Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

An Afghan girl in the Nawabad District of Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammad Haya Burhan

By John Sifton
NEW YORK, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

This week, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, released his first report. It is a catalog of abuses under Taliban rule since August 2021 and their devastating impact on Afghans.

The report also highlights the devastating humanitarian impact of the country’s economic crisis, caused in part by actions by foreign governments, noting that “all parties bear degrees of responsibility for failures to deliver economic and social rights.”

The report describes “staggering regression in women and girls’ enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.” It notes that “in no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life,” echoing a recent statement by UN experts describing “wide-spread, systematic and all-encompassing” attacks on the rights of women and girls.

The report also details Taliban abuses against officials from the former government, journalists, and religious minorities, among other rights concerns.

As someone who worked in Afghanistan before the first Taliban government fell in 2001, I have witnessed Taliban oppression firsthand. The report’s details are distressingly familiar.

Under the Taliban, the rule of law has no meaning. It isn’t even clear what “the law” is. Since last year, when the Taliban revoked the country’s constitution and stated that all laws needed to comply with Sharia, or Islamic law, it hasn’t been clear which laws and regulations are in force or how crimes are to be handled.

Instead, there are only “evolving and arbitrarily interpreted rules and decrees,” according to the UN report, and legal cases “are handled idiosyncratically across jurisdictions and venues,” while basic crimes are “often dealt with by security forces without involving prosecutors or judges.”

In short, “the law” is whatever a Taliban official might say it is. A situation more threatening to human rights is hard to imagine.

The Taliban authorities should take the report’s recommendations seriously. Most urgently, they should rescind abusive policies that violate the rights of women and girls, protect religious minorities, and engage with the special rapporteur and other UN offices to develop reforms.

The UN Human Rights Council is due to discuss the findings of the report later this month. States should take this opportunity to renew the mandate of the special rapporteur and to establish a new body that will investigate abuses and advance accountability.

Afghans are entitled to better than what the Taliban have given them: A life with few freedoms, no real justice, and where half the population is shut out of education and work.

John Sifton is the Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. He has previously served as a researcher and as Acting Deputy Washington Director. He focuses on South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and terrorism and counter-terrorism issues worldwide.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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There are 244 million children out of school. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

More than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. This shocking finding should be enough to be alarmed about the horrifying fate of an entire generation. But there is much more.

In fact, there are 244 million children still out of school, while educational centres are victims of armed attacks.

And millions more are falling prey to recruitment, enslavement, vital organs extraction, obliged displacements, drowning in the sea in migration journeys, homelessness, sexual violence, maiming, and a too long etcetera.

The above is to be added to other shocking facts like that 800 million girls are forced to be mothers, and that more than 200 million girls have already fallen prey to a dangerous, abhorrent practice, which is carried out in the name of social and religious traditions.

Also that 160 million plus are victims of forced labour, the double of a big European country’s -Germany- total population.

Half of them -or 80 million– are just 5 to 11 years old, and their number has been rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without mitigation measures, their number could rise to nearly 170 million by the year 2022.

The world’s children are also exposed to grave health problems as a consequence of the “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits, as revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

Schools closed

Moreover, school closures and disruptions caused by the pandemic have likely driven learning losses and drop-outs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, nearly 24 million learners might never return to formal education, out of which, 11 million are projected to be girls and young women.

Grave violations affect boys and girls differently. Whereas 85% of children recruited and used were boys, 83% of sexual violence was perpetrated against girls, adds the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to all the above.

The bell is ringing for the start of a new school year in many countries, but inequalities in access to education are keeping some 244 million children out of the classroom, according to data published on 1 September 2022 by UNESCO.

 

Where most?

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the most children out of school, 98 million, and it is also the only region where this number is increasing.

The Central and Southern Asia region has the second highest out-of-school population, with 85 million.

In addition to being sold in refugee camps, up to 50% of refugee girls in secondary school may not return, when their classrooms reopen after COVID-19, whilst 222 million girls were not able to be reached by remote learning during the pandemic.

The data has been provided by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, which also focuses on the staggering gender-based violations.

 

Girls

Girls impacted by the horrors of war and displacement in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen face even greater risks, such as gender-based violence, early child-marriage and unwanted pregnancies.

The banning of secondary girls’ education in Afghanistan is especially intolerable. In the past year, girls were estimated to be more than twice as likely to be out of school, and nearly twice as likely to be going to bed hungry compared to boys, adds Education Cannot Wait.

 

Education in emergencies

According to ECW’s recent Annual Results Report, conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergencies’ needs with funding appeals reaching US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020.

“While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education appeal funding – the overall funding gap spiked by 17%, from 60% in 2020 to 77% in 2021.”

 

Under attack

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack has elaborated a global study of attacks on schools, universities, their students and staff, in 2020 and 2021.

Education is under attack around the world, warns the study. From Afghanistan to Colombia, Mali to Thailand, “students and teachers are killed, raped, and abducted, while schools and universities are bombed, burned down, and used for military purposes.”

According to the Education under Attack 2022:

• In 2020 and 2021, there were more than 5,000 reported attacks on education and incidents of military use of schools and universities, harming more than 9,000 students and educators in at least 85 countries. On average, six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
• Six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
• Explosive weapons were used in around one-fifth of all reported attacks on education during the reporting period.
• The highest incidences of attacks on education schools were in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Myanmar, and Palestine.

The United Nations has focussed on the tragedy facing world’s children on the occasion of both the International Literacy Day on 8 September, and the International Day to Protect Education from Attack, on 9 September, among several other international days.

Despite all the above, the world’s richest countries continue to be devoted to spending more than two trillion US dollars on weapons that kill tens of thousands of innocent children.

Just see this: Spending on Nuclear Weapons — US$105 Billion a Year; US$300 Million a Day, US$12 Million an Hour. A tiny portion of this amount would suffice to grant the basic human right to education to hundreds of millions of children, right?

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

A 2021 World Bank-financed project in Uganda was supposed to help communities to sustainably manage local areas and to cope with the impacts of Covid-19. But at one site, the Toro Semliki Wildlife Reserve, the funding emboldened the Uganda Wildlife Authority. A government body, and the project’s implementing agency, the UWA has long prevented indigenous communities from reclaiming their land near the wildlife reserve.

Since 2015, UWA rangers have been responsible for more than 86 attacks, including 34 people beaten, shot, or injured, 15 arrested, and at least 29 killed in the wildlife reserve. That’s according to a new report called Wearing Blinders. Reprisals against the local community accelerated during negotiations over the World Bank financing.

Unfortunately, such events are not rare. In 2021, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre recorded over 600 attacks against human rights defenders in the context of business activities. Many of them involved, either directly or indirectly, development banks. That’s according to one of today’s guests — Lorena Cotza of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, an umbrella group of over 100 civil society groups and author of Wearing Blinders.

Our other guest is Ugandan human rights defender Gerald Kankya, director of the Twerwaneho Listeners Club. TLC  accompanies communities impacted by development projects, to denounce human rights violations and hold financiers accountable. Days before we spoke, Gerald and his colleagues filed requests for compensation for the families of the Toro Semliki Wildlife Reserve in the High Court of Uganda.

According to Lorena, development banks often shirk their responsibilities. They claim that there are no links between reprisals against community members and their financing of local projects. She believes that banks’ independent complaint bodies do produce insightful and credible investigations. However in the end, they can only make recommendations, not hold banks accountable.

 

Nesbit Gavanga, who mines sand illegally and sells it to builders, says he has few other economic options in Zimbabwe. Environmentalists, however, are concerned about land degradation. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
CHITUNGWIZA, Zimbabwe, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

In Chitungwiza, right next to the highway, 36-year-old Nesbit Gavanga and his five colleagues use shovels as they load trucks with sand.

The six apparently are in the business of sand-poaching and openly explain that every other day they engage in running battles with environmental officials who seek to curtail land degradation here. The group’s informal sand quarry lies 25 kilometers southeast of the Zimbabwean capital Harare.

For Gavanga and his colleagues, sand-poaching has been a source of income for years as the gang has never been formally employed.

Gavanga, with the others, invaded a patch of land in Chitungwiza to begin mining sand about eight years ago.

“This patch of land has given us money over the years, and we can’t afford to leave it. We are here to stay, and we are here to turn the sand into money,” Gavanga told IPS.

Gavanga is unfazed by the severity of damage he and his colleagues have unleashed on the giant swathes of land they have invaded in Chitungwiza.

What they care about is money, and Gavanga, with his colleagues, has managed to establish a huge customer base over the years.

“We just bring our picks and shovels here, and customers come with their trucks, and we fill the trucks with the sand we sell. Yes, this isn’t our land, but we have to survive from it even though (the authorities say) we are not allowed to mine,” 34-year-old Melford Mahamba, one of Gavanga’s colleagues, told IPS.

Gavanga claimed they make at least 30 to 40 US dollars daily from the enterprise.

But that is bad news for the environment.

Sand poachers have wrought huge scars on land across Zimbabwe as they harvest the river sand. These poachers leave uncovered pits.

Their customers are desperate individuals building urban homes.

According to the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), Zimbabwe’s statutory body responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources and protection of the environment, approximately 1694 hectares of land are affected by sand-poaching in the country, with Harare contributing to over 850 hectares of the statistics.

EMA has not been successful in stopping the sand poachers.

“Authorities chase us away from the places we mine for sand, but we always return in no time, even as they arrest us at times. We just bribe the officials and continue with the business,” Mahamba said.

Environmentalists like Happison Chikova, based in Harare, blamed Zimbabwe’s poor economy for the land degradation unleashed by sand poachers.

“These people have no jobs. They think by digging up sand soils for sale, believing they may break free from bankruptcy and poverty, but alas. They only make the environment suffer as they get very little money that hardly changes their lives,” Chikova told IPS.

But for the sand poachers like Mahamba, the profits are significant.

“The profits are huge since sand sells for 6 to 8 US dollars a cubic meter. We sell to clients using their own transport,” said Mahamba.

The sand poachers, in fact, incur very few costs, and the only costs they have to shoulder are the bribes given to council police.

Council authorities, for instance, in Chitungwiza, even though they conduct regular raids on sand poachers, are not fully capacitated.

“We conduct raids on sand poachers, but we don’t do that always due to insufficient resources, and so the sand poachers always go back to their illegal activities. It is like a cat-and-mouse game,” said Lovemore Meya, the Chitungwiza Municipality public relations officer.

For environmentalists like Chikova, sand poachers “damage vegetation while they dig out wide and deep pits which subsequently get flooded each rain season.”

Amid growing sand poaching in Zimbabwe, environmental lawyers insinuate that the practice contributes to climate change.

“Sand poaching increases Zimbabwe’s vulnerability to flooding in areas receiving high rainfall, with the practice of sand poaching also threatening wetlands, but sand poaching also affects water availability downstream, which then affects water use for climate adaptation purposes,” Ray Ncube, an environmental lawyer in private practice, told IPS.

EMA statistics have shown that as of December 2019, 9.5 million square meters of land across Zimbabwe had degraded due to illegal sand poaching.

As vast swathes of land fall to degradation, environmental activists like Kudakwashe Murisi in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, has blamed the country’s polarized politics for enabling sand poachers to do so as they please with the environment.

“Sand poachers are often youths with links to the ruling Zanu-PF party, obviously shielded by their political leadership, making it difficult for anyone to call them to order when they start digging up everywhere for sand soil,” Murisi told IPS.

In power for 42 years, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) is this Southern African nation’s governing political party.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A student teacher at the National Teacher's College Kabale follows a lecture through his smartphone. Credit: Michael Wambi/IPS.

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA/KABALE, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, an education officer in the district neighbouring Uganda’s capital Kampala decreed that teachers could not take computers, mobile phones, or tablets into classrooms.

Frederick Kiyingi said phones and information and communications technology (ICT) tools distract learners and would compromise their learning and focus.

But William Musaazi, a teacher who had realised the importance of using ICTs in teaching, tried to reason otherwise. “With this smartphone, I’m able to get the whole world around me just at the click of a button… And at the same time, it makes my lessons interesting, like a very interesting movie,” he told IPS recently.

While the colleges had already been supplied with ICT tools, the lecturers had technology phobia. After training, they can now use ICTs - When the COVID-19 situation came, it forced them to think ‘OK we have these facilities but how can we use them to reach out to our learners'

In the end, Musaazi decided to keep the vital tools out of class for fear of contradicting the guidelines.

Then in March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni announced a total lockdown, sending learning to a halt. Schools and universities remained closed for two years, leaving 15 million students with no education.

Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports (MoE) suggested delivering lessons through radio and television but that was not effective. The ministry turned to Enabel, the development agency of Belgium. It developed and implemented a distance learning strategy known as the TTE Sandbox to ensure that learning continued by training educators at the five national teachers colleges (NTCs).

 

Teaching using a sandbox

Teachers in training had to undertake a crash programme on how to use technology for teaching instead of the traditional methods. They were taught how to use digital tools such as screen-casting, podcasting, video conferencing and e-books or padlets.

Ironically, Enabel had suggested using technology in teaching at NTCs in 2019 but veteran lecturers were reluctant, remembers Virginie Hallet, a portfolio manager at the organisation.

“They said ‘we were born before computers, we don’t know anything about computers. Why do you want us to use ICTS in delivering lectures’?” she told IPS.

Andrew Tabura, a principal education officer in charge of post-secondary and secondary teacher education at the MoE, told IPS that while the colleges had already been supplied with ICT tools, the lecturers had technology phobia. After training, they can now use ICTs. “When the COVID-19 situation came, it forced them to think ‘OK we have these facilities but how can we use them to reach out to our learners,” he said.

According to Hallet, 62% of learners who were at home in different parts of Uganda were able to follow classes via the TTE Sandbox. “It meant that education was able to continue… So really to us, the sandbox was like a mind shift from resistance to total buy-in,” she said. “To us, this is a major success.”

At Kabale National Teacher’s College 400 km south of Kampala, IPS found lecturers still using the TTE Sandbox and other online tools to teach pre-service teachers close to a year after colleges were reopened.

 

Teaching teachers to use ICTs

It’s early morning. IPS has been granted access to one of the lectures at NTC Kabale. The punishing cold from the Rwenzori Mountains finds its way into the room but warm-hearted learners seem unbothered as Molly Nakimera delivers her lecture. The room has an overhead projector and a set of loudspeakers. A number of cables linked to a laptop computer are visible. Nakimera projects a role-play video about education management, then the class is invited to comment.

Afterwards, Nakimera tells IPS that previously it would take more than three weeks to complete such a course unit, but using ICTs like videos and podcasts means less time is consumed and outcomes are better.

“I teach a very big class. Yet I had failed to figure out a method that would help me to work with big numbers. I used to shout a lot as a teacher. Sometimes I could feel like I’m stretching myself. And sometimes I could not complete the syllabus the way I’m doing it with the sandbox,” she says.

Nakimera adds that while before she knew how to type Word documents, she didn’t know anything about podcasting and producing videos for teaching. To her, the smartphone was for placing calls and checking emails but she has realised that it is actually a small computer, and a key teaching and learning tool too. “These are new things that made me feel more interested, that made my work easy, made me feel that I should become more serious,” added the teacher.

Physics and mathematics lecturer Mujungu Herbert told IPS that before the pandemic every lecturer was using what he described as traditional methods of teaching, which included ‘chalk and talk’ lectures and, sometimes, laboratory equipment or materials from the environment. “With the TTE Sandbox, I have noticed that the learners are more active during the lessons. The teaching is more learner-centred than teacher-centred,” he explained.

Asked why he had not previously embraced ICTs, Herbert said he and other lecturers did not see the reasons for using them and that the pedagogy in place did not include how to teach using ICTs or how to apply for online learning or teaching.

 

The only option during lockdown

“I would only get to a computer at the time of preparing or setting an exam. I had not heard of Zoom before the pandemic. But while we were in lockdown, we realised that the learners were away from us. The only way to access them was to use ICT tools,” added Herbert.

With such tools, lecturers were able to enrol learners to attend virtually, run quizzes and assign tasks like assignments. Classes were interactive. Herbert did note that some students who lacked access to the Internet would miss classes, while those who had not invested in smartphones or tablets would find it hard to access online resources.

France Ruhuma, a student majoring in biology and chemistry at NTC Kabale, is one of the cohort of students who were introduced to the TTE Sandbox and have continued to use it after schools reopened.

“Now, most of my lifestyle has been shifted online. I don’t have to carry a lot of books. I just get to the sandbox, click on the links and get access to interactive videos,” Ruhuma told IPS. He added that videos packed with illustrations and diagrams are far better to learn from than the old chalkboard and teacher illustration methods.

When he spoke to IPS, Ruhuma had just returned from a teaching practice at a school near Kabale. He said that he realised that veteran teachers were yet to adopt ICT, while not all learners had access to mobile phones. “So as an upcoming teacher, I’m leaving the college when I’m equipped with ICT skills. But the challenge is that in most of these schools, teachers are computer illiterate and the school environment is not prepared for ICTs in teaching,” he said.

MoE Officer Tabura told IPS that the ministry is developing a policy and guidelines to integrate ICTs into education. “It will give guidance to schools on how ICT facilities can be used because there is a fear that teachers or learners will misuse the ICT gadgets,” he said.

According to Tabura, the TTE Sandbox was a small innovation that was developed to reach learners during the lockdown, but it has opened many doors for lecturers. “ I know it requires Internet for example. And that can be a challenge. But if you have Internet, this is something that can be replicated all over the world,” he said.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Sep 7 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The American author Sue Monk Kidd’s award-winning novel The Book of Longings has a sensational beginning, despite the simplicity of the phraseology: It starts: “I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus bin Joseph of Nazareth”. It would be impossible for anyone not to swallow this bait with enormous curiosity, and follow through with reading what is well and truly a ‘page-turner’. The book is crafted to be breezy and exciting, necessary perhaps to better deliver its message. This historical work of fiction was the subject of discussion at a recent seminar organized by the Dhaka -based ‘The Reading Circle’. The event was held in a ‘hybrid’ format, an experiment of the Circle in consonance with the evolving practices of the Covid era. There was a core of participants in Dhaka, and other members joining in from London, Paris, and Singapore. Chaired by Professor Razia Khan, the list of speakers and commentators included Niaz Zaman, Nusrat Huq, Tanveerul Haque, Ameenah Ahmed, Shahruk Rahman, Asfa Husain, Nazmun Nahar, Sarazeen Ahana and myself. The following essay is based on my remarks made on the occasion.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

The novel is about Ana, a woman born in the first century in Galilee, Palestine, who in the book is the mythical wife of Jesus of Nazareth. It is about how she longs to shape her own destiny at a time when women were perceived as no more than mere silent chattels, or possessions. To have Jesus as a character in a literary work, and yet not as the main protagonist, would require huge skill on the part of any author, which in view of the discussants, Kidd was able to demonstrate. The challenge is compounded when he is to be shorn of his divinity and presented as a simple human being as he was in the book; as a husband, a brother, and a son, not of God, but of a woman. The writer picks up this intellectual gauntlet, and seems to be able to pull it off.

That is mainly because her work is not about faith, but about feminism. She has a theme, and despite the biblical backdrop, it is not theology. It is one that has been a center of aspiration of half of humanity through ages, of women in a world dominated by men. It is a simple one, but historically has been one of the most difficult goals of humanity to achieve. It is that women should have the equal rights and opportunities as men. Just as it should, in deference to its importance at this time and age,this topic had featured time and again in the Reading Circle’s discussions . It was reflected in the yearnings of Briseis when the Circle read Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. Or in the passionate writings of Virginia Woolf when it discussed her A Room of One’s Own. And now in the longings of Ana in Sue Monk Kidd’s book. I would like to refer in this connection to a recent part-autobiographical tome by Glennon Doyle entitled “Untamed“. Having felt like a caged animal much of her life, Glennon Doyle has written about how she had learnt to break society’s rules, upend expectations, and rebuild her emotions and life. She was inspired by a Cheetah in a zoo!

Ana represents a prototype different from many others of her sex, though there is indeed a lot of Ana in a lot of women. She is wild, free spirited and untamed. She is intensely modern, a ‘woke’ person by contemporary standards, entertaining radical ideas about societal change. She even tries to shun motherhood, believed then, as now, to be a blessed state for every woman. She tries it by secretly using herbal contraceptives, which would be unthinkable in Nazareth, particularly in a household all Christendom was to worship as the ‘Holy Family’. She is extremely worldly, and not at all spiritual. Her prayer inscribed in an incantation bowl gifted to her by an aunt, is not about any kind of redemption from sin. Instead, she seeks blessings for the ‘largeness’ in her, a very individualistic longing, and seemingly Un-Christian. She is by no means a Mary Sue, the perfect woman in literature, one without failings or flaws. And yet the author shows Jesus as bestowing on her love, empathy, and understanding. And who can be more Christian in spirit than the Nazarene himself? So, is Sue Monk Kidd seeking to obtain for Ana’s behavior the highest possible social sanction?

Now for the character in the book of Jesus himself. The characterization of Jesus must have been the most difficult challenge to our writer. In Biblical terms, Jesus’ ministry to spread ‘the Word’ did not really begin till he was thirty. But in Christian belief emanating from the New Testament he was already divine when born, recognized by the three Magis who came to worship him with gifts at his birth! In the novel, Mary hardly behaves like the keeper of what would be the greatest secret on earth. She provides no clue as to Jesus’ divinity, remains totally mum about her experience at the Annunciation. This was (it’s not in the book but in the Bible) when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and announced the incarnation of baby-Christ in her womb, stating “Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee!” and a startled Mary, quickly regaining composure, responded ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord’!

Some Church-oriented critics of the book, who, while admiring the work of fiction, have opined that a Christian reader to better appreciate the book should be well-grounded in the Bible, otherwise he or she would be apt to misunderstand the essence of the contents. Be that as it may, Jesus here comes through, not as a leader of the Alpha- Male type like the mighty Achilles of the Trojan wars, but a Beta-male, compassionate and forgiving, who leads by kindness. He believes the kingdom of God will come by acts of love, rather than by the power of the sword.

This view is not at all shared by Judas, the betrayer of Christ, a complex personality in the book in which he is the adopted brother of Ana, apart from being a friend and later, disciple of Jesus. In the Biblical narration Judas gives Jesus away to his captors ‘for thirty pieces of silver’. In this book he is pictured as a political firebrand, a zealot who thinks for the Kingdom of God to come, the Romans must be driven away from Palestine, if need be, by the sword. He views Jesus’ mild ways as an impediment to his objective, and hence takes steps to remove him. There also have been interpretations of Judas, in some revisionist thinking, as someone who helps Christ fulfill his destiny by dying in the cross for the sins of man. Carl Trueman in his epochal work “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” has noted that radical thinkers and writers have driven the rapidly changing cultural mores in the Christian ethos with their ideas in recent times. Perhaps our writer can be seen as one such.

Sue Monk Kidd’s deference to tradition, however, is reflected in the way she depicts Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kidd shows Mary to be pious and pristine, truly without fault, as a woman, a mother, or even as a mother -in-law! Possibly the author uses a modicum of circumspection by not pushing the envelope too far. For me a tad surprising was that, perhaps being an American and not English, the author barely mentions a character, without developing it at all, who later emerges as a prime figure in English perceptions. It is Joseph of Arimathea who appears in this book only at Christ’s entombment. English literary tradition has it that Joseph of Arimathea had hosted the boychild Christ in the Mendip mountains in Somerset, which I had the occasion to visit.

This myth of the boy-Christ’s visit to England of course seeks to fill the void in our knowledge of Jesus’s life during his boyhood and youth, just as our author does in her book. The poet Blake highlights it in his New Jerusalem, England’s unofficial National Anthem when he rhetorically asks: “Did those feet in ancient times tread upon England’s mountains green?“. Since then, Jerusalem in English has become a metaphor for ‘heaven’, a blissful state in which many Britishers would like to see their country to be!

However, the message of our author lay, not in theology nor in history but in a somewhat fanciful response of our author to feminist intellectual and, at times, emotional urges. If Jesus had a wife, she would be the most silenced person on earth! Sue Monk Kidd only sought to give her a voice. This is indeed also the voice of everywoman, everywhere, and in every age!

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President and Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

An Afghan girl in the Nawabad District of Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammad Haya Burhan
 
A year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan has led to a deterioration in the lives of women and girls, affecting all aspects of their human rights, according to a report from three UN agencies. August 2022

By Saber Azam
GENEVA, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

Afghanistan is where history has taken it! The Trump-Taliban “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” signed on 29 February 2020, is deemed by many as the submission of a superpower to a group that had perpetrated acts of extreme ferocity and terror.

The withdrawal of Western countries in August 2021 was the logical ramification of that “peace deal” and the dilapidation of the aspirations of Afghans who believed in democracy, respect for human rights, good governance, the rule of law, and many other attributes that had taken rightfully free societies to fame and gain.

The return of the Taliban to power reserves an unpredictable future for the Central and South Asia region and puts the entire world on alert. Western assertions during the past year that the religious clerics “had changed” or their regime “would improve with time” tallied the same dictions twenty years ago about the corrupt Karzai government.

Never fact-based, such postulations were not clear-sighted and cogent from various perspectives.

However, the Taliban articulate what the Western capitals desire to heed. In addition, falsity and negation of truth have become the daily practice of their leadership. A quick review of the situation since 15 August 2021 reveals drastic reversals in the country.

A – Human Rights and Humanitarian Situations

Human rights, particularly those of women and girls, are the prime prey of the Taliban. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Independent Human Rights Commission were instantly banned. Instead, the Ministry of Virtues is established to implement archaic dogmas that they attribute to Islamic Sharia.

While children are permitted to attend school, the prospects of secondary and higher education and job opportunity remain unattainable to the female population. In addition to the imposition of total body cover, women are restricted from traveling, visiting a doctor, or reaching a health clinic without a recognized male chaperone, who must be the father, brother, or husband.

In retaliation to the nascent resistance that grows in strength in Central and Northern provinces, reports of young women and girls sexually assaulted and raped by the Taliban militants surface daily. In addition, collective punishment, torture, assassination, and expulsion/forced displacement of civilians, replaced by Taliban sympathizers brought from elsewhere, have increased.

Civil society activists are forbidden, and their demonstrations are viciously suppressed. Many human dignity advocates left the country. Others are arrested, tortured, and in some cases, assassinated.

Despite the Taliban’s impressive repression machinery, dauntless women still express their demands for access to freedom, higher education, and job, either in closed premises or in public, at the cost of their lives. One woman recently mentioned that “their struggle is against submission, dishonor, or suicide!”

Freedom of expression and independent media also befell targets of the new regime. Journalists and bloggers are not free anymore as they have to obey strict guidelines imposed by the Taliban. Reporters, scholars, and artists who freely expressed their opinion exercise no more such privilege. Some were arrested, and others were tortured and even killed. Culture has not been spared.

The Ministry of Virtues prohibited listening to music or performing shows. They focus on the size of men’s beards, people’s sartorial, parting men and women, and preventing unaccompanied ladies from using public transportation.

Ethnic, religious, and linguistic discriminations are manifest. Decision makers around the country are Sunni Pashtuns. The Hazara are deliberately targeted, justifying calls for genocide against them.

At the same time, the Taliban “impose” Pashtu in Dari-speaking provinces. Subsequently, conversations with Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, and others appear quasi impossible, leading to systematic and senseless harassment.

The Taliban rebuffed recognition of the Shia Jaffary doctrine. Following the Jewish, the remaining Afghan Hindu and Sikh populations had no alternative but to depart the country. The few Christians face unbearable hardship.

The humanitarian situation is devastating. Most educated people lost their jobs and were replaced by religious clerics. Citizens depend on the alms of those residing outside Afghanistan.

In addition to repeated droughts, the recent destructive floods around the country have further deteriorated the conditions of ordinary people. The Taliban misappropriating international humanitarian aid has been reported in multiple instances, and sites.

B – Security Situation

The Taliban are a divided organization. Their leadership does not seem to have authority over the foot soldiers. Despite their spiritual leader’s amnesty to former security officers, hundreds of them have been brutally assassinated.

Resistance fronts in Panjshir, Baghlan, Takhar, Kapisa, Parwan, Badakhshan, Sari Pol, and many other provinces have gained strength. The Taliban suffer hefty losses in these mountainous areas.

Subsequently, they target civilians, including women and children, accusing them of helping the resistance and apply the “Discovery Doctrine.” Some already speak of war crimes.

In addition, over 100 incidents of explosive weapons have been recorded in the country. Recruitment by the Taliban of youngsters in the south to fight in the north will inevitably deepen the divide in Afghanistan. Reports of one million internally displaced and many more fleeing the country seem credible.

Fatal border clashes have occurred with neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Despite the Taliban’s denial, the presence of notorious regional and international terrorist organizations in Afghanistan cannot be refuted, transforming this country into a haven for evildoers.

The killing of Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Kabul supports the above assertion. Some foreign militants fight alongside the Taliban; others pursue their specific objectives. Confrontation with numerous resistance fronts would likely intensify in the near future.

C – Political Situation

Similar to communists, the Taliban are inspired by deleterious ideologies. They derive their philosophy, policies, and actions from “self-defined” doctrines that are often contradictory even to the fundamentals of Islam. International norms for human dignity are ignored. The regime’s effort for international legitimacy has so far dramatically failed.

The willingness of the world community to provide humanitarian aid has been presented to the Afghan people as “de facto recognition” of their regime. The West bears a heavy responsibility for the current situation.

Their capitals deliberately trusted the Taliban rhetoric to justify their failure and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, the current contentious debate in the UN Security Council on the travel of the Taliban leaders may be a sign of change in the right direction.

There seems to be no place for democratic institutions in the Islamic Emirate. The “Supreme Leader,” assisted by a selected group of “religious scholars,” defines and decides everything. Under such circumstances, it would be challenging for the International Community to recognize the Taliban regime.

D- Economic Situation

Prior to the arrival of the Taliban, there was no viable economy in Afghanistan. Lack of proper vision and planning, rampant corruption, mismanagement, nepotism of the rulers, politicians, and senior managers, and many other misdeeds had gangrened public and private sectors. Since August 2021, the situation has worsened.

The Taliban appointed religious clerics to run each sector of the government (security, political, social, economic, financial, humanitarian, public relations, etc.) Those who could assist have either been sidelined or left the country. Afghanistan is in a terrible economic situation.

Despite numerous hydroelectric dams, Central Asian countries provide electricity to Afghans. Kazakhstan and India have provided significant quantities of wheat. And the International Community continues providing humanitarian assistance to delay or avert a looming calamity.

Conclusions

A new corrupt “Taliban elite” is being formed. They desperately lobby the Western countries for the sustention of their regime. Afghans have lost trust in bilateral or multilateral foreign security, humanitarian, and development actions.

World superpowers seem to compete to assert their supremacy in Central and South Asia. It can lead to another prolonged phase of instability! Though it is difficult to predict the corollaries of the current situation, the following would constitute the basis of sound assertions:

1 – Afghanistan is central to peace, stability, and security in Central and South Asia.

2 – The Taliban cannot govern Afghanistan alone. Their zealous effort to convince the Afghan people and the International Community that they are the right choice to govern the country failed. However, they would not share power. Therefore, insecurity will increase, and soon they will lose territory to the resistance. Lawlessness will intensify, and Afghanistan could face a “fractured country-like” situation. Human rights and humanitarian situations would severely worsen.

3 – Superpowers may destabilize each other’s interests through diverse internal and foreign groups rooted in Afghanistan. Neighboring countries would try to safeguard their interests using ethnic and/or religious affinities. The country could face the serious challenge of disintegration and the region the possibility of lengthy conflicts.

4 – To ensure that Afghanistan poses no threat, its entire political, social, and economic structures must alter with the sincere assistance of the International Community. The Afghan society has dramatically changed; previous government formulas and leaders proved futile.

For nearly three centuries, the centralized government has not served the population equitably. The so-called “peace agreements” and “all-inclusive governments” never proved efficient as they did not address the root causes of the repeated conflicts.

There is an urgent need to invest in a new generation of leaders from within the country and support them to identify the main grounds of dispute, disparity, injustice, and unhappiness. New good-governance formulas must be agreed upon. A unique Afghan-led peace process in which national, regional, and international dimensions of the puzzle are addressed must be sponsored and backed unequivocally. Any foreign interference would cause disruption and further deteriorate the situation.

The link to Afghanistan: What Went Wrong https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/08/afghanistan-went-wrong/.

Saber Azam is a former official of the United Nations and author of Soraya: The Other Princess, Hell’s Mouth: A Journey to the Heart of West African jungles, and numerous political and scientific articles [https://www.saberazam.com].

IPS UN Bureau

 

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María del Carmen Aguirre, 52, stands outside her home and pizza business in El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Her daughters send her remittances from the United States, but they use traditional systems and not the bitcoin electronic wallet, after this country became the first to make bitcoins legal tender on Sept. 7, 2021. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

A year after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decided to make El Salvador the first country where bitcoin is legal tender, the experiment has so far failed, as few of the original plan’s objectives have been achieved.

This result was foreseeable since Sept. 7, 2021, when Bukele’s government decided, out of the blue and without any precedent, to make bitcoin legal tender through a law approved by the legislature, controlled by members of the ruling party, Nuevas Ideas.

The aims of that decision were never explained in detail in an official plan, but were basically set out by Bukele, in power since 2019, through his tweets, as well as by officials who merely repeated what the president, given to governing with an authoritarian style, in which he is the only authorized voice for almost everything, has said."In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general.” -- Tatiana Marroquín

“Unfortunately there is no formal document or official information from the government in which the specific objectives of the measure have been laid out,” economist Tatiana Marroquín told IPS.

But judging by the president’s announcements, and by communications between the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which requested in January 2022 that the measure be annulled, several aims can be highlighted, such as boosting financial inclusion and tourism and improving the country’s “brand”, said Marroquín.

Disenchantment with the Chivo Wallet

The government claimed that bitcoin as legal tender would reduce the gap of unbanked people, which is around 70 percent of the population.

That segment would begin to carry out digital financial transactions with several clicks from their cell phones, according to the government.

However, because much of the information on bitcoin transactions has been classified by the authorities, it is unknown, for example, what percentage of the population is still actively using the Chivo Wallet, the digital wallet created by the government, and in what amounts.

Chivo is basically slang for “cool” in El Salvador.

It is known that at the beginning of the cryptocurrency’s implementation, around four million people downloaded the application, but basically they did so in order to collect a 30 dollar bonus granted by the government to promote the use of bitcoins.

But by this point it is clear that very few people are still using the application, judging by what you hear and see in the towns and cities of this Central American country of 6.7 million people.

“In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general,” Marroquin said.

Some businesses use them to receive payments, but there are very few transactions, analyst Ricardo Chavarría, director of Renta Asset Management, a company that manages investment funds in the international market, told IPS.

Nor has the government managed to convince Salvadorans living abroad to use the app to send family remittances to El Salvador, one of its main aims when it dove headfirst into bitcoins.

Each year, the country receives around seven billion dollars in remittances, representing 26 percent of GDP.

In August 2021, a month before the approval of the so-called Bitcoin Law, Bukele said in a tweet that Salvadorans pay around 400 million dollars in commissions to send money to their families in El Salvador.

That amount of money would be saved by sending it through the Chivo Wallet.

One of the Chivo ATMs scattered throughout El Salvador, in an attempt by the government to make it easier for the public to make transactions in bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that is legal tender in El Salvador, but which very few are using a year after its implementation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not even the diaspora trusts the cryptocurrency

However, according to official figures, only 1.5 percent of remittances were sent through e-wallets in the first quarter of 2022, a percentage far below what the government expected.

This was probably influenced by the high volatility of cryptoassets such as bitcoin, which is currently going through a crisis in its value, dubbed as a crypto winter.

Bitcoin’s price plunged to 19,813 dollars at the close on Sept. 5, well below last year’s peak, when it surpassed the 60,000 dollar mark.

And the Salvadoran population abroad, especially in the United States, where more than three million live, is reluctant to bet on something so volatile and, therefore, risky.

“People are extremely careful, despite the political capital of the president (Bukele), the same people over there (Salvadorans in the United States) do not risk their money,” said Chavarría.

That is the case of María del Carmen Aguirre, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who runs a small pizza business in El Zonte, a coastal community on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, some 50 kilometers southeast of San Salvador, part of the municipality of Chiltiupán, in the central department of La Libertad.

Aguirre told IPS that she regularly receives remittances from her two daughters who live in the United States, in San Francisco, California, but neither of them send the money through Chivo Wallet or any other similar platform.

“They send it only through the bank. It seems that they are quite afraid. ‘What happens if we send 200 dollars and at that moment the price of bitcoin goes down?’ they say to me,” said Aguirre, in her pizzeria.

El Zonte is a beach area known for its surfing and because an unusual community effort to use the cryptocurrency was launched there, about two years before the government decided to try bitcoins.

This initiative was promoted thanks to a donor, who remains anonymous, who gave money to carry out works in the town, but on the condition that those who worked on them would be paid in bitcoins and not in dollars, the legal tender in El Salvador since 2001.

That still raises suspicions: why would anyone be interested in promoting the crypto-asset in a poor coastal town, with dirt roads and modest shacks, although there are also some luxury hotels, hostels and restaurants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families in El Zonte received, on several occasions, 30-dollar vouchers from the mystery donor to use for bitcoin transactions.

“They gave us the bonus three or four times so we could go to the stores that already handled bitcoin,” Aguirre said.

Chavarría said the cryptocurrency is probably at the end of the so-called crypto winter, and he expects it to rise again in the future.

“For me, in a medium to long term horizon it is going to recover and it is going to win out,” he argued.

A street corner in the town of El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, which became the place where a project to promote the use of bitcoins in the country started, before the government of Nayib Bukele gave the cryptocurrency legal status in September 2021. Most businesses in this town accept them as a form of payment, but in the rest of the country the use of bitcoins is marginal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not just gangs

One thing that Marroquín the economist and financial analyst Chavarría agreed on is that, with the passage of the Bitcoin Law, El Salvador made the global headlines about something other than the recurring issue of gang violence, which used to be the only issue of interest to the international press.

In this sense, it could be argued that the country’s image improved somewhat on the world news agenda.

“The fact that El Salvador is on the news map and that it appears in Bloomberg, in The New York Times, in Spain’s El País, when the only topic before was the gangs, is good news for me as a Salvadoran,” said Chavarría.

Marroquín concurred that “El Salvador is undoubtedly no longer known as it used to be solely for violence.”

She added that the adoption of the bitcoin has also bolstered tourism in the country by attracting a segment of visitors interested in the cryptocurrency, although it remains to be seen whether this improvement will have an impact on poor communities near tourist spots.

The bitcoin symbol can be seen everywhere in El Zonte, a coastal community in southern El Salvador, such as on this 1970s Volkswagen van or ‘furgoneta’, called the Bitcoineta. The implementation of the cryptocurrency in this country has not gone well and so far has been a setback for President Nayib Bukele, although the outlook could change if the price of the cryptoasset rallies. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A cloak of secrecy

The government has been harshly criticized for the secrecy with which it has handled not only the adoption of the bitcoin but also other important issues about which the public has demanded information, since they have involved the use of public funds for which the Bukele administration has not been held accountable.

When it has been made available, Information has arrived in dribs and drabs.

It is known that the government has purchased 2,381 bitcoins, on which it has spent 106.04 million dollars. But when related investments are factored in, such as the ATMs placed at various points around the country, the total investment exceeds 300 million dollars.

“There is a big black cloak surrounding the government’s use of public funds,” Marroquín said.

Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives. Credit: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

Both mainstream media, international bodies and human rights defenders continue to rightly denounce the Taliban’s inhuman abuses against the Afghan people’s basic rights, in particular those of women and girls.

In doing so, they use a similar vocabulary, saying that since the Taliban “seized the power” on 15 August 2021 everything has collapsed. Shouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the power was “knowingly” “delivered” to them by the United States of America following negotiations between the two parties under Donald Trump’s administration?

How come the Taliban managed, in just weeks, to push Afghanistan’s economy into “free fall” as defined by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, already in December 2021 - that's only four months since the power was handed to them?

Other statements talk about how the Taliban’s regime has in just a few months erased with a stroke of a pen all the “great achievements” made over 20 years of US and allies’ massive military attacks on Afghanistan’s unarmed population.

 

Has all this happened in just 12 months?

How come the Taliban managed in just weeks to push Afghanistan’s economy into “free fall” as defined by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, already in December 2021 –that’s only four months since the power was handed to them?

How come that in such a relatively short time the Taliban have hurled into hunger as many as 23 million people – around 60% of the total population?

Have they in one year pushed over 6 million Afghans away to neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran?

Then, how come that “Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives,” as stated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM)?

“Since August 2021, nearly all Afghans have plunged into poverty and the country has been facing the risk of systemic collapse,” states IOM.

Add to this the reiterated UN disparate appeals for funding to provide “lifesaving” assistance to 21 million Afghans or 50% of the whole population.

By the way: weren’t the United States who helped, funded –and armed– the Taliban “moderate” predecessors, over the 70s and 80s, to expel the Soviet Union’s troops from Afghanistan?

Weren’t the US and allies aware that the “narco lords” in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, have also been providing money and weapons to the Taliban in exchange for protection?

 

Operation “Enduring Freedom”

Whatever the case is, the Afghan war narrative should also remind us of other “great achievements” made during the two-decade-long “Enduring Freedom” operation launched against this country by the then US president George W. Bush and allies.

Has this Operation Enduring Freedom really brought food, health, education, safety, democracy, stability… and freedom?

Regardless of the arguments used to “justify” them, wars are also a “good” business.

Indeed new weapons have been tested; killing-drones perfected, troops casualties lessened; fully-equipped private armies made big profits as did the giant weapons industry. And the strategic concept of “war on terror” has definitely been settled.

 

Another under-reported war trophy

Anyway, there seem to be other under-reported “great achievements.” One of them appears to be Afghanistan’s treasure of precious mineral resources that the technology and war business needs.

Just see this: the 2019 official report: Mining Sector Roadmap, published by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum [PDF], and introduced by the then Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, states the following, among other facts:

– Afghanistan has “extensive” mineral resources, located in every province of the country;

– Afghanistan has world-class deposits of iron, ore, copper, gold, rare-earth minerals, and a host of other natural resources… And oil and gas;

– Other minerals include aluminium, gemstones; lead, zinc, mercury; chromite; sulphur; hydrocarbons; asbestos; marble, lapis lazuli, emeralds and rubies; …

– Afghanistan holds more than a trillion dollars worth of mineral resources;

– Afghanistan “must’‘ leverage the expertise of the “private sector“ to harness the potential of its mineral sector, the official report highlights.

This Afghan government official report was published in 2019, i.e., while the United States and allies were still ruling the country.

 

Too many questions left unanswered

Just take a look at what a brilliant analyst and Nobel Peace Laureate, John Scales Avery, wrote in his recent must-read article: Making Money from War.

“If the aim of the “War on Terror” had been to rid the world of the threat of terrorism, acts like illegal assassination using drones would have been counterproductive, since they create many more terrorists than they destroy,” said Scales Avery, chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy.

“But since the real aim is to produce a state of perpetual war, thus increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex, such methods are the best imaginable. Urinating on Afghan corpses or burning the Koran or murderous night-time raids on civilian homes also help to promote the real goal, perpetual war,” said Scales Avery.

Now back to the more than a trillion dollars worth of Afghanistan’s mineral resources –those that are much required by the giant technology and other business: would it be too naive to connect the dots?

Ukrainian artist Mykola Zhuravel has used art to communicate the horrors of war since Russian’s occupation of Crimea in 2014.

By Sania Farooqui
New Delhi, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

“I must say that I had a premonition of a war with Russia in 2014 when Russian troops had started to occupy Crimea,” said Mykola Zhuravel, a contemporary painter and sculptor, in an interview with IPS. Zhuravel, with his partner, Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel, have used art to communicate and express the horrors of the war since 2014.

Their work has been presented at the Viennese Biennale, and they have exhibited a multimedia project titled Invasion Redux, which is poignantly used to transform their memories of the 2014 uprising and its aftermath into vivid abstract portrayals – artworks, sculpture, photography and films.

Artists Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel

For many, war and displacement in Ukraine began almost eight years ago, when Russia first started to invade Crimea, warning of a full-scale war and vast troop buildup near the Ukrainian border. They use their art as a mirror of Ukrainian resistance, “the invasion project is my reflection, as an artist on the tragic events associated with Russian aggression, where I showed the true image of the occupier through an artistic lens,” said Zhuravel.

Invasion Redux was first presented in 2016 in New York at the Ukrainian Institute of America, showcasing surreal images of “an invader and an occupier”, their aim to show a mass audience “the truth and warn them of the imminent dangers not only to Ukraine but the entire western world with a nuclear strike,” said Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“Until this terrible war that began in 2022, I lived with my family in Kyiv, we had a studio in the city centre, and as a photographer, I regularly held photo shoots and worked on art projects. But in just one moment, our whole life seems to have turned upside down. The war took away our dream, everything that we built,” Tishchenko-Zhuravel said.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, attacking the country from the north, south and east and surging troops towards the capital Kyiv making it Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. Almost 193 days later, the magnitude of the ongoing conflict has “wrought death on a mass scale, displaced hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians and forced millions to leave the country.”

Zhuravel said the morning of February 24 was a day when he and his family went into a state of shock, something they are yet to recover from. They had little time pack their bags and move to a safer spot.

Artwork by Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“It was a horror. That morning there were cannon shots being hit on Kyiv, sirens echoed through the city, and people were rushing to hide in bomb shelters,” Zhuravel says. “We had less than an hour to pack our lives in one suitcase and leave. We started by heading to the west of Ukraine, and from there on, it has been quite a journey till we found our way to Canada.

“We didn’t know how to react, but the instinct of self-preservation worked, and we then left for the west of Ukraine, crossed the border with Poland and then flew to Canada. All I took was a small suitcase, a camera, years of experience and faith that everything would be fine,” added Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have found ways to respond to the war, as reported here by TIME. The opposition included mass protest rallies with blue and yellow flags in the cities where Russian forces had already entered; unarmed civilians blocked roads and lay on the ground in front of Russian tanks, and girls threw Molotov cocktails at Russian military vehicles from car windows. Women hit enemy drones with jars of pickled tomatoes, and civilians united to help Ukrainian soldiers and their fellow citizens affected by the war. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in defence of their country surprised many, and their resistance continued even when they had to leave the country.

In April 2022, the Zhuravels held their first exhibition in Canada to continue telling the Ukraine story. The Canadian National Exhibition Association presented Invasion Redux at the CNE’S Withrow Common Gallery in Canada, through which Zhuravel says he will “continue telling the world truth about the military conflict through his artistic images and means as well as continue to glorify Ukrainian culture in Canada and rest of the world.”

Dasha Smovzh, designer and founder of Virna.

The war also threatened another artist’s life, a fashion designer working with her team in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine. Dasha Smovzh, the founder of Virna, a clothing brand that employed many local Ukrainians and designers, had to flee when Russian troops bombed her city.

“We lost everything, Kherson, which is now almost occupied by the Russian army. We simply had to leave. We just packed our bags, kept our work documents, took cash and ran away as far as we could from the war,” Dasha Smovzh said.

According to this report, until the war in Ukraine began, a generation of Ukrainian brands flourished in recent years as trade with Europe had eased. However, The World Bank has now estimated the Russian invasion to shrink Ukraine’s economy by 45 percent this year.

Like many others, Smovzh had to pause production as many factories were destroyed and shipments were delayed.

Dasha Smovzh with her team at Virna production house.

“All our family, relatives, and employees are still in Kherson. They have no work. They are struggling due to the ongoing bombings and attacks; sometimes, they have to turn off water and electricity. We did move a few of our clothes to storage and are trying to resume selling again now. None of it is easy or done in the usual way.

“My husband and two-year-old son are safe here in Canada, and we are grateful to the country for their support and opportunity. I can only hope that I can bring Ukrainian culture and beauty here in Canada. Kherson is our home, and I hope we can go back someday.

The uncertainty and fear brought by the war have threatened and impacted lives in ways one can imagine – splitting families and stranding many in Ukrainian war zones. At the same time, others escaped to other countries across or across Europe to seek safety. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions of Ukraine, including repeated rapes, unlawful violence and threats against civilians.

The large-scale displacements being seen could have lasting consequences for generations to come. By early August 2022, more than 6.6 million refugees from Ukraine had been recorded across Europe, and 10.3 million people, mostly women and children, had crossed borders from Ukraine to the neighbouring countries in the European Union. More than 5 million children need humanitarian assistance. This requires an immediate and steep rise in humanitarian needs. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will need relief and protection. At the same time, more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees may continue needing protection and assistance in neighbouring countries in the coming months.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A flooded village in Matiari, in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Credit: UNICEF/Asad Zaidi
 
The scale of the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan is unprecedented, with a third of the country under water, the UN warned on September 22. With more than 33 million people impacted, that represents 15 per cent of the total Pakistani population, said Dr. Palitha Mahipala, World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in the country.

By Robert Sandford
HAMILTON, Canada, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

Monsoon flooding has occurred often in Pakistan but never to the catastrophic extent presently happening.

A distinguishing feature of this disaster is that no one blames the flooding’s unprecedented intensity and destructiveness on anything but climate heating. The clear link between the warming atmosphere and the frequency and duration of extreme weather events of this scale should not be lost on the rest of the world.

Pakistan’s monsoon-related flooding in 2010 and 2011 was blamed by several observers on land-use changes that had altered natural drainage patterns, with some commenting that Pakistan and other countries most at risk from climate disruption were also the most dysfunctional.

Five years later, however, researchers discerned the fingerprints of climate change all over those floods, which killed 2,500 people, displaced 27 million and caused economic losses estimated at USD 7.4 billion, setting back Pakistan’s development severely.

Climate science confirmed that global warming was accelerating the global hydrological cycle and causing the loss of its relative stability and natural variability — “hydrological stationarity” — on which we had come to depend.

Simple atmospheric science tells us that warmer air holds more water, about 7% more per degree Celsius or about 4% per degree Fahrenheit.

In addition, satellite sensing has enabled us to recognize the existence and dynamics of atmospheric rivers — corridors of intense winds and moist air measured at 400-500 kilometres across and thousands of kilometres long.

These atmospheric rivers can carry the equivalent of 10 times the average daily discharge of North America’s massive St. Lawrence River.

Climate heating is causing these atmospheric rivers to become more powerful, more devastating, and more unpredictable.

And when they touch down, they can cause rainfall of never-before-imagined intensity and duration, as experienced not just by Pakistan, but in highly developed countries including Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

As this is written, a third of Pakistan is under water, at least 1,000 people are known to be dead, at least a million homes have been destroyed and 33 million people have become climate refugees.

So just how much more intense was this year’s supercharged monsoon in Pakistan? In July, 2010, a record 257 millimetres of rain was recorded in one day. This year, Karachi recorded more than 400 millimetres in under 24 hours.

Some 680 millimetres fell in Sindh Province, more than five times the average, with similar records set elsewhere. And it is not over.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know what a flood disaster would look like if 400 or 500 or 600 millimetres fell on any part of the world in just 24 hours.

And it is not just the behaviour of the monsoon that is changing. Weather patterns in Pakistan are increasingly unpredictable. This year, for example, the country essentially went from winter conditions directly into the intense heat of summer, which in much of Pakistan can mean temperatures of up to 50°C, more often now for weeks at a time.

The cumulative and compound effects of this year’s whipsawing heat waves and hitherto unimaginable monsoon flooding have left the country on its heels.

Government officials argue that Pakistan is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere. Yes, they admit that corruption, unenforced building codes and rebuilding in known floodplains have had an impact on the country’s vulnerability, as they have in earlier floods.

But Pakistan, they note, is responsible for barely 1% of the global greenhouse emissions causing the climate change that is so clearly responsible for ferociously more powerful monsoons. In Pakistan’s view, the world should pay to restore the country.

In developing countries, climate disruption has devastating national effects: fiscal crises, unemployment, profound social instability, governance failure, interstate conflict, and terrorist and cyber attacks.

Several observers now hold that accelerated warming will weaken several developing world states until they are incapable of effective action.

What we learn from Pakistan is that in a warmer climate, mega-storms are not just possible but inevitable, and they could happen as frequently as every 10 years. We simply cannot afford the infrastructure damage, economic disruption and human suffering that will surely accompany disasters of such greater magnitude. We have to see that, unless we act, that is what is coming.

And yet developed countries are effectively getting nowhere in terms of climate action. That failure could cost us the world.

Even just 1.1°C of warming is already causing a cascade of impacts which together are beginning to take a big economic toll. The cost of inaction is now clearly greater than the cost of climate action. And climate change is just starting to kick in.

To prevent even greater disasters from happening, to save nations like Pakistan, we have to slow and halt climate change, developed countries must lead the way, and we need to do it now.

Robert Sandford holds the Global Water Futures Chair in Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Foreign Secretary Liz Truss chairs the Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting from her office at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in London. Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Melissa Leach
BRIGHTON, UK, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

The UK’s new Prime Minister (and former Foreign Secretary), Liz Truss, enters Downing Street with a full and urgent in-tray, dominated by the highest inflation rate for 40 years and concerns across the country about the cost-of-living crisis.

Whilst urgent domestic policy is required, these national issues are symptomatic of a broader set of global crises, including the ongoing impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Therefore, the Prime Minister also has an urgent foreign policy agenda to address, within which international development has a vital role to play.

The FCDO’s long-awaited International Development Strategy was published in May, but the vision it set out broadly failed to meet the scale of the global challenges we face. These are the eight international development priorities we believe the new PM should be addressing:

1. Climate justice

Climate and environmental change are creating pervasive threats to the UK and all other countries, highlighted most recently by the UK’s record-breaking summer temperatures and the devastating floods in Pakistan. Ahead of the COP27 climate summit, where the UK hands over the COP Presidency to Egypt, the new PM should take the opportunity to show global leadership in the pursuit of climate and environmental justice.

This means prioritising support for those most disadvantaged and already experiencing the worst impacts and ensuring that their voices and knowledge count in decision making. It also means investing in effective mitigation and adaptation initiatives, which are purposefully connected to interconnected issues, such as access to water, food, healthcare, gender justice, education and land rights.

2. Health security

The UK’s expertise and investment in tackling epidemics has been world leading. The production and roll-out of technologies such as Covid-19 vaccines, and in health systems strengthening and universal health coverage (UHC), are valued by low-income countries and have been a critical part of the UK’s soft power.

As the Covid-19 pandemic proved how globally interconnected our health is, investment in future pandemic preparedness, that embraces institutional, knowledge and system questions (not just pharmaceutical interventions), and is guided by inclusive, localised and context-specific evidence, is critical for the UK, as well as globally.

3. Multilateral Cooperation and the SDGs

Universal challenges such as climate change and global health require co-ordinated international responses, which link local and national action with global level commitments and solidarities. Multilateral agencies such as the UN are best placed to lead these. Whilst there is room for reform, it’s short-sighted for the FCDO to have cut support for multilateral agencies without a clear assessment of the impact this will have.

IDS research shows that today’s crises – conflict in Ukraine and Ethiopia, climate change induced floods and heatwaves, pandemics, and rising inequalities – are all interconnected and require a rounded response, not a strategy that handpicks a few priorities in isolation. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the framework for addressing development challenges as a whole and should be at the core of the Government’s strategic planning.

4. Food equity

Whilst exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, rising global food insecurity is the result of a vastly unequal global food system, where power is held by vested interests and low crop yields are aggravated by drought or flood, conflict, and economic instability.

In the short-term, the UK needs to help stabilise global food supplies, but longer-term reforms are also needed, such as supporting more regenerative methods of food production and agro-ecological approaches that enhance agricultural biodiversity and resilience.

By investing in ‘bottom up’ research working with smallholder farmers and pastoralists in low-income countries, the FCDO can help identify what works best where, preventing the ‘one-size-fits-all’ technological solutions that often cause more problems than they solve.

5. China

Development has a great role to play in support of UK diplomacy. For the UK-China relationship where official channels of communications and diplomacy may deteriorate, strong relationships fostered by development and knowledge exchanges provide alternative channels for constructive dialogue.

There is particular potential around issues such as the vast Belt and Road Initiative, climate change, global health and the SDGs. Liz Truss is reported to be planning to take a more robust stance on the UK’s approach to China but we believe constructive dialogue with China around approaches to development co-operation should continue.

6. Transparency

In July, the department was downgraded in the Aid Transparency Index and the FCDO has been repeatedly criticised for its poor record on transparency since the DFID/FCO merger, including from the cross-party International Development Committee, Bond, the UK network of International Development NGOs and from the National Audit Office.

At a minimum the FCDO must be transparent about forward-looking budgeting and provide public data on planned ODA spending. To ‘stand up for freedom around the world’ as set out in the International Development Strategy, the FCDO must lead by example and have a clear framework for transparency, monitoring and evaluation, by which it can be held accountable.

7. Restoring 0.7

Reducing the UK’s ODA budget from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% in 2021 resulted in a real terms reduction of £4.6bn. This dramatically reduced the UK’s ability to deliver the high-quality aid and interdisciplinary research essential to improving the lives of people around the world. It also dismantled international science partnerships and damaged the UK’s global reputation.

Other countries such as the US, Japan, Canada and Australia increased international aid budgets in light of Covid-19 and other global crises, yet the UK Government downgraded its contribution.

Re-instating the Conservative manifesto commitment to 0.7, along with appointing an International Development Minister at FCDO would demonstrate to the rest of the world the UK’s commitment to international development, and tackling the challenges that affect us all – poverty and inequalities, disease and climate change.

8. Investing in international research

There is a vital role that the knowledge generated from UK-led international development research can play, with a threefold benefit to the UK as well as to global communities – contributing to the Government’s goal for the UK to be a science superpower, benefiting the UK directly through lessons learnt and new discoveries that can apply to challenges at home, and finding effective and value for money support for lower and middle-income countries.

Whilst we welcomed the commitment to evidence and expertise in the International Development Strategy, this should go further. It is important to ensure that social science contributions are valued as much as technical science ‘solutions’. It is important to champion the importance of working with and from the perspectives of people living in poverty and marginalisation, and not overlooking the capabilities of low-income countries in generating knowledge for vital transformations.

The commitments to UK science must be complemented by investing in the equitable, interdisciplinary and international research partnerships needed to find contextual solutions that will benefit marginalised people around the world, and in many cases, here in the UK as well.

In conclusion, through UK-led international development, the new Prime Minister has the opportunity to help tackle the significant crises we all face. As new disasters around the world unfold with increasing frequency and severity, we are constantly reminded that the cost of delay or denial is far too high.

Melissa Leach is Director, Institute of Development Studies, UK.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

As rich countries raise interest rates in double-edged efforts to address inflation, developing countries are struggling to cope with slowdowns, inflation, higher interest rates and other costs, plus growing debt distress.

Rich countries’ interest rate hikes have triggered capital outflows, currency depreciations and higher debt servicing costs. Developing country woes have been worsened by commodity price volatility, trade disruptions and less foreign exchange earnings.

Anis Chowdhury

Rising debt risks
Almost 60% of the poorest countries were already in, or at high risk of debt distress, even before the Ukraine crisis. Debt service burdens in middle-income countries have reached 30-year highs, as interest rates rise with food, fertilizer and fuel prices.

Developing countries’ external debt has risen since the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC) – from $2 trillion (tn) in 2000 to $3.4tn in 2007 and $9.6tn in 2019! External debt’s share of GDP fell from 33.1% in 2000 to 22.8% in 2008. But with sluggish growth since the GFC, it rose to 30% in 2019, before the pandemic.

The pandemic pushed up developing countries’ external debt to $10.6tn, or 33% of GDP in 2020, the highest level on record. The external debt/GDP ratio of developing countries other than China was 44% in 2020.

Borrowing from international capital markets accelerated after the GFC as interest rates fell. But commercial debt is generally of shorter duration, typically less than ten years. Private lenders also rarely offer restructuring or refinancing options.

Lenders in international capital markets charge developing countries much higher interest rates, ostensibly for greater risk. But changes in public-private debt composition and associated costs have made such debt riskier.

Private short-term debt’s share rose from 16% of total external debt in 2000 to 26% in 2020. Meanwhile, international capital markets’ share of public external debt rose from 43% to 62%. Also, much corporate debt, especially of state-owned enterprises, is government-guaranteed.

Meanwhile, unguaranteed private debt now exceeds public debt. Although private debt may not be government-guaranteed, states often have to take them on in case of default. Hence, such debt needs to be seen as potential contingent government liabilities.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Sri Lankan international capital market borrowings grew from 2.5% of foreign debt in 2004 to 56.8% in 2019! Its dollar denominated debt share rose from 36% in 2012 to 65% in 2019, while China accounted for 10% of its external borrowings.

Private borrowings for less than ten years were 60% of Lankan debt in April 2021. The average interest rate on commercial loans in January 2022 was 6.6% – more than double the Chinese rate. In 2021, Lankan interest payments alone came to 95.4% of its declining government revenue!

Commercial debt – mostly Eurobonds – made up 30% of all African external borrowings with debt to China at 17%. Zambian commercial debt rose from 1.6% of foreign borrowings in 2010 to 30% in 2018; 57% of Ghana’s foreign debt payments went to private lenders, with Eurobonds getting 60% of Nigeria’s and over 40% of Kenya’s.

More commercial borrowing
Thus, external debt increasingly involved more speculative risk. Public bond finance, foreign debt’s most volatile component, rose relative to commercial bank loans and other private credit. Meanwhile, more stable and less onerous official credit has declined in significance.

Various factors have made things worse. First, most rich countries have failed to make their promised annual aid disbursements of 0.7% of their gross national income, made more than half a century ago.

Worse, actual disbursements have actually declined from 0.54% in 1961 to 0.33% in recent years. Only five nations have consistently met their 0.7% promise. In the five decades since promising, rich economies have failed to deliver $5.7tn in aid!

Second, the World Bank and donors have promoted private finance, urging ‘public-private partnerships’ and ‘blended finance’ in “From billions to trillions: converting billions of official assistance to trillions in total financing”.

Sustainable development outcomes of such private financing – especially in promoting poverty reduction, equity and health – have been mixed at best. But private finance has nonetheless imposed heavy burdens on government budgets.

Third, since the GFC, developed economies have resorted to unconventional monetary policies – ‘quantitative easing’, with very low or even negative real interest rates. With access to cheap funds, managers seeking higher returns invested lucratively in emerging markets before the recent turnaround.

Large investment funds and their collaborators, e.g., credit rating agencies, have profitably created new means to get developing countries to float more bonds to raise funds in international capital markets.

Making things worse
Policy advice from donors and multilateral development banks (MDBs), rating agencies’ biases and the lack of an orderly and fair sovereign debt restructuring mechanism have shaped commercial lending practices.

Favouring private market solutions, donors, MDBs and the IMF have discouraged pro-active development initiatives for over four decades. Hence, many developing countries remain primary producers with narrow export bases and volatile earnings.

They have urged debilitating reforms, e.g., arguing tax cuts are necessary to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). Meanwhile, corporate tax evasion and avoidance have worsened developing countries’ revenue losses. Thus, net revenue has fallen as such reforms fail to generate enough growth and revenue.

Credit rating agencies often assess developing countries unfavourably, raising their borrowing costs. Quick to downgrade emerging markets, they make it costlier to get financing, even if economic fundamentals are sound.

The absence of orderly and fair debt restructuring mechanisms has not helped. Commercial lenders charge higher interest rates, ostensibly for default risks. But then, they refuse to refinance, restructure or provide relief, regardless of the cause of default.

When will we learn?
Following the 1970s’ oil price hikes, western, especially US banks were swimming in liquidity as oil exporters’ dollar reserves swelled. These banks pushed debt, getting developing country governments to borrow at low real interest rates.

After the US Fed began raising interest rates from 1977 to fight inflation, other major central banks followed, raising countries’ debt service burdens. Ensuing economic slowdowns cut commodity exporters’ earnings.

In the past, the IMF and World Bank imposed ‘one-size-fits-all’ ‘stabilization’ and ‘structural adjustment’ measures, impairing development. Developing countries had to implement severe austerity measures, liberalization and privatization. As real incomes declined, progress was set back.

With the pandemic, developing countries have seen massive capital outflows, more than in 2008. Meanwhile, surging food, fertilizer and fuel prices are draining developing countries’ foreign exchange earnings and reserves.

As the US Fed raises interest rates, capital flight to Wall Street is depreciating other currencies, raising import costs and debt burdens. Thus, many countries need financial help.

Debt-distressed countries once again seek support from the Washington-based lenders of last resort. But without enough debt relief, a temporary liquidity crisis threatens to become a debt sustainability, and hence, a solvency crisis, as in the 1980s.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

Most of the 2.1 billion strong workforce in Asia and the Pacific are denied access to decent jobs, health care and social protection but there is an array polices and tools that governments can use to remedy these deficiencies and ensure that the rights and aspirations of these workers and their families are upheld and that they remain the engine of economic growth for the region.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

A new report released today, the Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific: The Workforce We Need, offers tangible solutions to immediately address alarming trends that both preceded the new coronavirus and were exacerbated by the pandemic.

While 243 million new people were pushed into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic, half of all people in our region already had been surviving without cash, a third without necessary medicine or treatment and a quarter had gone without enough food to eat. This can lower productivity, which has fallen below the global average, but also tax revenues and future economic output.

With two-thirds of all workers in the region being employed informally, often with low wages, in hazardous working conditions and without a contract, half of our workforce are at the brink of poverty. People in our region are also at a higher risk of being pushed into poverty by health spending than anywhere else in the world, causing inequalities to further widen. With more than half of all people being excluded from social protection, pandemics, disasters economic downturns, or normal life events, such as falling ill, becoming pregnant or getting old often have detrimental impacts on households’ wellbeing and life prospects.

The reality is harsh: our workers are generally ill-equipped to unlock new opportunities, fulfill life aspirations for themselves and their families but also to face ongoing challenges emanating from megatrends of climate change, ageing societies and digitalization.

Climate-induced natural disasters cause businesses to relocate and jobs to disappear, disproportionately affecting rural communities. Digital technologies are bringing disruptive change to the world of work and the digital gap is intensifying inequalities in opportunities, income and wealth. Population ageing means that the number of older people will double by 2050, making policies to support active and healthy ageing ever more urgent.

None of these vulnerabilities are inevitable. With the right policies, our region’s workforce can become more productive, healthier and protected.

First, active labour market policies, through life-long learning and skill development, can support a green and just transition into decent employment and improve access to basic opportunities and adequate standards of living. Harnessing synergies between active labor market policies and social protection can help workers upgrade their skills and transition into decent employment while smoothing consumption and avoiding negative coping strategies during spells of unemployment or other shocks.

Second, extending social health protection to all can significantly improve workers’ health, income security and productivity. COVID-19 demonstrated the weakness of a status quo in which 60 per cent of our workers finance their own health care and receive no sickness benefits. A focus on primary health care as well as curative health protection is needed, also to support healthy and active ageing. People who are chronically ill or live with a disability must be included in health care strategies. Given the large informal economy across the region, extending social health protection is the key policy instrument for achieving universal health coverage in our region.

Third, building on the ESCAP Social Protection Simulator, a basic package of universal child, old age and disability social protection schemes, set at global average benefit levels, would slash poverty in our region by half. Our analysis also shows that social protection helps increase access to opportunities particularly for furthest behind groups. This income security would improve the workforce’s resilience. Extending social protection to all means increasing public spending by between 2 and 6 per cent of GDP, an investment well-worth its cost. The Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific can guide action towards broadening social protection coverage.

With this information at hand, there is a long overdue need for action. The policy recommendations set out in the Social Outlook are a priority for most countries in the region. These require bold but necessary reforms. For most countries these reforms are affordable but may require a reprioritization of existing expenditures and tax, supported by tax reform. Decent employment for all and an expansion of social protection and health care should form the foundations of a strong social contract between the State and its citizens. One where mutual roles and responsibilities are clear and where our workforce is given the security to fulfil their potential and be the force for achieving the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Having harvested and graded their sunflower crop instead of taking it to market, every member of Zikometso Productive and Innovation Centre (IPC) brings their produce to the factory for cooking oil production. The IPC falls under the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (Nasfarm). The rising cost of cooking oil in the country and the […]

Sizable differences in the levels of children dying persist especially between more developed and less developed regions. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

The chances of a child dying before reaching age five years have dropped substantially worldwide during the recent past. However, a significant divide remains among countries as well as within regions in the chances of children dying.

Over the past fifty years, the death rates of infants and children under age five have declined markedly. Since 1971 the world’s infant mortality rate declined from nearly 100 deaths per 1,000 live births to 28. Similarly, the world’s under-five mortality rate declined from nearly 150 deaths per 1,000 live births to 37 (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Despite those impressive declines, sizable differences in the levels of children dying persist especially between more developed and less developed regions. In 2021, for example, the infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate of the less developed regions were about eight times the levels of the more developed regions.

High rates of children dying are even more striking for many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. While sub-Saharan Africa represented 14 percent of the world’s population in 2021, it accounted for more than 56 percent of the deaths of children under age five. In contrast, more developed regions represented 16 percent of the world’s population but accounted for 1 percent of deaths of children under age five.

In addition, the infant mortality rates of the fifteen highest countries are all located in sub-Saharan Africa. Their rates are no less than thirteen times higher than those of the more developed regions. Moreover, four of those countries, i.e., Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, and Somalia, have rates that are eighteen times higher than those of the more developed regions (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

A similar pattern is clear for death rates of children under-five. The fifteen highest countries are again all in sub-Saharan Africa. They have under-five mortality rates that are at least fifteen times higher than those of the more developed regions. In addition, the rates of Somalia, Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic are about twenty times higher than the levels of the more developed regions.

Important factors contributing to high levels of children dying include neonatal causes, including preterm and low birth weight, asphyxia, infection, pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, measles, and tuberculosis.

The death of mothers is also a major factor associated with high levels of children dying. High rates of maternal mortality are often the result of excessive blood loss, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, obstructed labor, anemia, malaria, and heart disease. In addition to high rates of maternal mortality, countries with high death rates of children also have high rates of women dying during their childbearing years.

For the fifteen countries with the highest rates of child mortality, for example, female mortality between age 15 and 50 is at least four times higher than the level of the more developed regions. Moreover, in the Central African Republic, Chad, Lesotho, and Nigeria, female mortality between age 15 and 50 is more than seven times the level of more developed regions (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

One of key targets of the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) is by 2030 to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under five. More specifically, the goals are to reduce neonatal mortality to at least 12 deaths per 1,000 live births and under-five mortality to at least 25 deaths per 1,000 live births.

While sub-Saharan Africa represented 14 percent of the world’s population in 2021, it accounted for more than 56 percent of the deaths of children under age five. In contrast, more developed regions represented 16 percent of the world’s population but accounted for 1 percent of deaths of children under age five

For most of the sub-Saharan countries achieving those desired goals by 2030 appears unlikely. For example, the under-five mortality rate of sub-Saharan Africa in 2021 is 72 deaths per 1,000 live births, or nearly triple the desired goal by 2030. Also, the projected 2030 under-five mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa is 62, again more than double the desired goal of 25 deaths per 1,000 births.

The situation for the fifteen countries with the highest levels of children dying are even more striking. The under-five mortality rates of those countries are expected to remain far greater than the desired goal by 2030. For example, the 2021 under-five mortality rates for Nigeria and Somalia of about 111 deaths per 1,000 births are projected to decline to approximately 100 by 2030, or four times the goal of SDG 3.

On a variety of developmental dimensions, the countries with high rates of children dying are doing comparatively poorly. Those countries have high levels of poverty, illiteracy, and malnourishment.

Furthermore, on various global indexes, such as the Fragile State Index, the Human Development Index, the Economic Freedom Index, and the Human Freedom Index, those sub-Saharan African countries are doing comparatively poorly, typically falling in the bottom tier. For example, on the Fragile State Index, the rankings of the fifteen high child mortality countries reflect low levels of economic and social development with high levels of political instability.

Moreover, high child mortality countries are facing increasing risks of climate change. Those countries are among the least able to adapt to its consequences, such as high temperatures, droughts, flooding, and extreme weather events. Also, the same countries generally lack the financial and institutional capacities to carry out adaptation programs.

It is certainly the case that child mortality levels worldwide have declined substantially over the past half century. However, despite those impressive declines, a significant divide in the level of children dying remains between the more developed regions and most sub-Saharan African countries and other countries with high child mortality rates.

The major measures needed to address the high levels of children dying are widely recognized, with most of those deaths being due to preventable or treatable causes. According to the World Health Organization, six solutions to the most preventable causes of under-five deaths are: skilled attendants for antenatal, birth, and postnatal care; immediate and exclusive breastfeeding; access to nutrition and micronutrients; improved access to water, sanitation, and hygiene; family knowledge of danger signs in a child’s health; and immunizations.

It is also widely recognized that the financial resources, political will, social stability, and health programs that are necessary to reduce the numbers of children dying are typically lacking or seriously inadequate.

Addressing the significant divide in the rates of children dying represents a major challenge for many developing countries as well as the international community of nations that can offer aid and assistance to those countries. While the challenge is formidable, it is essential to reduce the unacceptably high levels of children dying.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations, and his latest book is: “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

There are many ways the UN can have a sizeable role in promoting the engagement and participation of youth and helping them becoming a central pillar of a new way of doing policy-making.

After all, if we want to rethink the relationships between the state and citizens, the foundation of a new Social Contract as envisioned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, youths must be enabled to have a voice and an agency powerful enough to directly influence decision making, locally and globally.

At the former level, the UN can set up UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies wherever it operates. Such entities would be more then tokenistic forums where meetings happen on “off basis” but instead would be structured as permanent mechanisms with a power of not only advising but also monitoring the work being carried out by the UN Country Teams.

Having in place such forums locally would pave the way for bolder action at the higher levels, on the international arena.

It is here where there is a great deal of scope for the UN to model a truly radical change in terms of youths’ participation globally, raising the bar in terms of what youths’ involvement means and what it can imply.

If we truly create pathways for youths to play a more central role and we generate a structure or mechanism for them to fulfill such responsibilities, international politics, while would not drastically change overnight, surely would be impacted.

This is the reason why Guterres should strive for something that, though discussed in the past, was never close enough to be fully considered nor implemented.

I am referring to the idea of creating a permanent UN Youth Assembly that would autonomously act alongside of the established General Assembly and would become a forum where youths from around the world can discuss and set the policy course.

This permanent mechanism could either be linked up with the assemblies or forums that the UN could establish at national level or could simply have a completely different, standing alone nature with its members being selected at national levels through transparent and competitive process.

While we cannot imagine at the moment that such body would yield any veto power, it could, for example, have a symbolic, though powerful role especially in making its voice heard by the major global powers.

For example, it would have access, on consistent basis, to the UN Security Council, the most consequential institution within the international community.

While the official positions of its members, results of government-to-government negotiations behind the curtain, won’t be altered, at least they could be openly challenged.

Imagine some representatives of the UN Youth Assembly addressing, after their own deliberations, the sessions of the Security Council: this would be a powerful reminder to the world leaders that youths can dare to think differently.

The working modality of this envisioned UN Youth Assembly could become a template for participation and transparency where inputs and feedbacks from youths around the world could make such assembly truly owned by all the youths from across the world.

Thanks to the progress of digital work, a permanent online platform could offer themes of discussions for the UN Youth Assemblies in a way that everyone, even those not formally part of the UN Youth Assembly, could participate.

Ensuring a strong connection between this assembly and the youths around the world is as vital as daunting.

The risk is that any bold attempt of creating a new world body for youths to be involved in the decision making could become an elitist platform where only the most connected youths would participate.

Instead of bringing in youths from disadvantaged groups, the “usual suspects”, youths from well off families with access to opportunities, would “capture” their new “toy”.

That’s why it is vital that UN agencies and programs around the world do a better job at promoting civic engagement and participation, enabling innovative pathways for also the less advantaged youths to participate and deliberate.

Setting up national mechanisms for the UN to engage youths at national level could offer a pipeline for a more diverse crop of youths to have a chance to be involved and participate.

Investing in capacity building of youths is more and more critical.

Thanks to innovative partnerships with civil society, trainings, courses, institutes or academies could offer a way for the UN to create a sort of “upward mobility” in terms of opportunities to participate for many youths now excluded.

In addition, the members UN Youth Assembly should be chosen on rotation basis and exercise their duties for short periods like six months or at the longest, one year as such short mandates would give chances to more youths to be in the Assembly.

Moreover, a way to ensure a deep link between this new body and the ground reality, each of its representatives would be supported by a deliberative group at national level, a further connection between local youths and the international arena.

Imagining such body comes with risks.

In relation to its duties and responsibilities, the UN Youth Assembly could be easily become object of derision.

It would be seen as another tokenistic tool that governments could use to promote some forms of reforms that in reality, instead, would continue to legitimize the current status quo in terms of decision making and power relations.

That’s why it is important that UN Youth Assembly is provided with the analytical and research tools that would make it an authoritative source of insights and proposals from a youths’ perspective.

Youths led deliberations should be based on a proper process of accessing to the best available information and through a very structured exercise of deliberative process that would, ultimately, end up with recommendations or proposals, also in forms of policy briefs.

Setting up a UN Youth Assembly won’t preclude other forms of youth’s activism and participation.

For example, we have seen with climate activism, how forceful youths’ actions have to be in order to become visible and noticed.

The Assembly would be just another way, now completely missing, for youths to properly channel their opinions and voices, overcoming the multitude of improvised consultation mechanisms that are often created for major global leaders ‘gatherings whose impacts are close to nil.

Moreover, like the UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies locally, the UN Youth Assembly could be given some limited binding powers in steering the course of the UN agencies and programs, having a clear voice and power in deciding their global strategies and priorities.

The future of youths’ participation aimed at setting the global agenda will be a mix of different and yet complementary actions from the ground and from the top alike.

Peaceful manifestations, including those of civil disobedience, have a place together with other forms of youths’ involvement.

Having a new global platform to express their voices should not be seen as a way to stifle bottom-up initiatives but, rather, as another way to help transform the way political power is exercised.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Thales Motta, director of GNR Fortaleza, stands in front of the biomethane plant located in northeastern Brazil, the development of which required overcoming prejudices, mistrust and misinformation to open up the market for gas generated from garbage. Now biomethane is expanding, making use of landfills and agricultural biomass. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
FORTALEZA, Brazil , Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

The increasing productivity with which humankind generates waste has gained at least one sustainable counterpart: the extraction of biogas from landfills, a growing activity in Brazil.

"There was a great deal of prejudice even among engineers, skepticism in the gas companies. We had to present analyses and quality tests that were more rigorous than the ones required for fossil fuel gas. But we broke down the barrier of discredit and opened a new market, proving that it is a safe, stable gas with predictable prices.” -- Thales Motta
Two small plateaus stand out in the landscape on the outskirts of Caucaia, one of the 19 municipalities that make up the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in the Northeast of the country.

Although they look similar, one of the hills receives about 5,000 tons per day of solid waste collected in the metropolitan region of 4.2 million inhabitants. The other, the old sanitary landfill which began to operate in 1991, is already closed, but it is the one that generates more gas.

“We are pioneers in the production of biomethane from garbage,” said Thales Motta, director of Fortaleza Renewable Natural Gas (GNR), a partnership between the private companies Ecometano, of the MDC renewable energy and natural gas group, and Marquise Ambiental, of Fortaleza, which manages the Caucaia landfills.

Biomethane is the by-product of biogas refining that removes other gases, such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

GNR Fortaleza produces about 100,000 cubic meters per day of this gas, which is sold to the state-owned Ceará Gas Company (Cegás), which mixes it with natural gas in its pipelines.

“We supply 15 percent of the gas distributed by Cegás, which trusted the quality of our biomethane,” Motta said during IPS’s visit to the GNR plant, inaugurated in December 2017.

This labyrinth of pipes collect biogas from the landfill and refine it to produce biomethane with 95 percent purity. The renewable gas is mixed with natural gas for industrial use, in vehicles and thermoelectric plants, as well as in homes and businesses in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Initial difficulties

Ecometano’s pioneering activity is due to another plant, Dos Arcos, established in 2014 in São Pedro da Aldeia, a coastal city of 108,000 inhabitants, 140 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro. Its capacity is limited to 14,000 cubic meters per day.

“There was no regulation for biomethane then and the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels denied us authorization to sell it,” said Motta, an electrical engineer. There were losses; the sales were made directly to a limited number of customers, such as supermarkets.

But the company persevered and the regulation came out in 2017, shortly before the start of GNR Fortaleza’s operations.

“There was a great deal of prejudice even among engineers, skepticism in the gas companies. We had to present analyses and quality tests that were more rigorous than the ones required for fossil fuel gas,” said the plant manager.

“But we broke down the barrier of discredit and opened a new market, proving that it is a safe, stable gas with predictable prices,” he added.

A view of the new Caucaia landfill, near Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil, which receives about 5,000 tons of garbage a day. It already produces biogas, but will do so on a larger scale in a few years. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Advantageous costs

At the beginning, biomethane cost 30 percent more, but today it is 30 percent cheaper than natural gas, in view of the rise in fossil fuels, he pointed out. Its price depends on internal factors, such as inflation, and is not subject to unpredictable oil prices on the international market or exchange rate fluctuations, he stressed.

“Biomethane competes with fossil gas on an advantageous footing today. But even if oil becomes cheaper, the market is predisposed to betting on biomethane” because of environmental issues, he said.

“Cegás decided to distribute biomethane because it considers it strategic to diversify its mix with a cleaner, renewable and sustainable gas, thus contributing to reducing pollution and improving the environment,” the company’s president, Hugo de Figueiredo Junior, told IPS.

“It is also an opportunity to expand suppliers, competition and conditions to offer better prices to the end consumer,” he added.

Cegás, in which the state of Ceará is a majority shareholder, was a pioneer within Brazil in the injection of biomethane into its network, starting in May 2018.

The nearly 15 percent proportion of biomethane in the total volume constitutes “one of the highest percentages of renewable gas injected into the grid by a distributor in the world,” Figueiredo said.

That proportion may expand in the future, but biomethane faces several challenges, he added.

There is a need to disseminate existing technological solutions and facilitate access to them, expand knowledge about potential uses of green gases, and improve regulation and processes for the collection and disposal of solid waste and wastewater, he said.

The old landfill, now covered, still generates biogas that is converted to biomethane by refining, in Caucaia in northeastern Brazil. The dark lake is leachate, a highly polluting waste liquid that is treated before being discarded by sprinkling it on the soil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Expansion

In terms of production, GNR Fortaleza is now the second largest biomethane plant in Brazil. It is surpassed by Gas Verde, from Seropédica, a town near Rio de Janeiro, which has been producing 120,000 cubic meters per day since 2019.

Many interested parties visit GNR, which has become a reference point for gas generated from waste because it has developed process technologies that make it possible to integrate equipment from different national and international suppliers, “with its own codes that are open” to anyone, said Motta.

Currently, many companies that extract biogas from landfills for electricity generation are preparing to convert their plants to biomethane production, he said.

“We receive visits here from universities and groups of interested parties. We have to build an auditorium for lectures. There was no laboratory for biomethane analysis in the Northeast. Now we have one and research on this gas is mushrooming,” Motta said.

But it is necessary to take a broader view, he acknowledged. Landfills are limited. A minimum of 2,000 tons of waste per day is needed to make a biomethane plant viable, he estimated. Only large cities with at least one million inhabitants generate that much solid waste.

“We have to look for other kinds of biomass,” he said.

Hundreds of trucks travel the roads transporting garbage to the Caucaia landfill, some 20 kilometers from Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará in Brazil’s Northeast region.
About 5,000 tons of garbage are produced daily from the metropolitan region, which has 4.2 million inhabitants. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This process is already underway, especially in the South and Southeast regions of Brazil, where largescale agricultural production offers a large volume of waste. Sugarcane is the main source of biomass, as it is also planted to produce ethanol, whose consumption in vehicles is on par with that of gasoline.

Livestock manure, especially from pigs, drives the production of biogas for electricity generation, and a growing proportion goes towards conversion into biomethane, especially for use in vehicles.

“Biomethane is a suitable fuel for the energy transition, has more predictable prices (than fossil fuels) and can be produced in regions far from the existing natural gas network,” which in Brazil is concentrated along the eastern coast, Figueiredo, the president of Cegás, said from the company’s headquarters in Fortaleza.

But not having a pipeline nearby can frustrate large projects, Motta said. He gave the example of a sugar agribusiness company that could produce 30,000 cubic meters of methane a day. As this is double its own consumption and the nearest big city is 90 kilometers away, the project was unfeasible.

Harnessing gas from garbage, and from biomass in general, has become an urgent necessity in the face of the climate emergency. Methane contributes more intensely to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, which is used to gauge threats to the climate.

Brazil and other countries pledged to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, as a crucial step towards keeping global warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius by 2050.

GNR Fortaleza, located in Caucaia, a city of some 370,000 inhabitants 15 kilometers from Fortaleza, plays an environmental role. But in terms of employment, it generates only 32 direct jobs and an uncertain number of indirect jobs, including outsourced services, temporary consultants and suppliers of certain equipment.

Cegás serves only 24,000 gas consumers in Greater Fortaleza. According to its data, industry accounts for 46.26 percent of consumption, thermoelectric plants for 30 percent and motor vehicles for 22.71 percent. There is little left – just 0.73 percent for households and 1.22 percent for commerce.

Related Articles

• Biofuels Slow Down Electric Vehicles in Brazil
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• Biogas Production Awaits Greater Incentives in Cuba

A partial view of the city of Punto Fijo, with the Cardón refinery in the background, on the Paraguaná peninsula, projected as a special economic zone overlooking the Caribbean in northwest Venezuela. CREDIT: Megaconstrucciones

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Sep 3 2022 (IPS)

Venezuela is preparing to replicate the experience of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), a mechanism with which more than 60 countries have tried to draw investment and accelerate economic growth, while under its avowedly socialist government a “silent neoliberalism” is gaining ground.

The aim of the SEZs is “to provide special conditions to gain the economic confidence of investors from all over the world, and productive development to put an end once and for all to oil rentism,” said President Nicolás Maduro when he promulgated the Organic Law of Special Economic Zones on Jul. 20.

The SEZs, “90 percent of which are in the global developing South, are a catalyst for economic restructuring processes and go hand in hand with the expansion of the neoliberal economy,” sociologist Emiliano Terán, a researcher with the non-governmental Venezuelan Observatory of Political Ecology, told IPS.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), there were 5,383 SEZs in the world in 2019 and another 508 under construction, of which 4,772 were in developing countries – 2,543 in China alone and 737 in Southeast Asia.

In Latin America and the Caribbean there were 486 – 73 in the Dominican Republic, some 150 in Central America, seven in Mexico and 39 in Colombia.

SEZs are mainly commercial, such as free ports or free trade zones, where import quotas, tariffs, customs or sales taxes are eliminated; industrial, with an emphasis on improving infrastructure available to companies; urban or mining ventures; or export processing.

Their main characteristic is that, in order to stimulate investment, especially foreign investment, there are more flexible regulations on taxes, investment requirements, employment, paperwork and procedures, access to resources and inputs, export quotas and capital repatriation.

One of the camping areas improvised by tour operators on La Tortuga, an island with no permanent population where tourist developments are being planned that are triggering environmentalist alarms, as they may severely affect the still almost pristine ecosystem of the island and its surrounding Caribbean waters. CREDIT: Jorge Muñoz/Aleteia

An eye on the environment

In Venezuela, the first five zones decreed are the arid Paraguaná Peninsula, in the northwest; Margarita Island, in the southeastern Caribbean; La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, which are the largest ports, along the central portion of the Caribbean coast; and the remote La Tortuga Island, some 200 kilometers northeast of Caracas.

Paraguaná (an area of 3,400 square kilometers) is home to a large oil refining complex, and Margarita Island (1,020 square kilometers) has for decades been a sales tax-free zone and a tourist mecca for Venezuela’s middle class.

Puerto Cabello and La Guaira are essentially ports for imports to the populated north-central part of the country, whose main exports, oil and metals, are shipped from docks in the production areas in the east and west.

Hotel complexes, airports, marinas and golf courses are being planned for La Tortuga, which covers 156 square kilometers and has no permanent population. Environmental groups warn that its waters, reefs and the island itself are home to five species of turtles, 73 species of birds and dozens of species of fish and cetaceans.

Sociologist Emiliano Terán (R) with economists Luis Crespo (C) and Carlos Lazo (L) take part in a forum at the Central University of Venezuela critical of the announced special economic zones. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

Limited economy

“The environmental issue is a concern, but it is hard to believe that the government has the resources or the investors for the number of hotels planned for La Tortuga,” economist Luis Oliveros, a professor at the Metropolitan and Central Universities of Venezuela, told IPS.

The decreed Venezuelan SEZs “seem more like announcements than realities, and although we like the government to think of growth and development hand in hand with private investment, much more is needed. It has yet to be clarified what exactly the government is pursuing with these zones,” Oliveros said.

In Venezuela “creating SEZs has limitations, such as the sanctions (imposed by the United States and the European Union) and the need to generate macroeconomic stability and legal certainty, which are pending issues,” he added.

After seven years of sharp decline – and three years of hyperinflation – Venezuela’s annual gross domestic product, which exceeded 300 billion dollars a decade ago, now stands between 50 and 60 billion dollars, according to economists.

Oil production, the main lever of the economy and source of tax revenues, has shrunk and is starved of new investments, while the State desperately seeks income by exporting crude oil at a discount or selling gold that is extracted at the cost of great environmental damage in the southeast of the country.

Attracting investment may be an uphill struggle for SEZs that have still not been fully mapped out, considering that, for example, major companies have not knocked on the door to raise oil production – 600,000 barrels per day when a decade ago it was three million – despite the favorable signals sent by the United States.

Since March, informal contacts between Washington and Caracas, prompted by the impact of the war in Ukraine on the world energy market, have explored, without success so far, easing sanctions and other measures to bring Venezuela back to the U.S. oil market with new investments.

Juan Griego Bay in the north of Margarita Island, already half a century old as a sales tax-free zone and tourist mecca for Venezuela’s middle class, is now one of the country’s five special economic zones. CREDIT: Mipci

Neoliberal plan

In the southeast of the country, an area rich in gold, iron, diamonds, coltan and other minerals, the 112,000 square kilometer Orinoco Mining Arc (larger than Bulgaria, Cuba or Portugal) was decreed in 2016 as a “strategic development zone”, and its control and management was handed over to the armed forces.

The Mining Arc “has been a precedent for a new model promoted by the State to attract investments, but with depredation of the environment and restriction of wages and workers’ rights,” warned Luis Crespo, professor of Economics at the Central University of Venezuela, during a forum at that university.

“The special economic zones are part of a silent neoliberal adjustment plan driven forward by the government of President Maduro,” said Crespo.

The Venezuelan SEZ law – enacted by the legislature, which has been boycotted by most of the political opposition – states that its purpose is to develop a new production model, promote domestic and foreign economic activity, and diversify and increase exports.

It also aims to promote innovation, industry and technology transfer, create jobs and “ensure the environmental sustainability of production processes.”

The terminology about socialism or transition to socialism, frequent in the political discourse of the government and the ruling United Socialist Party, is absent from the legislation of the SEZs and from the repeated calls for private capital.

“The example of China is being followed, as it is by other countries, in using the SEZs as a showcase for heterodox forms of capital accumulation, in a process of progressive neoliberalization of the economy, as the oil model of production and distribution of wealth is being exhausted,” Terán said.

He added that “the SEZs cannot be seen only in terms of macroeconomic indicators,” as they become “zones of social and environmental sacrifice, with a new political geography of dispossession, and with the cheapening of labor, especially that of women workers.”

According to UNCTAD, although there are differences in SEZs from one country to another and within countries, their common features include having a clearly defined geographic area, a regulatory regime that is distinct from the rest of the economy, and special infrastructure support for the development of their activities.

A view of the border crossing between Colombia and Venezuela over the Simón Bolívar Bridge (in southwest Venezuela and northeast Colombia), when there was free transit and intense activity before the border was closed and relations between the two countries broke down. Now Caracas proposes to create a binational special economic zone in the area. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

More politics

Venezuela’s SEZs will be guided by a council to be freely appointed by the president, each will have a single authority to be named by the president, and the decree establishing one of the zones must be considered by the legislature within 10 working days or it will be approved, without discussion.

Areas such as the SEZs, the Mining Arc or special military zones in practice modify the political-administrative division of the country, which only in theory is a federal republic with 23 states plus a capital district.

In another political move, on Aug. 23 Maduro publicly proposed to his new Colombian counterpart, leftwing President Gustavo Petro, who took office on Aug. 7, the creation of a special binational economic zone between southwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia.

“We are going to propose to President Petro the construction of a large economic, commercial and productive zone between the department of Norte de Santander (Colombia) and the state of Táchira (Venezuela),” Maduro said.

Diplomatic, political, commercial and transit relations between the neighboring countries have been severed since February 2019.

In Táchira, business spokespersons have expressed their support for this Andean state of 11,000 square kilometers to obtain special regimes that favor trade with the neighboring country, and their peers in Colombia are betting on a recovery of bilateral trade, which prospered until the first decade of this century.

Terán described the projected creation of the SEZs as a possible “new pact of elites in Venezuela,” after more than 20 years of acute political confrontation, but warned that “there is an alternative, because although fragmented, dispersed and with a new look, protests against these pacts have never ceased.”

By Helen Grant and Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Sep 2 2022 (IPS)

As we approach this year’s Transforming Education Summit, global leaders can and must prioritize expertise and mobilize political will to support efforts to ensure inclusive and quality education for all, especially girls. This is at the heart of Sustainable Development Goal 4 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the commitments made in the Charlevoix Declaration and the G7 Declaration on Girls’ Education.

Helen Grant

Despite the progress made in recent decades, gender inequality between girls and boys, in all their diversity, is deepening. According to a recent United Nations report, the interlinked crises: of armed conflicts, climate change and COVID-19 are putting the 2030 Agenda in “grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival.” These multiplying challenges are “creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, and affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the global learning crisis. Approximately 147 million children missed over half of in-person learning in 2020 and 2021 and it is estimated that 50% of refugee girls in secondary school may not return, when their classrooms reopen after COVID-19, whilst 222 million girls were not able to be reached by remote learning during the pandemic.

Shocking new estimates published by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) indicate that 222 million school-aged children caught in crises globally are in urgent need of access to a quality education. These include 78.2 million who are out of school – a majority (54%) of whom are girls – and 119.6 million who are in school but not achieving minimum competencies in mathematics or reading.

Yasmine Sherif

Girls impacted by the horrors of war and displacement in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen face even greater risks, such as gender-based violence, early child-marriage and unwanted pregnancies.

The banning of secondary girls’ education in Afghanistan is especially intolerable. In the past year, girls were estimated to be more than twice as likely to be out of school, and nearly twice as likely to be going to bed hungry compared to boys.

This is the global picture as we approach, Transforming Education Summit, and why it is such a critical moment for girls education around the world.

ECW’s Case for Investment

ECW’s new Case for Investment is our case for humanity. It speaks up for girls’ rights to a 12-year education everywhere, not least in contexts of humanitarian crisis. It is our collective responsibility to deliver on the promise of 222 Million Dreams and the Sustainable Development Goals.

According to ECW’s recent Annual Results Report, conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergencies needs with funding appeals reaching US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020. While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education appeal funding – the overall funding gap spiked by 17%, from 60% in 2020 to 77% in 2021.

Financing for education has not aligned with the deepening and growing needs. The gap has only widened.

It is only by closing this gap that we protect girls, support gender equality and empower the next generation of female leaders, teachers, lawyers, doctors and nurses.

Investing in 50% of a country’s population, its girls, is the best investment we can make. For every dollar invested in girls’ education, we see $2.80 in return. And a World Bank study estimates that the “limited educational opportunities for girls, and barriers to completing 12 years of education, cost countries between $15 and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings.”

The United Kingdom is a leading donor to Education Cannot Wait, and its support has allowed Education Cannot Wait and its strategic partners to have reached close to 7 million children and adolescents since 2016. In 2021 alone, the Fund reached 3.7 million children across 32 countries and an additional 11.8 million through COVID-19 interventions. Of all children reached by ECW’s investments to date, over 48% are girls, and 92% of programmes demonstrated an improvement in gender parity.

The Transforming Education Summit, and this year’s UN General Assembly will be a critical moment to address these challenges, and to assess the efficiency, effectiveness, scalability, sustainability and overall return-on-investment of ongoing and new initiatives and works streams as we look to increase girls access to quality education.

Delivering on Our Promise

Hosted by Switzerland and Education Cannot Wait – and co-convened by Germany, Niger, Norway and South Sudan – ECW’s 2023 High-Level Financing Conference offers an opportunity for leaders to turn these commitments into action.

We urge people everywhere to show their support for #222MillionDreams and #Everygirleverywhere with posts on social, individual donations, letters to your elected officials and calls to actions through the broad group of strategic partners.

Now is our chance to deliver on our promise of universal, equitable education. Now is our chance to transform girls’ education to transform the world. Now is our chance to deliver with humanity and for humanity.

About the Authors

Helen Grant is a Member of UK Parliament and the United Kingdom’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, leading the UK’s efforts internationally to ensure all girls get 12 years of quality education. Prior to politics, Helen was a children and family lawyer for 23 years.

Yasmine Sherif is the Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. A lawyer specialized in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law (LL.M), she has over 30 years of experience with the United Nations and international NGOs.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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