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Yilmaz Akyüz is former Director, UNCTAD, and former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva

By Yilmaz Akyüz
GENEVA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

At a time when the world economy is seen poised for yet another financial turmoil, there is a widespread recognition that emerging economies (EMEs) are particularly vulnerable because of their deepened integration into the global financial system.   What is less appreciated is the implication of financial globalization and integration for external wealth distribution between emerging and advanced economies and resource transfers from the former to the latter.

This is the subject matter of a new study by this author on external balance sheets of emerging economies, focussing on nine G-20 EMEs (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Turkey) and four major advanced economies, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK.

The new millennium has seen a rapid increase in gross external assets and liabilities of EMEs, both as a result of ultra-easy monetary policy in major advanced economies (AEs) and capital account liberalization in EMEs ‒ a process of deepened integration described as Playing with Fire.

Almost 90 per cent of outstanding external assets and liabilities of G-20 EMEs have been accumulated since the turn of the century.  Although debtor-creditor relations and foreign direct investment (FDI) within the Global South have been growing rapidly, a very large proportion of gross external assets and liabilities of EMEs are still with AEs.  This is true not only for financial assets and liabilities but also for FDI. Even in China less than 20 per cent of the stock of outward FDI are in other EMEs.

Yilmaz Akyüz

While foreign investment and lending in EMEs have reached unprecedented levels, even EMEs with current account deficits have been able to accumulate large amounts of gross external assets because inflows of capital have often exceeded what is needed to finance deficits.  In fact, with the exception of China and Russia, which have run current account surpluses since 2000, the entire foreign assets accumulation in G20 EMEs has relied on borrowed money, resulting in significant leverage in external balance sheets.

There are also significant changes in the structure of external balance sheets of EMEs.  The share of equities (FDI plus portfolio equity) in total external liabilities increased and the share of debt declined as governments sought to shift from debt to equities by opening up equity markets and liberalizing FDI regimes on grounds that equity financing is more stable and less risky than debt.

The share of equities in gross external assets also increased, but not as fast as in liabilities. Consequently, the net equity position (external equity assets minus liabilities) of G20 EMEs taken together, which was already negative at the beginning of the century, deteriorated further.

The share of international reserves in total external assets increased rapidly as countries sought to build self-insurance against speculative attacks, often with borrowed money.  The share of local currency in external sovereign debt increased as bond markets have been opened to foreigners to pass the currency risk. But the corporate sector has come to account for a growing part of external debt of EMEs by increasingly borrowing in international markets in dollars to benefit from lower rates.

These changes in the size and composition of external balance sheets of EMEs have not only generated new channels of transmission of external financial shocks (discussed in Playing with Fire), but also resulted in significant transfer of resources from EMEs to AEs.

Resource transfers from the South to the North through financial channels will continue unabated as long as capital flows remain unrestricted, the international reserves system favours a handful of rich countries which can also pursue self-seeking policies without regard to their global repercussions.

First, they have rendered the value of their existing stocks of external assets and liabilities more susceptible to changes in global financial conditions, notably asset prices and exchange rates, leading to capital gains and losses and altering their net foreign asset positions (NFAP or net external wealth, that is, the difference between gross external assets and liabilities).

Over the short term, these valuation changes can be much more important than current account balances in the movement of NFAP, particularly at times of severe instability as was seen during 2008-09. Since foreign assets and liabilities of EMEs are mainly with AEs, these gains and losses entail redistribution of external wealth between the Global South and the North.

Indeed, there is a strong negative correlation between year-to-year changes in net external wealth of nine G20 EMEs and four major AEs in the new millennium and a large proportion of such changes is accounted for by capital gains and losses rather than current account balances.

In the long-term current account remains a main determinant of net external wealth of nations, but capital gains and losses resulting from valuation changes can also be important.   Since the beginning of the century the NFAP of most G-20 EMEs deteriorated because of sustained current account deficits.

The NFAP of two surplus EMEs, China and Russia, improved, but not as much as their cumulative current account surpluses because they both suffered large amounts of capital losses on their outstanding external assets and liabilities.

For instance, China had a cumulative current account surplus of over $3 trillion during 2000-2016 but its net external wealth increased by only $1.6 trillion. By contrast the US had a cumulative current account deficit over $8 trillion during the same period but its net external debt deteriorated by less than $7 trillion because of capital gains. Even though some smaller G-20 EMEs also had capital gains, the nine EMEs taken together suffered capital losses in the order of $1.9 trillion during 2000-2016 while the four AEs enjoyed capitals gains over $1.6 trillion.

Second, with the expansion of gross foreign assets and liabilities, international investment income receipts and payments have gained added importance in the current account. Generally, EMEs are red in net international investment income not only because their external liabilities exceed assets, but also because the rate of return on their foreign assets falls short of the rate of return on their foreign liabilities.

Their liabilities are concentrated in high-yielding equities while a large proportion of their assets consists of low-yielding reserve assets. For this reason, even some EMEs with positive net external wealth positions such as China and Russia have deficits in net international investment income.

Furthermore, all EMEs including China earn lower return on their outward FDI than they pay on inward FDI. They also pay more on their external debt liabilities in risk premia than they receive on their external debt assets including reserves (US Treasuries), other bonds or deposits abroad.  The shift to domestic currency debt by governments of EMEs has widened the return gap between debt liabilities and assets because the exchange rate risk assumed by foreign investors needs to be compensated.

By contrast, the return differential between external assets and liabilities is positive for all four major AEs.  The US registers the highest positive return differential and runs a surplus on its international investment income balance despite having a negative net external wealth in the order of some 25 per cent of its GDP.

The return on its outward FDI is higher than in all other countries and exceeds by a large margin the return it pays on its inward FDI. As the country issuing the dominant reserve currency, the US also earns higher return on its external debt assets than it pays on its external debt liabilities (mainly Treasuries), thereby enjoying what is commonly known as “exorbitant privilege”.

The nine G-20 EMEs taken together have been transferring around 2.7 per cent of their combined GDP per year in the new millennium mainly to AEs as a result of the negative return gap between their foreign assets and liabilities and capital losses resulting from changes in asset prices and exchange rates.

These resource costs are incurred in large part because EMEs favour a particular structure of external balance sheets (highly liquid low-yielding assets, less liquid high-yielding liabilities) that is believed to be more resilient to external financial shocks.

This means that, in effect, EMEs are transferring large sums of resources to AEs in order to protect themselves against the shocks created mainly by policies of the very same countries. This is underpinned by an international reserves system that allows a handful of reserve-issuing countries, notably the US, to constantly extract resources from the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it is not clear if EMEs can adequately protect themselves against shocks when capital can move freely. Judicious use of capital account measures can secure reasonable protection while avoiding such costs.

For instance, one would not need to issue high-yielding liabilities to acquire large stocks of low-yielding reserves assets as self-insurance if inflows of fickle capital are effectively controlled.

Resource transfers from the South to the North through financial channels will continue unabated as long as capital flows remain unrestricted, the international reserves system favours a handful of rich countries which can also pursue self-seeking policies without regard to their global repercussions.

The post Financial Globalization, North-South Wealth Distribution and Resource Transfers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yilmaz Akyüz is former Director, UNCTAD, and former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva

The post Financial Globalization, North-South Wealth Distribution and Resource Transfers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

The sudden peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the opening of their previously closed and dangerous border, sent shockwaves of hope and optimism throughout the two countries. But a new issue has arisen: whether Eritreans coming into Ethiopia should still be classed as refugees.

“Asmara! Asmara! Asmara!” There is a new cry from the boys leaning out of minibuses picking up customers in the cities of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which straddles the border with Eritrea. Here a minibus stops for a lunch break during its 300-kilometer journey between Mekelle, the Tigray capital, and the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The historic shift in Ethiopia-Eritrea relations means Eritreans can cross one of the world’s former most dangerous borders without a passport or permit. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

More nuanced reality: Eritreans cuing at the Eritrean border check point, before heading north to Asmara, illustrates how not all Eritreans want refugee status in Ethiopia, despite most media narratives leaving out the nuances and portraying an endless flow of feeling Eritreans. “I went from Addis Ababa to Asmara after the border opened to see my father for the first time in 26 years—he died 10 days after I arrived,” says Senait, an Eritrean who moved to the Ethiopian capital after marrying an Ethiopian but wasn’t able to visit her family after war broke out in 1998 between the two countries, thereby closing the border. “Now I am going back to take his brother, my uncle, to live in Asmara. It will be better for him to be with family there than in Addis. But I will return to my family in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Long awaited freedom of movement: The wide palm tree-lined avenues of Mekelle, and its marketplace, have seen a rush of Eritreans coming to reunite with family and enjoy the more vibrant social life and shopping scene, before returning to Eritrea. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Long awaited freedom of movement: Once known for hosting convoys of camels carrying salt from the Danakil desert, Mekelle’s bustling market has lately seen an increase in sales of cereals, construction materials and petrol. “In Eritrea they are limited to how much they can take out of the bank each month, but here they can get money sent by relatives abroad,” says Teberhe, a Mekele entrepreneur. “They are taking back construction materials in case building restrictions are reduced at home.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Shared bonds and styles: The back and forth over the border is helped by many people in Eritrea and Tigray having shared the same language, religion and cultural and social traditions going back centuries before Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Peace—but also prosperity?: “Business is pretty good,” says Tesfaye, who usually works at the cement factory outside Mekelle but at the weekend earns extra money by exchanging Ethiopian birr and Eritrean nakfa for travelers crossing the border. “It’s a good opportunity while the banks aren’t changing money yet.” The open border has seen merchandise and trade flowing freely both ways, and merchants in Tigray cities and in Asmara profiting by the uptick, with talk of only more economic activity to come. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Motoring to Mekelle: Description of picture and occasion: Tired-looking cars with the distinctive Eritrean registration plate beginning ER1 can be seen joining minibuses on the main road through Tigray to the border or parked around Mekelle. “We’ve had lots of Eritreans staying,” says Ruta who owns Lalibela Hotel in the center of Mekelle. There’s also been a surge in room rentals in Mekelle thanks to Eritreans looking for work. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Refugee process still continues: A worker photocopying refugee application forms at the Tigray office for Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, known as ARRA. “Ethiopia is a signatory to the Geneva convention on refugees, so for now there is no change in their refugee status,” says Tekie Gebreyesas with ARRA. “The relationship between the two countries has improved, but the internal situation in Eritrea is still the same.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Glued to the reforming prime minister: Lunchtime diners watch a broadcast showing Ethiopia’s popular new leader, Abiy Ahmed, who shocked all by offering peace to Eritrea. The dilemma that Ethiopia now faces over Eritrean refugees reflects a challenge at a global level to better understand the realities of refugee life. “Refugees are always portrayed as victims,” says Milena Belloni, who has researched Eritrean refugees for a decade. “It misses the reality, that they have capabilities and come with dreams, desires and aspirations.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Refugees and peace not a contradiction: The Tigray city of Shire, not far from the border and where the UNHCR’s regional office is, has also seen its fair share of Eritrean arriving. A UNHCR worker who wasn’t willing to be quoted noted that around the world almost all countries receiving refugees do so while at peace with the country refugees are leaving—hence there is nothing unusual about Ethiopia and Eritrea reconciling while the refugee flow continues. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

 

Travel opens eyes: Ethiopian airlines has restarted flights to Asmara, though Ethiopians often choose the cheaper option of taking a domestic flight between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, before continuing by bus. The overall situation and options available remain fluid, and there could be even more changes ahead. “I don’t think there is any way back now for the Eritrean government,” Teberhe says. “Eritreans are experiencing freedom—the genie is out of the bottle.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

*Some names have been changed or omitted due to the requests of those interviewed.

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At Narok County, Kenya, during a discussion by anti-FGM campaigner Agnes Pareyio from Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative (TNI). The picture was taken at a school run by TNI for girls escaping FGM and child marriage. Credit: Equality Now/ Tara Carey

By Divya Srinivasan
NEW DELHI, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

According to official data on the global prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) released by UNICEF there are 200 million women and girls in the world who have been cut. Shocking though this statistic is, it seriously underestimates the nature and scale of the problem.

In 2015, when the United Nations was in the process of adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), civil society organizations successfully led the fight for eradication of FGM to be included in the targets and as one of the 230 global indicators used to measure progress.

Target 5.3 of the SDGs now requires all 193 countries which signed onto the SDGs to take action to end FGM and to measure prevalence of FGM within their countries.

The figure of 200 million is based on official representative data which is available for only 30 countries, 27 of which are in Africa. However, small-scale data and anecdotal evidence shows that FGM is occurring in over 30 other countries, many of which have passed laws banning the practice.

This includes at least 13 countries in Western Europe, as well as Australia, Canada, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the United States.

Thanks to growing activism from within practising communities, new information is now available that shows FGM is practised by both indigenous and immigrant communities in all continents except Antarctica.

Survivors, activists and grassroots organisations are courageously working to end FGM and have conducted small-scale research surveys to document its prevalence, provide support to affected women and girls, and advocate with legislatures, courts and local authorities to introduce and enforce legal bans.

The type of statistical information being provided is invaluable in the effort to end FGM because it pushes governments to take action and provides a baseline from which we can measure the scale and effectiveness of interventions.

However, their work is woefully underfunded and lacks sufficient international support. The United Nations, which designated 6th February as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation in 2003, has so far failed to dedicate adequate funds to eradicate FGM at a global level, particularly in Asia, the Middle-East and the Americas.

Even the UNFPA and UNICEF Joint Programme to Accelerate the Abandonment of FGM/C only covers some of the countries traditionally acknowledged to practise FGM.

The past year has demonstrated the monumental challenges faced by anti-FGM campaigners the world over, caused partly by gaps in understanding about the nature and extent of FGM in countries where it is not historically acknowledged to occur.

For instance, in India, despite the existence of independent studies documenting FGM within the Bohra community, the Indian government has sought to deny the existence of FGM in the country because of a lack of official representative data.

In November 2018, a District Judge in the U.S. state of Michigan dismissed charges brought against two doctors and six others accused of subjecting nine girls to FGM. Judge Bernard Friedman struck down a 20-year old federal law banning FGM on the technical grounds that it was unconstitutional because the power to outlaw the practise belonged to individual states, not Congress.

It is estimated that 513,000 women and girls are at risk or have been subjected to FGM in the United States. Although Judge Friedman’s ruling currently applies only to the Eastern District of Michigan, it potentially leaves tens of thousands of women and girls unprotected and in increased danger of being cut

Despite referring to FGM as ‘a despicable practice’, his order demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding about the discriminatory nature of FGM -which is carried out primarily to control the sexuality of women and girls – as well as the widespread nature of its occurrence within the U.S. The US Government has appealed against his ruling.

In August 2018, an appeals court in Australia overturned the country’s first FGM conviction in 2015 against a priest and mother from the Bohra community, who were found guilty of performing FGM on two young sisters.

Here again, the court ruling was not based on support for FGM but instead on the technical grounds that the type of FGM purported to be practised by the Bohra community, which involves cutting the clitoral hood, did not fall under the existing legal definition of FGM.

A request was put forward by the court asking the Government to consider expanding the law. FGM had been criminalized in the Australian state of New South Wales since 1994 and its definition has not been updated since then despite the World Health Organisation later adopting a more comprehensive definition and classification, which includes cutting of the clitoral hood.

The globalised nature of FGM requires not only a global response, but also a nuanced one that is tailored to meet the particular contours of FGM as it is practised in different countries or communities.

We need to update existing FGM laws and draft new ones to ensure that all types of FGM are covered within its ambit, as cutting of any kind violates the human rights and health of women and girls.

In line with target 5.3 of the SDGs, governments need to collect prevalence data on FGM in all countries where it is known to be practised, and report on their efforts to address the issue.

UNICEF is the organisation responsible for supporting countries in generating, analyzing and using dates for this target. This includes leading methodological work, developing international standards, and establishing mechanisms for the compilation and verification of national data, and maintaining global database.

The United Nations is failing in this commitment and needs to fund and pilot anti-FGM efforts in countries where it has not traditionally done so.

The medical community needs to intensify research efforts and publish disaggregated research and data that does not merely look at FGM generally, but analyses the health consequences for each type of FGM individually, particularly Types I and IV for which available medical research is scarce.

The fight to end FGM globally clearly stands at a turning point. There is rising backlash against the activism to eradicate FGM, and there is a threat of regression that risks losing hard-won gains.

For instance, in Kenya a petition has been filed asking the Court to declare as unconstitutional the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, which was enacted in 2011, and to abolish Kenya’s Anti-FGM Board.

However, 2018 also provided positive evidence that untiring efforts to end FGM through activism and legal bans undeniably work, with sustained efforts resulting in a “huge and significant decline” of women and girls across Africa being subjected to FGM between 1990 and 2016.

We need to learn from the fantastic work being done in Africa, adapt the strategies according to regional and cultural contexts, and implement them in every country where we know FGM is being practised.

Through the SDGs, activists and countries have made strong public commitments to ending FGM throughout the world by 2030. To achieve this goal, political commitments must now be put into action fully by accelerating and globalising efforts, collecting and circulating reliable data, and providing the proper funding needed to eradicate FGM once and for all.

*Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. Its international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sexual trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.

For details of the current campaigns, please visit www.equalitynow.org; on Facebook @equalitynoworg and Twitter @equalitynow.

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Excerpt:

Divya Srinivasan is South Asia Consultant for international women’s rights organisation Equality Now*

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By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, reiterates the urgent need to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls, in particular FGM, which is a practice that violates women and girls’ fundamental rights such as their right to health, their right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and even their right to life.

Idriss Jazairy

The UN estimates that at least 200 million girls and women around the world have undergone some form of FGM. The procedure is mostly concentrated in countries in Africa and the Middle East, but is also common in several Asian countries. Ambassador Jazairy underscores the fact that this practice is however not limited to these regions and unfortunately occurs in Western societies at a worrying rate as well, as FGM persists amongst immigrant populations living in Western Europe or North America.

A report on Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation produced by the UN Secretary-General in July 2018 deplored the prevalence of FGM around the world and showed that in order to fully eradicate it, it was imperative to address its root causes, including gender discrimination and gender inequality, which are similar to those of other harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage. The report deplored the fact that against the background of population movement across borders, the practice was taking on global dimensions, where increasing numbers of girls and women, including those from refugee and migrant populations, were subjected to it.

Against this background, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre noted that: “We encourage States to adopt comprehensive plans of action to eradicate FGM, taking into account the need for targeted support for groups of women and girls facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including migrant and refugee populations, rural women, and indigenous women.”

Furthermore, Ambassador Jazairy called for a concerted effort from international stakeholders, including international organizations, civil society, grassroots movements, and lawmakers, to raise awareness about the long-lasting consequences on women and girls of this cruel and obsolete practice, which is deeply-rooted in negative norms and stereotypes, and has no grounding or standing in Islam. “This custom has an enormous damaging impact on women’s physical and mental health, and perpetrates the pervasive cycle of discrimination and violence against women and girls within societies where it is still practiced,” he said.

In this respect, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre saluted the high-level political commitment to eliminating this practice showcased by the Government of the United Kingdom, which announced in November a £50 million pledge aimed at ending FGM by 2030. This financial commitment by the British government is the biggest donor investment aimed at eradicating FGM by an international donor. This pledge constitutes a positive step forward in raising the awareness of the international community on this woeful practice that will affect almost 70 million girls by 2030, unless drastic action is taken, according to UNFPA. Ambassador Jazairy strongly encouraged other States to follow suit.

Finally, the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director reiterated that FGM represents a gross violation of human rights, and calls for its prohibition and full eradication, in line with Target 5.3 of Sustainable Goal 5 on Gender Equality.

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By Idriss Jazairy
GENEVA, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

History testifies that there is no end to its evolution despite what some have claimed. This is because aspirations of its actors are in constant flux and because the quest for an « ideal city » is asymptotic.

Each generation wants to put its imprint on the present and to be the architect of its future in the pursuit of its own ideal.

Idriss Jazairy

The generations of the XXth century in the Arab region availed themselves of this opportunity through their struggle for the restoration of their dignity predicated on recovery of their nation’s sovereignty. This had an immediate effect on improving their condition at the time. They then set about charting the future society they aspired to and where equality would hopefully prevail. The spirit of the times was that such equality could best be pursued by socialist ideologies whether of the secular kind as pursued in part of the Middle East or blended with a statist concept of faith as was the case in other parts of the MiddleEast and in parts of North Africa. The effectiveness of these ideologies rested on an all-encompassing view of society which became co-terminous with the nation-state.

The nation-state is a modern concept on which contemporary advanced countries have built their identity as development contributed to the obsolescence of more narrow concepts of allegiance. While this was a more or less irreversible internal evolution in the global North, it was not necessarily so in the Arab region where tribal or regional allegiances remained vibrant though contained by what remained an exogenous socialist ideology. Commitment to the latter was narrowly related for newly liberated countries to patriotic anti-colonialism.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and of the Communist ideology which nurtured state socialism in the Arab region, the new generations there found themselves deprived of the cementing effect of a nation centralised through statism.

So the younger generations which now represent about two-thirds of the total population of the region are spurred by two factors :

First, they do not consider like their forebears that their quest for dignity is nurtured by thirst for sovereignty as the latter is already a given. These cohorts consider that the search for dignity must henceforth be nurtured by participation in decision-making and by promoting a culture of accountability in the field of human rights rather than one of compliance. So the search for dignity which for their elders was turned outwards is pursued by the younger generation why turning inwards. For the former, perceived dignity deficits led them to vent their anger outwards. For the latter, it lead them to vent it inwards. In the « digital era », social media and their borderless manipulation amplify this phenomenon. The elder and the younger generations remain bound however by a shared opposition to foreign invasion which compounds their anger

Second, as the statist pillars of nationhood that were exogenously inspired became more brittle following the weakening of the Communist ideology worldwide, the youth in the Arab region were and still are at a loss to find an alternative cementing ideal for the nation whose unity has been built in advanced countries through an indigenous maturing process of national preeminence.

Hence anger amongst the youth is coupled with a perceived and probably excessive sense of powerlessness which leads it to become detached from current affairs or to seek refuge in a community of faith rather than one based just on the nation. To a considerable extent, the lack of a perceived long term ideal for the future led the youth also to excavate one from the pre-colonial past i.e. the euphoric vision of an Islamic nation (that by all accounts never really existed) . Alternatively the loss of a societal compass is leading to re-activating sub-identities at the regional, local or tribal levels.

As in all social movements, there are aberrant individuals or groupings which exploit anger and frustration to pursue self-serving objectives of accessing power through violence in one case or through undermining national unity in the other.

That youth anger can thus be taken advantage of in the digital era gives a measure of its loss of momentum in the search for a common ideal. This explains why the Arab commotion called « Arab spring »was hardly more than social spasms generated by anger but deprived of a credible ideal for the longer term.

The ideal that can really mobilize the youth may be one based on the promotion of equal citizenship rights for all. This rights-based leitmotif is advocated by all the major world religions, creeds and value-systems. It is applicable for believers and non believers alike and works for unity of purpose at the national and at the international level. It will ultimately make irrelevant or obsolete the marginalizing and even oppressive connotations of concepts of ethnic, religious or gender minorities. It will cloak all individuals in a nation with the same right to dignity. Indeed the concept of minorities will seamlessly yield to that of social components of diversity in unity.

And ultimately equal citizenship rights is the gateway to peace as proclaimed at the World Conference held at the UN in Geneva on 25 June 2018 on Religions, Creeds and Value Systems joining Forces to Promote Equal Citizenship Rights under the patronage of HRH Prince Hassan of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Idriss Jazairy – Former Ambassador, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre on Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, an NGO think-tank in consultative status with the UN.

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Richard Danziger is IOM’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa

By Richard Danziger
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

Without a doubt, migration is a defining issue of this century. One billion people, one-seventh of the world’s population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees or asylum seekers.

In 2018, there was no longer a single state that can claim to be untouched by human mobility.

UN images of migrants

About 423 million people are living in the Economic Community of West African States, a 15-member grouping whose aim is to promote economic integration in a region where the unemployment rate is sometimes 20%—inevitably leading to migration.

The protection of migrants is a core value of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency. Globally, but especially in the Sahel region, abuses against migrants have grown more frequent along the migration routes. Human trafficking and smuggling exacerbate the vulnerability of migrants, especially those without access to documentation.

The IOM’s Regional Office for West and Central Africa maintains the conviction that anchored IOM’s founding 65 years ago: that all men and women are equal members of the same human family in which freedom, protection and dignity are not luxuries to be reserved for the lucky few but fundamental rights for all humankind.

2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 690,000 are internally displaced

Migration across the Sahel region is a complex issue, and managing it involves major challenges, including insufficient migration data, weak border management and controls, the recurrent need for humanitarian assistance, irregular migration and human trafficking.

Without effective bilateral or regional mobility agreements, thousands of workers will migrate.

Richard Danziger

Migration is often associated with poverty, but other factors also drive the phenomenon, including youth unemployment, climate change and urbanization.

Employment-seeking migration accounts for the biggest share of intraregional mobility as youth migrate from one country to another looking for better job opportunities.

Widespread population displacement is also linked to violent conflicts and unstable environmental conditions. Conflict in the Central African Republic, for example, has left an estimated 2.5 million people relying on humanitarian assistance and 690,000 internally displaced.

Migrants fleeing violence have spilled across the borders of neighboring countries, particularly Cameroon, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad and the Republic of Congo. The current situation represents a challenge not only for the affected countries but also for the region.

In view of this growing crisis, a well-managed, orderly migration framework that incorporates practical, humane and rights-based operational solutions is needed. Strengthening mobility schemes in the region will foster regular and circular migration, allowing people to work abroad legally, return home safely and participate in the development of their communities of origin.

This strategy must also ensure the mobility of cross-border communities, but such mobility raises border management challenges in the absence of effective identity management systems and given limited capacities to ensure surveillance and control over the extensive and porous borders throughout the region.

Stakeholders will have to take coordinated action to address issues such as threats to public health, despoiling of natural resources, the loss of critical years of education and job training.

An increasing number of migrants are reconsidering migration—especially irregular migration—and want to make it at home before taking undue risks by going abroad. Legal channels and regional mobility schemes could help this group.

To ensure the safety of vulnerable populations along migratory routes who lack legal options to migrate or return home, IOM, together with African Member States and the European Union, launched in December 2016 the EU-IOM Joint Initiative on Migrant Protection and Reintegration to provide immediate assistance to stranded migrants along the routes. Almost 40,000 people have received assistance since the launch.

West and Central Africa face some of the world’s greatest challenges—climate change and desertification, displacement due to conflict, galloping population growth and a youth bulge. But thanks to the resilience of the population of almost half a billion, these are also regions of enormous potential.

Sound migration policies and close cooperation among countries within the regions and on the continent with other countries of destination will help realize that potential, as will commitment by all concerned states to implement the new Global Compact for Migration.

The link to the original article
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/confronting-challenges-migration-west-and-central-africa

The post Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Richard Danziger is IOM’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa

The post Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 5 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – A new publication entitled “Women’s Rights in the Arab Region: Between Myth and Reality” has been released by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. On 15 September 2017, the Geneva Centre organized a meeting on the same theme in cooperation with the Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt at the United Nations Office in Geneva. It was held as a side-event to the 36th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

The conference held in the format of a panel debate sought to review the remaining challenges and to deconstruct the existing myths regarding women in the Arab region. As became evident during the debate, women worldwide are still suffering, to different degrees, from the grip of patriarchy, and these challenges are not specific to any culture, but are common to all countries.

The panel highlighted the negative impact of the stereotypical representations of Arab and Muslim women, and the resulting intersecting forms of discrimination. Despite the efforts of the international community, and the comprehensive international legal framework on women’s rights, major setbacks persisted all around the world.

The present publication features the proceedings of the above-mentioned panel discussion, as well as the written contributions from the renowned panellists that participated in the side-event, which include HE Ms Hoda Al-Helaissi, Member of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council and former Vice-Chairperson at King Saud University, Ambassador Naela Gabr, Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Ambassador Dubravka Simonovic, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Dr.Susan Carland, Researcher and Director of Monash University’s Bachelor of Global Studies in Australia, Ms Sarah Zouak, Co-founder of the French association Lallab and HE Ms Tahani Ali Toor Eldba, Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice of the Sudan.

It also contains a study signed by Ambassador Naela Gabr and edited by Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre, which seeks to underscore the lessons learned from the debate and to broaden the discussion to other regions of the world.

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Dilum Abeysekera is Founder & CEO, LEEG-net | LexEcon Consulting Group*

By Dilum Abeysekera
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 has entered its fourth year of implementation.

In terms of the estimated cost and the universal coverage of both developed and developing countries, it is the biggest ever development program that is being implemented to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

LEEG-net (Legal & Economic Empowerment Global Network – https://www.leeg-net.org ) is a multi-disciplinary network of professionals and a pro bono partnership for the Goals launched in January, 2017 in response to the global call-to-action extended by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It plays a catalytic role in implementing the SDGs by promoting legal innovation and empowerment of the poor and disadvantaged groups towards addressing the “greatest global challenge of eradicating poverty” – the unifying thread throughout the 17 Goals.

According to LEEG-net, the focus on legal innovation is an ongoing quest for new strategies and ways of thinking about what the law can do in the field of development.

The focus on legal empowerment as a human rights-based approach to development is an attempt to make the law work for the poor and disadvantaged groups by enhancing their capacity to resist poverty and get over it.

LEEG-net links the two themes by virtue of their shared importance in finding solutions to sustainable development challenges.

Current status of the implementation of SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018 published by the United Nations reviews progress in the third year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The report states that the rate of global progress is not keeping pace with the ambitions of the Agenda, necessitating immediate and accelerated action by countries and stakeholders at all levels.

The 2018 SDG Index and Dashboards report published jointly by Bertelsmann Stiftung and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) provides a ranking of countries by the aggregate SDG Index of overall performance.

It also presents an updated assessment of countries’ distance to achieving the SDGs. Key findings include:

(a) The Report states “For the first time, we are able to show that no country is on track to achieve all the goals by 2030.
For example, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland top the 2018 SDG Index, but they need to significantly accelerate progress towards achieving some goals, including Goal 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) and Goal 13 (Climate Action)”

(b) Most G 20 countries have started SDGs implementation, but important gaps remain.

(c) Achievement gaps are greatest towards universal completion of secondary education.

(d) Countries experiencing conflict have experienced some of the sharpest reversals, particularly towards achieving Goal 1 (No Poverty) and Goal 2 (No Hunger).

(e) Progress towards sustainable consumption and production patterns is too slow. High-income countries obtain their lowest scores on Goal 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) and Goal 14 (Life Below Water).

(g) High-income countries generate negative SDG spillover effects.

Human rights foundation of the SDGs

The 2030 Agenda is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights treaties.

According to an analysis of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, around 92% of the 169 SDG targets are based on the provisions of international human rights treaties and labour conventions.

LEEG-net perceives the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs as a restatement of universal human rights that encompass the three dimensions of sustainable development – social, environmental and economic.

The SDGs can be seen as a goal-based operational plan for realizing human rights including the right to development as recognized by international, regional and national instruments.

The “human rights foundation” of the 2030 Agenda justifies the adoption of a human rights-based approach to implementing the SDGs. A human rights-based approach to development seeks to achieve development objectives by following a legal roadmap.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the two International Covenants adopted in 1966 respectively on Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights along with other human rights instruments operative at the international, regional and national levels constitute the legal roadmap of a rights-based approach to development.

With the objective of advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, LEEG-net seeks to incorporate business-friendly and human rights-based approaches (or a holistic approach) into national action plans for implementing the SDGs.

The proposed mechanism is the promotion of legal, economic and technological empowerment of people including the poor and disadvantaged groups within the human rights foundation of the SDGs.

This process is visualized by the infographic named SDG Temple of Justice – an outline of a blueprint developed by LEEG-net team (web: https://www.leeg-net.org/sdg-temple-of-justice).

This blueprint seeks to prioritize policies and actions to advance eightfold rights that are considered imperative for developing countries in particular if they are to fully realize the SDGs.

These rights, as depicted by pillars of the infographic, are Gender Equality, Property Rights, Contract Rights, Business Rights, Labour Rights, Right to an Effective Remedy, Right to Information, and the Right to Development. Click on the pillars of the SDG Temple of Justice infographic to see how these rights critically impact on achieving the SDGs.

Member States’ commitment to adopting business-friendly approaches, including efficient legal and regulatory frameworks, promotes innovation, employment and inclusive growth.

As supported by empirical evidence, actions taken by State institutions that promote, protect and assure the rights of businesses (irrespective of their size) have had a direct impact on reducing poverty.

Economies with better business regulation have lower levels of poverty on average (Doing Business-2018, World Bank). Such commitments are required to help achieve SDGs 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 in particular.

LEEG-net considers the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) score as an effective indicator for measuring the “SDG-readiness” of national business regulatory frameworks.

The EODB score has been developed by World Bank’s Doing Business team to indicate an economy’s position to the best regulatory practice in relation to 10 indicator sets – the best score is set at 100, and the worst performance is set at 0.

LEEG-net believes that a considerable number of SDG targets of the 2030 Agenda can be easily met if countries maintain an EODB score of 80 or more.

Web: www.leeg-net.org | www.lexecongroup.com

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Excerpt:

Dilum Abeysekera is Founder & CEO, LEEG-net | LexEcon Consulting Group*

The post Business-Friendly & Rights-based Approaches to Achieve SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Chakravarthi Raghavan and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
GENEVA and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

In Davos in late January, several powerful governments and their allies announced their intention to launch new negotiations on e-commerce. Unusually, the intention is to launch the plurilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), an ostensibly multilateral organization, setting problematic precedents for the future of multilateral negotiations.

Chakravarthi Raghavan

Any resulting WTO agreement, especially one to make e-commerce tax- and tariff-free, will require amendments to its existing goods agreements, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreements. If it is not an unconditional agreement in the WTO, it will violate WTO ‘most favoured nation’ (MFN) principles.

This will be worse than the old, and ostensibly extinct ‘Green Room’ processes — of a few major powers negotiating among themselves, and then imposing their deal on the rest of the membership. Thus, the proposed e-commerce rules may be ‘WTO illegal’ — unless legitimized by the amendment processes and procedures in Article X of the WTO treaty.

Any effort to ‘smuggle’ it into the WTO, e.g., by including it in Annex IV to the WTO treaty (Plurilateral Trade Agreements), will need, after requisite notice, a consensus decision at Ministerial Conference (Art X:9 of treaty) . It may still be illegal since the subjects are already covered by agreements in Annexes 1A, 1B and 1C of the WTO treaty.

Consolidating power of the giants
Powerful technology transnational corporations (TNCs) are trying to rewrite international rules to advance their business interests by: gaining access to new foreign markets, securing free access to others’ data, accelerating deregulation, casualizing labour markets, and minimizing tax liabilities.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

While digital technology and trade, including electronic or e-commerce, can accelerate development and create jobs, if appropriate policies and arrangements are in place, e-commerce rhetoric exaggerates opportunities for developing country, especially small and medium enterprises. Instead, the negotiations are intended to diminish the right of national authorities to require ‘local presence’, a prerequisite for the consumer and public to sue a supplier.

The e-commerce proposals are expected to strengthen the dominant TNCs, enabling them to further dominate digital trade as the reform proposals are likely to strengthen their discretionary powers while limiting public oversight over corporate behaviour in the digital economy.

Developing countries must be vigilant
If digital commerce grows without developing countries first increasing value captured from production — by improving productive capacities in developing countries, closing the digital divide by improving infrastructure and interconnectivity, and protecting privacy and data — they will have to open their economies even more to foreign imports.

Further digital liberalization without needed investments to improve productive capacities, will destroy some jobs, casualize others, squeeze existing enterprises and limit future development. Such threats, due to accelerated digital liberalization, will increase if the fast-changing digital economic space is shaped by new regulations influenced by TNCs.

Diverting business through e-commerce platforms will not only reduce domestic market shares, as existing digital trade is currently dominated by a few TNCs from the United States and China, but also reduce sales tax revenue which governments increasingly rely upon with the earlier shift from direct to indirect taxation.

Developing countries must quickly organize themselves to advance their own agenda for developmental digitization. Meanwhile, concerned civil society organizations and others are proposing new approaches to issues such as data governance, anti-trust regulation, smaller enterprises, jobs, taxation, consumer protection, and trade facilitation.

New approach needed
A development-focused and jobs-enhancing digitization strategy is needed instead. Effective national policies require sufficient policy space, stakeholder participation and regional consultation, but the initiative seeks to limit that space. Developing countries should have the policy space to drive their developmental digitization agendas. Development partners, especially donors, should support, not drive this agenda.

Developmental digitization will require investment in countries’ technical, legal and economic infrastructure, and policies to: bridge the digital divide; develop domestic digital platforms, businesses and capacities to use data in the public interest; strategically promote national enterprises, e.g., through national data use frameworks; ensure digitization conducive to full employment policies; advance the public interest, consumer protection, healthy competition and sustainable development.

Pro-active measures needed
Following decades of economic liberalization and growing inequality, and the increasing clout of digital platforms, international institutions should support developmental digitization for national progress, rather than digital liberalization. Developing country governments must be vigilant about such e-commerce negotiations, and instead undertake pro-active measures such as:

Data governance infrastructure: Developing countries must be vigilant of the dangers of digital colonialism and the digital divide. Most people do not properly value data, while governments too easily allow data transfers to big data corporations without adequate protection for their citizens. TNC rights to free data flows should be challenged.

Enterprise competition: Developing countries still need to promote national enterprises, including through pro-active policies. International rules have enabled wealth transfers from the global South to TNCs holding well protected patents. National systems of innovation can only succeed if intellectual property monopolies are weakened. Strengthening property rights enhances TNC powers at the expense of developing country enterprises.

Employment: Developmental digitization must create decent jobs and livelihoods. Labour’s share of value created has declining in favour of capital, which has influenced rule-making to its advantage.

Taxation: The new e-commerce proposals seek to ban not only appropriate taxation, but also national presence requirements where they operate to avoid taxes at the expense of competitors paying taxes in compliance with the law. Tax rules allowing digital TNCs to reduce taxable income or shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions should be addressed.

Consumer protection: Strong policies for consumer protection are needed as the proposals would put privacy and data protection at risk. Besides citizens’ rights to privacy, consumers must have rights to data protection and against TNC and other abuse of human rights.

Competition: Digital platforms must be better regulated at both national and international level. Policies are needed to weaken digital economic monopolies and to support citizens, consumers and workers in relating to major digital TNCs.

Trade facilitation: Recent trade facilitation in developing countries, largely funded by donors, has focused on facilitating imports, rather than supply side constraints. Recent support for digital liberalization similarly encourages developing countries to import more instead of developing needed new infrastructure to close digital divides.

Urgent measures needed
‘E-commerce’ has become the new front for further economic liberalization and extension of property rights by removing tariffs (on IT products), liberalizing imports of various services, stronger IP protection, ending technology transfer requirements, and liberalizing government procurement.

Developing countries must instead develop their own developmental digitization agendas, let alone simply copy, or worse, promote e-commerce rules developed by TNCs to open markets, secure data, as well as constrain regulatory and developmental governments.

Chakravarthi Raghavan, Editor-emeritus of South-North Development Monitor SUNS, is based in Geneva and has been monitoring and reporting on the WTO and its predecessor GATT since 1978; he is author of several books on trade issues.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Senior Adviser with the Khazanah Research Institute. He was an economics professor and United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development.

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A fisher in Barbados. The Caribbean’s fish stocks have been affected by climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Feb 5 2019 (IPS)

In recent years Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries have experienced escalated climate change impacts from hurricanes, tropical storms and other weather-related events thanks to global warming of 1.0 ° Celsius (C) above pre-industrial levels. And it has had adverse effects on particularly vulnerable countries and communities.

CARICOM countries and other small island and low-lying coastal developing states have long been calling for limiting the increase in average global temperatures to below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Regional countries have also noted with grave concern the findings of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. The report noted that climate-related risks for natural and human systems including health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are significantly higher at an increased global warming of 1.5 °C than at the present warming levels of 1 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Particularly worrisome for small island developing states (SIDS) is the finding that 70 to 90 percent of tropical coral reefs will be lost at a 1.5 °C temperature increase and 99 percent of tropical coral reefs will be lost at a 2 °C temperature increase.

Dr. Douglas Slater, Assistant Secretary General at the CARICOM Secretariat, told IPS that they have been working closely with the Alliance of Small Island States grouping. “The CARICOM SIDS grouping is considered a very important link and we are really leaders in the SIDS movement,” he said.

He said that at last year’s 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the region had been able to ensure, to some extent, that the procedures for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement were clearly outlined.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Dr. Douglas Slater, Assistant Secretary General at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, says the region needs to recognise the importance of implementing some of the measures as recommended by technical institutions that will help to build climate resilience. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): How is the CARICOM region doing with its climate change fight?

DS: Starting from COP21 in France, certain decisions were made. The region thought that [at COP24] we needed to ensure that the procedures for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and the modalities were clearly elucidated and outlined. To some extent I would say that that was achieved.

Another issue that we took [to COP24] and lobbied hard for, was a response to the IPCC 1.5 study.

The world is already looking to limit global warming to below 2 °C. We insisted that it should be no more than 1.5°C. Now, it might sound like they are close, but the differences are so significant, especially as it relates to us.

I must say that we had a hard task convincing them to accept the language of the findings of the IPCC. In fact, majority of the parties supported the findings and the actions to respond to it. But there were some major players [who did not] and because we work on consensus, it couldn’t find its way into the outcome document in a forceful way that was supportive of what we wanted.

There were four main countries, some real heavy rollers—the United States, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—who resisted that. We will continue and there will be other opportunities. In fact, there is a meeting in May of this year where we’ll continue to push.

IPS: Were there any other tangible outcomes?

DS: We did get some language that will encourage parties to work towards what we want. There is also the issue of the Talanoa Dialogue, which was decided from the previous COP Presidency—Fiji. The word suggests working together in an inclusive cooperative way to ensure that a lot of issues, including the Nationally Determined Contributions, are adjusted to meet the times. That had some challenges being accepted wholesale too, but I think it is correct to say that Parties acknowledged what was happening and gave some commitment to increase the ambition to reduce greenhouse gases.

But it is a continuing struggle and we have to keep sounding our small but powerful voices because climate change is existential to us. Already, coming out of the hurricane season in 2017, we have had first-hand experience of what can happen to us and we don’t want a repeat of that.

IPS: Given the political cycle in the Caribbean where you could have a change in administration every five years or less, do you find that when an administration changes the drive and level of attention to climate change also changes?

DS: It is my feeling, based on my observation over the years, that the political parties in the region understand the impact that climate change can cause on us and in general are strongly supportive. So, it’s not a major issue. It might just be degrees of emphasis or so, but I don’t think there’s a challenge there. I think it is clear to all of our political leaders that climate change is a reality and it can devastate our sustainability, especially economic sustainability.

In my opinion, it doesn’t matter which administration is there, the policy should be aimed at addressing resilience to climate change and I think by and large that has been happening.

IPS: What major challenges remain for individual countries in the region or as a collective of SIDS? 

DS: I think we need to recognise the importance of implementing some of the measures as recommended by our technical institutions that will help to build resilience. Let us take hurricanes, for example. One of the reasons why you get significant damage is that the building codes that we have been using need updating. I think if we do that it will build a more resilient region. I think the message is there, but the implementation takes some time due to a lack of resources.

We have been working on that.

I know Dominica, especially post Hurricane Maria, are really working assiduously to build the first climate-resilient country probably in the world. That augers well for the region. We are hoping whatever we can gain from that experience can be disseminated in the entire region.

I am particularly concerned about some individual member states of CARICOM. Such as, for example, Haiti. I [bring up] Haiti because of land degradation and its impact, which we are dealing with now. We hope that Haiti can adjust to understanding the need for reforestation because that is a resilience measure.

I think if our individual member states can work with the various ministries and the regional institutions and we can mobilise the resources, that is the big challenge.

We know in general what we need to do. There’s a willingness to do it, the challenge is having the resources to.

We have some excellent institutions like CDEMA [Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency] which really is on the ball, but they need resources sometimes to respond to some of the challenges.

We are working with some international organisations and some other international development partners to see how we can pull that together. But it’s a work in progress.

*Interview edited for clarity.

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• The Caribbean Reiterates “1.5 Degrees Celsius to Stay Alive”

The post Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DOUGLAS SLATER, Assistant Secretary General at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat.

The post Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

Is there a connection between sex education, gender equality and promiscuity? On this website, Fabiana Fraysinnet recently denounced a Brazilian crusade against sex education conducted by conservative and religious sectors. Such initiatives are common in several other countries, where politicians and religious leaders accuse sexual education of blurring boundaries between male and female and thus foment homosexuality and transsexualism, as well as a moral relativism undermining family structures and adherence to religious guidance and dogma.

An opposite position is reflected by the personal motto of the Norwegian-Swedish journalist and socialist agitator Elise Ottosen-Jensen, who in 1933, together with a number of radical medical doctors founded the Swedish Association for Sexualiity Education (RFSU):

I dream of the day when every new born child is welcome, when men and women are equal, and when sexuality is an expression of intimacy, joy and tenderness.

Through her work as a journalist Elise Ottosen-Jensen had gained insights into the everyday life of working-class women. Scarce resources, hard work and domestic violence were common problems. Her conviction that the many unwanted pregnancies were a problem for several families and also a threat to women´s health and well-being turned her into an outspoken promotor of contraceptives and an agitator against the so-called sex laws, which prohibited use of contraceptives and penalized homosexuality. Until 1938 Swedish laws forbade the use of, information about, as well as distribution and marketing of contraceptives and it was not until 1944 that homosexuality was decriminalized. In 1955, sexual education was made compulsory in Swedish schools.

While I studied pedagogy in the 1970s the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire´s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was obligatory reading for all future Swedish teachers. Freire stated that pupils simply memorized “facts” transmitted by their teachers, maintaining that all education instead ought to problematize what appears to be simple truths and provoke students to “self-determination”. I was taught that the Swedish school was supposed to support the ”development of critically thinking individuals,” able to dispute generally accepted dogmas and opinions.

Sexual education was part of that agenda and connected to gender equality. It was emphasized that all over the world girls and women are facing social, economic and cultural barriers impeding their education and livelihoods and that even more lack comprehensive sexuality education, which serves as a tool for women to take control of their bodies, to plan their future and avoid unintended pregnancy, child-, early- and forced marriages.

Some educators soon developed Freire´s theories into something they labelled as “anti-oppressive education”, i.e. a commitment to empower youngsters from minority groups by making them question norms that determine people’s perceptions of what is “normal”. Such views have increasingly come to influence the current Swedish debate about the rights of people who identify themselves as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer).

Swedish radicals have recommended that children are given “gender neutral names”, while children´s books address norm changing themes, for example Kalle som Lucia, “Kalle as Lucia”. This particular story is about a boy who wants to be Lucia. In all Swedish schools winter solstice is celebrated by processions headed by a beautiful girl chosen by the pupils to be Lucia, Bringer of Light. While connecting traditional gender roles to normative change, books like Kalle as Lucia are supposed to teach kids that it is OK to be different.

Another Swedish norm changing initiative has been the replacement of the Swedish words for she and he with the neutral hen (from the Finnish gender neutral hän). Such efforts have been criticized as “ridiculous”, or even worse – as a Government supported scheme to blur the difference between the sexes, described as an integrated part of efforts to secure gender equality, which in reality is an entirely different endeavour. Gender equality aims at fomenting equal access to resources and opportunities for people of different sex, it does not at all seek to abolish biologically conditioned differences between women and men.

People who use bio-determinism as an argument against gender equality, claiming that promoting equal rights for women and men is a violation of religious and natural laws, ignore the fact people are able to change. John Stuart Mill, the 19th century economist and promoter of women’s emancipation, emphasized the dangers of bio-determinism:

Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences upon the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences. 1

We have over time developed social patterns that resist aggression and selfish behaviour. While living close together, humans have used their superior brains to comprehend how violence and excessive dominant behaviour are intrinsically bad for the survival of our specie. Humans are able to change their habitats, instead of exclusively adapting to them, something that is due to the fact that human beings are genetically programmed to make use of reason, culture and free will, an endeavour supported by education aimed at promoting openness, mutual support and compassion.

Ignorance about reproductive health is currently threatening to increase rates of teen pregnancy, communicable diseases, misogyny and abuse of girls and adolescents. Attacking gender equality and sex education in the guise of opposition to norm criticism may prove to be harmful to the entire society and not the least the wellbeing of women, whose health is threatened by the bigotry of religious leaders, harmful traditions and prejudiced politics.

Some years ago, I visited Andean communities, interviewing women about their life situation. I had previously found that as a foreign man one of the best ways of approaching reticent women in rural settings had been to do so in the company of a local midwife. What worried me during my encounters with Andean women was their often poor state of health and I assumed it was the midwife´s presence that made them reveal their pains.

Several suffered from vaginal prolapse and other conditions affecting the female reproductive system. Ailments caused by congenital malformations, or difficulties during pregnancies that came too early in life and often had been far too frequent. Women´s suffering could also have been a consequence of difficult deliveries, poor hygiene, deficient preventive healthcare, hard work, badly treated infections and venereal diseases. Disease affecting productive organs were generally suffered in silence, considered to be shameful since everything connected with female bodies was burdened by prejudices, chauvinism and religious narrow-mindedness. My meeting with these women made me realize that gender equality is not only an issue of equity between men and women, but physical differences between males and females have to be addressed as well.

We are able to change our destiny for the better by liberating ourselves from shackles of intolerance supported by murky traditions and misinterpreted biological determinism. This is one reason to why gender equality, and not the least – unrestricted access to healthcare and sex education for both women and men, benefit the entire mankind. Fear of male power loss and an assumed spread of homosexuality cannot be allowed to forbid sex education and become an obstacle to women´s health and wellbeing.

1Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Principles of political economy. University of Toronto Press. p. 319

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 Sex Education and Women´s Health appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo: Sheikh Nasir

By Quamrul Chowdhury
Feb 4 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(The Daily Star) – Every year on February 2, nations have been celebrating the World Wetlands Day since 1997. But unfortunately, despite national and international efforts, wetlands are still treated as revenue-generating machines or wastelands in many countries including Bangladesh. Apparently, nobody would like to think of wetlands as a natural solution in adapting to the global climate change.

Many people don’t even bother to think that these ecosystems play a significant role in mitigating the adverse impacts of climatic change. Hence, many wetlands have already been encroached, degraded or polluted. The theme of this year’s Wetlands Day is “Wetlands and Climate Change”—and it has been chosen to highlight the important role played by wetlands, as a natural solution, in terms of adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Many developing and developed countries as well as their economies and natural ecosystems have been battling with an unprecedented degree of climatic change in recent years. Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), prepared in 2008 and revised in 2009, identified that water security, food security, energy security, health security and livelihood security are being threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change.

As one of the lead authors of BCCSAP, I know that many of the 45 programmes included in this plan couldn’t be implemented because of resource constraints, deficits in programme preparations and planning problems. This is quite unfortunate.

It should be noted that wetland ecosystems are severely affected, for example, by sea-level rise, coral bleaching, hydrological effects, changes in water temperature, and alterations in water availability and quality. Wetlands in Bangladesh, like in many other developing countries, are particularly affected by socio-economic pressures and the climate change, which result in the degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and a concomitant negative impact on human communities, especially those on the coast.

The adverse impacts of climate change are particularly significant in our country and will decrease ecosystem resilience. Different reports suggest that around 90 percent of the wetlands, hosting more than 70,000 water birds, are in the coastal region and under threat of submersion following a sea-level rise.

Many of our coastal, haor, dry and upland regions are likely to lose large numbers of wetland species as a result of climate change. Wetlands, particularly coastal and haor wetlands, are important in the process to mitigate climate change because they help to manage extreme weather events through the multiple services that they provide. Important wetland functions include water storage, groundwater recharge, storm protection, flood mitigation, shoreline stabilisation, erosion control, and retention of carbon, nutrients, sediments and pollutants (Dugan 1990).

Experts say that wetlands are also significant carbon stores. According to the Ramsar Convention, it has been estimated that peatlands contain at least 550 Gt of carbon, which is almost double the amount stored in the world’s forests. Although they cover only 3 percent of the world’s landmass, they contain 30 percent of its soil carbon (Parish et al, 2008; FAO, 2012b). Wetlands such as mangroves like The Sundarbans, saltmarshes, haors and coral reefs play crucial roles in controlling flood peaks and spreading the water table. Thanks to their vegetation, such as trees and root mats, wetlands act as permeable barriers that slow waves, reduce flooding, and offer natural protection for coastlines against destructive weather events.

Wetlands are an important source of water everywhere, including in places where resources are scarce. Local populations and animal and plant species benefit from wetlands as providers of water. Wetlands allow water to reach the underground water table, making the resource available in dry periods.

Thus, wetlands are key for groundwater recharge and allow ecosystems to cope with drought in places like Barind Track. By the same process, by releasing underground water, wetlands help to maintain the flow of rivers when precipitations diminish. These enormously valuable natural bodies also offer solid evidence that investing in natural solutions is a cost-effective way to enhance resilience to climate change in vulnerable coastal areas and communities.

But with the degradation or encroachment of wetlands, human well-being is being compromised. It is raising the risk of flooding of houses and infrastructure, and increasing the risk of exposure to water shortages and drought. Against these threats, initiatives to conserve wetlands can make a difference and benefit the well-being of the future generations of people and wildlife.

I think our policymakers should help raise public awareness of the importance of wetlands. They should ensure stakeholder participation in wetland management to maintain human well-being including livelihood. Strengthening national legal and policy arrangements to conserve all wetlands is an urgent task and that should be an integral part of Bangladesh’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) which should be prepared without any further delay.

I would also suggest developing and implementing NAP as per the NAP Roadmap prepared in 2015 and it should be our high priority along with revisiting Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. Coastal, haor and unprotected wetlands are expected to be most severely impacted by climate change, but conserving and restoring the wetlands is an effective way to mitigate climate change impacts for people and biodiversity. Revisiting the Delta Plan is essential before it enters its implementation phase to ensure people’s participation in the formulation and implementation of this long-term plan, with more adequate public consultations.

Quamrul Chowdhury is a climate, water and sustainable development specialist, a former Chair of UN Kyoto Protocol Joint Implementation Committee, former member of UN Climate Adaptation Committee, and member of World Water Scenario Group.
E-mail: quamrul2030@gmail.com

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Thore Vestby, Vice-President of Mayors for Peace, speaking at the European regional meeting of parliamentarians and city leaders in Basel, Switzerland, Jan 15, 2019

By Christine Muttonen, Jacqueline Cabasso & Alyn Ware
BASEL, Switzerland, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

The United States last week officially announced it is walking away from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an agreement made between the USA and the Soviet Union in 1987 to eliminate a whole class of nuclear weapons that had been deployed in Europe and had put the continent on a trip-wire to nuclear war.

This follows US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement which currently prevents Iran from building or acquiring nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile the START treaty, which limits the number of US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons, is set to expire soon, with no renewal in sight.

Russia and the USA appear to be intentionally reversing the arms control agendas of the early post-Cold War era, and are instead enhancing and expanding their nuclear arsenals. Other nuclear-armed states are following close behind.

This goes against public opinion, which is overwhelmingly opposed to a nuclear arms race, and to nuclear sabre rattling and threats, whether open or veiled, from Presidents Putin and Trump. Despite this, it’s extremely difficult for civil society to directly influence Russian or US nuclear policy.

That points to a deficit of democracy in both countries. It also points up the need for direct actions parliaments, cities and citizens can take to stop the assault on arms control treaties and prevent a new nuclear arms race.

To that end, mayors, parliamentarians and representatives of civil society organizations from 40 countries – mostly Europe and North America, including the mayors of 18 US cities– sent a joint appeal to Presidents Trump and Putin, calling on them to preserve the INF Treaty and resolve nuclear-weapons and security related conflicts through dialogue rather than through military provocation.

Will it change their minds? Not likely. But the appeal was also sent to the leaders of US congressional and Russian parliamentary committees in charge of armed forces (defense) and foreign relations.

It calls on them to refuse to authorize or allocate funding for nuclear weapons systems which the INF Treaty bans, for example ground-based intermediate range nuclear missiles, or weapons systems which could provide similar capability and be similarly destabilizing, such as air or sea launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

This could be the key to preserving the arms control measures of the INF Treaty even if it collapses. If the relevant committees refuse to authorize funds for these nuclear weapons systems, it makes it next to impossible for them to be developed.

The appeal also outlines a commitment by the endorsing mayors and parliamentarians to build support from cities and parliaments in nuclear-armed and allied States (which includes NATO countries) for nuclear risk reduction measures such as “no first use” policies.

Resolutions reflecting these calls have already been introduced in the US Senate and House of Representatives, for example the Prevention of Arms Race Act of 2018 (S.3667), and the No First-Use Act introduced last week by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Adam Smith, Chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

Similar resolutions have been adopted by the California State Assembly and at least three US cities, and more are pending in eight other US state assemblies.

This power-from-below approach – taking concerted action on nuclear risk-reduction and disarmament in federal, state and city legislatures – is just beginning.

It’s analogous to actions by over 700 U.S. governors and mayors who committed to implementing the Paris climate accord, despite the Trump administration withdrawing from it. In both cases, state and municipal officials have power to influence the global outcome.

In the US, action on nuclear disarmament by city governments is being advanced by the U.S. section of Mayors for Peace, a global network of over 7,000 cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), a network of over 1400 major U.S. cities.

It has repeatedly urged Washington to show leadership in preventing nuclear war. For example, in June 2018 USCM unanimously adopted a resolution submitted by Frank Cownie, Mayor of Des Moines, Iowa and vice president of Mayors for Peace, with 25 co-sponsors, calling on the U.S. administration and congress to reduce nuclear tension with Russia, reaffirm the INF, adopt “no first use” and redirect nuclear weapons funding to meet human needs and protect the environment.

In Europe, cooperation between parliaments to advance nuclear risk-reduction, arms control and disarmament measures are advancing through the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA).

The parliaments of all European countries are part of it, along with the US, Canada, Russia and all former Soviet countries. A vital forum for dialogue between legislators from Russia and the West, the OSCE PA has succeeded in building consensus to support nuclear risk reduction including “no first use.”

Parliamentarians/legislators, cities and civil society activists can also slow the nuclear arms race by working to cut nuclear weapons budgets and to end investments in the nuclear weapons industry.

Corporations that make nuclear weapons and their delivery systems have a vested interest in stoking the nuclear arms race, so they lobby governments accordingly.

But parliaments, state governments and cities can influence their behavior by divesting from them, analogous to the way some major cities are divesting from fossil fuel companies to fight climate change.

So far only a handful of cities and non-nuclear governments have divested from nuclear manufacturers, but in 2017 the United Nations adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which could lead to a wider global divestment movement.

So, it may not be all up to Trump and Putin. There are powerful levers parliaments, cities and civil society can use to stop the unraveling of the arms control regime and prevent an arms race, and increasingly, they will use them.

As U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower said, “People want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

The post As Treaties Collapse, Can We Still Prevent a Nuclear Arms Race? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Christine Muttonen is a former Austrian parliamentarian who served as the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly from 2016-2017. Jacqueline Cabasso is the Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation and the North America Coordinator for Mayors for Peace. Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator for Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and Disarmament Program Director for the World Future Council.

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Grazing rhino picks out grass from thorny, pink-flowered mimosa weed. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is collecting perspectives from science to indigenous knowledge in a new assessment on the many values of nature. Credit:Ranjita Biswas/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

Humans have long had a varied and complicated relationship with nature—from its aesthetic value to its economic value to its protective value. What if you could measure and analyse these values? One group is trying to do just that.

Over 150 years ago, philosopher Henry David Thoreau highlighted humankind’s responsibility to respect and care for nature.

“Every creature is better alive than dead; men, moose, and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it,” he wrote in an essay.

At that very same moment in history, the Second Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution were at its peak in Europe and the United States, contributing to the depletion of natural resources and pollution that societies are dealing with today.

Now, rates of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions have dramatically increased, threatening the future of societies.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), desertification, caused by the degradation of soil and land, is affecting one-third of the Earth’s land surface. The issue already affects 250 million people across the world, and it threatens an additional one billion people who depend on land for their needs.

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) aims to bring these vast, and sometimes seemingly conflicting, perspectives from science to indigenous knowledge in a new assessment on the many values of nature, helping create a vision on how to work towards a more prosperous, sustainable future.

IPS spoke to Unai Pascual, one of the co-chairs of IPBES’ new assessment, on the importance of understanding the complex issue.

IPS (Inter Press Service): What exactly are the values of nature?

Unai Pascual (UP): There are many values because people understand values in different ways. If you talk to a philosopher, they would tell you what values are from a philosophical standpoint like moral and ethical values. If you talk to an economist, they would talk to you about economic values and the values of things reflected in the market.

One of the objectives of the assessment is to provide a clear framework that can conceptually guide anything related to how people measure and articulate those values and… how those values influence decision making and policies, and governance in general.

How we take care of nature and how we exploit it have to do with the underlying values that we have about nature and the meaning we provide to these values in every day life.

IPS: Why was this issue chosen as part of the assessment, and why is it important to examine these values?

UP: We need this assessment to understand the connection between how we perceive nature, the way we interact with it, and the quality of life of people.

Those policies, norms, and habits of people are based on the underlying values that we all hold as individuals and as a society. We need to understand those values in order to understand how we set up those institutions which, at the end of the day, are the ones which are going to determine the fate of nature and how we perceive how nature affects our quality of life.

Understanding the role of these social norms and policies are at the heart of what IPBES is about. IPBES recognises that we need to understand those in order to really connect the dots—connect nature and human well-being.

It is necessary to connect the way we value nature with the future of nature and therefore the future of human wellbeing.

IPS: 2018 saw a number of big reports on climate change and land degradation from IPCC, UNEP, and even IPBES. Will this new assessment be similar, and supplement these reports?

UP: Yes, the values assessment is a methodological one in spirit. The idea is that any assessment that will follow after the values assessment will be able to reflect on issues around values in ways that has not been possible before.

And so far, IPBES has tried to provide coherence around values since its inception. The assessment of values provides a great opportunity for IPBES and other platforms to see the importance of recognising different types of values about nature and ways to bring them into decision making.

This is a sort of conceptual and methodological pillar which will inform many scientific efforts within IPBES and outside IPBES as well.

IPS: What do you expect to find, and how will the research be undertaken? Does this involve talking to communities around the world, including indigenous communities?

UP: We are going to find a way to integrate and provide a coherent picture around the different understandings about values. This is of critical importance because otherwise the scientific community will continue talking about values but each community will understand that in a different way.

If we don’t have coherence, we are not going to be able to move forward and to design policies that respect those different ways of valuing nature.

We will [also] find the connections that have not been explicitly addressed by the scientific community about how values explicitly or implicitly affect decision making with regards to nature be it through policy, consumption choices by consumers, production means by producers… that is, connecting values with governance and human behaviour.

Those values are dynamic, they change over time…Those can affect policies and goals of society and individuals and therefore change how we use nature or how we connect to issues such as climate change and land degradation.

What we are going to try to portray as well is how the future of humankind, of different societies’ institutions and governments, would have to be transformed with regard to the values and how we put them in practice in changing people’s behaviour towards more sustainable and just futures.
We need to build the capacity of the scientific community and the public at large to connect our diversity of values and the sustainability challenges of humankind.

Another knowledge system which is at the heart of IPBES is that of indigenous and local communities. It is very important to understand how they perceive and relate with nature. Their approach to connecting to nature is fundamentally different from many Western societies. We know that much of the biodiversity that underpins the health of the planet is taken care of and managed by indigenous communities.

It is critical to bring their perspectives, knowledge systems, and values into the assessment.

This is a big challenge on how to bridge both the scientific and the indigenous knowledge systems and bring them in a way that both are recognised as being vital for understanding the role of values in society and how this can impact the future of the planet.

Q: How could the international community use this assessment once completed?

UP: This could be a resource for many years to come. I hope that it will clarify the different types of values that exist in society so that different perspectives on values are recognised and accepted as being legitimate.

As scientists, we provide information and knowledge about how nature and human well-being are connected. We should take into consideration that there are different pathways and different perspectives on those connections because there are different ways of relating to nature. Such diversity is important to be respected and nurtured in the quest for sustainability.

That’s a call for the scientific community whenever we do assessments or systemise knowledge to connect the state of the planet in terms of its various environmental dimensions from climate change to land degradation to biodiversity loss…when they try to connect this to human beings, the vector that connects them are values.

We hope that policymakers or decision makers can make better decisions in the quest for sustainability by taking into account these different, legitimate perspectives on the values of and about nature.

*Interview was edited for clarity and length

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The post Q&A: The Nature of Value vs the Value of Nature appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Tharanga Yakupitiyage interviews UNAI PASCUAL Pascual, one of the co-chairs of Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

The post Q&A: The Nature of Value vs the Value of Nature appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Idriss Jazairy Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the Adverse Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures

By Idriss Jazairy
GENEVA, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

The count down towards a tragic outcome in Venezuela has started. All outside powers express what they say is a shared concern for its peace-loving people that has the misfortune of sitting on what is maybe the largest oil reserves in the world. The problem is that geopolitics lead groups of foreign countries to express different, not to say opposed recipes as to how democracy can be restored and happiness pursued in Venezuela and want to make their own views prevail.

In this divided country. Divided the country has been indeed for quite some time. Of course circumstances have not been clement, both political and economic, what with institutional breakdown, the collapse in oil prices and the increasingly stiflling unilateral sanctions which have targeted Caracas.

But governance has also been found badly wanting, in a context of increasing violence on all sides. Incidentally, recent debates seem to imply there are three sides to the domestic dispute and forget the fourth, the millions of Chavistas themselves who can only be ignored at the peril of peace.

Idriss Jazairy. Credit: UN Photo

When stakes and passions are high, it’s hard for independent well-wishers to find Ariadne’s threat to safety. Of course, states are not entitled in international law to inflict unilateral sanctions to bring about regime change in other states.

Change must be the outcome of an internal process and preferably a peaceful one. The UN Secretary General has offered to facilitate such a process. Let not sabre-rattling dim this voice of wisdom. Let the international community forget about its polemics.

Yes the socio-economic situation in Venezuela is in shambles but let’s not make it worse by seeking an outright win like in a boxing match. True the use of overwhelming military power may achieve knock-out. But then pile up, as has been the case in Iraq, Syria or Libya, low-level conflict …and durable high level agony.

I appeal to all outside powers to give peace a chance by showing statesmanship at the Security Council through unanimously providing the Secretary General with this body’s full backing in the pursuit of the mission he expressed readiness to undertake to facilitate the internal change process. It may look less radical in the short term but it will spare lives and livelihoods in the medium term.

My appeal may be inspired by wishful thinking. It may already be a case of « Alea jacta ». It’s a familiar case. We’ve all seen it happen before.

Idriss Jazairy is quoted in a New York Times article titled “Venezuela’s Guaido Courts Russia; Powers Divided on Maduro”

 

The post Venezuela
 
Alea Jacta ! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Idriss Jazairy Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the Adverse Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures

The post Venezuela
 
Alea Jacta ! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Demonstrators in the neighborhood of Cotiza, on the north side of Caracas, where the protests in working-class areas of the Venezuelan capital against the government of Nicolas Maduro broke out on Jan. 21, before spreading to other parts of the country, and which resulted in 40 deaths in the first month of the year due to the brutal crackdown. Credit: Courtesy of EfectoCocuyo.com

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

The protests in Venezuela demanding an end to the presidency of Nicolás Maduro in the last 10 days of January, whose soundtrack was the sound of banging on pots and pans in working-class neighbourhoods, had a high human cost: more than 40 deaths, dozens wounded and about a thousand detainees, including 100 women and 90 children under 18.

In Catia, a working-class neighbourhood west of Caracas, a number of young people were shot dead between Jan. 21-25, while National Police and military National Guard commandos demolished improvised roadblocks and barricades made with trash, managing to quash the protests.

“They managed to do it. The local residents say that in the streets where several of these boys fell, silence and solitude have prevailed after 6:00 PM. The pots and pans have not returned,” sociologist Rafael Uzcátegui, head of Provea, an organisation that has been recording human rights violations in the country for decades, told IPS.

These protests have two special elements: they are taking place in neighborhoods and sectors that until recently formed part of the government’s social base, reflecting the anger felt by the poor in the face of the country’s socioeconomic collapse, which has turned their protests into “mini-Caracazos,” recalling the violent protests given that name in February 1989, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Furthermore, they have been submerged in the institutional crisis that has had the country in its grip since January and which has put Venezuela at the forefront of world geopolitics, with a struggle for power that is also playing out between the governments of the United States and other countries of the Americas and European countries, on the one hand, and China, Russia and Turkey, on the other.

Maduro, 56, who governed the country from 2013 to 2019, was sworn in on Jan. 10 for a second term after winning an election in May 2018, the results of which were not recognised by the legislature or by most of the opposition or the governments of the Americas and Europe.

The election was called outside the legal timeframe by a National Constituent Assembly composed solely of government supporters, the electoral authority banned the main opposition parties and leaders, and a cloud of irregularities enveloped the campaign and the voting day itself, according to complaints from local and international organisations.

The opposition-controlled National Assembly refused to recognise Maduro’s re-election and the president of the legislature, Juan Guaidó, 35, declared himself acting president on Jan. 23, before a crowd in Caracas, while mass opposition demonstrations were held in some 50 cities.

Since Jan. 21, when 27 members of the National Guard mutinied in a barracks in the neighborhood of Cotiza, north of Caracas, refusing to recognise the re-election of Maduro, “cacerolazos” – pots-and-pans protests – spread, and groups of local residents in poor neighborhoods of the capital and cities in the provinces improvised barricades and clashed with the security forces and irregular civil groups of sympathisers of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Looting of shops also broke out in several cities in the provinces.

Human rights organisations question the use of the Special Action Force (FAES) of the National Police in Venezuela to suppress popular protests, because these commandos are trained to use lethal force. Credit: PNB

The Jan. 21-25 crackdown left 35 people dead, dozens injured by bullets or plastic pellets, and 850 arrested.

“On Jan. 23 alone, 696 people were arrested – the largest number in a single day of protests in 20 years,” lawyer Alfredo Romero, director of the Penal Forum, an organisation that follows the question of those detained for political or social reasons, told IPS.

The Forum counted 12,480 arbitrary detentions from February 2014 – the year of the first mass protests against Maduro – to October 2018, classifying 1,551 people as political prisoners, of whom 236 were still in prison when the report was produced. The list has now grown with those arrested so far this year.

Since Maduro first took office in 2013, Provea and other human rights groups have reported that at least 250 people have died in street protests.

Romero said the state uses a “revolving door” strategy: when political detainees are released, usually on parole, another group is arrested for similar reasons.

In January, “the order the security forces received was to arrest protesters. It is clear that the government decided to assume the cost of stopping the protest in the poorer areas, which in the past were ‘Chavista’ but have now turned against Chavismo,” he said.

Chavismo was the political movement of Hugo Chavez, president from 1999 until his death in 2013.

For two decades, the urban poor and working-class supported Chavismo, but they have now increasingly turned against Maduro, exasperated by the high food prices, the collapse of services such as water, electricity, health and transport, and the increasingly acute shortage of medicines or cooking gas.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in Geneva on Jan. 29 that “just over 40 people have been killed” and of these “at least 26 were allegedly shot dead by security forces or pro-government armed groups during the demonstrations.”

Provea contends that at least eight people were killed in extrajudicial executions in Caracas and two provincial cities when members of the National Police’s elite FAES squad entered their homes.

“FAES receives training for lethal action, against extortion or kidnapping. It is not trained to handle public order situations. Its codes and weapons, which are highly lethal, are not in proportion to the rules of proportional and gradual use of force applicable in situations of popular protest,” said Uzcátegui.

The arrests, which included 100 women and at least 90 children and adolescents, “have been carried out in indiscriminate sweeps, to spread fear and discourage protests,” Romero said.

One such case is that of Jickson Rodriguez, 14, who is epileptic as a result of an old head injury.

He and his young friends were banging on pots and pans near his family’s barbershop on the night of Jan. 22 in Villa Bahia, which is located in Puerto Ordaz, an industrial city on the banks of the Orinoco River, 500 kilometers southeast of Caracas, when National Guard units captured him and six others and took him to a barracks that guards a steel plant.

“Since I wasn’t crying, I was the one who received the most blows. I told the guards, ‘Why are you beating us when we’ve already been arrested?’ and they slapped me. They gave me blows to the head. I told them ‘you can’t hit me on the head, I have epilepsy, and they told me: ‘Shut up, you’re a detainee’,” he told his family and journalists a few days later.

“I found him, handcuffed, after searching for him in various places where they were holding people, the afternoon of the following day,” his mother Rosmelys Guilarte, 39, a hairdresser who also has three daughters, told IPS. “He was beaten on the soles of his feet, so there would be no visible bruises. He had a convulsion while he was in detention, which is why he was handed over to me two days later.”

Jickson “was accused by the judicial police of participating in looting that took place miles from where we were banging on pots and pans that night – something that was impossible. He has orders to report to the authorities every 30 days. I try to get him to rest a lot, this has been really hard on him,” she said from her home.

For Uzcátegui, “the government’s strategy has three components: repression in the face of the discontent shared by most of the population, betting that the current political conflict will wane, and attempts to limit the visibility of the crisis by going after the media and journalists.”

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Faustino Perez, Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Day of Solidarity with the People of Venezuela, 1969.

By Vijay Prashad
Feb 1 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Tricontinental) – On 15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as Allende’s government was removed from power. The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country.

CIA memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.

US business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft drink maker Pepsi Cola and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once Allende nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated this day as the Day of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections of the military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, these military men moved against Allende, who died in the regime change operation. The US ‘created the conditions’ as US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US President Richard Nixon answered, ‘that is the way it is going to be played’. Such is the mood of international gangsterism.

Phone Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16 September 1973.

Chile entered the dark night of a military dictatorship that turned over the country to US monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet’s cabinet.

What happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has attempted to do in many other countries of the Global South. The most recent target for the US government – and Western big business – is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing unique. It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is familiar to countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The formula is clichéd. It is commonplace, a twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a world under the heel of the West and of Western big business.

Tweet from US Senator Marco Rubio on 24 January 2019.

Step One: Colonialism’s Traps. Most of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by colonialism. Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the misfortune of being single commodity producers – either sugar for Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their economies meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues from their singular commodities (98% of Venezuela’s export revenues come from oil). As long as the prices of the commodities remained high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell, revenue suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from $160.72 per barrel (June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019). Venezuela’s export revenues collapsed in this decade.

Step Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the architecture of the world economy. They called for the creation of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would allow them to pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and diversify their economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil and bauxite – were to be built so that the one-commodity country could have some control over prices of the products that they relied upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960, was a pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of OPEC over the past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to control oil prices. They are at the mercy of the powerful countries of the world.

Step Three: The Death of Southern Agriculture. In November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and landless peasants in the world. That month, the World Trade Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity of Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and landless peasants of the Global South. Mechanisation and large, industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had raised productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. The small farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. They were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as Samir Amin wrote, presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant. What are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is higher in the West, but the corporate take-over of agriculture (as Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior Fellow P. Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off their land and leaves them to starve.

Step Four: Culture of Plunder. Emboldened by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law. As Kambale Musavuli and I write of the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6 billion is routinely robbed of at least $500 by monopoly mining firms, mostly from Canada – the country now leading the charge against Venezuela. Mispricing and tax avoidance schemes allow these large firms (Canada’s Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal billions of dollars from impoverished states.

Step Five: Debt as a Way of Life. Unable to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global South states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by 60%. When commodity prices rose between 2000 and 2010, debt in the Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall from 2010, debts have risen. The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished countries that they follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of Angola’s export revenue is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP ratios. Two out of five low-income countries are in deep financial distress.

Step Six: Public Finances Go to Hell. With little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances in the Global South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on Trade and Development points out, ‘public finances have continued to be suffocated’. States simply cannot put together the funds needed to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make borrowing difficult, which is compounded by the fact that banks charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to indebted countries.

Step Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending. Impossible to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance, governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending. Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification – all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF force countries to conduct ‘reforms’, a word that means extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.

Step Eight: Social Distress Leads to Migration. The total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million. That makes the country called Migration the 21st largest country in the world after Thailand and ahead of the United Kingdom. Migration has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through Libya are part of this global exodus.

Step Nine: Who Controls the Narrative? The monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no sympathy for the structural crisis faced by governments from Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to Western pressure are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct ‘reforms’, they are safe. Those countries that argue against the ‘reforms’ are vulnerable to being attacked. Their leaders become ‘dictators’, their people hostages. A contested election in Bangladesh or in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United States is not cause for regime change. That special treatment is left for Venezuela.

Alfredo Rostgaard, OSPAAAL poster, 1969.

Step Ten: Who’s the Real President? Regime change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy of the government in power: by putting the weight of the United States behind an unelected person, calling him the new president and creating a situation where the elected leader’s authority is undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides – without an election – to anoint its own proxy. That person – in Venezuela’s case Juan Guaidó – rapidly has to make it clear that he will bend to the authority of the United States. His kitchen cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties to the US (such as Harvard University’s Ricardo Hausmann and Carnegie’s Moisés Naím) – will make it clear that they want to privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan people in the name of the Venezuelan people.

Step Eleven: Make the Economy Scream. Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the people of Venezuela.

Step Twelve: Go to War. US National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the words 5,000 troops in Colombia written on it. These are US troops, already deployed in Venezuela’s neighbour. The US Southern Command is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As the coup climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go to war.

Edson Garcia, Titina Silá (1943-1973).

None of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a commander of the Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to free her country. It is not inevitable to the people of Venezuela, who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not inevitable to our friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea Benjamin walked into a meeting of the Organisation of American States and said – No!

It is time to say No to regime change intervention. There is no middle ground.

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Excerpt:

From the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

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In Bol, Chad, the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed meets Halima Yakoy Adam who survived a Boko Haram suicide bombing mission. Credit: Daniel Dickinson / UN News

By Amina J. Mohammed
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

After flying into the city of Bol in the Republic of Chad, over the lush fields and receding lakes, we landed to a rapturous welcome from traditional rulers and local women. Their faces reflected a hope and dignity slipping away under the harsh reality of poverty and insecurity.

The women, smiling at us as we disembarked, showed the same resilience I have seen in women in countless contexts: an ability to survive, even in the face of multiple forms of violence and insecurity at home, in public or from political conflict.

I visited Chad last summer as part of a three-country mission that included South Sudan and Niger, leading a delegation of senior women from the United Nations and the African Union.

In Niger and Chad, we were joined by Margot Wallström, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, a country that has pioneered the idea of a feminist foreign policy and given prominence to the dynamic between women’s status in society and international peace and security during the country’s two years on the Security Council.

Throughout the mission, I could not shake what we have come to know, that women, and their rights, are the first to suffer in times of crisis. And that this often compounds already high levels of inequality and violence.

I met Halima, a young girl whose life had not been her own. Against her will she was forced to marry. Then her husband, a member of Boko Haram, indoctrinated her with promises of a better afterlife. Halima strapped on a suicide belt, yet never made it to what they were told was a target, as the belts of two other girls went off as they stopped to pray.

Halima lost both her legs. Her future seemed grim, yet she had a measure of hope as she spoke and is working as a paralegal in her community to empower other women.

In Niger, at a centre for fistula survivors, we met girls as young as 12 and 13. Mere children forced into marriage and then raped by their husbands, without any agency or voice over their futures, their bodies, their lives.

Over 75% of girls in Chad and Niger marry before they are 18. They drop out of school and many become pregnant soon after, and because of their young age and complications during pregnancy, these countries have some of the highest maternal mortality rates globally.

Faced with dire poverty and often conflict, families believe they have no choice. They cannot feed their children, but hope maybe a husband can.

As we commemorated 16 days of activism to end violence and harmful practices against women and girls last year, it is important that we acknowledge the multiple forms of violence women and girls face, and the consequences they have for individuals, families, communities, and our shared agendas for development—the 2030 Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

From early forced marriage to femicide, from trafficking to sexual harassment, from sexual violence to harmful traditional practices: violence in all its forms is a global impediment to sustainable development, peace and prosperity.

It prevents women from fully engaging in society, scars successive generations, and costs countries millions in health expenses, job days lost, and long-term impacts.

The United Nations, together with partners, national governments and civil society, is leading efforts to end all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030. And we have existing efforts we can build on.

During our trip, we met traditional leaders, in particular men, who are taking actions in their own communities to stop early marriage. We talked to fisherwomen on Lake Chad who have taken over a traditionally male job in order to provide for their families and who are engaged in sustainable resource management, income generation and empowerment.

And across a number of countries in Africa, we are implementing a new effort with the European Union—the Spotlight Initiative to eliminate violence against women and girls. The approximately $300 million investment in Africa will target all forms of gender-based violence, with a particular focus on child marriages, female genital mutilation and the sexual and reproductive health needs of women and girls.

I finished my travels with a great sense of urgency and hope. The visit reinforced my conviction that we need to implement our global agenda on sustainable development—the 2030 Agenda—with urgency, and gender equality is at the very heart of this.

I am inspired and hopeful because of women like Halima, like the survivors of marriages they never chose, like the girls who were forced into sex and pregnancy long before their bodies were ready. They survived. They are telling their story, and they are determined to have a better future, not only for themselves, but also for their sisters.

In the words of the late Kofi Annan, “Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”

The link to the original article:
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-sahel-crucial-sustainable

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Excerpt:

Amina Mohammed is the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations

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Credit: Hafiz Johari / Shutterstock.com

By Yina Shan, Praem Mehta, Duminda Perera, & Yurissa Varela
HAMILTON, Canada, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

Cost-effective technologies are available to remove arsenic in groundwater. Why then do tens of millions still fall ill to this chronic problem?

High natural levels of arsenic are characteristic of the groundwater supply in many countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, and the United States.

Some of the contamination is caused by mining, fertilizers and pesticides, waste disposal, and manufacturing, but mostly it is due to arsenic leeching — dissolved from rocks underground by highly acidic water.

At least 140 million people in 50 countries have drinking water containing arsenic at levels above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline — 10 μg/L (micrograms per litre). In some places, people are using groundwater with arsenic levels 10 times or more the WHO’s recommended limit.

This exposure, through drinking water and crops irrigated with contaminated water, can lead to severe health, social and economic consequences, including arsenicosis (symptomized by muscular weakness, mld psychological effects), skin lesions, and cancers (lung, liver, kidney, bladder, and skin). The social implications of these health impacts include stigmatization, isolation, and social instability.

Arsenic-related health problems lead to significant economic losses due to lost productivity in many places. In Bangladesh, where the groundwater arsenic problem is most acute, the economic burden from lost productivity is expected to reach an estimated US$ 13.8 billion in about 10 years.

There are many technologies today that, broadly speaking, use one of six approaches to remove arsenic, described in an abundance of scientific studies. Between 2014 to 2018 alone, over 17,400 papers were published describing elements of the problem and a myriad of low-cost treatment technologies.

A report, published by the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, draws on 31 peer-reviewed, comparable research papers that appeared between 1996 and 2018, each describing new technologies tested in laboratories and / or in field studies. The papers covered:

* 23 lab-tested technologies that used groundwater from nine countries (Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Guatemala, India, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam) and demonstrated arsenic removal efficiencies ranging from 50% to almost 100%, with a majority reaching over 90%. About half achieved the WHO standard of 10 µg/L.

* 14 technologies tested at the household or community level (in Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, and Nicaragua) achieved arsenic removal efficiency levels ranging from 60% to about 99%, with 10 removing more than 90%. Only five reached the established WHO standard.

For lab-tested technologies, the cost of treating one cubic meter of water ranged from near-zero to about US$ 93, except for one technology (US$ 299 per m³). For field tested technologies, the cost of treating a cubic meter of water ranged from near-zero to about US$ 70.

No single technology offers a universal solution, but the report helps point to remedies likely to prove most economical and efficient given the many variables present in different locations worldwide.

Key factors influencing removal efficiencies and costs are:

• the arsenic concentration of the influent water,
• pH of the influent water,
• materials used,
• the energy required,
• absorption capacity,
• labour used,
• regeneration period and
• geographical location

The report also notes that a technology can only be considered efficient if it successfully removes arsenic to a level that meets or exceeds the WHO standard of 10 µg/L.

Bangladesh, China and India and some other countries with resource constraints or certain environmental circumstances – such as very high arsenic concentrations in groundwater – set higher, easier-to-reach national arsenic concentration targets.

In Bangladesh, for example, where the nationally-acceptable arsenic limit in water is set to 50 µg/L, it’s estimated that more than 20 million people consume water with arsenic levels even higher than the national standard.

Globally, despite international efforts, millions of people are exposed to arsenic concentrations reaching 100 µg/L or more.

While national limits higher than the WHO standard may help policymakers report better arsenic reduction results, if a country feels that the situation is coming under control it may reduce the sense of urgency in policy circles to eradicate the problem, and the population continues to suffer from ingesting high levels of arsenic.

A limit less stringent than the WHO guideline effectively shifts attention from the problem and impacts and postpones the best health outcome for citizens — and needlessly so, given the technologies available.

The technologies in hand today can significantly reduce the numbers of people affected by this public health problem. Needed is a sustained, concerted effort from policymakers, engineers, healthcare providers, donors, and community leaders to achieve quantifiable and sustainable impacts.

Over the next decade, we need wide-scale implementation of remediation solutions to meet the WHO standard and achieve two key Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 3 (“Good health and wellbeing” and SDG 6 (“Clean water and sanitation”).

We have cost-effective tools to alleviate and ultimately eradicate the problem of arsenic-contaminated water consumption. Let’s use them.

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Excerpt:

Researchers Yina Shan, Praem Mehta, Duminda Perera and Yurissa Varela developed this report at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, hosted by the Government of Canada and McMaster University

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