Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party. The party could soon be in government, after the 23 July 2023 general elections. Credit: Shutterstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The abuse of human rights has sharply increased with the steady rise of the right and far-right parties in the wealthy industrialised countries, whose extremist ideology is now spreading faster than ever in Europe.

Indeed, most of the European Union 27 member countries are now either formally ruled by or strongly influenced and supported by extremists and populist parties, which publicly negate basic human rights, while masking their policies of suppressing public services like health, education, pensions, and protection of workers.

 

Life of citizens to be handled by private corporations

Let alone, their negation of the existing deadly gender violence, the right of women to equal opportunities, and the devastating climate catastrophes which impact the very same Europe, let alone all international laws regulating the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

It’s like a ladder of incremental extremism - You start at the bottom with a stereotype, move on to emojis and memes that lead to harmful speech. Harmful speech leads to hate speech, a torrent of hate builds up, and results in the incitement of violence. And then you have actual violence

And they are active in most European countries, from Scandinavian and Baltic States, to Italy and Greece, through Hungary, Poland, Czechia, France and Austria, let alone the United Kingdom.

Spain is one of very few European countries still ruled by a progressive Government, although it is feared that the right and far-right parties will take over after the 23 July 2023 general elections.

 

The myth of white supremacy

Their trend to further promote the myth of ‘white supremacy’ is not new, but rather a reflection of what is being done by European descendents in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Such a myth goes against what they call ‘minorities,’ e.g., anybody who is not White and Christian.

They call it “the defence of our national identity.”

In short, the spread of hate speech, stigmatisation and racial discrimination is now being widely “institutionalised” in European countries, those whose governments signed –and their Parliaments ratified– all international, legally-binding declarations, treaties and laws defending the protection of human rights.

For such purposes, they further spread hate speech, which reinforces “discrimination and stigma and is most often aimed at women, refugees and migrants, and minorities,” as described by the United Nations on the occasion of this year’s International Day for Countering Hate Speech (18 June).

With hate “spreading lightning fast on social media and mega spreaders using divisive rhetoric to inspire thousands, hate speech “lays the ground for conflicts and tensions, wide scale human rights violations.”

 

‘Dark age of intolerance’

On this, Mita Hosali, Deputy Director of the UN Department of Global Communication (DGC), said young people are often seen today as vectors of such toxic trends as online hate speech.

“Increasingly, we are entering this dark age of intolerance, fueled by polarisation and mis- and disinformation, and there are all kinds of ‘facts’ swirling out there,” she cautioned.

“It’s like a ladder of incremental extremism,” Hosali said.

“You start at the bottom with a stereotype, move on to emojis and memes that lead to harmful speech. Harmful speech leads to hate speech, a torrent of hate builds up, and results in the incitement of violence. And then you have actual violence.”

Tech companies must now show effective leadership and responsibility around moderation to set up guard rails for respectful online discourse, she said.

“It really boils down to leaders, whether they are political, business, faith, or community leaders,” she said, emphasising that such efforts must also start within the family and ripple across all circles of influence so that ordinary people fight back against hate speech.

According to the world’s largest multilateral body –the UN–, the devastating effect of hatred is sadly nothing new.

However, “its scale and impact are amplified today by new technologies of communication, so much so that hate speech has become one of the most frequent methods for spreading divisive rhetoric and ideologies on a global scale.”

 

Social exclusion fuels terrorism

The consequences of such a growing social exclusion spreading in Europe and elsewhere are dire.

On this, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, on 19 June 2023 stressed at the UN’s Third Counter-Terrorism week that terrorism affects every region of the world, while preying on local and national vulnerabilities.

“Poverty, inequalities and social exclusion give terrorism fuel. Prejudice and discrimination targeting specific groups, cultures, religions and ethnicities give it flame.”

 

No one is born to hate

Hatred, conspiracy theories and prejudice infiltrate our societies and affect all of us. We are flooded by information – and disinformation – more than ever before both on- and offline. “But no one is born to hate.”

Nevertheless, ‘toxic and destructive’ hate speech has now grown much faster and wider than anytime before.

 

Migrants, the easiest victims

In the right and far-right campaigns in defence of what they call “our freedom,” “our Western civilisation,” “our democracy,” “our values,” and “our Christian faith,” they turn migrants, now more than ever before, into the easiest prey to chase.

In fact, like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, among other Western wealthy powers, the 27 members of the European Union on 8 June adopted a strongly criticised by major human rights organisations, which further restricts the basic human rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

 

Death of migrants, ‘normalised’

The number of migrants who died and are still hopelessly missing as a consequence of the 14 June shipwreck off Greece coast of a fishing vessel carrying between 450- and 750 migrants, is still unknown.

Anyway, it just adds to a long series of migrant deaths in only one sea: the Mediterranean.

Although the number of dead migrants in the Mediterranean is far from being credibly counted, the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Missing Migrants Project documented 441 migrant deaths in the Central Mediterranean in the first quarter of 2023, “the deadliest first quarter on record since 2017.”

 

The most dangerous maritime crossing

The increasing loss of lives on the “world’s most dangerous maritime crossing” comes amidst reports of delays in State-led rescue responses and hindrance to the operations of humanitarian non-governmental organisations’ search and rescue (SaR) vessels in the central Mediterranean.

Not only that: Italy, like other South European States, still argues that the non-governmental, voluntary humanitarian vessels dedicated to search and rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, are involved in… human trafficking.

Paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil. In the US, it's labelled as a restricted-use substance, meaning that farmworkers are still allowed to spray it on crops as long as they receive proper EPA training and certification. Credit: Atraxia Law

By Miguel Leyva
San Diego, California, US, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The US agricultural industry has been one of the key sectors driving our country’s continuous demographic and economic growth. Unfortunately, farmworkers are one of the least protected professional groups, with minority and migrant agricultural laborers suffering disproportionately higher health risks due to deeply-entrenched discriminatory policies and practices.

Although acknowledged as essential workers during the height of the covid pandemic, minority farmworkers still have to contend with inadequate working conditions and insufficient social protections that leave them and their communities vulnerable to the enduring effects of toxic agrochemicals.

 

Rooted in Environmental Racism

Due to its high potency and increasing medical evidence indicating its links to life-threatening conditions, paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil. According to data from the US Geologic Survey, more than 17 million pounds of paraquat are used in US agriculture every year, with states like California, Texas, Illinois, and Mississippi spraying over 1 million pounds on crops annually

Throughout the 20th century, redlining kept low-income ethnic communities segregated in areas with substandard living conditions. At the same time, racist lending practices enabled white Americans to operate and own 94 to 98 percent of US farmland, further preventing the social mobility of marginalized groups and their capacity to amass generational wealth.

The disproportionate health burdens minorities endure due to systemic prejudice is better described as “environmental racism.” Notably, approximately 83% of the US agricultural labor force is Hispanic. In rural areas where agriculture is the primary source of employment, this phenomenon is propagated by the excessive use of synthetic pesticides.

As the main ingredient in popular products like Gramoxone and Parazone, paraquat (paraquat dichloride) is an extremely effective herbicide used to combat weed species that have developed resistance to conventional pest-control chemicals. In the US, it’s labeled as a restricted-use substance, meaning that farmworkers are still allowed to spray it on crops as long as they receive proper EPA training and certification.

However, due to its high potency and increasing medical evidence indicating its links to life-threatening conditions, paraquat is currently banned in over 67 countries, including China, the EU, and Brazil.

 

Farmworker’s Toxic Exposure Risks

According to data from the US Geologic Survey, more than 17 million pounds of paraquat are used in US agriculture every year, with states like California, Texas, Illinois, and Mississippi spraying over 1 million pounds on crops annually. Other states where annual paraquat applications exceed 500,000 pounds/year include Tennessee, Oklahoma, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, and Washington.

In California’s mainly-Hispanic counties, minority farmworkers and agricultural communities endure disproportionate levels of pesticide exposure. Although not exclusive to the Golden State, with similarly high rates documented in Florida, North Carolina, Idaho, and Washington, clinical studies carried out in the Central Valley illustrate the toxic burdens plaguing Latino and migrant workers.

Chronic exposure to paraquat has been linked to breast and thyroid cancer, as well as fetal and pregnancy-related toxicity. Even more concerning, a recent UCLA study found that long-term paraquat exposure is associated with higher Parkinson’s disease prevalence, building on evidence uncovered over a decade ago. Even though correlation doesn’t imply causation, it’s worth noting that California also has the highest number of Parkinson’s diagnoses in the US (106,701).

The steep health toll minority farmworkers and their families pay is punctuated not only by the lacking occupational protections that current pesticide regulations provide but also by farm owners’ disregard for EPA-mandated worker protection standards. While owners are obliged to provide safety training, personal protective equipment, and prevent workers’ access to fields until exposure risks subside, they rarely follow regulations given the low chance of penalties and insufficient institutional enforcement.

Additionally, the linguistic barriers migrant and minority farmworkers encounter make it less likely that they will fully understand safety guidelines or seek medical help when pesticide poisoning occurs. At the same time, non-English speakers who aren’t aware of their rights are far more susceptible to unscrupulous employers’ exploitative practices.

 

Combating Social Injustice in the Agricultural Sector

Despite the risks, ethnic farmworkers put up with unsafe working conditions and hesitate voicing their discontent since doing so may endanger their employment status and prevent them from earning the income their families rely on.

Faced with a plethora of socio-economic and occupational hazards, vulnerable minority workers and their communities rely on state and federal institutions to create a legal framework that provides adequate protection against toxic environmental exposure. However, the EPA controversially approved paraquat’s relicensing until 2035, discounting mounting evidence of the herbicide’s potential for enduring harm.

Several environmental, public health, and farmworkers’ rights organizations contested the EPA’s decision, determining the Agency to reconsider paraquat’s relicensing for agricultural purposes, with a final decision expected later this year. Such actions are vital and embolden disenfranchised minority groups who often lack the resources or political influence to confront industry interest groups who oppose pesticide policy reform.

Moving forward, Congress could help reduce exposure risks in the agricultural industry by restoring partial or complete jurisdiction over pesticide regulations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), enabling better coordination with the EPA on regulatory and enforcement issues. Meanwhile, more attention should be afforded to legislative proposals such as Sen. Corry Booker’s Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PACTPA), which seeks to ban dangerous pesticides like paraquat, impose more stringent penalties on uncompliant farm owners, and mandate bilingual labeling for pesticides.

Farmworkers who have worked with Paraquat pesticide either as a sprayer, chemical mixter, tank filler and have been diagnosed witth Parkinsons’ should file a Paraquat claim to obtain rightful compensation. People living near farming communities where Paraquat was sprayed and were diagnosed with Parkinson’s are also eligible for a claim.

 

Miguel Leyva is a case manager with Atraxia Law and helps agricultural workers harmed by Paraquat exposure compile the documentation and medical records needed to file a toxic exposure claim.

 

By Matti Kohonen
LONDON, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The sanctions against Russian oligarchs who hold billions of dollars have mostly failed to have a real impact beyond freezing a few yachts and properties. So, what went wrong? Now we know.

The “Rotenberg Files”, a mass leak of over 42,000 emails and documents, has showed how Russian oligarchs Boris and Arkady Rotenberg hid their assets and those of Vladimir Putin, using trusts and private equity investment funds, taking advantage of the lack of public beneficial ownership registries.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and especially since 2022, sanctions on Russian oligarchs and legal entities linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine include 12,900 designations against Russia. Some estimates say that Russian oligarch offshore wealth is over US$1 trillion, but sanctions so far have only frozen US$58 billion, due to difficulty in establishing ownership.

Sanctions vary but have been mainly implemented by G7 countries and the European Union. Their effectiveness depends on setting up beneficial ownership registries that cover all possible legal vehicles, and the obligation to cross-check beneficial owners against sanctions regimes by a wide variety of professional enablers for due diligence purposes.

This has largely not happened. Despite progress in establishing centralised beneficial ownership registries, a commitment made by nearly 100 countries, very few of them are open to public access and are ridden with loopholes. In reality, global South countries are now leading the way in establishing effective BO registries after the European Court of Justice ended public access to EU-wide BO registries in November 2022.

This has allowed trusts to become the legal vehicle of choice by Russian oligarchs to hide their wealth. They are also very hard to detect as the presence of a trust deed can be kept at a lawyer’s office if there is no requirement to register the trust in a beneficial ownership registry. Many BO registries do require declaring trusts, but there are loopholes that allow for setting up trusts in jurisdictions that do not require registration of trusts or have loopholes regarding thresholds or exemptions. Only 65 countries require some form of registration of trusts.

Eight of the 18 BVI companies mentioned in the Rotenberg leaks were ultimately dissolved, and two relocated to Cyprus. This implies that Cyprus has become a key location to use trusts and other instruments to conceal ownership. As a European Union member, Cyprus was obliged to create a central register of beneficial ownership in line with the EU’s fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive. Trusts based in Cyprus do come under this requirement, but the Rotenbergs used a loophole in the BO laws to conceal ultimate ownership that goes around the existing EU 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

They effectively created a complex ownership structure around different entities in order to be below the trigger points for reporting beneficial ownership (in most cases 25 percent of control), yet still retaining control through power through potential voting coalitions in the complex structure that were concealed elsewhere. The structure used by the Rotenbergs involved a US entity that is owned by entities elsewhere, including Italy, the UK, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Bahamas (four entities), the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands,

Along with trusts, private equity firms have been revealed as another preferred vehicle to dodge sanctions. Investment vehicles called “closed mutual funds,” in Russian abbreviated as “ZPIFs,” held these assets. They are not considered legal entities under Russian law, and thus are not under obligations to reveal their shareholders to the authorities. The leaked files show that 13 ZPIFs were linked to the Rotenbergs.

To evade questions about the true nature of the beneficial owners, the leaked files show that “there is a practice where the General Director of the Management Company is recognized as the ultimate beneficiary”. The ZPIF’s invested in Russian companies, Monaco real estate, and other assets where beneficial ownership checks do not take place. Companies where they owned minority stakes could do business relatively normally.

Private equity and mutual funds are a global concern. According to a recent report, “Private Investments, Public Harm”, there are nearly 13,000 investment advisers in an $11 trillion industry with little or no anti-money laundering due diligence responsibilities in the USA, with the real possibility that sanctioned oligarchs use such vehicles to conceal their ownership. The US Enablers Act seeks to remove the exemption from due diligence checks from investment managers but the bill did not pass last December.

Art is another way to conceal ownership, as art dealers are not under any reporting requirements for money laundering purposes. A July 2020 report by a U.S. Senate subcommittee detailed an elaborate scheme in which the Rotenberg brothers spent more than US$18 million on art purchases in the months after they were sanctioned by the U.S. in March 2014. They acquired several artworks, including a US$7.5 million René Magritte, through a web of offshore companies based in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.

The tools to hide wealth used by Russian oligarchs to evade sanctions are exactly the same than the ones used by those behind natural resource crimes such as illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, or indeed wealthy billionaires abusing laws to pay less than what they should in taxes. One cannot create a regime to just catch Russian billionaires. An overhaul of ownership transparency, from companies and trusts to art, vessels, aircraft and among other asset classes, including private equity and hedge funds, is required. Otherwise Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats around the world will continue dodging controls, keeping their shady money safely hidden.

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');  

Excerpt:

The author is Executive Director of Financial Transparency Coalition

The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo

By Adam Day and Florian Krampe
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jun 22 2023 (IPS)

The wildfires raging in Canada are yet another reminder that climate change is already having an impact on all our lives. As the smoke clears around the United Nations building in New York, we are likely to see a renewed push for the UN Security Council to tackle the security risks posed by climate change, including in the upcoming New Agenda for Peace policy brief from UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), supported by a growing body of scientific evidence, reach the inescapable conclusion that climate change is a meaningful factor in the risks of violent conflict.

In fact, one group of experts recently suggested that only a ‘misreading of the state of science’ could allow any doubt over the links between climate change and insecurity.

Despite the evidence, and despite the Security Council having already passed more than 70 resolutions and statements on climate-related security risks, efforts to make climate change a standing item on the Security Council’s agenda have so far failed.

While some permanent and elected members favour broadening the Security Council’s mandate to cover responses to all ‘threats to peace and security’, including climate change, others—notably China and Russia—want to keep Security Council business restricted to deploying peace operations, imposing sanctions, authorizing the use of military force and creating tribunals.

These mechanisms are not sufficient to address the plethora of climate-related security challenges societies around the world are facing.

The Security Council seems likely to continue its incremental approach, recognizing some country-specific climate–security links in resolutions (e.g. mentioning climate-driven recruitment into an armed group) without tackling the broader security impacts of the climate crisis.

Even this limited scope offers some real opportunities for addressing climate-related security issues in conflict settings that are already on the Security Council’s agenda. Nevertheless, it is time to ask whether more can be achieved within the UN system on broader climate–security challenges outside the Security Council chamber, in particular through the UN General Assembly.

There are many instances where the General Assembly has acted when the Security Council has become deadlocked. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377—also known as the 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution—allows the General Assembly to call emergency sessions on threats to peace and security when this happens.

After laying unused for 25 years, the resolution was invoked in February 2022 in relation to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, there is a surprisingly rich history of the General Assembly adopting a wide range of actions on security matters linked to human rights violations.

We here consider some of the arguments for the General Assembly taking a bigger role in addressing climate–security challenges.

A more inclusive forum

One of the objections to the Security Council’s role on climate–security (and indeed more generally) is that it is not an inclusive or meaningfully representative body. The 10 elected members have only two years to shape an issue, after which they rotate off the Council.

Thus, most of the time, the 188 UN member states, without the five permanent Security Council seats, have no say in the Council’s agenda. With every member state represented, the General Assembly is arguably a more representative forum for negotiating responses to a global issue such as climate change and its ensuing security risks.

Better access to the science

The scientific knowledge base on climate change and its impacts is developing fast. To design appropriate and timely multilateral responses, member states need regular access to the latest evidence, and this is another area in which the General Assembly’s offers important opportunities.

The Security Council could theoretically invite any scientist or expert to brief it on climate-related security risks, but in practice it has offered little access. The situation has improved significantly in the past five years thanks to the Climate Security Mechanism and the Informal Expert Group on Climate Security.

Also, efforts by the Peacebuilding Commission to broaden the climate–security discussion and introduce more evidence have only partially succeeded thus far.

The General Assembly has a more open and potentially dynamic set of processes for bringing in the latest climate and political science, and is able to consider evidence across the development, humanitarian and human rights arenas—where many of the human security impacts of climate change are most acutely felt.

In addition, its inclusive format means it can increase visibility of evidence coming from the most affected regions.

Generating new stimulus

Finally, the General Assembly can potentially galvanize a much broader range of integrated action across the UN system than can the Security Council. This is a distinct advantage, as the complex and dynamic ways in which climate-related security risks take shape mean that lasting solutions to them require coordinated responses across sectors.

In addition, engagement on climate-related security risks in the General Assembly could generate important new stimulus for the UN Climate Change Conferences as well as international financial institutions.

How could the General Assembly take up the climate–security challenge?

The General Assembly has plenty of shortcomings. On contentious issues, it tends to issue fairly toothless statements, and it has struggled to generate action on some of the most pressing issues of our time.

That said, a more concerted effort to activate the General Assembly on climate, peace and security could have a broader impact across the system, including potentially within the Security Council. As the General Assembly considers how to revitalize its work, we offer four possible entry points:

1. Put climate–security challenges on the agenda. It is worth noting that when Ireland and Niger attempted to pass a resolution on climate and security in the Security Council in 2021, it was co-sponsored by 113 member states beyond the Council. This demonstrates the widespread support for tackling climate-related security issues at the multilateral level. During the next General Assembly session, which starts in September, the General Assembly’s new president, Dennis Francis, could play a crucial role in building on this support. Holding open debates on climate, peace and security and offering opportunities for high-level events in September could help to consolidate member states’ views. And pushing for the co-facilitators of the Summit of the Future to include climate, peace and security would also help to keep member states focused on the issue.

2. Build on the new right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Last year’s landmark General Assembly resolution (UN General Assembly Resolution A/76/L.75) establishing the human right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment offers an important entry point for climate-related security issues. The strong links between human rights violations and violent conflict are well documented and could offer an important role for the Human Rights Council to take up this issue as well. The General Assembly’s recognition of environmental human rights should lead to greater focus on how violations can lead to risks of violence, and could be the basis for targeted actions such as investigations into violations of the right to a clean environment, or a call by the General Assembly for the Security Council to place climate on its agenda as a standing item.

3. Amplify the evidence. The General Assembly is able to establish commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions on any issue it deems necessary. While in the past it has tended to create such bodies to address serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, there is no reason the General Assembly could not also demand fact-finding around the security risks posed by climate change. Indeed, even the process of trying to establish such a commission could help to highlight the issue in a way that could also put pressure on the Security Council to act.

4. Mandate other bodies and enable financing. The General Assembly has an extraordinarily powerful role in setting the mandates of other bodies in the multilateral system. For example, it oversees the work of the Peacebuilding Commission and could consider expanding the commission’s mandate to include climate-related risks more explicitly. The General Assembly could also push for the IPCC to have a dedicated scientific track on climate, peace and security. In addition, the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) could catalyse an increase in funding dedicated to climate, peace and security, in peace operations and beyond.

Ultimately, the General Assembly cannot be the only forum for advancing multilateral action on climate-related security risks. But greater activity within the General Assembly could have a ripple effect across the system, potentially driving action on other fronts, and even pressuring the Security Council to take up the issue more directly.

Dr Adam Day (United States/United Kingdom) is the Head of the UN University Centre for Policy Research in Geneva and leads programming on peacebuilding, climate security, human rights, global governance and emerging risks; Dr Florian Krampe is the Director of SIPRI’s Climate Change and Risk Programme.

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');  

The expansion towards the mountains of the coastal city of Ensenada, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, stresses the water supply, which is scarce in this peninsular region due to its arid nature and deficiencies in water management. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
ENSENADA, Mexico , Jun 21 2023 (IPS)

At the entrance to the coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California a sign reads: “Every drop matters to us. Take care of the water.”

The message is important, as the city faces shortages due to hoarding by agricultural producers and builders, as well as the drought that has become more severe because of the effects of the climate emergency."There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard." -- Adrián González

But cities such as Ensenada, which has a population of 443,000 and is located 2,883 kilometers from Mexico City, do not take sufficient advantage of the reuse of water, a technique that along with other measures can contribute to the fight against the water shortage at a time when Mexico is suffering from intense drought and an unusual heat wave.

Independent expert Adrián González said a conventional focus on obtaining water that ignores improvements in its use continues to prevail.

“There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard,” he told IPS.

Demand exceeds supply, and supply cuts and overexploited sources dry up the water supply. The delivery and sale of water in “pipas” or tanker trucks is a common sight in Ensenada, located in an arid region between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

Due to the overexploitation of the aquifers and the growing demand, Ensenada is suffering from a deficit, so long-term solutions are urgently needed.

Consumption stands at about 1,000 liters per second (l/s), which should increase to about 1,260 in 2030, while supply totals about 800 l/s, according to the State Water Commission, the government agency responsible for water resource management in Baja California, on the peninsula of the same name, bordering the United States.

While installed capacity and treatment are on the rise, a widespread problem lies in the historical lack of efficiency and maintenance of facilities, which limits the scope of the available technologies.

In 2021, coverage reached 67.5 percent of the wastewater generated and collected in the municipal sewage systems of this Latin American country, just a few tenths more than the previous year, according to data from the National Water Commission (Conagua).

Treated water can be used for agricultural irrigation, gardening, domestic and industrial uses, and can help recharge aquifers.

Local water agencies can undertake aquifer recharge projects, but incentives for doing so are needed. In fact, the legal framework does not stipulate recovery rights for reused water, which falls under the general jurisdiction of Conagua.

 

The El Naranjo municipal treatment plant in the city of Ensenada, in the northwestern peninsular state of Baja California, is operating below its installed capacity, which is further affecting the distribution of scarce water in the city. CREDIT: Conagua

 

Mexico, with a population of 128 million inhabitants spread over an area of 1.96 million square kilometers, is facing increasing water stress, ranking 24th among the countries in the world with this phenomenon, caused by overexploitation, pollution, scarcity and inequity in access to water.

In 2021, 2,872 water reuse plants were operating in Mexico – three percent more than the previous year-, with an installed capacity of 198,603 l/s and a treated flow of 145,341 l/s, just 0.5 percent above the 2020 level.

The northern state of Sinaloa has the largest number of plants (311), followed by Durango also in the north (241) and neighboring Chihuahua (195). Despite their water needs, those with the smallest number of plants are the southeastern state of Campeche and the northern state of Coahuila (27 each), which furthermore operate below capacity.

There are 44 plants operating in Baja California, with an installed capacity of 7692 l/s and a performance of 6222. At the same time, 14 of the 48 groundwater reservoirs in the state, including the Ensenada reservoir, suffer shortages because annual extraction exceeds renewal.

Regional and federal authorities have resorted to seawater desalination in the state, but it only refines about 130 l/s, out of a capacity of 250.

Martín Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental Citizens’ Water Commission, criticized the measures applied so far in the reuse of water.

“We have only achieved palliative measures. We have been suffering from the same problems for 30 years,” he stressed.

 

The coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California depends on aquifer extraction, seawater desalination and the transfer of water from the state of Tijuana, also on the U.S. border, as not enough water is reused. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

 

Baby steps

In another northern state, in the east, Nuevo León, reuse is showing signs of success, but more progress is needed.

Antonio Hernández, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Pronatura Noreste, stressed to IPS the need for treated water infrastructure.

“We don’t have a sufficient network to distribute the treated water available. In 2022, when the water shortage crisis began, the agency responsible instructed the municipalities to buy treated water and thus take pressure off the groundwater,” he told IPS from Monterrey, Nuevo León’s capital.

“The transfer was to be by truck. But it did not happen, because the municipalities did not buy the water nor did the government build the distribution network. Availability does not mean accessibility,” he said.

In 2022, Nuevo León, especially greater Monterrey with a population of more than five million people, faced a severe water crisis.

As a result, the authorities resorted to supply cuts, rate hikes, anti-waste fines and awareness campaigns on water usage.

In that state, 13 of the 24 aquifers are overexploited, including the one outside of Monterrey proper.

The population of Monterrey drinks about 16,000 l/s, which results in a deficit of about 3,000 l/s. That means the 56 treatment plants are insufficient, managing 12,387 l/s, compared to an installed capacity of 16,162 l/s.

 

Mexico does not take sufficient advantage of wastewater reuse, which can be used to recharge aquifers, for consumption in industrial facilities, for agricultural irrigation or for urban use. Pictured is a fountain in a park in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

 

Half-hearted measures

Despite the problems faced by the plants, the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) only inspected four municipal facilities, most of them private, in 2016 in Baja California, where it found “minor irregularities” and charged fines in three, according to a public information request filed by IPS.

In Mexico City, only two were inspected – in 2018 and in 2022 – and minor irregularities were found in one private municipal plant, although it was not fined. In 2018, Profepa visited four plants in Nuevo León in which it found minor irregularities.

In total, Profepa inspected a total of 330 plants, including 50 in the western state of Jalisco and 33 in the northern state of Chihuahua. Of that total, it found minor irregularities in 234, and none in 69.

 

Focus on pipes and little else

The generalized view is the conventional one of promoting the construction of infrastructure to face the crisis, without addressing the scarcity of water resources.

The current Mexican government boasts that it is promoting 15 water projects, such as the construction of dams, aqueducts and treatment plants, mainly in the north of the country to combat the crisis.

In places like Ensenada, the outlook is no different.

Over the next few years, the State Water Commission foresees the expansion of the desalination plant, the modernization of an aqueduct, the rehabilitation of five treatment plants, the delivery of treated water to the agricultural zone, and the rehabilitation of pumping plants and wells.

Despite the situation, the Baja California state government is just now drafting its water plan for the 2022-2027 period.

In Nuevo León, authorities announced the digging of more wells, the construction of the Libertad dam, the El Cuchillo II Aqueduct and four treatment plants, as well as the modulation of pressure to reduce waste.

The Libertad dam will have a capacity of 1,500 l/s, at a cost of some 350 million dollars. Meanwhile, the aqueduct will transport 5,000 l/s, thanks to an investment of some 495 million dollars.

Mexico has also benefited from international financing for water projects. Since 1997, the North American Development Bank has financed 27 water and sanitation projects in Baja , in addition to three in Nuevo León since 2001.

 

The Norte treatment plant in the Mexican state of Nuevo León seeks to promote water reuse for automobile assembly, urban and agricultural activities in an area that experienced a severe water crisis in 2022. CREDIT: Conagua

 

Its financing of a 6.8 million dollar wastewater management initiative in the city of Mexicali is currently under public consultation.

In addition, the U.S.-Mexico binational financial institution is backing the issue of a 150 million dollar green bond for water projects.

The experts consulted proposed several measures, such as awareness campaigns, water reuse, and leak repair.

González, the independent expert, said the combination of reuse and efficiency offers very low costs and promising results.

“There is not going to be just one single solution. Fate is going to catch up with us. We can’t continue following strategies that have never worked and that have been exhausted,” he argued.

Zepeda, the water activist, also suggested the creation of a citizen water commission to audit the operation of the system.

“The situation is not going to improve until availability and uses are corrected. It is a combination of water sources and activities. We need long-term solutions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hernández the researcher proposed a revision of zoning and land use plans to address the construction of neighborhoods, golf courses and vehicle assembly plants, to promote the efficient use of water.

Related Articles

• Spate of Water Projects in Mexico Ignore Impact

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 2023 (IPS)

When the 193-member General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development back in September 2015., it was aimed at transforming the world into an idealistic state of peace and economic prosperity.

But eight years later, most of the world’s low-income countries (LICs) have been struggling to achieve even a single goal, including the two key targets: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

In a new report released June 21, the United Nations has singled out some of the key achievers—the top five, among the world’s high-income countries (HICs), which are led by Finland, and followed by Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria.

European countries continue to lead in the SDG Index – holding the top 10 spots -– and are on track to achieve more targets than any other region, with Denmark, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, and the Slovak Republic as the top five countries that have achieved or are on track to achieving the largest number of SDG targets this year.

By contrast, Lebanon, Yemen, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, and Myanmar have the largest number of SDG targets moving in the wrong direction

The findings are listed in the 2023 Sustainable Development Report (SDR) and Index, which ranks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

There is a risk that the gap in SDG outcomes between HICs and the LICs will be larger in 2030 than when the goals were universally agreed upon in 2015, warns the report

• Based on the current pace of progress since 2015, none of the goals will be achieved by 2030, and on average, less than 20% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved.
• Government effort and commitment to the SDGs is too low, and notably, LICs and LMICs (low middle income countries) obtained a higher average score than HICs on political and institutional leadership for the SDGs.
• Among the G20 countries, average scores range from more than 75 percent in Indonesia to less than 40 percent in the Russian Federation and the United States.
• Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score on a new pilot index for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report includes the first pilot index of multilateralism that captures the overarching dimensions of support for multilateralism and comparisons of countries, including countries’ efforts to promote and preserve peace, percentage of UN treaties ratified, international solidarity and financing, membership in select UN organizations, and the use of unilateral coercive measures among other indicators.

Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report was released just ahead of the June 22-23 International Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

As the UN nears the mid-point of the SDGs and ahead of the Paris Summit, the report provides timely insights on the chronic shortfalls of SDG financing to developing and emerging economies and offers six priorities for reform of the Global Financial Architecture.

The report also features a new pilot Index that gauges countries’ support for multilateralism and a new Index to track government efforts and commitments to the SDGs.

Despite the grim news, the report demonstrates that while the world is off track at the mid-point of the SDGs, now is the time for countries to double down on SDG progress by endorsing deep reform of the global financial architecture and implementing the SDG Stimulus to close the significant financing gap facing developing and emerging countries.

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, President of the SDSN and a lead author of the report, says half way to 2030, the SDGs are seriously off track – with the poor and highly vulnerable countries suffering the most.

“The international community should step up at this month’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, and at the key upcoming multilateral meetings, including the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the SDG Summit New York in September, and COP28 in Dubai, to scale-up international financial flows based on SDG needs”.

“It would be unconscionable for the world to miss this opportunity, especially for the richest countries to evade their responsibilities. The SDGs remain fundamental for the future we want.”

Providing a critical analysis of the new report, Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, based in Bonn, told IPS the SDSN report brings no surprises.

That the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs was already noted by the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Midterm Report, and many other civil society Spotlight Reports before.

However, the message that the SDSN Report conveys with the SDG Index is absolutely misleading, he pointed out.

“It suggests that the Western industrialized countries at the top of the ranking are on the right development path. But this is only because it ignores the negative externalities of their consumption and production patterns and their economic and financial policies. For good reasons, SDSN has therefore also developed a Spillover Index, but this merely complements the SDG Index,” he noted.

The emphasis on the SDG Index, with its positive ranking of Western industrialized countries, sends the wrong political message, said Martens.

“To reduce growing global inequalities, governments in the UN must address the structural causes of these inequalities”.

First and foremost, he argued, this requires fundamental reforms in the global financial architecture. The SDG Summit 2023, the Summit of the Future 2024, and the Fourth FfD Conference 2025 provide pivotal opportunities to initiate these reforms, he declared.

Chee Yoke Ling, Executive Director, Third World Network, Malaysia, told IPS the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its 17 SDGs has fallen victim to the failure of means of implementation – new and additional financing as well as appropriate technology transfer to developing countries.

“We see the same fate for the climate and biodiversity treaties”.

At the same time, she said, the barriers in the external environment have worsened. “So, we see alarming debt burdens because the international financial architecture remains stacked against developing countries, while public funds and governments are pushed to take on a “de-risking” role to shore up private creditors”.

Look beyond, she said, the buzz of the World Bank’s Evolutionary Roadmap and the Macron New Global Financing Pact and “we see a fundamentally similar and even stronger set of policies and measures to maintain the status quo and further subject countries to financing sources beyond public control.

Meanwhile middle-income countries and even LDCs are faced with private creditors who refuse to do their part in debt reduction, and G7 governments do not want to rein them in either.

Trade protectionism is also rearing its head. The roll-out of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism has raised alarms. In the name of a green transition for Europe, this new carbon border tax CBAM will directly impact Sub-Saharan Africa that relies heavily on exports of fossil fuels, minerals and metals that are carbon intensive, she pointed out.

Studies show that African countries will be highly exposed to the CBAM since 26% of continental trade was with the EU, while only 2.2% of the EU’s trade was with Africa.

The CBAM could reduce Africa to EU exports by up to 5.7%, based on current carbon prices. This may have the effect of reducing Africa’s GDP by about $16 billion at 2021 levels.

“Without clean technologies being shared with Africa, the EU’s new tax penalizes those countries that are already under increasing debt burden”.

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');  

With one-fifth of farming households dependent on palm oil production, policy considerations that look after the environment, lives, and livelihoods were essential.

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

Oil palm has brought significant benefits and prosperity to Liberia. The export of crude palm oil is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the government. The palm oil crop covers more than 1 million hectares, hundreds of thousands are employed in the palm oil sector, and at least 21 percent of the farming households produce palm oil.

Opportunities for the country’s palm oil and other palm products in the international markets are considerable—creating a temptation to prioritize development over environmental concerns.

In 2020, policymakers in the Inter-Ministerial Commission on Palm Oil Concessions in Liberia faced a significant challenge: developing a policy path that pursued quick short-term profits and faced long-term negative consequences to the environment, lives, and livelihoods—or a beneficial approach for people and planet.

Forests Belong to Humanity

“When decisions are too short-term, narrow, and short-sighted, we do not take into account the long-term impact of our action. We need to recognize that some goods are common goods or public goods, such as forests. They do not belong to one person or one company; they belong to humanity as a whole,” says Francisco Alpizar, Wageningen University and Research.

This was the case for Liberia’s palm oil sector, whose key stakeholders include government, the private sector, NGOs, business associations, smallholder associations, and households that directly or indirectly rely on it as their lifeline.

“From an economic perspective, the prices of goods and commodities should reflect the true cost to societies, not just the immediate cost of producing them but also the environmental impact the production of those goods and services carries for societies,” Alpizar says.

The Liberian National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) was facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership. Here policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

Targeted Analysis Scenario Benefits All

As they developed the National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership, policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

UNDP developed the TSA to respond to the growing demand from decision-makers and stakeholders for more policy-relevant sustainable development analysis to support national SDG implementation facing diverse policy, management, and investment choices.

As an innovative analytical approach, the TSA captures and presents the value of ecosystem services within decision-making to help make the business case for sustainable policy and investment choices. By doing so, the TSA allows policymakers to calculate these costs and make decisions that harmonize with the environment.

In Liberia, policymakers needed economic data that compared the outcomes of continuing with conventional palm production with the results of taking a different route to make sound, informed decisions leading to sustainable palm concessions.

At the time, the situation in the West African country was characterized by contradictory forest management and concessions policies. The Commission had to balance the eagerness of communities and smallholder producers to engage in palm oil concessions because they brought employment and socioeconomic benefits and concerns in the global market about the environmental risks of palm oil production.

UNDP’s TSA provided an answer, enabling the Commission in Liberia to include all the relevant social, environmental, and economic impacts. TSA offered a systematic approach covering all aspects of the sector.

The TSA improves the decision-making process by capturing and presenting the value of ecosystem services and sectoral production to make policy decision-making more holistic. The tool applies to any sector, scenario, context, or country.

“TSA can, for instance, be applied for decision-making at the national level, when taking a national perspective, regional, company or even household level. For each and every one of those decisions, we need a careful analysis of what the current situation looks like and how it will look in the future and, what would be the alternative situation,” Alpizar explains.

Business-as-Usual Versus Sustainable Ecosystem Management

One is considered a business-as-usual scenario, and the other a sustainable ecosystem management scenario.

“When you compare one against the other, with a long-term perspective and focusing on the relevant indicators for the decision makers or the things that the decision maker cares for, then you can provide a better picture of the decision that is in front of us, and that is what targeted scenario analysis is.”

He says targeted scenario construction of business-as-usual versus sustainable ecosystem management outcomes is presented to the decision maker. When this is done, in principle, the decision maker will have a powerful decision-making tool to make informed decisions based on evidence.

“If we put ourselves in the feet of a decision maker, that is, for example, deciding whether to implement a series of policies to make the agricultural sector more sustainable, the business-as-usual scenario means you continue with the current practices. A sustainable ecosystem management scenario would be one in which you change a series of practices or actions, and with that, in principle, you achieve a different outcome,” Alpizar explains.

He gives an example of producing pineapples under a business-as-usual scenario with an impact on surrounding lands, agrochemicals, deforestation, land use change, competing diseases, or diseases that spread to the surrounding area, which might be viable but over a short period of time. The alternative scenario is to create and implement a more long-term, sustainable approach.

“Through UNDP’s application of TSA methodology, you can carefully construct the two scenarios by first asking this question: As the decision maker, what do you really care about? Is it employment, taxes, production, or reducing social unrest? Based on the answer, the analyst can construct a targeted scenario,” Alpizar says.

Returning to Liberia, the TSA was able to show that Smallholder Production (SPO) scenario and environmental sustainability were in the best interests of the concessionaire and the Liberian economy – with substantially greater benefits compared with the business-as-usual scenario (USD 333 million versus USD 188 million over 20 years).

When these results were discussed with the multistakeholder National Oil Palm Platform of Liberia, it was accepted and paved the way toward sustainable palm oil development in Liberia.

Across the world, TSAs have been conducted to assess the economic value of ecosystem services for various strategic economic sectors such as hydropower, agriculture, and tourism under the business-as-usual and sustainable ecosystem management scenarios to create a sustainable development path where humanity is in harmony with the environment.

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

• Transforming Food Systems through Conscious, Mindful Practices
• UNDP Good Growth Partnership: Getting All on Board to Meet Deforestation Targets (Part 1)
• UNDP Good Growth Partnership: Smallholders Key to Reducing Indonesian Deforestation (Part 2)
• UNDP Assistance Helps Farmers to Meet New EU Deforestation Rules

Irene Grace says human rights defenders hiding in Kenya fear harassment and intimidation due to a decline in civic rights. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

While leaving one’s country and becoming a refugee is a last resort, it is a decision that many, like Steve Kitsa, have had to make. As conflict becomes increasingly protracted in many African countries, many others will take this step.

“In a matter of life and death, I fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) five years ago and left my elderly mother behind. One day we were seated in a group of young men, chatting and enjoying the morning sun, when a lone gunman in uniform approached us and started firing away unprovoked. Such incidences had become too common in the eastern region, and some of my friends were killed,” Kitsa tells IPS.

Kenya hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. Kitsa is one of more than 520,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers. But human rights defender Irene Grace, who fled Uganda two years ago, says the number is much higher because borders are porous.

Nevertheless, official records show that about 287,000 refugees come from Somalia, 142,000 from South Sudan, 50,000 from DRC, and 32,000 from Ethiopia; many live in Dadaab and Kakuma camps.

Others, like Kitsa, have found their way into the urban centers of Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, and Eldoret. Outdated statistics from 2017 indicate that more than 67,267 refugees live in Nairobi.

“There is a lot of exploitation because we need the locals to survive. Along the highways, you will find many young men hawking peanuts. You can tell they are from DRC because of the kind of Swahili they speak. They sell these peanuts under the hot sun, all day, every day, in exchange for a plate of food and somewhere to sleep as the profits go to the host. Most of us are desperate to go to France,” he explains.

Irene Grace fled Uganda for promoting the rights of the LGBTQI community as the country clamped down on their rights. As the government-endorsed crackdown against the community intensified, so did threats against her life.

“The issue of human rights defenders in exile is one aspect of the refugee situation that is hardly ever talked about. The risk is very high because you are under an alias in a foreign country, and if murdered, you are likely to remain unidentified for a long time, and it might take years to connect the dots. The question of who bears the duty of protection for us remains unanswered,” Grace says.

Her fears and concerns reflect the 2022 report findings by the global civil society alliance, CIVICUS, and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), highlighting the decline in civil rights in Kenya. According to the report, the government was using excessive force to quieten dissent.

Kenya was placed on the CIVICUS Monitor’s human rights ‘Watchlist’ in June 2022. The Watchlist highlights countries with a recent and steady decline in civic freedoms, including the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly.

Kenya was rated Obstructed by the CIVICUS Monitor. There are 42 countries in the world with this rating. The rating is typically given to countries where power holders heavily contest civic space and impose a combination of legal and practical constraints on the full enjoyment of fundamental rights.

In 2021, Front Line Defenders released a report accusing the governments of Uganda and Kenya of giving the South Sudanese National Security Service (NSS) intelligence agency the freedom to target refugee human rights workers who fled the country.

“It is very difficult to continue with activism in such a hostile environment, on top of the many other challenges confronting us, such as a lack of documentation and access to services. Some of us left our families behind, exposed and unprotected. Over the eight years, I have lived in Kenya, I have received many threatening calls from South Sudan, but I know the information of my whereabouts came from within this country,” Deng G, an activist from South Sudan, tells IPS.

“Our situation worsens when local activists are targeted. In exile, you must connect with local networks to survive and continue with your activism. I am aware of activists in Kenya currently being held without trial for protesting against the high cost of living.”

KHRC continues to express concerns over the misuse of laws to undermine peaceful protest and recently responded with speed when five activists from the Social Justice Center, a Nairobi-based grassroots group, were arrested during a peaceful protest against the controversial Finance Bill 2023.

A pre-independence Public Order Act requires activists to notify authorities of protests at least three days in advance. Police have mistakenly understood the provision as a requirement for protests to be approved or denied, using it as an excuse to deem protests ‘unpermitted.’ Even though the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed in Kenya’s constitution, it is continually undermined, says CIVICUS and KHRC.

Irene Grace says ongoing hostilities have derailed efforts to promote the safety and security of LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees in the Kakuma Refugee Camp complex in northwestern Kenya whose lives are at risk. She says they are experiencing discrimination, and physical and sexual violence, among other forms of human rights violations.

“I am unable to travel there to determine how we can mobilize and improve their safety, working hand in hand with grassroots activists in Kenya. There are corrupt security officers, and once they discover you are hiding in the country, you become a target. They want you to pay them to turn a blind eye as you go on with your activities,” she says.

Kitsa says the issue of bribes is a most pressing challenge for many refugees seeking to integrate with the locals.

“They usually threaten to send you to the refugee camps despite having refugee documentation allowing you to live among the locals. They can create many problems for you.”

Against this backdrop, Irene Grace says activism is being suppressed from multiple angles, and human rights activists, local and those operating from exile, must now go back to the drawing board to find safer, impactful ways to speak truth to power and take the powers that be head-on.
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

• CIVICUS Report Exposes a Civil Society Under Attack
• Drone Journalism Holds Great Potential to Improve Safety of Journalists in Africa’s Volatile Situations
• Transforming Food Systems through Conscious, Mindful Practices

Excerpt:

Home Away From Home is the theme of World Refugee Day 2023. However, for many, including human rights activists who have fled their homes, a decline in civil rights in their host countries means their lives are often endangered and their activism curtailed.

By Tanja Sejersen, Nicola Richards & Victoria Fan
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

Each year, the births of 64 million children under the age of five and deaths of 8.4 million people are invisible to governments in Asia and the Pacific. Most countries in the region are yet to achieve universal civil registration, leaving many people without a legal identity and, as a result, invisible to the State.

These people often face challenges in accessing basic services, such as education and healthcare, in securing employment and social benefits, and in protecting their human rights. In addition, deficient civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems lead to significant gaps and lags in up-to-date population and health data, crucial for designing and monitoring effective public policies and allocating resources.

Recognizing its importance, countries reached agreement on the Asia Pacific CRVS Decade in 2014 and set out a vision to achieve universal civil registration in the region by 2024. An applied CRVS research agenda was launched to help meet this this challenge.

Applied research on CRVS helps to generate and disseminate evidence on what strategies work, and what doesn’t, as well as how governments and partners can improve systems to better deliver on commitments to get everyone in the picture.

By documenting experiences in communities, countries and regions, the potential benefits of successful interventions and innovations can be replicated and possible shortcomings addressed.

Given the importance of applied research for improving CRVS, ESCAP organised the first ever Asia-Pacific CRVS Research Forum on 3-4 April 2023. With more than 30 speakers representing 15 countries, 24 research papers and almost 400 registered participants, the forum revealed many interesting facets of CRVS while opening eyes to the multitude of initiatives to ensure better and more inclusive systems across the region.

Many presentations emphasized how different initiatives are making real-life impacts on individuals and communities. There was a clear emphasis on community engagement, equity and ‘reaching the hardest to reach’, such as integrating gender-equity in CRVS legal reviews, addressing barriers to civil registration for hard-to-reach populations in Pakistan and gender disparities in premature mortality in the Philippines.

On-the-ground innovations were on display: a first-of-its-kind CRVS survey in Nepal that worked with both service providers and communities to understand barriers and enablers to registration; evidence from Fiji on the clear effectiveness of incentives on birth registration completeness; and the development of customized mortality audit and inquest systems in Thailand and Sri Lanka to improve the quality of cause of death data.

Much more work is needed to drive CRVS systems forward in the face of increasing challenges, with research playing a key role. In particular, the forum identified a stronger focus on building inclusive and resilient CRVS systems, including in conflict and humanitarian settings where there is both an acute need for civil registration along with increased difficulties in providing services.

As countries around the world adjust to competing government priorities during times of economic and social challenges, there is a critical need to maintain momentum on strengthening CRVS systems as the basis for realising human rights and ensuring access to basic social services including health and education.

Further, CRVS systems are essential for generating timely mortality data whose importance for pandemic preparedness and response has been recently emphasized. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, research is central to ensure continued innovation and improvement, and to provide opportunities to reflect and learn.

We hope in the future to develop this work further to embed and develop critical applied research capacity within countries and at the implementation level – to ensure we can really get everyone in the picture.

Tanja Sejersen is a Statistician; Nicola Richards is Consultant, ESCAP; Victoria Fan is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development.

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');  

O'Brian Robinson (R) sits with two friends at the beach. He is a trans man, coordinator of Negritudes Trans HN, a group that fights for the rights of the trans community in Honduras, including those of the black Garífuna population living mainly on the Atlantic coast, in the north of the country. CREDIT: Courtesy of Negritudes Trans HN

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

There is still a long way to go before the LGBTI population in Central America stops being discriminated against and begins to make progress in gaining recognition of their full rights, including the possibility of changing their name to match their gender identity, in the case of trans people.

“The issue of the rights of LGBTI people is extremely precarious. There is no recognition of our rights, obviously including the identity of trans people in our country,” O’Brian Robinson, general coordinator of Negritudes Trans Honduras, told IPS from Tegucigalpa."The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society.” -- O’Brian Robinson

In the heavily conservative Central American countries, public policies with a strong moralistic bias predominate on issues such as the right to abortion or the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) population.

That is the reason for the strong institutional resistance to the passage of a gender identity law recognizing the rights of this community, without discrimination. In none of the six countries in the region – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama – has such legislation been enacted.

The vast majority of the LGBTI population experiences marginalization and social rejection that in many cases leads to physical violence and even murder – phenomena that are not exclusive to this region.

A June 2022 Amnesty International report stated that El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Honduras are among the countries in the Americas with “high levels of hate crimes, hate speech, and marginalization, as well as murders and persecution of LGBTI activists.”

 

As in other regions of the world, the LGBTI community in Central America has been marginalized and is the victim of frequent human rights violations, including murders and other hate crimes. One of the chief demands is the approval of laws that allow transgender people to legally change their name so it matches their gender identity and expression. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

The right name

Regarding the fight for a name that matches an individual’s gender identity and expression, Robinson pointed out that daily aspects such as carrying out bank transactions, undergoing a medical consultation or enrolling in an academic course are difficult for a trans person in Honduras.

And this is especially true if the legal name on their document is the one they no longer use, which is generally the case due to the obstacles they face in obtaining an ID that reflects their transgender identity.

“The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society,” added the 29-year-old activist.

These daily tasks can be carried out, but often after facing ridicule, contempt, and arguments with civil servants who do not understand that State institutions are there to serve everyone, without distinction.

In Honduras, it is forbidden to change your name, according to article 61 of the National Registry of Persons Law, with only three exceptions: that it is unpronounceable, that it is the name of some object, or that it violates decency and good customs.

This third category makes it impossible for a trans person to change their name.

According to the Amnesty International report, the concept of transgender encompasses people who identify as such and also includes transsexuals, transvestites, gender queer or “any other gender identity that does not meet social and cultural expectations regarding it.”

Robinson added that LGBTI, and specifically trans, organizations have been pushing for changes in the legal regulations since 2010 in order to pass a law that brings visibility to and protects people with anything other than a heterosexual gender expression and sexual identity.

In 2021 they also promoted a reform of the registration law, which would open the door to a legal name-change process for trans people.

More than 4,000 signatures were collected in support of the proposed bill. But it was rejected by the authorities, who alleged that only 200 of the signatures were real and the rest were false, which Robinson said was untrue and a “ridiculous” argument.

In Guatemala and El Salvador, trans people can change their names, but that is because the legal regulations allow anyone to do so if they wish and can afford to.

“The Civil Code in Guatemala has always allowed everyone to change their name, but from a heterosexual perspective,” Galilea Monroy, director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, told IPS.

Monroy, a trans woman, said that through this mechanism around 500 people from that community have been able to change their names, with financial support from international organizations.

But a name change costs around 600 dollars in Guatemala and about 4,000 dollars in El Salvador.

Monroy also pointed out that the name change does not include modifying the “sex” in the personal identity document, and in her case, her ID continues to say she is a “man”. The same is true in El Salvador.

 

Galilea Monroy is the executive director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, which pushes for respect for the rights of trans people in a nation where, like the rest of Central America, it is difficult to work for changes on behalf of LGBTI people, and where hate crimes against this community are frequent. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala

 

A region of hatred and death

In El Salvador, transgender activist Karla Avelar, with the support of several Salvadoran human rights organizations, filed a lawsuit against the government on Jan. 31 for not providing a legal mechanism allowing her name to match her gender identity on her ID.

The case came to light on May 17, during a conference in San Salvador in which the organizations and Avelar participated by means of videoconference.

In February 2022, the Constitutional Chamber, a five-judge court that is part of the Salvadoran Supreme Court, ruled that the legislature had one year to pass a law that would allow trans people to change not only their names but the gender on their ID.

But parliament, which since 2021 has been controlled by Nuevas Ideas, the party of President Nayib Bukele, failed to meet the deadline.

Avelar also held the government responsible in her lawsuit for failing to investigate or prosecute those responsible for the violence against her and her mother, which forced them to seek asylum in a European country in 2017.

In addition, the lawsuit mentions the forced displacement that she and her mother suffered because they had to flee the violence, including gang violence.

“El Salvador has a history of violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community that mainly affects transgender people,” Avelar said in an online call from the conference held in San Salvador by the organizations backing her case.

The violence suffered by Avelar, 45, included an attempt on her life in 1992.

In a March 2021 ruling on the case of Vicky Hernández, a Honduran trans activist murdered in June 2009, allegedly by agents of the State, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered a series of reparations for the LGBTI community to be fulfilled by Honduras in the area of human rights.

Among the provisions to be complied with, the Inter-American Court included the “right to recognition of legal personality, to personal liberty, to private life, to freedom of expression, to their name and to equality and non-discrimination,” as included in several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, known as the San José Pact.

This international treaty, in force since 1978, makes Inter-American Court rulings final and binding on the States parties, which currently number 23 as some countries have pulled out. But Honduras has not complied with the requirements in the ruling.

 

Trans women, the most prone to violence

Transgender women are the most prone to suffering attacks, whether verbal or physical, the Amnesty International report says, because due to the lack of job opportunities they tend to engage in sex work on the streets, unlike trans men.

This was corroborated by the Guatemalan activist, Monroy, who pointed out that around 90 percent of trans women engage in sex work and are thus victims of all kinds of abuse and attacks.

“Most of us trans women have to do sex work because we don’t have social coverage or basic rights such as access to education, work, decent justice, not to mention a pension,” Monroy stressed.

She added that around 90 percent of transgender women engage in sex work on the streets of Guatemala, and the rest work in trades such as hairdressing, or are in the informal sector.

To this must be added the transphobic attitudes that prevail among the population of Central American countries.

“Discrimination is latent in social spaces, in parks, in restaurants, in nightclubs, and in many cases they reserve the right of admission when they identify you as being part of the LGBTI community, and much more so if you are trans,” Monroy said.

She added: “It’s horrible when they tell you: ‘there is no service here’, or there is, but they tell you ‘sit there in the corner where nobody will look at you’.”

She said that far from promoting laws in favor of gender identity, in Guatemala 20 lawmakers “who are totally religious are pushing for approval of Law 5940, which does not recognize gender identity and in which they want to implement the famous conversion therapies.”

Woman and child walk through flood waters in east Jakarta, Indonesia. Climate change impacts are becoming more severe, and there is concern that vulnerable developing countries will not receive the assistance required to mitigate risks. Credit: Kompas/Hendra A Setyawan / World Meteorological Organization

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

Vulnerable countries, banking on robust climate negotiations, want an inclusive funding package to help them with the devastating impacts of climate change.

The poor progress at the 2023 Bonn Climate Change Conference, known as the 58th session of the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has dampened hopes for successful climate negotiations at COP 28.

SB58, which closed in Bonn, Germany, last week, was marked by wide disagreements, including the adoption of the agenda. The session ended without concrete outcomes on an array of key issues, such as the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, the mitigation work programme, the global stock take (GST), and the global goal on adaptation (GGA).

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

“Even when we do not like the pace that the negotiations have gone, we have to find a way to a solution sooner than later; human existence is at stake,” Yamide Dagnet, Climate Justice Director at Open Society Foundations (OSF), told IPS.

The foundation has been supporting the climate change community in pushing for solutions.

“We need to see more efforts to make the whole society more resilient.”

She said having a financial package for investment and development aligned with the Paris Agreement was crucial.

Dagnet said there was an urgent need to support building resilient communities because climate change impacts are becoming more frequent and severe, destroying lives and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable countries. Furthermore, the extreme weather events have also destroyed communities and cultures and damaged property.

“We need to work hard, sweat, and speed the pace of negotiations on our ability to find common ground and avoid a zero-sum game,” said Dagnet, a former climate change negotiator. She underscored that the Bonn meetings matter because they are laying the ground for discussions at COP28 and highlighting areas of cooperation and division.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its recent report, has called for accelerated action to adapt to climate change while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, warning of a huge gap in actions currently underway and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks.

Developed countries have called for the inclusion of adaptation in the GST.

Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) developing countries’ commitment to mitigating climate change, should be recognized. He called for an additional message in the GST to acknowledge this “strong demonstration of commitment by vulnerable countries in the face of inadequate international support.”

Vulnerable countries want mitigation and adaptation to be included in a negotiated package at COP28, Dagnet said, noting that the G7 should fulfill their promise to provide adaptation finance.

“The financing of the Loss and Damage is part of the financing package that is needed. But we need to focus on everything, including mitigation and adaptation for vulnerable countries; otherwise, COP 28 will not achieve anything,” she said, highlighting that countries must develop more ambitious climate plans.

The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, agreed to keep the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

However, scientists have warned that the world is off target in emission reduction, and the influential UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated that going beyond the 1.5°C threshold risks unleashing severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.

The agreement also recognized that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to poor and vulnerable countries while encouraging voluntary contributions by other Parties.

Zimbabwean farmer Lindiwe Ncube gestures in an empty field in Bubi District in Matabeleland North province, where she harvested a only few bags of maize during a period of drought. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“Climate justice is to be fought for. This is a process, and if we are to make progress in the operationalization of a fund created at COP 27, we need to get clarity on how we can bring in money to that fund, and such money should not be increasing debt for vulnerable countries,” she noted.

Climate finance is a nagging issue for vulnerable countries already suffering the impacts of climate change. They need to adapt and mitigate against climate change by shifting to cleaner energy and making food systems resilient to the impacts of droughts, high temperatures, and floods.

Developed countries, wary of liability, have not delivered the finance they pledged to help vulnerable countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. The $100 billion a year financing pledged 20 years ago has not been delivered, and prospects are dim that it will. The envisaged Loss and Damage Fund—if COP28 operationalizes it—will help vulnerable countries cope with climate-induced disasters.

Dagnet says there is a need for innovative financing for loss and damage, such as tapping blended finance, philanthropy, taxes, and levies on some economic sectors, such as fossil fuels and aviation.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently proposed that rich governments tax fossil fuel companies’ windfall profits. The Marshall Islands have also proposed levies on shipping through the International Maritime Organization. At the same time, other ideas for funding adaptation have included levying a small fee on international flights—which contribute to climate-heating emissions—and a global tax on financial market transactions, which the new fund could distribute.

While COP 27 prioritized the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund, COP 28 is not about cherry-picking an issue to progress on, Dagnet argues, suggesting that the state of the Paris Agreement is key in climate negotiations.

“We need to deliver on all pillars of the Paris Agreement and demonstrate progress,” she said. “We are far from the Paris Agreement goals. The push for energy efficiency targets is really good, but at the same time, we cannot have the message that we will continue business as usual with fossil fuels.”

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

• Biodiversity Rich-Palau Launches Ambitious Marine Spatial Planning Initiative
• Vulnerable Countries Need Action on Loss and Damage Today and Not at COPs To Come
• COP27: Climate Change Exacerbates Vicious Loop of Human Rights Inequity

These human tragedies are playing out at Europe's land and sea borders on a daily basis. The first quarter of this year marked the deadliest in the central Mediterranean in six years, say humanitarian organisations in a joint statement. Credit: UN News Centre

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

Make no mistake: European States are complicit in the death of thousands and thousands of human beings on their shores, land borders and at home. The massive drowning of hundreds of migrants close to Greece shores on 14 June is just a new chapter in Europe’s long series of continued violations of all international human rights laws.

So far, 10 worldwide known humanitarian organisations have strongly reacted, in a joint denunciation statement, asking the European Union (EU) to ‘end rights violations at Europe’s borders.’

In their Joint NGO statement: The EU must not be complicit, launched on 16 June, organisations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, OXFAM and Save the Children, among others, warned that once again, dozens of lives have been lost at Europe’s borders “due to the EU’s failure to allow people seeking protection to reach Europe safely.”

Hundreds are missing and presumed dead after the latest tragedy close to the Greek coast, with reports that amongst the dead are many women and children who were held below the deck of this overcrowded fishing vessel.

 

European States were “informed”

“The authorities of several Member States were informed[1] of the vessel in distress multiple hours before it capsized, and a Frontex aircraft was also present at the scene.” [2].

Organisations have advocated relentlessly with the European Commission, Member States and European policy makers to adopt measures to end human rights abuses and senseless deaths at EU borders. Instead, some EU states have drastically reduced search and rescue (SAR) capacity at sea, and restricted civil society SAR operations, which means that prompt and effective assistance cannot be provided to migrants in distress, in blatant disregard of international SAR obligations

These human tragedies are playing out at Europe’s land and sea borders on a daily basis. The first quarter of this year marked the deadliest [3] in the central Mediterranean in six years, adds the statement which was also signed by Danish Refugee Council, HIAS Europe, International Rescue Committee, Missing Children Europe, and SOS Children’s Villages International.

The joint humanitarian organisation statement goes on reporting that human rights watchdogs[4], civil society organisations, the United Nations[5] and countless investigative journalists as well as major media outlets[6] have documented the human rights violations, pushbacks[7] and systematic failures to engage in search and rescue that have now become the EU’s de facto migration management policy.

 

Europe urged to end rights abuse, senseless deaths

Hundreds of reports and evidence submissions have been published, including those based directly on witness and survivor testimonies.

Organisations have advocated relentlessly with the European Commission, Member States and European policy makers to adopt measures to end human rights abuses and senseless deaths at EU borders, it adds.

“Instead, some EU states have drastically reduced search and rescue (SAR) capacity at sea, and restricted[8] civil society SAR operations[9], which means that prompt and effective assistance cannot be provided to migrants in distress, in blatant disregard of international SAR obligations.”

 

More pushbacks and more deaths

Furthermore, on 8 June European Union’s Member States agreed on a reform of the European asylum and migration system, which is built on deterrence and systematic detention at EU borders, that will most probably incentivise more pushbacks, and deaths at sea, while the border monitoring mechanisms established so far are neither independent nor effective[10].

“This will only push people fleeing war and violence into even more dangerous routes and cause more unnecessary deaths. Meanwhile, EU Member States continue to rely on untransparent deals worth billions with third countries, in an attempt to rid themselves of their asylum responsibilities.”

In their joint statement, the human rights watchdogs urge a full investigation into these deaths, specifically into the role of EU Member States as well as the involvement of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which supports the management of the EU’s external borders and the fight against cross-border crime.

 

An ‘open graveyard’ at Europe’s borders

“We urge the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, to finally take a clear stand on the open graveyard at Europe’s land and sea borders, and to hold Member States accountable.”

“We call for a European asylum system that guarantees people the right to seek protection in full respect of their rights. The EU should abandon the narrative of blaming shipwrecks on smugglers and stop seeing solutions solely in the dismantling of criminal networks.”

 

“A recipe for more abuse at EU borders”

Analysing the new reform of the European asylum and migration system, Human Rights Watch‘s Judith Sunderland on 9 June warned that EU migration reforms deal will increase suffering at borders.

“European governments pave the way for further abuse,” reported Sunderland, Human Rights Watch’s Associate Director, Europe and Central Asia Division.

A June 8 agreement among European Union countries on asylum procedures and migration management is “a recipe for more abuse at EU borders,” she warned.

Interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg endorsed policies that “will entrench rights violations, including expedited procedures without sufficient safeguards, increased use of detention, and unsafe returns.”

The deal creates an expedited “border procedure” for anyone applying for asylum following an irregular entry or disembarkation after a rescue at sea, she adds.

The procedure would be mandatory for asylum seekers coming from countries whose nationals have a less than 20 percent rate of being granted some form of protection and anyone authorities say withheld or used false information, Sunderland further reports.

 

Asylum seekers likely to be “locked up”

“In practice, many if not most people will be channelled into these sub-standard accelerated procedures with fewer safeguards, such as legal aid, than the normal procedure.”

People are also likely to be “locked up” during the procedure, which could take up to six months, with few exemptions for people with vulnerabilities, families, or children.

According to the human rights defender, imposing this procedure in conjunction with detention or detention-like conditions is directly linked to the twin interests of many EU countries in preventing people travelling further into Europe from countries of first entry and in deporting people as swiftly as possible.

The agreement would allow each country to determine what constitutes a “safe third country” where people can be returned, based on a vague concept of “connection” to that country. This could lead to people being sent to countries they have merely transited or where they have a family member but have themselves never been, and where their basic rights cannot be guaranteed.”

 

Want to further abuse human rights, just pay a fine!

“EU countries have rejected a mandatory relocation scheme, instead aiming to allow countries who won’t take asylum seekers to pay into a common fund that would be used to finance unspecified projects in non-EU countries, presumably focused on preventing migration.”

When the European Commission presented its proposal for a Migration Pact in September 2020, more than 70 organisations warned the proposal risked “exacerbating the focus on externalisation, deterrence, containment, and return.”

The remains of a shipwreck on a beach in western Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

A new catastrophe in the Mediterranean, this time off the coast of Greece. The number of drowned still to be determined — barely 100 survivors speak of more than 700 passengers on board— will be added to almost 30,000 lost at sea since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migrations.

Those are just the people that someone, family or friends, ever claimed. The actual figures are almost certainly much higher.

The long-awaited stability in Libya is key for the region and its people, including those in the northern Mediterranean. But the world continues to look the other way. After this new catastrophe at sea, we will only remember that an entire country, and its people, from a single line, so familiar now: “The boat had departed from Libya”

We read that the traffickers’ boat had left the coast of Libya bound for Italy. We rarely look deeper. Does anyone remember Libya other than as the port of departure after a new misfortune at sea?

Libya has always been a transit country from Africa to Europe. Today, however, we are talking about a scale of unfathomable magnitude, for a very simple reason. Libya has been in chaos for more than a decade, and by now the line dividing trafficking mafias, armed militias, and politicians has become almost invisible.

It might not have turned out this way. We all remember 2011, when a wave of protests against regimes entrenched for decades rocked the Middle East and North Africa. Once that unrest descended into conflict, Libya’s revolt became doubtless the most visible. The eight-month civil war monopolized TV channels and newspapers throughout the world.

The war seemed to end with the lynching of the country’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi, in October of that same year. Literally overnight, Libya disappeared from global attention, as focus shifted elsewhere. There was neither time nor international will to reflect on what had happened, and would come next.

It would prove a missed opportunity. Libya’s immediate future did not look bleak at the time. In 2012, after presidential elections in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya too elected a post-Ghaddafi democratic body, the first General Congress of the Nation, designed to replace the “umbrella” body opposition forces had created during the war, the National Transitional Council.

Elections brought hope to a society that had never been asked its opinion on anything. And at first, unlike what happened in neighboring countries, a self-dubbed “democratic” coalition of new political parties took hold, with political moderates prevailing over an emerging religious extremist wing.

But the euphoria only lasted until that summer. Sectarian attacks against Sufi Muslims took place, followed closely by the assassination of the US ambassador in Benghazi. Images of the burning American consulate anticipated the unraveling to come.

 

Migrants spotted aboard a sinking dinghy boat somewhere off the Libyan coast. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

 

A new war broke out in 2014, but remained almost unreported and poorly understood outside Libya. The country split between two governments: one in Tripoli that had the backing of the UN, and another in Tobruk, in the east of the country, that had the backing of allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of Libya.

In the fall of 2015, emails leaked to the UK Guardian revealed that Bernardino León, the United Nations envoy for Libya charged with mediating the conflict, had maintained close links with the UAE, which backed Tobruk’s side in the war. Neutrality was assumed from the UN negotiatorbut this was seemingly not the case.

After “Leongate” forced the UN envoy’s resignation in November 2015, León would move to Dubai, where he was appointed director of the UAE’s Diplomatic Academy. International press remained largely silent on the scandal, and a promised UN investigation never saw the light of the day. Far from contributing to a rapprochement between Libya’s two warring sides, the UN process had led to the war dragging on, and the two sides to entrench.

In 2019, after five years of neither side gaining the upper hand, the Tobruk side, led by strongman Khalifa Haftar — a general who had helped bring Gaddafi to power, and was then later recruited by the CIA— launched a brutal offensive at Tripoli, receiving air and logistics cover from the United Arab Emirates.

The attack on Tripoli was fast and indiscriminate. Civilian targets were bombarded, provoking officials in London and Berlin to initially protest Hafter’s move as “an attack by someone who had not been attacked”. European governments debated calling for Haftar to reign in the onslaught.

Once again, European politics would come into play in Libya. EU parliamentary elections—held in May 2019— filled the Brussels parliament with politicians who were less concerned with the lost to average Libyans, and shared French President Emmanuel Macron’s more hawkish vision.

The French leader’s US counterpart, Donald Trump, also called France and Russia directly and told them he wanted neither Egypt nor the UAE, Haftar’s backers, as enemies. Washington would go on to support Haftar in Tobruk, though the rival Tripoli government had the backing of the UN.

All this would occur in a nation with enormous potential for prosperity. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, as well as reserves of underground water and promising mineral resources. It is very close to Europe geographically, boasting an enormous tourist potential and a network of ports that many governments would dream of.

With a population of barely six million, it would be easy for Libya to turn into a model of progress and well-being for the entire region. But the world’s decision-makers have other plans, it appears. In addition to the calls between Washington, Brussels and Moscow, governments in Ankara, Doha, Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, among others, also know Libya’s strategic and financial value, and want their share. If they don’t get what they want there, each of them will make sure their rivals don’t either.

While global forces take the country’s fate out of Libyans’ own hands, thousands of Sudanese, Malians, Somalis, Nigeriens and others fleeing war and misery continue to pass through a mirage of a country. Those who survive the brutal desert journey fall in the hands of the deeply-rooted human trafficking networks, which operate unmolested amid Libya’s chaos.

The long-awaited stability in Libya is key for the region and its people, including those in the northern Mediterranean. But the world continues to look the other way. After this new catastrophe at sea, we will only remember that an entire country, and its people, from a single line, so familiar now: “The boat had departed from Libya.”

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 19 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Sexual violence is unacceptable in any shape or form, in all contexts, including those of conflict.

As we come together on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, we must reflect together on the pain, horror, fear and inhumanity that rape, sexual abuse, trafficking, slavery, child marriage and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence bring to a young child’s life, hence, our collective humanity.

Sexual violence is a grave breach of international law. It is immoral and it is unconscionable. Nevertheless, as we look back and towards brutal armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan and beyond, we read reports of girls and women – and boys and men too – being raped, sexually abused, pushed into marriage, trafficked and denied their most basic human rights and human dignity.

While sexual violence and rape have long been tactics of war, global efforts to end sexual violence in conflict are relatively new – and have been far too ineffective in curtailing these despicable assaults on people everywhere. Consider that the Lieber Code first mentioned rape as an executable offense during wartime in the late 1800s in the US Civil War. Sexual violence was also mentioned in the 1949 Geneva Convention as a “need to protect the honour of women.” It wasn’t until the late 1990s that rape during wartime was more largely prosecuted, with the United Nations classifying it as both a crime against humanity in 1993 and a war crime in 1995.

As a global community, we have done far too little to protect people – especially girls and women – from these heinous attacks. Growing militarization, the proliferation of arms and terrorism are making matters even worse.

In places that have experienced high levels of political, social and economic upheaval, recent UN reports indicate that “sexual violence is being used to subjugate and humiliate opposition groups and rival communities.” And when sexual violence occurs, perpetrators often go free, while girls and women are all too often blamed, ostracized and shunned from their communities.

We must stand united against these weapons of oppression. Education is key to empowering women and girls everywhere to stand up against sexual violence, it’s key to providing girls in crisis-impacted countries with access to safety and protection in the classroom. Education also entails mental health services to enable them to begin to heal from what otherwise would become lifelong scars. Education empowers them to pursue justice and end impunity. Education is also key for boys and men to understand that any act of sexual abuse or violence is criminal, despicable and unacceptable – anywhere, anytime, in every circumstance.

Please join Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies, in calling for an immediate stop to all forms of sexual violence. We will endure these assaults on individuals – and on our humanity – no more.

 

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');  

Excerpt:

ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif Statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict

WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, Yohei Sasakawa, would like to create a society where there is social inclusion. It is this philosophy that motivates his life-long campaign to end discrimination against people affected by leprosy. Credit: Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

In 1974, Yohei Sasakawa accompanied his father to a leprosy hospital he had funded. He saw leprosy patients inside the hospital still and expressionless. The smell of leprosy filled the air, the smell of pus from open sores.

His father sat with the patients, touched their hands and faces, and encouraged them to be hopeful. Treatment was within reach, and they would live. At that moment, Sasakawa wondered about the life that awaited these patients outside the hospital – a difficult life of discrimination and alienation, with many ostracized from society. He silently vowed to dedicate his life to ending leprosy.

Yohei Sasakawa chronicles his campaign to rid the world of leprosy in his biography Making the Impossible Possible. Credit: Hurst Publishers

In his newly published book, Making the Impossible Possible, he chronicles face-to-face encounters with an ancient disease shrouded in many myths and misconceptions. His travels to leprosy-endemic countries as WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination started in 2001 and has involved over 200 trips to nearly seventy countries.

“Nearly all of my destinations have been remote locations where people live in quite desperate conditions. It has always been my belief that the place where the problems are happening is also precisely where the solutions will be found,” he says.

“I am also a firm proponent of the Neo-Confucian idea that knowledge is inseparable from practice. I want to be a man of deeds. I became involved in my international humanitarian work out of a passionate desire to be involved on the front lines until my last breath, and I am the first to admit that my work is done, in that sense, for my own personal satisfaction.”

As he retraces a remarkable journey on the frontlines of fighting the leprosy scourge, the Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease by the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative and the University of Bergen in Norway will kick off on June 21, 2023, and end the following day.

The conference is a nod to February 28, 1873, when Norwegian doctor Gerhard Armauer Hansen discovered Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy. To commemorate the historic anniversary, the conference seeks to highlight that 150 years later, leprosy is not a disease of the past.

Leprosy still exists as a neglected tropical disease in more than 120 countries worldwide, with at least 200,000 new cases reported annually. Nevertheless, progress over the last half-century has brought the world closer to the goal of a world without leprosy.

The Bergen conference is an opportunity to draw on the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of many people at the place where Mycobacterium leprae was first observed, and to build momentum to complete the last mile in leprosy, the hardest part of the journey.

Sasakawa’s book is a treasure trove of challenges, triumphs, best practices, lessons learned, and insights into what it will take to finish the last mile in the decades-long marathon to eliminate the ancient disease.

The book is the most detailed account of Sasakawa’s quest to work for a world without leprosy and the discrimination it causes.

It is an account of his travels to remote communities around the world to hear directly from those affected by the disease, as well as his meetings with policy-makers, government leaders, and heads of state to advocate for a renewed commitment to the fight against leprosy, including measures to protect the human rights of those it affects.

“For as long as I can remember, I have made a point of repeating three messages in every meeting, conference, or press conference that I attend. The first message is that leprosy is curable. The second is that free treatment is available everywhere around the world. And the third message is that discrimination against people affected by leprosy has no place,” Sasakawa affirms.

“These messages are very easy to understand. But the third one, the message that discrimination has no place, is extremely difficult to put into practice. The habits of a lifetime and ingrained unconscious attitudes are not easily dispelled.”

Similarly, these messages will reverberate throughout the two-day conference to spread the message that today, leprosy is treatable with multidrug therapy (MDT), but if treatment is delayed, leprosy can cause progressive impairment and result in lifelong disability.

Delayed treatment and consequent disability have largely contributed to the persistent stigma surrounding the disease and the discrimination that persons affected by leprosy and their families continue to face. Discrimination is also a barrier to new case detection, discouraging people from seeking treatment.

Through sustained concerted efforts, many countries and international organizations, led by the WHO, are now aiming for zero leprosy—zero disease, zero disability, and zero discrimination.

Achieving this goal will require stakeholders to cooperate closely. To this end, the conference will bring together key leprosy stakeholders from around the world for two days of discussions focused on three pillars: medical, social, and historical.

Notable dignitaries scheduled to deliver messages at the event include Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, WHO Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Ingvild Kjerkol, Minister of Health and Care Services, Norway.

Keynote speakers include Professor Paul Fine of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr Alice Cruz, the UN Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members.

The conference is part of the “Don’t Forget Leprosy/Don’t Forget Hansen’s Disease” campaign launched by the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative in 2021. It follows the 2022 Global Forum of People’s Organizations on Hansen’s Disease held in Hyderabad, India, the 2023 International Symposium at the Vatican on Hansen’s Disease incorporating the Global Appeal 2023 to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy, and 150-anniversary events.

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

• Pope, Sasakawa in Global Appeal for a Leprosy Free World
• We Must Do More to Remove People’s Negative Image of Leprosy from their DNA – Yohei Sasakawa
• Sasakawa’s Epoch-Making Quest to End Discrimination of Leprosy Affected People

ESDO Media Briefing on Plastic INC-2

By External Source
PARIS, Jun 19 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Plastic INC-2 finished up by laying out a roadmap for the time in between meetings leading to INC-3, requiring the creation of a “zero draft” of the new treaty for review at INC-3. Allocating a day to discuss the synthesis report of elements not thought of during INC-2 prior to the meeting. Representing Global Plastic INC-2, Dr. Shahriar Hossain, Secretary General of ESDO provided an overview of the meeting’s results today (Thursday) in the media briefing, press briefing organized by Environment and Social Development Organization.

Dr. Shahriar informed, the meeting was seen by many as a way to gauge the Committee members’ dedication to the process and to the treaty that would eventually end plastic pollution. Despite the contentious debates, lengthy pauses, and late hours, the Nairobi spirit was still alive. Now that they have voiced their thoughts on the options paper.

Dr. Shahriar said that all the plastic that we have ever touched is most likely still in existence. Even if it’s fragmenting, it still remains land or sea-based. Plastic has been found in the most remote and most accessible areas of the natural world. Furthermore, plastic is created from fossil fuels, and emits greenhouse gases that influence climate change, he added.

Dr. Shahriar Hossain

Delegates at the second encounter of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) to develop an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) about plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, gathered at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris, France. Two contact groups were held throughout the day and night, and they discussed objectives and obligations, measures of implementation (MoI), implementation measures, and other matters. Group 1, headed by Gwendalyn Kingtaro Sisior (Palau) and Axel Borchmann (Germany), examined the aims and substantial commitments of the ILBI’s future. The group gave their first impressions and put their emphasis on the 12 potential duties regarding options, such as:

• phasing out and/or reducing the supply of, demand for, and use of, primary plastic polymers;
• banning, phasing out, and/or reducing the use of problematic and avoidable plastic products;
• banning, phasing out, and/or reducing the production, consumption, and use of chemicals and polymers of concern;
• reducing microplastics;
• strengthening waste management;
• fostering design for circularity;
• encouraging “reduce, reuse and repair” of plastic products and packaging;
• promoting the use of safe, sustainable alternatives and substitutes;
• eliminating the release and emission of plastics to water, soil and air;
• addressing existing plastic pollution;
• facilitating a just transition, including an inclusive transition of the informal waste sector; and
• protecting human health from the adverse effects of plastic pollution.

The Committee decided to go with the oral decision.

Final Decision:

• Urges members and observers to forward INC-2 reports to the Secretariat and requests the Secretariat to upload these submissions to the INC website;
• Requests INC Chair Meza-Cuadra, with the support of the Secretariat, to prepare a zero-draft text of the ILBI for consideration at INC-3, guided by the views expressed at INC-1 and INC-2, with a full range of options indicated.

The resolution also calls on the Secretariat to: ask observers to submit their ideas by August 15, 2023, and for members to do the same by September 15, 2023, for elements that were not included in the options paper, such as principles and scope, and for any areas that need to be addressed between meetings;

Syed Marghub Murshed, Former Secretary Govt., presided over the Media Briefing. Moderated by Dr. Ainun Nishat, Professor Emeritus, Center of Climate Change and Environmental Research, BRAC University.

‘The second Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) session focused on developing a legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution, including the marine environment. It emphasized the need to tackle the chemicals in plastics to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of plastics at all stages of their lifecycle’, said Syed Marghub Murshed, Former Secretary of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Chairperson of ESDO.

Concerning the recent international plastic treaty, ESDO delivered the subsequent declaration.

• Limiting, phasing out, and decreasing the manufacture, usage, and consumption of chemicals and polymers that are a worry.
• Cutting down on microplastics.
• Utilizing zero-waste mechanisms to reinforce waste management and solutions.
• Promoting the use of safe, sustainable alternatives and substitutes.
• Protecting human health from the adverse effects of plastic pollution throughout the life cycle.
• Addressing existing plastic pollution.

Dr. Shahriar Hossain, said, ‘A global plastic treaty on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment where plastics waste and chemical pollution are driving the triple planetary crisis relating to environment climate, and pollution. It is high time we should take the necessary steps from our side to beat plastic pollution.’

‘To ban the massive production and tremendous use of single-use plastic products in our daily lives, we need to promote environment-friendly alternative plastic products to secure biodiversity and public health,’ said Siddika Sultana, Executive Director of the Environment and Social Development Organization.

 

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 photo of workers of the state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) drilling an oil well. CREDIT: YPFB

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

One of the largest natural gas reservoirs in South America is showing signs of decline and the hopeful expectations that emerged in 2006, to turn Bolivia into a regional energy leader, are waning.

When the fossil fuel bonanza was already showing signs of fatigue, then president Evo Morales (2006-2019) announced in the middle of his election campaign, in March 2019, the discovery of what was described as a “sea of ​​gas” in the department of Tarija, in the south of the country.

But the certainty of a future natural gas boom gave way to a downward trend in the sector that is currently affecting production and sales and has shattered the hopes that gas would remain the engine of internal development for a long time to come, according to industry experts.

“They strangled the goose that laid the golden eggs,” said Gonzalo Chávez, an analyst with a PhD in economics, who pointed to a 3.2 billion dollar drop in gas revenues between 2014 and 2021. The decline is attributed to the lack of exploration of new reserves.

In 2014, oil and gas revenues amounted to nearly 5.5 billion dollars, compared to less than 2.3 billion dollars in 2021, according to Chávez’s calculations. The fall is considerable, more so given that in 2021, public spending totaled 2.6 billion dollars. The economy grew that year by 6.5 percent, according to the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance.

The state-owned oil and gas company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) “has shown that it does not now have the technical or financial capacity to explore or develop new fields,” economic analyst Roberto Laserna told IPS.

The company’s website reported that the investment in exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons for the period 2021-2025 amounts to 1.4 billion dollars, and quotes its president, Armin Dorgathen, as stating that the aim is “to change this situation of the importation of fuels.”

On Jun. 12, the YPFB announced that the testing stage at the Chaco Este X9D oil well, located in the province of Gran Chaco in Tarija, “recorded hydrocarbon flows in two reservoirs,” as part of the effort the company is making to show that it is pulling out of the production rut.

Dorgathen announced that the discoveries will contribute an average production of 8.76 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and 281 barrels per day of crude oil.

Questions that IPS sent to YPFB a few days earlier, regarding the drop in gas revenues, received no response.

In the 21st century Bolivia remains dependent on hydrocarbons, both for its energy consumption – 81 percent of which comes from fossil sources – and for its tax revenue – 35 percent of which comes from the industry since the Hydrocarbons Law was introduced in 2005.

This landlocked Andean country of 12.2 million people has an economy traditionally based on extractive activities, especially tin, lead, zinc, copper, gold and silver mining, and more recently and abundantly on fossil fuels, after the discovery of large gas deposits at the beginning of this century.

One of the first measures adopted by Morales upon taking office in 2006 was the total nationalization of the industry, leaving the entire production and marketing chain in the hands of the YPFB. And thanks to the gas boom, 38 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues were obtained in the period 2006-2018, when the steady decline began.

A photo of the Chaco Este X9D well, exploited by YPFB in the Gran Chaco province of the department of Tarija in southern Bolivia. CREDIT: YPFB

 

Hasty actions

To try to pull out of the crisis, Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energy Franklin Molina announced on Apr. 28 to Congress 18 new exploration and exploitation projects, 11 of which are to be carried out this year, with an investment of 324 million dollars – a plan considered unrealistic by industry observers.

The 11 projects, where oil appears to take precedence over gas, are located in four of Bolivia’s nine departments: La Paz in the west,Tarija in the southeast, Santa Cruz in the east, and the central Chuquisaca.

“The fact that we do not have gas and we are net fuel importers is the fault of flawed government policies” in the sector, financial analyst Jaime Dunn wrote on his social networks.

According to the expert’s calculation, the fiscal deficit for the year 2022 reached 1.7 billion dollars, largely due to the fuel subsidy, because a 159-liter barrel of oil is bought on the international market for an average of 90 dollars and is sold domestically for 27 dollars.

Long gone are the “sea of ​​gas” dreams that in April 2002 led President Jorge Quiroga (2001-2002) and his Minister of Economic Development Carlos Kempff to announce that after a study of 76 oil fields by a US company, it was estimated that the country’s proven and probable gas reserves totaled 52 trillion cubic feet (TCF).

But only 10.7 TCF of proven natural gas reserves were certified in 2018.

The search for new reserves runs up against a legal framework that protects the environment and indigenous lands, where part of the probable sources of hydrocarbons are located. “The constitution contains many obstacles and restrictions to attract foreign companies with the capacity for exploration,” said Laserna.

The rewritten constitution, approved in February 2009, forces companies interested in exploration and exploitation to obtain authorization from the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, with the threat that any permit will be declared null and void if this requirement is not met.

Foreign companies, according to the constitution, are “subject to the sovereignty of the State,” which rules out arbitration and diplomatic demands as a way of solving conflicts.

A photo of the 15-story building of the headquarters of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), located in La Paz, where the executive and organizational offices of the government-owned oil company have been operating since 2018. CREDIT: Franz Chavez/IPS

 

Environment and development

In terms of energy production, the constitution prohibits transnational corporations from exclusively managing concessions.

In addition, it places the environment above interests in economic uses of land and gives the local population the right to participate in environmental management, “to be previously consulted and informed about decisions that could affect the quality of the environment.”

These powers granted to indigenous peoples and local communities are protecting the Tariquía National Flora and Fauna Reserve, in the municipality of Padcaya in the department of Tarija, which covers 246,870 hectares, part of which is close to the border with Argentina.

Since 2017, Lurdes Zutara has been a local organizer fighting the entry of oil companies into the area, warning that since the first roads were opened to give access to exploration equipment and teams, the water from the local source that gives rise to rivers and streams has decreased in flow.

Speaking with IPS from her town in Tariquía, the activist said that some families in the communities accepted the entry of heavy machinery, and noted that municipal authorities belonging to the governing Movement to Socialism (MAS) party were facilitating the preparatory operations for oil exploration.

“The immediate risk is drought because the road affects the water intakes,” Zutara said.

She added that things will never be the same, that the relationship among local inhabitants will change because inequalities will emerge between those who obtain development with the support of the company and others who will be left out.

Bolivia is officially a multinational country located in the center of South America, where 41 percent of the population of 12.2 million consider themselves indigenous, according to the last census.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), based on data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), described in its latest report on human development the persistence of significant inequalities by geographic area, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.

In 2018, 54 percent of the inhabitants of rural areas suffered from moderate poverty and 33.4 percent from extreme poverty, compared to 26 and 7.2 percent, respectively, in urban areas.

Against this backdrop, Chávez the economist lamented that Bolivia went from being a major gas reserve in the South American region “to an importer” of fuels, with the subsequent impact on social development.

Laserna concurred, stating that “the outlook for the country is very discouraging” with respect to gas and the expected socioeconomic boost that was to come from fossil fuels.

Unless the rain comes, there is sufficient water only until mid-June, at best. Uruguay is suffering from a drinking water shortage. To prevent this from becoming a permanent issue, the country’s economy must change fundamentally. Credit: Canva/Ernesto Velazquez

By Dörte Wollrad
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

Drinking water is running out in Uruguay — this headline got the small South American country onto international news. Prolonged drought has brought the reservoir and river that supply the capital Montevideo down to 10 per cent of their normal water level. Unless the rain comes, there is sufficient water only until mid-June, at best.

Paradoxically, Uruguay is located in a region that holds more than 30 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves. So, there is groundwater. But the fact that drinking water is available only to those able to buy it in bottled form highlights rather different political priorities. Amidst the climate crisis, short-term economic interests have been prioritised over prevention, mitigation and adaptation.

Economic interests prevail

Water supply is not a new issue in Uruguay. As early as 2004, 65 per cent voted in favour of a referendum on a constitutional amendment to establish access to drinking water as a fundamental right. It also gave the state exclusive responsibility for water treatment and supply.

Experienced in direct democratic procedures, Uruguayans thus prevented the participation of French and Spanish companies in the public water utilities and a possible privatisation, as was the case in other countries in the region.

Dörte Wollrad

Uruguay’s economy depends on commodity exports; cellulose, beef, rice and soya, to name a few. In all these sectors, the production is highly water-intensive. The latest drought has caused enormous losses in recent months, but this is not an isolated incident. Meteorologists have been warning of a huge reduction in precipitation for more than three years now.

That is why outgoing President Tabaré Vasquez passed on construction plans for another reservoir to Luis Lacalle Pou’s newly elected government in 2020. The aim was to avoid foreseeable supply bottlenecks. But the reservoir was never built. Also, discussions on a transformation strategy for a development model that, due to climate change, has a foreseeable expiry date did not happen.

Instead, the new neoliberal government approved foreign investment projects that are extremely water-intensive and fed by groundwater wells. For example, in 2021, Google started the construction of a gigantic data centre, which requires 7 million litres of fresh water every day to cool the servers.

In 2022, an agreement was reached with a German firm on the production of green hydrogen in northern Uruguay, which requires 600,000 litres of fresh water a day. There was no parliamentary vote on either project and thus no democratic participation.

Despite the recent lack of rainfall, there has been no attempt to tap into the groundwater to obtain drinking water. Instead, since early May, estuary water from the Rio de la Plata has been mixed in with remaining reserves. As a result, drinking water now considerably exceeds the sodium and potassium levels laid down by the Health Ministry. And people only became aware of this because the water was now noticeably salty.

After contradictory messaging on whether tap water could be drunk, finally, the Ministry recommended that old people and invalids stick to bottled water. It remains to be seen how hospitals, schools and day-care facilities will obtain the drinking water they need.

When asked what the poor are supposed to do (10 per cent of the population live beneath the poverty line), the deputy chair of the state-owned water company said that people should give up Coca-Cola for water. Marie Antoinette sends her regards.

A government feeding lies

Trade and industry were the next to suffer from the problems of water quality. Can saltier water be used in certain production processes without damaging machinery? Can bakers raise bread prices to cover the cost of drinking water without suppressing demand, already hard hit by Covid-19?

As in Europe, Uruguayans are also grappling with high inflation, which reached double figures before stabilising at 9 per cent. But even this level is unlikely to be maintained. The government broke its promise to keep the price of bottled water under control.

In many places ‘Blue Gold’ is out of stock and, where it is available, priced the same as Coca-Cola. Now, there are plans afoot to import bottled water from neighbouring countries.

Despite being under increasing pressure, the government knows how to use the situation to its advantage. It feeds the neoliberal narrative that public companies are incompetent. What’s more, salty drinking water makes it easier for the government to gain acceptance of its ongoing negotiations on building a river-water desalination plant. The ‘Neptuno’ project is facing strong protests, highlighting its potential environmental damage, high costs and de facto partial privatisation of water as a resource.

But the problem is not new. Previous governments formed by the progressive coalition Frente Amplio also failed to focus consistently on transforming the development model. Although the energy matrix has been almost entirely converted to renewable energies in only a few years, soya cultivation and pasture lands, as well as eucalyptus plantations for cellulose production grew even under progressive rule.

The renovation of old pipelines was also delayed so that now 50 per cent of drinking water just seeps away. There are no incentives for more frugal private water use, either. Only now are radio commercials calling on people to refrain from washing their cars or watering their gardens have started to be broadcasted.

However, one thing was guaranteed during the 15 years of the Frente Amplio government: the state’s responsibility for water and other essential goods. Today, the citizens no longer even believe the waterworks with regard to the measured values of the tap water. The loss of trust in the state’s duty of care is enormous.

The effects of climate change on the water supply are also discernible in Europe. Just look at the crisis in Spain’s agricultural sector or the drying up of whole bodies of water from the Aral Sea to Lake Garda. Nevertheless, few people in Europe can imagine a day they might turn on the tap and no water comes out.

But the battle for the Blue Gold has long begun. Fresh water is not the gold of the future but of the present. And as with any resource allocation conflict, it needs political and legal regulation. This applies in particular to the governments and parliaments of the countries concerned. But criticising mismanagement in the Global South is pointless in isolation.

Climate change knows no borders. That’s why we need to challenge our own national and community policymakers on this issue. What signal do trade agreements send that reinforce Latin America’s role as a raw materials supplier?

How can food security be ensured while conserving water? What guidance, investments and technologies do the production countries need? And what incentives would facilitate change away from consumption and thus demand?

Global public goods such as fresh water need global protection and international regulation. Unless we think about and promote socio-ecological transformation in global terms, climate justice will remain a pipe dream and the rule of the market will dominate resource distribution. Our joy at sourcing green hydrogen from Uruguay in place of wind turbines down the road is thus likely to prove short-lived.

Dörte Wollrad heads the office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Uruguay. Previously, she led the foundation’s offices in Argentina and Paraguay.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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: CIVICUS

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jun 16 2023 (IPS)

If you’ve never heard of the Cybercrime Convention, you’re not alone. And if you’re wondering whether an international treaty to tackle cybercrime is a good idea, you’re in good company too.

Negotiations have been underway for more than three years: the latest negotiating session was held in April, and a multi-stakeholder consultation has just concluded. A sixth session is scheduled to take place in August, with a draft text expected to be approved by February 2024, to be put to a vote at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) later next year. But civil society sees some big pitfalls ahead.

Controversial beginnings

In December 2019, the UNGA voted to start negotiating a cybercrime treaty. The resolution was sponsored by Russia and co-sponsored by several of the world’s most repressive regimes, which already had national cybercrime laws they use to stifle legitimate dissent under the pretence of combatting a variety of vaguely defined online crimes such as insulting the authorities, spreading ‘fake news’ and extremism.

Tackling cybercrime certainly requires some kind of international cooperation. But this doesn’t necessarily need a new treaty. Experts have pointed out that the real problem may be the lack of enforcement of current international agreements, particularly the 2001 Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention.

When Russia’s resolution was put to a vote, the European Union, many states and human rights organisations urged the UNGA to reject it. But once the resolution passed, they engaged with the process, trying to prevent the worst possible outcome – a treaty lacking human rights safeguards that could be used as a repressive tool.

The December 2019 resolution set up an ad hoc committee (AHC), open to the participation of all UN member states plus observers, including civil society. At its first meeting to set procedural rules in mid-2021, Brazil’s proposal that a two-thirds majority vote be needed for decision-making – when consensus can’t be achieved – was accepted, instead of the simple majority favoured by Russia. A list of stakeholders was approved, including civil society organisations (CSOs), academic institutions and private sector representatives.

Another key procedural decision was made in February 2022: intersessional consultations were to be held between negotiating sessions to solicit input from stakeholders, including human rights CSOs. These consultations have given CSOs the chance to make presentations and participate in discussions with states.

Human rights concerns

Several CSOs are trying to use the space to influence the treaty process, including as part of broader coalitions. Given what’s at stake, in advance of the first negotiating session, around 130 CSOs and experts urged the AHC to embed human rights safeguards in the treaty.

One of the challenges it that, as early as the first negotiating session, it became apparent there wasn’t a clear definition of what constitutes a cybercrime and which cybercrimes should be regulated by the treaty. There’s still no clarity.

The UN identifies two main types of cybercrimes: cyber-dependent crimes such as network intrusion and malware distribution, which can only be committed through the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and cyber-enabled crimes, which can be facilitated by ICTs but can be committed without them, such as drug trafficking and the illegal distribution of counterfeit goods.

Throughout the negotiation process there’s been disagreement about whether the treaty should focus on a limited set of cyber-dependent crimes, or address a variety of cyber-enabled crimes. These, human rights groups warn, include various content-related offences that could be invoked to repress freedom of expression.

These concerns have been highlighted by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has emphasised that the treaty shouldn’t include offences related to the content of online expression and should clearly and explicitly reference binding international human rights agreements to ensure it’s applied in line with universal human rights principles.

A second major disagreement concerns the scope and conditions for international cooperation. If not clearly defined, cooperation arrangements could result in violations of privacy and data protection provisions. In the absence of the principle of dual criminality – where extradition can only apply to an action that constitutes a crime in both the country making an extradition request and the one receiving it – state authorities could be made to investigate activities that aren’t crimes in their own countries. They could effectively become enforcers of repression.

Civil society has pushed for recognition of a set of principles on the application of human rights to communications surveillance. According to these, dual criminality should prevail, and where laws differ, the one with the higher level of rights protections should be applied. It must be ensured that states don’t use mutual assistance agreements and foreign cooperation requests to circumvent domestic legal restrictions.

An uncertain future

Following the third multistakeholder consultation held in November 2022, the AHC released a negotiating draft. In the fourth negotiating session in January 2023, civil society’s major concerns focused on the long and growing number of criminal offences listed in the draft, many of them content-related.

It’s unclear how the AHC intends to bridge current deep divides to produce the ‘zero draft’ it’s expected to share in the next few weeks. If it complies with the deadline by leaving contentious issues undecided, the next session, scheduled for August, may bring a shift from consensus-building to voting – unless states decide to give themselves some extra time.

As of today, the process could still conclude on time, or with a limited extension, following a forced vote on a harmful treaty that lacks consensus and therefore fails to enter into effect, or does so for a limited number of states. Or it could be repeatedly postponed and fade away. Civil society engaged in the process may well think such a development wouldn’t be so bad: better no agreement than one that gives repressive states stronger tools to stifle dissent.

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');  

Plastic bags were a part and parcel of life in Kenya. More than 100 million plastic bags were used annually in Kenyan supermarkets alone, with at least 24 million plastic bags discarded every month. Kenya was choking under the weight of plastic bags. “Every food market, big or small, used plastic bags to wrap raw […]