over 100 billion dollars (CBD, 2006).

The Convention also warns that addressing the problem of invasive alien species is “urgent” because “the threat is growing daily, and the economic and environmental impacts are severe.”

 

Ballast water

Cargo ship de-ballasting | CSIRO | Permission | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

In poor words, ships transporting merchandise from one extreme of the world to another, once they discharged their cargo, they once upon a time used to load heavy stones and rocks to ensure more stability to the vessels in their new maritime crossing. Later on, they started to load sea water instead of stones. This is the ballast water.

Then, upon their arrival to a new port, and before loading another cargo, they would discharge the water (ballast water) they loaded in another sea.

The point is that the water taken from one sea is full of living species and organisms which are natives of that specific ecosystem. The discharge of this ballast water obviously implies discharging those species and organisms to a different marine ecosystem.

Some of them would simply perish, but many more would survive at the cost of species and organisms, natives of the new habitat.

 

A major threat

“Ballast water is essential for the safe operation of ships. It provides stability and manoeuvrability during a voyage and during loading and unloading operations,” explains the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). Management of ballast water also reduces the hull stress caused by adverse sea conditions or by changes in cargo weight as well as fuel and water.

However, EMSA also explains that the process of loading and unloading untreated ballast water poses a major threat to the environment, public health and the economy as ships become a vector for the transfer of organisms between ecosystems, from one part of the world to another.

“When ballast water is taken up in port, many microscopic organisms and sediments are introduced into the ships ballast tanks. Many of these organisms are able to survive in these tanks, and, when ballast water is discharged, they are released into new environments.”

If suitable conditions exist in this release environment, these species will survive and reproduce and become invasive species.

“In some cases, there is a high probability that the organism will become a dominant species, potentially resulting in: the extinction of native species, effects on local/regional biodiversity, effects on coastal industries that use water extraction, effects on public health and impacts on local economies based on fisheries.”

 

The Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis. This male specimen was found ashore in 150 metres distance to the banks of the Elbe river in the German federal state of Brandenburg | Christian Fischer | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

 

Extensive damage

The European Maritime Safety Agency further warns that “ballast water discharge typically contains a variety of biological materials, including plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. These materials often include non-native, nuisance, exotic species that can cause extensive ecological and economic damage to aquatic ecosystems, along with serious human health issues including death.”

For its part, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) explains that ballast water is routinely taken on by ships for stability and structural integrity. It can contain thousands of aquatic microbes, algae and animals, which are then carried across the world’s oceans and released into ecosystems where they are not native.

“Untreated ballast water released at a ship’s destination could potentially introduce new invasive aquatic species. Expanded ship trade and traffic volume over the last few decades have increased the likelihood of invasive species being released. Hundreds of invasions have already taken place, sometimes “with devastating consequences for the local ecosystem, economy and infrastructure.”

 

“Take-Make-Dispose”

The dominating ‘life-style’, generated by the “Take-Make-Dispose” economic model, which is based on over-production/over-consumption/over-commercial benefits, has massively increased international transporting systems.

From big trucks using fossil fuel, to giant cargo ships over-loaded with enormous containers –let alone huge oil tankers, the fact now is that around 80 percent of global trade by volume and over 70 per cent of global trade by value are carried by sea and are handled by ports worldwide. Updated estimates situate these figures in 90 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2016 estimated that there are more than 50,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo. The world fleet is registered in over 150 nations and manned by more than a million seafarers of virtually every nationality.

For its part, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) also in 2016 estimated that some 1.1 trillion dollars-worth of agricultural products are traded internationally each year.

This “Take-Make-Dispose” economic model has proved to be one of the world’s main killers due to the huge pollution it causes for air, land and soil, marine and freshwater.

Moreover, this prevailing economic model implies that over one third of food is lost and/or wasted, enough to feed all hungry people.

 

Furthermore…

Invasive alien species arrive in new habitats through various channels, being shipping the main one. Though important, they are not the sole problem the voracious production-consumption model brings.

For instance: containers. According to the Floating Threat report, “shipping today means sea containers: Globally, around 527 million sea container trips are made each year – China alone deals with over 133 million sea containers annually.”

“It is not only their cargo, but the steel contraptions themselves, that can serve as vectors for the spread of exotic species capable of wreaking ecological and agricultural havoc.”

 

Credit: Bigstock

 

More floating threats

In addition to the invasive alien species, the fact that over 80 per cent of global trade is carried by sea also implies other invisible treats –while ships bring coffee, snacks and TV sets, they also carry pests and diseases.

In its ‘A Floating Threat: Sea Containers Spread Pests and Diseases’, FAO highlights that while oil spills garner much public attention and anguish, the so-called “biological spills” represent a greater long-term threat and do not have the same high public profile.

“It was an exotic fungus that wiped out billions of American chestnut trees in the early 20th century, dramatically altering the landscape and ecosystem, while today the emerald ash borer – another pest that hitch-hiked along global trade routes to new habitats – threatens to do the same with a valuable tree long used by humans to make tool handles, guitars and office furniture.”

The specialised world body also reminds that perhaps the biggest “biological spill” of all was when a fungus-like eukaryotic microorganism called Phytophthora infestans – the name of the genus comes from Greek for “plant destroyer” – sailed from the Americas to Belgium. Within months it arrived in Ireland, triggering a potato blight that led to famine, death and mass migration.

“The list goes on and on. A relative of the toxic cane toad that has run rampant in Australia recently disembarked from a container carrying freight to Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot, and the ability of females to lay up to 40,000 eggs a year make it a catastrophic threat for local lemurs and birds, while also threatening the habitat of a host of animals and plants.”

The report A Floating Threat: Sea Containers Spread Pests and Diseases’ estimates that up to 90 percent of world trade is carried by sea today, with vast panoply of differing logistics, making agreement on an inspection method elusive.

“Moreover, many cargoes quickly move inland to enter just-in-time supply chains. That’s how the dreaded brown marmorated stink bug – which chews quickly through high-value fruit and crops – began its European tour a few years ago in Zurich.”

This animal actively prefers steel nooks and crannies for long-distance travel, and once established likes to set up winter hibernation niches inside people’s houses.

The list of dangers the current economic model –and “our civilisation” and “our life-style” pose day after day is too long to be summarised in just one report. The uncontrolled threats of the invasive alien species are just an example.

Any hope that humans wake up… perhaps by attentively listening to Greta Thunberg –and with her the already mobilised world’s youth:

“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes… We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis…if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then… we should change the system itself.”

 

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

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Children walk through a damaged part of downtown Craiter in Aden, Yemen. The area was badly damaged by airstrikes in 2015 as the Houthi’s were driven out of the city by coalition forces. Credit: UN OCHA/Giles Clarke

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2019 (IPS)

When the UN Security Council met last week to discuss the deaths and devastation caused to civilians in ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, the killings in Yemen and the air attacks on hospitals, schools, mosques, and market places—whether deliberate or otherwise– were singled out as the worst ever.

But the destruction and irreparable damage to civilian infrastructure and human lives were caused by weapons provided by some of the permanent members of the Security Council, including the US, France and UK.

And last week, in defiance of US Congressional opposition to arms sales to some of the warring Middle Eastern nations, the Trump administration went one better: it justified the proposed sale of a hefty $8.1 billion dollars in American arms to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia under a so-called “emergency notification”.

All three countries are part of a Saudi-led coalition unleashing attacks on Yemen battling Houthi insurgents backed by Iran– and the new weapons systems are expected to add more fire power to the coalition.

The “emergency notification” for arms sales was not only an act of defiance against the US Congress but also an attempt to placate American allies in the Middle East and, more importantly, the powerful arms lobby in the United States.

One of arguments adduced by the Trump administration is that increasing arms sales to Middle Eastern allies are meant to counter an “anticipated Iranian aggression”.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS this is not about deterring Iranian aggression and it is certainly not an “emergency.”

“It’s about the profits of American arms manufacturers at the expense of countless Yemeni lives.”

“This is but the most extreme manifestation, however, of a longstanding bipartisan policy of transferring deadly and sophisticated armaments to the family dictatorships in the Middle East”, said Zunes, who also serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

He pointed out that It is ironic that a nation which emerged in revolution against monarchy, would be the world’s number one arms supplier of absolute monarchies today.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal May 25, the Houthis are less ideologically aligned with Tehran, and Iran denies arming the group. But US officials disagree, saying Iran has trained them and provided them with weapons.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council May 23 that civilians continue to make up the vast majority of casualties in conflict, with more than 22,800 civilians dying or being injured in 2018 in just six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

He stressed the need for the Security Council to do more to enhance compliance with the laws of war. http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/un-failed-civilians/

In a statement released last week, the London-based Amnesty International was dead on target when it ridiculed the US argument that some of the weapons supplied to the Saudi-led coalition were “precision-guided” to avoid civilian casualties.

“The great military powers cynically boast about ‘precision’ warfare and ‘surgical’ strikes that distinguish between fighters and civilians. But the reality on the ground is that civilians are routinely targeted where they live, work, study, worship and seek medical care.”, the statement added.

AI said parties to armed conflict unlawfully kill, maim and forcibly displace millions of civilians while world leaders shirk their responsibility and turn their backs on war crimes and immense suffering.

Asked for his comments, Philippe Nassif, Advocacy Director – Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, told IPS decision made by President Trump to circumvent Congress and authorize billions of dollars’ worth of arms sales to serial human rights abusers Saudi Arabia and the UAE is extremely unfortunate and reckless.

“Both these countries have used US made weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen, a country mired in conflict that has been made worse by the conduct of the UAE and Saudi led coalition,” he added.

The Trump administration has had a blank check policy when it comes to arming its Middle Eastern allies, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Nassif pointed out that the atrocious human rights records of these governments, where executions, extrajudicial killings, mass incarceration, torture, and indefinite detentions are part of daily life for their citizens, is made worse by the US continuing to arm these governments.

“Now that the UAE and Saudi Arabia will receive new American weapons, we can expect a continuation of the hell that has been brought upon Yemen, where 11 million people are suffering from famine, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and thousands killed,” he noted.

“We can also expect weapons to fall into the wrong hands, such as Al Qaeda, or be sent to other conflict zones where the Saudi’s and UAE are backing ascending autocrats, such as Haftar in Libya,” Nassif declared.

In a statement released May 24, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “I made a determination pursuant to section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act and directed the Department to complete immediately the formal notification of 22 pending arms transfers to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia totaling approximately $8.1 billion to deter Iranian aggression and build partner self-defense capacity”.

“These sales will support our allies, enhance Middle East stability, and help these nations to deter and defend themselves from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.

Delaying this shipment, Pompeo argued, could cause degraded systems and a lack of necessary parts and maintenance that could create severe airworthiness and interoperability concerns for key partners, during a time of increasing regional volatility.

He argued that national security concerns have been exacerbated by many months of Congressional delay in addressing these critical requirements, “and have called into doubt our reliability as a provider of defense capabilities, opening opportunities for U.S. adversaries to exploit.”

The equipment to the three countries includes aircraft support maintenance; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); munitions; and other supplies.

“Today’s action will quickly augment our partners’ capacity to provide for their own self-defense and reinforce recent changes to U.S. posture in the region to deter Iran. I intend for this determination to be a one-time event,” Pompeo added.

He pointed out that Section 36 is a long-recognized authority and has been utilized by at least four previous administrations since 1979, including Presidents Reagan and Carter.

“This specific measure does not alter our long-standing arms transfer review process with Congress. I look forward to continuing to work with Congress to develop prudent measures to advance and protect U.S. national security interests in the region,” he declared.

The United States is, and must remain, a reliable security partner to our allies and partners around the world. These partnerships are a cornerstone of our National Security Strategy, which this decision reaffirms, Pompeo said.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 28 2019 (IPS)

Since this Commission first met in 1947, our countries have travelled a long journey. Our economies are expected to become larger than the rest of the world combined, measured by purchasing power parity. It is often said the Asia-Pacific region is the engine of the world economy.

With multilateralism increasingly questioned, we have yet more to offer. We can provide the global leadership to collectively achieve a transformed and resilient society in our region.

Empowered societies working in concert to respond to challenges which transcend borders and accelerate progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

With these challenges in mind, this Commission is our opportunity to reaffirm our shared responsibility and commitment to the ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – to build on past successes and shape future priorities. Let me mention five areas, which I believe are central to achieving the transformation and resilience we need.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

We must put people first and build a coherent response to population dynamics which are radically altering our societies and our economies. We can learn from each other as we strengthen policies, institutions and legislation to empower people and promote equality.

This effort should be complemented by work to strengthen regional cooperation on population development and social protection – but also to promote gender equality, disability rights and safe, orderly and regular migration.

Strengthening sustainable connectivity could make us more resilient to international trade tensions and deliver huge economic benefits. When it comes to transport and infrastructure connectivity, we have achievements on which to build – guided by international standards, UN norms and values.

The same ambition is needed for energy connectivity, information and communications technology (ICT) connectivity and trade facilitation measures.

We have an opportunity to join forces to strengthen our work to combat environmental degradation, pollution and the mismanagement of natural resources. To protect our oceans there is no alternative to stepping up our multilateral cooperation.

Transformed and resilient societies can only be achieved if we stop disaster risk outpacing resilience. Intensified by climate change, disasters are five times more likely to affect a person in Asia-Pacific than a person living elsewhere.

The basis for stronger regional cooperation is well established. Let us use it to give pace to the development of national disaster risk reduction strategies.

New technologies have the potential to accelerate our journey to transformed and resilient societies on many fronts. Digital healthcare and education are providing cost effective solutions at scale.

Smart cities, energy systems and transport solutions are offering alternatives to protect the environment. Yet for digital solutions to be unleashed as a force for good, their broader implications need to be fully understood and the necessary infrastructure developed.

An enabling environment, investment and technological, individual and institutional capacity are all needed. ESCAP should be a forum for best practice exchange to harness digital technology for sustainable development.

The Regional Roadmap for Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a framework which will continue to guide our work. Yet we should also continuously sharpen our policy focus as the situation evolves – including to respond to these five priorities.

From an institutional perspective, ESCAP and the United Nations system are working to remain fit for purpose. You will be discussing the midterm review of this Commission’s conference structure during this session. The United Nations Development System reform is well underway. It has moved to its regional phase.

In this broader context, I have established an Eminent Persons Advisory Group and am seeking views from all interested parties. Our goal is to identify how we can better serve the needs of our member States and deepen meaningful engagement with all our partners.

I believe a reenergised approach to supporting transformed and resilient societies is coming into focus.

At subregional level, ESCAP’s partnerships with subregional organisations must be strengthened. Where common objectives exist, we must work to complement each other. Where best practice can be shared, ESCAP can facilitate such exchanges.

We are supporting the development of a Complementarities roadmap with ASEAN under the leadership of Thailand and will be a partner in its implementation. I would like to explore similar initiatives with other subregional institutions.

A coherent regional level approach is becoming increasingly important to overcome challenges which transcend borders and strengthen the means of implementation such as financing for development, data and statistics. In Asia-Pacific, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States must remain our priority. We should also scale up our support for middle-income countries to ensure their aspiration are met.

I am committed to working with all member States to achieve transformed and resilient societies. The evidence indicates we can be more effective if we empower citizens to support this transformation.

At this 75th session of the Commission, I am honoured by the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn who has shown great dedication to this cause in Thailand. I look forward to benefiting from her experience.

Let me also thank the Royal Thai Government for hosting ESCAP in Bangkok for the past seventy years, and all member States for their longstanding, unwavering support. I am looking forward to joining forces with all of you to accelerate progress towards sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific.

*In an address to the 75th session of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Bangkok.

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Excerpt:

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

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael Lim Mah Hui
KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, May 28 2019 (IPS)

Over recent decades, the scope, size, concentration, power and even the purpose and role of finance have changed so significantly that a new term, financialization, was coined to name this phenomenon.

Financialization refers to a process that has not only transformed finance itself, but also, the real economy and society. The transformation goes beyond the quantitative to involve qualitative change as finance becomes dominant, instead of serving the needs of the real economy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Financialization involves the growth and transformation of finance such that with its hugely expanded size, scope and concentration, finance now overshadows, dominates and destabilizes the productive economy.

The role and purpose of finance has been qualitatively transformed. Finance used to profit from serving production and trade. Traditionally, financing production involved providing funds for manufacturers to finance production, and for traders to buy and sell.

Financialization, on the other hand, turns every imaginable product or service into financial commodities or services to be traded, often for speculation. Instead of seeking profits by financing the productive economy and trade, finance is now more focused on extracting rents from the economy.

Finance is hegemonic, dominating all of society without appearing to do so, transforming more and more things into financial products and services to be traded and sold. But financialization could not have happened on its own.

Its nature and pace have been enabled and shaped by ideological, legal, institutional and deliberate policy and regulatory changes. Regulatory authorities, both national and international, can barely keep up with its transformative consequences.

Size matters
One aspect of financialization refers to the size of finance relative to the whole economy, with the financial sector growing faster and securing more profit than other sectors. The simplest and most popular measure of finance uses national income accounts for ‘finance, insurance and real estate’ (FIRE).

Michael Lim Mah Hui

In the US, finance’s share of GDP grew from 14% to 21% between 1960 and 2017, while manufacturing’s fell from 27% to 11%, and trade’s declined from 17% to 12%. The financial sector is almost twice as large as both trade and manufacturing sectors.

The growth of shadow banking, referring to activities similar to traditional banking undertaken by non-bank financial institutions that are not regulated as banks, is a growing and significant source of credit and accounts for much of the growth of finance.

Such institutions include hedge funds, private equity funds, mortgage lenders, money market funds and insurance companies. These financial institutions, including traditional banks, have used securitization, ‘off-balance sheet’ derivative positions and leverage to create, manage and trade securities and derivatives, ballooning its business volume.

With heightened concerns about growing financial fragility, more sophisticated measures have been introduced to estimate ‘shadow banking’. Most country-level measures show shadow banking increasing rapidly before, and more worryingly, after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis!

At the same time, finance has also secured the most gains in the US, taking advantage of the sector’s ability to leverage more than non-financial corporations, engaging in financial innovations and trading complex and opaque products netting super profits.

During 1960-2017, finance almost doubled its profits, from 17% to 30% of total domestic corporate profits, while manufacturing’s share shrank by almost two thirds from 49% to 17%.

Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank estimated that that the US financial sector made around US$1.2 trillion (US$1,200 billion) in ‘excess profits’, relative to the previous mean, in the decade before the 2008 global financial crisis.

Greater concentration
There are contrasting views of whether bank concentration leads to greater or less financial stability. But size certainly does not guarantee either good banking practices or financial stability.

In fact, the global financial crisis suggests that the “too big to fail” syndrome encouraged moral hazard. Big banks take on excessive risk as they believe they have a safety net — governments will bail them out to prevent a financial system collapse.

Over the years, US banking has become more concentrated. This accelerated with the abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act and its replacement with the Graham-Leah-Bliley Act in 1999 which saw the creation of universal bank behemoths combining commercial and investment banking activities.

The top five banks in 1990 held less than 10% of total bank assets; by 2007, they had 44%. Seven years after the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis, the US banking industry is just as concentrated, with the top five banks – JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and US Bancorp – holding US$7 trillion, or 44% of total bank assets.

Meanwhile, asset management is even more concentrated than banking. Together, the ‘Big Three’ – Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street – are the largest shareholders in four-fifths of listed US corporations, managing nearly US$11 trillion, thrice the worth of global hedge funds. Such asset management relies on banks for leveraged access to financial markets.

Undoubtedly, many regulators have replaced previously weak regulation, which failed to check spreading systemic risk before the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, with new rules. But these do not seem to have effectively checked more recent abusive practices.

Recent technological, ideological, institutional and political changes have drastically transformed finance, enabling it to penetrate and dominate all spheres of life such that financialization is the new avatar.

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.

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

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2019 (IPS)

As it relentlessly pursues its strongly pro-Israeli policy – along with its disdain for multilateralism – the Trump administration continued to display its hostility towards the United Nations and its humanitarian agencies at a meeting of the UN Security Council focusing on the recent escalation of violence in Gaza.

The administration’s three hardline objectives were best reflected as they converged on a single political crossroad when the US Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt told the Security Council May 22 it was time to dismantle the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which has supported Palestinian refugees since it began operations back in 1950.

The US has already slashed its contribution to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), from 69 million in 2016 to zero in 2017, cut 300 million dollars in funds to UNRWA and reduced 500 million dollars from the UN’s biennium peacekeeping budget

At a press conference announcing her decision to step down as US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley told reporters last October that that during her two-year tenure “we cut $1.3 billion in the UN’s budget. We’ve made it stronger. We’ve made it more efficient.”

But the reduction in funds to UNRWA has been described as the unkindest cut of all — because the UN agency has been sustaining the economic survival of Palestinian refugees for the last 69 years.

Nadia Hijab, President of the Board of Directors at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian policy network, told IPS: “If anyone is still in doubt about the Trump Administration’s deal of the century – also known as Israel’s plan to end the conflict on its terms – Greenblatt made that very clear when he said: “We do not have to wait until a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….” to transition UNRWA out of existence.

And indeed, the Administration has not waited for any kind of solution or made any reference to international law, she added.

It has simply, on behalf of Israel, imposed facts on the ground with its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and its embassy move, and defunding UNRWA, said Hijab.

“Now it doesn’t want anyone else to fund UNRWA but rather to focus on the supposedly bright economic future to be discussed at the economic conference in Bahrain next month,” she noted.

But what is really underway is erasure of Palestinian national and political rights leaving the majority of the Palestinian people in exile with the rest forced to survive under the draconian conditions of occupation, siege, and discrimination in the land of Palestine/Israel, declared Hijab.

She pointed out it should be clear that a commitment to UNRWA goes beyond services to refugees: It is a powerful symbol of the Palestinians’ existence as a people with a right to self-determination as well as other internationally recognized rights including the right to return to their lands and homes.

Sam Husseini, Senior analyst at the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA), told IPS the occupying power is obligated to take care of people under occupation under the Geneva Conventions.

“Israel has done anything but… It has subjected the Palestinian people to attack after attack and siege after siege, making anything like normal economic development impossible,” he added.

Husseini also pointed out that UNRWA has fulfilled a desperately needed role for generations of Palestinians.

“The fact that it’s gone on for so long is the fault of the “international community” — the US government first and foremost, having prevented a resolution to the conflict along lines prescribed by international law,” he declared.

Now, with the Trump administration wanting to stop deferring a final settlement to the conflict in favor of wanting to impose one that deprives the Palestinians of virtually all their rights, they are targeting any support that Palestinians may have to bully them into complete submission to Israel’s military dictates. UNRWA is top on that list, he said.

At the Security Council meeting, Greenblatt thanked UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krähenbühl for his briefing, and for his work over the years.

“But I’m afraid it is time for him– and all of you– to face the reality that the UNRWA model has failed the Palestinian people. UNRWA’s business model, which is inherently tied to an endlessly and exponentially expanding community of beneficiaries, is in permanent crisis mode,” Greenblatt said.

That is why the United States decided that it will no longer commit to funding this irredeemably flawed operation, he added.

“We did not come to this conclusion lightly. Since UNRWA’s founding, the U.S. has donated $6 billion. Let me repeat that: $6 billion – vastly more than any other country. And yet year after year, UNRWA funding fell short.”

“UNRWA is a band-aid, and the Palestinians who use its services deserve better – much better. We do not have to wait until a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in place to address that fact,” he declared.

Responding to Greenblatt’s comments, Krahenbuhl told a press conference in Gaza UNRWA’s mandate was a matter for the entire U.N. General Assembly to consider, not by “one or two individual member states”.

“Therefore, Palestinian refugees should remember that the mandate is protected by the General Assembly, and of course we will engage with member states to ensure what we hope is a safe renewal of that mandate,” Krahenbuhl said.

Currently, over half of the 2.0 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which is under Israeli blockade, receive food aid from UNRWA.

Meanwhile, as part of its ongoing policy against multilateralism, the US has already scuttled the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, refused to participate in the global migration compact, pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, abandoned the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, dismissed the relevance of the World Trade Organization (WTO), revoked the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, and withdrew from both the Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government announced that it would take over all under-utilised land and redistribute it to deserving farmers, irrespective of their race and colour. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
MARONDERA, Zimbabwe, May 28 2019 (IPS)

For subsistence farmer Rogers Hove—who proudly brandishes a worn out letter for his five hectare piece of land he obtained from government following the chaotic land seizures from white commercial farmers over two decades ago—what matters most to him, “is to see my piece of land in my possession”.

At the age of 78, Hove has little else to show for the land he owns.

Hove has not made much money from it. Other than three thatched huts built from plain home-made brick, there is not much else on the land, let alone cattle—the ownership of which is regarded as a symbol of wealth.

“One day things will be alright and I may be able to farm productively the same way white farmers used to do here before we stepped in to take over our land,” Hove tells IPS.

But 20 years ago, Hove was 58 when former President Robert Mugabe’s government embarked upon a violent land reform programme that saw many black Zimbabweans taking ownership of huge swathes of land once occupied by white farmers—who were loathed by the now 95-year-old former Zimbabwean president.

Despite boasting of owning one of the most fertile pieces of land in Mashonaland East Province, Hove admits that many resettled farmers like himself have fallen on hard times.

“Yes, I have this land, but since I took over, I have not produced much because I have no means to do my farming properly. Other farmers who have the means often have to assist me, but that has not changed anything either,” Hove says.

Instead of tending to the farm, Hove’s wife, Agness, 70, is busy by the roadside selling trinkets and cigarettes to passersby.

“Maybe we will have food if I do this. We have nothing from our farm. Well-wishers give us handouts,” Agness tells IPS.

All their seven children have their own families living far from their aged parents, who have fixed their hope on the piece of land they invaded during the country’s chaotic land reform programme.

In Zimbabwe, it never rains, but pours for underperforming farmers like Rogers and Agness. Under President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, many of these farmers risk losing their land.

Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government announced that it would take over all under-utilised land and redistribute it to deserving farmers irrespective of their race and colour. 

Briefing parliament at the time, Douglas Karoro, Zimbabwe’s deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Culture and Rural Development, said “in the event that the government decides to distribute the land to people, it’s our policy to make sure that the distribution exercise is done fairly.”

“’The redistribution is not going to look at the colour of the farmer, the political inclination of the farmer, or the religious affiliation of the farmer,” Karoro told Parliament earlier this year.

But before struggling resettled farmers like Rogers face the boot from their land, for now the Zimbabwean government awaits completion of a land audit in order to implement the new policy.

Dispossessing resettled farmers here is not a new phenomenon. Under Mugabe’s government, unproductive resettled farmers were threatened with eviction.

At the time the then agriculture minister Douglas Mombeshora was quoted as saying, “what we are doing now is identifying farms and plots where land is not being utilised at all or not being used to its potential with a view to distributing it to others.”

Farmers like Hove pin the blame on government for their failures to successful farm the land seized from white commercial farmers.

“Government has always promised to help us with inputs to improve our farming, but only those that support the ruling Zanu-PF party benefit from the inputs while the majority like us suffer on the land we say we now own,” says Hove.

As such, the 71,000 families who resettled on farms once owned by white commercial farmers face an uncertain future.

Consequently, hunger has not spared them either as they have become victims of the country’s incessant droughts despite owning swathes of rich agricultural land.

“I have each year depended on food from donor organisations as my land hardly gives me adequate food since I settled here in 2001,” Menford Mutimbe, a 71-year old resettled subsistence farmer from Marondera, with eight children and two wives, tells IPS.

However, Zimbabwe’s resettled farmers have no guarantee of ownership to the pieces of land they repossessed from white farmers.

So for them, according to other farmers like Mutimbe, “getting capital from banks to sustain our farming activities is hard.”

“What we have are mere offer letters which banks have not taken in as collateral although government has made efforts to have our 99 year leases used as collateral to help us get loans,” Mutimbe said.

Last year, Zimbabwe’s central bank agreed to accept 99-year leases from resettled farmers as collateral after government changed the law to allow the 99-year leases to be transferable and bankable.

Despite the move, suffering continues for struggling farmers like Hove who says “banks are rejecting my lease for no clear reasons.”

Independent economists like John Robertson know the reason for this.

Soon after the government declared the state to be the owner of all land in the country, even the 99-year leases cannot be trusted.

“Government resented the influence of commercial farmers and decided that the best way to dis-empower them was to take away their property rights. They portrayed the move as a means to redress racial imbalances that were imposed by colonisation, but government also cancelled the ownership rights of black farmers,” Robertson tells IPS.

Ben Gilpin, director of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), says the situation for resettled farmers is different as “former commercial farmers had property rights that enabled them to finance short-, medium- and long-term capital requirements.”

“Once these were undermined, the financial sector fled. Former farmers were responsible for the risk involved…if they failed, the lenders would have recourse,” Gilpin tells IPS.

Yet as resettled farmers like Hove cling to the hope of using their leases as collateral to get bank loans, Robertson has nevertheless painted a grim picture about this optimism.

“The collateral value of the land was cut to zero when the government declared all agricultural land in the country to be the property of the State. This meant that the farmers could not offer title deeds to the banks as security for loans; so ever since Land Reform, the farmers had no access to bank finance,” says Robertson.

Land experts like Professor Mandivamba Rukuni, a development analyst and strategist in the areas of agriculture, community development, business, finance, government, and education, blame Zimbabwe’s failing economy for the resettled farmers’ mounting woes.

“My main analysis is that Zimbabwe’s economy is in bad shape; it affects agriculture. It’s ridiculous to expect agriculture to do well when the country’s economy is choked. Financial markets are not doing well. Where can government get money to support them (resettled farmers)?” Rukuni tells IPS.

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Young girls learn to make reusable sanitary pads. Courtesy: Ida Horner/Let Them Help Themselves

By Ida Horner
SURREY, England, May 28 2019 (IPS)

The organisers of Menstrual Hygiene Day say that although there has been a lot of good work on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) either currently underway or already completed, we are a long way off from achieving an even playing field for girls and women worldwide.

Menstruation stigma persists in some parts of the world due to cultural practices whilst in others hygiene products are so heavily taxed as to render them inaccessible for some girls.

In some countries, MHM is not treated as a critical component of reproductive health training for adolescents, and as such it does not feature in school lessons and, where it does, teachers do not feel empowered to teach about MHM with comfort. Yet, the ability of teachers to teach about MHM freely can contribute to the breaking down of taboos around menstruation.

There are concerns about fragmentation and its impact on menstrual hygiene education.

In this regard, fragmentation refers to the lack of common goals and joint monitoring that in turn impacts media attention, political will plus more investment in menstrual hygiene education in needed.

Ida Horner is the Chairperson of Let Them Help Themselves.

These are issues that we at Let Them Help Themselves have encountered in the Ntungamo district of SW Uganda where we have been working with schools on menstrual hygiene education since 2016.   We trained a team of local girls who serve as menstrual hygiene ambassadors and as part of their role, they go into schools to provide information about menstrual hygiene as well carry out basic research on knowledge about menstruation.  

Amongst our ambassadors’ findings are some eye-watering statistics, for instance, on average 53 percent of the girls they spoke to did not know what menstruation was before they experienced it and in one of the schools, this figure was 80 percent.

As well as gathering these statistics, the ambassadors are also confronted with questions about menstruation. The questions are, about hygiene, the prevention of infections, frequency of periods, bloating, clots, weight gain etc. A combined education programme on menstrual hygiene in this instance, would ensure accurate information and menstrual hygiene education for boys, men, teachers, health workers, politicians and other professionals. In particular, teachers need to be empowered to provide accurate information and support for pupils and in turn, break down negative social norms

It would also ensure the availability of water and sanitation facilities in schools, privacy and dignity for menstruating as well as policies that reduce the cost of menstrual absorbents.

Why isn’t this happening? Can it all be blamed on the lack of common goals or fragmentation about education on menstrual hygiene management? Whose job is it to educate girls about periods?

You would think that, it is the role of parents, however, our ambassadors report that some parents they speak to do not have the confidence to have these conversations with their children, whilst some do not have an understanding of periods. This was exemplified in a conversation our MHM ambassadors had with a schoolgirl at one of the schools they visited:

“I missed a midterm test because I didn’t have pads. I live with my father and when I asked him for money to buy pads he told me that he had no money to waste on useless things. I stayed away from school because I didn’t want to risk an accidental leak having seen one of the girls in my class be humiliated when an accidental leak left a bloodstain on a chair.”

Given such attitudes amongst some the parents, where should girls go to access information and menstruation products?

Whilst coordination of findings and good practice matters, our work demonstrates that what is needed is the mainstreaming of menstrual hygiene education into development agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Gender Mainstreaming agenda.

It is not enough to have goals that ensure increased school registration for girls who then drop out due to a lack of MHM. In the long run, this has implications for a country’s economic development due to a large number of girls who become adults that are trapped in poverty because they lack skills to create their own employment or access employment elsewhere.

Prior to rolling out the MHM programme to more schools in Ntungamo district we ran a trial in one of the schools. We wanted to find out whether providing free pads would improve school attendance amongst girls. We were surprised to learn that as well as an improvement in attendance; the school had saved money during the trial and the school environment improved. This was because, in the absence of recycling facilities for disposable pads, the school would use petrol to burn the used pads. As a consequence, this would expel noxious fumes within the school grounds.

These findings are anecdotal but paint speak to a need for nation-states to pay attention to MHM in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals and as well as ensure that gender has been mainstreamed into their development policies.

Our fight to enable girls to access information on menstruation and hygienic absorbents continue and you can be part of it by making a donation to our campaign here.

The author can be contacted via Twitter @idahorner or email info@lethemhelpthemselves.org

The post Educating Girls about Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ida Horner is the Chairperson of Let Them Help Themselves

The post Educating Girls about Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Mette Frederiksen is a Danish Social Democrat politician. She has been a member of the Folketing, the parliament of Denmark, since 2001, and served in Helle Thorning-Schmidt's government as Minister of Employment from 2011 to 2014.

By Mette Frederiksen
COPENHAGEN, May 27 2019 (IPS)

Immigration policy has divided the people of Denmark for many years. There are few other areas where the fronts are drawn so divisively and where arguments become attacks.

Maybe this is understandable? Immigration policy plays an important part when it comes to defining the country we want to be. There are deeply held emotions at stake. And more and more people are experiencing for themselves what happens when integration fails.

Mette Frederiksen

When it comes down to it, the Social Democrats do not believe the people of Denmark are as divided on this issue as one might think. We want to help refugees. That is our duty as a compassionate country.

We also agree that there are limits when it comes to the number of immigrants that can be integrated into our country. And it is crucial to ensure that integration is improved. Why, then, is this so very difficult?

Maybe we Danes have been too quick to judge one another? But not wishing to see your country undergo fundamental change does not make you a bad person. And wanting to help other people to improve their lives does not mean you are naive. The vast majority of us want to do both – we want to help more people, and we want to take care of our country.

This may be a difficult task, because Denmark and the world are facing a genuinely difficult situation. A new situation. Record numbers of refugees are on the move.

We are also seeing increasing numbers of people who are not fleeing war or civil unrest, but who – understandably enough – are seeking to make better lives for themselves in our part of the world. Climate change will force more people to relocate. And add to that the fact that the population of Africa is expected to double by about 2050.

In Denmark, the population has changed rapidly in a short time. In 1980, 1 per cent of the Danish population was of non-Western origin. Now, that figure stands at 8 per cent. This development has come about in just one generation.

Danish society is benefiting greatly from the contributions made by many of the people who have come here over the years. People who have learnt Danish, who have jobs, who share our values and who, quite simply, are now Danish. But unfortunately, too many people have come to Denmark without becoming part of Denmark.

It is not a temporary challenge that we face. This challenge is here to stay. It places pressure on our welfare model, our high levels of equality and our way of life.

We are facing a severe challenge. But we have dealt with severe challenges before.

We have disagreed on matters over the years, even major issues. But Denmark is at its best when we compromise and move forward together. Compulsory education. The state pension. Free access to health services for all.

None of these decisions has been forced through by a narrow majority and a divided population. That is why they still stand today. And we need the same kind of decisions when it comes to immigration.

We have to rise above the daily discussions. Shine a spotlight on what we aim to achieve. Spend more time thinking about what is both realistic and fair, rather than considering what is in the short-term interests of the parties. In short, what we need is an immigration policy to unite Denmark.

So, in 30 years’ time, we will be able to look back on our generation of citizens and decision-makers and say that we resolved the challenge of our age. That when faced with major dilemmas, we struck the right balance between taking responsibility in the world, and taking responsibility for Denmark.

Make no mistake, we cannot help everyone here in Europe and in Denmark. But equally, refugees must be helped. Conditions in the very poorest parts of the world must be improved at a fundamental level so that people do not seek happiness elsewhere. We cannot turn our backs on the world, nor do we wish to.

That is why we need a comprehensive, long-term plan.

This is the message we want to put forward with this proposal. We present what we feel is the ideal solution. Some elements cannot be implemented straight away, but everything begins with resolve and the will to do something. And we have that. Our proposal consists of three elements:

Numbers matter. Denmark must take back control. We want to impose a limit on how many non-Western immigrants are allowed into Denmark each year. So that our residential areas, schools and places of employment can keep up. So that we have a genuine opportunity to integrate the people who come here. So that they learn the language, find jobs and come to adopt our basic values.

And we have a proposal on how we can enforce such a limit in purely practical terms while also operating in compliance with international conventions. We want to change our asylum system and set up a reception centre outside Europe. In the future, it will only be possible for UN refugees to be granted asylum in Denmark.

We have to help more people. At the moment, the weakest people are being left to fend for themselves – the people who are unable to flee, or who cannot afford to. The people who are most in need of help. That is not fair.

We must never accept people drowning in the Mediterranean, or being subjected to violence and abuse as they flee. Our aim must be to ensure that fewer people have to flee, and that more people can create a future for themselves in their own countries instead of seeking a new life in Europe.

This is a problem that Denmark cannot resolve alone, but we can take the lead. By doubling our own support to adjacent areas. And, as part of the EU, by spearheading a historical boost of Africa in particular.

New fight for freedom. Social democracy is, and always has been, a freedom project. It has given more and more people the opportunity to shape their own lives. It has largely succeeded in this by providing education, high levels of employment and free access to health care for all.

We are now facing a new chapter in this fight for freedom: the new Danes. Gender equality has to apply to them as well. Rights and obligations go hand in hand. Religion is always subordinate to democracy. This requires us to deal with the norms that exist in certain parts of Denmark.

First and foremost, it requires more people to become part of the Danish community. Where we all share the same basic values. And where we meet one another in residential areas and schools. A 10-year plan must be applied to ensure that no residential areas, schools or educational institutions have more than 30 per cent non-Western immigrants and descendants in future.

And more have to contribute to Danish society. That is why we want to introduce an obligation for all immigrants on integration benefits and cash benefits to contribute 37 hours a week.

These are the main elements of our proposal. Are there elements in this that the Social Democrats have not endorsed previously? Yes. The world and society have changed. And luckily, politics is not set in stone.

We said to ourselves from the outset that we have to start from scratch, think along new lines and adopt a holistic approach. We believe we have achieved that with what we are now proposing.

We are of the opinion that Denmark needs a cohesive, long-term immigration policy. Where the fundamental direction is fixed and its individual elements are not subject to constant changes.

Our entire proposal is a presentation for discussion. We are very happy to listen to other people’s good ideas. But we will insist on one thing: there is a need for broad and binding cooperation with regard to long-term solutions.

Denmark does not need the bloc politics and divisiveness that have historically characterized immigration policy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Social Democrats stand by an immigration policy that is both realistic and fair. An immigration policy to unite Denmark.

The post Realistic & Fair Immigration: A Policy to Unite Denmark appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mette Frederiksen is a Danish Social Democrat politician. She has been a member of the Folketing, the parliament of Denmark, since 2001, and served in Helle Thorning-Schmidt's government as Minister of Employment from 2011 to 2014.

The post Realistic & Fair Immigration: A Policy to Unite Denmark appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 27 2019 (IPS)

Human existence includes dreams, thoughts, ideas, music, stories, religion, and other immaterial ”things”. They constitute an important part of our habitat, i.e. the dwelling place of any living organism, consisting of both organic and inorganic surroundings. I learned this when I many years ago found myself among the undulating heights of Cordillera Central, which rise diagonally across the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

After days of hard work in fields and garden plots, peasants of the Cordillera gathered on the porches of their bright-painted houses, or ramshackle huts, to chat and play dominoes with their neighbours. While they, around kerosene lamps, joined friends and families, stories were told about dreams and another sphere, quite different from our everyday existence. On an occasion like that, Julian Ramos, a patriarch more than a hundred years old, told me:

People from your part of the world do not understand that a man like me lives in two worlds. I move between them like someone who walks through sunshine and shadows. I work and toil in one world close to another one that consists of dreams, music and tales; things I cannot see and touch. It is the dwelling place of gods, saints, and miracles. Listen to the dog howling out there in the dark. I tell you, that is not just a dog. Oh no, it is a human being who turned himself into a dog. The butterfly you saw in your room last night, that was no butterfly, it was your beloved who dreamt about you and her dream turned her into a butterfly. The fireflies over there are no insects, they are the souls of dead ancestors. All around us are things and creatures we do not know, which we cannot see, cannot understand. Up in the air, in the earth down below us, in the springs, the caves and the trees, live the mysteries, the luas. What we assume to be our world is only a tiny fraction of something else, something much, much bigger. I know this since I am an old man. Life is a tough and hard teacher and the longer we are forced to encounter him, the more we learn.

Remembering Julian Ramos´s words I realize that a man like me and “people from my part of the world”, actually live in two worlds as well. A sphere of dreams and vodú deities was part of Julian Ramos´s and his neighbours´ habitat, a realm that actually is present in the minds of people all around the world and probably has been there ever since Homo Sapiens developed. However, ”westernized” human beings have for the last thirty years, or so, also become used to live with or even within another habitat, the artificially created, but yet real Cyberspace,1 which affects our lives to an even higher degree than Julian Ramos´s ”spiritual realm”.

Cyberspace´s enormous digital world is a dream world, an unregulated and uncontrolled domain. However, contrary to Julian Ramos´s spiritual sphere it has been created by machines. Cyberspace exists and is accessible to individuals from all over the world. A place both beyond and within everyday life. We enter Cyberspace to interact with others; exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, gamble for money and play games, make contact with future spouses, create artistic media, discuss politics and direct, create and influence a wide range of actions in real life. Cyberspace is used and misused for money transactions, purchasing goods and product promotion. It benefits technology strategists, security professionals, entrepreneurs, government, military – and industrial leaders, as well as fanatics and criminals.

As the dream world, Cyberspace is a make-believe environment, visited by cybernauts who may appear to be real, but do not exist in reality.2 In 2017, the Scottish writer Andrew O´Hagan wrote a book in which he decribed how he created a fictive character who through the Internet gained a life of his own.3 He called him Ronald Pinn and received a Facebook account in the name of his invented character; complete with a profile, interests, and hundreds of fake friends.4 Soon Ronald Pinn gained real ”friends” as well, contacts enabling him to enter a vast market place.

O´Hagan became obsessed with his own creation – his Frankenstein monster and while being a novelist O´Hagan experienced how the character he had created began to control him. William Faulkner once said:

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.5

Tellers of tales, people who like Julian Ramos, are able to enter spiritual spheres where they do not only meet gods and angels but also encounter monsters. O’Hagan created his own Mr. Hyde, a dangerous doppelgänger. He made Ronald Pinn into a young drug addict, political extremist, and gun fetishist. In Pinn´s name, O´Hagan rented an actual apartment and through the web he purchased white heroin, arriving in vacuum packs costing £ 39. He also bought bundles of counterfeit money that was easily accepted in various London stores. For his web purchases the fake Ronald Pinn used cyber-currency, bitcoins, and as long as he paid he was welcome everywhere in Cyberspace, his real identity was never checked. Ronald Pinn could have been a mercenary, a terrorist, a psychopath – no one cared. He bought false identity documents, as well as several weapons, which arrived in parts to the apartment of a non-existent Ronald Pinn.

The so called Dark Web is a criminal´s paradise made real. O´Hagan found that it is a place governed by ”an anti-authoritarian madness. A love of disorder as long as your own possessions aren´t threatened.”6 The monsters and trolls created in the ”spiritual sphere” of traditional storytellers might not be real, though those inhabiting Cyberspace do exist. The fictitious Ronald Pinn contacted Cyberspace monsters who sold him drugs, weapons and means to contact pimps and killers. Cyberspace is a parallel universe with a potential to cause a lot of damage. We have to be careful not to fall in its traps and have to find means to check and shun the lies and deceits thriving there. We also have to try to help our friends and children to avoid being engulfed by the Dark Web.

1 The concept became common knowledge after the Canadian-US writer William Gibson 1982 introduced it in the short story Burning Crome, developing it further in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, where he described it as a “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data,” Neuromancer (2016). New York: Penguin Classics, p. 52.
2 From October 2018 to March 2019, according to its own reports, Facebook took down more than 3 billion fake accounts. https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement
3 O´Hagan, Andrew (2017) The Secret Life: Three True Stories. London: Faber & Faber.
4 Fake followers and friends (bots, spam accounts, inactive users, and non-real/invented persons) are common in political propaganda and consumer surveys. For example, Twitter Audit did in 2017 find that of 31 million followers of Trump´s Twitter, 15 million were bots and fake accounts. It was also recently established that 63 percent of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro´s more than four million twitter followers were fake.
5 Fant, Joseph L. and Robert Ashley, eds. (2002) Faulkner at West Point. Oxford MS: University Press of Mississippi, p. 101.
6 The Secret Life, p. 122.

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

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A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), less than one percent of humanitarian aid is spent on combating gender-based violence in crises. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

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

It’s time to end sexual and gender-based violence once and for all, participants of a two-day conference said.

In Norway, United Nations agencies, governments and civil society convened for the first-ever thematic humanitarian conference to combat sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in humanitarian crises.

The conference, which brought together representatives from 100 nations and over 200 organisations and SGBV survivors, aimed to mobilise political and financial commitments as well as strengthen effective and multi-sectoral SGBV prevention and response.

“We cannot, and must not, pretend these atrocities are not taking place. Sexual and gender-based violence tears apart the very fabric of society, and inflicts lasting wounds on individuals and whole communities,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

“Now is not the time to stand idly by. Now is the time for action,” she added.

Worldwide, more than one-third of all women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. While boys and men are also affected, the risk is much higher among women and girls and is particularly exacerbated in humanitarian crises.

In Nigeria, while the kidnapping of the Chibok school girls gripped international headlines in 2014, Boko Haram has and continues to kidnap women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. In this dated picture, Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014 to call on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

In Nigeria, while the kidnapping of the Chibok school girls gripped international headlines in 2014, Boko Haram has and continues to kidnap women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. A report by the Henry Jackson Society found that Boko Haram members would forcefully impregnate women in order to produce the “next generation of fighters.”

Nadia Murad, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Goodwill Ambassador, was among thousands of Yazidi women who were kidnapped by the Islamic State.

Many are forced to be sex slaves, and reports found that IS even uses social media sites such as Facebook to sell Yazidi women as sex slaves.

While Murad was able to escape, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved.

While women like Murad are leading the fight against SGBV and are often the first responders in a crisis, funding is woefully inadequate.

According to the International Rescue Committee, less than one percent of humanitarian aid is spent on combating gender-based violence in crises.

However, as communities lose access to basic services and needs such as shelter, healthcare, and income, financial support and provision of services is of the utmost importance.

In 2019, an estimated 140 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of these, approximately 35 million are women and girls of reproductive age.

Participants in ‘Ending Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Humanitarian Crises’ conference reiterated the importance of listening to survivors to help guide action.

“When I meet survivors I ask them what could have been done to prevent what happened to you, and they tell me things like a stove. In South Sudan, [they said] we have to go out of the protected civilian site to go fetch wood and that’s when we get raped,” said UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.

In South Sudan, at least 175 women and girls experienced sexual and physical violence between September and December 2018 alone. Of these cases, 64 were girls, some as young as eight years old.

Researchers from the UN Mission in South Sudan and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, found that most of the victims were attacked on roads as they traveled in search of firewood, food or water, commodities which have been limited since the start of the conflict in 2013.

One woman recounted her experience after being raped on three separate occasions while walking to or from food distribution sites, stating: “We women do not have a choice…if we go by the main road, we are raped. If we go by the bush, we are raped…we avoided the road because we heard horrible stories that women and girls are grabbed while passing through and are raped, but the same happened to us. There is no escape—we are all raped.”

“We really need to listen to survivors. They have both a role to play in prevention and response,” Patten added, pointing to the need to address root causes of structural gender inequality and discrimination.

With regards to response, it is essential for survivors to receive health and psychosocial services as well as a safe space to heal, many said.

However, an increase in funding for SGBV prevention and response is sorely needed as well as support for local women’s organisations who are at the forefront of crisis response.

Recently, 350 Somali women leaders jointly called for zero tolerance for gender-based violence and the urgent passage of the Sexual Offences Bill which would be the country’s first dedicated SGBV-related legislation.

“We need to address the call for justice for survivors, we need to support women working closely with survivors,” said Somali Minister of Women and Human Rights Development Deqa Yasin Hagi Yusuf.

“We will return from this conference with even more energy to strengthen our legal and institutional framework to tackle SGBV,” she added.

The UN Population Fund’s Executive Director Natalia Kanem also stressed how crucial partnerships are and pledged to follow through with the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit’s commitment to provide 25 percent of funding to local and national responders by 2020.

“Support women and girls to rebuild their lives, to regain their dignity, and to feel safe and secure amidst crisis…Let the woman decide, let the girl decide,” Kanem said.

By the end of the conference, 21 donors committed 363 million dollars over the next two years.

“We are at a turning point. We have done something new, we thought out of the box, and I think we have all given something out of the ordinary. We all wanted this to work and we did,” said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway Ine Eriksen Søreide in her closing remarks.

“I am absolutely confident we will be able to sustain this momentum…we have the majority, and we can make the changes…now the hard work starts,” she added.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shown here being showered with rose petals after his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was declared winner in the country’s national elections. Source: Narendra Modi Facebook Page

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 25 2019 (IPS)

“We worked for the poor and they voted us back to power,” was the explanation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made to newly-elected legislators on Saturday, May 25, on the spectacular win scored by his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s just concluded general elections.

Modi’s statement appeared refreshingly simple when seen against the plethora of theories and analyses on the second electoral defeat in a row that the BJP delivered to the venerable Indian National Congress party that led India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and had become almost synonymous with governance in the years since.

“More than anything else the election was the victory of Modi’s political leadership,” Ajay Mehra, professor of politics and currently senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, tells IPS. “Since the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 the leadership quotient has been missing in Indian politics.”

“Modi was astute enough to understand this vacuum while the Congress party singularly failed to restore the leadership quotient when it had the chance while in power during 2004—2014 under Manmohan Singh, who was more manager than political leader,” Mehra says.

Modi’s main opponent, Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson and great-grandson of former Congress prime ministers did make a bid to fill the leadership vacuum in the run up to the elections but “it was all too little too late,” says Mehra.

According Mehra, Modi never lost an opportunity to project himself as a strong and powerful leader. And the greatest opportunity came in the form of a deadly suicide-bombing attack on an armed forces convoy in Kashmir on Feb. 14, that left 40 troops dead.

Modi, who could never be faulted for his sense of timing, waited until Feb 26, a date close to the general elections, to order Indian air force jets to carry out retaliatory bombing on a militant camp in Balakot, deep inside Pakistani territory.

The Balakot bombing added hugely to Modi’s image as a great nationalist leader ready to defend the country against internal and external threats without hesitation, says Mehra.

Throughout the long and arduous election campaign across the country that followed, Modi repeatedly harped on the Balakot bombing to audience tuned to the idea of Pakistan as a long-standing enemy country which armed and financed terrorist groups tasked with the objective of wresting Muslim-majority Kashmir from Indian control.

It appears that the Gandhi and Congress party leaders learned no lessons from the defeat in 2014 when Modi’s one-time occupation of being a tea-stall vendor in a railway station was made fun of and used as proof that he was incapable of running a large and complex country like India.

This time around Modi’s description of himself as a ‘chowkidar’ (or watchman) taking care of the country’s interests was converted by the Congress party into the slogan ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ (the watchman is a thief) in reference to accusation that a deal to buy Rafael fighter jets from France was tainted and rigged to favour crony capitalist interests.

But, like the tea vendor jibes, the chowkidar slogans backfired with the mass of desperately poor Indian voters identifying all the more with Modi than with the half-Italian Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, who lent a hand in the election campaigning and addressed political rallies.

The campaign focused on the Rafael deal also had the effect of turning the electoral battle into one that was not over issues like rising unemployment, deep agrarian distress and declining manufacture into a personality clash between Gandhi and Modi—one in which the callow Congress leader could only lose to his politically astute and seasoned opponent.

A former spokesperson for the BJP during his long political career, Modi understood the value of building a positive image for himself through carefully arranged political interviews to friendly journalists while scrupulously avoiding the glare of India’s unruly media.

In fact, the only press conference Modi ever gave as prime minister came at the end of his present tenure and that too after elections were safely over. And then he sat through it without uttering a single word but deflecting questions towards his trusted lieutenant and party boss, Amit Shah.

However, Modi was visible everywhere on social media, bear-hugging world leaders one day and sitting in a cave in the snow-clad Himalayas meditating in the saffron robes of Hindu monk the next.

While such images drew derision and mockery from India’s English-speaking elite, the aspirational crowds identified even more with one of them who had made good but was yet rooted in traditional, devoutly Hindu roots.

On Saturday, Modi was elected as leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of right-leaning political parties that includes the BJP. Though the BJP won a majority of seats on its own, gaining 303 out of 542 sets while the Congress party secured just 52 seats. 

In his address to newly-elected parliamentarians of the NDA, Modi said the ‘pro-incumbency vote’ was the result of the faith that people reposed in him. He vowed to take the whole country along into the future, even his enemies. He’s revised his slogan from 2014 to include the latter part on faith: ‘Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas, sab ka vishwas’ or ‘With everyone, for everyone’s development, with everyone’s faith‘. It was regarded as his assurance that everyone, even his political opponents, could trust him.

Modi also warned the new legislators: “Do not resort to a VIP culture–the people don’t like it.”

According to Rajiv Lochan, political commentator and professor of history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, the Congress party lost mainly because it came to be associated with the worst side of traditional India.

“The Congress believes in castes, it believes in religious groups, it believes that Muslims are one single entity as are Hindus and Sikhs,” says Lochan, referring to the parties ‘vote bank’ calculations to take advantage of horizontal and vertical divisions in Indian society.

“The Congress party also represents the feudal aspect in which people are seen as supplicants. All the Congress policies in this election were designed with the presumption that people are supplicants while the scion who has no energy, no intelligence and no abilities is still the boss directing everyone.

“Think of the stories of tiger hunts by Indian princes in colonial times when a servitor would kill the tiger and insist that it was the prince who had done it,” Lochan tells IPS.

“In contrast,” he adds, “the BJP had a Narendra Modi who was full of infectious energy. He had the ability to energise his audience.”

According to Lochan the BJP also ran a “very modernist campaign that was predicated on promising to empower everyone irrespective of caste, religion and family even increasing its support among Muslims from 9 percent to 12 percent, according to the poll surveys.”

“On the whole, I would say, people voted out the bad of traditional India and voted in the good,” says Lochan.

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A mother and her infant in Kenya. Credit: @UNFPAKenya

By Monica Juma
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 24 2019 (IPS)

In 1994 the International Conference and Population and Development (ICPD) was hosted in Cairo by the Government of Egypt. Twenty-five years later, Kenya is ready to convene the ICPD “Nairobi Summit” in November 2019.

The Programme of Action endorsed and adopted at the historic Conference in Cairo has had a tremendous effect in transforming the lives of women and girls in developing countries. A quarter century later, the international community will again converge, this time in Nairobi, to renew, revitalize the commitments made at the inaugural conference.

The goal of universal sexual and reproductive health care, including family planning for all, is central to the Programme of Action. Reaching this goal is vital, not only for the health and well-being of women and girls everywhere, but also for the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the ones related to ending poverty, securing good health, realizing gender equality and achieving sustainable communities. Urgent and sustained efforts to realize sexual and reproductive health are therefore crucial.

Robust political will, backed by sustainable financial commitment, have seen Kenya record significant gains in advancing the health of women and mothers. Maternal mortality rates are down from 400 per 100,000 live births to 362 per 100,000 within the last few years. More women are giving birth under professional care; more midwives are being trained and deployed.

Monica Juma

Twenty-five years ago, only about one in four married women used a modern contraceptive. Today about two in three do. In 1994, the average Kenyan woman had close to six children; today, she has fewer than four.

The Programme of Action was supposed to have been fully implemented by all countries by 2014. Yet five years later, many women especially in Africa still face economic, social and institutional barriers to services. Gaps are particularly pronounced among the poor and in rural areas.

Every year in Kenya, more than 5,000 women and adolescents die from pregnancy and birth-related complications while nearly 200,000 suffer disabilities, including 3,000 cases of obstetric fistula. According to the World Health Organization, pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading causes of death among 15-to-19-year-old girls globally. In Kenya, as many as one in seven women want to prevent a pregnancy but are not using a modern contraceptive.

Yet all the evidence shows strong links between deliberate family planning; the health of the mother before, during, and after birth; and the health consequences for subsequent generations. Poor maternal health is associated with diminished child health, with implications for birth weight, neonatal survival, cognitive development, child behaviour, school performance, and adult health and productivity.

Healthier women contribute to better-educated and more productive societies. Second, ensuring women’s control over their own fertility can boost the pace of economic growth and development.

These gaps must be filled. It’s not just a matter of fulfilling the commitments we made in Cairo in 1994. It’s also a matter of rights. Every woman, regardless of her income or where she lives, has the right to information and services that allow her to determine for herself whether, when or how often she becomes pregnant, starts and stops her childbearing.

The Nairobi Summit, which we are proud to convene with the Government of Denmark and UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, will focus on concrete actions that governments can take to end preventable maternal death, the unmet demand for contraception, as well as gender-based violence, along with the end of harmful practices of child marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030, the target year for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

To journey from Cairo to Nairobi must be one where we reaffirm commitments that enable half of the world population to be empowered in a way that optimizes their contribution to human prosperity. On its part, the leadership of Africa must ensure that women’s health, and consequently that of the next generation, is frontloaded in all development plans.

We must maintain the upward trajectory until every woman who wants to prevent a pregnancy has access to family planning and no woman dies giving life.

The post The World Made Promises to Women and Girls, We Must Fulfil Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ambassador Monica Juma is the Cabinet Secretary (Minister), of Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The post The World Made Promises to Women and Girls, We Must Fulfil Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Report Reveals Mounting Pressure on Zambia’s Environmental Resources appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Irene Lungu Chipili is Manager, Corporate Affairs at the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA).

The post Report Reveals Mounting Pressure on Zambia’s Environmental Resources appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Illustration: SHARARA ZAHEEN

By Zyma Islam
May 24 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Little-educated women from remote villages find themselves sold as sex-workers in the Middle East, because neither the government nor recruiting agencies can authenticate foreign employers seeking housemaids.

Her home is two boat rides away from central Narsingdi—first, a boat drops you off on the outermost banks of the char, and then after crossing half a mile across the sandy islet, a smaller dinghy takes you down a canal that feeds into the body of char. On either side of the sediment-heavy canal is pure unadulterated beauty—long sandy banks that get overridden with the tall grassy kashful in autumn, followed by lush green woodlands deeper inland. The only other traffic in the canal are families of waddling ducks and the rare clique of kids splashing about. The dinghy drops you at a place where you get your first glimpse of a paved road—that too, one that is barely wide enough to fit a single battery-run three-wheeler that you have to take all the way to the very end of the road. From there her home is once again a half mile away across fields.

Her landless parents work as sharecroppers on other people’s fields where the going-rate is Tk 60 per day, making their family “ultra-poor” in academic terms. As a result, neither Kohinur, nor her younger brothers and sisters have completed even primary school. Scat trails around the house points out that the family practices open defecation.

So, when this teenager was approached a local broker named Badol, offering her a job as a housemaid with a Tk 18,000 monthly salary in Saudi Arabia, her parents found no reason to say no. “We thought she was going to the land of Makkah and Madina, she was going to be close to Allah, so we chose to send her,” says her mother, a woman who is barely in her forties, but looks decades older as a result of a life of hard labour.

Kohinur was stuffed into a head-to-toe black burkha to get her passport photo taken. The tiny nervous face peering through the burkha’s visor in her official portrait, was passed off as a 26-year-old married woman with two children in her passport, because it is not legal to send any woman under the age of 25 abroad. Then, clutching her fabricated passport, the teenager left her pristine homeland on a town-bound boat loaded with harvest, livestock, farmers and traders—the only vessels large enough to ply the Meghna river.

Atiyah was sold to a brothel in Lebanon by brokers of a government accredited recruiting agency.

Her recruiting agency, M/S Biplob International, secured a work clearance for her from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), and her details were uploaded to a database run by the Saudi government. They then matched her up with an employer who said he was looking for a housemaid. Kohinur flew out on October 30, 2018.

But once she reached Saudi Arabia, she realised that the house was not a family home; it was a brothel.

“They traded her like we trade goats and cattle,” says Kohinur’s mother, “Every day in the evening, men would come to the home to take her and return her by the morning.” Sometimes the customers took her for days, and one even kept her for a month.

“They beat her twice a day with wound up cables. She begged one of the other girls in the brothel to let her use a phone to call us. We informed the broker Badol that our daughter is in a brothel, and to prove that, she had to manage a video call. The girls helped her,” describes her mother.

The broker demanded Tk 45,000 from the family to bring back the girl. “We loaned the money from a moneylender at a steep interest,” says the mother. Kohinur finally came back on January 13, 2019.

“We got her married last month to a construction worker, before word spread that she was made to do sex work in Saudi Arabia. She is not 18 yet. Such is the luck of my daughter, that her husband was too poor to even buy her a wedding sari. They gave her a normal cotton sari, and a cotton salwar kameez set,” laments the mother.

Illustration: SHARARA ZAHEEN

Just a few miles away, on the same char, another ultra-poor family’s daughter was also sent to Saudi Arabia to do sex work. 25-year-old Armin* and her two children were abandoned by her husband, leaving her to live with her parents. Her father barely scrapes a living by picking peanuts on others’ land. Her home is a broken-down one-roomed shanty shared with their livestock. Cooking fuel made with dried cow dung and grass were stacked up to the ceiling by the foot of the bed, making the entire room smell—but they have nowhere else to keep it.

“They threw my daughter off the second floor of the brothel because she refused to give in to their demands,” says Armin’s mother. Armin survived the fall, but now has a crippled arm and a foot. The doctors had to surgically insert a rod into her leg to mend the fracture. A long scar extends from her upper arm to her shoulder, where the skin had split upon impact. Another scar nestles between her eyebrows on her forehead. The fall also broke two of her front teeth. A disabled, penniless Armin was deported from Saudi Arabia and sent back to Bangladesh on June 8, 2018.

Both Kohinur and Armin had gone through legal channels. The BMET had cleared them for work. A Saudi government-accredited recruiting agency from Saudi Arabia had uploaded the details of their employers to a database system that is accessible to the recruiting agencies in Bangladesh and the BMET—so both of them were aware of whom the women were being sent to. How is it that after Kohinur and Armin were legally sent to Saudi Arabia, they ended up doing sex work?

It seems as if every single person and body involved in Bangladesh send these women abroad like throwing a stone in the dark and hoping it hits the target. In spite of the introduction of digital database systems for employers and microchip-enabled smartcards for workers, nobody in Bangladesh has any way to verify whether the employers are legit.

Villages where these women come from are remote, but still has shops dedicated to sending migrant workers abroad.

For example, when the government was asked how these women ended up as sex slaves, they said they are not in charge of verification of the employers.

“We do not choose the employers, it is the local recruiting agencies that coordinate with the recruiting agencies in the target country to find the employers,” said Mujibur Rahman, the director of emigration and protocol at BMET.

So, we asked Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, the secretary-general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) how it is that women are legally being sent abroad to work in brothels.

“We cannot vet the employers. That is the job of the Saudi recruiting agencies,” he says.

Meanwhile Kohinur’s recruiting agency flat out denied sending anyone by that name, although records at BMET, disclosed to this correspondent by their officials, state otherwise. “We did not send anyone by that name last year,” says the managing director, AKM Jashimuddin.

“Everyone involved in this trade is doing business but neither the government nor the recruiting agencies are willing to take responsibility,” says Shakirul Islam, chairperson of Ovibashi Karmi Unnoyon Program (OKUP), an organisation providing support to migrant workers.

“The recruiting agencies receive USD 2,000 for every woman sent to Saudi Arabia for example, so there is a monetary incentive to do business with all sorts of employers,” alleges Shariful Hasan, head of BRAC’s migration programme. According to data provided by BRAC, 1,353 female abuse survivors returned just from Saudi Arabia alone between January to December last year. Among them, five were pregnant. There are no official statistics on how many female workers returning to Bangladesh were forced to work as sex slaves.

The responsibility—as it stands—has been shifted entirely on the young, vulnerable shoulders of the women being taken in as sex slaves.

“There is only one way for us to get employers blacklisted—if an allegation gets proven in the foreign courts,” says Noman, “and for that the woman who makes the accusation must stay back in that country, and battle the case out in court. If she wins, the employer is blacklisted.”

“But activists and her family members keep pressurising us to bring them back.”

In effect, in order for Bangladeshi authorities to acknowledge an employer as a “pimp” or a sexual abuser, female migrant workers have to put their lives on hold, stay back in the country where they had been abused and engage in lengthy court battles that could last years. For this, they have to seek help from the Bangladesh consulate in that respective country.

This is a tall order for women like Kohinur and Armin. Firstly, they go abroad to salvage their families from poverty, making it impossible to stay back to fight legal battles. Secondly neither of the women even knew which city they were taken to! So how would they find the Bangladeshi embassy?

On the other hand, accusations without convictions are not enough for recruiting agencies on either side to blacklist an employer.

“If the employer is not blacklisted, there is no existing system for a recruiting agency to communicate to the other Bangladeshi recruiting agencies that a certain employer runs a brothel, instead of a family home,” continues Noman, “so they may end up sending more women to the same person.” Evidently, crowdsourcing information does not hold much stock in this industry.

“Besides the woman could be lying,” concludes Noman, stating that recruiting agencies have had to deal with cases of false allegations.

The scenario does not get better.

“When the woman chooses to return back home, she has to sign a document saying that she is terminating the employment. We are then legally obligated to either return the USD 2,000 we were paid for recruiting the girl or send another woman,” states Noman. He assures that recruiting agencies forgo the money rather than sending another woman to the same house.

Unfortunately, in practice, that money paid by the recruiting agency to employers to release the woman often comes from the families themselves—so not only do the women have to endure the torture, but they also have to pay crippling amounts of money to secure their release. When 20-year-old Atiyah’s* husband received a call from Jordan that barely lasted two minutes, but constituted of his wife crying and saying “they have sent me to a bad house” over and over again, he knew he must get her back.

The construction worker from a village in Baghata, Narsingdi loaned Tk 1,36,000 (approximately USD 1,700) from a moneylender and handed it over to the broker who had sent his wife to Lebanon. Atiyah was brought back 18 days after she was sent to Lebanon, but unfortunately the family’s expenses weren’t over yet.

As a result of the gang-rape and torture Atiyah was subjected to, her health was affected and she suffered gynaecological complications. “I came back in 2017, and got pregnant the same year, but something went wrong with the pregnancy and they had to surgically remove a part of the body where the baby grows,” says Atiyah quietly.

Her medical records show that her right fallopian tube ruptured, and had to be surgically removed. “The doctor told me I cannot have a baby anymore,” she adds. The surgery cost them Tk 70,000, and this, too, her husband had to loan from a moneylender.

“The torture there was horrible. I was not given any food to eat—not a single grain of rice. I was only given alcohol. I survived on the chanachur snacks my husband had packed for me before I left for Lebanon. I ate barely a morsel a day to make the packet last. In that state, I had to dress up in just underwear to serve up to four men at a time every night,” describes Atiyah.

“And now my father and brothers are blaming me, saying it was my fault and that I had gone abroad to do sex work, so they cut me off from my inheritance,” says the survivor.

But even under sky-high debt, the survivor is not without hope—a sobering reminder of the patience and endurance of migrant workers. When asked what she wants to do with her life now, Atiyah starts to talk about her talents. “I am very good at rearing chickens! Maybe I could try my hand at that? See I have two already!” she grinned. Her beautiful large black eyes, which were glassy and dead while talking about her time in Lebanon, now lit up her entire face.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the women

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post SENT FOR HOUSE WORK: MANY TRICKED INTO SEX WORK appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: IMF

By Chris Wellisz
WASHINGTON DC, May 24 2019 (IPS)

As a child growing up in Communist Yugoslavia, Branko Milanovic witnessed the protests of 1968, when students occupied the campus of the University of Belgrade and hoisted banners reading “Down with the Red bourgeoisie!”

Milanovic, who now teaches economics at the City University of New York, recalls wondering whether his own family belonged to that maligned group. His father was a government official, and unlike many Yugoslav kids at the time, Milanovic had his very own bedroom—a sign of privilege in a nominally classless society. Mostly he remembers a sense of excitement as he and his friends loitered around the edge of the campus that summer, watching the students sporting red Karl Marx badges.

“I think that the social and political aspects of the protests became clearer to me later,” Milanovic says in an interview. Even so, “1968 was, in many ways, a watershed year” in an intellectual journey that has seen him emerge as a leading scholar of inequality. Decades before it became a fashion in economics, inequality would be the subject of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Belgrade.

Today, Milanovic is best known for a breakthrough study of global income inequality from 1988 to 2008, roughly spanning the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall—which spelled the beginning of the end of Communism in Europe—to the global financial crisis.

The 2013 article, co-written with Christoph Lakner, delineated what became known as the “elephant curve” because of its shape (see chart). It shows that over the 20 years that Milanovic calls the period of “high globalization,” huge increases in wealth were unevenly distributed across the world.

The middle classes in developing economies—mainly in Asia—enjoyed a dramatic increase in incomes. So did the top 1 percent of earners worldwide, or the “global plutocrats.”

Meanwhile, the lower middle classes in advanced economies saw their earnings stagnate.

The elephant curve’s power lies in its simplicity. It elegantly summarizes the source of so much middle-class discontent in advanced economies, discontent that has turbocharged the careers of populists from both extremes of the political spectrum and spurred calls for trade barriers and limits on immigration.

“Branko had a deep influence on global inequality research, particularly with his findings on the elephant curve, which has set the tone for future research,” says Thomas Piketty, author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Piketty and his collaborators confirmed the findings in a 2018 study, which found that the top 1 percent globally captured twice as much of total growth as the bottom 50 percent from 1980 to 2016.

Milanovic’s findings “appear to be even more spectacular than what was initially suggested,” Piketty says. “The elephant looks more like a mammoth.”

Economists long disdained the study of inequality. Many lived in a theoretical world populated by a mythical figure known as homo economicus, or rational man, whose only attribute was a drive to maximize his well-being. Differences among people, or groups, were irrelevant. Variety was irrelevant. Only averages mattered.

In this world of identical rational actors, the forces of supply and demand worked their magic to determine prices and quantities of goods, capital, and labor in a way that maximized welfare for society as a whole. The distribution of wealth or income didn’t fit into the picture. It was simply a by-product of market forces.

“The market solves everything,” Milanovic says. “So the topic really was not—still is not—totally mainstream.”

Then came the global financial crisis of 2008, and with it “the rise of the realization that the top 1 percent or the top 5 percent have really vastly outstripped, in income growth, the middle class,” he says.

The study of inequality also got a boost from the explosion of data that can be mined with evermore powerful computers, making it easier to divide the anonymous masses of consumers and workers into groups with common characteristics. Big data, he says, “enables the study of heterogeneity, and inequality is by definition heterogenous.”

Data has always been one of Milanovic’s passions, alongside his interest in social classes, which flourished during his high school years in Brussels, where his economist father was posted as Yugoslav envoy to the then–European Economic Community.

“High school in Belgium—and I think it was the same in France—was very Marxist,” he says.

His classmates were divided between leftist kids, influenced by the student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and “bourgeois” kids. As the privileged son of a diplomat representing an ostensibly workers’ government, young Branko didn’t quite fit either category. “It was a very peculiar situation,” he says.

At university in Belgrade, Milanovic initially leaned toward philosophy but decided economics would be more practical. It also offered a way to combine his interests in statistics and social classes.

Graduate studies led to a fellowship at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he was impressed by American abundance—huge portions of inexpensive food, free refills of coffee, big cars—alongside stark income inequality and racial discrimination.

Two years later, he was back in Belgrade to work on his doctoral dissertation on inequality in Yugoslavia, mining rare household survey data supplied by a friend who worked in the federal statistical office.

While his dissertation raised eyebrows in Marxist Yugoslavia—along with his decision to avoid joining the Communist Party—it launched a two-decade career at the World Bank’s Research Department.

“Branko was really one of the leading experts, even at that time, on income distribution,” says Alan Gelb, who hired Milanovic to join a small team studying the transition to market economies in post-Communist eastern Europe. Milanovic focused on issues of poverty and income distribution.

The wealth of data the World Bank collects was a priceless resource, and it inspired Milanovic to carry out cross-country comparisons of inequality, which were a novelty. One day in 1995, Milanovic was talking with Gelb’s successor as the head of his unit.

“I suddenly had this idea: ‘Look, we have all this data from around the world. We study individual countries, but we never put them together.’ ” Four years later, he published the first study of global income distribution based on household surveys.

In the years that followed, Milanovic published widely and profusely. Alongside his work on post-Communist economies, he continued to explore inequality and its link with globalization. His articles and books display the broad range of his interests, which include history, literature, and sports.

In one article, he estimates the average income and inequality level in Byzantium in the year 1000. Another looks at the links between labor mobility and inequality in soccer, which he calls the most globalized sport.

He found that club soccer has become very unequal because a dozen top European teams can afford to recruit the world’s best players. On the other hand, the free movement of soccer players has reduced inequality among national teams. The reason: players from small countries can hone their skills at top club teams, then return home to compete for their national teams.

Literary conversations with his wife, Michele de Nevers, a specialist in climate finance at the Center for Global Development, inspired him to write an offbeat analysis of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Arguing that the book is as much about money as love, he estimates the incomes of various characters and looks at how wealth influences the choice of mates for Austen’s protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet.

He did the same for Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Both essays were published in Milanovic’s 2011 book, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality .

Another book, Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, was a milestone that synthesized years of his scholarship on inequality within and among countries since the Industrial Revolution.

In contrast to Piketty, who argues that inequality inexorably widens under capitalism, Milanovic sees it moving in waves or cycles under the influence of what he calls benign and malign forces.

In advanced economies, income disparity widened in the 19th and early 20th centuries until the malign forces of war and hyperinflation reduced it by destroying wealth. After World War II, benign forces such as progressive taxation, more powerful labor unions, and more widely accessible education pushed inequality down.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a watershed. It brought the former Soviet bloc states into the global economy at a time when China also began opening up. Rapid growth in the developing world narrowed inequality between countries while widening it in the developed world, where middle-class incomes stagnated as the wealthy prospered.

What does the future hold? It looks good for much of the developing world and especially Asia, which will continue to catch up with the rich countries. In advanced economies, on the other hand, the outlook seems grimmer.

There, the twin forces of globalization and technological innovation will continue to squeeze the middle class. Social mobility will decline as an entrenched elite benefits from greater access to expensive higher education and wields its political clout to enact “pro-rich” policies, such as favorable tax regimes.

As income disparities grow, so will social tensions and political strife—a prognosis confirmed by events such as Brexit and protests in France that have occurred since the book’s publication in 2016.

Milanovic worries that this friction might lead to a “decoupling” of democracy and capitalism, resulting in plutocracy in the United States and populism or nativism in Europe.

While there has been considerable debate about inequality over the past decade, “nothing has really moved” in policy terms, he says. “We are on this automatic pilot which basically leads to higher inequality. But I am not totally losing faith.”

The traditional answer—redistribution of income—won’t work as well as it did in the past because of the mobility of capital, which allows the wealthy to shelter their incomes in tax havens. Instead, policy should aim for a redistribution of “endowments” such as wealth and education.

Measures would include higher inheritance taxes, policies that encourage companies to distribute shares to workers, and increased state funding for education.

“We cannot achieve that tomorrow,” he says. “But I think we should have an idea that we want to move to a capitalist world where endowments would be much more equally distributed than today.”

Milanovic also takes on the nettlesome issue of inequality between countries. He calculates that an American, simply by virtue of being born in the United States, will earn 93 times more than a person born in the world’s poorest country.

This is what Milanovic calls the “citizenship premium,” and it gives rise to pressure for migration as people born in poor countries seek their fortunes in richer ones.

Milanovic argues that halting migration is no more feasible than halting the movement of goods or capital. Yet it’s also unrealistic to expect citizens of advanced economies to open their borders. His solution: allow more immigrants but deny them the full rights of citizenship, and perhaps tax them to compensate citizens displaced in the labor force.

His current work, in a way, brings him back to his roots in Yugoslavia. It involves the study of class structure in the People’s Republic of China and, in particular, a close look at the top 5 percent of the income distribution. It forms a part of his next book, Capitalism, Alone, which argues that China has developed a distinct form of capitalism that will coexist with its liberal forebear.

Where is the study of inequality headed? Milanovic sees two frontiers, both driven by the availability of new data. One is wealth inequality, à la Piketty; the other is intergenerational inequality, a subject plumbed by economists such as Harvard’s Raj Chetty.

The two areas “appeal to young people who are now very socially aware,’’ he says. “On the other hand, they are very smart and want to work on tough topics.” He adds, “I am very optimistic in that sense.”

*Opinions expressed in articles and other materials are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

The post Class Analyst: Global Income Inequality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

CHRIS WELLISZ is on the staff of Finance & Development published by the International Monetary Fund*

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Rohingya refugees gather near the fence in the ‘no man’s land’ between Myanmar and Bangladesh. PHOTO: PHYO HEIN KYAW/AFP

By Mahmood Hasan
May 24 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Since the massive exodus of Rohingyas from Rakhine to Bangladesh in 2017, a lot has been written and said about the plight of these unfortunate people. After nearly two years, it appears that the outraged world community has forgotten about this persecuted ethnic minority.

Regarding the repatriation process of Rohingyas, Myanmar has been stalling continuously. Given the fact that majority of Rohingyas are Muslims, whose language is related to Chittagonian and who share similar physical features with Bengalis, with time these people will eventually be assimilated into the local Bangladeshi population. It appears that both Aung San Suu Kyi and her Army Chief Min Aung Hlaing are in a cosy situation now that this ethnic community has been driven out of Myanmar. For them, there is practically no scope for these people to return to Rakhine.

Understandably, the diplomatic démarche that Myanmar has undertaken to thwart the return of Rohingyas is quite well-known. The three big countries that have given support to Myanmar against repatriation of Rohingyas have two arguments: religious antagonism and that Rohingyas are a part of overpopulated Bangladesh. Sandwiched between Hindu-majority India and Buddhist-majority Myanmar, Muslim-majority Bangladesh is in an unenviable situation as far as its population is concerned. Both India and Myanmar look upon Muslims of Bangladesh with great deal of suspicion.

BJP is well-known for its anti-Muslim stance, especially its policies since it came to power in Delhi. Delhi’s antipathy towards Rohingya Muslims was more than evident when it threatened to drive out 40,000 Rohingya refugees who took refuge in India, provoking sharp criticism from the United Nations. India has invested heavily in developing the coastal belts around Sittwe to gain access to the northeastern states of India. Furthermore, having a foothold in Rakhine will give India sway over the southern Bay of Bengal. The other aspect that Delhi openly believes is that Muslim-majority Bangladesh is bursting along the seams with its rapidly growing population. The statements coming from Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat in 2018 and top BJP leaders are not political rhetoric—rather they clearly expose Delhi’s worries over overpopulated Bangladesh.

Having served in Bangladesh missions in Yangon and Delhi, I have often come across government officials and journalists inquiring about the population growth of Bangladesh. The underlying point was that Bangladeshis were spilling across the borders into neighbouring India and Myanmar.

Contiguous neighbour China has high stakes in Myanmar and has blocked UN resolutions against Myanmar. China not only has growing business and military ties but has also invested enormously in Rakhine state as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Here, like India, China wants access to the Indian Ocean through Rakhine and the Bay of Bengal. It is well-known that Beijing is at odds with its Uyghurs Muslims and it is clear that China has consciously overlooked the state-sponsored crimes against the Rohingya Muslims by Naypyidaw. Then again, Myanmar’s narrative that inhabitants of overpopulated Bangladesh have spilled across the borders into Myanmar has caught the attention of Chinese diplomats.

Strangely though, while China and India are competing for strategic influence over Myanmar, both Beijing and Delhi are on the same page over the Rohingya issue.

Russia is also having difficulties with Muslim-majority Commonwealth of Independent States. Moscow has no love lost for Muslims and probably sees the Rohingya Muslims as a source of trouble in Rakhine. Besides, Myanmar’s military procurements from Russia have no doubt played an important role in Moscow supporting Naypyidaw against Dhaka.

The recent rise of Arakan Army in volatile Rakhine has added a new dimension to the instability in the state. The Myanmar Army (Tatmadaw) has suffered serious losses when this unknown insurgent group attacked several Tatmadaw outposts since January 2019. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and Arakan Army are cooperating with each other to fight the Tatmadaw.

On the Bangladesh side, there are some disquieting developments. Living in relatively safe conditions in Bangladesh, the Rohingyas are unwilling to return to Rakhine, where the situation is completely insecure. Then again, many international NGOs working to provide succour oppose their return to Myanmar. The longer these refugees are in Bangladesh, the better it is for some of these NGOs. There are allegations that INGOs are engaged in profitable businesses doing little for the Rohingyas. Bulk of the available funds are being spent for the comfort and travel of NGO functionaries.

But the most disturbing development has been the decision of Bangladesh government to relocate some 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char. This is evidently very good news for Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi and General Hlaing will take it as victory—that Bangladesh has accepted the Rohingyas as part of its population.

Rohingya refugees herded in Teknaf area have been trying to break out of the camps to either get out of Bangladesh or to get assimilated into the Bangladeshi population. There are reports of police arresting Rohingyas at Bangladeshi airports and from boats in the Bay of Bengal. Having nothing much to do, these refugees are increasingly getting involved in all kinds of criminal activities—drug smuggling, women trafficking and, above all, becoming susceptible to radicalisation.

Myanmar has actually launched a non-military aggression against Bangladesh to destabilise the country socially, economically, environmentally and politically. The only way this aggression can be tackled is to get stringent UN Security Council sanctions against

Myanmar. For that to happen, Bangladesh will have to get all the five permanent members of the Security Council on its side. But China and Russia have repeatedly blocked any statement from the UN Security Council. Fourth Joint Working Group meeting between Bangladesh and Myanmar was held in Naypyidaw on May 3, 2019, but no concrete movement on repatriation was seen.

Procrastinating on the Rohingya problem is favouring Myanmar. Clearly, Bangladesh is caught up in a complicated geo-political game involving big powers and is doomed to host the Rohingya refugees indefinitely.

Mahmood Hasan is a former ambassador and secretary of the Bangladesh government.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Syrian mother and child near Ma'arat Al-Numan, in a photo dated 2013. A collapse in waste management services, often disrupted due to fighting, can also lead to contamination and health risks, posing a challenge not only for civilians still living in Syria but also for those who wish to return. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2019 (IPS)

Despite the United Nations Security Council’s task of protecting civilians, millions around the world are still being displaced and killed with little to no accountability for perpetrators.

Marking 20 years since the UN Security Council included the protection of civilians in its agenda, the group convened for an open debate on the subject.

While there has been some progress, the global picture remains dire as civilians continue bear the brunt of the cost of war.

“Grave human suffering is still being caused by armed conflicts and lack of compliance with international humanitarian law…we have the rules and laws of war. We all now need to work to enhance compliance,” said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the council.

Ahead of the meeting, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan urged the Security Council to end its “catastrophic failure,” stating: “World leaders have all but abandoned civilians to the ravages of war. This week’s open debate in the Security Council must yield more than just posturing and empty promises. Concrete action is needed to reverse course, effectively protect civilians, stop war crimes and end impunity.”

According to the UN, more than 22,8000 civilians were killed or injured in 2018 alone across just six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.

All five permanent Security Council members are parties to many of these conflicts, and are thus responsible for the failure to protect civilians.

For instance, the United States-led coalition killed more than 1,600 civilians in the Syrian city of Raqqa over four months in 2017.

The Saudi-led coalition, supported by Western arms from the United States, United Kingdom, and France, have also injured and killed thousands of civilians and deliberately blocked food assistance in Yemen, contributing to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The UN Secretary-General particularly pointed to the indiscriminate use of explosive weapons in populated areas and its devastating impact as 90 percent of those killed and injured are civilians.

Many of those civilians are too often children.

“The great military powers cynically boast about ‘precision’ warfare and ‘surgical’ strikes that distinguish between fighters and civilians. But the reality on the ground is that civilians are routinely targeted where they live, work, study, worship and seek medical care. Parties to armed conflict unlawfully kill, maim and forcibly displace millions of civilians while world leaders shirk their responsibility and turn their backs on war crimes and immense suffering,” Hassan said.

Beyond the deaths and injuries of civilians, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer noted the long-term impacts of such conflict on communities, stating: “We see damaged infrastructure leading to the collapse of essential health, water systems, and more. It is not only civilian infrastructure that is harmed – the environmental consequences of conflict are often overlooked. This includes vital natural resources which, if damaged can have implications not only for the survival of civilian populations but also for environmental risks.”

Since September 2014, a coalition led by the U.S. has conducted air strikes targeting many oil installations in Syria.

Dutch non-profit PAX found that such damage can generate significant air pollution and soil and water contamination, producing further long-term negative health consequences, including respiratory disorders and cancer.

A collapse in waste management services, often disrupted due to fighting, can also lead to contamination and health risks, posing a challenge not only for civilians still living in Syria but also for those who wish to return.

Maurer highlighted the need for the Security Council to protect displaced communities or at the very least to let them protect themselves. 

“Too often do we see that in addition to being exposed to war and violence, populations are stopped from reaching safer spaces, are constrained by bureaucratic obstacles and are limited in their free movement,” he said.

Guterres pointed to the need to enhance compliance with international humanitarian law as well as greater and more even progress on accountability.

“For the Security Council, this means being more consistent in how it addresses protection concerns within and across different conflicts, and being more comprehensive in terms of, for example, grappling with the protection challenges of urban warfare. And it means keeping today’s conversation going,” he told the council.

Such decisions are crucial for the peace, security, and protection of civilians worldwide.

“These decisions can save lives or end them; they can create hope or misery; and they can bolster or break the norms that protect universal humanitarian laws and principles…not only are the decisions of all UN Member States and especially the Security Council important, the absence of decisions by the Council also takes its toll on civilians,” Maurer said.

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By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, May 23 2019 (IPS-Partners)

On 9 May 2019, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, the World Against Racism Network and the Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent organized an Emergency Assembly on the Rise of Global Racism. It was held at the United Nations Office in Geneva in the presence of more than 150 representatives of Permanent Missions, UN staff, civil society and academics.

The aim of this Assembly was to invite the international community to take a joint stand against racism, racial discrimination and intolerance and to address the fundamental structural root causes of these scourges through a robust and universal implementation of the DDPA.

It served as a timely opportunity to give a new impetus to ongoing efforts to counter the rise of extremism and xenophobia in all its forms and manifestations, which is taking openly aggressive forms expressed through Islamophobia, Afrophobia, anti-Arabism and anti-Semitism. The recent spate of terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand and of 21 April 2019 in Colombo, Sri Lanka as well as in California on 27 April 2019 are a reminder that the rise of hate and supremacist ideologies erupts into blind violence unexpectedly.

The Emergency Assembly was likewise held strategically in between two important events in Geneva that brought international human rights experts to the UN on the issue of racism.

In its 6-9 May session the Group of Independent Eminent Experts – composed of HE Hanna Suchocka Dr Edna Roland, Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari and Dr. Saied A. Ashshowwaf – discussed the continued relevance of the DDPA, commemorating its 20th anniversary and developing a multiyear outreach programme for DDPA information and public mobilisation.

In order to consult with the Independent Eminent Experts on the continued relevance of the DDPA, the co-organizers of the Emergency Assembly invited Dr Roland to offer her viewpoints on the imperative need for the full and effective implementation of the DDPA.

In her statement, Dr Roland observed that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) do not mention the ethics and issues of racism which represent an impediment to development. Dr Roland suggested that national governments should include this in their national SDG implementation plans provisions concerning the implementation of the DDPA. She likewise stressed the need to develop a multi-year outreach programme to implement the DDPA including mobilizing NGOs and seeking new ideas to fight against xenophobia, racism and related intolerance.

The day after the Emergency Assembly, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) organized a consultation on People of African Descent through a meeting of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. This is an integral part of the full and effective implementation of the DDPA. The Forum was established by the UN General Assembly in resolution 69/16 of 1 December 2014 entitled “Programme of activities for the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent.”

At the Emergency Assembly, the co-organizers highlighted that the pursuit of the International Decade for People of African Descent and the establishment of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent should not be seen as a substitute for the DDPA. These frameworks should instead complement existing mechanisms related to the implementation of the DDPA, its programme of activities and the Independent Eminent Experts’ recommendations to achieve full and effective equality.

In this connection, the Emergency Assembly underscored the importance of political will, unity of purpose and international cooperation in the pursuit of action-oriented recommendations to address all forms and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance through the implementation of the DDPA, whether the issue refers to Afrophobia, Arabophobia, Islamophobia or Anti-Semitism.

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Women queue during Nigeria's presidential election at Capital School polling unit, in Yola. Credit: Reuters

By Ulrich Thum and Lena Noumi
ABUJA, Nigeria, May 23 2019 (IPS)

Two months after the general elections in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, things are back to normal. The incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, a 76-year-old general and former military Head of State, clearly defeated his challengers.

With his All Progressives Congress (APC), he has been propagating the fight against rampant corruption, economic recovery and the restoration of security. Especially the North-Eastern part of the country has been terrorised by the Islamist insurgency group Boko Haram for over 10 years.

While his progress in economic recovery and restoration of security can at best be described as moderate, Buhari’s anti-corruption war is the subject of much contention. Some have trust in his efforts while others criticise his onslaught as one-sided and directed mostly at the opposition.

The main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), had put forward 72-year-old Atiku Abubakar, former Vice-President from 1999 to 2007, as their candidate. He’s a millionaire entrepreneur and now four-time presidential candidate who faced several allegations of corruption.

Even though the euphoria and hope that accompanied Buhari’s election in 2015 had long vanished, Atiku seemed for most to be no viable alternative to Buhari.

The opposition parties failed to come up with a joint candidate who could challenge the political establishment and bring fresh air into the country’s political scene. The tense security situation along with the postponed elections, which was announced only a few hours before, resulted in the lowest voter turnout since 1999 with only 35 per cent.

This suggests that a large portion of the population see little potential for positive change by casting their votes. Many others just sold their votes to at least reap some benefit.

Moreover, the two elderly men’s campaign was rather dispassionate and accompanied by frequent political manoeuvring and allegations against each other, rather than programmatic discussions.

In the aftermath of the election, disillusionment and frustration are widespread. The 2019 elections have shown that a real alternative to the established system of the ‘rule of old men’ has yet to emerge. Women and youths in particular, who make up the majority of the Nigerian population, are not adequately represented in the political system.

Nigeria at lowest rate of women representation

Women are gravely underrepresented in Nigerian politics. Currently, Nigeria has the lowest rate of female representation in parliaments across the continent. Globally, it ranks 181 out of 193 countries, according to the International Parliamentary Union.

Provisions to increase the percentage of women in elected and appointed positions to 35 per cent had no success. According to the Global Gender Gap Report, the gap between men and women in areas like economic participation, education and health, is not nearly as wide as in the realm of politics.

Women are deterred from entering politics by the patriarchal system, in which men are believed to be natural leaders of women, and a lack of transparency in the candidate selection process.

According to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), 47 per cent of registered voters and only 7 of the 71 presidential candidates for the 2019 elections were women. Nonetheless, there has never been a female president or state governor elected in Nigeria.

Women currently make up less than 6 per cent of the national parliament members. And it doesn’t look much better when looking at candidatures: of the candidates for the national and gubernatorial elections, women made up roughly one-in-eight. Why’s that?

Women are deterred from entering politics by the patriarchal system, in which men are believed to be natural leaders of women, and a lack of transparency in the candidate selection process. Cultural believes that women are supposed to be in charge of the family rather than being in politics and money politics support the existing system.

Moreover, the lack of a well organised grassroots women’s movement backing and supporting promising candidates results in poor political participation. Obiageli Ezekwesili, known through the successful #BringBackOurGirls campaign, bowed out to the final run-up for the presidential elections disillusioned.

‘We are waiting for the day the political class will now change and decide to be nice. They are never going to be nice, quote me. There is no incentive on the part of our political class to do things differently’.

Too young to run?

While registered youth voters (up to the age of 35) make up more than half of the voter population of 84 million, the young generation has no say in Nigerian politics. There might have been a sense of hope in 2018 within the circles of youth activists: as a result of the #NotTooYoungToRun campaign initiated by the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), a law was passed that opened up the political space for increased youth participation. It reduced the age for presidential candidates from 40 to 35 and for House of Representatives candidates from 30 to 25 years.

Overall, there’s a positive trend in youth participation, as youth candidacy has increased from 21 per cent in 2015 to 34.2 per cent in the 2019 elections. However, the actual numbers of young women and men under the age of 35 voted into elected positions are more sobering. According to YIAGA, only twelve youth candidates under 35 managed to get elected into the House of Representatives, an increase by nine compared to 2015.

At least however, the discourse has shifted and the lack of representation is discussed publicly. For most Nigerian political parties, young people are at best seen as supporters, mobilisers or political foot soldiers.

They are hired to instigate violence, manipulate the elections and intimidate the opposing parties. Some of the smaller parties actively tried to promote women and youth participation through lowering the horrendous costs for the candidacy forms.

But for the major parties, only a few of the women and youth emerged from the primaries on state and federal political level.

The system remains the same

All in all, the Nigerian political system remains dominated by temporary political alliances of ‘old men’ and sustained by huge flows of money. Politics is a way of getting access to huge spoils of money. Political candidates have to invest heavily or are being invested in by others.

The aim is to get a return on that investment. Politicians, rather than considering themselves as representatives of the people, have obligations or intentions that are more monetary than anything else.

Women and youths do not feature well in this money game. Because their probability to win elections is more unlikely, they are not considered a secure investment.

Unfortunately, in the 2019 elections, political movements advocating for the participation of youth and women were unable to challenge the political structures of patriarchy supporting corruption and making Nigerian politics a dirty business.

Nonetheless, first important steps towards change have been made, even though they did not translate into votes yet to a significant degree.

At least however, the discourse has shifted and the lack of representation is discussed publicly. Nevertheless, it will be crucial to actually increase the representation of women and young people, without letting them become a part of the predominant system of money politics that currently exists.

Instead of seeing their future turn as a chance to get their own piece of the national pie, women and young people need to be ready and willing to be monitored and held accountable.

Accordingly, it’s important to nurture and select a future class of principled politicians, especially women and young people, who are ready to truly represent the Nigerian people.

The post Women & Youth Remain Politically Underrepresented in Africa’s Most Populous Nation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ulrich Thum is the Resident Representative of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung office in Abuja, Nigeria. He has previously worked as a program coordinator for the GIZ Civil Peace Service program in Zimbabwe and as a peace worker for AGEH in South Sudan and Nigeria.

 
Lena Noumi holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science and is currently studying International Relations and Development Policy at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

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-- PRESS RELEASE --

By Amnesty International
May 22 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The UN Security Council must mark the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions this year by ending its catastrophic failure to protect millions of civilians around the world whose lives and livelihoods are routinely ravaged by violations of the laws of war, Amnesty International said today.

Tomorrow (23 May), the Security Council will hold an open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict – 20 years after this goal was first added to its agenda.

“Twenty years after the UN Security Council pledged to do its utmost to protect civilians in armed conflict, and 70 years since the Geneva Conventions sought to shield civilians and others from the types of atrocities committed during the Second World War, the picture is incredibly grim,” said Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International.

“The great military powers cynically boast about ‘precision’ warfare and ‘surgical’ strikes that distinguish between fighters and civilians. But the reality on the ground is that civilians are routinely targeted where they live, work, study, worship and seek medical care. Parties to armed conflict unlawfully kill, maim and forcibly displace millions of civilians while world leaders shirk their responsibility and turn their backs on war crimes and immense suffering.

“Russia, China and the United States continue to abuse their veto power by blocking draft resolutions that aim to prevent or stop atrocities from taking place. Every time this happens, they are putting innocent people living in these danger zones at grave risk.”

In recent years alone, Amnesty International has documented a blatant disregard for civilian protection and international humanitarian law in armed conflicts where four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are parties – Russia, the USA, the UK and France. The fifth, China, has actively shielded neighbouring Myanmar as it carried out war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide.

The disastrous failure to protect civilians has been evident in the US-led Coalition’s blitzing of Raqqa, Syria, that left more than 1,600 civilians dead; in Russian and Syrian forces’ wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and lives in Aleppo, Idlib and elsewhere – forcing mass displacement of millions and amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity; and in the war in Yemen where the Saudi Arabia/UAE-led coalition, backed by Western arms, has killed and injured thousands of civilians in unlawful attacks and fuelled one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Somalia remains another of the world’s worst human rights and humanitarian crises. All parties to the conflict, including the USA, have violated both international human rights and humanitarian law. Despite ramping up air strikes in its secretive war in Somalia over the past two years, the USA failed to admit a single civilian casualty until an Amnesty International investigation prompted it to.

Israel has repeatedly targeted civilians and civilian objects during military operations in Gaza since 2008, causing great destruction and loss of human life. Between March 2018 and March 2019, Israel used lethal force against Palestinian protesters, killing at least 195 people, including medics, journalists, and children. Palestinian armed groups have fired indiscriminate rockets into civilian neighbourhoods in Israel, causing several fatalities.

In South Sudan and elsewhere, conflict-related sexual violence and gender-based violence are occurring at shocking levels. Witnesses and victims of a brutal government-led offensive in April-July 2018 in the north of the country described how civilians, including women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities were deliberately killed by gunfire, burnt alive in their homes, hung from trees and rafters and run over with armoured vehicles. Civilians were hunted down while fleeing into nearby wetlands, or rivers, as soldiers shot indiscriminately into areas where people were hiding and carried out attacks on islands where they had sought refuge.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported a record high number of civilian casualties in 2018, with 10,993 people killed or injured

Just last week, in Libya, Amnesty International documented how a fresh offensive on Tripoli has been marked by indiscriminate attacks and assaults putting the lives of civilians, including vulnerable detained refugees and migrants, at risk.

Nor is the record of the United Nations itself unblemished. In South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere, UN peacekeepers have failed, on multiple occasions, to protect civilians facing deadly violence. A particularly reprehensible problem is that of sexual exploitation and abuse, with civilian women and girls being raped and assaulted by the very peacekeepers who are supposed to protect them.

Especially vulnerable people like children, older persons and persons with disabilities have also been targeted in particular ways in conflict – such as militaries and armed groups recruiting child soldiers or brutally assaulting those less able to flee during attacks on civilian populations.

Despite international treaties prohibiting their use, some states and armed groups continue to use inherently indiscriminate weapons like cluster munitions and landmines, which have been banned under international law for their impact on civilians. Others, such as Syria and Sudan have also used chemical weapons, which have no place in warfare.

Last year, the UN Refugee Agency decried the record-breaking figure of 68.5 million people displaced worldwide by armed conflict and other forms of violence.

“Seventy years on from the Geneva Conventions, to have almost 70 million human beings displaced by wars and other violence reflects the catastrophic failure of world leaders to protect them,” said Tirana Hassan.

“World leaders have all but abandoned civilians to the ravages of war. This week’s open debate in the Security Council must yield more than just posturing and empty promises. Concrete action is needed to reverse course, effectively protect civilians, stop war crimes and end impunity.”

To read a joint statement by 22 NGOS, including Amnesty International, calling for action to strengthen the protection of civilians in armed conflict, please see:
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/joint-statement-22-ngos-call-action-strengthen-protection-civilians-armed-conflict

The post UN: Catastrophic failure as civilians ravaged by war violations 70 years after Geneva Conventions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

-- PRESS RELEASE --

The post UN: Catastrophic failure as civilians ravaged by war violations 70 years after Geneva Conventions appeared first on Inter Press Service.