Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Lack of accessible information in sign language has made online platforms, education, healthcare inaccessible for the Deaf due to non-provision of information in sign language formats. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Egwelu Timothy
KAMPALA, Jul 27 2023 (IPS)

Every July, the disability community honors its history, accomplishments, and experiences during Disability Pride Month. One such group is the deaf community in Uganda, which makes up 3.4% of the population.

Members of the Deaf community celebrate the positive aspects of deaf culture, activism, and the pride of being Deaf, and feel value. But, we also recognize our oppression and know that we deserve better than the prevalent discrimination, exclusions and inaccessibility we regularly face.

While the inclusion of Deaf persons in organisations such as Uganda National Association of the Deaf (UNAD) , Deaf Youth Advocacy Network, and National Union of Persons with Disabilities enables us to help with some development of policies and best practices, merely having representation in consultations is not enough.

It is critical for a truly inclusive and accessible society that Deaf persons are involved in the decision-making processes. However, it is only feasible if policies can be understood, deaf people can actually attend meetings, and their voices are heard and taken seriously

All mainstream laws, policies and services also must be accessible to Deaf persons in sign language beforehand so we can contribute and guide language and outcomes.

Too often, however, Deaf persons are excluded. For instance, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an unfortunate digital gap for over 20,000 Deaf persons who use assistive devices like smart phones to access information.

Today, generally, lack of accessible information in sign language has made online platforms, education, healthcare inaccessible for the Deaf due to non-provision of information in sign language formats.

Furthermore, the lack of adequate support services such as access to interpretation, Sexual Reproductive Health, mental health services and social protection are concerning. In policy consultations, there is no meaningful participation as 60% of deaf participants cannot comprehend the written law.

The Constitution of Uganda is the second in the world to recognize the right to sign language both within the body and under the Cultural Objective Principle XXIV (iii) of the National Directives of State Policy. Article 21(1) on equality before the law, under the law and all spheres of life is equally instrumental.

These are further operationalised under the Persons with Disability Act of 2020. Most notably under Section 6, 7, 9 and 12 on non-discrimination under provision of education and general commercial services, health and employment. Despite this plethora of legal backing, the provision of information in sign language is still lacking.

The Constitution and other relevant laws such as the Penal code Act chapter 120 laws of Uganda are similarly inaccessible in sign language therefore ignorance of law is guaranteed for deaf persons despite it being no exception to criminal liability.

There is widespread agreement around the world that governments and institutions must take proactive measures to ensure that deaf persons have equal access to mainstream policies, systems, and services.

This includes providing accessible communication, transportation, education, healthcare, employment opportunities, and other essential services. However, the law and appropriate implementation are two different things.

Furthermore, regardless of the sector, policymakers must ensure that sign language accessibility is considered from the outset of policy development and implementation. They must engage Deaf persons and their representative organizations in meaningful consultation to understand their needs, preferences, and priorities.

Policymakers must also ensure that the Deaf have equal protection under the law to engage in the policy formulation process, voice their opinions, and influence decision-making. This includes providing accessible venues, information, formats, and technologies to facilitate their participation. In the recent consultations on development of the policy guidelines for television access, I applaud Uganda Communication Commission for inviting stakeholders from the various organisations to partipate in the consultancies and ensuring accesibility to sign language.

To sum up, it is critical for a truly inclusive and accessible society that Deaf persons are involved in the decision-making processes. However, it is only feasible if policies can be understood, deaf people can actually attend meetings, and their voices are heard and taken seriously. In this Disability Pride month, let’s level the playing field and ensure that everyone can participate in meaningful ways to make a truly inclusive society.

Egwelu Timothy is a lawyer and a disability policy & inclusion consultant

Secretary-General António Guterres (centre) visits residential neighborhoods of Irpin, in Ukraine's Kyiv Oblast February 2023 . Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2023 (IPS)

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the creature of—and subservient to — the 193 member states who largely reign supreme in the world body.

But, in reality, Antonio Guterres has been defiant and openly challenged one of the five permanent members of the Security Council lambasting Russia for its 17-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

Mercifully, and hopefully, he has no plans to run for a third term and face a Russian veto— as did former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who defied the US, and was defeated in his bid for a second term (when 14 members of the Security Council voted for him while the US exercised its veto).

Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, has been consistent in his attacks on Russia pointing out that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.

In his most recent a statement released July 23, Guterres “strongly condemned the Russian missile attack on Odesa that resulted in civilian causalities and damaged the UNESCO-protected Transfiguration Cathedral and other historical buildings in the Historic Centre of Odesa, a World Heritage site.”

“In addition to the appalling toll the war is taking on civilian lives, this is yet another attack in an area protected under the World Heritage Convention in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.”

Guterres said he was concerned about the threat that this war increasingly poses to Ukrainian culture and heritage. Since 24 February 2022, UNESCO has verified damage to 270 cultural sites in Ukraine, including 116 religious sites.

Still, is Guterres — and the international community– fighting a losing battle against Russian President Vladimir Putin? Are there any other alternatives in sight?

James Paul, a former Executive Director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum (GPF), told IPS the Secretary-General should really be able to help with negotiations– or even lead them.

“Thus, he cannot be too partial. But the Secretary-General (SG) is always partial to the US and any criticism is dealt with very severely as when Kofi Annan said the US had broken international law in Iraq,” said Paul, author of the 2017 book titled “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council”.

“All his staff were stripped away, and he was humiliated in The New York Times,” he pointed out. “I think the SG should try to stay in a position that enables him to act as an intermediary”

“Did the then SG criticize the damage to heritage sites in Iraq by US forces? No. The P-5 are not equal”, said Paul, who was a prominent figure in the NGO advocacy community at the United Nations and a well-known speaker and writer on the UN and global policy issues.

Martin S. Edwards, Professor, School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University in New Jersey, told IPS the SG is playing this correctly, working to delegitimize Russia, and rightly so. There’s not much else that can be done to make Russia into a pariah state.

“The SGs voice on this in recent days (not only in criticizing this missile strike but also the end of the grain deal) has been both steadfast and needed,” he said.

“The main problem, sadly, is that this needs to be resolved on the battlefield”.

“ The more that Putin realizes he will not achieve any of his objectives, and the more that he realizes his regime is in danger, the more he would be willing to listen to overtures for peace. This war remains a huge tragedy for all involved,” declared Edwards.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS it is part of the UN Secretary-General’s duties to protect the rules and values of the UN Charter.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, aimed at annexing territory and erasing Ukraine’s existence as an independent state, is the most blatant violation of the Charter’s fundamental rules and of international law, he pointed out.

“The Secretary General has no choice but to condemn Russia for its criminal actions even if this means that Russia does not accept him as a mediator. As the UN General Assembly has said, there is no solution to this war except for Russia to withdraw its troops and to cease all attacks,” declared Bummel.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has described the deaths and destruction in the nine-year-old civil war in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.

The killings, mostly civilians, have been estimated at over 100,000, with accusations of war crimes against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) battling Yemen, described as one of the world’s poorest nations in the UN’s list of least developing countries (LDCs).

But the weapons used in these killings originated in the US which has remained the primary arms supplier to both countries. But neither the UN nor successive SGs have at least hinted or accused the US of being implicitly responsible for the civilian killings,

The New York Times said in 2017 that some US lawmakers worry that American weapons were being used to commit war crimes in Yemen—including the intentional or unintentional bombings of funerals, weddings, factories and other civilian infrastructure—triggering condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups who also accuse the Houthis of violating humanitarian laws of war and peace.

https://www.globalissues.org/news/2019/04/26/25240

Going back to 2003, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the United States, and surprisingly, lived to tell the tale—but paid an unfairly heavy price after being hounded by the US administration..

When the US invaded Iraq in March 2003, he described the invasion as “illegal” because it did not have the blessings of the 15-member UN Security Council, the only institution in the world body with the power to declare war and peace.

But the administration of President George W. Bush went after Annan for challenging its decision to unilaterally declare war against Iraq: an attack by a member state against another for no legally-justifiable reason.

The weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), reportedly in Iraq’s military arsenal, which was one of the primary reasons for the invasion, were never found.

Subsequently, Annan came under heavy fire for misperceived lapses in the implementation of the “Oil-for-Food” program which was aimed at alleviating the sufferings of millions of Iraqis weighed down by UN sanctions

Meanwhile, in his 368-page 1999 book titled “Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga,” Boutros-Ghali provided an insider’s view of how the United Nations and its chief administrative officer (CAO) were manipulated by the Organization’s most powerful member: the United States.

Although he was accused by Washington of being “too independent” of the US, he eventually did everything in his power to please the Americans. But still the US was the only country to say “no” to a second five-year term for Boutros-Ghali.

In his book, Boutros-Ghali recalls a meeting in which he tells the then Secretary of State Warren Christopher that many Americans had been appointed to UN jobs “at Washington’s request over the objections of other UN member states.”

“I had done so, I said, because I wanted American support to succeed in my job (as Secretary-General”), Boutros-Ghali says. But Christopher refused to respond.

When he was elected Secretary-General in January 1992, Boutros-Ghali noted that 50 percent of the staff assigned to the UN’s administration and management were Americans, although Washington paid only 25 percent of the UN’s regular budget.

When the Clinton administration took office in Washington in January 1993, Boutros-Ghali was signaled that two of the highest-ranking UN staffers appointed on the recommendation of the outgoing Bush administration– Under-Secretary-General Richard Thornburgh and Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed — were to be dismissed despite the fact that they were theoretically “international civil servants” answerable only to the world body.

They were both replaced by two other Americans who had the blessings of the Clinton Administration.

Just before his election in November 1991, Boutros-Ghali remembers someone telling him that John Bolton, the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, was “at odds” with the earlier Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar because he had “been insufficiently attentive to American interests.”

“I assured Bolton of my own serious regard for US policy.” “Without American support” Boutros-Ghali told Bolton, “the United Nations would be paralyzed.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

Currency values and foreign exchange rates change for many reasons, largely following market perceptions, regardless of fundamentals. Market speculation has worsened volatility, instability and fragility in most economies, especially of small, open, developing countries.

US Fed pushing up interest rates
For no analytical rhyme or reason, US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) chairman Jerome Powell insists on raising interest rates until inflation is brought under 2% yearly. Obliged to follow the US Fed, most central banks have raised interest rates, especially since early 2022.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The US dollar or greenback’s strengthening has been largely due to aggressive Fed interest rate hikes. Undoubtedly, inflation has been rising, especially since last year. But there are different types of inflation, with different implications, which should be differentiated by nature and cause.

Typically, inflationary episodes are due to either demand pull or supply push. With rentier behaviour better recognized, there is now more attention to asset price and profit-driven inflation, e.g., ‘sellers inflation’ due to price-fixing in monopolistic and oligopolistic conditions.

Recent international price increases are widely seen as due to new Cold War measures since Obama, Trump presidency initiatives, COVID-19 pandemic responses, as well as Ukraine War economic sanctions.

These are all supply-side constraints, rather than demand-side or other causes of inflation.

The Fed chair’s pretext for raising interest rates is to get inflation down to 2%. But bringing inflation under 2% – the fetishized, but nonetheless arbitrary Fed and almost universal central bank inflation target – only reduces demand, without addressing supply-side inflation.

But there is no analytical – theoretical or empirical – justification for this completely arbitrary 2% inflation limit fetish. Thus, raising interest rates to address supply-side inflation is akin to prescribing and taking the wrong medicine for an ailment.

Fed driving world to stagnation
Thus, raising interest rates to suppress demand cannot be expected to address such supply-side driven inflation. Instead, tighter credit is likely to further depress economic growth and employment, worsening living conditions.

Increasing interest rates is expected to reduce expenditure for consumption or investment. Thus, raising the costs of funds is supposed to reduce demand as well as ensuing price increases.

Earlier research – e.g., by then World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno, with William Easterly, and by Stan Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – found even low double-digit inflation to be growth-enhancing.

The Milton Friedman-inspired notion of a ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’ (NAIRU) also implies Fed interest rate hikes inappropriate and unnecessarily contractionary when inflation is not accelerating. US consumer price increases have decelerated since mid-2022, meaning inflation has not been accelerating for over a year.

At least two conservative monetary economists with Nobel laureates have reminded the world how such Fed interventions triggered US contractions, abruptly ending economic recoveries. Although not discussed by them, the same Fed interventions also triggered international recessions.

Friedman showed how the Fed ended the US recovery from 1937 at the start of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second presidential term. Recent US Fed chair Ben Bernanke and his colleagues also showed how similar Fed policies caused stagflation after the 1970s’ oil price hikes.

De-dollarization?
However, the US dollar has not been strengthening much in recent months. The greenback has been slipping since mid-2023 despite continuing Fed interest rate hikes a full year after consumer price increases stopped accelerating in mid-2022.

Many blame recent greenback depreciation on ‘de-dollarization’, ironically accelerated by US sanctions against its rivals. Such illegal sanctions have disrupted financial payments, investment flows, dispute settlement mechanisms and other longstanding economic processes and arrangements authorized by the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and UN charters.

Even the ‘rule of law’ – long favouring the US, other rich countries and transnational corporate interests – has been ‘suspended’ for ‘reasons of state’ due to economic warfare which continues to escalate. Unilateral asset and technology expropriation has been justified as necessary to ‘de-risk’ for ‘national security’ and other such considerations.

Horns of currency dilemma
For many monetary authorities, the choice is between a weak currency and higher interest rates. With growing financialization over recent decades, big finance has become much more influential, typically demanding higher interest income and stronger currencies.

Central bank independence – from the political executive and legislative processes – has enabled financial lobbies to influence policymaking even more. For example, Malaysia’s household debt share of national output rose from 47% in 2000 to over four-fifths before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 81% in 2022.

There is little reason to believe recent exchange rates have been due to ‘economic fundamentals’. Currencies of countries with persistent trade and current account deficits have strengthened, while others with sustained surpluses have declined. Instead, relative interest rate changes recently appear to explain more.

Thus, both the Japanese yen and Chinese renminbi depreciated by at least six per cent against the US dollar, at least before its recent tumble. By contrast, British pound sterling has appreciated against the greenback despite the dismal state of its real economy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• US Policies Slowing World Economy
• Stop Worshiping Central Banks
• Central Bank Myths Drag down World Economy
• Ideology and Dogma Ensure Policy Disaster
• Inflation Phobia Hastens Recessions, Debt Crises
• Inflation Targeting Farce: High Costs, Moot Benefits

The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.

By Violet Chihota
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

Before COVID-19 came along, the two most lethal infectious diseases were HIV and tuberculosis (TB). Even though HIV still lingers, with 1.5 million people contracting the infection every year, epidemiologists point to the availability of many HIV prevention options as a primary reason for the decreasing caseload.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past two decades, new HIV infections decreased by 49%, HIV-related deaths decreased by 61% and an estimated 18.6 million lives were saved because of new treatments that minimise the infection and prevent its spread.

We have so many options for HIV prevention at our disposal, including the dapivirine vaginal ring, oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), harm reduction for people who use drugs, condoms for both men and women, voluntary medical male circumcision and the recently approved long-acting cabotegravir, with other options in development.

We have a suite of prevention tools because everyone is different, and people need to be able to choose their methods according to the way they live their lives. We observe a similar abundance of choice within family planning with oral pills, a variety of injectables, intra-uterine devices and condoms—we share this prevention method with HIV programs.

The urgency of the need is clear: an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to the disease in 2021, the second consecutive year the death toll went up after 14 years of progress. In Africa, an estimated 2.5 million people contracted the disease in 2021, one million of which were never diagnosed and treated

We do not have this many options for TB prevention, but the world needs to adapt to embrace choice if we are to meet the globally agreed-upon goal of reducing TB deaths by 90% by 2030—referred to as the “End TB targets.”

The urgency of the need is clear: an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to the disease in 2021, the second consecutive year the death toll went up after 14 years of progress. In Africa, an estimated 2.5 million people contracted the disease in 2021, one million of which were never diagnosed and treated.

Yet there are glimmers of good news. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates of TB incidence have slowly declined over the past few years in Angola, Ethiopia, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia—all countries with high burdens of TB.

Of these countries, Zambia has also had success in finding and diagnosing an increasing number of these infections; the pandemic impacted the surveillance efforts of the other governments.

As for HIV, there is no effective vaccine to prevent TB in adults: the BCG vaccine only prevents severe TB in children. However, there are ways to prevent TB when someone is potentially exposed to an infected person. In the workplace or when a family member at home becomes sick, for example, prevention starts with masking, which was traditionally used in clinical care settings. The other ways work through prophylactic regimens. For TB, we initially only had isoniazid that could be taken for six, nine, 12 or 36 months depending on country guidelines, but now we have shorter regimens that allow for patient choice.

These options include regimens lasting one (1HP) and three months (3HP), with different combinations of the antibiotic drugs rifapentine and isoniazid, all with vitamin B6 supplements to help counter some of the side effects of treatment. There is also a three-month regimen of rifampicin and isoniazid (often given to children and adolescents) and a four-month regimen of rifampicin alone. Longer courses of isoniazid taken for 6–36 months also remain options, though most people are eligible to take a shorter rifapentine- or rifampicin-based regimen and should be given the choice to do so.

We need to do a better job of making sure that people at risk of TB have access to the full range of prevention options. A recent peer-reviewed study underlines this point, estimating that tracing the personal contacts of people diagnosed with TB and providing them with prevention treatment would save the lives of 700,000 children under the age of 15 and 150,000 adults by 2035.

Even the financial benefits of the prevention program, in terms of increased economic productivity, would outweigh the costs. Nobody questions the need to have options for HIV prevention or family planning, but questions arise when trying to roll out a one-month TB prevention regimen when there’s already a three-month regimen available. We need them all. We also need to collect more data to differentiate which prevention regimens are best for each patient type to ensure success.

The WHO guidelines for preventive TB treatment create the possibility of choice among TB preventive treatments by not ranking the regimens by preference or effectiveness. But health care facilities and outreach programs need to embrace that range of options and make sure that a choice exists in practice. Supply chains may limit choice initially, but if there is no demand for more options from providers, there is no impetus to expand the supply chains.

The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It took a combination of scientific ingenuity and innovation, combined with an intensive dedication of resources that made a range of preventive options available around the world.

It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish.

Violet Chihota is an Adjunct Associate Professor and Chief Specialist Scientist at the Aurum Institute. She has been a researcher in global health for over 10 years, designing and managing the conduct of clinical research studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Cameroon, Georgia, India and Malaysia.

Afshan Bhurgri, a cancer survivor, advises women to listen to their bodies and be aware of the symptoms of cervical cancer. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

“Listen to your body, and if there is anything strange happening, do not ignore it,” is the advice of 57-year-old Afshan Bhurgri, a cancer survivor.

Eight years ago, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at a time when she was “in a good place” in life. Her kids were grown up, and she had more time to herself. A fitness freak, the schoolteacher’s daily routine included going to the gym daily. “I joined a creative writing class as I loved penning my thoughts!” she reminisced.

But then everything changed when she found out she had cancer.

Cancer of the cervix uteri is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, with an estimated 604,127 new cases and causing the death of 341,831 in 2020.

In Pakistan, an estimated 73.8 million women over the age of 15 are at risk of developing cervical cancer caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Cervical cancer in Pakistan, according to the WHO. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

In the absence of complete data, it is estimated that of the 5,000 women diagnosed with this cancer in Pakistan, some 3,000 lose their lives every year due to lack of access to prevention, screening and treatment, thus making it the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women of the reproductive age group in the country, after breast and ovarian cancers. Up to 88 percent of cervical cancer cases are due to human papillomavirus (HPV) serotypes 16 and 18, as reported by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

“We are short on authentic data on the prevalence of the disease burden,” said Dr Arshad Chandio, who works at Jhpiego Pakistan as an immunisation lead. His organisation, which has supported HPV vaccine introduction in seven countries with Gavi support, is partnering with the federal and provincial governments, along with WHO, UNICEF, and USAID, to implement a roadmap for cervical cancer prevention and introduction of HPV vaccine in Pakistan. Cervical cancer is the only cancer that is preventable by a vaccine.

Cervical cancer worldwide, according to the WHO. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

“Without authentic data, our plan to eradicate this disease will not be watertight,” admitted Dr Irshad Memon, the director general of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation in Sindh.

Dr Shahid Pervez, senior consultant histopathologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), co-chair of the country’s newly established National Cancer Registry, recommends legislation to make reporting of cancer mandatory. “This will be one way of collecting basic data, at one place, which is expected by international agencies to roll out an effective cancer control programme in Pakistan,” he added.

Cervical cancer warning signs. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

Although Bhurgri had knowledge about cancer of the cervix and went for regular health checkups and screenings, her doctors did not carry out full examinations, which led to the infection turning cancerous. It all started in 2009, five years prior to being diagnosed with cancer when she started noticing a “foul smell emanating from my vagina” after her period became “heavier” than usual.

“Let alone screening and testing for the cancer, many healthcare professionals do not even know of the disease, or how women get infected,” pointed out Chandio.

“I am an educated person, I could afford to get the best medical help, and I went to three of the city’s top gynaecologists, got pap smears done on their requests over the years, and I was only sent for HPV test when it was too late,” rued Bhurgri. In 2014, a doctor suggested an ultrasound which gave a true picture. A biopsy confirmed she had cervical cancer.

After her biopsy, Bhurgri started reading up on cervical cancer, and one of the indications was the foul vaginal smell.

“It could have been nipped in the bud if only the doctors had carried out a thorough examination,” said gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Azra Ahsan, president of the Association for Mothers and Newborns, blaming “sheer negligence” on the part of her fraternity.

“A gynaecological consultation must not only be limited to a conversation across the table,” said Ahsan, but should include an “examination on the couch including a proper internal examination, ideally a pap smear and visual inspection,” especially if, like Bhurgri, a patient was complaining of heavy bleeding and a foul smell.

Bhurgri’s journey towards wellness was tough. A radical hysterectomy was recommended, and her cervix, her uterus and her ovaries were removed. Twenty-eight radiations and five chemos later, over a five-month period, she was given a clean chit by her oncologist. The cost of treatment, back in 2014 at a private hospital, was a whopping Rs30,000,000 (USD 1,097) back then.

Screening Can Save Lives

Although Bhurgri’s cancer may have remained under the radar despite regular screening via pap smears, doctors say HPV and pap smear tests are the best way to screen a woman for cervical cancer. They can identify patients who are at high risk of developing pre-cancerous changes on the cervix as well as pick up those who have already developed these changes.

These precancerous lesions can be treated before they turn into cancer. Sadly, in Pakistan, the uptake of pap smears is negligible and estimated to be as low as 2 percent.

According to Dr Uzma Chishti, assistant professor and consultant gynecologic oncologist, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, AKUH, Pakistan’s health system is so financially stretched that it cannot afford to provide screening of women by these expensive tests. Instead, she recommends WHO’s recommendations of performing a visual inspection of the cervix by acetic acid (VIA) to screen women to help reduce the incidence of cervical cancer. “VIA is an alternative screening test for low-and-middle-income countries like ours,” she said.

Vaccinations the Best Option

The WHO triple intervention recommendation to eliminate cervical cancer in countries like Pakistan includes scaling up HPV vaccination to 90 percent for girls aged between 9 to 14, twice-lifetime cervical screening to 70 percent and treatment of pre-invasive lesions and invasive cancer to 90 percent by 2030. “All three are essential if we want to eliminate cervical cancer completely,” emphasised said Ahsan.

HPV vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer are the way forward as it provides primary prevention, said Chishti, in the absence of VIA, screenings and pap smear tests. Almost 60 per cent of cervical cancer cases occur in countries that have not yet introduced HPV vaccination. Pakistan is one of them.

Once up and about, the first thing Bhurgri did was get her 14-year-old daughter vaccinated for human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. “My older daughter remains unvaccinated as she was 21 then and studying abroad. She needed three shots and could not make it to that timeline,” she said.

In Pakistan, two globally licensed HPV vaccines – Cervarix (protective against HPV serotypes 16 and 18) and Gardasil (against 6, 11, 16, and 18) were available till a few years ago, but very few doctors, even in the private sector, were prescribing them.

“We made it available in our clinic and counselled any and everyone, but it mostly fell on deaf ears, and very few people actually got vaccinated. As a result, huge amounts of vaccines expired in the warehouses, and the pharmaceutical firms decided to not make it available in Pakistan,” explained Ahsan.

In 2021, medical students at the AKUH interviewed 384 women attending outpatient clinics between the ages of 15 to 50 to find out their knowledge about cervical cancer. They found that of the 61.2 percent of women who had heard about cervical cancer, 47.0 percent knew about pap smear tests, and among them, 73 percent had gotten a pap test. A total of 25.5 percent of women, out of the 61.2 percent, knew that a vaccine existed for prevention, but only 9.8 percent had been vaccinated against human papillomavirus. The study concluded that a majority of the women interviewed for the study belonged to a higher socioeconomic class and were mostly educated, yet their knowledge regarding the prevention and screening of cervical cancer was poor. “This reflects that the knowledge levels as a whole would be considerably lower in the city’s general population,” the study concluded.

Shamsi highlighted the challenges of discussing HPV in a conservative society where sexual health topics are hardly discussed due to the embarrassment and taboo associated with sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This communication conundrum has resulted in a general lack of information about the disease. “There is a total lack of information about HPV, cervical cancer, and its prevention among the masses,” she said.

But this may change if Pakistan introduces the HPV vaccine at a national level, utilising routine effective and established immunisation delivery strategies. According to Dr Uzma Shamsi, a cancer epidemiologist at the AKUH, implementing the HPV vaccine at a national level in Pakistan could save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.

The benefits are enormous, and hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year, she emphasised.

Pakistan is in talks with Gavi the vaccine alliance, to support the country in including the single-dose HPV (two covers four strains) vaccine in its routine immunisation programme. “It will probably take another two years and USD 16 million before we can roll out the vaccine, but when it happens, it will be a country-wide campaign,” confirmed Memon.

Shamsi predicted some tribulation because the primary target group for vaccination is pre-adolescent girls. “A new vaccine for a new target age group comes with its own set of challenges in a society where conspiracy theories about vaccination programmes, stigma and misinformation about cancer and sexual health persist,” she said. And so before the actual rollout,  Shamsi emphasised, it was important to increase awareness about the HPV virus, cervical cancer causes, and vaccine’s safety and usage among the general public, patients, and healthcare professionals while actively dispelling misinformation.

Memon agreed that “conversation around the vaccine must begin”. For its part, the Sindh government set aside Rs 100 million ($365,884) for advocacy of HPV vaccine uptake in its current budget. “We will initiate a dissemination campaign once we know when the HPV vaccination programme is to begin,” he said. The Sindh province was also the first to initiate the typhoid conjugate virus vaccine after an extensively drug-resistant virus was found in the province. He was hopeful there would be less resistance to the HPV vaccine after the successful administration of measles and rubella and the pediatric Covid-19 vaccines earlier.

However, said Memon, “We will need more women vaccinators this time as young girls are shy of rolling their shirt sleeves up for male vaccinators.” With up to 125,000 female health workers across Pakistan, who were earlier trained by Gavi for MR immunisation, which is a much more difficult vaccine to administer (being subcutaneous) as opposed to the HPV one (which is muscular), he said, this workforce can be engaged to get trained for this vaccination campaign too.

In the end, however, according to Chandio, “without a strong political will and leadership, a national HPV vaccination programme cannot become a reality in Pakistan to eliminate this largely preventable cancer among women”.

Fighting her cancer has changed Bhurgri in more ways than one. Her message to women is to “not put yourself aside; make yourself a priority.” While she continues to lead a healthy life – going to the gym, eating healthy, resting, she said, “You cannot go on and pick up where you left off”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Vaccination Is the Best Bet Against Drug-Resistant Superbugs — Experts
• Star Wars Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy — Symbolises A Litany of Firsts For Women
• Pakistan’s 10 Billion Dollar Flood Funding Question

Credit: UNICEF/UNI403619/Karimi

By James Elder
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

The needs of Afghanistan’s children and families are immense. So are the efforts of those supporting them: teams of community workers made up of family members, teachers in community-based schools, vaccinators, and health workers working around the clock to bring life-saving services in the face of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

I recently traveled to eastern Afghanistan to meet some of the inspiring heroes who, this year already, helped UNICEF reach around 19 million children and their families with health and nutrition services.

UNICEF’s incredible health and nutrition response is supported by people across Afghan society. One of them is Mangal, a hero on two wheels. Every morning, Mangal picks up vaccines at a UNICEF-supported district hospital.

He carefully packs them in a cooler, which he straps to his motorbike before setting off to remote villages. Mangal braves rough, narrow roads, the scorching heat, and genuine security risks.

“I ride for nine kilometres every day to bring these vaccines to the people who need them,” he tells me. “They understand how important it is to protect their children from diseases. They don’t need any persuasion to come here. They greet me with gratitude and hope.” 

A doctor prescribes medicine for mothers and children during a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team visit. Credit: Karim / UNICEF

Some of Mangal’s supplies land here, with a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team providing services straight to the communities who need them most and who have no other way to access health care.

Like so much of UNICEF’s health and nutrition work across Afghanistan, these programmes are game-changers.

But these teams have their work cut out for them.

“Nearly half of all children under five in Afghanistan are malnourished, a truly devastating number,” UNICEF’s head of nutrition, Melanie Galvin, tells me. “Some 875,000 of them are expected to need treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of undernutrition and one of the top threats to child survival across the globe.”

Ramping up the response means staffing up the response, too. UNICEF has more than doubled the number of places where a child can be treated.

“Last year we put more nutrition nurses and nutrition counsellors into overflowing hospitals,” Melanie says. “We put them directly into communities where people live. We put them into mobile clinics that reach very small and isolated populations. We put them into day care centre spaces in poor urban areas.”

A child receives RUTF during a visit by a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team. Credit Karim/UNICEF

Mobile health and nutrition teams are critical in reaching rural areas with basic services like pre-natal checkups, vaccinations, psycho-social counselling, and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). It’s a heartbreaking condition to see up close. In this photo, little Zarmina receives an RUTF sachet from Melanie.

RUTF really is a magical paste – energy dense and full of micronutrients. Used to treat severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, RUTF is made using peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins and minerals, and has helped treat millions of children in Afghanistan.

As we tour a hospital, Dr. Fouzia Shafique, UNICEF Afghanistan’s Principal Health Advisor, explains how UNICEF has managed to support so many children, despite all the challenges.

“Health clinics, family teams of community workers, community-based schools, vaccinators, and trained female health workers,” she tells me. Donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also been critical partners, helping UNICEF provide care even in difficult-to-reach areas of the country.

So many of the life-saving interventions I encountered on my mission are made possible by the tireless work of UNICEF staff such as Dr. Shafique and Dr. Nafi Kakar, who fill a multitude of roles, including inspecting vaccines and parts of the cold chain system that is used to store them.

Helping families access quality primary and secondary health care means supporting thousands of health facilities, covering operating costs, paying the salaries of tens of thousands of health workers, and procuring and distributing medical supplies.

Together, these efforts are helping UNICEF reach many of the more than 15 million children in Afghanistan who need support. It’s a difficult number to comprehend, but easier to appreciate when you meet some of those very same children.

There’s the baby fighting for her life in an incubator; the children working for their families in fields of unexploded mines; the children grappling with the anxieties and pressures of poverty; or the girls deprived of their greatest hope – education. Each child is like my own. Unique. Each child is special.

The smiles say it all: For Dr. Shafique and young girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a good day. But there remains so much to do. Supporting the health and well-being of people in Afghanistan isn’t only about access to health services, it’s also about the protection of rights – notably, ensuring rights and freedoms for women and girls.

Given the enormity of UNICEF’s role in the health and nutrition sector, it’s critical for UNICEF – and for children in Afghanistan – that funding is maintained. So that the country’s children can grow up safe, healthy and be the heroes in their own stories.

Source: UNICEF Blog
The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. It also brings insights and opinions from the world’s leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF’s staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF’s official position.

James Elder is UNICEF Spokesperson in Afghanistan.

IPS UN Bureau

Marisol and Misael Menjívar pose next to the biodigester installed in March in the backyard of their home in El Corozal, a rural settlement located near Suchitoto in central El Salvador. With a biotoilet and stove, the couple produces biogas for cooking from feces, which saves them money. The biotoilet can be seen in the background. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador , Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

A new technology that has arrived in rural villages in El Salvador makes it possible for small farming families to generate biogas with their feces and use it for cooking – something that at first sounded to them like science fiction and also a bit smelly.

In the countryside, composting latrines, which separate urine from feces to produce organic fertilizer, are very popular. But can they really produce gas for cooking?

“It seemed incredible to me,” Marisol Menjívar told IPS as she explained how her biodigester, which is part of a system that includes a toilet and a stove, was installed in the backyard of her house in the village of El Corozal, near Suchitoto, a municipality in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán."When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too." -- Marisol Menjívar

“When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too,” added Marisol, 48. Hers was installed in March.

El Corozal, population 200, is one of eight rural settlements that make up the Laura López Rural Water and Sanitation Association (Arall), a community organization responsible for providing water to 465 local families.

The families in the small villages, who are dedicated to the cultivation of corn and beans, had to flee the region during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, due to the fighting.

After the armed conflict, they returned to rebuild their lives and work collectively to provide basic services, especially drinking water, as have many other community organizations, in the absence of government coverage.

In this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, 78.4 percent of rural households have access to piped water, while 10.8 percent are supplied by wells and 10.7 percent by other means.

With small stoves like this one, a score of families in El Corozal in central El Salvador cook their food with biogas they produce themselves, thanks to a government program that has brought clean energy technology to these remote rural villages. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Simple green technology

The biodigester program in rural areas is being promoted by the Salvadoran Water Authority (Asa).

Since November 2022, the government agency has installed around 500 of these systems free of charge in several villages around the country.

The aim is to enable small farmers to produce sustainable energy, biogas at no cost, which boosts their income and living standards, while at the same time improving the environment.

The program provides each family with a kit that includes a biodigester, a biotoilet, and a small one-burner stove.

In El Corozal, five of these kits were installed by Asa in November 2022, to see if people would accept them or not. To date, 21 have been delivered, and there is a waiting list for more.

In El Corozal, a rural settlement in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador, the technology of family biodigesters arrived at the end of last year, and some families are now producing biogas to light up their stoves and cook their food at no cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“With the first ones were set up, the idea was for people to see how they worked, because there was a lot of ignorance and even fear,” Arall’s president, Enrique Menjívar, told IPS.

In El Corozal there are many families with the surname Menjívar, because of the tradition of close relatives putting down roots in the same place.

“Here we’re almost all related,” Enrique added.

The biodigester is a hermetically sealed polyethylene bag, 2.10 meters long, 1.15 meters wide and 1.30 meters high, inside which bacteria decompose feces or other organic materials.

This process generates biogas, clean energy that is used to fuel the stoves.

The toilets are mounted on a one-meter-high cement slab in latrines in the backyard. They are made of porcelain and have a handle on one side that opens and closes the stool inlet hole.

One of the main advantages that family biodigesters have brought to the inhabitants of El Corozal, a small village in the Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, is that the whole process begins with clean, hygienic toilets, like this one set up in Marleni Menjívar’s backyard, as opposed to the older dry composting latrines, which drew flies and cockroaches. To the left of the toilet is the small handle used to pump water to flush the feces into the biodigester. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

They also have a small hand pump, similar to the ones used to inflate bicycle tires, and when the handle is pushed, water is pumped from a bucket to flush the waste down the pipe.

The underground pipe carries the biomass by gravity to the biodigester, located about five meters away.

The system can also be fed with organic waste, by means of a tube with a hole at one end, which must be opened and closed.

Once it has been produced, the biogas is piped through a metal tube to the small stove mounted inside the house.

“I don’t even use matches, I just turn the knob and it lights up,” said Marisol, a homemaker and caregiver. Her husband Manuel Menjívar is a subsistence farmer, and they have a young daughter.

In El Corozal, biodigesters have been installed for families of four or five members, and the equipment generates 300 liters of biogas during the night, enough to use for two hours a day, according to the technical specifications of Coenergy, the company that imports and markets the devices.

But there are also kits that are used by two related families who live next to each other and share the equipment, which includes, in addition to the toilet, a larger biodigester and a two-burner stove.

With more sophisticated equipment, electricity could be generated from biogas produced from landfill waste or farm manure, although this is not yet being done in El Salvador.

Marleni Menjivar gets ready to heat water on her ecological stove, watched closely by her four-year-old daughter, in El Corozal in central El Salvador, where an innovative government program to produce biogas has arrived. With this technology, people save money by buying less liquefied gas while benefiting the environment. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Saving money while caring for the environment

The families of El Corozal who have the new latrines and stoves are happy with the results.

What they value the most is saving money by cooking with gas produced by themselves, at no cost.

They used to cook on wood-burning stoves, in the case of food that took longer to make, or on liquefied gas stoves, at a cost of 13 dollars per gas cylinder.

Marleni Menjívar, for example, used two cylinders a month, mainly because of the high level of consumption demanded by the family business of making artisanal cheeses, including a very popular local kind of cottage cheese.

Every day she has to cook 23 liters of whey, the liquid left after milk has been curdled. This consumes the biogas produced overnight.

For meals during the day Marleni still uses the liquefied gas stove, but now she only buys one cylinder a month instead of two, a savings of about 13 dollars per month.

“These savings are important for families here in the countryside,” said Marleni, 28, the mother of a four-year-old girl. The rest of her family is made up of her brother and grandfather.

“We also save water,” she added.

The biotoilet requires only 1.2 liters of water per flush, less than conventional toilets.

In addition, the soils are protected from contamination by septic tank latrines, which are widely used in rural areas, but are leaky and unhygienic.

The new technology avoids these problems.

The liquids resulting from the decomposition process flow through an underground pipe into a pit that functions as a filter, with several layers of gravel and sand. This prevents pollution of the soil and aquifers.

Also, as a by-product of the decomposition process, organic liquid fertilizer is produced for use on crops.

Most families in the rural community of El Corozal have benefited from one-burner stoves that run on biogas produced in family biodigesters. Larger two-burner stoves are also shared by two related families, where they cook on a griddle one of the favorite dishes of Salvadorans: pupusas, corn flour tortillas filled with beans, cheese and pork, among other ingredients. CREDIT: Coenergy El Salvador

Checking on site: zero stench

Due to a lack of information, people were initially concerned that if the biogas used in the stoves came from the decomposition of the family’s feces, it would probably stink.

And, worst of all, perhaps the food would also smell.

But little by little these doubts and fears faded away as families saw how the first devices worked.

“That was the first thing they asked, if the gas smelled bad, or if what we were cooking smelled bad,” said Marleni, remembering how the neighbors came to her house to check for themselves when she got the latrine and stove installed in December 2022.

“That was because of the little information that was available, but then we found that this was not the case, our doubts were cleared up and we saw there were no odors,” she added.

She said that, like almost everyone in the village, her family used to have a dry composting toilet, but it stank and generated cockroaches and flies.

“All that has been eliminated, the bathrooms are completely hygienic and clean, and we even had them tiled to make them look nicer,” Marleni said.

She remarked that hygiene is important to her, as her little girl can now go to the bathroom by herself, without worrying about cockroaches and flies.

Related Articles

• Rural Women’s Constant Struggle for Water in Central America

Children celebrate during a ECW high-level mission to South Sudan. Credit: ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

In times of crisis, education is an essential component of humanitarian intervention packages, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil told IPS in an exclusive interview.

She was speaking to IPS during the UN’s ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum, during which she participated in the side event, “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace.”

Years of conflict in South Sudan and the region, combined with recurring disasters, massive population displacement and the impact of COVID-19, have adversely impacted the Government’s efforts in delivering quality education to all. Yet, their interest and commitment to invest in inclusive education remains.

“Every time there is a crisis, there is a rush for humanitarian assistance as a life-saving intervention. But I think education (should be part) of this as well. When people run away from conflict or natural disasters, they are mostly women and children,” Acuil said.

“These children arrive exhausted and traumatized, and what is crucial is that the (humanitarian) intervention is integrated. We must also work at the same time to create a safe environment where these children can continue to go to school. This helps them psychologically to be engaged in learning (rather) than thinking of what they have gone through,” she continued.

“Education is lifesaving. They will play, they will get lessons, they will get counseling from those teachers who are well-trained in [trauma] counseling… All these interventions provide them with a crucial sense of normalcy.”

Interestingly, she said, the first thing children in crisis ask is: “Can we go to school?”

According to UNHCR, close to 200,000 people – a majority of whom are children and women – have crossed to South Sudan in recent weeks to flee the conflict in Sudan. International humanitarian partners work with the Government to ensure the new arrivals receive health, nutrition, and schooling.

South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil.

“South Sudan has an open-door policy. As soon as they are settled, children have to go to school. [We are] building temporary shelters for them to go to school. Supporting teachers, who will be helping these children, is key.”

Acuil said Education Cannot Wait has been at the forefront of assisting with setting up quality, holistic education opportunities for incoming children. She also stressed the importance of integrating refugees into the national system, citing South Sudan’s inclusion policy as a best practice in the region.

“We have refugee teachers who are head teachers in our public schools. We have refugees in our boarding schools and public schools in South Sudan.”

ECW recently extended its Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country with a new US$40 million catalytic grant. GPE provided an additional US$10 million for the programme.

The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close coordination with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and others partners. The investment will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Total ECW funding in South Sudan now tops US$72 million. ECW is calling on five donors to step up with US$5 million each to provide an additional US$25 million in funding to the education in emergencies response in South Sudan.

The needs are pressing for the world’s youngest nation.  South Sudan continues to receive refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan and requires additional support to address the converging challenges of conflict, climate change, forced displacement and other protracted crises.

“The multi-year programme that was launched last month will help a lot in terms of access, infrastructure, and teacher training. We have ‘hard-to-reach areas’ that have never seen a school, never seen a classroom. These are the places we have prioritized and targeted with this $40 million grant. Along with girls’ education, and children with disabilities, and also materials for education, especially printing more books.”

Acuil highlighted the importance of girls’ education, in a context where cultural norms and practices, including child marriage, hinder their access to school. She said the country is tackling the issue through a vast campaign championed by the President that targets traditional leaders, civil society, members of parliament, executives, educators, teachers and students themselves.

“Our President has taken the lead in campaigning for girls’ education. This year he declared free and compulsory education for all to ensure South Sudan makes up for the two lost generations due to conflict in the country. He is encouraging us to [open] boarding schools for girls, especially. In primary school, the disparity is so close, and in some states, we have more girls than boys. But when they transition to the secondary level, only 18% complete their 12-years education.”

Acuil called on UN Member States to support education in emergencies and invest more resources.

“Education Cannot Wait has shown and demonstrated that when there are crises, they have a prompt response to help children. Whether during disasters or man-made wars, ECW has been able to do that. We need to focus on that, prioritizing education and also investing in education.”

“If you invest in children today, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. We must help facilitate their education and empower them to help their countries and communities. That is why humanitarian assistance and education should go hand-in-hand.”

“I would like to end this with something I heard from a local girl who said: ‘Education cannot wait, but marriage can wait.’ Our humanity’s strength lies in education, and we must continue to remind those who keep forgetting, and ensure to awaken those who have not yet woken up to be part and parcel of education.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

IPS – UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), South Sudan

Related Articles

• Financing Biggest Hurdle to Providing Children with Quality Education in Crisis Situations – ECW
• ‘Spending Money on Education is Investing in Humanity’
• South Sudan President, Education Cannot Wait Jointly Announce Extended Multi-Year Education Response for Crises-Impacted Sudanese Children

By Lawrence Wittner
ALBANY, USA, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted. The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.

The Problem of Russian Policy

The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status. Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”), as well as the Budapest Memorandum and the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership (both of which specifically committed the Russian government to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity), Putin was an ambitious ruler, determined to restore what he considered Russia’s imperial grandeur.

This approach led not only to Russian military intervention in Middle Eastern and African nations, but to retaking control of nations previously dominated by Russia. These nations included Ukraine, which Putin regarded, contrary to history and international agreements, as “Russian land.”

As a result, what began in 2014 as the Russian military seizure of Crimea and the arming of a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine gradually evolved into the full-scale invasion of February 2022―the largest, most devastating military operation in Europe since World War II, with the potential for the catastrophic explosion of the giant Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and even the outbreak of nuclear war.

The official justifications for these acts of aggression, trumpeted by the Kremlin and its apologists, were quite flimsy. Prominent among them was the claim that Ukraine’s accession to NATO posed an existential danger to Russia.

In fact, though, in 2014―or even in 2022―Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO because key NATO members opposed its admission. Also, NATO, founded in 1949, had never started a war with Russia and had never shown any intention of doing so.

The reality was that, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly two decades before, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was out of line with both international law and the imperatives of national security. It was a war of choice organized by a power-hungry ruler.

The Problem of UN Weakness

On a deeper level, the war was avoidable because the United Nations, established to guarantee peace and international security, did not take the action necessary to stop the war from occurring or to end it.

Admittedly, the United Nations did repeatedly condemn the Russian invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine. On March 27, 2014, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution by a vote of 100 nations to 11 (with 58 abstentions), denouncing the Russian military seizure and annexation of Crimea.

On March 2, 2022, by a vote of 141 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), it called for the immediate and complete withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine. In a ruling on the legality of the Russian invasion, the International Court of Justice, by a vote of 13 to 2, proclaimed that Russia should immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine.

That fall, when Russia began annexing the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, the UN Secretary-General denounced that action as flouting “the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” while the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 143 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), called on all countries to refuse to recognize Russia’s “illegal annexation” of Ukrainian land.

Tragically, this principled defense of international law was not accompanied by measures to enforce it. At meetings of the UN Security Council, the UN entity tasked with maintaining peace, the Russian government simply vetoed UN action. Nor did the UN General Assembly circumvent the Security Council’s paralysis by acting on its own. Instead, the United Nations showed itself well-meaning but ineffectual.

This weakness on matters of international security was not accidental. Nations―and particularly powerful nations―had long preferred to keep international organizations weak, for the creation of stronger international institutions would curb their own influence.

Naturally, then, they saw to it that the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, could act on international security issues only by a unanimous vote of its membership. And even this constricted authority proved too much for the U.S. government, which refused to join the League.

Similarly, when the United Nations was formed, the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council were given to five great powers, each of which could, and often did, veto its resolutions.

During the Ukraine War, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky publicly lamented this inability of the United Nations to enforce its mandate. “The wars of the past have prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war,” he remarked in March 2022, “but they unfortunately don’t work.”

In this context, he called for the creation of “a union of responsible countries . . . to stop conflicts” and to “keep the peace.”

What Still Might Be Done

The need to strengthen the United Nations and, thereby, enable it to keep the peace, has been widely recognized. To secure this goal, proposals have been made over the years to emphasize UN preventive diplomacy and to reform the UN Security Council.

More recently, UN reformers have championed deploying UN staff (including senior mediators) rapidly to conflict zones, expanding the Security Council, and drawing upon the General Assembly for action when the Security Council fails to act. These and other reform measures could be addressed by the world organization’s Summit for the Future, planned for 2024.

In the meantime, it remains possible that the Ukraine War might come to an end through related action. One possibility is that the Russian government will conclude that its military conquest of Ukraine has become too costly in terms of lives, resources, and internal stability to continue.

Another is that the countries of the world, fed up with disastrous wars, will finally empower the United Nations to safeguard international peace and security. Either or both would be welcomed by people in Ukraine and around the globe.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany, the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press) and other books on international issues, and a board member of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund.

Source: Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) which envisions a peaceful, free, just, and sustainable world community

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the official policy of Citizens for Global Solutions.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Credit: Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

At a meeting with European and Latin American leaders in Brussels this July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reiterated the bold commitment he had made in his first international speech as president-elect, when he attended the COP27 climate summit in November 2022: bringing Amazon deforestation down to zero by 2030.

Lula’s presence at COP27 was a signal to the world that Brazil was willing to become the climate champion it needs to be. Following a request by the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for Environment and Development, Lula offered to host the 2025 climate summit in Brazil; it has now been confirmed that COP30 will be held in Belém, gateway to the Amazon River.

At COP27 Lula also said he intended to revive and modernise the 45-year old Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, a body bringing together the eight Amazonian countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – to take concerted steps to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Four years of regression

In his four years in office, Lula’s far-right climate-denier predecessor Jair Bolsonaro dismantled environmental protections and paralysed key environmental agencies by cutting their funding and staff. He vilified civil society, criminalised activists and discredited the media. He allowed deforestation to proceed at an astonishing pace and emboldened businesses to grab land, clear it for agriculture by starting fires and carry out illegal logging and mining.

Under Bolsonaro, already embattled Indigenous communities and activists became even more vulnerable to attacks. By encouraging environmental plunder, including on protected and Indigenous land, the government enabled violence against environmental and Indigenous peoples’ rights defenders. A blatant example was the murder of Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in June 2022. The two were ambushed and killed on the orders of the head of an illegal transnational fishing network. Both the material and intellectual authors of the crimes have now been charged and await trial.

Reversing the regression

Having being elected on a promise to reverse environmental destruction, the new administration has sought to restructure and resource monitoring and enforcement institutions. It strengthened the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), the federal agency in charge of enforcing environmental policy, and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), which for the first time is now headed by an Indigenous person, Joenia Wapichana.

Bolsonaro had transferred FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, run by a leader of the congressional agribusiness caucus. Instead of protecting Indigenous land, it enabled deforestation and the expansion of agribusiness.

In contrast, Lula’s first political gestures were to create a new ministry for Indigenous peoples’ affairs, appointing Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara to lead it, and to make Marina Silva, a leader of the environmentalist party Rede Sustentabilidade, Minister for the Environment, a position she had held between 2003 and 2008.

Lula also restored the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in 2004 and implemented until Bolsonaro took over. In February, the government set up a Permanent Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires in Brazil to coordinate actions across 19 ministries and develop zero deforestation policies.

The strategy establishes a permanent federal government presence in vulnerable areas with the aim of eliminating illegal activities, setting up bases and using intelligence and satellite imagery to track criminal activity.

The newly appointed Federal Police’s Director for the Amazon and the Environment, Humberto Freire, launched a campaign to rid protected Indigenous land of illegal miners. It appears to be paying off: in July he announced that around 90 per cent of miners operating in Yanomami territory, Brazil’s largest protected Indigenous land, had been expelled. According to police sources, there were 19 mine-related deforestation alerts in April 2023 – compared to 444 in April 2022.

But the fight isn’t over. There are still a couple of thousand miners active and the criminal enterprises employing them remain very much alive. The key task of recovering damaged land and rivers can only begin once they’re all driven away for good. And an issue that cries out for international cooperation remains unresolved: violence and environmental degradation continue unabated in Yanomami communities across the border in Venezuela, and will only increase as illegal miners jump jurisdictions.

Achieving the ambitious zero-deforestation goal will require efforts on a much bigger scale than those of the past. And such efforts will further antagonise very powerful people.

Obstacles ahead

With the environmental agenda back on track, the pace of Amazon deforestation slowed down in the first six months of 2023, falling by 34 per cent compared to the same period in 2022. However, numbers still remain high and reductions are uneven, with two states – Roraima and Tocantins – showing increases. Deforestation is also still rising in another important part of Brazil’s environment, the Cerrado, where preservation areas are few and most deforestation happens on private properties.

For the Amazon, a crucial test will come in the second half of the year, when temperatures are higher. A stronger El Niño phase, with warming waters in the Pacific Ocean, will make the weather even drier and hotter than usual, helping fires spread fast. Anticipating this, IBAMA has scaled up its recruitment of firefighters to expand brigades in Indigenous and Black communities and conduct inspections and impose fines and embargoes. To discourage people from starting fires to clear land for agriculture, the agency prevents them putting that land to agricultural use.

But in the meantime, Brazil’s Congress has gone on the offensive. In June, the Senate made radical amendments to the bill on ministries sent by Lula, diluting the powers of the Ministries of Indigenous Peoples and Environment and limiting demarcation of Indigenous lands to those already occupied by communities by 1998, when the current constitution was enacted.

Indigenous leaders have complained that many communities weren’t on their land in 1998 because they’d been expelled over the course of centuries, and particularly during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. They denounced the new law as ‘legal genocide’ and urged the president to veto it. Civil society has taken to the streets and social media to support the government’s environmental policies.

They face a formidable enemy. A recent report by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency exposed the political connections of illegal mining companies. Two business leaders directly associated with this criminal activity are active congressional lobbyists and maintain strong links with local politicians. They also stand accused of financing an attempted insurrection on 8 January.

Against these shady elites, civil society wields the most effective weapon at its disposal, shining a light on their dealings and letting them know that Brazil and the world are watching, and will remain vigilant for as long as it takes. The stakes are too high to drop the guard.

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.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Deer sanctuary at Nijhum Dwip – the island of tranquility.

By Ramiz Uddin and Mohammad Saiful Hassan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Blue tourism, widely referred to as Coastal or Maritime tourism, is a distinct idea from traditional tourism, which capitalizes on a country’s ocean, sea, or coastal region.

Coastal tourism is the largest market segment in the world, accounting for 5% of GDP and contributing 6-7% of total employment. Furthermore, coastal and maritime tourism will employ 1.5 million additional people worldwide by 2030.

Though Blue Tourism is not a new concept, but off late Bangladesh has been realizing its importance as it can help earning a lot of foreign exchange contribute to its GDP and accelerate the pace of achieving SDGs by 2030.

Blue Tourism: A Potential Blue Economy Avenue for Bangladesh

According to Asian Development Bank (ADB), coastal and maritime tourism has immense potential in the blue economy and could become one of the largest sources of tourism revenue in Bangladesh. Ocean contributed $6.2 billion in 2015 in total value addition to the Bangladesh’s economy which implies 3 percent of GDP (Business Standard 2020).

Among different sectors of the Blue Economy, Blue Tourism is the most potential sector.

Figure: Why blue tourism shall be nurtured

Potentials of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh

Maritime area of 207K sq. km, with 580 km of coastline, 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, and 12 nautical mile territorial zones creates unprecedent opportunities for Bangladesh to accelerate the growth of blue economy.

Icing on the top are the 75 large and small islands in the coastal and maritime zone of Bangladesh, which are regarded as touristy sites for their rich biodiversity. Coral reefs, seagrass reefs, sandy beaches, sandbars, marshes, flood basins, estuaries, peninsulas, mangroves etc. are a few examples of the aquatic life.

Currently these zones are endowed with 17 fish sanctuaries, 5 national parks, and 10 wildlife sanctuaries, all of which can spur the tourism sector’s expansion. As a result of the discovery of numerous new sea beaches, the sector continues to expand and diversify.

Policies and interventions introduced to nurture the potential

The government of Bangladesh along with the vibrant private sector have introduced various initiatives to develop and promote blue tourism in Bangladesh.

Since 2015, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has been working to unleash the potentials of Blue-Economy. To ensure rapid implementation Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has highlighted major action points in the seventh five-year plan (7FYP) and eighth five -year plan (8FYP) of Bangladesh.

Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), GoB, had formed the “Blue Economy Cell” in 2017 to coordinate the running blue economy related projects across sectoral ministries and departments. The government of Bangladesh has also laid emphasis on the BLUE tourism in different development plans including Perspective Plan-2041, and Delta Plan-2100.

In order to exploit the tourism potential, Sea cruises between Bangladesh and India have already been launched in March 2019. To encourage foreign visitors to Cox’s Bazar’s largest sea beach, the Bangladesh Economic Zone Authority (BEZA) has been establishing three exclusive tourism parks there. These parks include Naf Tourism Park, Sabrang Tourism Park, and Sonadia Eco-Tourism Park.

Bangladesh Tourism Board has formulated a Tourism Master Plan for 25 years (2023-2047) for the country. Primarily a total of 255 tourist sites under 11 tourist clusters have been identified.

These tourist sites are potential for Eco-Tourism, Beach & Island Tourism, Pilgrimage/Spiritual Tourism, Archaeological & Historical Tourism, Riverine Tourism, Adventure and Sports Tourism, Rural Tourism, Ethno-tourism, MICE Tourism and Cruise Tourism in this coastal and maritime region.

The tourism master plan includes 200+ potential interventions overall. The Bangladesh Tourism Master Plan calls for the immediate development of 13 islands altogether in the coastal region.

Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) and UNDP Accelerator Lab Bangladesh’s Joint Initiative:

In the last quarter of 2022, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) in collaboration with UNDP Accelerator Lab has conducted research on Blue Tourism in Bangladesh, especially in the coastal regions. The core objectives of the joint research comprise identifying the coastal and maritime tourism resources, facilities, and tourist activities in Bangladesh, mapping tourist minds, and identifying the sustainability of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh.

However, with the technical assistance of UNDP Bangladesh Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) has begun to work on the execution of Bangladesh’s Tourism Master Plan.

Dr. Ramiz Uddin is Head of Experimentation, UNDP Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh; Mohammad Saiful Hassan is (Deputy Secretary), Deputy Director (Research and Planning), Bangladesh Tourism Board, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism – Bangladesh.

Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Transgender people often entertain at weddings and other events, but they increasingly face violent acts, especially since part of an Act ensuring their rights was recently struck down. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

“The problems transgender people face start from their homes as their parents, especially fathers and brothers, look them down upon and disrespect them,” says 20-year-old Pari Gul.

Gul, a resident of Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), left her house at 16 when her mother asked her to or face being killed by her father.

“I was born as a boy, and my name was Abdul Wahid, but when I came to Peshawar and joined a transgender group, I got a female name, Pari Gul. Since then, I have been going to weddings and other festive ceremonies to dance,” she says. “Dance is my passion.”

However, she has often been the brunt of discrimination and violence.

“During my five-year career, people have beaten me more than 20 times. Each time the perpetrators went unpunished,” she told IPS in an interview.

Trans people are often targeted in KP, one of Pakistan’s four provinces.

On March 28, a man shot dead a transgender person in Peshawar. It was the third incident targeting transgender persons in the province in less than a week. Despite the violence, violent attacks on transgender people aren’t considered a major crime.

Khushi Khan, a senior transgender person, says lack of protection is the main problem.

“People have developed a disdain for us. They consider us non-Muslims because we dance at marriages and other ceremonies,” she says.

“We had lodged at least a dozen complaints with police in the past three months when our colleagues were robbed of money, molested and raped but to no avail,” Khan, 30, says.

Last month, clerics in the Khyber district decided they wouldn’t offer funerals to transgender persons and asked people to boycott them.

Rafiq Shah, a social worker, says that people attack the houses of transgender, kill, injure and rob them, but the police remain silent “spectators”.

“We have been protesting against violence frequently, but the situation remains unchanged,” Shah said.

Qamar Naseem, head of Blue Veins, a national NGO working to promote and protect transgender people, isn’t happy over the treatment meted out to the group.

“Security is the main issue of transgender persons. About 84 transgender persons have been killed in Pakistan since 2015 while another 2,000 have faced violence, but no one has been punished so far,” Naseem says.

The lack of action by the police has emboldened the people.

“Health, transportation, livelihoods and employment issues have hit the transgender (community) hard. Most of the time, they remained confined to their homes, located inside the city,” he says.

There are no data regarding the number of transgender in the country because the government doesn’t take them seriously, he says.

In May 2023, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) dealt a severe blow when it suspended the implementation rules of the Protection of Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

Farzana Jan, president of TransAction Alliance, says that FSC’s declaration that individuals cannot alter their gender at their own discretion, asserting that specific clauses within the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 contradict Islamic law, has disappointed us.

The FSC declared un-Islamic sections 3 and 7 and two sub-sections of Section 2 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, five years after the law was passed, the FSC rolled back key provisions granting rights to Pakistan’s transgender community.

Some right-wing political parties had previously voiced concerns over the bill as a promoter of “homosexuality,” leading to “new social problems”.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, is against the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and will cease to have any legal effect immediately, the verdict stated.

Amnesty International said the verdict was a blow to the rights of the already beleaguered group of transgender and gender-diverse people in Pakistan. It said some of the FSC’s observations were based on presumptive scenarios rather than empirical evidence. The denial of essential rights of transgender and gender-diverse persons should not be guided by assumptions rooted in prejudice, fear and discrimination, AI said.

“Any steps taken by the government of Pakistan to deny transgender and gender-diverse people the right to gender identity is in contravention of their obligations under international human rights law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to which they are a state party,” it said.

The government should take immediate steps to stop the reversal of essential protections, without which transgender and gender-diverse people will be even more at risk of harassment, discrimination and violence, AI added.

On July 12, 2023, transgender representatives from all provinces held a press conference at Lahore Press Club, where they vehemently condemned the recent decision by the FSC against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018.

Arzoo Bibi, who was at a press conference, said it was time to stand united for justice and equality.

“Militants don’t threaten us, but our biggest concern is the attitude of the society and police,” said Arzoo.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Food Insecurity Fears as Pakistan Faces Cyclone, Monsoon Season
• Theatre Used to Dispel Polio Immunisation Myths in Pakistan
• Afghan Tailors Flee to Pakistan After Ban on Stitching Women’s Clothing

In a Mexican city with buildings that reflect its level of modernization, a truck collects waste, mainly plastic, ignoring higher standards of care for health and the environment. Plastic garbage is just the tip of a serious social and environmental problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: Greenpeace

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress towards partial regulations to reduce plastic pollution, but the problem is serious and environmental activists are calling for regulations in the entire chain of production, consumption and disposal of plastic waste.

The release of plastic waste into the environment “is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that begins much earlier, from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, to the transport and transformation of these precursors of an endless number of products,” Andrés del Castillo, a Colombian expert based in Switzerland, told IPS."That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems." -- Andrés del Castillo

Ecuadorian biologist María Esther Briz, an activist with the international campaign Break Free From Plastic, said “plastic pollution in our countries is not on its way to becoming a big problem: it already is.”

“From the extraction of raw materials, since we know that 99 percent of plastic is made from fossil fuels – oil and gas – plus the pollutants that are released during the transformation into resins and in consumption, and in the more well-known phase of when they become waste, our region is already very much affected,” the activist told IPS from the Colombian city of Guayaquil.

Plastic production in the region exceeds 20 million tons per year – almost five percent of the global total of 430 million tons per year – and consumption stands at 26 million tons per year, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), a coalition of 800 environmental organizations.

In the region, the largest installed production capacity is in Brazil (48 percent), followed by Mexico (29 percent), Argentina (10 percent), Colombia (8.0 percent) and Venezuela (5.0 percent).

The average annual consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean is about 40 kilos per inhabitant, and each year the region throws 3.7 million tons of plastic waste into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Del Castillo, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), warned that “if the trend is not reversed, by 2050 plastic production will reach 1.2 billion million tons annually. Paraphrasing (famed Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude) Gabriel García Márquez, that is the size of our solitude.”

“That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems,” del Castillo said from Geneva.

 

Volunteers from Peru’s Life Institute for Environmental Protection clean up plastic garbage washed up on the coast near Lima. In the waters surrounding cities, as well as in the oceans, discarded plastic waste that is not reused or recycled is added to other forms of pollution, severely affecting nature, including species and the landscape. CREDIT: IPMAV

 

Fearsome enemy

The plastic life chain is an enemy to health due to the release of more than 170 toxic substances in the production process of the raw material, in the refining and manufacture of its products, in consumption, and in the management and disposal of waste.

Once it reaches the environment, in the form of macro or microplastics, it accumulates in terrestrial and aquatic food chains, pollutes water and causes serious damage to human health, to animal species – such as aquatic species that die from consuming or being suffocated by these products – and to the landscape.

It also accounts for 12 percent of urban waste. UNEP estimates the social and economic costs of global plastic pollution to be between 300 billion dollars and 600 billion dollars per year.

It also affects the climate: the world’s 20 largest producers of virgin polymers employed in single-use plastics, led by the oil companies Exxon (USA) and Sinopec (China), generate 450 million tons a year of planet-warming greenhouse gases, almost as much as the entire United Kingdom.

And prominent villains are single-use plastics, such as packaging, beverage bottles and cups and their lids, cigarette butts, supermarket bags, food wrappers, straws and stirrers. Of these, 139 million tons were manufactured in 2021 alone, according to an index produced by the Australian Minderoo Foundation.

After alarm bells went off at the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, composed of 175 countries, was created. It held its first two meetings last year, in Montevideo and Paris, and will hold its third in November in Nairobi, in a process aimed at drafting a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.

As if the boom in the production, consumption and improper disposal of plastics were not enough, the Latin American region is also importing plastic waste from other latitudes.

Studies by GAIA and the Peruvian investigative journalism website Ojo Público reported that in the last decade (2012-2022) Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Colombia received more than one million tons of plastic waste from different parts of the world.

Although it is claimed that plastic waste is sold to be recycled into raw material for lower quality products or textiles, this rarely happens and it ends up adding to the millions of tons that go into landfills every year.

“We cannot even deal with our own waste and yet we are importing plastic garbage from other countries, often with very little clarity and transparency, so there is no traceability of what is imported under the pretext of recycling,” Briz complained.

 

Single-use plastics, more than a third of global production and ubiquitous in everyday life, are seen as the main villains in the entire plastics business chain, and Latin American and Caribbean countries are moving towards banning them altogether or at least limiting production and use. CREDIT: Goula

 

Laws and regulations are on their way

On the other side of the coin, in 2016 Antigua and Barbuda became the first country in the region to ban single-use plastic bags, and it has gradually expanded the ban to include polystyrene food storage containers, as well as single-use plates, glasses, cutlery and cups.

Since then, 27 of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have enacted national or local laws to reduce, ban or eliminate single-use articles and, in some cases, other plastic products.

“There is a wide range: countries that already have strong rules to regulate plastics, especially single-use plastics, and they are applied. Others have very good regulations but they are not enforced. In others there are no regulations, and there are countries where nothing is happening,” Briz said.

In Argentina a 2019 resolution by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development covers the life cycle of plastic (production, use, waste and pollution reduction) and a 2020 law bans cosmetic and personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads.

Belize, Chile, Colombia, most Mexican states and Panama have passed regulations to progressively ban or limit the consumption of single-use plastics, as have Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But in some cases there are doubts as to whether these provisions are effectively enforced.

Brazil has had a National Plan to Combat Marine Litter since 2019, which, however, has not yet been implemented. Costa Rica also has a National Marine Litter Plan, which seeks to reduce waste with the support of the communities.

Ecuador is turning the Galapagos Islands into a plastic-free archipelago, and phased out plastic bags, straws, “to-go” containers and plastic bottles in 2018.

Fences, including those made from recovered plastic waste, are being installed in rivers in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic to collect plastic waste and prevent it from being washed out to sea.

In Guatemala, Castillo noted, the municipality of San Pedro La Laguna, in the Lake Atitlán basin, was a pioneer, banning sales of straws and plastic bags in 2016, and the city government won lawsuits in court over the ordinance. The example is spreading throughout the country.

 

View of a petrochemical plant of the Brazilian giant Braskem. Environmentalists’ demands for a halt to the expansion of plastics production focus on states in Mexico and Brazil, which have the largest petrochemical facilities in the Latin American region. CREDIT: Braskem

 

From landfills to petrochemicals

Del Castillo, the Ecuadorian expert, said that “apart from initiatives of a voluntary nature, regional action plans, and the regulation of single-use plastic products, the ongoing negotiation of an international treaty promises to be the path that has been chosen to put an end to plastic pollution.”

The treaty should cover “all emissions and risks from plastics during production, use, waste management and leakage,” del Castillo said, but “we don’t have to wait for the treaty to act: States can already say ‘No to the expansion of virgin plastics production’.”

The MarViva Foundation, which fights marine pollution in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, argues that “the best way to manage single-use plastic waste is not to create it,” and advocates discouraging the production, use and consumption of these materials.

But in the face of such proposals, “one of the biggest obstacles has to do with the economic power of the petrochemical industry, which refuses to reduce production. In Latin America, the largest producers of plastics are the petrochemical companies of Mexico and Brazil,” said Briz, the Ecuadorian biologist.

“Plastic is a cheap product, since its environmental and social costs are not taken into account, and while the cost of production and distribution is low, the cost for the health of people and the environment is not,” said the activist.

In short, for activists, an approach based only on recycling and bans will be of limited scope until a moratorium is imposed on the expansion of plastics production, with a global market worth 600 billion dollars a year and which at the current rate could triple in the next two decades.

Dr Abhijit Bhattacharya, MS, Central Hospital Kalla, Eastern Coalfields Ltd., assesses an x-ray of a TB patient. Credit: ILO

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jul 21 2023 (IPS)

In a surprise move, pharma giant Johnson and Johnson (J&J) has agreed not to enforce some of its patents on a lifesaving TB drug, making generic versions available in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Although on the WHO’s list of essential medicines and a cornerstone of much TB treatment, bedaquiline had not been available in many countries in part because of its high cost.

A deal agreed between J&J and the Stop TB Partnership will allow the latter to procure and supply generic bedaquiline to 44 low- and middle-income countries through its Global Drug Facility (GDF). It is expected the price at which these countries will then be able to buy the drug under the deal will be significantly lower than currently, and some experts have suggested it may also reduce the price of the drug for those countries not covered in the deal.

But patient advocacy groups say that while it is good news that many countries will now get the drug more cheaply, there remain some serious problems with the new deal as countries with some of the highest TB burdens in the world
are excluded. They are also unhappy that it does not address the enforcement of secondary patents the company has on altered formulations of the drug, which are in place in scores of LMICs until 2027.

Critics have called on J&J to declare it will not enforce any secondary patents on bedaquiline in any country with a high burden of TB and withdraw and abandon all pending secondary patent applications for this lifesaving drug.

“We hope this deal will help drive down the price of this drug for all countries. But it doesn’t go far enough. What would have been best would have been for J&J to abandon and withdraw all the secondary patents it holds or has applied for everywhere,” Lindsay McKenna, TB Project Co-Director at the Treatment Action Group (TAG), told IPS.

Advocacy organisations have for years been pressing J&J to reduce the price of bedaquiline.

First approved in 2012, it was the first new TB drug in over 40 years and was hailed as revolutionary in the fight against drug-resistant TB, cutting out the need to use often very toxic, intravenously administered drugs. Its use in patient regimens also produced vastly improved treatment outcomes.

But its high cost – initially USD900 per course even in low-income countries – meant that it was available to relatively few people in many low- and middle-income countries, which have some of the highest TB burdens in the world.

Its price has now come down but remains too high in the eyes of many experts.

According to global health charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), J&J currently prices the drug at USD1.50/day for an adult treatment (USD272/six months). But with scale-up and unrestricted generic competition, it says the price of bedaquiline could get closer to USD0.50 per day.

This would make a huge difference to cash-strapped TB programmes in poorer countries.

“Any penny that can be saved [on bedaquiline] and which can be spent on something else related to TB, such as case identification, is of massive importance, especially in countries with high TB burdens,” Christophe Perrin, TB advocacy pharmacist at MSF, told IPS.

But even if the deal does bring the price down to that level, some of the countries which would benefit from purchasing the drug at a lower price will not be able to as they have been excluded from it.

Nine countries in the Eastern European and Central Asian region, which have some of the highest TB burdens in the world, are not covered by the deal because of an exclusive supply agreement J&J has with a Russian pharma firm.

“This deal is beneficial for those countries which can access it, but why are some countries excluded? Those that are excluded have some of the highest TB burdens in the world. It’s a real worry,” said Perrin.

The exclusion has infuriated senior health officials in some of the excluded countries. In a rare instance of its kind, the national tuberculosis (TB) programme (NTP) of Belarus sent an open letter to J&J demanding urgent action to improve equitable access to bedaquiline in Belarus, and all other countries with a high burden of TB.

“It is completely unfair that we will be excluded from this deal,” Dr Alena Skrahina, Deputy National TB Programme Manager, Belarus, told IPS.

Another high-burden country that will not be able to take advantage is South Africa. The country’s national procurement rules mean that it obtains bedaquiline directly from J&J.

Doctors and patient activists involved in the country’s fight against TB say South Africa’s inclusion in the deal would have been a huge boon to its efforts against the disease.

“Any money that can be saved could be used to expand diagnosis, public awareness, and use shorter TB treatment regimens, which is what we are looking to do here. Almost 95% of our patients are receiving bedaquiline, so a reduction in the price could have a massive effect. It would definitely benefit South Africa if it was included in this deal,” Dr Priashni Subrayen, TB technical director at the Johannesburg-based healthcare organisation Aurum Institute, told IPS.

Brenda Waning, head of the GDF, told IPS the deal was a good one for LMICs, but could also theoretically benefit countries not covered by it. It is widely expected that the competitive tenders in the deal will push the global price of the drug down as well.

“The deal is special in that usually when a company like J&J gives out licences it does so to a supplier, but this deal allows for multiple competitive buyers. We are expecting the price of bedaquiline to go down, although we won’t know by how much until the tenders happen. But a lower price is not the only benefit for countries. It will also mean more suppliers – the last thing you want to be doing is relying on a single supplier for a drug so there will be greater supply security – and whenever you have a price decrease, that frees up money which can be used for other things [to fight TB],” she said.

“We think the access price [for other countries] may come down through these tenders, so these countries could, theoretically, get it at a lower price than previously,” she added.

But even if that does happen, it will not be enough for critics who say J&J must abandon secondary patents it holds, or has applied for, in any country.

Unlike primary patents, which protect a completely new chemical entity, secondary patents cover modifications of, medical uses, and dose regimes of the new compound, among others. Critics argue they form part of a practice of “evergreening” which extends companies’ monopolies on existing products and, crucially, makes it difficult for generic manufacturers to enter the market with a generic drug after the original patent has expired

J&J has secondary patents for bedaquiline in 44 countries which are not due to expire until 2027, but under the new deal with StopTB, those countries will now be able to obtain a generic version of the drug.

But they remain in place in those states – “if J&J were to suddenly pull out of this deal, these countries would be back to square one,” noted Perrin – and the company continues to actively pursue their implementation elsewhere.

Phumeza Tisile, a South African TB survivor who lost her hearing because of side effects of treatment with older generation TB drugs, said J&J, and other pharma companies, should immediately withdraw secondary patents and commit to not applying for them anywhere in future.

“This provides affordable medicine to people who need the drug [and] helps people get generic versions of the relevant medicine at a very low cost,” she told IPS.

Pharmaceutical firms often argue that secondary patents are necessary to recoup the often very high costs associated with bringing a novel drug to the market and invest in the production of other new medicines.

J&J did not respond when contacted by IPS, but in a statement made as news of the deal broker last week, the company denied its patents had prevented people from accessing its drug and that the most significant barrier to treatment access for patients was the millions of undiagnosed TB cases every year.

Tisile, who works for advocacy group TB Proof, dismissed such claims, saying secondary patents may be denying people the drugs which they need to stop them dying.

“It’s greed,” she said. “Pharma companies make medicines to help people, but it never made sense to me that they make this medication so out of reach to people who actually need the medication the most, for them, it’s only profits. “This then can be very dangerous to millions of people who need the medication to survive. In this case, it should be patients before profits,” she said.

Others pointed out that the development of many new drugs is often funded by taxpayers – one study found that public investment into bedaquiline’s development was as much as five times that of J&J.

“It’s not a good faith argument to say that secondary patents are needed for a company to benefit from its investment in a drug. You could flip that round and say that the public needs to benefit from the investment they made into a drug,” said McKenna.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Marginalising Key Populations Impacting Efforts to End HIV/AIDS Epidemic
• Ukraine: Environmental Crisis Compounds Humanitarian Disaster Following Dam Destruction
• Tuberculosis Risk Factors Exacerbated by Climate Change

Activists, CSOs and faith-based leaders this week pondered how you get a seat at the table when they couldn't even get access to the UN building.

By Abigail Van Neely
NEW YORK , Jul 21 2023 (IPS)

How do you get a seat at the table when you can’t even access the building? This question loomed as activists, faith-based leaders, and NGO representatives gathered at the NY Ford Foundation. They discussed how to amplify the voice of civil society organizations at the UN Headquarters across the street.

“How to UNMute” was hosted on July 20, 2023, as a side event during the ongoing 2023 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). The event kicked off the creation of a manual to break down barriers to civil society engagement as the first step towards turning ideas into action.

Maithili Pai, the UN advocate for the International Service for Human Rights, illustrated the divide between the UN’s verbal commitments and its actual practices. Sometimes, Pai said, civil society representatives could not enter UN meeting rooms or waited years for UN accreditation. According to Pai, some representatives even faced retaliation for trying to interact with UN bodies.

“We understand very well that civil society is under attack and that there are people pushing you back,” Costa Rica’s Ambassador to the UN, Maritza Chan, told the audience.

Chan stressed that meeting the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) required empowering civil society organizations that provide critical insight.

“We need civil society in the room at all times, providing advice, supporting states, and also calling us when we are not doing things right,” Chan said.

Recommendations for the manual on ‘unmuting’ civil society were developed at a recent workshop. They include better-resourced UN NGO support offices, increased financing for participation in UN events, and more supportive visa processes, especially for delegates from the global south who have been historically excluded. Advocates also called for more systematic flows of information, methods of participation, and pathways into the UN.

Arelys Bellorini, the senior UN representative from World Vision, said she has to go to friendly missions to facilitate youth access to the UN.

Nelya Rakhimova, a sustainable development specialist, said she was asked to pay $1,500 to be at the UN.

Carmen Capriles, an environmental policy expert at the United Nations Environment Program, said she could not attend meetings on climate change because they were closed.

The Ambassador to the UN from Denmark, Martin Bille Hermann, pushed these advocates to present specific action items. “You’re not giving me easy avenues to deliver,” Hermann said. “Develop a toolbox that would allow us to continue to live in an old house.”

“We cannot expect different results by doing the same things,” Chan added.

This is not the first time these issues have been raised.

On the 75th anniversary of the UN in 2020, the General Assembly committed to making the UN more inclusive to respond to common challenges. The following year, a set of steps to strengthen the meaningful participation of stakeholders across the UN was presented to the secretary general by a group of civil society organizations and the permanent missions of Denmark and Costa Rica. The recommendations were endorsed by 52 member states and 327 civil society organizations.

The 2021 letter focused on the use of technology to make UN meetings more accessible. It cited an evaluation survey that found 50 percent of participants during the virtual 2020 HLPF joined for the first time. Most of these new participants represented civil societies in developing countries.

One suggestion for bridging digital divides and incorporating a more diverse range of participants was to host hybrid events and offer internet connection at UN country-based offices. However, Rakhimova pointed out that some events still do not have hybrid options.

The 2021 letter also called for a civil society envoy to the UN and an official civil society day. Neither recommendation has been formally implemented yet.

Mandeep Tiwana, chief officer of CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations with a strong presence in the global south, addressed inequalities in who influences international decision-making. Tiwana expressed concern that wealthy members of the private sector can “come in through the backdoor.” Meanwhile, activists already facing restrictions on their work wait outside.

“The time to open the doors to the UN virtually, online, and in person has come,” Chan said.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Ukraine War ‘Intrinsically Linked’ to Sustainable Development Goals
• Black Sea Grain Initiative ‘Paused’ But Africa Must Live Beyond Foreign Dependence
• ‘Spending Money on Education is Investing in Humanity’

Credit: Eswatini Government/Twitter

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jul 21 2023 (IPS)

Eswatini heads to the polls soon, with elections scheduled for September. But there’s nothing remotely democratic in prospect. The country remains ruled by King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, who presides over Eswatini with an iron fist. Mswati dissolved parliament on 11 July, confident there’s little chance of people who disagree with him winning representation.

A long history of repression

There’ll be some notable absentees at the next election. At least two members of parliament (MPs) certainly won’t be running again: Mthandeni Dube and Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza were convicted of terrorism and murder in June. Their real crime was to do what Swazi MPs aren’t supposed to do: during protests for democracy that broke out in 2021, they dared call for political reform and a constitutional monarchy.

Dube and Mabuza could face up to 20 years in jail. In detention they were beaten and denied access to medical and legal help. They were found guilty by judges appointed and controlled by the king. In Eswatini, the judiciary is regularly used to harass and criminalise those who stand up to Mswati’s power: people such as trade union leader Sticks Nkambule, subject to contempt of court charges for his role in organising a stay-at-home strike demanding the release of Dube and Mabuza. Other activists face terrorism charges.

But not every crime is so zealously prosecuted. In January, human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko was shot dead by unidentified assailants. Maseko was chair of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum, a network that brings together civil society groups, political parties, businesses and others to urge a peaceful transition to democracy. He’d previously spent 14 months in jail for criticising Eswatini’s lack of judicial independence. He was also Dube and Mabuza’s lawyer. There’s been little evident investigation of his killing.

There’s plenty more blood on the king’s hands. The 2021 democracy protests were initially triggered by the killing of law student Thabani Nkomonye. At least 46 people are estimated to have been killed in the ensuing protests. Security forces reportedly fired indiscriminately at protesters; leaked footage revealed that the king ordered them to shoot to kill.

In some areas security forces went house to house, dragging young people out for beatings. Hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured. People who survived shootings weren’t allowed to keep the bullets extracted from them, since this would have constituted evidence. Some bodies were reportedly burned to try to conceal the state’s crimes. When a second wave of protest arose in September 2021, led by schoolchildren, Mswati sent the army into schools, and then closed schools and imposed a nationwide protest ban. Hundreds of protesters and opposition supporters were jailed. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was enforced with the army on the streets and an internet shutdown imposed.

To this day, no one has been held accountable for the killings. There’s also been zero movement towards reform.

Farce of an election forthcoming

Following the intervention of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the king agreed to hold a national dialogue. But two years on, that hasn’t happened. Instead he held a Sibaya – a traditional gathering in which he was the only person allowed to speak.

Now the election is going ahead without any constructive dialogue or reform. The chances of reform-minded potential MPs winning significant representation are slimmer than ever. To do so, they’d have to navigate a two-round process that is exclusionary by design, with candidates first needing to win approval at the chiefdom level. No party affiliations are allowed.

To further rein in those elected, Mswati directly appoints most of the upper house and some of the lower house. And just to make sure, he picks the prime minister and cabinet, can veto legislation and remains constitutionally above the law.

#Eswatini
Mswati's "Selection" is not an Election. https://t.co/CwtYNwcuOC pic.twitter.com/R27fIzBLz4

— tdebly (@tdebly1) July 12, 2023

It’s a system that serves merely to fulfil a kingly fantasy of consultation and pretend to the outside world that democracy exists in Eswatini. Official results from the last two elections were never published, but it’s little wonder than turnout in this electoral farce has reportedly been low.

With the king unwilling to concede even the smallest demands, evidence suggests that repression is further intensifying ahead of voting. The king has imported South African mercenaries – described as ‘security experts’ – to help enforce his reign of terror. There are reports of a hit list of potential assassinations. Lawyers who might defend the rights of criminalised activists and protesters report coming under increasing threat.

Time for international pressure

People have been killed, jailed and forced into exile, but desire for change hasn’t gone away. After all, people in Eswatini aren’t asking for much. They want a competitive vote where they can choose politicians who serve them rather than the king, and they want a constitutional monarchy where the king has limited rather than absolute powers. If they got that, they might even get an economy that works in the public interest, rather than as a vast mechanism designed to funnel wealth to the royal family while everyone else stays poor.

The pretence of an election shouldn’t fool the outside world. Civil society keeps calling on African regional bodies not to let them down. In May the Multi-Stakeholder Forum urged the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to back an eight-point plan to respect human rights and enable dialogue. The demands were presented by Tanele Maseko, Thulani Maseko’s widow.

The full text of the MSF statement to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) on 1 May, 2023 in Banjul, the Gambia pic.twitter.com/V790L3ELRn

— Swaziland Multi-Stakeholder Forum (@crisis_forum) May 17, 2023

Eswatini’s activists also expect more of SADC, and of the government of South Africa, the country where so many of them now live in exile. Governments and organisations that claim to stand for democracy and human rights need to exert some pressure for genuine dialogue leading to a transition to democratic rule. They shouldn’t keep letting the king get away with murder.

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

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

A pickup truck is fueled with biomethane at a pump in the Franca Wastewater Treatment Plant, in the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo. Some 40 vehicles are run on biofuel produced from wastewater treatment. The resulting sludge goes through a biodigestion process, which extracts biogas, which is then refined as biomethane. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
FRANCA, Brazil, Jul 21 2023 (IPS)

The city of Franca is an example of basic sanitation in Brazil. In addition to providing universal treated water and sewage to its 352,500 inhabitants, it extracts biogas from wastewater and refines it to fuel its own vehicles.

Biomethane, the final product also called renewable natural gas, replaces fossil fuels and is used in 40 vehicles of the state-owned company Saneamiento Básico do Estado de São Paulo (SABESP) in Franca, in the northeast of the state of São Paulo."We are a laboratory, a pilot project, which SABESP will replicate in other facilities when the economic and technical feasibility has been proven and the qualification and regulation of biomethane is in place." -- Alex Veronez

SABESP Franca has been producing biogas at its main wastewater treatment plant (ETE) since its inauguration in 1998, but for 20 years it flared the gas in order to avoid pollution. In 2018 it switched to purifying it to initially supply 19 vehicles.

The city became a symbol of good sanitation practices when it reached first place in the ranking of the 100 largest Brazilian municipalities by the non-governmental Instituto Trata Brasil, which monitors the sector and promotes awareness of it.

From 2015 to 2020 Franca remained in the lead, but fell to ninth place in 2023, in the report released in March. Reduced investment, relative to income, was one of the factors leading to the decline. But the city continued to score top marks in nine of the 12 categories evaluated.

The main reason for the decline, according to the institute’s executive president, Luana Pretto, was the rate of water loss in distribution: 28.89 percent. The target is 25 percent. This item is also measured by the losses in each connection, in which the city is doing well, but the evaluation takes into account both indicators.

“The competition is fierce among the top positions,” Pretto told IPS from nearby São Paulo. “The top-ranked improve even more, while those at the bottom get worse. The best ones, with sound systems in place, have more capacity to invest in expansions and improvements. At the bottom, many new investments are required.”

 

Alex Veronez, district manager of the São Paulo State Basic Sanitation company, is interviewed in his office in the city of Franca in southeastern Brazil. The production of biomethane from sewage here is a “laboratory” to be replicated after proving its economic and technical feasibility, in addition to producing improvements such as drying the sludge to convert it into biofertilizer. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

Biogas complements sanitation

Extracting biogas from wastewater and using biomethane, in which SABESP Franca is a pioneer in Brazil and Latin America, would improve the ranking, since it complements sanitation, she acknowledged. But it is not included in the assessment.

Franca is the only one of Brazil’s 5,575 municipalities that produces biomethane from wastewater, even in the SABESP system, which is responsible for the basic sanitation of 375 municipalities in the southeastern state of São Paulo, with a total of 28 million inhabitants.

“We are a laboratory, a pilot project, which SABESP will replicate in other facilities when the economic and technical feasibility has been proven and the qualification and regulation of biomethane is in place,” explained Alex Veronez, district manager of SABESP in Franca, which is responsible for operations in 16 municipalities.

The biomethane plant was inaugurated in 2018, thanks to a partnership with the German Fraunhofer institute, which provided the refining and storage equipment, while SABESP carried out the necessary works and the adaptation of its vehicles to biofuel.

Investments totaled seven million reais (1.5 million dollars at the current exchange rate) and a return on the investment is expected in seven years.

 

A decanting pond is the first step in the treatment of wastewater that then goes through other processes until it is sufficiently clean to be returned to the river, at the Wastewater Treatment Plant in Franca, a city in southeastern Brazil. This leaves sludge that goes to the biodigesters where biogas is produced. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

The benefit is primarily environmental. The International Center for Renewable Energy-Biogas (CIBiogás) estimates that biomethane reduces gasoline pollution by 90 percent.

Its production is only the final part of the 550 liters per second wastewater treatment plant, about 85 percent of Franca’s total. It comprises several processes and numerous ponds, for decanting and oxygenation that increase the reproduction of the microorganisms necessary for biogas production in three large biodigesters

 

Regulations needed for biofertilizer

The sludge that goes through the biodigestion process that extracts gases from it can be converted into fertilizer. As such it was distributed to farmers during the 13 initial years of the ETE, until new regulations on fertilizers by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock prevented it from being used.

Since then, the sludge has been discarded in the city’s sanitary landfill, a waste that also has costs for transporting a material that is heavy due to its 80 percent moisture. Composting treatment to eliminate impurities such as fecal coliforms could enable it to be used as biofertilizer, but it became unfeasible due to the cost.

“We spend a lot to carry water to the landfill,” lamented Veronez in a conversation with IPS in his office at SABESP in this southern city.

In order to save money and create better conditions for converting sludge into fertilizer, SABESP Franca is implementing a new drying system, which has been purchased and is being installed, as well as renovating a greenhouse to dry the sludge using solar thermal energy.

 

The Franca Wastewater Treatment Plant in southeastern Brazil has three large biodigesters that extract biogas from sludge, where the microorganisms that perform biodigestion reproduce, in a process that eventually gives rise to biomethane. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

“This will allow us to dry 90 tons of sludge per day,” the manager said. It will save on transportation costs and represents a step forward towards the regulation and development of compost, an additional product that would be added to biomethane in the use of organic waste.

For now, only light SABESP vehicles use biomethane. Successful tests were carried out on a bus from the Swedish company Scania. Sweden is a country that uses biofuel extensively in its heavy vehicles.

But the sanitation company does not plan to sell biomethane, which it produces for its own use. SABESP has many vehicles and a level of energy consumption that will demand all the biogas and biomethane it produces in the long term, said Veronez, a construction engineer.

There are many challenges standing in the way of fully taking advantage of urban sewage gases, including the organization of the market and regulation of the activity, which is a recent development in Brazil, unlike in Europe.

The biggest progress in producing biogas is in landfills, especially for electricity generation. In a few cases it is converted into biomethane.

 

The energy potential of sanitation

In Brazil, only about two percent of the potential for biogas is being tapped, the Brazilian Biogas Association (Abiogás) estimates. The main sources are agricultural waste, led by sugar cane residue and animal excrement, landfills and urban wastewater.

 

Part of the equipment at Franca’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, for processing the biogas that generates biomethane, described as renewable natural gas, which is already replacing fossil fuels in 40 of the company’s vehicles on an experimental basis. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

But the potential of basic sanitation, limited in relation to agriculture and landfills, would increase if the goal of universalizing its services by 2033, set by the regulatory framework for the sector passed by Congress in 2020, is met.

In Brazil, 44.2 percent of the population of 203 million people still has no sewerage service. The goal set by the Sanitation Framework approved by Congress in 2020 is for at least 90 percent of the population to have access to wastewater treatment by 2033.

The goal of universalization of treated wastewater is more feasible because it already stands at more than 85 percent of the total. The problem is droughts, which have become more frequent as a result of climate change.

“Franca was caught off guard by the 2014 drought, a novel experience because we did not know the limits of our water sources, the measurements were insufficient,” Veronez acknowledged.

Water security improved with the June 2022 inauguration of a new water treatment plant that takes water from the Sapucaí-Mirim River, the largest in the region. Until now, the local water supply depended basically on the smaller Canoas River, which cuts across the municipality.

The new catchment will serve 30 percent of the population, but it will be connected to the old system so that it can compensate for eventual reductions in flow from other sources, explained the manager of SABESP Franca.

Related Articles

• Biodigesters Boost Family Farming in Brazil
• Biomethane, the Energy that Cleans Garbage in Brazil

A weaker Russia needs Iran more; on the other hand, a weaker Russia threatens both countries’ authoritarian model of governance.

By Emil Avdaliani
TBILISI, Georgia, Jul 21 2023 (IPS)

Iran is not interested in a highly powerful Russia that could block Iranian ambitions in the South Caucasus and Middle East. At the same time, a too weak Russia would constitute a dangerous development paving the way for greater Western influence along Iran’s northern border and potentially even leading to the reversal of Moscow’s dependence on Tehran.

When a mutiny led by one-time Vladimir Putin ally and Wagner Group chief Evgeny Prigozhin began on June 24, 2023, Iranian officials were uneasy. The sudden unrest came at a time of unprecedented alignment between Tehran and Moscow and caught the Iranian regime off-guard.

Iranian media reacted to the events in a variety of ways. Hard-line Fars News Agency published numerous articles on the unfolding events and explained the reasons for the mutiny, essentially parroting information provided by Russian news outlets.

Fars also criticized Western media for double standards for its apparent approval of a revolt led by someone equally if not more brutal than Putin.

The Nour Agency was more explicit in accusing the West of purposefully fomenting Putin’s downfall. The same agency, however, also published more restrained versions such as one noting that threats to the West would multiply if Prigozhin was able to take control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

The Tasnim Agency featured a series of articles as well as analyses that also blamed the West for exacerbating Russia’s difficult position. Hardline Kayhan newspaper predictably accused the West of direct involvement in internal Russian affairs.

Other analysts were more nuanced, and many blamed the mutiny on Moscow’s failure to meet its military goals in Ukraine. The former head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, argued that Putin emerged weaker from the mutiny.

On the official level, Iran openly supported its northern neighbor. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman spoke of the rule of law, while Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian expressed hopes that Russia would prevail. President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin two days after the revolt ended to convey his “full support.”

Iran’s official support for the Russian government and its leader was not surprising. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, and many other countries expressed the same view. What matters is that despite a seemingly careful management of the crisis, uncertainty about Russia’s geopolitical power and, most of all, Putin’s ability to control the situation lingers for Iran.

The stakes are high. The two have been lukewarm partners despite a spurt of activity since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Historical grievances as well as conflicting regional ambitions have often prevented the expansion of cooperation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The war in Ukraine marked a notable break from the previous era. Pressured by the West, Russia openly shifted toward Asia and the Islamic Republic. Expanding trade through the North-South corridor as well as growing military cooperation have increased the stakes for Iran over how well Russia fares both in Ukraine and domestically.

In many ways, the present alignment is exceptional; such cooperation has not been seen since the late 16th century when both Russia and Persia feared the expanding Ottoman Empire.

A Goldilocks approach: Russia should neither be too strong nor too weak

Yet modern Iran is not interested in a highly powerful Russia that could block Iranian ambitions in the South Caucasus and Middle East. At the same time, a weak Russia would constitute a dangerous development, paving the way for greater Western influence along Iran’s northern border and potentially even leading to the reversal of Moscow’s dependence on Tehran.

Russia’s internal destabilization would also reverberate badly for Iran since the latter has had its own share of internal disturbances since the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

Wagner’s success would have shaken the very foundation on which the Eurasian states have been building a new order: a strong security apparatus that uses modern technologies to control dissent.

Until recently, Eurasian powers had seemed to show that they had harnessed modernity and that the concept was no longer solely associated with the West. The Wagner mutiny, however, exposed that this order is vulnerable and that a modern authoritarian state can easily fall into disarray.

On one level, however, Prigozhin’s failure to achieve whatever his goals were presents an ideal scenario for Iran. Russia is weakened, but not too much and the longer this state of affairs continues, the better for Iran.

Indeed, Moscow serves as a linchpin in the Islamic Republic’s efforts to divert Western attention from the Middle East and gain further momentum in terms of regional influence and its nuclear program. Given the likelihood of Russia continuing the war in Ukraine, this trend could further solidify in coming years.

The mutiny and the ensuing reported purge in the military ranks revealed cracks in the Russian elite, but also provides the Islamic Republic with opportunities to advance its position in bilateral ties.

Putin cannot afford to lose friends, which means greater avenues for Iran to act. Tehran might become more emboldened in the South Caucasus, where it has grasped an emerging vacuum as a result of Moscow’s distraction and pushed for closer ties with Armenia, Russia’s long-time ally.

Another area is the nuclear negotiations where Russia might even lend further support to Iran not to reach a consensus with the West. In Syria, Russia could be more vocal against Israeli strikes against Iranian positions.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity for Iran lies in space and military cooperation. In other trade, Iran might achieve a preferential agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union by the end of this year. Another area for growth could be in Russian investments in Iran.

Under a recently signed agreement, Moscow agreed to finance a railway link for a new transport corridor. This could be a precursor for investment in other sectors of Iran’s embattled economy.

Longer term, Iranian elites recognize that Russia is unlikely to win the Ukraine war, at least not decisively enough, and that the present stalemate is the best that the Kremlin can expect. This dire picture for Russia means its push toward Asia will only grow, feeding into Iran’s own “Look East” agenda, which has encountered some pushback recently over failed attempts to attract investments from China, India, and other Asian actors.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of silk roads.

Source: Stimson Center, Washington DC

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Scientists have recently unveiled a first-ever weather forecasting model using artificial intelligence (AI) aimed at creating resilience in Africa. Credit: Kureng Dapel/World Meteorological Organization

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jul 20 2023 (IPS)

Scientists have recently unveiled a first-ever weather forecasting model using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning solutions to help vulnerable African countries build resilience to climate impacts.

Researchers from the Kigali-based African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) are working on a new AI algorithm that allows various end users of weather predictions to make data-driven decisions.

According to climate experts, these efforts focus on building an intelligent weather forecasting system that is multi-dimensional and updated in real-time with a long-range and is a technology capable of simulating long-term predictions much more quickly than traditional weather models.

“Key to these interventions is to improve the accuracy of weather forecasting and help African governments better prepare for and respond to weather emergencies,” Dr Sylla Mouhamadou Bamba told IPS.

Bamba is the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 6 (AR6) for the Working Group 1 contribution: The Physical Science Basis and African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) – Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Science based in Kigali, Rwanda.

The AI model currently being tested by researchers from the Kigali-based Centre of Excellence focuses on analyzing huge data sets from past weather patterns to predict future events more efficiently and accurately than traditional methods commonly used by national meteorological agencies in Africa.

The first-ever machine learning model, which researchers are currently testing, focuses on analyzing huge data sets from past weather patterns to predict future events more efficiently and accurately than traditional methods to boost climate resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Rather than working out what the weather will generally be like in a given region or area to get forecasts, Bamba points out that developing modern statistical models using a machine learning approach to forecast sunlight, temperature, wind speed, and rainfall has the potential to predict climate change with efficient use of learning algorithms, and sensing device.

Although most national meteorological agencies in Africa have tried to enhance the accuracy of their weather forecasts, scientists say that although current technologies can forecast weather over the next few days, they cannot predict the climate over the next few years.

“Many African countries are still struggling to take measures in preventing major climate-related disaster risks in an effective manner because of lack of long-term adaptation plans,” Dr Bamba says.

The latest findings by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) show that as the global climate further warms, the long-term adverse effects and extreme weather events brought about by climate change will pose an increasingly serious threat to Africa’s economic development.

The limited resilience of African countries against the negative impacts of today’s climate is already resulting in lower growth and development, highlighting the consequences of an adaptation deficit, it said.

Indicative findings by economic experts show lower GDP growth per capita ranging, on average, from 10 to 13 per cent (with a 50 per cent confidence interval), with the poorest countries in Africa displaying the highest adaptation deficit.

While projections show that climate change is likely to exacerbate the high vulnerability, the limited adaptive capacity of the majority of African countries, particularly the poorest, will potentially roll back development efforts in the most-affected nations, Dr Andre Kamga, the Director General of the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD). This highlighted the need to build high-resolution models.

Apart from exploiting processes to achieve early warning for all in the current climate value chain Dr Kamga stresses the pressing need to move to impact-based forecasts to enhance the quality of information given to users and to expect more efficient preparedness and response.

While Africa has contributed negligibly to the changing climate, with just about two to three percent of global emissions, the continent still stands out disproportionately as the most vulnerable region globally.

The latest report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)  indicates that most of these vulnerable countries lack the resources to afford goods and services to buffer themselves and recover from the worst of the changing climate effects.

While AI and machine learning remain key solutions for researchers to overcome these challenges, Prof. Sam Yala, Centre President at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Rwanda, is convinced that these modern weather forecasting models are important to help manage challenging issues related to improving adaptation and resilience in most African countries.

Frank Rutabingwa, Senior Regional Advisor, UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Coordinator Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa Programme (WISER), acknowledges that for African countries to prevent and control major climate-related disaster risks effectively, it is important to improve their forecasting and information interpretation capacities.

Latest estimates by researchers show that the skill of numerical weather prediction over Africa is still low, and there remains a widespread lack of provision of nowcasting across the continent and virtually no use of automated systems or tools.

Scientists from AIMS are convinced that this situation has significantly affected the ability of national meteorological services to issue warnings and, therefore, potentially prevent the loss of life and significant financial losses in many countries across the continent.

In Africa, a study by Dr Sylla projected an extension of torrid climate throughout West Africa by the end of the 21st century. However, other African regions, such as North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, lack this information.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning can play a critical role by filling these data gaps on the reliability of weather forecasts that undermine understanding of the climate on the continent,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• African Women Seek to Boost Innovation and Creativity in Agribusiness
• Rwanda: Better Mapping of Erosion Risk Areas Needed More Than Ever
• New Business Technology Transfer Provides Benefits for African Pharmaceutical Industry

Ortensia Tserem, a 27-year-old indigenous woman from the Amazon jungle, arrived with her partner to the coastal city of Ica in search of better economic opportunities. She never imagined that living without water would become part of her daily life. In her wooden shack in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Ica, she has had to make space for plastic containers to store the water she buys to meet the needs of the couple and their two young children. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

By Mariela Jara
ICA, Peru , Jul 20 2023 (IPS)

Living without water in a desert area is part of the daily life of Ortensia Tserem, a member of the indigenous Wampis people from the Amazon rainforest of northeastern Peru, who came three years ago to the outskirts of the coastal city of Ica with the dream of better economic opportunities for her family.

However, the scarcity of water is a major hardship. Every week she has to buy water from tanker trucks, which costs about 56 dollars a month, a heavy burden on the family’s small income."The worst thing is not having water," said Fernández. "You get used to the sun, to the wind... but without water and sanitation it is very difficult. We don't leave because we have nowhere else to go: We just hope that the authorities will make good on what they promised us as candidates: to bring us drinking water." -- Alicia Fernández

“I have a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old baby boy. The most difficult thing is to make sure we have water for their hygiene, so that they don’t get sick,” she told IPS while showing the plastic drums where she stores water in her shack in the Intercultural settlement of Nuevo Perú on the outskirts of Ica, the capital of the department of the same name.

Like hers, the 150 families who settled in this desert area in the department of Ica, south of Lima, lack water, sewage and electricity services.

The shantytown is part of the area known as Barrio Chino, located at kilometer 163 of the Panamericana Sur, a major highway that runs across the country. It is populated by people from towns in Peru’s Andes highlands and Amazon jungle who are keen to become part of Ica’s agro-export boom.

Agricultural exports, which account for four percent of Peru’s GDP, are one of the factors that have exacerbated the problem of water scarcity in Ica, the sixth smallest of the country’s 24 departments, which had just over one million inhabitants in 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics.

“Since early 2000 in Ica we have been feeling the worsening water shortages due to the lowering of the water table as a result of the drilling of wells, when after the agrarian reform the large landed estates reemerged as a result of agro-exports,” Gustavo Echegaray, an engineer and renowned expert on water resources, told IPS.

Engineer Gustavo Echegaray poses for a photo at his office in Santiago, a city in the semi-desert coastal Peruvian department of Ica. The consultant and expert in water resources warns that in Ica, where agro-export activity has overexploited water, things will collapse if measures are not taken to correct the water imbalance. CREDIT: Courtesy of Gustavo Echegaray

Groundwater is considered the reserve for the future, so good management and sustainable use are imperative, he stressed.

Echegaray, who lives in Santiago, a city in Ica, also experiences daily water rationing. In his neighborhood they receive one hour of piped water a day, with which they fill tanks and containers for household use.

This complication of day-to-day life in the cities is much worse in the impoverished neighborhoods on the outskirts.

The right to water, a distant goal

Tserem, 27, said the right to water, guaranteed in international treaties and in Peru’s constitution, is just an empty promise. “Look at how living without water affects our health, our food, our environment, our peace of mind,” she explained as she gave IPS a tour of her modest wooden house.

The family has a latrine in the backyard, and taking a daily shower is an impossible dream.

Ortensia Tserem (L) and María Huincho moved from other parts of Peru three years ago to the outskirts of Ica, the capital of the coastal desert department of the same name in south-central Peru. Their families were drawn by the agro-export boom of which Ica is the epicenter, but they struggle to get temporary jobs and casual work, and their biggest challenge is access to drinking water, which they have to buy from tanker trucks. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Her partner is a day laborer on one of the large farms dedicated to export crops, whose work varies according to the seasonal labor requirements. “Right now it’s the slow season, there’s no harvest yet; he is helping to prune the tangerine trees, but only for a few hours a day,” she said in a quiet voice.

Fewer hours of work means a reduction in income, making it even more difficult to afford to buy water.

She is also employed during the harvests and at other times of higher demand for labor on the nearby large landed estates, and the rest of the time she spends raising the children and doing household chores.

María Huincho, 39, who moved here from the Andean department of Huancavelica, adjacent to the highlands of Ica, faces a similar situation. She came with her partner and their three young children with the hope of working on one of the farms that grow export crops like blueberries, grapes, tangerines, artichokes or asparagus.

A view of the Nuevo Peru Intercultural settlement, a shantytown which forms part of the area known as Barrio Chino, inhabited by families from different regions of Peru who came to the department of Ica, hoping for jobs on the large export-oriented fruit and vegetable farms. The 150 families in the neighborhood suffer from severe water scarcity. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

“I’ve been here for three years now and the hardest thing is to go without water. I bathe once a week, more often than that is impossible,” she told IPS. She is Tserem’s neighbor and they help each other in their daily chores. “You can never just sit still doing nothing here,” she said, smiling as she looked around at the large sandy field where the wooden houses have been built.

Ica is known worldwide for the pre-Inca Nazca Lines, ancient geoglyphs in the sand made by the Nazca culture which developed a complex hydraulic system with an extensive network of aqueducts that astonished the world when they were discovered.

Today, water stress is a reality in a large part of the department, one of the hardest hit by the growing water scarcity in this South American country of 33 million people.

Aquifer depletion

According to the United Nations, people require 20 to 50 liters per day of clean, safe water to meet their needs for a healthy life. Peru, despite its great diversity of water sources, has failed to guarantee the populace the right to water.

The National Center for Strategic Planning (Ceplan) has projected that by 2030, 58 percent of the Peruvian population will live in areas affected by water scarcity. Overexploitation is one of the reasons.

“Life without water is very difficult,” said Rosa Huayumbe (L) as she and Alicia Fernández paused on their way home, after walking down the steep unpaved road they take every day to buy food and water, which they pipe up to their homes using hoses. The two women have lived for eight years in the Dos de Mayo neighborhood, part of the municipality of Subtanjalla in the department of Ica. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Echegaray, the engineer, told IPS from his hometown that at the end of the 2000s the agricultural frontier in Ica was smaller, but under the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who changed the country’s economic model to a free market regime, land that was wasteland was allocated for business investment.

“The agricultural frontier has grown a lot on the side of what used to be desert, in the Villacurí pampas (grasslands), which are before the entrance to the city of Ica and also in the lower valley. Due to the irrigation technology that they began to use, a large amount of uncultivated land was made available by drilling new wells, which was done without any controls until 2009,” said the expert.

The result was seen in the decrease of water for small-scale agriculture and for local human consumption, Echegaray said.

“The population of the department of Ica has grown and at the same time the amount of water has decreased. A serious problem has been generated in the lower part of the province (also called Ica) and in general in most of the districts where water is rationed, there are areas where families have access to piped water one or two hours per week or every 15 days,” he said.

He added that due to the overexploitation of the wells, the water table is more fragile and an imbalance is occurring – in other words, the amount of water filtering into the aquifers is less than what is extracted from the wells.

Life is very hard without water

In March 2009, Law 29338 on water resources was approved, which regulates areas where water is protected or where its use is banned.

The bans refer to the “prohibition to carry out water development works; the granting of new permits, authorizations, licenses for water use and discharges.” The National Water Authority (Ana) has already applied this to the aquifers of Ica, Villacurí and Lanchas, all three of which are in the department of Ica.

But despite the ban, reports continue to appear from Ana itself about new wells in the aquifers. “Not all of them are detected,” lamented Echegaray.

Rosa Huayumbe (L) and Alicia Fernández, who came to Subtanjalla, in the Peruvian department of Ica, the center of the agro-export boom, climb the steep, dusty road they walk every day to get to their homes in the Dos de Mayo neighborhood, where the severe water shortage constantly disrupts their lives and makes a huge dent in their meager family incomes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Rosa Huayumbe, 47, was born in the Amazonian city of Iquitos and her friend Alicia Fernández, 30, is from Pisco, a city in Ica. They came to the Dos de Mayo neighborhood in the Ica municipality of Subtanjalla eight years ago, and they have never had piped water in their homes.

This is a poor, desert area, where sand covers the unpaved streets and small houses, most of which are made of wood.

They live in a steep area and must stretch meters of hose so that the tanker truck can deliver water to their homes. They buy three dollars of water a day to cover their basic necessities.

“We work on the large farms,” Huayumbe told IPS. “Right now there is only work for men, which is pruning. We have more time to spend with our children but no money and it’s an even bigger problem to buy water.”

“The worst thing is not having water,” said Fernández. “You get used to the sun, to the wind… but without water and sanitation it is very difficult. We don’t leave because we have nowhere else to go: We just hope that the authorities will make good on what they promised us as candidates: to bring us drinking water,” she added during a pause climbing the steep dirt road back to their homes.

Echegaray said that if something is not done, Ica will run out of water and collapse. He called for studies to determine the water imbalance, which is estimated to be between 38 and 90 million cubic meters per year. “The difference is too big,” he said.
.
He also proposed putting into operation some natural dams and increasing experiments in planting and harvesting water that revive ancestral techniques to restore the aquifers.