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Rome march for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Credit: Mariangela Isaia.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Dec 18 2023 (IPS)

Giulia Cecchettin had a bright future ahead of her. A smart 22-year-old, she was days away from graduating in biomedical engineering at Padua University. She was a loving sister to her two siblings, helping her father cope after the premature passing of her mother due to cancer in October 2022. Her sweetness and generosity of spirit made her popular with her peers. She only had one problem. Her ex-boyfriend and course mate Filippo Turetta could not accept the end of their relationship.

She admitted to friends in Whatsapp messages that she wished she could get Turetta out of her life, as he continued to pester her following the breakup, but she was too afraid that he would hurt himself to break off contact.

Although it is only one in a long series of high-profile femicide cases, the brutality of the murder and the ages of the victim and killer sparked public anger and dismay and prompted much soul-searching about how to tackle the problem of patriarchy and gender-based violence

She didn’t realise it was her safety that was in danger.

After meeting Cecchettin for dinner on November 11, Turetta stabbed her to death, hid her body in countryside and fled to Germany.

Her family were quick to raise the alarm that she, and Turetta, had gone missing.

Days of intense anxiety followed.

Hoping Cecchettin was still alive, her uncle made a public appeal to Turetta, telling him the family would forgive him, even if he had hurt her, if he returned her to them.

The terrible truth emerged when Cecchettin’s body was found a week after she had gone missing covered by two black bin bags under a rock near a lake in the Friuli region.

Turetta, 21, was arrested on a road near Leipzig the day after, having run out of money for petrol. He confessed at once to German police and has been extradited.

The case shocked Italy.

Although it is only one in a long series of high-profile femicide cases, the brutality of the murder and the ages of the victim and killer sparked public anger and dismay and prompted much soul-searching about how to tackle the problem of patriarchy and gender-based violence (GBV).

Amid the outcry, Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government and opposition parties agreed on motions to accelerate the passage of a bill that was already in parliament on combatting violence against women.

The package, which was swiftly passed into law, includes new restraining orders and heightened surveillance on men guilty of domestic violence and it also boosts the emergency gender-violence hotline.

Days after it was confirmed Cecchettin had been killed, big marches took place all over the country for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25, with the Rome demo attracting around half a million people.

 

Rome march for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Credit: Mariangela Isaia.

 

The scale of the problem is alarming.

A recent police report said 109 women had been murdered in Italy in 2023 up to early December, including 90 within the family or relationship sphere and 58 by their partner or exes.

The Italian National Research Council (CNR) has said that more than 12 million women in Italy, equal to almost 51%, between the ages of 18 and 84, have experienced physical or psychological violence at least once in their lifetime, but that only 5% have reported the incident.

In a study carried out by the CNR’s Institute of Clinical Physiology in 2022, over 2.5 million women (10.1%) reported currently experiencing situations of psychological violence and 80,000 (0.3%) said they were currently undergoing physical violence.

The CNR said the data on gender-based violence in Italy provide “evidence of a particularly extensive and only partly visible phenomenon”.

Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi has said 10 new cases of violence against women are reported each day in the Italian capital.

Cecchettin’s father Gino and sister Elena have both shown remarkable courage and composure in calling for Giulia’s death to mark a turning point in the fight against gender-based violence.

“May Giulia’s memory inspire us to work together against violence, may her death be the impetus for change,” Gino Cecchettin told over 8,000 mourners at his daughter’s funeral at Padua’s Basilica of Santa Giustina on December 5.

“My daughter Giulia was exactly as you have got to know her: an extraordinary young woman, cheerful and lively, never satiated with learning.

“Femicide is often the result of a culture that devalues the lives of women (who then become) victims of those who should have loved them; instead they are harassed, forced into long periods of abuse, until they have lost their freedom, before they also lose their lives,” said Cecchettin.

“How can this happen? How could this have happened to Giulia?”.

Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara sent a circular letter to schools inviting them to get pupils to reflect on what Gino Cecchettin said at the funeral.

Another sign that Giulia Cecchettin’s death has had an impact on the public conscience is the success of There’s Still Tomorrow (C’è Ancora Domani), a film about domestic abuse that is the directorial debut of Paola Cortellesi, an actress best-known for her comedy work.

In addition to gaining widespread critical acclaim and winning three prizes at the Rome Film Fest, it is the most successful Italian film at the box office in 2023 and it even beat Barbie in terms of the number of people it has pulled to Italy’s cinemas this year.

The initial united front on addressing GBV, however, has started to fray.

The government criticised the presence of Palestinian flags at the November 25 march, with Family and Equal Opportunities Minister Eugenia Roccella saying it had been a “wasted opportunity”.

“Women’s mobilization must not be polluted by ideology and too much political partisanship,” Roccella said.

Furthermore, Valditara’s plan to introduce relationship education at schools to prevent GBV also created division when he nominated a gay-rights activist, Anna Paola Concia, among the project’s coordinators.

The minister made a U-turn and pulled all three coordinators following fierce objections on the right of the political spectrum to Concia’s involvement.

Sadder still, the Cecchettin family have had to file complaints with prosecutors after coming under a barrage of insults and threats over their calls for action on GBV.

And, despite the outcry, Cecchettin’s death did not stop new cases of femicide and domestic abuse from hitting the news.

But Meloni, Italy’s first woman premier and the leader of the rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, has promised more initiatives on this front are in the pipeline.

“We will not stop until violence against women stops,” she said. “It is something that is incompatible with our present”.

Azzawieh Market in Gaza City lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Omar Al-Qattaa

By Mouin Rabbani
MONTREAL, Canada, Dec 18 2023 (IPS)

The political significance of US-Israeli differences is easily exaggerated.

It is certainly true that tensions in the relationship exist. Israel is currently committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The US would like Israel to reduce – not cease, but reduce – its slaughter Palestinian civilians,

Israel has stated its intention to indefinitely maintain a military presence within at least parts of the Gaza Strip, and rejects any role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the governance of the Gaza Strip. The US has indicated it would like to see Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundary and supports replacing Hamas rule with that of the PA, which it believes to be in Israel’s best interest.

Washington would like to resume bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under US supervision, and has paid lip service to a two-state settlement. Israel has repeatedly and emphatically rejected both proposals.

Neither these nor other disagreements resulting from the current crisis have resulted in any reduction of US military, political, or diplomatic support for Israel, which remains total and unconditional. In other words, US-Israeli tensions have the political significance of a loving couple deciding whether to dine on steak or sushi for their next date.

It has been widely reported, for years, that Biden and his key lieutenants detest Netanyahu, and intensely so. If so, the Israeli prime minister must be thinking: “With enemies like these, who needs friends?”.

On December 12, the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on “Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” during the 45th plenary meeting of the resumed 10th Emergency Special Session. Member States adopted a resolution, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, the unconditional release of all hostages as well as a call for “ensuring humanitarian access”. It was passed with a majority of 153 in favour and 10 against, with 23 abstentions. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

The US is not only complicit in Israel’s genocide, it is a full and active partner. For it to propose a “humanitarian pause” under present conditions, which in addition to the continuous, relentless bombing include measures intended to produce starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease is tantamount to advocating for a Khmer Rouge coffee break.

A meaningless and diversionary charade if ever there was one.

If the Biden administration does take action to enforce international law during the current crisis it won’t be against Israel, but rather against Yemen for interfering with global shipping. Israeli impunity might as well be incorporated into the US constitution.

The performance of the UN Secretariat also leaves much to be desired. It has been extremely slow off the mark, hesitant to a fault, and excessively deferential to the US and Israel. It’s head of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, has been enveloped in an impenetrable invisibility cloak.

For his part Secretary-General Guterres has been condemning Hamas in the strongest possible terms on an almost daily basis since 7 October but has yet to explicitly condemn Israel for anything.

Candidates for Guterres’s censure would include the mass killings of thousands of children; a medieval siege designed to produce widespread starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease; an unprecedented campaign to destroy an entire territory’s health sector; the bombing of UN facilities sheltering civilians fleeing hostilities, and a record number of UN staff killed in a conflict, often together with their families.

Among senior officials only Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, and to a lesser extent Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, have defied the echo chamber and been more explicit in framing the atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

To his credit, Guterres on 6 December invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, thereby identifying the crisis as not only a humanitarian emergency but also a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security.

Its significance notwithstanding, history will question why Guterres dithered for two months when it came to calling out Israel for its ferocious onslaught on Gaza before suddenly reaching for his heaviest weapon.

Rather than using the stature and authority of his office during the crucial months of October and November to call for an immediate and comprehensive cessation of hostilities and accountability for all who have violated the laws of war or international humanitarian law, he instead chose to advocate for a vaguely-defined “humanitarian ceasefire”.

For Guterres, the Gaza Crisis constitutes a low point in an already unremarkable and frankly mediocre tenure. There’s a reason morale at the UN is disintegrating.

One does not require the benefit of hindsight to conclude that Guterres would have done better to align himself with the overwhelming majority of UN member states, who on 12 December, in numerous speeches from the floor, once again spoke out against the horrors of this war and called for it to end forthwith.

Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor, Jadaliyya www.jadaliyya.com

IPS UN Bureau

 

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People in Rafah city in the Gaza Strip flee a missile attack. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 2023 (IPS)

The unrestrained destruction of Gaza and the disproportionate killings of over 17,000, mostly civilians– in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas and 120 hostages in captivity– have left the Palestinians in a state of deep isolation and weighed down by a feeling of being deserted by the world at large.

The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance.

The plight of the Palestinians was best described by Middle East correspondent Raja Abdulrahim who was quoted in the New York Times last week as saying: “Some people have told me they would rather just have a nuclear bomb (drop) and take them all out because the situation has gotten so desperate– and they don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.”

“They also feel like the entire world has abandoned them.”

Co-incidentally, a junior minister last month proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza as “one way of dealing with the threat of Hamas.” But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instantly shot down the proposal and took the unusual step of suspending the politically far-right minister.

Perhaps Netanyahu was conscious of the fact– that even in an unlikely nuclear attack on Gaza — the fallout, described as potentially suicidal, will be equally disastrous on Israel and end up as an act of self-immolation.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu last week reportedly justified the killings of civilians and the virtual destruction of Gaza by pointing an accusing finger at the United States.

The devastation of Gaza, he says, was no better than the “carpet bombing” of Germany by the US in 1943 and the unleashing of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

And US President Joe Biden, an unrelenting ally of Israel, shot back: “Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War II, to see to it that it didn’t happen again”.

The United Nations, created in 1945 following the devastation caused by World War II, was mandated with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security.

But other international institutions, including the Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arrived much later.

Dr Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, who teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, told IPS for Prime Minister Netanyahu to equate the bombing of Gaza to the “carpet bombing” of Germany and the dropping of atomic weapons on Japan is, at best, as preposterous as one can imagine.

Although President Biden himself did not justify the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan, he pointed out, the circumstances at the time were completely different than the current situation in Gaza.

Furthermore, attitudes and views have greatly changed since then, particularly because of the bombings’ aftermath.

Dr Ben-Meir said President Truman was faced with a dilemma – to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Japan, whose soldiers were fighting to the death, which could result in the death of 5-10 million Japanese and hundreds of thousands of Allied troops.

Or use nuclear weapons that would result in the death of 200,000 Japanese, civilians and soldiers alike, but would end the war quickly and spare casualties on a massive scale, thinking it was better to sacrifice 200,000 lives to save 1 million more, he pointed out.

On that basis, Truman made the decision, albeit in today’s environment, that decision would be entirely different. Furthermore, Truman may not have even been fully aware of the bomb’s true devastating nature and initially believed that it was intended specifically for a military target.

In hindsight, said Dr Ben-Meir, the use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable under any, and all, circumstances, as President Biden stated, “That’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again.”

As to the “carpet bombings” of Germany, while there were a few instances of cities being bombed wholesale, most notably Dresden, for the most part, American and Allied troops carried out strategic bombings, targeting as much as possible specific military installations and other industrial targets supporting Germany’s war efforts, he argued.

Furthermore, as Biden noted, the actions of all powers during World War II came under serious criticism and evaluation, and institutions and treaties were established in the war’s aftermath to prevent these wholesale actions that greatly affected civilians, whether intentionally or not, from happening again.

“There’s no question that Israel has been steadily losing international support due to the rise of Palestinian casualties, which has now exceeded 17,000. The irony is because of this terrible heavy toll of casualties, the unthinkable slaughter of 1,200 Israelis is no longer being mentioned, and this is due to Netanyahu’s complete disregard, in my view, for the indiscriminate horror that is being inflicted on Gaza”.

He should be far more calculating in targeting Hamas to prevent the unnecessary death of civilians, which is only drawing ever more criticism of Israel’s war tactics.

“Israel will certainly win the war against Hamas, but it is as certain that it will continue to lose the support even of its closest allies and friends unless Israel takes extraordinary measures to protect civilian lives in Gaza while articulating an exit strategy consistent with a two-state solution to end the conflict,” declared Dr Ben-Meir.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Research associate, Tania Eulalia Martínez Cruz from Oaxaca, Mexico shows how intercropping assists communities remain self-sufficient. Credit: Conrado Perez/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Dec 15 2023 (IPS)

The world is not on track to end hunger and poverty as a future of growing food insecurity and climate challenges beckon. Small-scale farmers are the backbone of food production, producing one-third of the world’s food and up to 70 percent of the food consumed in Africa and Asia, yet they are often cut off from the services they need to pull themselves out of poverty and food insecurity.

As small-scale farmers and communities in rural areas—where 80 percent of the world’s poorest live—edge even closer to the epicenter of climate-induced disasters, there is an urgent need for world leaders to increase funding to provide much-needed tools for rural communities to adapt to and mitigate these challenges.

To address these challenges, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) received record-breaking pledges in support of its largest replenishment ever, putting the organization on track to positively impact the lives of millions of rural people across the globe.

“This is a clear sign of the confidence member states have in IFAD and the importance they place on our ability to deliver results and impact through targeted investments that transform agriculture, rural economies, and food systems. They understand that investing in rural people and small-scale producers, who produce one-third of the world’s food and up to 70 percent of the food in low- and middle-income countries, is the only path to a food-secure future,” said Alvaro Lario, President of IFAD, following the pledging session in Paris.

IFAD is on track to receive a record replenishment as contributions increase substantially from both big and smaller nations. Photo: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The fourth replenishment session, which Angola and France hosted in Paris, saw an increase in pledges. IFAD is both a UN organization and an International Financial Institution (IFI), working in remote rural areas where poverty and hunger are at their deepest, so that rural populations are not left behind and are equipped to lift themselves out of poverty.

A replenishment session is the process by which IFAD mobilizes its core resources—an exercise in accountability by which IFAD reports to its Member States on its strategy, reform, and performance, usually at the mid-term of the previous replenishment period.

To date, 48 Member States have pledged USD 1.076 billion to replenish their core resources. Ten countries have increased by more than 50 percent from their previous contribution, and 31 countries have committed to their highest contribution ever, marking a record level of financing achieved for IFAD’s 2025–2027 programme of work.

IFAD launched its 13th replenishment in February 2023, calling for increased investments in small-scale farmers and rural people across developing countries. Every three years, member states replenish IFAD’s resources. The consultation culminated in a pledging session in Paris. Fundraising will then continue in 2024. Typically, over 100 countries contribute to IFAD’s replenishments, making it the most widely supported of all the major IFI replenishments.

“I am humbled by the positive momentum from today’s session and confident that IFAD’s ambitious call to mobilize USD 2 billion in new funding to support a USD 10 billion programme of work impacting over 100 million rural people will be achieved in the coming months,” said Lario.

To address today’s complex challenges facing rural communities, IFAD urged world leaders to increase rural investments. IFAD’s Member States have demonstrated their record-breaking support and IFAD’s pivotal role in revitalizing the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals through investing in rural people.

“We rely on IFAD to ensure the resilience we seek to build, taking into account climate change and all other factors that hinder our development,” said Carmen do Sacramento Neto, Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Angola, at the opening of the session.

“There has been an improvement in the living conditions of rural and fishing populations where the IFAD project was implemented, and it has had a significant impact. We announce that Angola will maintain its contribution and increase it in the coming years as a clear sign of our commitment.”

“With four in five of the world’s poorest people living in rural areas, the road to a prosperous, resilient, and food-secure future runs through rural communities. As multiple crises converge, rural people need us to invest in them more than ever before. As countries scramble to respond to unforeseen crises, development budgets are stretched, making the right investments is urgent and critical.”

Eunice Mwape is 26 and the mother of four children. She used to travel far to the garden because there was not enough water near her village of Shatubi. Now, thanks to the IFAD-sponsored project E-SLIP, Eunice has water close to her house. Credit: IFAD

Collaborating with member states, IFAD invests in rural development and across food systems to help small-scale farmers produce more food in greater variety, access markets, apply new technologies, and adapt to climate change. IFAD ensures that member state contributions reach those who need them the most, with 45 percent of total concessional financing going to low-income countries and at least 30 percent of core resources dedicated to fragile situations.

Pledging funds towards SDGs 1 and 2 today means spending less on development tomorrow. For every USD 1 spent on resilience, it now saves up to USD 10 in emergency aid in the future, not to mention avoiding hardship for millions of people the world over. IFAD’s work achieves measurable impact.

Between 2019 and 2021, IFAD’s investments improved the incomes of 77.4 million rural people, while 62 million rural people increased their production, and 64 million rural people improved their access to markets, enabling them to sell their production.

Additionally, thanks to improved agricultural practices, access to technical assistance and credit, as well as the diversification of their income sources, IFAD assisted 38 million people in building their resilience, which is a measure of their capacity to recover from climatic and non-climatic shocks.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: WRF
 
The resounding consensus of the recent World Resources Forum Conference: in order to achieve wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries, humanity needs to rethink how it values resources.

By Mathias Schluep
ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, Dec 15 2023 (IPS)

While the COP28 presidency celebrated an “historic deal” to transition away from fossil fuels, we must remind ourselves that the future wellbeing of human societies in a livable planet depends on more than that.

Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. To achieve the ultimate goal, we need to fundamentally rethink the value of natural resources and reassess their link to long-term human wellbeing.

Having a world climate conference with a tunnel vision on fossil fuels does not help us in that.

At stake is the long-term ability of human societies to provide for wellbeing, especially in light of a growing global population and widening inequalities. Over the past decades, resource use has significantly improved living standards for many, particularly in high-income countries, but this now comes at an unprecedented cost to the environment and human health.

According to the UN International Resource Panel, today resource extraction and processing are responsible for 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress, 50% of carbon emissions and 1/3 of air pollution health impacts.

The use of resources has more than tripled since 1970 and, if current trends continue, global material consumption is predicted to double again by 2060. This growth is especially prominent for metals and non-metallic minerals, which are the backbone of major industries and the enablers of the energy and digital transitions.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that global demand for critical raw materials will quadruple by 2040 – in the case of lithium, demand is expected to increase by a factor of 42.

Resources are the bridge between economic productivity and ecological balance. A bridge that, in most policy and governance frameworks, has often remained invisible. The main reason for this lies in an economic model not valuing natural resources.

Economists have severely downplayed the dependence of economic activity on resources and the natural systems that generate them. This has contributed to overexploitation, environmental degradation and the exacerbation of global challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

Distorted economic incentives and market signals are now ubiquitous, such as in the well-known cases of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest or the depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing. Others are less discussed, especially in relation to the mining sector, which will become the engine of the global economy.

If not responsibly managed, mining activities can lead to soil erosion, habitat destruction and contamination of water sources, impacting the local ecosystems and nearby communities who depend on those ecosystems.

A prominent example is the handling of mining waste and mining tailings, the residue remaining after mineral processing. Recent research reveals that a third of the world’s mine tailings facilities are located within or near protected areas, posing a significant threat to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity in the event of facility failures or accidents.

Unfortunately, these accidents are not as uncommon as one may think. The disaster of the Brumadinho (Brazil) tailings storage facility in 2019 unleashed a toxic tidal wave of around 12 million cubic meters, which killed 270 people and destroyed a significant area of the Atlantic forest and a protected area downstream.

Economic models are human-made and can be changed. If we are serious about sustainability and long-term human wellbeing, they must be transformed to better account for the unreplaceable value that natural resources provide.

This shift, advocated for by participants at the World Resources Forum 2023, requires acknowledging the interconnectedness of economic, ecological and social systems, underpinning the need for new accounting models to integrate ecological and social indicators.

Profound changes need to permeate climate negotiations and international policies, if future COPs are to play a meaningful role in preserving life on this planet. This year we witnessed once again how climate change discussions tend to overlook the central role played by the excessive and irresponsible use of resources, and apply a tunnel vision focused on CO2 emissions which are a key aspect to tackle, but essentially a symptom of a more profound ill.

The cure goes through integrating natural resource management in the institutional fabric and extending the relevant policy options beyond the prevailing energy supply. Ecological health and human wellbeing are interlinked objectives which call for reassessing our values and rethinking how we use natural resources.

Mathias Schluep is Managing Director World Resources Forum

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Secretariat building in New York City, where staff of the UN Secretariat carry out the day-to-day work. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 2023 (IPS)

Going back to the 1970s, thousands of UN staffers were given legal status opting for permanent residency in the US– after their retirement.

But that longstanding privilege now seems to be in jeopardy forcing retirees to return to their home countries uprooting their lives in the US.

The United States Immigration and Nationality Act has for long allowed long-serving UN staff members, who held the traditional G-4 visa status, and who met certain criteria, to apply for Legal Permanent Residency, also known as a “Green Card,” under the “Special Immigrant” category (EB-4), upon separation on retirement.

The UN’s Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance (DMSPC) last week sent an “urgent notice” to staffers that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has temporarily suspended accepting applications to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status (I-485 form) under the “Special Immigrant” category (EB-4).

This development may affect the ability of staff members who hold G-4 visas to continue to reside in the United States following their separation from service on retirement.

The suspension may also affect recent retirees; children of current or retired staff members, as well as a surviving spouse, who have been planning to apply for Legal Permanent Residency under the “Special Immigrant” category.

The UN has advised staffers to seek legal advice from an immigration firm about their future status in the US.

Speaking off-the-record, a long-time UN staffer told IPS the programme is in jeopardy with no clear indication when it will resume or get resolved.

The reason is apparently a backlog of applications, but it may even be political, he said. ”You may never know”.

Basically, he said, it has been suspended because of some changes that came into effect early this year in the immigration laws –and also due to the existing backlog of applications.

“This means no priority processing for G4 visa holders from the UN. The situation is quite serious as it was taken by surprise many in the Secretariat”.

“We have been told that within 30-days, we have to leave the US upon separation unless the individual manages to change the status by going through an immigration lawyer. I don’t see it restored in the near future. A big disappointment and a mess to say the least.”

Most UN staffers who own apartments or house and property—and are on short notice– will have to dispose them before they leave the US while others with children in US colleges will have to make adjustments.

“It’s an absolute nightmare”, said one staffer whose retirement is due in February next year when he will be forced out of the US.

Meanwhile, In Geneva, which houses more than 40 international organizations, mostly affiliated to the United Nations such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), staffers apply for “resident permits” on their retirement.

After they have lived 5-10 years, including years spent at the UN, they are entitled to permanent residency leading to Swiss citizenship.

Currently, the US is home to over 9,000 staffers who work in the Secretariat and in UN agencies in New York, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN children’s agency UNICEF and UN Women– with some on retirement after living the US for over 30 to 40 years.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Women and children in Afghan cities endure hours-long queues for a vital resource—water. Credit: Learning Together

By External Source
Dec 14 2023 (IPS)

According to United Nations statistics, nearly 80 percent of Afghan families lack access to sufficient water for their daily needs. Afghanistan, a landlocked country with limited water resources, is grappling with an exacerbated drought fueled by climate change, affecting the entire region.

In the western parts of Kabul, residents must endure lengthy queues, waiting for hours to secure the water they need.

To obtain drinking water, residents must travel considerable distances, enduring hours of waiting only to bring home a few barrels. Families designate someone to stand in line constantly, yet they still experience several days and nights without water

The situation has reached a critical point, exemplified by the district of Dasht-e-Barchi running out of water as temperatures rise. This crisis has persisted for months.

In the 13th district of Kabul city, the water company has suspended the water supply. Muhammad Ali and Juma, who have been living in the district for more than seven years, describe their plight as the worst they’ve experienced, emphasizing the absence of water and any communication from officials.

To obtain drinking water, residents must travel considerable distances, enduring hours of waiting only to bring home a few barrels. Families designate someone to stand in line constantly, yet they still experience several days and nights without water.

A private company that used to distribute water to people in exchange for money does not do it anymore. Residents say that there is no government water supply system in this area.

People can’t afford to dig their own wells. Therefore, they must wait for hours to get water from mosques and public distribution centers.

Groundwater levels in Kabul have dwindled significantly. In the Pole Khushk area, western Kabul, people wait from morning to evening for just one barrel of water, highlighting the severe impact of poverty and water scarcity on the city’s residents.

 

Water scarcity compounds the hardships of life in the Afghan capital, Kabul, adding to the misery of its residents. Credit: Learning Together

 

The Ministry of Energy and Water has plans to manage groundwater. The head of water program coordination, Rafiullah Stanakzai, says that there are several ongoing projects: the Kabul-Panjshir water canal project as well as the Shah Tut and the Shah Arous projects that supply water to Kabul. The work on these projects will begin after the technical team has reviewed them.

Officials attribute the decline in groundwater levels to population growth and excessive groundwater usage, underscoring the urgency of resolving the water crisis.

The water crisis needs a quick resolution. The Taliban government lacks a comprehensive plan to address the population’s needs for drinking water and essential necessities, casting a dark and hopeless shadow over the country plagued by drought.

A recent United Nations report highlights the gravity of the water crisis in Afghanistan:

• Around 8 out of every 10 Afghan people drink unsafe water. 
• 93% of children in Afghanistan (15.6 million children) live in areas of high, or extremely high, water vulnerability. 
• Nearly 4.2 million people practice open defecation. 
• 5 out of every 10 Afghan people don’t have access to at least basic sanitation facilities. 
• Over 6 out of every 10 Afghan people don’t have access to basic hygiene facilities. 
• Around 94% of schools across Afghanistan lack access to basic handwashing facilities. 
• Around 35% of healthcare facilities lack access to at least a basic drinking water supply.

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

Credit: El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Dec 14 2023 (IPS)

It’s recently been reported that the two main protagonists of Sudan’s current conflict – leaders of the armed forces and militia at war since April – have agreed to face-to-face talks. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an East African body, announced the potential breakthrough – although Sudan’s foreign ministry has since claimed IGAD’s statement is inaccurate, creating further uncertainty.

There’s no question that an end to the violence is urgently needed. The conflict has created a humanitarian and human rights crisis. But the two leaders involved, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, have provided ample evidence to doubt whether they’re really interested in peace, or in accountability for atrocities.

Human rights crimes on all sides

Al-Burhan and Hemeti were partners in the October 2021 coup that ousted the civilian government that followed the 2019 revolution. Their conflict began at a crunch moment for a supposed return to civilian rule and amid a plan to absorb the RSF into the SAF. As much as anything, it appears to be a personal power battle between the two leaders.

The conflict initially played out on the streets of the capital, Khartoum, and its neighbouring city of Omdurman. It has since spread to other regions. Other rebel groups are active, some acting independently of the two main forces.

All sides are targeting civilians, with clear evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed. Over 12,190 people have been killed since the conflict began. The UN also estimates that 6.6 million people have now been displaced, the world’s highest number of displaced people.

The conflict has been brought to Darfur, the site of a genocide against local ethnic groups committed by the RSF and other Arab militias that began in 2003. Twenty years on, people are again being killed solely because of their ethnicity. The RSF now controls much of the region. In November, in response to the RSF’s ethnic cleansing, key Darfur militia groups joined the SAF’s side, signalling a further escalation of conflict.

The chaos of conflict has caused a cholera outbreak, with the health system collapsing and medical workers under attack. The World Food Programme has recently warned of a deepening hunger crisis.

In Chad, a low-income country home to around a million displaced people before the conflict began, refugee centres are struggling to cope with arrivals from Sudan and people live in crowded and insanitary conditions, exposed to continuing insecurity.

Humanitarian workers are being targeted. In December, two people were killed in an attack on a Red Cross convoy in Khartoum. Journalists are also being targeted, making it harder to get accurate and independent news from the ground. In Khartoum, the RSF has turned media buildings into detention centres.

And yet the response from the international community has been wholly inadequate. Recently the UN announced it had received only 38.6 per cent of the US$2.6 billion needed for humanitarian response in 2023. It’s only been able to help a fraction of those in need.

In another blow, at the start of December, the mandate of the UN Integrated Assistance Mission in Sudan was terminated at the request of the SAF-led government. Its job had been to support a democratic transition. The move offered a troubling sign that the government wants less rather than more international oversight.

A history of wishful thinking

With other conflicts dominating global headlines – first Ukraine, now Gaza – the world isn’t paying attention. But that doesn’t mean states have stopped taking sides. Sudan’s size, mineral wealth and geographical position give it strategic significance. Foreign states have long made self-interested calculations. Before the conflict, most states, as well as the UN, placed faith in the military as a source of stability. With that idea blown, states are now deciding which side is their best bet.

The United Arab Emirates is reportedly supplying arms to the RSF, and recently several of its diplomats were expelled by the foreign ministry. Russia is also on the RSF’s side. Both countries have an interest in Sudan’s gold. On the other side, Egypt has always been strongly behind the military establishment and the USA is said to be sliding towards the SAF as the perceived lesser of two evils.

Even when apparently well-intentioned, states and international organisations have consistently been guilty of wishful thinking. Before the conflict they put their faith in the promises of a military-led transition plan. Every process attempted since the coup has only further empowered the leaders now at war.

Need to enable civil society

It’s time Sudan’s civil society was heard and enabled to help pave the road to peace.

Sudan’s civil society is complex and layered. There’s an elite tier that broadly backed the supposedly transitional administration that emerged after the coup. There are established civil society organisations that work to provide essential services and advocate for rights. But the biggest source of opposition to armed rule has come from resistance committees: informal neighbourhood-level groups that played a crucial role in the 2019 revolution.

The committees are democratic and make decisions by consensus. They call for civilian rule and reject the calculations of the outside world about which form of military government can best guarantee stability, which for the resistance committees means continuing oppression. They’ve also become a key source of humanitarian response, including by providing food, water and healthcare.

Diverse resistance committees have worked together to develop a plan for transition to democracy. But the outside world seems perplexed, struggling to engage with a leaderless movement and rejecting demands for democratic civilian rule as somehow too ambitious.

But everything else has failed. There should be no route for either of the warring military leaders to retain power. When peace comes, so must accountability for human rights crimes. And neither will materialise unless democracy does – which means an enabled and empowered civil society.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Celebrating the end of COP28, which ended with an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. Credit: UNFCCC

By Cecilia Russell
DUBAI, Dec 14 2023 (IPS)

While the outcomes of COP28 are being hotly debated in both the scientific and social justice arenas, the climate conference has taken an unprecedented step forward toward a just transition, says Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations.

Making some preliminary remarks a day after the climate conference ended, she said: “COP28 ends like it started: imperfect, yet an important and unprecedented step forward in our “course correction” for a just transition towards resilient and greener economies.”

The UN decision acknowledged the need for the decline of coal, oil, and gas for the first time in an agreement that talks about transitioning out of fossil fuels. It will also be known for operationalizing the Loss and Damages Fund, even if the funding falls far below the requirements for climate-stressed countries and communities.

UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell acknowledged these contractions in his final speech.

“While we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end,” Stiell said.

He also noted that climate finance, which he said was a great enabler of climate action, fell short of the trillions needed to support developing countries with clean energy transitions and adaptation efforts.

He urged ordinary people everywhere to not relent in their demands for a climate-just world.

“In the crucial years ahead, your voices and determination will be more important than ever. I urge you never to relent. We are still in this race. We will be with you every single step of the way.”

Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations. Credit: TJ Kirkpatrick, Open Society Foundations

Dagnet believes that COP28 is the start of a new era in climate justice.

“This is not an end; rather, just the beginning of an implementation journey that we know is hard but can be so positively transformative, and just if we manage to mobilize, in an equitable manner, all hands-on deck. A climate-just journey and outcome require vigilance, creativity, and accountability; stronger solidarity and engagement at all levels; promoting human rights; and shared prosperity for all,” she says.

This COP, Danget says, laid bare the issues with the Paris Agreement, especially with the just transition.

“More specifically, this COP exposed all the contradictions and challenges faced when implementing the promises of the Paris Agreement, especially a managed, equitable transition away from fossil fuels and the sustained mobilization, alignment, and access to financial flows domestically and internationally to decarbonize and build resilience,” Dagnet says. ”

While some signals got clearer with more substantive commitments, challenges remain, however, in how the just and equitable transition is sequenced.

“Inclusive processes matter to foster shared prosperity and benefits throughout the journey, together with adequate safeguards to minimize unintended adverse impacts of climate-related measures and technologies and to protect frontline and marginalized communities.

“Similarly, the just operationalization and continued capitalization of the Loss and Damage Fund will require vigilance, effective guidance, and mechanisms to make sure commensurate funding is actually mobilized and reaches the communities that need it the most in a timely manner. Adequate mobilization of finance for adaptation by the donor community is also essential to tackle losses and damages with dignity. We are happy that a dozen of them committed to join OSF efforts in this regard.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: EBRD

By Anton Usov
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Dec 14 2023 (IPS)

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is addressing the issue of youth entrepreneurship and employment in Central Asia by launching a seven-year €200 million (US$ 218 million) Youth in Business (YiB) programme.

The programme is designed to provide better access to finance and relevant training to young entrepreneurs in the region, where up to one third of the population is aged between 18 and 34 years.

The Youth in Business programme in Central Asia (YiB CA) will target micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) led or owned by young individuals under the age of 35.

It will consist of up to €200 million for on-lending to up to 20 partner financial institutions in Central Asia and Mongolia; targeted non-financial services for eligible small businesses will be provided by the Bank’s Advice for Small Businesses programme to help develop their entrepreneurial skills through training, advisory services and networking opportunities.

The EBRD’s investment will be complemented by a package of up to €30 million consisting of grants and concessional co-financing to stimulate inclusive lending and youth entrepreneurship.

It is expected that the first loan agreements under the YiB CA will include: a loan of up to US$ 10 million to Uzbekistan’s largest private bank Hamkorbank, a loan of up to US$ 8 million to Shinhan Bank Kazakhstan, a loan of up to US$ 4 million to Mongolia’s leading micro lender Transcapital, and a loan of up to US$ 2 million to Kazakhstan-based microfinancial organisation Arnur Credit.

A market assessment conducted by the EBRD in the region reveals that while many young people across Central Asia have a strong entrepreneurial mindset, very few have access to equal economic opportunities. Only around 10 per cent of them have access to necessary training and professional expertise.

This is very important for Central Asia, where MSMEs account for almost half of total employment and contribute to almost 40 per cent of regional GDP.

Grant support and concessional finance to the programme is provided by the government of Kazakhstan, the Small Business Impact Fund and the European Union.

The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Central Asia. It has to date provided close to €19 billion through more than 1,000 projects.

Anton Usov is EBRD Chief Spokesman for Central Asia and Mongolia

IPS UN Bureau

 

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It was an extraordinary COP Summit in a year characterized by record-breaking temperatures combined with El Niño, producing a climatic carnage in Africa—deaths from fatal floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Libya, where floods wiped out a quarter of a city. Deadly cyclones in Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; a […]

A female orca splitting a herring bait ball while diving through it to get one. (Underwater Sea Scapes WINNER for 2023 Photo Competition The annual Photo Competition for UN World Oceans Day)

By Jean-Paul Adam
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

As an Islander from the Seychelles, Africa’s smallest country, I find that the ocean is intricately woven into my heritage. It not only defines my roots but also shapes the trajectory of my journey. When I think of the future, I can’t help but also look at the boundless possibilities reflected in the vast expanse of the ocean.

I am therefore encouraged that the growing trend of African leaders turning their attention to the ocean as a catalyst for achieving “climate positive growth”. This is the premise of the Nairobi Climate Action Summit, where African leaders emphasized that ‘Africa possesses both the potential and the ambition to be a vital component of the global solution to climate change’.

African leaders are emphasizing that ‘climate positive growth’ will be built by Africans, for Africans. Of course, support is needed – no one can achieve the scale of change needed without massive upscaling of investment.

Jean-Paul Adam

The Great Blue Wall is an initiative which aims to catalyze the promise of ‘climate positive growth’ into action. Under the Comoros Presidency, the African Union seeks, now more than ever, a ‘blue future’.

Spearheaded by African countries in the Western Indian Ocean, as outlined in the Moroni Declaration adopted in June 2023, the Great Blue Wall initiative aims to shield African countries from impacts of climate change and natural disasters uplifting and delivering economic empowerment to local coastal and island communities.

The existing industrialized fishing practices of distant nations is completely detached from the eco-system which supports the biomass and hence poses a threat. The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission has underlined overfishing of tuna species, especially the big-eye tuna and yellow-fin tuna.

At the same time, the warming ocean, increasing acidification of the water and consequent bleaching of coral reefs affects the availability of the prey species such as mackerel for the much-prized tunas.

Coastal African nations find themselves at risk, often reaping limited benefits from their marine resources, similar to challenges faced with mineral exports from the mainland. FAO and other UN agencies are working with African countries to allow them to reap more benefit from their marine resources.

The Great Blue Wall aims to conserve marine resources through Marine Protected Areas as well as empower local communities by boosting the sustainable fisheries value chain and establishing of additional economic opportunities through eco-tourism and related economic activities.

The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Framework on Biological Diversity delivered a global pledge to place 30% of the world’s oceans under protection-further reinforced by the 2023 adoption of an agreement on protecting marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction.

A regenerative model also implies actively investing in the ocean for climate resilience. In this instance, mangroves in particular are nature’s best line of defense. Mangroves provide some of the most effective protections against coastal erosion, while they are also critical spawning grounds for numerous commercial fish species and crustaceans.

Marine-based eco-tourism is also one of the most valuable forms of economic activity to provide opportunities for local populations. These are some of the elements that underpin the transformation from ‘extraction’ to ‘regeneration’.

How does this fit into Africa’s drive for sustainable industrialization?

The Great Blue Wall not only offers a model for a ‘regenerative blue economy’ but also addresses broader challenges associated with Africa’s maritime space.

As Africa’s trade heavily relies on sea transport, ensuring climate-resistant port infrastructure becomes pivotal, most pressing is the development of Africa’s maritime corridors for trade to build on the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Reliable and affordable energy is a key enabler of sustainable value chains. Opportunities exist for offshore wind energy, for example, as being explored by Morocco. Meanwhile, floating solar is being tested in Seychelles, while using the ocean temperature differential for cooling purposes is being piloted in Mauritius.

Financing the vision

As the Great Blue Wall envisions climate resilience built on community-focused economic empowerment, financing is key. The gap in climate finance is glaring- all the while conflicts divert resources away from climate and development priorities. The climate finance gap highlighted by the High Level Expert Panel on Climate Finance co-chaired by Nick Stern and Vera Songwe showed that $2.4 trillion was required by 2030.

Large-scale climate finance availability would allow the Great Blue Wall initiative to mobilize quickly and at scale. Additionally, the Great Blue Wall also aims to generate income streams that support communities, reducing dependency and helps to boost domestic resource mobilization.

Among these opportunities including tapping into the potential of ‘blue carbon’ or issuing carbon credits based on the sequestration potential of oceanic resources. Successful small scale projects such as Mikoko Pamoja in Kenya have delivered high quality results for local communities through mangrove rehabilitation.

Recognizing increased debt burdens of African countries, the opportunity to use debt swap instruments to replace existing expensive debt with more affordable longer-term lending could potentially liberate fiscal space to be redeployed to finance some of the priorities of the Great Blue Wall. The Seychelles debt for climate swap of 2015 for example delivered new and predictable flows of finance for marine conservation.

Looking ahead: COP28 and beyond

The Great Blue Wall has high-level political backing and is a priority for the African Union and its partners. Efforts are underway to expand its adoption to other African countries, connecting the ambitions of the countries along the Indian Ocean to those along the Atlantic.

At COP28, the focus was on mobilizing seed financing for this ambitious project which not only provides climate adaptation, but also seeks to fundamentally transform the economic model for management of marine resources.

The Great Blue Wall captures the essence of the ‘climate positive growth’ we hope to see.

Jean-Paul Adam is the Director, Policy, Monitoring and Advocacy at the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, UN Secretariat in New York

Source: Africa Renewal

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst.

Extreme poverty continues to be high and is now worse than before the pandemic in low-income countries (LICs) and among those affected by fragility, violence and conflict. The promise of eradicating poverty worldwide by 2030 has become unachievable.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings in Marrakech in October were only the second-ever in Africa. But the rich nations-dominated BWIs failed yet again to rise to the challenges of our times, setting Africa and the global South even further back.

Instead of fostering cooperation to address the causes and effects of the contemporary catastrophe, neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank governors could agree on joint communiques due to the greater politicisation of multilateral fora.

Indebtedness immobilises governments
Indebtedness and restrictive creditor rules prevent governments from spending more counter-cyclically to overcome the many contractionary tendencies of recent times, besides preventing them from addressing looming social and environmental crises.

The G20’s largest twenty economies have urged strengthening “multilateral coordination by official bilateral and private creditors … to address the deteriorating debt situation and facilitate coordinated debt treatment for debt-distressed countries”.

But its Common Framework to restructure debt has been roundly criticised by civil society, think tanks and even the World Bank on many grounds, including the paltry concessional credit relief offered to a few of the very poorest countries.

In contrast, the G24 caucus of developing countries at the BWIs has emphasised the need for “durable debt resolution measures while collaborating on resolving the structural issues leading to such vulnerabilities.”

But all those advocating purported solutions are not even trying to ensure fiscal space and public spending capacity for counter-cyclical efforts, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and national development objectives.

Surcharges
The IMF currently imposes additional charges on countries that do not quickly clear their debts to the Fund. Besides the usual fees and interest, borrowing countries paid over $4 billion in such surcharges in 2020-22, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Surcharges will cost debt-distressed countries about $7.9 billion over six years. The G24 has emphasised that surcharges are pro-cyclical and regressive, especially with monetary tightening.

Governments have undertaken contractionary policies and cut imports for lack of foreign exchange. This deepens the problems of heavily indebted poor countries who cannot but count on the Fund for relief and solutions.

At Marrakech, the governing International Monetary and Financial Committee decided to “consider a review of surcharge policies”. The G24 called for “a suspension of surcharges while the review – which we hope will lead to substantial permanent reduction or complete elimination – is being conducted.”

Rich nations have been divided over surcharges. With Ukraine now among the top surcharge payers, following civil society criticisms, the Biden administration’s refusal to review surcharges in 2022 was heavily criticised by the US Congress.

Deepening austerity
IMF fiscal austerity measures of the 1980s returned with a vengeance after the 2008 global financial crisis, and then again during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020. Most Fund loans require cutting the public sector wage bill (PSWB), the budget line to pay employees.

Most wage earners in many LICs, including nurses, teachers and other social service workers, work for the state, directly or indirectly. Although much needed, these employees have been more likely to be targeted by such budget cuts.

PSWB cuts may involve hiring or wage freezes, or limiting, or even cutting wages. These inevitably undermine government capacities and services. Fiscal consolidation has also involved raising more indirect, consumption taxes, and tax exemptions, e.g., for essential goods such as food.

In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22, the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, meant regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. PSWB and fuel or electricity subsidy cuts are also common demands worsening economic contractions.

Austerity bound to fail
But the IMF’s own research suggests such austerity policies are generally ineffective in reducing debt, their ostensible purpose. The April 2023 IMF World Economic Outlook acknowledged austerity programmes and fiscal consolidations “do not reduce debt ratios, on average”. Yet, its Fiscal Monitor still demands “fiscal tightening” of most developing countries.

The new IMF-World Bank debt sustainability framework sets the LICs’ external debt-to-GDP ratio limit at 30% or 40%. It insists debt-distressed economies must have lower ratios than ‘strong’ countries, effectively further penalising the weak and vulnerable.

Instead of enabling consistently counter-cyclical macroeconomic frameworks, the IMF’s current short-termist approach is mainly preoccupied with annual, or worse, quarterly balances, mimicking corporate reporting practices.

Such short-termism further limits fiscal space, effectively preventing or deterring public sector investments requiring longer-term macroeconomic frameworks to realise benefits. This discourages ‘patient’ medium- to long-term investments required for national economic planning and transformation, essential for sustainable development.

Restrictive debt and fiscal targets have meant even less public investment. This is typically required of borrowing countries as a credit conditionality. Annual IMF Article IV consultations cause other countries to also accept similar constraints to avoid Fund disapproval.

While a few better-off economies enjoy full employment, most countries face further economic contraction, not least due to interest rate hikes led by the US Fed and their many effects. Instead of being part of the problem, the IMF should be part of the solution.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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29-year-old Proud Mugunhu, a popular Zimbabwean dancer, has mesmerized crowds and onlookers with his dancing skills at events as he gyrates to gather sanitary pads in order to give them to girls and women who are too poor to afford them. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
BULAWAYO, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

At first, he danced for money, but later on, he realized the need to dance for sanitary pads in order to help poor girls and women. Now, 29-year-old Proud Mugunhu conducts dance tutorials that earn him 100 pads from each session.

Mugunhu started his commercial dancing in Zimbabwe’s Epworth informal settlement east of Harare, the country’s capital, where he said he grew up seeing poor girls and women making do without sanitary pads during menstruation.

Now, Mugunhu, who has turned into a popular dancer, has become famed for combating period poverty.

He (Mugunhu) does not only dance to please onlookers, but has now chosen to dance in order to be rewarded with sanitary pads to pass these on to the girls and women pounded by period poverty.

In and outside Zimbabwe, Mugunhu now dances at events where he has struck deals to receive sanitary pads as payment in his war against rampant poverty.

As a result, his dancing has seen many of the girls and women graduate from using rags to something that gives them dignity and confidence.

“I started dancing in 2015—dancing commercially at weddings. I only began dancing for sanitary pads last year, and I am gathering as many sanitary pads as I can in order to help,” Mugunhu told IPS.

“Growing up in Epworth, I saw a lot in terms of the ravages of poverty, especially on girls. So, what I do is that I conduct dance classes for ordinary people, and I choose to be paid using sanitary pads in order for me to then use these to donate to poor girls and women.”

He claims that he gets more than 100 pads per dancing class that he conducts.

“I just want to help those in need. I’m praying that I will be able to get more sanitary pads so that I will be able to give to many girls and women in need.”

The destitution Mugunhu witnessed as he grew up in Epworth compelled him to dance.

In 2019, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube, made a surprise announcement that US$12.5 million had been allocated to acquire sanitary pads for poor rural girls in the country who had reached puberty.

Apparently, the news brought joy to Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga, the then chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Primary and Secondary Education.

For many years, she (Misihairambwi) passionately lobbied for the provision of sanitary pads to schoolgirls, while she also made calls for a tax regime that made sanitary wear affordable to every woman in the country.

Whether or not the poor girls eventually received free sanitary pads from the government remains unclear to this day.

But a top government official in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Women Affairs has claimed that next year they are set to provide sanitary pads free of charge to the country’s poor women and girls.

“Next year, we have plans to work with women who are into sewing to sew reusable sanitary pads, which they will give to girls and women at no cost,” the Chief Director of the Ministry of Women Affairs, Lilian Matsika, told IPS.

With period poverty the norm in poor communities, women’s rights activists like Bridget Mushayahanya called on the government to end the crisis.

“What we want is for our government to understand that menstruation is something that women don’t choose to have. If it were possible, Mushayahanya said, “I would like for our government to work with other regional governments that do ‘pink tanks,’ which means that all items needed by women during menstruation are available for very low prices or free of charge.

Chipo Chikomo, founder of an organization called Nhanga Trust, which manufactures reusable sanitary pads for girls, bemoaned poverty, which she blamed for forcing many to be absent from school during their menstruation.

“We see many girls walking long distances to school; this means that during their monthly menstrual cycles, they don’t then go to school because they won’t have pads to use when they are having menstruation,” she told IPS.

Yet many, like Chikomo, complained of persistent period poverty. For others, like Anna Sande and Sharon Bare, heroic individuals such as Mugunhu stand out as saviors for poor girls and women hammered by period poverty.

Following this year’s elections, at 23 years of age, Sande became Epworth’s youngest mayor, taking charge of a poor local authority where period poverty is common for many.

“I am so grateful for the help I have obtained from Proud Tatenda Mugunhu, who gathers sanitary pads using his dancing talent to help poor girls and women in my community during their monthly periods,” Sande said in an interview with IPS.

Even ordinary Epworth residents like Sharon Bare cannot hide their joy as Mugunhu thwarts period poverty in their midst.

“I really appreciate everything that Mugunhu is doing. I am so proud he is doing a good thing to help poor girls and women get sanitary pads during menstruation,” Bare said.

Peace Hungwe, who is the founder of Peace Hub Zimbabwe, an organization that handles mental health cases in Harare, also showered Mugunhu with praise for his initiative to help poor girls and women surmount period poverty.

“At first, I want to thank Proud. Like his name suggests, he should be proud of himself. There are very few people who do what he is doing. Menstruation is a hard time for many poor girls and women, which leads them into sex work to merely get sanitary pads to use during menstruation,” she told IPS.

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Colombian President Gustavo Petro presented his environmental plans at COP28 in Dubai and added his country to the small group of nations that support the negotiation of a binding treaty to prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels, despite his country being an oil producer. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

One of the most heated debates at the annual climate summit coming to a conclusion in this United Arab Emirates city revolved around the phrasing of the final declaration, regarding the “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels within a given time frame.

This is an essential calculation on the decommissioning of refineries, pipelines, power plants and other infrastructure that, in some cases, have been in operation for years, as discussed at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Experts who talked to IPS at the summit agreed on the magnitude of the bill, which for some Latin American nations could be unaffordable."Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources." -- Fernanda Carvalho

Fernanda Carvalho of Brazil, global leader for Energy and Climate Policy at the non-governmental World Wildlife Fund (WWF), referred to the amount without specifying a figure.

“Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources,” the expert, who was present at COP28, held at Expo City on the outskirts of Dubai, told IPS.

COP28 engaged in an acrimonious debate between phase-out and phase-down, with a definite date, of oil, gas and coal, which has already anticipated a disappointing end in Dubai, that in line with the tradition at these summits extended its negotiations one more day, to conclude on Wednesday, Dec. 13.

The “phase-down” concept has been in the climate-energy jargon for years, but it really took off at the 2021 COP26 in the Scottish city of Glasgow, whose Climate Pact alludes to the reduction of coal still being produced and the elimination of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Throughout the climate summits since 1995, developing countries have insisted on differentiated measures for them, in accordance with their own situation, the need for financing from developed nations and the transfer of technology, especially energy alternatives.

Enrique Maurtúa of Argentina, senior diplomacy advisor to the Independent Global Stocktake (iGST) – an umbrella data and advocacy initiative – said they hoped for a political signal to determine regulations or market measures regarding a phase-down or phase-out.

“If a target date is not set, there is no signal. If you set a phase-out for 2050, that is a pathway for the transition. With a deadline, the market can react. And then each country must evaluate its specific context,” the expert told IPS in the COP28 Green Zone, which hosted civil society organizations at the summit.

Available scientific knowledge indicates that the majority of proven hydrocarbon reserves must remain unextracted by 2030 to keep the planetary temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold agreed in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to avoid massive disasters.

On Sunday, Dec. 10 the non-governmental Climate Action Network (CAN) delivered at COP28 a dishonorable mention to the United States for its role in Israel’s carnage in Gaza, in the traditional Fossil of the Day award for “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of progress on climate change at the summits. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Failed attempts

In the Latin American region there are unsuccessful precedents of fossil fuel phase-outs.

In 2007, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), launched the Yasuní-Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini initiative, which sought the care of the Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, in exchange for funds from governments, foundations, companies and individuals of about 3.6 billion dollars by 2024 to leave the oil in the ground.

The aim was to leave 846 million barrels of oil untouched underground. But a special fund created by Ecuador and the United Nations Environment Fund only raised 13 million dollars, according to the Ecuadorian government. So Correa decided to cancel the initiative in 2013, at a time when renewable energies had not yet really taken off.

In a referendum held in August, Ecuadorians decided to halt oil extraction in a block in Yasuní that would provide 57,000 barrels per day in 2022 – the same result sought by Correa, but without foreign funds.

The result of the referendum is to be implemented within a year, although the position of the government of the current president, banana tycoon Daniel Noboa, who took office on Nov. 23, is still unclear.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has put the brakes on new oil and coal exploration contracts, a promise from his 2022 election campaign.

In addition, the president announced on Dec. 2 in Dubai that his country was joining nine other nations that are promoting the formal initiation of the negotiation of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Colombia will thus become the first Latin American nation and the largest oil and coal producer to join the initiative that first emerged in 2015 when several Pacific Island leaders and NGOs raised the urgent need for an international mechanism to phase out fossil fuels.

For the undertaking of a just energy transition to cleaner fuels, Petro estimates an initial bill of 14 billion dollars, to come from governments of the developed North, multilateral organizations and international funds.

The latest summit of hope for the climate kicked off on Nov. 30 in this Arab city under the slogan “Unite. Act. Deliver” – the least successful in the history of COPs since the first one, held in Berlin in 1995.

The hopes included commitments and voluntary declarations on renewable energy and energy efficiency; agriculture, food and climate; health and climate; climate finance; refrigeration; and just transitions with a gender focus.

In addition, there were financial pledges of some 86 billion dollars, without specifying whether it is all new money, to be allocated to these issues.

Like many countries, the host of COP28, the United Arab Emirates, has had a pavilion in the so-called Green Zone, which hosts non-governmental organizations, companies and other institutions. The Emirati government bet a lot on the climate summit to deliver results, but without directly targeting the fossil fuels on which its economy depends. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Billions

Given the production and exploration plans of the main hydrocarbon producing countries in the region, the magnitude of the challenge in the medium and long term is enormous.

In October, Brazil, the largest economy in the region and the 11th largest in the world, extracted 3.543 billion barrels of oil and 152 million cubic meters (m3) of gas per day.

This represented approximately two percent of the domestic economy that month.

Mexico, the region’s second largest economy, extracted 1.64 million barrels and 4.971 billion m3 of gas per day in October, equivalent to 52 million dollars in revenues.

Meanwhile, Colombia produced 780,487 barrels of oil in the first eight months of 2023 and 1,568 cubic feet per day of gas, equivalent to 12 percent of public revenues.

“We have to think about decarbonization measures. We want Latin America to be a clean energy powerhouse,” said Carvalho.

As of September, Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras was working on obtaining 9.571 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the Global Oil & Gas Exit List produced by the German non-governmental organization Urgewald.

This represents an excess of 94 percent above the limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex is producing 1.444 billion barrels of oil equivalent, 56 percent above the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.

Finally, the public company Ecopetrol, mostly owned by the Colombian state, is working to obtain 447 million barrels, 98 percent above the Paris Agreement limit, according to Urgewald.

In addition, the cost of action against the climate crisis is far from affordable for any Latin American nation.

For example, Mexico estimated that the implementation of 35 measures, including in the power, gas and oil generation sector, would cost 137 billion dollars in 2030, but the benefits would total 295 billion dollars.

But Maurtúa says the budget question is only relative. “There is a lot of public money with which many things can be done,” complemented by international resources, he argued.

Credit: Ilmars Znotins/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

Last month the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, passed a package of eight laws recognising same-sex civil unions and associated rights. The new legislation came in response to a 2020 Constitutional Court ruling that established that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to the benefits and legal protections afforded to married opposite-sex couples.

Equal marriage rights are still a long way away, and civil unions are only a first step in the right direction. But in one of Europe’s most restrictive countries for LGBTQI+ rights, activists view it as a significant shift, achieved after numerous attempts over more than two decades. Anti-rights forces agree, and they’re not going to let it happen quietly. They’ve already responded with an attempt to stop the new law being adopted by campaigning for a referendum.

The breakthrough

The first registered partnership bill was submitted by the National Human Rights Office in 1999 but rejected by parliament’s Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee and never debated. Initiatives accelerated in the mid-2010s but were all rejected – the latest attempts coming in 2020 and 2022.

On 29 October 2020, a popular initiative calling for the passage of a civil union law that had gathered more than 10,000 signatures was voted down by parliament. Campaigners immediately started a new initiative for the ‘legal protection of all families’, which attracted over 23,000 signatures – but that too was rejected by parliament in December 2022.

Following the 2020 parliamentary vote, however, two court rulings catalysed change. In November 2020, the Constitutional Court found the labour law in violation of the constitution because it didn’t provide for parental leave to the non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship.

As the result of a 2006 anti-rights initiative to ban same-sex marriage, the Latvian Constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The concept of family, however, isn’t explicitly defined in reference to marriage, and the court understood it more broadly as a stable relationship based on understanding and respect. It concluded that the constitution demanded protection for same-sex partners and gave parliament a deadline of 1 June 2022 to amend the law to provide a way for same-sex couples to register their relationship.

A year later, in December 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that if the deadline was missed, same-sex couples would be allowed to resort to the courts to have their relationship recognised.

Anti-rights backlash

The anti-rights reaction was quick in coming. Two months after the Constitutional Court ruling, parliament introduced a constitutional amendment that went further than ratifying the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, defining family as based on marriage.

To comply with the Constitutional Court’s ultimatum, in February 2022 the Ministry of Justice submitted a civil union bill and two months later, despite an attempted boycott to deny a quorum, parliament approved its first reading.

When it became apparent that the court’s deadline would be missed, same-sex couples started petitioning the courts for recognition as family units. The first of dozens of positive rulings was issued on 31 May 2022.

That same day a tight parliamentary vote resulted in the appointment of Latvia’s first out gay president. Momentum was building, and parliament finally passed a law to allow same-sex civil unions on 9 November 2023.

But conservative politicians managed to put the new law on hold as they seek to gather the signatures required to force a referendum that they hope will prevent its entry into force.

A long way to go

Even if it survives the challenge, the new law is no panacea. Ultimately, access to marriage is the only way to ensure LGBTQI+ couples have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Recognition of same-sex relationships is a step forward, but still leaves Latvia behind neighbouring Estonia, which legalised same-sex marriage in June.

If upheld, the new legislation will give registered same-sex couples some but not all the rights associated with marriage – they’ll have hospital visitation rights and tax and social security benefits, but not inheritance rights or the right to adopt children.

Beyond the legal sphere, the biggest challenge will come in influencing public attitudes, as signalled by Latvia’s scores on Equaldex’s Equality Index. This ranking combines a legal index that assesses key laws and a public opinion index that measures attitudes towards LGBTQI+ people. Latvia scores far lower for public opinion than for its laws. A 2019 Special Eurobarometer poll found that only 49 per cent of Latvians thought that LGBTQI+ people should have the same rights as heterosexuals.

The message is clear: changing laws and policies won’t be enough – and any legal victories will remain in peril unless social attitudes change.

Latvian LGBTQI+ organisations are fully aware of this, which is why they’ve worked on both fronts for many years. A centrepiece of their work to challenge prejudice is the annual Pride event, which Latvia pioneered for the Baltic region in 2005. As recounted by its organisers, Latvia’s Pride grew from 70 participants who faced 3,000 protesters in 2005 to 5,000 participants at EuroPride 2015, held in Latvia’s capital Riga, and 8,000 in the 2018 Baltic Pride, also held in Riga. Pride was repeatedly banned by Riga City Council, and it invariably faced hostile counter-protesters – but fewer each time, while the number of Pride participants has grown, boosting people’s self-confidence.

Global trends show progress towards the recognition of LGBTQI+ rights to be much stronger than regression. Latvian LGBTQI+ advocates will continue to push forward on both the policy and awareness-raising fronts. They’ll continue working to secure what they’ve already achieved while striving for more. They’re on the right course.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Credit: UNICEF / Oleg-Popov

By Naureen Hossain
NEW YORK, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

Child poverty persists even in some of the world’s richest countries, new findings from a UNICEF report reveal.

UNICEF’s Office of Global Insight and Policy’s latest report details the prevalence of child poverty in 39 EU and OECD countries. It reveals the extent of child poverty in these countries and how these cases vary from middle-to-high-income countries. Titled Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth, this report is the latest in the Innocenti Report Card series, which observes children’s well-being in high-income countries. Within these countries, over 69 million children were living in households earning less than 60 percent of the average national income level. Across these countries, there was a reported 8 percent decrease in poverty levels between 2014 and 2021. During this period of relative prosperity, countries took this as an opportunity to address child poverty, with varying levels of success.
Of the countries assessed for this report, Slovenia, Poland, Finland, and Denmark reported child poverty reduction rates that exceeded 30 percent. By contrast, higher-income countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and France reported a high percentage of child poverty and even saw these rates increase in recent years.

Determined by assessing and comparing child poverty rates through two metrics, the first was to compare the national income level and child poverty levels in the 39 countries. It was found that although the richer countries had higher national income levels, they did not have lower child poverty rates. This meant that a higher national income did not guarantee these countries’ ability to reduce child poverty. It only makes the contrast more striking when compared to countries such as Slovenia and Poland, which are not ranked among the wealthiest countries.

The second metric used to measure child poverty was what the report referred to as ‘non-monetary poverty’. This was determined through needs assessments where a person could not access certain services or through seeking the opinions of those living through poverty. Poverty was measured through material deprivation, the absence or lack of services and goods, or housing security.

Credit: UNICEF / Alexandru-Saru

Multiple factors could contribute to the high poverty risks in these countries. Poverty itself should be assessed from a multidimensional perspective. The report notes that since 2020, global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and disruptions in the global supply chain have upended our way of life. These global events left already-vulnerable communities, including children, at greater risk of living in poverty. Economic relief programs that were either introduced or expanded on during the early pandemic era are at risk of not being renewed or beyond their capacity to support the families that need them. The rise in living costs, from food to energy to housing, has put more pressure on low-to-middle-income families. For single-income families and particularly single-parent households, this poses a greater challenge if they live in high-income countries and if these families’ incomes are largely spent on these living costs.

It was observed that children experiencing persistent poverty, in that they have lived in poverty multiple times in their lives, are more likely to exhibit behavioral and learning difficulties. In the long term, they do not complete schooling or earn lower wages as adults.

The report also notes that certain inequalities present greater poverty risks. Children living in single-parent or one-adult households are at least three times more likely to experience poverty. It was also noted that children from minority communities were more likely to live in income poverty. These communities included racial and ethnic minorities, children whose families had migrated to their host country, indigenous and Roma children, and children with disabilities. In the EU, for instance, 37.2 percent of children whose parents were migrants lived in income poverty. This contrasts with the 15.6 percent of children whose parents were citizens of the country.

Credit: UNICEF / Ashley-Gilbertson

Among some groups, the higher risk of poverty is only one indication of the systematic disadvantages that they face, according to Gwyther Rees, Social and Economic Policy Manager at UNICEF Innocenti. Rees, who is one of the authors of the report, told IPS that the groups that need social protection are often not accessing them, in what is referred to as “non-take-up.”.

“Non-take-up of social protection affects all groups, but paradoxically, it is most prevalent among the most marginalized and, therefore, most in need of social protection,” he said. “There are multiple reasons for this, including, for example, a lack of financial inclusion (such as having a bank account), stigmatization, which discourages certain groups from accessing social protection benefits, and complex application procedures and hurdles, to name a few.”

Based on this report, it is clear that comprehensive changes need to be made in how countries tackle poverty reduction. The report recommends the broad measures that countries should take, including expanding social protections for children, improving access to essential services beyond financial support, expanding labor policies to ensure decent pay and working conditions for parents, and mitigating the inequalities in poverty risks. For children in minority groups, this will require ongoing action to make sure the barriers that prevent them from accessing these social protections are dealt with.

One noteworthy conclusion of the report is that children should be included in the discussion of poverty reduction. Children with lived experience would possess their own insights and perspectives. Just as children and adolescents have been proactive in environmental activism, there is hope that they will be encouraged to act similarly on the issue of poverty reduction. Rees told IPS that UNICEF Innocenti has been conducting consultations with children on their views on poverty in six countries, with plans to share their findings in 2024.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Lorenzo Díaz, son-in-law of José Antonio Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background, a windmill and a solar heater are other technologies in the clean energy mix that the family has installed at their Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela and Jorge Luis Baños
TAGUASCO, Cuba, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

The combined use of clean energies allows Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba, to practice a unique system of family farming production that guarantees self-sufficiency based on permaculture, agroecology and care of the environment.

For three decades, 65-year-old farmer José Antonio Casimiro and his family have been applying innovations to take advantage of the solar, wind, hydraulic and biomass potential on their 13-hectare farm in the municipality of Taguasco in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus.

Casimiro and his wife Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65, settled in 1993 with their children Leidy and José Antonio – Chavely was born a year later – on their paternal grandparents’ farm and began working to reverse the deterioration of the infrastructure and soil erosion.

The family, who live on the farm except for the eldest daughter, is currently self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and fruit. Of the basic foodstuffs, they only have to buy sugar and salt, and the surplus they produce is sold in surrounding areas.

They also promote education and awareness-raising on good agricultural and environmental practices, on the social networks.

At Finca del Medio, a number of daily processes are supported by clean sources such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as cooking, dehydration and drying of foods, and baking and refrigeration of food.

The farmer commented that the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kilowatt hours (kWh) from a combination of multiple technologies and innovations that utilize the potential of clean energy sources.

If only conventional electricity were used for their activities, it would cost them around 10,000 pesos (83 dollars) per month, he said.

Their 28 solar panels, which produce about 8 kWh, increased the power for water collection, irrigation and supply, while three solar heaters ensure hot water for domestic needs such as bathing.

The hydraulic ram uses the water pressure itself as the only energy to extract it from a dam with a capacity of 55,000 cubic meters, pipe it to a tank at the highest part of the farm, and from there the slope is used for irrigation by gravity, or to fill the animals’ water troughs.

Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters provide biogas, obtained from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and even household sewage.

Due to a decrease in the amount of manure, only one of the biodigesters is operating, which provides about seven meters of biogas per day, enough for cooking, baking and dehydrating food.

The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.

The installation of the biodigesters, the solar panels and one of the solar heaters was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station of Pastures and Forages through its Biomass-Cuba project, Casimiro said.

The agro-ecological innovator also highlighted the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.

The family also has two windmills and an efficient stove that uses firewood, coconut shells and other waste to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and treat meats for preservation.

Casimiro is in favor of incorporating renewable energy sources into agricultural processes. But in his opinion, “More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”

Clean sources account for only five percent of electricity generation in this Caribbean archipelago of 11 million inhabitants.

The government considers it a matter of national security to modify the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on fossil fuel imports and hit by cyclical energy deficits.

Jeffrey D. Sachs speaks at the ReWired Summit at COP28. Credit: X

By Joyce Chimbi
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

The United State’s contribution to the Loss and Damage Fund equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending, says Jeffrey D. Sachs, a world-renowned economist, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development.

While the Loss and Damage Fund promise was made at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, this was the first major milestone announced at COP28 in Dubai. So far, pledged contributions by various countries to the World Bank-hosted Loss and Damage Fund have reached USD 700 million. While this is a major step in the right direction, there are concerns that the fund is too small and that powerful nations are not doing enough to halt the pace and rate of climate change.

“The COP process is still a formalism, not a breakthrough.  Yes, there is a new losses and damages fund, but it is tiny—USD 700 million pledged—compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars of climate-related losses each year,” Sachs says.

Estimates are that by 2030, the total estimate of loss and damage for developing countries could be between USD 290 billion and USD 580 billion; another says it is USD 400 billion per year and rising.

Africa is on the frontlines of the devastating effects of climate change, despite accounting for the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions—3.8 percent.

“The US pledged a measly USD 17.5 million, which equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending. All other financing remains tiny compared to the real needs.  The US and Europe are engaged in war, not in climate financing.  The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are the only things of interest to US foreign policy,” Sachs told IPS. “John Kerry is powerless in reality.  He is there to give speeches.  He has no authority to deliver any real policies.”

He says it is crucial to stop the wars; once that is done, real diplomacy could start.

“On to COP29, in a rapidly warming world of great danger.  The first priority is to stop the wars, and that requires the world community to tell the US to stop the warmongering and to force Israel to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  By stopping the wars, we could begin real climate diplomacy among the major fossil-fuel-producing countries.  The top three fossil-fuel-producing countries are China, the US, and Russia.  The three need to cooperate.  That depends on a fundamental change in US foreign policy.”

The Loss and Damage Fund refers to the economic, social, and cultural losses and damages caused by anthropogenic climate change to natural and human systems. It is a vehicle to deliver climate justice to communities disproportionately affected by climate change. The climate injustice lies in the fact that, despite a low carbon footprint, developing countries are facing the full force of climatic changes, slowly wiping out their biodiversity and destroying lives, livelihoods, and cultural heritage.

Climate change is the most serious threat facing culture today. Globally, World Heritage properties are bearing the brunt of climate change, from increasing ocean acidification, desertification, droughts, floods, and fires related to rising temperatures. Climate change is slowly eradicating the African coast and its cultural heritage; 20 percent of Africa’s heritage sites are in danger.

Communities uprooted by climate-induced disasters are losing their ways of life, including the preservation of traditions for future generations. This is the cultural cost of climate change for many vulnerable communities, particularly indigenous people, who are currently suffering greatly from severe and drastic changes in weather patterns.

Vulnerable developing nations face greater risk from climate change and lack the funds to recover from climate events that have become increasingly frequent and more severe. While some losses from climate-induced disasters are impossible to recover from, such as loss of life, the fund is expected to help build better infrastructure after a severe climatic event.

While there is wide applause for the loss and damage fund, there is also criticism that the fund’s contributions at COP28 thus far cover less than 0.2 percent of climate-induced losses in developing countries. Additionally, powerful nations are reluctant to address critical issues such as phasing out fossil fuels that could significantly slow down climate change, giving Africa and other vulnerable nations in the global South much-needed relief.

“The United States political class is not serious. China is more interested.  Only an end to the wars, followed by serious negotiations among the major fossil-fuel producers, will work. The top 10 fossil fuel producers are: China, US, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, Iran, and Iraq. These 10 countries need to make serious, cooperative, and coordinated plans to phase out their production. They have not yet begun to hold such talks. In the meantime, funding for Africa is also seriously neglected,” Sachs says.

To reaffirm the 1.5°C-aligned energy transition, COP28 set out to firm up a number of ambitious goals, such as tripling global renewable energy generation capacity by 2030, doubling annual energy efficiency improvements by 2030, and an orderly decline in fossil fuel use demand by 2030, starting with no new coal plants.

The Summit further sought commitment from the oil and gas industry to align their strategies and investment portfolios with 1.5°C, with a focus on a 75 percent reduction in methane emissions by 2030. And financing mechanisms for a major scaling-up of clean energy investment in emerging and developing economies.

However, on Monday, December 11, 2023, the draft text of the agreement excluded the words “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels, instead only promising to reduce oil and gas, and several countries, including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and Japan, said they would not sign what would essentially be “death certificates for many small island states.”

The first-ever global stocktake, released in October 2023 ahead of the Dubai Summit, revealed that the world is not on track to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It is the first time that a UN climate summit has surveyed progress towards achieving the goals agreed in 2015, following the landmark Paris COP.

The stocktake report is akin to an inventory, as it looked at everything related to where the world stands on climate action and support. It provides a critical turning point. At COP28, UN member states will negotiate their response to the stocktake’s findings, looking at the state of planet Earth, and chart the best course for the survival of both planet and humankind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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In 2013, a new treaty, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, was adopted by a global community under the auspices of UNEP. The Convention is named after Minamata Bay in Japan to remember the lessons of the tragic health damage by industrial mercury pollution in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim of the treaty is to protect the environment and the human health from anthropogenic emissions and releases of the toxic heavy metal. It regulates the entire life cycle of mercury – its supply, trade, use, emissions, releases, storage, and the management of waste and contaminated sites.

By Charlie Brown
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

As it strives to be the prototype environmental treaty of this era, the Minamata Convention on Mercury continues its razor-like focus on ending all major uses of mercury. Emerging as the force leading the charge is the Global South, particularly the Africa Region, whose proposals led to hard-charging changes addressing dental amalgam, mercury-based skin creams, and fluorescent lights.

At the Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention (“COP5”), concluding in Geneva on 3 November, countries debated the African Amalgam Amendment, calling for the phase out of amalgam. The Africa region, led by Roger Baro, the Environment Minister of Burkina Faso, strategically built alliances beforehand, starting with the crucial 27-nation European Union.

Civil society was inspired watching one delegate after another rising to support the phase out of mercury in dentistry: from West Asia (Saudi Arabia, Jordan) to South Asia (Pakistan) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam), from Oceania (Australia, Tuvalu) to South America (Argentina) and non-E.U. Europe (Norway, Switzerland).

But several dissenters, while agreeing action is needed, were not yet amenable to a phase out date. Emerging therefore was the worldwide consensus to take three giant leaps toward mercury-free dentistry:

• For the first time, the treaty recognizes that countries can phase out amalgam – and more and more have already succeeded!
• The nations amended the treaty to add a new requirement: those countries that have “not yet phased out dental amalgam” must submit an action plan or a report on their progress.
• Most exciting of all, the nations inserted into the treaty, in brackets, a phase-out date for amalgam – an action that is not legally binding but which automatically agendizes a debate and a vote, at COP6 in 2025, on whether and when to phase out amalgam.

The Africa Region led the movement to end the use of two other mercury products, gaining phase-out dates in the Minamata Convention for mercury in skin cream (UN Convention Agrees to Phase Mercury Out of Cosmetics by 2025 – Zero Mercury) and for all fluorescent light bulbs (https://www.clasp.ngo/updates/cop5-decision/).

Africans, both government and civil society, are grimly determined to protect its people from mercury exposure and not to let its continent be made a dumping ground for toxic products, including amalgam.

In the national capitals, the march to mercury-free dentistry continues unabated. In October, Gabon decided amalgam is no longer allowed – and huge credit here goes to Serge Molly of Libreville, a long-time leader at the Minamata Convention.

This month the European Parliament and the Council of Europe debate when—not if—to phase out amalgam in all 27 member states (a dozen already have). Other Parties are ending amalgam piecemeal . . . banning its use in children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers . . . or in the military . . . or in government programs.

No consumer or parent these days wants amalgam; no one with the power to choose accepts a mercury implant in the mouth. Where choice reigns—the private sector—amalgam use is ending.

Well-ensconced inside government bureaucracies, the mercury lobby imposes amalgam outrageously on powerless consumers—the indigenous, the poor, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the institutionalized, the privates in the army and the seamen in the navy.

Unchecked by their superiors, the condemnable chief dental officers of the U.S. and Canada (1) ignore their legal duty to comply with the Minamata Convention Children’s Amendment, (2) violate their Hippocratic Oath daily by outright defiance of the recommendations against use by both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and (3) maintain mercury-toxic workplaces for dental workers while they sit protected from mercury exposure in their plush government bureaus.

The great Minamata Convention had its genesis from studies showing mercury in the Arctic, drifting there via air or waterways, was harming indigenous peoples. In stark defiance of the spirit of Minamata, Health Canada dentists fly planeloads of mercury fillings daily into the Arctic and sub-Arctic, leaving the dental mercury behind to pollute the Tribal Lands.

Equally ignominiously, the U.S. Indian Health Service has ignored for seven years the resolution from the National Congress of American Indians to cease amalgam use on Tribal Lands.

To the profound disappointment of the environmental community, Canada’s Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault MP—despite his superb résumé fighting toxins while an NGO leader—does nothing to reduce amalgam use by Health Canada, even though his ministry is the lead at Minamata.

It is time for Minister Guilbault to condemn this wholesale usage of mercury fillings that is poisoning tribal lands. Inaction by ECC Canada portends another Grassy Narrows scandal in the making.

Rather than apply President Biden’s splendid priority of environmental justice to the U.S. Public Health Service, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine opts for physician-to-dentist professional courtesy—giving carte blanche to the pro-mercury chief dental officers to pollute Tribal lands, prisons, Army forts, Navy bases, and minority-dominated inner cities.

By the stroke of a pen, the 4-star Admiral could order the dentists under her command at the Public Health Service to end amalgam use—and the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry calls on her to do so now.

Dentists still implanting this colonial-era primitive device do so not because they need to; but because they want to. Inaction in Ottawa and Washington must end; these two federal governments are the major reason that North American oral health care remains two-tiered: choice for the middle class and mercury for the powerless.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry