Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Some 50 human rights defenders from Latin America held a meeting at the Journalists Club in Mexico City to exchange strategies and analyse the challenges they face in the most lethal region for activists. Special rapporteurs on indigenous peoples, displaced persons and freedom of expression attended the meeting. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

“We’re in a very difficult situation. There is militarisation at a regional level, and gender-based violence. We are at risk, we cannot silence that,” Aura Lolita Chávez, an indigenous woman from Guatemala, complained at a meeting of human rights defenders from Latin America held in the Mexican capital.

The Quiché indigenous activist and leader of the K’iche’s People’s Council for the Defence of Life, Mother Nature, Land and Territory, told IPS that the Guatemalan government “has said that we are violent trouble-makers, but we defend our territory and we say no to the mining companies.”

Chávez, who was a finalist for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2017, and winner of the Ignacio Ellacuría Prize of the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation that same year, is an organiser of the opposition by native communities in western Guatemala against mining companies, hydroelectric dams and African oil palm producers.

She has received death threats and attacks that forced her to seek refuge in Spain in 2017.

But her case is far from an exception, in Guatemala and in the rest of Latin America, the most lethal region for human rights defenders according to different reports, especially activists involved in defending land rights and the environment.

In this increasingly alarming context, Chávez and some 50 activists from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, the United States and Uruguay participated in the International Meeting of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Mexico City from Feb. 15-18, under the slogan “Defending does not mean forgetting.”

Guests at the meeting were United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz from the Philippines; UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Cecilia Jiménez-Damary from the Philippines; and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Edison Lanza from Uruguay.

The human rights defenders identified common threats such as interference by mining and oil companies in indigenous territories, government campaigns against activists, judicial persecution, gender-based violence, and polarised societies that often fail to recognise the defence of human rights.

Evelia Bahena, an activist from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, told IPS about “the suffering and destruction” at the hands of “companies that make profits at the cost of the lives of others.”

In the municipality of Cocula, Bahena has fought against mining projects, which drew threats and lawsuits against her, forcing her to flee her community – a common fate for activists struggling against mega-projects that harm the social fabric and natural resources of the villages and towns where they are built, and the rights of local residents.

Award-winning Guatemalan indigenous activist Aura Lolita Chávez, leader of the K’iche’s Council of Peoples, has been forced to seek refuge in Spain because of death threats and attacks, due to her struggle against the activities of companies that affect the environment and indigenous territories in her country. Credit: Courtesy of ETB

A number of reports have focused on the plight of human rights defenders in the region. In the report “At what cost? Irresponsible Business and the Murder of Land and Environment Defenders 2017”, published in July 2018, the international organisation Global Witness stated that of the total of 201 murders of human rights defenders in the world in 2017, 60 percent happened in Latin America.

Brazil recorded the highest number of homicides of activists of any country, 57. In Mexico, the number was 15, five times more than the year before, while Nicaragua recorded the highest murder rate of activists relative to its population, with four killings, according to the British-based organisation.

The “Global Analysis 2018”, produced by the international organisation Front Line Defenders, also depicts a grim outlook, counting 321 human rights defenders killed in 27 countries, nine more than in 2017. Of that total, 77 percent involved defenders of the land, the environment and indigenous people.

In the Americas, the most common violations consisted of threats and smear campaigns, according to the Irish-based organisation. In Colombia, 126 activists were murdered; in Mexico, 48; in Guatemala, 26; in Brazil, 23; and in Honduras, eight.

For Ana María Rodríguez, a representative of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, difficult conditions persist in her country, where 20 human rights activists have been murdered so far in 2019.

“We still don’t have an effective response from the state” to guarantee the safety of human rights defenders, Rodríguez told IPS.

The most numerous victims are social organisers from areas once controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group that is now a political party with representation in parliament, after signing a peace agreement with the government in 2016, ending half a century of armed conflict.

Special rapporteurs on different aspects of human rights take part in the Feb. 18 closing ceremony of the Latin American meeting of human rights defenders and journalists in Mexico City. Credit: Courtesy of CMDPDH

“There are delays and non-compliance with the peace agreement,” which have contributed to the defencelessness of human rights activists, according to the lawyer.

In Mexico, this year has already claimed a deadly quota, with at least six human rights defenders and three journalists killed.

Added to this record number are the ongoing crises in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the arrival in January of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has issued open threats against civil society, and statements by leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office in Mexico since December, against civil society organisations and journalists who take a critical stance.

The rapporteurs present at the meeting, on unofficial visits to Mexico, listened to the accounts given by activists and recalled that governments in the region have international obligations to respect, such as guaranteeing the rights of indigenous people, displaced persons and journalists, as well as protecting human rights defenders.

“One of the basic rights is to prior consultation and obtaining free, prior and informed consent,” especially with respect to megaprojects, Tauli-Corpuz, UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, who belongs to the native Kankanaey Igorot people of the Philippines, told IPS.

In her October report on Mexico, the special rapporteur criticised the violation of rights of indigenous people, especially the right to prior consulation on energy, land or tourism projects in their territories.

López Obrador’s government plans to build a railway running through five states in the south and southeast of the country and to create an overland route linking the Pacific and Atlantic coasts that runs across native lands – projects that are opposed by affected communities.

For his part, Lanza, the IACHR special rapporteur, said the recommendations of the joint report released in June 2018 with David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, should be the starting point for the measures to be adopted by the Mexican government.

“The important thing is for the State to comply with the recommendations. We are following that up,” he told IPS. In March, his office will present its annual regional report on freedom of expression.

Jiménez-Damary highlighted that Colombia is the most critical case of forced internal displacement, with some 6.5 million victims as of 2017, while in Mexico some 345,000 people have had to leave their homes and in El Salvador, 296,000.

“One displaced person is already one too many. The state has the main responsibility” in such cases, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of internally displaced persons told IPS.

Related Articles

• A “Crisis Point” for Human Rights Defenders
• Protection of Journalists Fails in Latin America

The post Attacks on Human Rights Defenders: A Daily Occurrence in Latin America appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 19 2019 (IPS)

For two centuries, all too many discussions about hunger and resource scarcity has been haunted by the ghost of Parson Thomas Malthus. Malthus warned that rising populations would exhaust resources, especially those needed for food production. Exponential population growth would outstrip food output.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Humanity now faces a major challenge as global warming is expected to frustrate the production of enough food as the world population rises to 9.7 billion by 2050. Timothy Wise’s new book [Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. New Press, New York, 2019] argues that most solutions currently put forward by government, philanthropic and private sector luminaries are misleading.

Malthus’ ghost returns
The early 2008 food price crisis has often been wrongly associated with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The number of hungry in the world was said to have risen to over a billion, feeding a resurgence of neo-Malthusianism.

Agribusiness advocates fed such fears, insisting that food production must double by 2050, and high-yielding industrial agriculture, under the auspices of agribusiness, is the only solution. In fact, the world is mainly fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale, often called family farmers who produce over two-thirds of developing countries’ food.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, neither food scarcity nor poor physical access are the main causes of food insecurity and hunger. Instead, Reuters has observed a ‘global grain glut’, with surplus cereal stocks piling up.

Meanwhile, poor production, processing and storage facilities cause food losses of an average of about a third of developing countries’ output. A similar share is believed lost in rich countries due to wasteful food storage, marketing and consumption behaviour.

Nevertheless, despite grain abundance, the 2018 State of Food Insecurity report — by the Rome-based United Nations food agencies led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — reported rising chronic and severe hunger or undernourishment involving more than 800 million.

Political, philanthropic and corporate leaders have promised to help struggling African and other countries grow more food, by offering to improve farming practices. New seed and other technologies would modernize those left behind.

But producing more food, by itself, does not enable the hungry to eat. Thus, agribusiness and its philanthropic promoters are often the problem, not the solution, in feeding the world.

Eating Tomorrow addresses related questions such as: Why doesn’t rising global food production feed the hungry? How can we “feed the world” of rising populations and unsustainable pressure on land, water and other natural resources that farmers need to grow food?

Family farmers lack power
Drawing on five years of extensive fieldwork in Southern Africa, Mexico, India and the US Mid-West, Wise concludes that the problem is essentially one of power. He shows how powerful business interests influence government food and agricultural policies to favour large farms.

This is typically at the expense of ‘family’ farmers, who grow most of the world’s food, but also involves putting consumers and others at risk, e.g., due to agrochemical use. His many examples not only detail and explain the many problems small-scale farmers face, but also their typically constructive responses despite lack of support, if not worse, from most governments:

• In Mexico, trade liberalization following the 1993 North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) agreement swamped the country with cheap, subsidized US maize and pork, accelerating migration from the countryside. Apparently, this was actively encouraged by transnational pork producers employing ‘undocumented’ and un-unionised Mexican workers willing to accept low wages and poor working conditions.
• In Malawi, large government subsidies encouraged farmers to buy commercial fertilizers and seeds from US agribusinesses such as now Bayer-owned Monsanto, but to little effect, as their productivity and food security stagnated or even deteriorated. Meanwhile, Monsanto took over the government seed company, favouring its own patented seeds at the expense of productive local varieties, while a former senior Monsanto official co-authored the national seed policy that threatens to criminalize farmers who save, exchange and sell seeds instead!
• In Zambia, greater use of seeds and fertilizers from agribusiness tripled maize production without reducing the country’s very high rates of poverty and malnutrition. Meanwhile, as the government provides 250,000-acre ‘farm blocks’ to foreign investors, family farmers struggle for title to farm land.
• In Mozambique too, the government gives away vast tracts of farm land to foreign investors. Meanwhile, women-led cooperatives successfully run their own native maize seed banks.
• Meanwhile, Iowa promotes vast monocultures of maize and soybean to feed hogs and bioethanol rather than ‘feed the world’.
• A large Mexican farmer cooperative launched an ‘agro-ecological revolution’, while the old government kept trying to legalize Monsanto’s controversial genetically modified maize. Farmers have thus far halted the Monsanto plan, arguing that GM corn threatens the rich diversity of native Mexican varieties.

Much of the research for the book was done in 2014-15, when Obama was US president, although the narrative begins with developments and policies following the 2008 food price crisis, during Bush’s last year in the White House. The book tells a story of US big business’ influence on policies enabling more aggressive transnational expansion.

Yet, Wise remains optimistic, emphasizing that the world can feed the hungry, many of whom are family farmers. Despite the challenges they face, many family farmers are finding innovative and effective ways to grow more and better food. He advocates support for farmers’ efforts to improve their soil, output and wellbeing.

Eating better
Hungry farmers are nourishing their life-giving soils using more ecologically sound practices to plant a diversity of native crops, instead of using costly chemicals for export-oriented monocultures. According to Wise, they are growing more and better food, and are capable of feeding the hungry.

Unfortunately, most national governments and international institutions still favour large-scale, high-input, industrial agriculture, neglecting more sustainable solutions offered by family farmers, and the need to improve the wellbeing of poor farmers.

Undoubtedly, many new agricultural techniques offer the prospect of improving the welfare of farmers, not only by increasing productivity and output, but also by limiting costs, using scarce resources more effectively, and reducing the drudgery of farm work.

But the world must recognize that farming may no longer be viable for many who face land, water and other resource constraints, unless they get better access to such resources. Meanwhile, malnutrition of various types affects well over two billion people in the world, and industrial agriculture contributes about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Going forward, it will be important to ensure affordable, healthy and nutritious food supplies for all, mindful not only of food and water safety, but also of various pollution threats. A related challenge will be to enhance dietary diversity affordably to overcome micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related non-communicable diseases for all.

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

The post Agribusiness Is the Problem, Not the Solution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

At global fashion brand Ganni's 2019 runway show, models glided down the runway against the backdrop of girls from developing countries. Credit: Instagram / @oursecondskin

By Zafirah Zein
SINGAPORE, Feb 19 2019 (IPS)

Scandinavian fashion label and global It-brand Ganni hardly caused a stir recently when it closed Copenhagen Fashion Week with a sustainability-themed showcase titled “Life on Earth.”

Considering that sustainability is now a consumer trend, it is no surprise that a luxury brand touted as “a magnet for cool girls all over the planet” aimed to boost its street cred with a show that put sustainability at its core.

The problem? Photographs of brown, underprivileged women in developing countries served as the backdrop for a runway of mostly white, European models decked in designer clothing, with no mention of their stories, and how these connected in relation to the brand, or sustainability for that matter.

Zafirah Zein

Decades after the end of colonialism, Western domination in the areas of sustainable development and environmental protection threaten to undermine our efforts towards a more equal, sustainable future.

Anna Nadim Saber, a New York-based fashion blogger, criticised the brand online for being “problematic,” sharing in a long Instagram post: “This is a larger pattern of exploitation in the fashion industry. It is exactly women like those in these pictures who are worst affected by our industry: poor wages and terrible working conditions in sweatshops that manufacture clothing for many Western brands.”

To the fashion industry, she said: “Stop being tone deaf and blind to your own internalised, colonial mentality.”

Saber appeared to be the only voice from the fashion business who called out Ganni’s misstep, but her view picked at a discomfort that I’ve been harbouring a few months into writing about sustainable development.

Ganni’s efforts to promote sustainability were not just misplaced; they perpetuated notions of inequality and Western superiority through the misrepresentation of other communities and the lack of real engagement with global problems.

These “tone deaf” practices by Western brands also reaffirmed the unsettling perception that the global narrative on sustainability deflects blame from and even applauds the actors that have long been the driver of global ills.

This is rooted in colonial attitudes and cultural imperialism—issues that stem from the historical relationship between once colonised-states and their ex-colonisers, and unequal power structures between the Global North and South.

Eco-colonialism?
The term eco-colonialism is practically unheard of in the mainstream conversation on sustainability. However, government agencies and civil groups worldwide have recently used it to refer to the behaviour and policies of developed, Western nations who currently serve as the loudest voices on environmental protection today.

Earlier this year, Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) accused the European Union (EU) of “economic colonisation” for its move to ban palm oil in biofuels by 2020, in a bid to halt deforestation. The country has also claimed the ban to be “discriminatory” as it favours European-grown oils such as rapeseed and sunflower, while diverting attention away from domestic environmental issues.

In an interview, a spokesperson for FELDA said: “It’s the same colonial attitudes, the white man imposing their rule on us from afar.”

Palm oil contributes significantly to the economies of Asian palm-oil exporting countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, where poor, smallholder farmers in these countries account for almost half of palm oil output and thus depend on the commodity for economic survival.

Europe, in this case, is only considering their own priorities and not those of people in Malaysia and Indonesia, while still using palm oil in everything else from soap and cosmetics to crackers and ice cream.

Putting a freeze on a crop that is most significant in accelerating social and economic development of many countries across Africa and Southeast Asia carries the shadow of neocolonialism, which includes a powerful state exercising control over another through economic or monetary means.

Another issue that stinks of green imperialism is the plastic waste trade, which gained attention after China banned foreign waste imports in January last year to protect its environment.

Forced to deal with their own rubbish, China’s move was met with backlash from British and American companies, even prompting a senior director at the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington to say: “Do they (China) care about the global environment or only their own environment because we are land-filling perfectly good materials now because of the actions that they’re taking.”

Some also took the easier route, by redirecting their waste to Southeast Asia and swamping local ports and recycling plants across the region in the process. This led to a backlash from several countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, who subsequently banned plastic waste imports.

Thailand and Vietnam are among the five countries that were ranked as the most marine polluting countries in the world, making Asia the target of international criticism over their waste management practices and unsustainable consumer lifestyles, despite the fact they are usually at the receiving end of rich nations’ waste.

This has created an unequal picture of global waste, in which developed nations, who are more likely to engage in overconsumption, are deflected from blame.

However, most media attention has focused on plastic-choked oceans in Asia while spotlighting environmental movements in the West that want to wipe out plastic straws and switch to more durable, dearer items—lifestyle practices that are out of reach for many in the developing world.

As this opinion piece by geography experts at the University of Guelph, Canada, puts well: “If we understand waste, not as something produced by the actions of a group of individuals, but rather a product of socioeconomic systems that contribute to making waste and encourages wasting, problems with these dominant explanations arise. We start to see that Western consumers are part of the problem and cannot be absolved of their responsibility.”

Moving away from Western-led sustainability
Chandran Nair, Malaysian founder of Hong Kong-based think tank Global Institute for Tomorrow, writes in his book The Sustainable State that the problem with today’s sustainable development narrative is that it is understood from the perspective of advanced economies rather than developing ones.

He notes that discussions are often led by Western experts who rarely confronted the unsustainable means by which their own economies had grown.

Speaking with Nair at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, he weighed in on our shared view that the Western-dominated sustainability space often rang hypocritical and is reminiscent of colonial habits such as paternalism, victim-blaming and exporting problems.

Furthermore, most sustainability events and panel discussions lacked the diversity that could better represent the issues faced by the majority of the world’s population and were instead populated with white men in suits. This also extends to civil society, where green movements in Asia are often led by Western expatriates.

This always seemed strangely ironic to me, that the West was leading the world into a sustainable future, after almost worldwide adoption of a Western economic model that thrives on overconsumption has resulted in the pillaging of the earth.

“The most unsustainable societies are Western societies, but they make it an Asian problem,” said Nair. “Now these societies are also providing us with solutions from their thought leaders. There’s something wrong with this picture.”

That conversation with Nair drove home the flaw in our current narrative: sustainability often focuses on the demands and desires of the developed, and largely Western world, while failing to address the more complex barriers that the majority of the world has towards achieving a sustainable way of life.

Real solutions lie in radically shifting the global conversation to one rooted in local needs and contexts, and coming up with knowledge-based ideas and polices that are independent of Western models.

Sustainability has to furthermore be more inclusive of other voices outside of the Western mainstream—especially communites long marginalised by it—by striving for true representation that does not perpetuate damaging colonial mentalities.

Not doing so runs the risk of supporting a global structure of inequality that will do no good to our quest for sustainability.

*This story was originally published on Eco-Business and reproduced with permission.

The link to the original article follows: https://www.eco-business.com/opinion/in-the-world-of-sustainability-colonialism-is-not-dead/

The post In the World of Sustainability, Colonialism is Not Dead appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zafirah Zein is a correspondent for Eco-Business*, a sustainability media organisation covering responsible business and sustainable development in Asia Pacific.

The post In the World of Sustainability, Colonialism is Not Dead appeared first on Inter Press Service.

“There’s been very little accountability in South Sudan for what is chronic, endemic problem of sexual violence against women and girls,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19 2019 (IPS)

Women and girls continue to face the brunt of violence in the northern region of South Sudan with persistently high and brutal levels of sexual violence, a new report found.

Despite the signing of a peace deal nearly five months ago, United Nations investigators have found an “endemic” rise in cases of sexual violence in South Sudan’s Unity State.

“There’s been very little accountability in South Sudan for what is chronic, endemic problem of sexual violence against women and girls,” said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) spokesperson Rupert Colville.

“Virtually complete impunity over the years, as a result, very little disincentive for these men not to do what they’re doing,” he added at the launch of the report.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet also expressed concern over the widespread issue, stating: “The volatility of the situation in South Sudan combined with the lack of accountability for violations and abuses committed throughout Unity, likely leads armed actors to believe that they can get away with rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence.”

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

U.N. Missions in South Sudan (UNMISS) and OHCHR researchers 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, 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.”

The 30-year-old survivor was raped on three separate occasions, each time around the same location to or from food distribution sites in Bentiu.

Almost 90 percent of the women and girls were raped by more than one perpetrator and often over several hours, the report found.

The report also observed that many of the attacks were premeditated and organised, stating: “The ruthlessness of the attackers appears to be a consistent feature of sexual violence documented during this investigation.”

In another incident in November, a woman who was two months pregnant suffered a miscarriage after being gang-raped.

Survivors also described being beaten with rifle butts, sticks, and cable wires if they attempted to resist or after they were raped.

A 50-year-old survivor told investigators she was beaten after trying to keep armed men from taking her 25-year-old daughter.

“Some of them threw punches and kicks on me for not allowing them to take my daughter. Those armed men were just like my sons, but they were so cruel. They do not have mercy,” she said.

Among the factors that have contributed to the rise in attacks against women and girls is the large number of fighters on “standby” mode awaiting disengagement and withdrawal.

Though a peace agreement was signed in September 2018, the new transitional government will not be put into effect until May, leaving members of numerous armed forces in limbo.

“A lot of these young men who are heavily armed, are just waiting around…This is a very toxic mix, and there are also youth militia which some of these official groups ally with and you don’t know exactly who they are; they’ve been heavily involved as well,” Colville said.

President Salva Kirr of South Sudan. The United Nations has urged Kirr to carry out investigations and seek justice for survivors of sexual violence in the northern region of the country. Credit: Elias Asmare/IPS

Impunity and the lack of accountability have also led to the normalisation of violence against women and girls, and both UNMISS and OHCHR have urged President Salva Kiir to carry out investigations and seek justice for survivors.

Upon hearing about reports of mass report, an investigation was carried out by a South Sudanese committee. However, they denied the allegations and declared that the rapes were “not a true story.”

While the current peace deal seems volatile, it is increasingly urgent for the new South Sudan to act and protect women and girls.

“Sadly, we have continued to receive reports of rape and gang rape in northern Unity since the beginning of this year,” Bachelet said.

“I urge the Government of South Sudan to take adequate measures – including those laid out in the peace agreement – to protect women and girls, to promptly and thoroughly investigate all allegations of sexual violence and to hold the perpetrators accountable through fair trials,” she added.

Related Articles

• South Sudanese Girls Given Away As ‘Blood Money’
• War-ravaged South Sudan Struggles to Contain AIDS
• OP-ED: Violence Leaves Women, Girls, and Young People on the Edge in South Sudan

The post Sexual Violence Surging in South Sudan appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Mining Grabs Up Land, Deals Blow to Agriculture in Central America appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 19 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – Two new publications entitled “The Unprecedented Rise of People on the Move” and “Veiling/ Unveiling: The Headscarf in Christianity, Islam and Judaism” have been published by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue.

The purpose of the first publication is two-fold: it is first to assess the causes and consequences of forced displacement of people on the move in Europe and in the Arab region. The first volume entitled “Migration and human solidarity, a challenge and an opportunity for Europe and the MENA region” explores the adverse impact of cross-border movement resulting from war-related insecurity and from economic push factors such as the detrimental impact of climate change.

Secondly, it aims to demonstrate that the migrant and refugee crisis is not a “number-crisis” as many of the European countries most hostile to the arrival of people on the move are those that have hosted the smallest numbers of migrants. Upon examination of these issues, it becomes clear that the closed border policies of advanced societies and the rise of xenophobic populism further aggravate the migrant and refugee crisis.

The publication also includes a part entitled “Protecting people on the move: IDPs in the context of the refugee and migrant crisis” examines the causes and consequences of internal displacement in the context of the migrant and refugee crisis. It demonstrates that the push and pull factors of forced displacement of IDPs in the Arab region exacerbate migrant and refugee inflows to Europe. Upon examination of the predicaments of IDPs in Syria, Iraq and Azerbaijan, the study demonstrates that prolonged internal displacement results in long-term adverse impact on societies from economic, social and political standpoints.

In conclusion, the publication suggests that the long-term solution to enhance the protection of IDPs in conflict- and disaster-settings rests on the ability of stakeholders to develop efficient policies to prevent and reduce internal displacement.

The aim of the second publication is to counter misconceptions, deconstruct stereotypes and to show the role of the headscarf as a bridge between cultures and religions. Against the background of a heightened fear of the Other, with societies turning inwards and moving away from tolerance, the headscarf has become outrageously politicised. Politicians are waging a relentless war against this religious symbol, either by advocating its prohibition and thus trampling on article 18 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, or by legislating to impose it on women, thus violating women’s freedom to choose what to wear.

The Geneva Centre partnered with the Permanent Mission of Algeria to organize a panel discussion and an exhibition on 23 February 2018, at the UN Offices in Geneva, entitled “Veiling/ Unveiling: The Headscarf in Christianity, Islam and Judaism.” In the first part of the publication, the reader is provided with the summary of the debate, whilst a full chapter is dedicated to the lessons learned, offering an analysis of the topic from the standpoint of each religion discussed. The second part of the publication provides a graphic illustration of the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition.

The post The Geneva Centre issues a publication on the unprecedented rise of people on the move and one other on the role of the headscarf as a bridge between cultures and religions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

At the 8th Meeting of the South Commission, Havana , Cuba , July 1990. Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Chairman of the South Commission, President Fidel Castro of Cuba, Manmohan Singh, Secretary-General of the Commission, Carlos Fortin (right) and Branislav Gosovic (left), of the Commission staff.

By Branislav Gosovic
GENEVA, Feb 18 2019 (IPS)

The BAPA+40 Zero Draft Outcome Document—to be adopted at the upcoming conference on the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA+40) in Argentina March 20-22– is much like a conference report intended to accommodate different points of view.

It is neither a visionary policy nor substantive action-oriented agenda needed to bolster South-South cooperation (SSC) and give it greater importance in the United Nations system, which would normally be expected from a once-in-a-decade high-level UN conference.

Having been drafted carefully to take into account views and sensitivities of the developed countries, which have not been overly enthusiastic about South-South cooperation, the document could not give adequate prominence to preferences and position of developing countries, the major interested party and leading force of that cooperation.

Initial comments on and reactions to the Zero Draft reflect continuing disagreements and underlying policy differences between the South and the North regarding the nature and objectives of South-South cooperation.

Given – (a). the contents and policy limitations of the Draft Outcome Document, which largely delimit the final outcome of the Conference; (b). the traditional misgivings of the developed countries about SSC and their efforts to constrain its development; (c). the political and institutional obstacles that limit the UN role and engagement of its staff in promoting SSC; and (d). the absence of a comprehensive, up-to-date South platform for SSC and the differences that exist among the South’s large and diverse constituency – the Group of 77 would do well already now to begin preparing for the period following BAPA+40.

Initially, in its BAPA+40 follow-up, the G77 should address – in its own circle and in a comprehensive manner – the challenges and opportunities facing South-South cooperation.

Taking into account the outcome of the 2019 Buenos Aires Conference and the lessons learned during its preparatory process, proceedings and negotiations, a new effort should be undertaken to elaborate a G77 South-South cooperation policy platform and agenda for action.

In this context, it is important to recall the G77 1981 Caracas Conference on Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries (ECDC), which followed the 1978 Buenos Aires Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC).

Both Conferences were part and parcel of the Global South’s New International Economic Order (NIEO) initiatives during that period. The Caracas event had to be organized outside the UN, but it relied on logistical and substantive support of the UNCTAD Secretariat.

The goal was to carry on with the process beyond what had been possible to achieve in Buenos Aires and in the framework of the UN itself. The Caracas Programme of Action on Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries (A/36/333) was adopted.

It broadened the concept to incorporate “economic cooperation among developing countries” beyond the politically and substantively restricted “technical assistance”, projects-centred approach dealt with in Buenos Aires (A/CONF.79/13/Rev.1).

However, the concept of ECDC could not properly be institutionalized in the UN framework due to the opposition of the developed countries. Indeed, in the institutional-reform sweep in the 1990s, driven and inspired by these countries, even the UNCTAD Unit on ECDC was closed.

As part of its continuing initiative in the UN, the Group of 77 began to champion a broader concept, namely “South-South cooperation”, elaborated in the 1990 Report of the South Commission, The Challenge to the South. In 1994, G77, in its Ministerial Declaration, urged the UN to convene an international conference on South-South cooperation in 1996.

The resolution on South-South cooperation adopted subsequently by the UN General Assembly, inter alia called on the UN Secretary-General, in preparing his report on the state of South-South cooperation, to keep “in view the proposal to convene an international conference on South-South cooperation”.

This non-committal wording reflected the lack of developed countries’ support for the idea. And, in fact, it took nearly 15 years before such a conference could be held in the UN – the 2009 Nairobi High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation – and before the concept of South-South cooperation was anointed in this Organization.

One can argue that the suspicion harboured by key actors in the North vis-à-vis SSC has not basically changed, even though these countries now exhibit a greater tactical flexibility due to the changing realities, including the emergence of and the challenge posed by “the rising South”.

Given the differences of outlook between the North and the South, and political and administrative constraints that UN organizations and staff experience in their work to advance the process of South-South cooperation and to assist the developing countries in this domain, a satisfactory outcome of the three-day BAPA+40 North-South encounter does not seem likely from the point of view of the Group of 77.

It would, thus, be propitious for the Group to begin considering a similar approach to the one it had adopted after the 1978 Buenos Aires TCDC Conference, when it decided to hold its own ECDC conference in 1981 in Caracas.

In view of the existing situation, possibly in the final stage of the 2019 Buenos Aires Conference, the Group of 77 should highlight the coming 40th anniversary of the 1981 Caracas Conference by announcing the launching of its own South-South follow-up, as a sequel to BAPA+40.

In this way, G77 and its member states would commit themselves to review and formally consider the nature of South-South cooperation and its role in development and in the evolving geopolitical setting.

This would be a collective undertaking, pursued within one’s own circle and policy space, with the goal being to elaborate a Global South’s policy and action-oriented agenda for South-South cooperation, without the developed countries present to influence the parameters of that cooperation.

While centred on SSC actions and needs within the Global South, the proposed follow-up would also need to address, as a separate issue, the role of the UN and UN system in actively supporting South-South cooperation, as an important dimension of international development cooperation and, indeed, of democratic global governance.

Two events already on the agenda could contribute to the follow-up process in the initial stage. The Group of 77 ministerial conference, planned to mark the 55th anniversary of the Group’s establishment, could consider SSC issues and follow-up to BAPA+40, including the re-launching of some ideas and projects agreed on in the past but not implemented.

Also, as suggested by the G77 Geneva Chapter in its comment on the Zero Draft, the next quadrennial UNCTAD conference, UNCTAD XV in 2020, will be an opportunity to pave the way for a far more active policy and substantive and action-oriented role of the UN by entrusting UNCTAD with some key domains of SSC.

These include ECDC, trade, finance, investment, technology, services, and regional and sub-regional integration, in which it had played an important and pioneering role in the past.

UNCTAD XV would also be an appropriate forum where to consider the larger institutional issue, namely of a leading role that UNCTAD, in partnership with and the support of the UN regional economic commissions and the South-South economic groupings, could play in spearheading and energizing the role of the UN and UN system in support of SSC.

When considering a possible G77 follow-up process to BAPA+40 and how to deal with shortcomings and weaknesses that have affected SSC and how to reinvigorate it in the coming period and beyond, the issue that merits priority attention is the need for institutional self-empowerment of the Global South, which is seriously handicapped by not having its own global institution, one similar to the North’s OECD.

A strong organization of the South is a sine qua non of the necessary drive and long-term institutional leadership and focus for the evolving process of South-South cooperation.

This institutional deficiency cannot be overcome by relying solely on the UN, especially in its present vulnerable situation when it is under the pressure of the key developed countries. Nor can one expect this function to be undertaken by individual developing countries.

A collective self-organization at the global level is of utmost priority and importance, including for a common review of the problems and challenges faced, for distilling common views and positions, and for the participation of all countries of the Global South.

BAPA+40 and its follow-up process in the fold of the Group of 77 would provide a political impulse to inaugurating a vital action for establishing an organization that would serve as the Global South’s own lead mechanism in the promising and all-important domain of South-South, as well as international and multilateral cooperation, an organization that would work in parallel with, complement and stimulate the efforts of the UN family as a whole.

A decision to establish a major, significant global organization of the Global South for South-South cooperation would represent a landmark event on the world scene.

In conclusion, it can be argued that, despite problems and political tensions within the South, between and within its countries, often with the involvement of actors from the North, and also despite crises in the global economy and turbulences in the multilateral system of international cooperation, the overall context today is favourable for South-South cooperation.

On the geopolitical front, the spread of right-wing populism and the migrant crisis, as well as major political and economic changes in the North, are reflected in the mounting global interventionism, the negative attitude towards the developing countries’ aspirations, and the disregard for multilateralism and values on which the United Nations is founded.

This will require of the developing countries actively to seek solutions through South-South cooperation, collective self-reliance, solidarity, an overarching political stance and initiatives regarding global concerns and issues.

The post The Challenges & Opportunities Facing South-South Cooperation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Branislav Gosovic worked in UNCTAD, UNEP, UNECLAC, World Commission on Environment and Development, South Commission, and South Centre (1991-2005), and is the author of the recently-published book ‘The South Shaping the Global Future, 6 Decades of the South-North Development Struggle in the UN.’

The post The Challenges & Opportunities Facing South-South Cooperation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 18 2019 (IPS)

Roma, a 2018 Mexican film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is currently on a triumphal journey through the world. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the best director and best foreign language film at the Golden Globe Awards, best director and best picture at the Critics´ Choice Awards, best film, best direction and best cinematography at the British Academy Film Awards. Furthermore, Roma has a record high ten nominations for the upcoming Academy Awards (The Oscars). Not at all bad for a black-and-white movie, which appears to have been directed by a sophisticated cineaste and custom-made for an art-house audience. Moreover, Roma deals with a highly controversial and seldom treated theme – the plight of poor, women domestic workers.

Of course, it was with high expectations that I sat down to watch this highly acclaimed movie, but it produced more disappointment than admiration. Let me begin with the aesthetics. I got an uncanny feeling that I had seen cinematography like this before. I was reminded of movies that Michelangelo Antonioni directed during the 1960s. He did not build his movies around traditional plots or intrinsic, character analysis. He rather used visuals as a tool for his message, which nevertheless was quite radical, critical of social ills and the feeling of alienation they created. Antonioni’s films were characterized by scant action and dialogue, complex and detailed composition and extremely long and well-planned shots. His characters were submerged in their inner life, unable to communicate their feelings, while Antonioni made their surroundings reflect their feelings. His persons moved around in simple, but at the same time visually stunning environments, saturated with moods and atmospheres.

Alfonso Cuarón´s movie is made like that and apart from Antonioni it reminded me of another skilled director, Luis Buñuel. Watching the wealthy people in Roma carousing on a hacienda during New Year´s Eve I came to think about Buñuel´s devastating criticism of the emptiness of higher class life in his The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and when a fire starts in the woods I was back in a surreal scene from Miloš Forman´s The Firemen´s Ball. I spite of these impressive models Cuarón´s movie lacks the desperation, the shocking condemnation of inner-city poverty of Buñuel´s Los Olvidados, which he in 1950 filmed in the slums not far from Colonia Roma, the wealthy middle class district in Mexico City, where Cuarón´s film takes place twenty years later. Roma has the refinement and aesthetics of Italian neo-realistic movies, but lacks the heart-braking compassion of films like Umberto D. and Bicycle Thieves, in which the desperate and poor protagonist in the end cries out: “I curse the day I was born!”

Like in the movies mentioned above, the setting of Cuarón´s characters is depicted with cinematographic splendour, but they do not advance the strong compassion you feel for a person like da Sica´s poor pensioner or bicycle thief. Cuarón´s “Cleo” Gutiérrez is an indigenous live-in maid in a wealthy middle-class household. Unfortunately, she remains a stereotype, as if she had been cast and solidified in the same mold as so many other working people imagined by upper middle-class moviemakers. A strong, silent, all-enduring and all-tolerating heroine, depraved of a voice of her own.

Cleo appears to speak the language of the Zapotecs of the valleys of Oaxca in southern Mexico, but we learn nothing about her roots among a people who uphold their strong traditions and who gave birth to Mexico´s president Benito Juárez (1806 – 1872), who from poor, rural, indigenous origins rose to become a well-educated, urban professional and a worldwide symbol of Latin American nationalism and resistance to foreign intervention.

Quiet and patient Cleo is dating Fermín, equally poor but a ruthless egocentric, who in an absurd scene naked is displaying his martial art skills, confessing to the usually silent Cleo: “I owe my life to martial arts. I grew up with nothing, you know.” Cleo becomes pregnant and Fermín avoids all responsibilities, insulting Cleo by calling her gata, cat, a common slur for maids “unable to take care of themselves”. Her employers sympathize with her and Cleo continues to work for them, receiving good medical care, thanks to the family’s connection to a major urban hospital.

The general background to Cleo´s drama is that the family father is leaving his wife and their four children, as well as the politically motivated Corpus Christi Massacre of June the 10th 1971, when 120 unarmed protesters were killed. Fermín happens to be part of the paramilitary Halcones, Falcons, who were guilty of the slaughter. The weakest moment of the movie is when this Fermín suddenly appears with a gun in the store where Cleo is looking for a crib for their expected child and he kills a man in front of her, at the same time as she goes into labour and is brought to the hospital by the mother of her employer. In spite of excellent care her baby is born dead. In connection with this comes the film´s most revealing scene: When Cleo is taken to the delivery room, the grandmother Teresa is asked by a nurse about Cleo’s last name, her date of birth and if she has insurance. Teresa cannot answer any of those questions.

Here the movie, as well as the reality, reveal themselves – poor women who work as maids are not considered as close friends and family members. Their employers often declare that “they are part of the family”, but this may serve as a means to deny them decent wages and social security. In spite of its shallowness, its lack of social, psychological and political sting Roma makes us aware of the plight of female, domestic workers; their poverty, defencelessness and marginalisation. Nevertheless, the soft, apolitical approach of Cuarón may just as well be a whitewash of inequality and discrimination and result in what I heard a Mexican woman state on TV: “Roma constitutes a homage to all the brave women who make it possible for us other women to make our contribution to society.”

As of June 2018, there were 2.2 million domestic workers in Mexico. Around 95 per cent of them were women and more than half of them had an indigenous background. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 67 million domestic workers worldwide, not including child domestic workers, and that this number is increasing steadily in both developed and developing countries. Approximately 83 percent are women and many are migrant workers.1 For the most part, domestic work is demanding and undervalued. Even if legislation protecting domestic workers exists in many countries, it is seldom enforced. Domestic work is generally poorly paid and regulated. It is also common that domestic workers are subject to serious and various forms of abuse. Maybe a change is on its way. In July 2011 an ILO Convention on Domestic Workers was adopted.2 It recognized domestic workers as workers with the same rights as other labourers and it was entered into force on 5th September 2013. However, the Convention is still far from being implemented everywhere. In spite of its shortcomings a popular film like Roma might constitute a small step in the right direction.

1 https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/domestic-workers/WCMS_209773/lang–en/index.htm
2 https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CMW.aspx

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

The post Roma the Movie: The Hidden Drama of Domestic Workers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Una May Gordon, Principal Director, Climate Change Division, in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Jamaica. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 18 2019 (IPS)

The island state of Jamaica is vulnerable to climate change which has in turn threatened both its economy and food production. But the Caribbean nation is taking the threat seriously and it has constructed a robust policy framework to support national climate action, particularly when it comes to promoting climate-smart agriculture (CSA).

“Climate change is a threat to Jamaica,” Una May Gordon, Principal Director, Climate Change Division, in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, told IPS. “We have pulled all the stops to deal with it in a smart way. Developing and implementing effective policies has been our weapon to fight climate change especially to protecting agriculture, a key economic sector.”

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), CSA pursues the triple objectives of sustainably increasing productivity and incomes, adapting to climate change, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions where possible. Though this does not imply that every practice applied in every location should produce ‘triple wins’. 

Over the last 30 years Jamaica has experienced increased floods, landslides, shoreline erosion, tropical storms, hurricanes, sea level rise and prolonged drought.

The Climate Change Division was created in 2013 in a deliberate attempt to place specific emphasis on the climate agenda. Jamaica recognised that climate change was affecting the country’s different sectors and instituted measures such as better management of water resources, adopting sustainable farming practices and planting crops that can withstand erratic weather conditions.

Adopting climate smart agriculture approaches has informed the country’s development agenda, said Gordon.

As the focal point for climate change in Jamaica, the Climate Change Division has facilitated the streamlining of climate change throughout the government structures. Gordon explains how Jamaica, which signed and ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement, has implemented resilience-building measures in the agriculture sector as part of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): How has climate change affected Jamaica specifically with regards to agriculture?

Una May Gordon (UG): Agriculture is one of the major sectors and major drivers of the Jamaican economy and it is probably the largest employer of labour within the economy. Agriculture is grounded on the rural economy and therefore affects the lives of small farmers and farm families. Drought, the [low] rainfall, the disparity in the cycles, increasing pests and disease and all these are climate related and we have seen the impacts on the production and the livelihood of the farmers.

On the other hand, there is the sea level rise; the large part of the Jamaican coastline is being impacted. Most of our critical infrastructure is within 5 kilometres of the coast and therefore many coastal communities [are also based along the coast]. We are seeing the impacts on the coastal communities and with the warming waters, we have seen less fish catches.

IPS: How do these policies work?

UG: The climate change policy has actions and activities to implement to make agriculture resilient and sustainable by adopting mitigation measures such as water management, better cropping to reduce agriculture’s environment impacts.

The agriculture ministry has a climate change focal point. This focal point belongs to a network of focal points. One of the structures that were created out of the policy framework is the climate change focal point network, which integrates and coordinates climate actions in the country. We recognise that a number of rural women are impacted by climate change. Therefore, the gender disparity between male and female is a gap we are working to close as we promote CSA initiatives.

IPS: How is CSA working?

UG: CSA, for us, is agriculture that is sustainable, that speaks to farmers and adapts to climate change. From a mitigation point of view, we talk about efficiency and reduction of waste and support for forest development.

Many farmers are on the borderline with the forests. In Jamaica, the preservation of the forest is about the sustainability of the production system and the adaptation and mitigation efforts of the farmers.

IPS: How do we get farmers to change their behaviour and recognise this?

UG: If farmers are not aware of the weather-related impacts, then they will be not be able to take action. And so the Met Service is a full partner in this project and we are using ICTs to provide farmers with real time weather data through their mobile phones. 

If a farmer knows that today or next week there will have more rain, then they will plan better as opposed not knowing what the weather will be like. If a farmer knows he will have no soil moisture then he probably takes steps to mulch. Farmers need to have a mind set change and become more proactive and prepare more to meet the challenges and we are arming them with information and skills to adapt.

IPS: How effective has this been?

UG: The project is in its early days but we have seen some results. We have farmers working together. By bringing them together, we are getting a change in minds sets because individually each farmer is doing their part and collectively they do better over time. Jamaica is divided into 14 parishes and this project is in three parishes. Eventually if we can scale up to another three parishes this year, we will be able to cover all.

IPS: What have you learnt from this that can be replicated?

UG: We underestimate the power of ICTs as a solution to addressing climate change. Cellphones are more powerful instruments than we take them to be. They can be a tool of trade for the farmers not only to make calls and so forth, but also to become part of the solutions to advance adaptation efforts because farmers can access value added information timely. Farmers are amenable to change and want to adapt. We are targeting 5,000 farmers across the three parishes. This project, though small in the scheme of things, will have a large impact.

IPS: As a government institution, what have you done to get the buy in of the private sector?

UG: Jamaica is very fortunate because the private sector is involved with us as partner in climate action … Some are retooling their own operations and there are huge investments in climate change now in Jamaica. This makes it easy for the government to scale up their ambition. Recently our Prime Minister announced that we would move from a target we had set on our own NDC of 30 percent renewables by 2025 – 2030 to 50 percent.

We also have invested significantly in clean energy. We have a solar farm and wind farms going up and these are private actions. From an agriculture point of view, the private sector is investing in sustainable agriculture practices where they are using solar energy.

The dialogue with the private sector and the government is at an advanced stage. We are supporting the rest of the Caribbean Region in conducting a scoping study to look at barriers to private sector engagement in climate action.

Related Articles

• Grenada to Launch USD42m Water Resiliency Project
• The Caribbean Reiterates “1.5 Degrees Celsius to Stay Alive”
• Countries On the Frontline of Climate Change Impact Call for Stronger Mitigation Commitments

The post Q&A: Jamaica Pushes Climate Smart Policies to Secure the Future of its Food Supply appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS correspondent Busani Bafana interviews UNA MAY GORDON, Principal Director, Climate Change Division, in Jamaica's Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation

The post Q&A: Jamaica Pushes Climate Smart Policies to Secure the Future of its Food Supply appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Men and women from Kalawa ward in Kenya’s Makueni County attended a forum on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many said that development projects implemented for them didn’t include their views and input. Credit: Justus Wanzala/IPS

By Justus Wanzala
MAKUENI, Kenya, Feb 18 2019 (IPS)

Julia Mutua is a resident of Kalawa ward in the semi-arid Makueni County in Eastern Kenya and a member of a women’s farmers group that runs a poultry project.

“Women are increasingly playing a key role in economically uplifting of their households, unlike before, but they need access to affordable loans from financial institutions and requisite skills to run own enterprise,” Mutua told IPS.

When she looks around she sees the issues of poverty, and access to essential services like running water and healthcare that many in the county grapple with. She notes too that poverty has affected access to education as many parents are unable to pay their children’s school fees.

Mutua is also concerned about ensuring that people living with disabilities are included in development. “People living with disabilities have been marginalised  for long, alongside poor women and girls. To bring everybody on board in the journey to achieve SDGs, they need tailor-made interventions to address their unique challenges,” she told IPS.

But she understands the need for partnership and collaboration in attaining these development goals.
In the early morning at the end of January, she is one of a group of about 100 women and men in Kalawa Township who attended a forum on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While the dialogue concentrated on effective and local participation in implementing the SDGs, the one-day forum’s main theme was ‘Leave no one behind’. Apart from local participants, also in attendance were representatives from Kenya’s National Treasury State Planning SDGs Unit, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), Islamic Relief and Caritas International.

The initiative is part of the International Civil Society Centre’s programme that involves working with governments, ordinary citizens and civil society to obtain community-driven data on marginalised communities.

The project is still in its pilot phase and is taking place in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Nepal and Vietnam.

Back in Makueni County, the dialogue is the third in a series of five that are taking place across the country. The forums began in December, with the first one taking place Kibera Slums in the country’s capital, Nairobi. A national forum will be held later this February.

But in Makueni the issues discussed included; understanding the conditions that promote the exclusion and marginalisation of various groups in society, categories of marginalised groups, and ways of ensuring their participation in decision making when it comes to the SDGs. Deliberations also included the impact of policy intervention on development outcomes for marginalised groups.

The 100 participants, most of whom are members of community-based organisation tackling development challenges, where in agreement that the dialogue provided a great opportunity to discuss issues affecting marginalised groups.

“Water scarcity affects women and children most,” Patricia Mutuku, an official of a local Water Users Association (WRUA ) called Thwake Kalawa, said. Her association undertakes projects such as creating sand dams, managing water springs, planting trees and reclaiming degraded land.

“We’ve a plan to plant trees specifically for ground water recharge. One of our members visited Ethiopia and learnt how trees can be used to enhance ground water recharge, an initiative we’re keen to replicate,” she said.

Fred Odinga, from VSO, said the dialogue offered his organisation an opportunity to understand how different groups and communities perceive the SDGs.

“We’ve observed in forums across the country that the most marginalised segments of society, like women who have never been heard before in the development process, get a chance to be heard by government officials during such events,” Odinga told IPS.

Odinga, however, said that public participation in undertaking of SDGs projects, although highly appreciated, had flaws that required addressing.

Indeed, participants expressed their frustrations saying views collected at grassroots level for county projects were rarely used in the final plans. Participants lamented that by the time decisions were made, what was aired at the grassroots level was rarely reflected because the process involved many levels of input.

They also said that many people failed to provide this input in the first place because in many cases this was only collected from city centres, which are not easily accessible for many.

“This means that their ideas are never considered in the development process,” Odinga said.

Odinga said as convenors, they were able to demystify the SDGs, “when we started [this morning] not many appeared to comprehend SDGs. Quite a number have had heard about it but couldn’t link it to the challenges they face.”

“Unfortunately, this is just a discussion with 100 people in a county with over a million. We need many similar forums to grasp the issues facing counties as they pursue the attainment of the SDGs,”  Odinga said. He added that everyone had to be part and parcel of the journey, and that nobody should be left behind.

Charles Nyakundi of VSO, who chaired a session on citizen participation when implementing the SDGs, observed that key shortcomings for this are monitoring, evaluation and accountability.

“To ensure positive change we need to let communities [financially] own projects for sustainability instead of initiating, implementing and moving away,” he explained.

Nyakundi said in earlier SDG dialogue forums in other counties they noted that most marginalised groups include the elderly, persons with disabilities and women.

“In some cultures men are the decision makers, women don’t [contribute] ideas,” Nyakundi explained.

His views were reiterated by Fredrick Musau, a resident of Kalawa who said that a bottom up approach in terms of identification and execution of community projects is preferred by residents. Musau is an opinion leader in Kalawa ward—a former teacher who sits in most local county committees that deal with development.

Despite being a drought-prone area, Makueni County is noted to have made huge strides in improving the lives of its people since Kenya adopted devolution six years ago. Devolution is a constitutional arrangement where decision making is vested in local administrative units or counties, with national government allocating resources. The counties are run by governors.

Stephen Odhiambo from the SDG Unit of the National Treasury in the Government of Kenya called for enhanced collaboration and partnership between all levels of government and non state actors.
He explained that an intergovernmental technical working group has been constituted to oversee the implementation of SDGs at national and county services.

Noting that the dialogue forum was successful, Odhiambo said, “Citizens should not cow from demanding for services.”

Odhiambo explained that currently no useable data was available on attaining the SDGs amongst Kenya’s communities and what was mostly used to evaluate this was proxy data.

“We are working on collecting community data. The National Treasury, National Bureau of Statistics, civil society organisations in collaboration with the Germany agency, GIZ, among others, are supporting the initiative. A lot of citizen-generated data is gathered at county level, but is rarely harnessed,” he said.

Odiambo said that there is need for a multi-sectoral approach of mapping and reaching marginalised groups where they are in order to engage them.

Crispus Mwanzoya, a national government sub county administrator was, however, concerned with the sustainability of SDG projects. But he added that contributing to the SDGs could be as simple as enhancing and redirecting a gutter on a house in order to collect rain water.

“We need to change our mindsets to attain SDGs for we’re not poor in resources but poor in mind. The government can’t do everything, we have a central role.”

Related Articles

• Expectations High for First Global Blue Economy Conference
• Leave No One Behind: The Right to Development
• The Adolescent Girl Holds the Key to Kenya’s Economic Transformation and Prosperity
• Kenyan Women Turning the Tables on Traditional Banking and Land Ownership

The post Kenya’s Marginalised Say Nothing For Us, Without Us appeared first on Inter Press Service.

"Humanitarian aid now. We need it," read a banner during a massive demonstration in Caracas on Feb. 12, demanding that international aid blocked at the border of neighboring countries be allowed into the country. The demonstrations were held in 50 towns and cities around the country, in support of Juan Guaidó as acting president and demanding that President Nicolás Maduro step down. Credit: Humberto Márquez/IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 16 2019 (IPS)

The international food and medical aid awaiting entry into Venezuela from neighboring Colombia, Brazil and Curacao is at the crux of the struggle for power between President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó, recognised as “legitimate president” by 50 governments.

The current situation “offers advantages to Guaidó. It is trying to break the ties between Maduro and the armed forces through the pressure to receive humanitarian aid,” Argentine analyst Andrei Serbin Pont, director of the Regional Coordinator of Economic and Social Research, a Latin American academic network, told IPS.

Serbin said Guaidó should secure the so-far reluctant participation of the Red Cross and the United Nations with respect to getting the aid into the country because “by definition humanitarian aid cannot have political objectives,” which are clearly present in the cooperation offered by governments of the Americas and Europe that refuse to recognise Maduro as the legitimately re-elected president."The struggle over the aid makes many local residents here see that there is hope that this time the opposition will bring about change; people now see light at the end of the tunnel." -- Nadine Cubas

President Maduro said: “It is not humanitarian aid but a rotten gift, which carries within the poison of humiliation of our people and serves as a prelude to military intervention. If the United States wants to help us, the blockade, the financial persecution and the economic sanctions against Venezuela should cease.”

U.S. President Donald Trump and several of his Latin America policy advisers repeat the mantra that “Maduro must go,” and that Washington “does not rule out any option, including the military option” with respect to Venezuela.

The Venezuelan armed forces, which have reiterated their loyalty to Maduro, have been deployed in territorial defence exercises since late January, have blocked road access from Colombia, and are ready to prevent any attempt to bring in the controversial aid shipments.

In the midst of one of the multitudinous street demonstrations that the opposition has held in recent weeks, Guaidó announced that “humanitarian aid is going to come in, no ifs ands or buts. I have given the order to the armed forces to allow it to enter” on Feb. 23.

The unprecedented situation in which Venezuela finds itself, with two supposed presidents, is due to the fact that the opposition and many governments consider invalid the May 2018 elections in which Maduro, 56, was elected for a second six-year term on Jan. 10, and refuse to recognise him as president.

In response, the opposition-dominated National Assembly, considered to be in a state of rebellion by the other branches of government, decided that its president, the 35-year-old Guaidó, would be acting president of Venezuela, starting on Jan. 23.

The border city of Cúcuta in northeastern Colombia has already received 500 tons of medicines and nutritional supplements, while Guaidó announced new collection centers in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil and on the neighboring Dutch island of Curacao, where 90 tons are expected from France, opposition deputy Stalin González told the media.

The aid accumulated so far “consists of emergency medicines and supplements for children under three years of age with severe malnutrition, pregnant or nursing mothers, and the elderly,” Julio Castro, leader of the non-governmental organisation Doctors for Health, told IPS.

The medical aid, according to Castro, “10 percent of what is urgently needed,” for some 300,000 patients, will go to public hospitals and will be distributed by NGOs and religious organisations, with the support of thousands of volunteers responding to the opposition’s call.

Gonzalez said there are already 250,000 volunteers mobilised around the country, including 10,000 health professionals.

Young people from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela gathered in downtown Caracas on Feb. 12 to express support for President Nicolás Maduro. Credit: AVN

An immediate effect of the bid for aid has been that the government has increased in recent days the delivery of apparently stockpiled medicines and supplies to several public hospitals, according to workers at several hospitals in Caracas and other cities.

People like Natalia Vargas, 39, a bank clerk and diabetes patient, hope that “if emergency help arrives, then other medicines that are scarce because they are imported can come. And when you get them, they’re too expensive.”

“I hope that the politicians and the military will reach an agreement to bring in the aid,” she told IPS at her home in La Candelaria, a traditional lower-middle-class neighourhood in central Caracas.

The international aid initiatives are in response to the social and economic collapse that has occurred in Venezuela since Maduro firste came to power in 2013, unprecedented due to the fact that it happened in an oil-rich country and because of the speed of the collapse, without no natural catastrophe or war.

During the last five years and while some three million people left the country, more than 80 percent of Venezuela’s 31 million inhabitants were left in poverty and unable to acquire enough food and the medicines they need, in addition to hyperinflation since 2017, according to the Study on Living Conditions conducted by three of the country’s leading universities.

In the same period, the economy shrunk to half its size, GDP plunged 56 percent, 210,000 of the 490,000 companies in the country closed, half of the industrial park has been operating at 20 percent of capacity, and local agriculture can barely provide 25 percent of the necessary food, according to the 2018 year-end report of the Fedecámaras central business chamber.

The deficit of medicines in pharmacies remains has stood at 85 percent since last year, the president of the Federation of Pharmacists, Freddy Ceballos, said on Feb. 13.

From the town of Cúa, near the east of the capital, Nadine Cubas, 71, who suffers from hypertension and glaucoma, told IPS that “we are far from the border, that aid may not reach the valleys of the Tuy River, where we are, but if it supplies the people in the west then there is a better chance of getting medicines here.”

Cubas added that “the struggle over the aid makes many local residents here see that there is hope that this time the opposition will bring about change; people now see light at the end of the tunnel.”

What the opposition is counting on is this: if the government lets the aid in, it will show weakness and a division in the support of the military, with an unpredictable domino effect, and if it does not allow it in, it will look like an inhumane clique of leaders whose only concern is to hold onto power, opposition deputies Julio Borges and Juan Miguel Matheus told reporters.

This position is in line with the demand that the entry of aid be a first step for the Venezuelan crisis to lead to elections for a new government, as demanded by the United States, the Lima Group of 12 countries from the hemisphere and the majority of the European Union, against opposition by other governments, such as those of China, Cuba, Iran, Russia and Turkey, or calls for a search for a middle path, issued by Mexico and Uruguay.

Borges and Gonzalez said the humanitarian aid that has accumulated will be followed by more aid as the political game unfolds in Venezuela.

Governments such as those of Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Puerto Rico and the United States, plus the Organisation of American States, have offered more than 200 million dollars in assistance.

Related Articles

• Bullets Against Pots and Pans in the Crackdown on Venezuela’s Protests
• In Venezuela, Two Presidents Vie for Power

The post International Aid Feeds Hope and Fuels Confrontation in Venezuela appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Natasha Chaudhary* is a trainer, coach and strategy consultant working to strengthen people-powered work. She is a Director at Haiyya, an Indian youth led feminist non-profit organization specializing in grassroots campaigning and consulting.

By Natasha Chaudhary
NEW DELHI, Feb 15 2019 (IPS)

Results from a survey with young and unmarried women suggest that as low as 1% of women have received information on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) from their mothers, doctors or government campaigns.

And 53% of these women feel unsure if the sexual health problems they faced were severe enough to visit a gynaecologist. Within the Indian context and patriarchal system, any conversation around young women’s sexuality is limited and stigmatised.

Natasha Chaudhary

This massively impacts the way unmarried women view their sexual health. About 13 women in India die every day due to unsafe abortions.

Shame and stigma particularly impact unmarried women who end up delaying abortions and often resort to backdoor clinics putting their lives at risk. As low as 20% of the unmarried women my organization (Haiyya) surveyed, knew about the abortion law in India, and 95% had never visited a gynaecologist to take consultation on sex, pleasure or contraception.

As a demographic, unmarried women are completely invisible in the domain of SRHR in India. Due to societal biases and shame, they de-prioritize their sexual health needs and refrain from accessing services.

When they try to consult doctors, they are often denied services, misinformed or coerced into decisions. It is this stigma and narrative we are challenging through our initiative at Haiyya called Health Over Stigma.

It all started 2 years ago, when one of our colleagues had to undergo an abortion. It was a traumatic and harrowing experience she went through at the clinic, where her dignity was shamed and destroyed.

Following that event, we found ourselves sharing personal stories with each other that we had never shared before. One of us had been denied getting a pap smear test because the doctor felt she would only need it once married.

Someone else had elongated treatment of a vaginal infection because she was too scared to visit a gynaecologist. Someone else had been shamed by the doctor, who dared to ask if her parents knew she was sexually active.

We all had approached our sexual health from a place of fear. None of us felt we could hold service providers accountable. We felt as if we were alone and had no bargaining power as a community.

We began talking to more women and found that despite different experiences, we were bound by our stories of isolation and helplessness. This issue has persisted because power lies with age old institutions where women are disengaged from decision making processes that affect their very own lives.

We needed to flip this by organizing unmarried women as a collective and moving the onus and accountability on medical institutions.

After two years of work, we are challenging the status quo. As a recipient of the Goalkeepers Youth Accelerator Award, this year I will be able to lead Haiyya in the implementation of a campaign were women will mobilize and demand to be treated with dignity and their agency upheld and asking doctors to fulfil their duty as non-judgmental service providers.

Through storytelling and community building, we are aiming to achieve three key objectives in 2019:

Catalyzing public commitments from institutions such as hospitals, ministries and other relevant health actors to update their code of conduct. Creating an online platform that empowers women by providing them with resources on their rights, how to access services, and testimonials from individual experiences.

Building a community of women in India who drive an online conversation in key states on devising informed strategies that improve access to health services and combat stigma

Within the sexual reproductive health and rights spaces, unmarried women continue to be a marginalised group. As a young unmarried woman working with other such women, I want to change that narrative.

We will achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 5.6 (ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights) by making possible that all women, from diverse backgrounds, ages and choices, have the right and necessary information.

*Natasha Chaudhary holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from University of Sydney and was an undergraduate at Delhi University. She says she deeply cares about gender, health and caste issues with a focus intersectional leadership and designing-interventions that enable changemakers as decision- makers shifting away from service delivery models.

The post Dismantling Sexual Health Stigma in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Natasha Chaudhary* is a trainer, coach and strategy consultant working to strengthen people-powered work. She is a Director at Haiyya, an Indian youth led feminist non-profit organization specializing in grassroots campaigning and consulting.

The post Dismantling Sexual Health Stigma in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Suriname’s President, Desiré Delano Bouterse, who this week gathered the High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation nations in Paramaribo for a major conference to discuss the way forward. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 15 2019 (IPS)

At the Bonn Climate Conference in 2017, Suriname announced its aspirations to maintain its forest coverage at 93 percent of the land area.

For Suriname and other High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations, maintaining forest coverage is their contribution to saving the planet from the effects of climate change, something they did not cause.

But HFLD nations have faced a challenge finding a development model that balances their national interests while continuing to deliver eco-services to the world. They say the valuable contribution of especially HFLD developing countries to the climate change challenge is not reflected in climate finance.

These countries – which also include, among others: Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Bhutan, Zambia, and French Guiana – now have a champion at the forefront of their cause.

He is Suriname’s President, Desiré Delano Bouterse, who this week gathered the HFLD nations in Paramaribo for a major conference to discuss the way forward.

The three-day conference ended with countries adopting the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation.

“The declaration is one of significance,” Bouterse told IPS in an interview.

“What I want to communicate to the world community is that we should first and foremost note that our planet is in danger and that it calls for common action.”

Bouterse said HFLD developing countries have set themselves on a new path, and that Suriname takes its new assignment very seriously and pledge its dedication.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Mr. President, what was your vision when this conference was being conceptualised?

Desiré Delano Bouters (DDB): It’s more than 30 years that we are facing this issue, and what we have looked at is that countries that are facing the issue of high forestry have difficulties getting financial opportunities. So that is basically the main reason for the conference.

We have forest cover of approximately 94.6 percent. Our commitment to the world is that we will maintain a forest cover of 93 percent. That is a commitment we made.

What we know is that there is a contention between the interest and will to maintain the forest cover and on the one hand. On the other hand are the development challenges with scarce financial resources. Thirdly is the difficult to access financial opportunities. So, what has to happen is that the world community has to understand this commitment and seek a mechanism for easier accessibility to financial mechanisms so that we can therefore get training, we can get capacity building – access to finances in order to maintain this commitment. So, it’s crucial to get that access.

IPS: We have seen so many declarations made before, is there a reason to be optimistic about the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation?

DDB: Yes, there have been declarations but here’s what I think is necessary coming out of this process. There is a need for precise scientific research which will allow us a truthful picture of what we can be given for the offer we make; so that there is a very precise calculation so to speak, so that we don’t estimate but rather know what the value is of the offer we have made.

IPS: What does this declaration mean in terms of financial resources and also benefits to the people of Suriname and other HFLD nations?

DDB: Firstly, the declaration is one of significance, such that we have gathered as like-minded countries to basically face the coming challenges together and therefore approach the world community with one voice in order to over the hurdle that we commonly face. And so you should see the declaration in that sense, that we have brought the many Heads of countries with similarities together to get mileage out of what we offer.

IPS: You have been charged with championing this cause on behalf of the NFLD nations – You are speaking directly to the international community, what message are you sending right now?

DDB: What I want to communicate to the world community is that we should first and foremost note that our planet is in danger and that it calls for common action. If we neglect coming together to address this danger, we may face a very tragic situation which will then leave our planet worse than we have met it for our children and their children.

IPS: Now that you have adopted the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration, what is the next step?

DDB: Firstly, what we have to do or know is that the group of countries have identified Suriname as the leader to communicate what we have agreed upon in this conference and as such we have to use each international opportunity to let the world know what we have agreed upon and what we are expecting from them.

We have to, from a common position, reason. We have to reason from a common position and therefore we should approach our position, not from a point of view that the other developed countries should take the lead. No, we should look at it from our point of view.

You should see it as this, politically and economically, being in the Caribbean and South America, we should approach it from a common and joint position. Let me give an example. When you look at CARICOM, even if it’s the United States, CARICOM works together as one. It’s the same when it comes to China, Canada, India or even Europe. Why? Because we’re joined together. We have a common strategy. So, when you’re alone, it’s very difficult. But when you have your structure, they will take you more seriously. That’s why I give the example of CARICOM. There are different, small nations but the big countries – if it’s Russia or India – everybody wants to talk with the 14 CARICOM countries.

IPS: Is there a role for the youth and all of this?

DDB: Yes, we have in our portfolio in CARICOM, inclusion of the youth, this is something we are proud of. What we have seen here today is that young people have stepped up to the plate and they have made their voices heard. However, I’m also of the belief that we should make the space and give them the opportunity to assume leadership so that they can learn and make errors, but at the same time don’t make the same mistake that we as leaders have made; because before you know it, it’s their turn to be leaders. It is therefore important to allow them that experience so that they can be part of the process.

Related Articles

• http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/02/today-declare-love-forests-ecosystems/
• The Role Technology Can Play in Fighting Climate Change and Deforestation

The post Q&A: Suriname’s President Champions Preserving the World’s Forests appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DESIRE DELANO BOUTERSE, president of Suriname.

The post Q&A: Suriname’s President Champions Preserving the World’s Forests appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Bringing #MeToo to the Fashion Industry appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Yldiz Deborah Pollack-Beighle said the adoption of the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation declaration represents a commitment that no longer would HFLD nations be the ones producing the solution to climate change and global warming without the required financial assistance. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 15 2019 (IPS)

High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations ended a major conference in Suriname on Thursday, with the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation.

Krutu—an indigenous Surinamese word—means a gathering of significance or a gathering of high dignitaries, resulting in something that is workable.

“It is with great joy that I announce the adoption of the Krutu of Paramaribo Joint Declaration on HFLD Climate Finance Mobilisation,” Suriname’s President Desiré Delano Bouterse said.

“The adoption of this document is important to jointly continue our efforts and focus on practical results, as it enables us to increase our cooperation at relevant international and multilateral mechanisms.”

In the declaration, HFLD nations made several pledges, among them: to raise international recognition of the significant contribution that HFLD developing countries provide to the global response to climate change by enabling their forests to serve as vital carbon sinks, and look to the international community to provide adequate financial support to help maintain this treasure.

For HFLD developing countries, nature and development are intrinsically connected, Bouterse said, adding they were all confronted with the threats from unsustainable activities, while attempting to plan a sustainable development.

Bouterse said the challenge for these nations had been to find a development model that balances their national interests while continuing to deliver eco-services to the world.

“I look forward to a united voice and innovative models that will shape our mutual interests. Suriname is honoured to have received the mandate to bring the HFLD developing countries’ effort to the international fora. We take this assignment very seriously and pledge our dedication,” the Suriname president said.

“We, as HFLD developing countries, have set ourselves on a new path. We offer to all of our friends and collaborators the Krutu of Paramaribo to lead the way.”

Suriname was the first country that reserved vast amount of its land mass—11 percent—for conservation purposes, when it established the Central Suriname Nature Reserve in 1998.

Bouterse said at that time Suriname had manoeuvred itself into a difficult position because almost half of its land was handed over to logging companies in the early 90s.

However, he said that the strategic establishment of the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, with a total area of 1.6 million hectares, put an immediate halt to these activities.

“This decision was specifically taken for protection reasons. A decision without even having the foresight of what this Nature Reserve’s intrinsic value would be in the years to come,” he said.

“Now, 20 years later, we owe it to ourselves to evaluate and question the impacts of this decision. Are the ecosystems in the Nature Reserve intact or enhanced as originally intended?

“Do the conservation efforts contribute to our economic development? Do we invest enough in our own capacity to be a player on the world environment stage? Do we make sufficient use of available multilateral funds and financial mechanisms? And, to what extent does our fellow Surinamese man or woman benefit from having a Nature Reserve that comprises 11 percent of their land?”

Meanwhile, Bouterse said Suriname will improve its legislation, align policies to their aspirations and improve even further.

“It is with great satisfaction that I announce that Suriname has deposited the instrument of ratification to the Paris Agreement on Feb. 13. We look to the international community to assist us with appropriate financial instruments, technology and training, for only together we can attain our common objectives.”

With the Declaration being adopted on Valentine’s Day, Panama’s Vice Minister for the Ministry of Environment Yamil Sanchez said, “Today we declare our love to our forests and ecosystems.”

Suriname’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Yldiz Deborah Pollack-Beighle said the declaration represents a commitment that HFLD nations no longer will be the ones producing a solution to climate change and global warming without the required financial assistance.

“The conversation needs to change, and it should be that we should be paid for maintain or our forests,” Pollack-Beighle told IPS.

“It was not an easy conversation, but we’ve had a breakthrough and the breakthrough resulted in the fact that we will be leaving this conference with this document.”

She said at the end of the day, it’s the people of HFLD nations that will benefit from the three days of talks.

The Krutu Declaration will result in tangible benefits for the communities that are living and are resident in these forested areas, Pollack-Beighle said, adding that the countries as a whole will also benefit.

“For Suriname, we need to arrive at the point where we will no longer have to beg for the fact that we have presented the world with a solution, but we will be sought out and provided with opportunities that are existing,” she said.

“We are leaving here with a commitment that needs to translate itself in such a way that . . . we see significant changes immediately after this conference.

“Suriname has been given the role of advocate and champion to make sure that this declaration finds its way at the highest level of the global agenda, bilateral agendas, but also the regional agenda,” Pollack-Beighle added.

Related Articles

• The Role Technology Can Play in Fighting Climate Change and Deforestation
• Q&A: We Are Helping the World Mitigate Climate Change, Now it’s Time to Help Us
• Our Forests Provide the World With Oxygen But We Need More Climate Change Finance – HFLD Countries

The post ‘Today, We Declare Our Love to Our Forests and Ecosystems’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An electoral worker prepares identity card and biometric verification readers, at the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Kano, northern Nigeria, on February 14, 2019. CPJ joined a call for Nigeria to ensure that internet and social media services remain connected during the upcoming elections. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

By Editor, CPJ
Feb 14 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – The Committee to Protect Journalists joined more than 15 rights organizations and the #KeepItOn Coalition to call for Nigerian authorities to ensure that internet and social media services remain connected during upcoming elections, and safeguard internet speeds of websites and messaging applications. In early February, Nigeria’s federal government denied rumors of plans to shut down the internet during upcoming elections, according to the privately owned Guardian Nigeria and Quartz news outlets. Nigeria has two sets of elections scheduled in the coming weeks: federal elections on February 16 and state elections on March 2.

The letter, addressed to Umar Garba Danbatta, executive vice chairman and chief executive officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission, emphasized how internet disruptions inhibit journalists’ ability to safely conduct reporting and run contrary to international law. It also highlighted additional social and economic costs of internet outages.

“The media is critical to this particular election and critical to people understanding both the [election’s] processes and procedures,” Festus Okoye, national commissioner of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, told CPJ on February 13. Okoye also emphasized the importance of internet connectivity because the smart card readers used for voter identification are based on the internet. “Three networks–Glo, MTN, and Airtel–are powering them [the smart card readers], so if you jam the network there won’t be any election…that’s just the bottom line.” he said.

Read the full letter here.

The post CPJ joins call for Nigeria to ensure internet and social media services remain connected during elections appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Maria Ressa--founder, CEO, and executive editor of the Rappler news website--giving her acceptance speech at CPJ's 2018 International Press Freedom Awards on November 20, 2018. (Getty Images/Dia Dipasupil)

By Editor, CPJ
Feb 14 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – The Philippine government’s legal harassment of the news website Rappler and Maria Ressa, its founder and executive editor, took an alarming turn Wednesday when officers from the National Bureau of Investigation arrested Ressa at Rappler’s bureau in Manila and held her overnight over a cyber libel case filed against her by the Justice Department. Ressa’s arrest was in connection to a story published by Rappler in 2012, before the law was enacted. Ressa told CPJ before her arrest that the charge was “political” and that the Philippines has “weaponized” its cybercrime law. Ressa was released on bail on Thursday morning. CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler explored the implications of Ressa’s arrest for press freedom in an op-ed for CNN.

Apart from the cyber-libel charges, Ressa and Rappler face five tax cases. In December, CPJ and First Look Media announced a campaign to provide legal support for journalists, and the first recipients were Ressa and Rappler. CPJ’s board also passed a resolution Wednesday condemning the arrest.

The post Philippines’ Maria Ressa detained and released over ‘political’ charge appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname tells IPS High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations need support as they continue to protect their forests. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 14 2019 (IPS)

As High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations meet in Suriname at a major conference, it is obvious that the decision made by these countries to preserve their forests has been a difficult but good one.

“It is a choice that governments have to make to determine whether they want to continue being custodians of the environment or whether they want to pursue interests related only to economic advancement and economic growth,” Dr. Armstrong Alexis, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname, tells IPS in an interview.

The UNDP and the U.N. Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) have been instrumental in the coming together of the group of countries under the HFLD umbrella.

Both U.N. bodies have supported countries with the design and implementation of national policies and measures to reduce deforestation and manage forests sustainably, hence contributing to the mitigation of climate change and advancing sustainable development.

Forests provide a dwelling and livelihood for over a billion people—including many indigenous peoples. They also host the largest share the world’s biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services, such as water and carbon storage, which play significant roles in mitigating climate change.

Deforestation and forest degradation, which still continue in many countries at high rates, contribute severely to climate change, currently representing about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Amid this, Alexis says HFLD countries need support as they continue to protect their forests.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

For a long time Suriname has maintained 93 percent forest cover of total land area which has been providing multiple benefits to the global community, in particular, combatting climate change for current and future generations. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you give a brief synopsis of the work of the UNDP in Suriname?

Armstrong Alexis (AA): The UNDP is a partner in development in Suriname. We specifically focus on resources. We cover a whole spectrum of issues around climate change, renewable energy, the reduction of fossil fuels and adaptation and mitigation measures. We also focus on the issue of forests.

IPS: Why is this meeting important for Suriname, and what was the UNDP’s role in collaborating with the HFLD nations?

AA: Suriname is the most forested country on earth. Approximately 93 percent of the land mass of Suriname is covered by pristine Amazonian forests. So, with 93 percent forest cover, Suriname has traditionally, for centuries, been a custodian of its forests and have preserved its forests while at the same time achieving significant development targets for its people.

Given the role of forests as they relate to climate change and in particular the sequestration of carbon, Suriname genuinely believes, and the science will back that up, that Suriname in fact is a carbon negative country. It stores a lot more carbon than it emits. And there are a number of other countries in the world that the U.N. has defined as Heavily Forested Low Deforestation countries. These are countries that are more than 50 percent covered by forests and at the same time they have the deforestation rate which is way below the international average which I think is .02 percent of deforestation per annum.

These countries have come together through a collaborative effort supported by the UNDP and the UN-DESA.

We’ve brought these countries together because they all have a common purpose, they all have a common story and they all are working towards finding common solutions to ensure that there is:

1. Recognition of the fact that these countries have traditionally maintained their forests and have not destroyed the forests in the name of development;
2. Given the relevance of trees and forests to combatting climate change, that these are actually the countries that provide a good example and the best opportunity for serving the earth with high forest cover.

IPS: What is the way forward for the protection of forests?

AA: In every country where there are forests there are activities that result in two things – deforestation, where the trees are cut down and usually not replaced; and you also have what it called forest degradation where the forest is not totally destroyed but it is not as thick, it does not have as many trees and sometimes the trees are much younger for many different reasons, including timber production. So, you might be degrading the quality of the forest but not necessarily deforesting in total.

Those countries that form the HFLD have made commitments with the international community that they will continue to pursue their development objectives without necessarily destroying their forests. And destroying here means either deforestation or degradation.

It’s a challenge because in Suriname for example, the small-scale gold mining sector is the largest driver of deforestation—not timber production, not palm oil as in some countries, and not infrastructure.

IPS: So, what do you say to a country that has gold in the soil? That they should not mine that gold?

AA: It’s difficult to say that to a country when the economy depends on it. How do you say to a country don’t produce timber when the economy of the country depends on it?

There are ways and means of doing it [small-scale mining or timber production] in a sustainable way. There are ways and means of ensuring that in granting concessions whether it be for timber production or small-scale gold mining, that you take into consideration means and approaches for rehabilitation.

You have to take into consideration the biodiversity and the sensitivity of some of those forests and whether or not you value more the biodiversity of that area or the few dollars that you can make by destroying that area’s forests and extracting the gold and extracting the timer.

So, conscious decisions have to be made by governments and our role as UNDP is to provide the government with the policy options, which usually is supported by sound scientific research and data to indicate to them what their real options are and how they can integrate those options in the decisions that they make.

So, it is a difficult choice indeed, but it is a choice that governments have to make to determine whether they want to continue being custodians of the environment or whether they want to pursue interests related only to economic advancement and economic growth.

So far, they’ve done a good job at it. One of the areas that I want to emphasise is that a lot of this work cannot be done by the countries alone, because if you think about it, the market for the timber is not Suriname. The market for the gold is not Suriname.

Usually the companies that come into those countries to do the extractives, they are not even local companies. They are big multinational companies. A country like Suriname or Guyana—those countries cannot take on this mammoth task alone. They need the support of the international community, they need the support of agencies like the U.N., they need the support of the funds that have been established like the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, the Adaptation Fund, and they need the support of the bilateral donors and the countries that have traditionally invested in protecting the forests.

Related Articles

• Q&A: We Are Helping the World Mitigate Climate Change, Now it’s Time to Help Us
• Our Forests Provide the World With Oxygen But We Need More Climate Change Finance – HFLD Countries
• Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions

The post Q&A: What of the Carbon Neutral Countries? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DR. ARMSTRONG ALEXIS, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname.

The post Q&A: What of the Carbon Neutral Countries? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Engineer Roberto Wong Loi Sing says technology has a very crucial role to play in fighting climate change and deforestation. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 14 2019 (IPS)

At 51, Roberto Wong Loi Sing has spent nearly half of his life working in the field of engineering. But as he spends his days designing more efficient stormwater management systems, or water purification systems, for instance, the child in him comes alive as he combines his skills to find “win-win” solutions for the environment.

“On a practical scale, I am talking about things like water purification,” says Wong Loi Sing, who specialises in land and water management. “The child in me lives when we can combine things for a win, win. So, if I can design, if I can work in making better stormwater management systems but at the same time contribute to better land management, that would be ideal.”

He currently serves as the Leader of Projects at ILACO—an engineering firm in Suriname which is active in a wide range of studies and planning of development projects, among other things. The firm is also one of the local sponsors of a major international conference on climate financing for High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries, which the Caribbean nation of Suriname is hosting.

Wong Loi Sing, who spoke with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, says technology has a very crucial role to play in fighting climate change and deforestation.

At the macro level, he says technology can also help big polluters in the world reduce their pollution and become much more environmentally friendly.

“On a large scale, we, as experts in the field of technology, definitely have to take the lead role—not politicians, not economists, not financiers—but technologists, engineers, the scientists. [We] should make it so attractive for investors to be willing to invest in cleaner technology, greener technology,” Wong Loi Sing tells IPS.

“You have to invent. Your mind is the biggest asset that you have, and we are able,” he affirms.

Trinidad & Tobago-based KVR Energy Limited is one company that has taken military technology of Forward Looking InfraRed Optical Gas Imaging (FLIR OGI) and found innovative uses for it—such as using it to find hazardous gases.

The company uses an optimal gas imaging camera, which is considered a highly-specialised version of an infrared or thermal imaging camera, to find gas leaks “which would be otherwise impossible to find using conventional methods,” KVR’s regional manager Vikash Rajnauth tells IPS.

“The technology is not new, it has been used for military and defence, but this aspect of it is very special because it uses a specific tuning of a detector to find hazardous gases. We have worked on a methodology to use footage from the camera to quantify this gas . . . so this way we can put an actual dollar value to it,” Rajnauth says.

Most importantly, Rajnauth says they can also now put a value as to how many credits companies are using by producing hazardous gases and emitting them into the environment.

He explains that his company has already implemented the technology at British Petroleum (BP) and Shell, noting that they were able to get Shell in Tunisia to come onboard long before getting buy-in for the technology from Shell in Trinidad & Tobago.

“At the end of March this year, we will be entering into our first exercise with the Atlantic LNG facility in Trinidad to quantify gas leaks,” Rajnauth says.

But he also admits the technology does not come cheap.

“It has a spectral filter inside the camera. It also has a cryogenic cooler that cools a FLIR Indium Antimonide (InSb) detector inside the camera down to -321 degrees F. The technology is not cheap, but it pays back for itself in no time when we consider loss of containment, prevention of catastrophic failures and harm to the environment,” Rajnauth says.

Information technology consultant Camille Pagee says there are also low-cost solutions available to countries in the Caribbean to gather data. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Meanwhile, information technology consultant Camille Pagee points out that there are low-cost solutions available to countries in the Caribbean to use to collect data as they address climate change.

Pagee, the Managing Director at Connect Consulting Limited, has worked in IT in the Caribbean since 2004, following software development experience in Canada. Over the years she has gained experience in dozens of businesses, from large breweries to small companies and public agencies.

She says that in the Caribbean region, costly solutions and projects by both business and government have a high rate of failure, and she recommends that countries use the tools they already have at their disposal and to also start on a small scale.

“The truth is that climate finance is a subject that is very abstract, but it’s founded 100 percent on data. We are speaking as the HFLD countries and stating that we’re delivering a service and we’re demanding that services have a particular value,” Pagee tells IPS.

“How does business work, how does finance work? It wants to measure value. There’s a value to everything that we purchase and so we have to present a value to everything that we want to receive, sell, market or manage. And where does that come from? Data.”

Pagee says she has found that there are two main myths that have contributed to the high rate of failure of IT projects. The first is that collecting data is a very technical exercise.

“The truth is, every single day in our businesses, in our offices, at client service counters for government public service we are collecting data, some [of it is through] using simple tools like the old fashion ledger, while others conduct face to face surveys.”

Using her own company as an example, she says they have collected data from around the Caribbean trying to make use of simple every-day tools.

“We conduct face-to-face surveys to collect primary, real, current information about a range of things. It could be public opinion, it could be state of projects, it could be impact,” she tells IPS.

“My company [comprises] under 10 people, we have had clients in nine countries around the Caribbean, and in the past eight years we have collected 100,000 face-to-face interviews on points of data ranging from short questions–10 points to as long as 50 points.”

Pagee says the second myth is that data collection is a technical activity and complex projects require complex and advance project structures.

But she says most people, even in developing countries and HFLD nations are already preparing to collect data.

“We’re not lacking any of the tools. I am calling on those who are in a position to make decisions about big projects, especially relating to data which is especially related to the success of climate financing, climate measurements and carbon measurements – let’s think about the importance of small steps and small projects, community level activities,” Pagee says.

“Data is a product which continue to have value. It doesn’t lose the value if you collect it in small portions compared to collecting it in large portions. It all tells you the reality of your process, the success of your business efforts,” she adds.

Related Articles

• Q&A: We Are Helping the World Mitigate Climate Change, Now it’s Time to Help Us
• It is Imperative for the Caribbean to Have a Seat at the COP24 Negotiating Table
• Our Forests Provide the World With Oxygen But We Need More Climate Change Finance – HFLD Countries

The post The Role Technology Can Play in Fighting Climate Change and Deforestation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Rapa Nui’s Stone Statues and Marine Resources Face Threats from Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.