Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Credit: World Food Programme (WFP)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 22 2022 (IPS)

The ominous warnings keep coming non-stop: some of the world’s developing nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, are heading towards mass hunger and starvation.

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned last week that as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night while the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared — from 135 million to 345 million — since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.

But in what seems like a cruel paradox the US Department of Agriculture estimates that a staggering $161 billion worth of food is dumped yearly into landfills in the United States.

The shortfall has been aggravated by reduced supplies of wheat and grain from Ukraine and Russia triggered by the ongoing conflict, plus the after-effects of the climate crisis, and the negative spillover from the three-year long Covid-19 pandemic.

While needs are sky-high, resources have hit rock bottom. The WFP says it requires $22.2 billion to reach 152 million people in 2022. However, with the global economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between needs and funding is bigger than ever before.

Controlling the loss and waste of food is a crucial factor in reaching the goal of eradicating hunger in the world. Credit: FAO

“We are at a critical crossroads. To avert the hunger catastrophe the world is facing, everyone must step up alongside government donors, whose generous donations constitute the bulk of WFP’s funding. Private sector companies can support our work through technical assistance and knowledge transfers, as well as financial contributions. High net-worth individuals and ordinary citizens alike can all play a part, and youth, influencers and celebrities can raise their voices against the injustice of global hunger,” the Rome-based agency said.

In 2019, Russia and Ukraine together exported more than a quarter (25.4 percent) of the world’s wheat, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).

Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder, Food Tank told IPS the amount of food that is wasted the world is not only a huge environmental problem–if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.

But food waste and food loss are also moral conundrums. It’s absurd to me that so much food is wasted or lost because of lack of infrastructure, poor policymaking, or marketing regulations that require food be thrown away if it doesn’t fit certain standards.

This is especially terrible now as we face a worldwide food crisis–not only because of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, but multiple conflicts all over the globe.

“We’ve done a good job over the last decade of creating awareness around food waste, but we haven’t done enough to actually convince policymakers to take concrete action. Now is the time for the world to address the food waste problem, especially because we know the solutions and many of them are inexpensive,” she said.

Better regulation around expiration and best buy dates, policies that separate organic matter in municipalities, fining companies that waste too much, better date collection around food waste, more infrastructure and practical innovations that help farmers.

“And there are even more solutions. We can solve this problem–and we have the knowledge. We just need to implement it,” said Nierenberg.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said last November food waste in the United States is estimated at between 30–40 percent of the food supply.

“Wasted food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills and represents nourishment that could have helped feed families in need. Additionally, water, energy, and labor used to produce wasted food could have been employed for other purposes’, said the FDA.

Effectively reducing food waste will require cooperation among federal, state, tribal and local governments, faith-based institutions, environmental organizations, communities, and the entire supply chain.

Professor Dr David McCoy, Research Lead at United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH), told IPS the heartbreaking image of food being dumped in landfills while famine and food insecurity grows, must also be juxtaposed with the ecological harms caused by the dominant modes of food production which in turn will only further deepen the crisis of widespread food insecurity.

“The need for radical and wholesale transformation to the way we produce, distribute and consume food has been recognized for years. However, powerful actors – most notably private financial institutions and the giant oligopolist corporations who make vast profits from the agriculture and food sectors – have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Their resistance to change must be overcome if we are to avoid a further worsening of the hunger and ecological crises, he warned”.

Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, told IPS that according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global food production and stocks are at historic high levels in 2022, with only a slight contraction compared to 2021.

“Skyrocketing food prices seen this year are rather due to speculation and profiteering than the war in Ukraine. It is outrageous that WFP has been forced to expand its food relief operations around the world due to speculation, while also having to raise more funds as the costs of providing food relief has increased everywhere”, he said.

Mousseau pointed out that WFP’s costs increased by $136 million in West Africa alone due to high food and fuel prices, whereas at the same time, the largest food corporations announced record profits totaling billions.

Louis Dreyfus and Bunge Ltd had respectively 82.5% and 15% jump in profits so far this year. Cargill had a 23% jump in its revenue. Profits of a handful of food corporations that dominate the global markets already exceed $10 billion this year – the equivalent of half of the $22 billion that WFP is seeking to address the food needs of 345 million people in 82 countries.

At a press conference in Istanbul, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held out a glimmer of hope when he told reporters August 20 that more than 650,000 metric tons of grain and other food are already on their way to markets around the world.

“I just came back from the Marmara Sea, where Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish and United Nations teams, are conducting joint inspections on the vessels passing through the Black Sea on their way in or out of the Ukrainian ports. What a remarkable and inspiring operation.”

“I just saw a World Food Progamme-chartered vessel – Brave Commander – which is waiting to sail to the horn of Africa to bring urgently needed relief to those suffering from acute hunger. Just yesterday, I was in Odesa port and saw first-hand the loading on a cargo of wheat onto a ship.

He said he was “so moved watching the wheat fill up the hold of the ship. It was the loading of hope for so many around the world.”

“But let’s not forget that what we see here in Istanbul and in Odesa is only the more visible part of the solution. The other part of this package deal is the unimpeded access to the global markets of Russian food and fertilizer, which are not subject to sanctions.”

Guterres pointed out that it is important that all governments and the private sector cooperate to bring them to market. Without fertilizer in 2022, he said, there may not be enough food in 2023.

Getting more food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia is critical to further calm commodity markets and lower prices for consumers

“We are at the beginning of a much longer process, but you have already shown the potential of this critical agreement for the world.

And so, I am here with a message of congratulations for all those in the Joint Coordination Centre and a plea for that vital life-saving work to continue.

You can count on the full commitment of the United Nations to support you,” he declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Rising inflation and the Ukraine war has added to the woes of Zimbabweans, where even the middle class struggle to buy a loaf of bread. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
Harare, Aug 19 2022 (IPS)

With inflation at 256.9 percent, 49-year-old Dambudzo Chauruka can no longer afford to buy bread despite working as a civil servant in Zimbabwe.

A father of six school-going children, Chauruka earns 126 000 Zimbabwean dollars monthly, the equivalent of 157 US dollars (USD).

Bread now costs 1,30 USD in Zimbabwe, up from 0,90 cents five years ago when former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was toppled from power in a military coup.

Not only that, but the cost of a kilogram of choice beef has risen to 9 USD, while five kilograms of chicken drumsticks now cost 21,000 Zimbabwean dollars, about 22 USD.

“I can’t afford bread every day. If I spend money buying bread every day, I will run out of money to pay rent and buy groceries for my family,” Chauruka told IPS.

In May 2022, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe said a family of five required 120 000 Zimbabwean dollars a month in local currency to survive, about 300 USD. Still, it could be much higher this time amid ever-rising inflation.

Amidst galloping inflation, petrol price in Zimbabwe has fluctuated, a major determinant in the pricing of basic goods and services here.

From 1.77 USD per liter recently, petrol now costs about 1.60 USD even as it was pegged at 1.41 USD in January before war broke out in Ukraine following the invasion of the East European nation by Russia.

Zimbabwe’s inflation shot from 96 percent to 132 percent in May, with food inflation alone climbing from 104 percent to 155 percent. The country’s monthly inflation spiked from 15.5 percent in April to 21 percent in May.

As a result, for many underpaid working Zimbabweans like Chauruka, starvation has pounced as they grapple with the country’s galloping inflation and subsequent poverty in the towns and cities where they live.

Chauruka and his family are residents of Kuwadzana high-density suburb in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

Now with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war slowing down food exports to many developing countries like Zimbabwe, many urban dwellers like Chauruka and his family have had to contend with starvation amid rising food prices.

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe (GMAZ), wheat prices have surged from 475 USD to 675 USD per tonne.

As a result, bread for many urban dwellers known for years to afford it has suddenly turned into a luxury.

But come July 22, Russian and Ukrainian officials signed a deal to allow grain exports from Ukrainian Black Sea ports.

Key witnesses to the agreement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the agreement would help ease a global food crisis.

For urban Zimbabweans who have to party with their hard-earned money to put every morsel of food on their tables, the agreement would import smiles as well.

One Zimbabwean, relieved at the news, is 57-year-old Nyson Mutumwa, a senior government employee.

“Now, I’m optimistic the Russia-Ukraine deal to unblock food passages to countries wanting food imports would relieve many nations of food shortages and cause a fall in food prices,” Mutumwa told IPS.

Russia and Ukraine are among the world’s biggest food exporters, especially wheat, to developing countries like Zimbabwe.

Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year led to a de-facto blockade of the Black Sea, resulting in Ukraine’s grain exports sharply dropping.

With the new agreement between the warring countries, even retail shop owners in Harare, like 48-year-old Jonathan Gunda in Mbare, the oldest township in Harare, are in high spirits.

“I had suspended the selling of bread and buns. In fact, I had canceled selling off all wheat products, but with the new agreement between Russia and Ukraine, this may mean I will be back in business,” Gunda told IPS.

Yet amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war blamed for causing food shortages and stoking inflation, World Food Program Southern Africa Director Menghestab Haile, in May this year, urged Zimbabwe and surrounding countries to increase food production.

“SADC region has water, has land, has clever people, so we are able to produce in this region. Let’s diversify and let’s produce for ourselves,” WFP’s Haile said then.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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ECW Director Yasmine Sherif in the field.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Aug 19 2022 (IPS-Partners)

As we come together to celebrate people helping people on this year’s World Humanitarian Day, we honor the courageous and remarkable humanitarians delivering on the frontlines to help us achieve our goals for peace, universal human rights, and education for all.

It takes a village to raise and support a child in a humanitarian crisis. In our efforts to deliver on the Grand Bargain Agreements, Sustainable Development Goals and global commitments to ensure human rights, Education Cannot Wait is connecting donors, governments, UN agencies, civil society organizations, the private sector and local non-profits to provide the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents with the safety, protection and opportunity of a quality education.

In places like Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen, these frontlines heroes are risking their lives because they believe that it takes a village to raise a child, and because they believe education is our most powerful tool in building a better world.

Today, 222 million children and adolescents worldwide are impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and protracted crises who require urgent educational support. It will take a global village to reach these children.

As we honour the commitment and sacrifice of the 460 aid workers who were attacked in 2021, and the 140 who tragically lost their lives, we call on the people of the world’s global village to rise up against violence, to rise up against oppression, and to unite in our global actions to deliver on our promises of 222 Million Dreams.

This is our promise for a more peaceful world as outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Convention and the United Nations Charter. This is our promise to deliver quality education through local action with global impact for crisis-affected girls and boys left furthest behind.

 

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Excerpt:

World Humanitarian Day Statement by ECW Director Yasmine Sherif

Iêda de Oliveira is the director of Eletra, a pioneer in the production of electric and hybrid buses in Brazil. In July, the company inaugurated a new plant for the production of 1,800 of these buses per year, relying on the expansion of this market in Brazil and Latin America. CREDIT: Courtesy of Eletra

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 19 2022 (IPS)

Brazil celebrated 100,000 electric vehicles in circulation in late July, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 46 million combustion vehicles registered in the country and in contrast with the pace of the phasing out of oil in the world’s automotive industry.

The lag is due to several factors, but one is the progress achieved in Brazil by biofuels, especially ethanol, which in its best years, such as 2019, surpassed domestic gasoline consumption.

Much of this consumption is due to the addition of 27 percent ethanol in Brazilian gasoline, a blend that helps reduce urban air pollution. Most of it is provided by fuel made from sugarcane.

Also contributing to the success of biofuels is the “flex car” that has been produced in Brazil since 2003, with engines that consume both fuels in a mixture of any proportion. The consumer chooses gasoline or ethanol according to convenience, generally because of the price difference.

There is a consensus that ethanol makes sense to buy if it costs less than 70 percent of the price of gasoline, because in general its consumption per kilometer driven is 30 percent higher. But some nationalists always choose ethanol, as a genuinely national product.

Thus, the transition to electric vehicles will cost Brazil not only the replacement of the entire fuel production and distribution infrastructure with electricity, but also a probable drastic reduction in its sugarcane industry, which generates one million direct and indirect jobs.

In terms of gas stations alone, for example, Brazil has more than 42,000 distributed throughout its vast territory, the largest in Latin America.

The Brazilian automotive industry, which ranks ninth in the world in terms of production, does not yet produce fully electric vehicles. Its option, for now, are hybrids, which have combustion and electric engines.

In June, of the 4,073 electrified vehicles that joined the national fleet, 73 percent were hybrids – ethanol (44 percent) and gasoline (four percent) – while the so-called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) accounted for 25 percent and have batteries that are also recharged at specific points.

In the first two cases, the two engines provide propulsion or only the electric one, powered by combustion as electricity generator.

Only two of the 13 assembly plants in Brazil produce hybrids. Fully electric cars, with only batteries charged at plugs, are all imported. They accounted for 27 percent of electrified vehicles registered in Brazil in June.

Adalberto Maluf, president of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association, fears that the lack of a national electric mobility policy will affect the competitiveness of the Brazilian automotive industry. He decided to resign from his corporate post to run for Congress, for the Green Party. CREDIT: Courtesy of Adalberto Maluf

Brazil’s hesitation

The industrial sector advocates a gradual transition, which would include greater development and use of biofuels and hybrid vehicles, to avoid or at least delay the end of a sector that represents 20 percent of Brazil’s industrial product.

Arguments such as pollution caused by the production and disposal of batteries undermine support for electrification to combat the climate crisis.

Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, a negative factor in countries that depend on fossil fuels, especially coal, do not affect electric mobility in Brazil, where renewable sources account for 85 percent of the electricity mix.

Batteries are also a barrier, as is the higher cost of electric vehicles. But technological advances are expected to make them cheaper and Brazil can benefit from domestic production, if the feasibility of a large lithium mine in the state of Minas Gerais is confirmed, as well as advantages due to the abundance of iron, nickel and niobium, other components, in the country.

Brazil’s reluctance is reflected in the lack of an “electromobility policy,” complained the president of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association (ABVE), Adalberto Maluf, at a Jul. 29 debate on the subject in São Paulo.

Without public incentive policies, Brazil could lose international competitiveness and get left behind by the global trend, he lamented.

Maluf, who was also director of Marketing, Sustainability and New Businesses at the Chinese company BYD in Brazil, left his corporate position on Aug. 15 to become a candidate for the lower house of Congress in the October elections for the Green Party. He promises to fight to reduce transportation pollution.

Global progress

The world produced 6.6 million new electrified cars in 2021, more than double the previous year and nearly nine percent of total motor vehicle sales, according to the International Energy Agency.

And the global trend is to go to 100 percent electric or battery-powered vehicles (BVE), rather than hybrids.

Meanwhile Brazil only incorporated 20,427 new electric vehicles during the first half of this year, out of a total of 918,000 cars, trucks, buses and commercial vans.

The automotive sector is facing a decline in production in the last two years, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its peak occurred in 2013 with 3.7 million units produced that year.

The annual total has dropped since then, and has remained below three million since 2015. This year, 2.34 million vehicles with four or more wheels are expected to be produced.

Around the world, the accelerated advance of electrification is confirmed especially in the European Union, which decided to abolish the sale of combustion cars as of 2035. Norway, which is not a member of the EU, set that goal for 2025, viable since these new vehicles reached two-thirds of sales in the country in 2021.

China is also experiencing an electromobility boom, with three million electric vehicles sold last year, or 15 percent of all motor vehicles produced in the country.

In June 2017 the Ministry of Mines and Energy received the first electric vehicle made by Itaipu, the giant hydroelectric power plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay, as an incentive for the electrification of transportation. But little has been done since then for the dissemination of electric vehicles in the country. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil

Buses reduce the lag

The high price of electric cars, the low investment capacity in infrastructure, the technology gap and the small scale of the market, among other factors, prevent developing countries in the South from following the trend of rich or emerging markets such as China.

But the advance of electric buses helps mitigate that disadvantage, at least in Latin America.

Brazil has the advantage of having companies that produce and export these vehicles which play a key role in mobility in large cities, in addition to a huge market. Its bus fleet exceeds 670,000 units nationwide, which will have to be replaced, since only a few hundred are electric, which is facilitated by the fact that many cities have made electromobility the goal of public transportation.

São Paulo, for example, aims to have 2,600 electric buses in service by 2024 and to eliminate all fuel-powered passenger transport by 2030. Around 15,000 buses serve Brazil’s largest city, a metropolis of 20 million people.

Several companies presented their new public transport vehicles at the Latin American Transport Fair (LatBus), held Aug. 9-11 in São Paulo.

This is the case of Marcopolo, the largest bus body manufacturer in Brazil, which exhibited the Attivi, its first 100 percent electric model for Brazilian cities. The company has already exported more than 350 buses to Latin American countries such as Argentina and Colombia, and Asian countries such as India.

Eletra, which considers itself a “national leader in sustainable transportation technology”, also presented its e-Bus buses in different sizes – 12.5 and 15 meters – fully electric buses that can travel 250 kilometers without recharging the batteries.

The company announced the inauguration of a new industrial plant in São Bernardo do Campo – basically the capital of the Brazilian automotive industry near São Paulo – with an annual capacity to produce 1,800 electric and hybrid buses, and with 1,200 employees.

Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: UNAMA/Freshta Dunia

By Saber Azam
GENEVA, Aug 19 2022 (IPS)

After the horrendous tragedies of 9/11 in the year 2001, the US intervened in Afghanistan. Promising statements such as “we are going to smoke them [Al-Qaeda and their Taliban protectors] out” and “we are after ending terrorism” received warm receptions.

Even the West’s main adversaries, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, endorsed the war against radicalism. Dozens of thousands of soldiers, the most sophisticated military equipment, and billions of US dollars began to inundate Afghanistan to smolder the fanatics out of this country and annihilate barbarism. Afghans assumed that after years of wars and calamities, peace, security, and serenity were at their doorsteps.

In the ensuing twenty years, 3,600 foreign soldiers (2,500 Americans) sacrificed their lives, 34,000 (21,000 Americans) were wounded, and dozens of thousands were traumatized. Furthermore, about 70,000 Afghan soldiers, 47,000 civilians, and 53,000 Taliban militants perished. Though the number of wounded and traumatized Afghans cannot be precisely evaluated, the sequels of war affected the entire population.

However, in August 2021, the US and its allies evacuated Afghanistan hastily, handing it over to those they had to “smoke out,” shattering the hopes of respect for human rights, democracy, good governance, progress, and trust in a promising future.

Not only Afghans but the world is now holding its breath as the Taliban are considered unpredictable, unreliable, and dangerous. What instigated the “submission of the West” would be arduous to comprehend at this stage as intervening states retain crucial information for concealment necessities. However, there is an absolute need to understand and draw lessons based on the available evidence.

Despite noticeable improvements in areas such as women’s emancipation in main cities and freedom of expression, many aspects of the West’s intervention and actions between 2001 and 2021 in Afghanistan did not fulfill the objectives. A detailed analysis would not fit the scope of this article. However, the following flaws were indisputable:

A – The Bonn Deal in December 2001

The “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan” ignored decades of transformation in the country. It did not address the root causes of repeated crises. The assumption that only “like in the past two and half centuries, only Pashtun leaders can govern this country” was erroneous.

In particular, the resistance against the Soviet Union and communist regimes, the Mujahidin tragic era, and the first Taliban rule had generated new realities. Other ethnic groups had significantly gained political, military, and social apprehensions.

In addition, the euphoria of “kicking out the terrorists and their protectors” was such that not only the so-called “legitimate government,” recognized by the International Community since 1992, was sidelined, but the idea of incorporating a few elements of the Taliban, known to the US and its allies, to the negotiating table was disregarded.

At least, it would have split the extremist movement from the onset of the West intervention. As a result, the “broad-based government” was senseless for reconstructing a war-torn country and seemed nothing but a reward to former warlords, Western loyalists, and political traders.

Nepotism, tribalism, rampant corruption, dilettantism, loyalty to foreign interests, and many other flagrant handicaps promptly affected central and provincial governance systems.

B – Afghan Leadership

The pick, by the US, of the Head of Provisional Authority, who then became the Chairman of the Transitional Administration and twice President of the country (2001 – 2014), astonished many. He and his successor (2014 to 2021) were not recognized for any significant contribution against terrorism or political and management skills.

Therefore, the lack of clear strategies to build a nation and forge a promising future marred their administrations. Senior executives and politicians of the country felt “fuehrer” and untouchable, granting all privileges and rights to themselves and little or nothing to the people.

The creation of the General Independent Administration for Anti-Corruption in 2004 was a significant failure; the first head had to resign, and the second was a convicted drug dealer in the US. Its replacement in 2008 by the High Office for the Oversight and Anti-Corruption did not prove helpful as the same “senior officials and staff” remained in place.

Those who wished to prosecute corrupt individuals, including the President’s family members and close allies, were instantly dismissed. Others against whom rock-solid proof of misdeeds existed were shielded.

Efforts by the second President and his Chief Executive as of 2014 did not curb the swindle! The 18 “anti-corruption” organs, headed by their underhand devotees, lacked coordination, and business as usual persisted.

The ousted Taliban began to regroup in Pakistan at the beginning of 2002, strengthen their ties with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations further, and commit suicide attacks within Afghanistan on military structures and crowded public areas. Many were convinced of the complicity of senior government officials.

C – The US and its Allies

The enthusiasm for “smoking out” Al-Qaeda and their protectors from Afghanistan and “ending terrorism” did not last long in Western capitals. Already as of 2003, they were cognizant of cronyism, kleptocracy, and other appalling realities in the country.

Instead of providing immediate remedies by compelling the inept leaders to accomplish their duties, they let the situation corrode hoping that “it will improve with time!” The establishment of SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) by the US Congress in January 2008 did not change much. Its reports on mismanagement of resources often went unattended.

The state of affairs became worse in 2009 due to election rigging. The silence of the West was a tacit endorsement of the misdeed. Suggestions to opt for a transitional government composed of competent, honest, unbiased, and ethically-bound young individuals, from within the country, were ignored under the pretext that it would be contrary to the constitutional order. However, the election fraud in 2014 was such that the US opted to put aside the constitution. A government based on an unworkable political agreement was founded.

Despite its promising nature, the hurdle relied on the fact that there was no change in the people who run State affairs. The US and its closest allies closed their eyes and ears to the widespread malfunctions, including in the security apparatuses. Such a situation permitted the Taliban to grow in strength, grab more territory, and finally take over the government on 15 August 2021.

D – Other Most Concerned Countries

The Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran monitored the failure of Western intervention in Afghanistan from its onset. It is fair to say that they rejoiced in the “defeat of the US.” Pakistan maneuvered to manage Afghanistan through the Taliban.

They had learned from the failure of their first attempt (1996-2001) and had conveniently prepared the new generation of Islamic clerics. India and Central Asian countries earnestly endeavored for a peaceful Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia had an ambiguous policy.

While it was part of the International Coalition to fight terrorism, the espousal of Saudi nationals to extremist movements in Afghanistan was undeniable, a fact that the government in Riyadh could have prevented.

E – The United Nations (UN)

The UN’s role seemed the most questionable. Victims of decades of imposed tragedies, the Afghan people expected this organization to stand for them. Unfortunately, it miserably failed to do so. Instead, the UN bogged down in rubber-stamping the desires of the strongest.

In Bonn, it did not push for addressing the root causes of decades of conflict to “save succeeding generations [of Afghans] from the scourge of war,” as its Charter stipulates and endorsed the irremediable provisional agreement. Then, it became the ratifying organ of repeated rigged elections, depriving Afghans of their fundamental rights.

The accusation of Taliban activists benefitting from the “return of refugees” program to settle in the northern provinces of Afghanistan surfaced in some circles. In addition, it assumed the prime role in managing multi-lateral aid to the Afghan people, amounting to hundreds of billion US dollars.

There are accounts of endemic mismanagement, corruption, and inefficiency. However, the UN has not investigated its actions. This is a serious blow to its image and leadership, providing further elements for skeptical to consider it a redundant and unaccountable organization.

F – The Syndrome of Easy Money

Experts believe that the availability of “easy and extirpated money” provided at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, which began on 7 October 2001, laid down the foundation of corruption and the future demise of the republic. A few who then became the bigwigs of the regimes profited immensely from its flow.

Most scholars trusted that the West, led by the US, would implement an answerable government model that functioned in their societies. Subsequently, the public pressure on the leaders to use international sympathy and unlimited support in addressing the root causes of the conflicts, building a solid nation based on a new framework suitable to all ethnic groups, and developing appropriate confidence-building measures was weak!

The fact that hundreds of billions of US dollars per year will have an end did not figure in many assumptions. Despite democratic avenues, most remained “infirm” on their leaders’ rampant corruption, nepotism, tribalism, and inefficiency.

With the above in mind, there was no chance for the republic to sustain itself in Afghanistan. The Taliban rule the country again. The question is could they keep it?

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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In spite of their high preparedness and growing consciousness and activism and their indisputable right to decide upon their present and future, today's youth voice is still far from being heard. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

A couple of decades ago in Athens, a conversation over a ‘souvlaki’ and wine dinner with a young Greek economist led to talking about democracy. Asked for his opinion, he said “By then, when philosophers like Aristotle formulated their theories about democracy, the society was dominated by the rich.”

When asked “what about the people?,” the young Greek economist took a long sip of wine and answered with a visibly sarcastic smile “The people were their servants.”

Whether this young man’s interpretation of democracy was wrong or right, accurate or not, more controversial or less, is something too long to explain and anyway it is up to you to judge.

 

The poisoned inheritance

Anyway, the pressing question now is if today’s 1.5 billion youth can bear the baleful load that they inherit from the previous generations.

A swift answer would be “yes.” After all, previous and current generations coped with two European-manufactured Great Wars which soon attracted their descendents–the United States, and other military powers like the –also European– Soviet Union, among others.

Not only, these generations had also to confront dictatorial regimes, civil wars, poverty, hunger, destruction, and a long list of hardships.

Another question would be if the current and future generations will be able to fix up the so many horrifying wrongs made by the previous ones, such as the looming threat of a nuclear war, the voracious depletion of natural resources, the dominance of private corporations, the supplantation of human beings by robots…

… Let alone the never-ending game of the world’s top guns –the US, the UK, France, Russia and China, precisely those who hold the unexplainable and unjustifiable power to annulate, through their veto, the decisions made by the world’s over 190 countries. They exercise such a power in their ironically called “Security Council.”

Whatever the future will be, reality shows that the world’s youth now receive a very heavy inheritance, in a scenario already shaped by two George Orwell’s masterpieces: “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

See this dozen facts, selected among so many others, which have been provided on the occasion of this year’s International Youth Day, marked 12 August.

 

The figures

• Half of the people on Planet Earth are 30 or younger, and this is expected to reach 57% by the end of 2030.

• While you read this, 1.8 billion young people, the largest generation of youth in history, are transitioning to adulthood.

• Today, there are 1.2 billion youth aged 15 to 24, accounting for 16% of the global population. By 2030 their number is projected to have grown by 7%, to nearly 1.3 billion. These two figures, combined with the previous one, make an average of 1.5 billion youth.

 

No voice?

In spite of their high preparedness and growing consciousness and activism and their indisputable right to decide upon their present and future, today’s youth voice is still far from being heard, let alone listened to.

A UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs research shows that there are about 1.2 billion youth aged 15 to 24 in the world today. “This is a huge percentage of the global population whose interests and voices have traditionally been overlooked.”

In fact, today’s youth has practically nul participation in national legislative bodies. Globally, only 2.6% of parliamentarians are under 30 years old, and less than 1% of them are women.

On this issue, a survey on the occasion of this year’s International Youth Day, the United Nations specialised bodies revealed that:

• 76% of those under 30 years old think politicians don’t listen to young people

• 8 in 10 people think that current political systems need drastic reforms to be fit for the future

• 69% of people think that more opportunities for younger people to have a say in policy development would make political systems better.

Meanwhile, the average age of those who decide upon the present and future of the world’s youth is as high as 64 years.

 

 No jobs?

The Global Employment Trends for Youth 2022 reveals that those aged between 15 and 24 years have experienced a much higher percentage loss in employment than adults since early 2020.

Also that the total global number of unemployed youths is estimated to reach 73 million in 2022, six million above the pre-pandemic level of 2019.

At the same time, 60 million jobs that will be created by the green economy in 30 years do not even exist yet.

 

No education?

“Unless we take action, the share of children leaving school in developing countries who are unable to read could increase from 53 to 70 percent,” warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, in his message on the 2022 International Day of Education on 24 January.

In fact, some 1.6 billion school and college students had their studies interrupted at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic — and it’s not over yet, said Guterres.

Today, school closures continue to disrupt the lives of over 31 million students, “exacerbating a global learning crisis.” See: Up to 70% of Children in Developing Countries to Be Left Unable to Read.

 

The climate crunch

Young people bear a disproportionate burden of the environmental crises the world faces today, which will impact their future, reminds the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

“Research shows that many young people feel frustrated and unheard, creating a sense of unfairness that has, in recent years, fueled a surge of climate activism led by youth.”

According to a recent study, children born in 2020 will experience a “two to seven-fold increase in extreme climate events,” particularly heatwaves, compared to people born in 1960.

 

The “Rule of the People”

Meanwhile, another question raises here: has the concept of democracy as the rule of people ever been really practised?

Before you judge, please be reminded of the findings released by the Oxfam International in its May 2022 report Profiting from Pain.

“Billionaires have seen their fortunes increase as much in 24 months as they did in 23 years.”

“Those in the food and energy sectors have seen their fortunes increase by a billion dollars every two days,” adds the research carried out by this global movement of people working together with more than 4,100 partner organisations and communities in over 90 countries.

Furthermore, “food and energy prices have increased to their highest levels in decades. And 62 new food billionaires have been created.”

In the meantime, there are up to one billion hungry humans.

IPS article: Inequality Kills One Person Every Four Seconds explains how deadly inequality is and how it contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds.

Today’s youth are an unpowered witness to numerous unprecedented crises, which they did not create but are expected to overcome… and hopefully leave a much less baleful inheritance.

Only artisanal fishing is allowed in the waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands, where it is possible to catch large, valuable fish. The area is a marine reserve, a nursery of species for the eastern Pacific and is off-limits to industrial fishing. But its continental shelf is increasingly under siege by the Chinese fleet. CREDIT: MAG Ecuador

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

Illegal and excessive fishing, mainly attributed to Chinese fleets, remains a threat to marine resources in the eastern Pacific and southwest Atlantic, as well as to that sector of the economy in Latin American countries bathed by either ocean.

Worldwide, “one out of every five fish consumed has been caught illegally, 20 percent of the nearly 100 million tons of fish consumed each year, and generally in areas closed to fishing,” veteran Venezuelan oceanographer Juan José Cárdenas told IPS.

An emblematic case, said the researcher from the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, is the Galapagos Islands, 1,000 kilometers west of the coast of Ecuador, surrounded by a 193,000-square-kilometer protected marine area, a hotbed of species in great demand for human consumption.“For several species in the eastern Pacific we are already at the edge of the environmental precipice with legal fishing; a small additional fishing effort, illegal fishing, is enough to affect the sustainability and food security that these species provide." -- Juan José Cárdenas

Galapagos, an archipelago totaling 8,000 square kilometers, is famous for its unique biodiversity and as a natural laboratory used by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) for his theories on evolution.

The Ecuadorian Navy indicated that in June they maintained surveillance of 180 foreign vessels, including fishing boats, tankers and reefers, fishing near the 200 nautical mile (370 kilometers) limit of the Galapagos Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), also known as the continental shelf.

In 2017, 297 vessels were detected, 300 in 2018, 245 in 2019, and 350 in 2020. At the beginning of each summer they fish off Ecuador and Peru, then off of Chile, before crossing the Strait of Magellan and heading up the southwest Atlantic off Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

In the Pacific they have fished intensively for giant squid (Dosidicus gigas). According to the satellite tracking platform Global Fishing Watch, 615 vessels did so in 2021, 584 of which were Chinese.

Alfonso Miranda, president of the Committee for the Sustainable Management of the South Pacific Giant Squid (CALAMASUR), made up of businesspersons and fishers from Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, said that this year 631 Chinese-flagged vessels have entered Ecuadorian and Peruvian Pacific waters.

Miranda says that Peruvian fishermen report incursions by Chinese ships in Peru’s EEZ, and he does the math: if Peruvian squid production reaches 500,000 tons, with revenues of 860 million dollars a year, some 50,000 tons taken by the foreign fleet means the loss of 85 million dollars a year.

The giant squid is the second most important fishing resource for Peru, after anchovy, and its catch generates more than 800 million dollars a year and thousands of jobs, which is why the country seeks to prevent incursions into its waters by vessels of other flags, especially from China. CREDIT: Government of Peru

Accumulated problems

Cárdenas the oceanographer pointed out that the area is rich in tuna, of which more than 600,000 tons are caught annually (10 percent of the world total), but posing a serious threat to sustainability, for example with the use of fish aggregating devices or FADs that alter even the migratory habits of this species.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 34 percent of tuna stocks in the seven most widely used tuna species are exploited at biologically unsustainable levels.

For several species in the eastern Pacific, including some whose fishing is banned such as sharks, “we are already at the edge of the environmental precipice with legal fishing; a small additional fishing effort, illegal fishing, is enough to affect the sustainability and food security that these species provide,” said Cárdenas.

Pedro Díaz, a fisherman in northern Peru, told the Diálogo Chino news platform in the port of Paita that “we don’t just want to fish and catch. We want to allow the giant squid to breed and grow so that it can generate employment and foreign currency for the State.

“We also want the giant squid to have a sustainable season, and what will those who come after us, the young people who take up fishing, find?” he added.

FAO fisheries officer Alicia Mosteiro Cabanelas told IPS from the U.N. agency’s regional headquarters in Santiago, Chile that “it is not always possible to measure the impact of a given fleet operating in areas adjacent to the exclusive economic zone of coastal nations.”

This is because “there is not always a stock assessment of the target species, nor is there information available on retained, discarded and incidental catch, or on the number of vessels authorized to operate by the respective flag States and unauthorized vessels.”

In 2017 Ecuador seized the Chinese vessel Fu Tuang Yu Leng after finding in its holds more than 6000 sharks illegally caught in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. CREDIT: DPN Galapagos

Mosteiro Cabanelas noted that “overfishing always has a direct impact on the sustainability of resources, generating a decrease in income for the fishing sector and in the availability of fishery products for local communities and consumers in general. Latin America is no exception.”

And for FAO it is clear that “illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem that compromises the conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources,” said the expert.

It also “harms fishers’ livelihoods and related activities, and aggravates malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity.”

The media in coastal countries also report that fishers in Latin America – citing cases from Brazil, Chile and Mexico – are violating bans and extracting valuable species whose fishing is not permitted. Ecuadorians have exported large quantities of shark fins, after declaring the sharks as bycatch.

Shark fins are highly sought after in places like Hong Kong – where shark fin soup can cost up to 200 dollars – and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates the global trade in shark and ray meat at 2.6 billion dollars.

The Argentine Navy carries out surveillance of a Chinese fishing vessel at the limits of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which is rich in squid, hake and prawns. CREDIT: Argentine Naval Prefecture

Keeping an eye on poachers

Last year, some 350 Chinese-flagged vessels fished during the first half of the year off Argentina’s territorial waters, where there is a wealth of another kind of squid, the Argentine shortfin squid (Illex argentines), as well as Argentine hake, prawns and other prized species.

It is a fleet that, according to Argentine ship captains, commits IUU with unreported transshipments that camouflage illegal fishing, transferring fish between vessels and turning off the transponders that indicate the ships’ location.

A report published in June by Oceana, an international non-governmental organization that tracks IUU fishing, claimed that more than 400 Chinese-flagged vessels fished for about 621,000 hours along the Argentine EEZ between 2018 and 2021, and disappeared from tracking systems more than 4,000 times.

The Argentine government has reported that, in contrast to the 400,000 tons per year of Argentine shortfin squid that landed in its ports at the end of the 20th century, since 2015 less than 100,000 tons per year are caught, with just 60,000 in 2016.

Industry reports in the local media indicate that foreign vessels (Chinese, South Korean, Taiwanese or Spanish) have caught up to 500,000 tons of squid annually, near or within its EEZ – a volume that can represent between five and 14 billion dollars a year.

Fish aggregating devices or FADs are used in the eastern Pacific to facilitate and increase tuna catches, aggravating the threat of overfishing and even posing a risk of altering the migratory habits of the species. CREDIT: WWF

And the problem is not only seen in Argentina: last Jul. 4, the Uruguayan Navy captured in its territorial waters, 280 kilometers from the Punta del Este beach resort, a Chinese-flagged vessel, the “Lu Rong Yuan Yu 606”, dedicated to squid fishing, which was apparently fishing furtively at night in that area.

As the holds were empty, it could not be established with certainty that it was fishing in the Uruguayan EEZ, and the ship was released after payment of a fine for contravening other navigation regulations.

There was no repeat of the 2017 experience in Ecuador with the “Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999”, a vessel that functioned as a large refrigerator to store the catch of other vessels, which was operating illegally in the Galapagos Marine Reserve.

About 500 tons of fish, including vulnerable and protected species, were found on the ship, especially some 6,000 hammerhead sharks.

The Ecuadorian justice system handed prison sentences to the captain of the ship and three crew members for the crime of fishing for protected species, and fined them 6.1 million dollars. As the payment was not made, the vessel became the property of the Ecuadorian Navy.

China has formally banned its fleet from operating in prohibited waters and warned captains that it will withdraw licenses from those who violate these rules, and President Xi Jinping gave assurances to that effect to his Ecuadorian counterpart Guillermo Lasso when the latter visited Beijing in February.

Far from the shores of Latin America, on May 24 in Tokyo, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) bloc, agreed on new surveillance mechanisms for the Chinese fishing fleet.

At the same time, Washington is working with countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama on agreements to help monitor the Chinese fleet, the largest in the world, which has 17,000 ships catching 15 million tons a year in the world’s seas.

The U.S. initiative is part of its renewed global confrontation with the Asian giant, the so-called new cold war.

African leaders must recognise the enormous potentials of the continent’s informal workers and begin to integrate them better into their city-building visions and strategies. Credit: Suleiman Mbatiah/IPS

By External Source
Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

African leaders are increasingly aspiring to “modernise” their cities. That is to make them “globally competitive” and “smart”. The hope is to strategically position cities in Africa to drive the continent’s much-needed socio-economic transformation.

But these aspirations tend to marginalise and antagonise the informal sector. The sector encompasses the suite of economic activities by workers and economic units that are – in law or in practice – not covered (or insufficiently covered) by formal arrangements.

We are a team of international scholars researching sustainable cities in Africa. In our latest paper, we explore the dual role played by the informal sector in Africa’s urban economy. On the one hand, it plays a positive role. It provides employment, securing household income and savings, provides household basic needs and boosts civic engagement.

Clearly, the informal sector oils Africa’s urban economy in many important ways. This makes it highly unlikely that any visions of transforming lives on the continent can succeed without taking the sector into adequate account

But the sector also plays a negative role. It contributes to social and gender inequality, insecurity, congestion and pollution.

Overall, we found that the informal sector has a lot to offer the future of African cities. We therefore recommend that public policy focuses more on regularising the sector, instead of displacing it. This is often done to make way for elitist big capital projects.

Also, we warn that ignoring or marginalising the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on the sector could spell a social bloodbath on the continent.

 

The ‘smart cities’ craze in Africa

There has been a resurgent interest in building so-called “smart”, “modern”, “globally competitive” cities in Africa. Some are seeking to build entirely new cities. But, for the most part, most governments want to put cities on the “map” through large-scale redevelopment or by “modernising” existing city districts.

African cities have long been blamed for not serving as engines of growth and structural transformation as their counterparts did during Europe’s Industrial Revolution. This makes it refreshing that leaders on the continent are seeking to turn things around.

The problem, however, is that these visions of city modernisation tend to heavily marginalise and antagonise the informal sector in their design and execution. Some even have a strong focus on displacing informal workers and activities – particularly hawkers and hawking, slum dwellers and slum settlements – from the central business districts of the cities.

For instance, early this year, the authorities in Nigeria sent a combined team of police, military and other law enforcement officials to destroy a Port Harcourt informal settlement that housed some 15,000 families.

Their counterparts in Ghana are currently conducting similar exercises.

These decisions are often justified on the grounds that informal workers and their activities generate “congestion”, “crime”, “filth/grime”, and “disorderliness”.

In other words, they impede sustainable city-making, and hence, must be eradicated.

But is this premise backed by the evidence? This is the question our team recently interrogated.

We conclude that the informal sector is rather the goose laying Africa’s golden eggs.

 

Unpacking the data

We argue in our paper that African leaders must re-think the informal sector as a potential site for innovation and solutions.

Consider its employment creation potential for instance. In 2018, a study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that the informal sector employs some 89.2% of the total labour force in sub-Saharan Africa if agriculture is included.

Even without agriculture, the share of informal employment is still significant: 76.8%. In central Africa, without agriculture, the sector’s share of employment hovered at 78.8% and 91% with agriculture. In east Africa, the contributions stood at 76.6% without agriculture and 91.6% with agriculture. The figures for southern and western Africa hovered around 36.1% and 87% without agriculture and 40.2% and 92.4% when agriculture is included.

The informal sector also makes other important contributions to Africa’s economy. In 2000, the gross value additions of Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo’s informal sector (including agriculture) hovered around 71.6%, 55.8%, 51.5%, and 72.5% of the countries’ total GDPs.

The sector’s contribution to housing too is substantial. The most notable form of informal housing, popularly called “slums”, provide accommodation to millions of urban dwellers on the continent.

The United Nations’ data suggest that Nigeria’s share of urban population that are accommodated in slums as of 2015 stood at 50.2%. That of Ethiopia was 73.9%; Uganda’s 53.6%; Tanzania’s 50.7%. Ghana and Rwanda’s hovered around 37.9% and 53.2%, respectively.

Clearly, the informal sector oils Africa’s urban economy in many important ways. This makes it highly unlikely that any visions of transforming lives on the continent can succeed without taking the sector into adequate account.

More importantly, the millions of working-class people whose lives depend on the sector have shown consistently that they won’t take their continuing marginalisation lying down. They frequently resist eviction orders.

Perhaps, their most profound moment of resistance was witnessed at the height of the COVID pandemic.

Many African governments imposed lockdowns to limit community transmission of the virus. However, after subjecting informal workers to extensive brutalities, they still refused to comply, forcing many governments to suspend the lockdowns. The pandemic has shown that the continuing systematic marginalisation of informal workers in city-making heralds more trouble for the future.

 

Informality at the heart of city-making

The issue is not that city authorities must allow informal workers and activities to go unchecked. They clearly have a responsibility to deal with the problems in the sector to ensure the security and health of the public. This includes the informal workers themselves.

The problem with current approaches is that they largely dispossess the workers and displace them to make way for big capital projects which serve the needs of a privileged few.

African leaders must recognise the enormous potentials of the continent’s informal workers and begin to integrate them better into their city-building visions and strategies.

The recent integration of informal waste collectors/recyclers – popularly called Zabbaleen – in waste management in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, offers great lessons.

The Zabbaleen had long been neglected for so-called “formal” private companies which, however, continued to prove inefficient and structurally unable to navigate the narrow streets of several neighbourhoods of Cairo.

When Cairo authorities finally recognised that the Zabbaleen are better suited for the job, they changed course and brought them onboard. The emerging evidence suggests that the change is paying some fruitful dividends in improved sanitation.

Cairo’s progressive example paints a powerful image of how the capabilities of informal workers could be seriously incorporated and integrated into building African cities. Hopefully, more of such interventions will be replicated in other sectors of the continent’s urban economy.

Dr Henry Mensah and Professor Imoro Braimah of KNUST’s Centre for Settlements Studies, and Department of Planning contributed to the original article.

Gideon Abagna Azunre, PhD student, Concordia University; Festival Godwin Boateng, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainable Urban Development, The Earth Institute, Columbia University; Owusu Amponsah, Senior Lecturer, Department of planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and Stephen Appiah Takyi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mask mandates are now over, but health practitioners and scientists say it’s time to use what we have learnt about COVID-19 to manage other epidemics. Credit: IMF Photo/James Oatway

By Fawzia Moodley
Johannesburg, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

After two years of economic and social upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries, including South Africa, have lifted the tough protocols such as lockdowns, the mandatory wearing of masks and social distancing.

COVID fatigue, the global economic bloodbath, devastating social and mental health impacts, and the hope that large-scale vaccinations provided sufficient herd immunity, persuaded these governments to lift the suffocating protocols.

But experts warn that we should not be lulled into a false sense of security.

According to the Statista Research Service, outbreaks of COVID-19 continue to be confirmed in almost every country in the world. The virus has infected nearly 566 million people worldwide, with the number of deaths at almost 6.4 million. The most severely affected countries include the US, India, Brazil, France and Germany.

Thankfully, the deadly Delta variant is no longer a significant threat. The emergence of Omicron, which is more easily transmitted, has raised concern among scientists because it constantly mutates, as evident from its swift evolution from the BA.2 lineage to Omicron.B4 and B5.

Dr Waasila Jassat of the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) says that South Africa has a high number of Omicron cases but fortunately experienced only a small rise in hospitalisations and deaths during its BA.4 and BA.5 wave. Quoted in the scientific journal Nature, she warns that older adults are still at high risk and that the new strains are more immune to vaccinations.

A panel of experts at a recent webinar in Johannesburg, titled: “Is COVID 19 over? Or is it still lurking in the shadows? An African response to the pandemic”, expressed concern at the unknowns related to the mutating nature of Omicron.

They reviewed the devastating impact of the lockdown measures, the lessons learnt from our handling of the pandemic, and explored alternate and less drastic ways to deal with future pandemics.

Psychiatrist Dr Surenthran Pillay said the pandemic had led to an increase in mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, resulting not only from the illness and deaths but also from job losses and economic fallout.

“The other complication that has to be managed is the associated increase in poverty that comes with COVID. Africa is not the wealthiest region. With COVID coming, we are not giving attention to people’s other needs. We can’t neglect communities’ needs because the anxieties and psychiatric aspect of the lack of food or lack of housing or other economic complications that come from COVID are just as important.”

Pillay also speaks of the impact on children.

“We have a whole generation of kids who spent two years behind masks, and important stages in their lives like recognising facial expressions were lost for them.”

Dr Samantha Potgieter, an expert on infectious diseases from the University of the Free State, says there’s hope that future pandemics will be better managed due to the lessons learnt this time.

“Unfortunately, we certainly can’t say that COVID is over, and if I were to guess what the future holds, I think the hope is that as repeated infections occur and vaccine boosters are fine-tuned, we will continue to see waves of the disease but with less and less disruption of our lives.”

The role of the media also came under scrutiny. Ogechi Ekeanyawu, the Sub-Saharan regional editor of the African Science podcast, speaks about the critical role of the media in disseminating “credible and scientifically backed” information about vaccines and treatment during a pandemic.

In the era of social media, “where anyone can come with a camera or any text that they like to put out,” she says, “it is important that all information is verified and authentic”.

“We’re looking at the science, listening to the scientists, making sure that they have a larger voice; so, sort of centring their voices in our reports so that we are not misinformed at any point in time.”

She also notes that the media had ignored monkeypox, which the World Health Organization recently declared a public health emergency until it spread to Europe and other developed countries.

“It has always existed here, particularly in West Africa in countries like Congo and Nigeria, but all of a sudden, it is now a global concern, and people are now talking about research. Monkeypox existed all the while here, and there was no spotlight on it.”

Dr Subeshnee Munien, an environmental scientist, warns that even if COVID ends, infectious diseases and pandemics are “going to be more frequent than we’d like to believe”.

She says COVID has devastated the poorest of the poor and exposed “what needs to be done for us to be better prepared for the next infectious event.”

The message was clear: This is no time for complacency; we need to learn from our experience of COVID to be able to deal with future pandemics in a more constructive and less disruptive way.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Globally, feminist movements have been some of the biggest drivers of progressive social change. Credit: UN Women

By Angelika Arutonyva and Leila Hessini
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

Feminist movements are powerful, and donors who want to contribute to solving the biggest challenges facing the world today, should fund them deeply, and without restrictions. Research by Htun and Weldon back this up, showing that globally, feminist movements have been some of the biggest drivers of progressive social change.

The work of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) helps us understand what this looks like in practice. In 1995, they began working to strengthen women’s rights and address the issue of violence against women. Working across eight countries, SIHA built an informal network of women with very little funding, most of which was project-specific.

The work that feminist movements do is vital, and yet this is work that is severly underfunded. Analysis from the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) shows that women’s rights organizations receive only 0.13% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and 0.4% of all gender-related aid. Additionally, only 0.42% of foundation grants are allocated towards women's rights.

Once they received their first core funding grant, they had the flexibility to be responsive—and none too soon. When Sudan’s dictatorship fell in 2019, SIHA was ready to respond. They had built trust within the country and knew how to support communities. At a time when other actors couldn’t enter the region and it was difficult to get funding through, SIHA supported feminist activists to respond to threats, especially that of mass sexual violence, as well as the opportunities for impact.

We see similar patterns around a variety of issues within the gender justice umbrella. In 2021, Benin liberalised its abortion law allowing for the termination of pregnancy at up to twelve weeks in cases where a continuation “is likely to worsen or cause a situation of material, education, professional or moral distress which is incompatible with the woman’s interests.”

This is a significant win for feminist movements as it recognises the importance of abortion access for a wide variety of reasons. At the global level, for years, feminist leaders have advocated for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to pass a treaty that recognises the gendered nature of the world of work.

The result was ILO Convention No. 190, described as the first international treaty to recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence and harassment. This is a major policy win and Governments that ratify the convention will be required to put in place processes to prevent and address violence and harassment in the world of work.

The work that feminist movements do is vital, and yet this is work that is severly underfunded.

Analysis from the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) shows that women’s rights organizations receive only 0.13% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and 0.4% of all gender-related aid. Additionally, only 0.42% of foundation grants are allocated towards women’s rights.

This is the massive gap that we need a bold new school of philanthropists to fill. To deliver on the promise that feminists and social justice movements hold, we require bold innovators to shift the way the world operates. Daring progressive individuals should invest resources into people who can shift our communities and societies to be better, more accepting and welcoming environments. All that is needed to do this is to provide communities, particularly those led by Black, Indigenous and People of Color with a significant level of resources that allows the freedom to be bold and creative in their work.

Recently, Shake the Table, a feminist organisation that bridges the worlds of philantopy and social justice, teamed up with the global philanthropic advisory firm Bridgespan, to explore how feminist movements can be supported to address systemic oppression, and to realise the transformative change that donors seek.

This initiative is a first – bringing together insights from High Net Worth Individuals and feminist movement leaders. The report calls for new financing for feminist movements – asking for an investment of an extra $1.5billion per year. In their words:

“We set the very minimum of $1.5 billion a year over and above current funding levels as a starting point, to hold ground against the anti-gender movement and gain traction toward a just future for us all. For thousands of individual feminist leaders, organizations, and their collective movements, this investment would represent a game-changing opportunity. Increasing the resources available to feminist movements by an order of magnitude could enable gains (and stave off losses) in reproductive rights around the world, fairer and more dignified wages and working conditions, and climate justice. It could advance work to reduce gender-based violence as well as push back against authoritarianism and protect democracy, countering systemic abuse in communities around the world. It would recognize the transformative, collaborative work of feminist movements across borders and generations. Such an investment will lead to outcomes we can’t yet imagine.”

And yet the outcomes that already exist speak powerfully of the possibilities that could be further unleashed if feminist movements were resourced boldly.

Feminists want to co-create a better world. A world where feminist movements thrive is one where people from all backgrounds live in peace and enjoy a full range of human rights and freedoms. A world where feminist movements thrive centres constituency work done and led by Black and Indigenous people, and People of Color.

This work cannot be done with a pittance. The work of world making requires bold philanthropy from a feminist lens. Significant resources need to be directed towards historically marginalized communities – led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color around the world.

Organizations working at the grassroots need to be trusted and recognised for the deep knowledge they hold on how to create change, and donors need to do what they can do best – give – and get out of the way so that the all important work of social change is accelerated.

Angelika Arutyunova is an Armenian from Uzbekistan, feminist social justice consultant with two decades of experience across regions, movements and sectors.

Leila Hessini is the Vice President, Programs at Global Fund for Women.

Young climate activists take part in demonstrations at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. November 2021. Credit: UN News/Laura Quiñones

By Ulrika Modéer and Veronica Winja Otieno
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

Today, our world is 1.1°C warmer than it was in the pre-industrial era, and failure to act urgently could possibly result in increases of 1.5°C-2°C between 2026 and 2042. Climate change poses a serious risk to the fundamental rights of people of every age.

Extreme weather such as droughts, floods and heatwaves, and their effects of food and water insecurity, livelihood losses, famines, and wildfires exacerbate inequalities and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, among them young people and children.

UNDP’s Peoples’ Climate Vote, the largest ever survey of public opinion on climate change, revealed that nearly 70 percent of under 18s are most likely to believe climate change is a global emergency. Other studies show that ‘eco-anxiety’ is increasing, particularly amongst the young.

A global study of 10,000 youth from 10 countries in 2021 found that over 50 percent of young people felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty about climate change, while 45 percent said their feelings negatively affected their daily lives.

Countries expressing more worry tended to be poorer, such as those in the south, or those in the north that had been directly affected by climate change.

Young people continue to take on a leading role in influencing, advocating, and demanding for responsible climate behaviour and stronger political will from governments and the private sector. During COP26, young leaders presented a Global Youth Position statement, representing the views of over 40,000 young leaders demanding that their rights be guaranteed in climate change agreements.

School strikes for climate have been recorded in over 150 countries, gaining widespread attention from the public and media. Young leaders have raised awareness in their communities, promoted lifestyle changes and concrete solutions, and advocated for the rights of vulnerable groups, including Indigenous people, who are often excluded from decision-making.

Despite this, young people continue to report ageism is affecting their lives, their employment, political participation, health, and justice. This not only detracts from their wellbeing but it prevents societies from designing inclusive policies and social services that are fair for all ages.

This has translated to a growing sense of hopelessness and mistrust towards governments’ willingness and ability to tackle the eminent climate challenges amongst youth.

As the UN celebrated International Youth Day 2022 (on12 August), this year’s theme was Intergenerational Solidarity: Creating a World for All Ages. Action is needed from all generations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to ensure that no one is left behind.

This is particularly important in addressing climate change, which is considered the most significant intergenerational injustice of our time. It is imperative that everybody, and especially the older generations, work with young people to achieve climate justice.

A systemic change to enhance inter-generational solidarity, is urgently required to address and remove inequalities, and to tackle structural barriers to meaningful youth engagement.

At UNDP, we strongly believe in the importance of meaningful youth involvement in decision-making, both as a demographic and democratic imperative to address youth rights, needs and aspirations. Our Aiming higher guidance explores critical ways to achieve this.

It’s important to listen to the voices of young people and to join them in speaking against climate injustice. The voices of young people must be included in the decisions taken now, and steps taken to ensure that they can hold governments accountable.

As it stands, and rightfully so, all renowned climate change activists are young people. But it is also important that older generations join in the activism and support responsible climate action. This has the potential to improve trust and enhance effective collaboration.

All youth voices should be given a fair chance. Amongst young people, those from rural areas in the global south are further marginalized and affected disproportionately by the effects of climate injustice, yet unlike their urban counterparts have found little voice.

This is due to a number of factors including the digital divide and limited resources, including visa denials, which lock them out of the crucial stages of policy-making. Meaningful collaboration with youth and grassroots organizations provides an opportunity for all voices to be heard.

Education is an important tool. The Peoples’ Climate Vote revealed that the most profound driver of public opinion on climate change was a respondent’s level of education. Policy makers should continue to educate all generations not only on what climate change is and its effects, but even more importantly on protection and mitigation measures.

The incorporation of climate smart education from basic to tertiary levels of education will play a key role in creating awareness and integrating climate solutions across all levels of society.

To inspire hope and further encourage young people towards climate action, it is important that progress is highly celebrated. This plays a key role in strengthening young people’s agency and resilience to continue pushing on and not thinking their efforts are futile.

There are 1.2 billion young people and their collective input will have an impact both now and in the future. Fortunately, there is good news.

Young people played an important role in the Climate Promise. While young people were largely ignored in earlier Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) now 75 percent of Climate Promise countries prioritize youth in developing their NDCs, primarily through consultations, raising awareness and advocacy campaigns.

The cost of solar and wind power and electric vehicles have come down dramatically. Between 2010 to 2019, solar energy costs decreased 85 percent, wind energy by 55 percent, and lithium-ion batteries by 85 percent.

And in the last decade, climate finance has significantly increased, reaching US$632 billion.

The solidarity, mutual respect, and understanding between the young people of the global north and south on climate action, as well as their advocacy for marginalized groups whose voices are not heard is admirable. This emphasizes the important role that solidarity plays.

Young people have been ignored in climate decisions for far too long and can no longer be seen as merely means to an end. It is their present and their future that’s at stake. Their concerns and their solutions must be at the heart of all decision-making.

Empowering young people presents a historic, transformational, and collective opportunity to advance an inclusive green recovery, accelerate progress on the SDGs and to lay the foundation for a peaceful and sustainable future.

Ulrika Modeer is UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP and Veronica Winja Otieno is African Young Women in Leadership Fellow & Strategy Analyst, UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Journalists, writers, both local and international, have called on the authorities in India to respect human rights and release imprisoned writes and dissident and critical voices. Protests about media freedom have become more urgent in recent years since this protest by the Mumbai Press Club. Credit: Facebook

By Mehru Jaffer
Lucknow, Aug 17 2022 (IPS)

On the eve of India’s 76th Independence Day, the president of the country, Droupadi Murmu, received a letter signed by 102 international writers, including authors from India and the Indian diaspora expressing “grave concerns about the rapidly worsening situation for human rights” and calling for the release of imprisoned writers and “dissident and critical voices”.

Salman Rushdie signed the letter before the attack on him on August 12, 2022. Rushdie joined PEN America and PEN International, two worldwide associations of writers, to convey his anguish to the highest office in India.

Dated August 14, 2022, the letter urged the President of India to support the democratic ideals promoting and protecting free expression in the spirit of India’s independence and to restore India’s reputation as an inclusive, secular, multi-ethnic and -religious democracy where writers can express dissenting or critical views without threat of detention, investigation, physical attacks, or retaliation.

“Free expression is the cornerstone of a robust democracy. By weakening this core right, all other rights are at risk and the promises made at India’s birth as an independent republic are severely compromised,” the writers emphasised.

In its Freedom to Write Index 2021, PEN America considered India the only “nominally democratic country” among the “top 10 jailers” of writers and public intellectuals worldwide. The letter highlighted the arrest of writers, including poet Varavara Rao who was recently granted bail.

The “grave concern” regarding threats to free expression and other core rights has grown steadily in recent years.

The signatories underlined that writers and public intellectuals were “subject to arrest, prosecution, and travel bans intended to restrain their free speech”.

Well-known authors Amitav Ghosh, Perumal Murugan, Orhan Pamuk, Jerry Pinto, Salil Tripathi, Aatish Taseer and Shobhaa De, have signed the letter that said, “Online trolling and harassment is rife, hate speech is expressed loudly”, and criticised frequent internet shutdowns “centred on Kashmir” limit the access to news and information.

The letter registered a strong protest over the “persecution” of writers, columnists, editors, journalists, and artists, including Mohammed Zubair, Siddique Kappan, Teesta Setalvad, Avinash Das, and Fahad Shah.

In yet another PEN America initiative, 113 authors from India and the Indian diaspora have contributed to a collection reflecting on the state of free expression and democratic ideals. Titled India at 75, the collection includes original writings by Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Geetanjali Shree, Rajmohan Gandhi and Romila Thapar, among others.

Rushdie writes that India’s “dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death”.

“Then, in the First Age of Hindustan Hamara, our India, we celebrated one another’s festivals, and believed, or almost believed, that all of the land’s multifariousness belonged to all of us. Now that dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death. A shadow lies upon the country we loved so deeply. Hindustan isn’t hamara anymore. The Ruling Ring—one might say—has been forged in the fire of an Indian Mount Doom. Can any new fellowship be created to stand against it?”

On August 15, India celebrated 75 years of independence from colonial rule. The country has yet to conquer poverty, but the largest democracy in the world did enjoy an excellent track record of encouraging free and fair media.

However, press freedom, as well as the unity of the country, is threatened by communal politics. A large section of mainstream media has turned pro-government, especially after the general elections in the spring of 2019. Ever since pressure has increased on the media to toe the line of the Hindu nationalist government. For the same reason, it is often difficult to distinguish between a ruling party spokesperson and a journalist in India today.

“At centre stage of media are views of political parties, their respective spokespersons making more noise than saying anything substantive on the electronic media,” Anand Vardhan Singh, Lucknow-based senior journalist and founder of YouTube channel The Public, told the IPS.

Singh regrets that the people in power have fragmented the national media between English versus regional languages, print versus electronic versus social media.

Investigative journalism is a thing of the past. The reporting aspect of media has taken a backseat.

This year’s independence day celebration will be remembered for what 9-year-old Mehnaz Kappan said.

“I am Mehnaz Kappan, daughter of journalist Siddique Kappan, a citizen who has been forced into a dark room by breaking all freedom of a citizen”.

Siddique Kappan is a Delhi-based journalist from Kerala. He was arrested in October 2020 on his way to Hathras, a poverty-stricken village in north India in Uttar Pradesh, to report on the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman.

“Attempts to demean, belittle, and outlaw dissent and protest and the problem of growing communalisation are the principal challenges the country faces today. A journalist needs nerves of steel and tremendous courage to continue to ask questions,” senior journalist and founding editor of The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan, said.

Siddharth Varadarajan, foundering editor of The Wire has also been targeted. Credit: The Wire

Like many others, Varadarajan, too, was punished for speaking out, and court cases are filed against him. Many journalists are booked for sedition to intimidate those scribes who refuse to toe the line of people in power.

The problem is that mainstream media has stopped questioning the government. Public interest is no longer on the mind of the media. The purpose of mainstream journalists, nicknamed ‘godi’ media or ‘cozy’ journalism, is only to praise those in power.

The media has abrogated its responsibility of asking questions, and those journalists who question, like Mohammad Zubair (33), are put into jail. The arrest of journalist Zubair marks a new low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press. Zubair was arrested because AltNews,  a fact-checking website he co-founded, frequently exposed claims made by the government, making him an obstacle to false propaganda. Zubair was arrested last June. He spent 23 days in prisons and police custody in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and was released on July 23, 2022, after the Supreme Court granted interim bail to him.

Soon after he had walked out of prison, Zubair told the national daily The Hindu that he thinks his arrest was made an example for others.

Zubair said that multiple First Information Reports (FIR) filed against him were a message from the government that it could book 10-15 random FIRs in different states to keep one in jail for years. Zubair was released after a Supreme Court ruling to grant him bail. The FIRs filed against Zubair are random and bizarre, like two FIRs in Uttar Pradesh are for fact-checking a media channel-which is his job. There is another FIR for calling an accused in a hate speech case a hate monger in a tweet!

Zubair happens to be a Muslim. Another Muslim journalist Sana Mattoo was prevented from flying abroad for a book release. To intimidate Zubair, money-laundering charges were filed against him. Maria Ressa, the Nobel Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines, said that she was shocked at the arrest of Zubair and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad. Ressa told a digital media reporter in India that all journalists should unite to oppose what has happened.

“Everyone should be talking about it; everyone should be writing about this,” said Ressa.

In a population of 1.4 billion people, 14 percent are Muslim, but the practice of majoritarian politics in recent times has made the ruling party increasingly intolerant of Muslim voices in the country. Kappan, a Muslim, was denied bail.

Millions of tweets are directed at journalist Rana Ayyub, another Muslim, making her one of the most brutally targeted journalists in the world.

Ayyub, an independent journalist and a Washington Post columnist, has used her social media heft and the global attention she receives to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims and the arrest of journalists in India. She was accused of money laundering and tax fraud related to her crowdfunding campaign to help those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Ayyub has denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations baseless. Early this year, the United Nations appointed independent rights experts issued a statement calling Indian authorities to stop the systematic harassment against Ayyub.

“Relentless misogynistic and sectarian attacks online against journalist Rana Ayyub must be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the Indian authorities, and the judicial harassment against her brought to an end at once,” the statement said.

For the same reason, India ranks as one of the most dangerous and restrictive countries for journalists today. Despite its secular and democratic status, India is ranked 142nd in the Reporters Without Borders 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

There are other ways to make journalists feel uncomfortable. Notices were sent to the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) to vacate the accommodation allotted to them as their lease will soon end. A similar notice was also sent to South Asia’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Both organisations are Delhi based.

Shobhna Jain, President of IWPC, said, “It’s a routine procedural thing. The government is giving us renewals, and we are quite hopeful that this year too, we will get the lease renewed for a longer period”.

The IWPC is the country’s first association of women journalists, founded in 1994 as a support group to help women meet challenges unique to women. It was to ensure that women’s by-lines were respected and heard. Today more than 800 women are members of the IWPC who use the premises to network, access news sources, exchange information and share experiences to advance the profession. Located in the heart of New Delhi and equipped with a library and computer centre, the premises are a boon for journalists wanting to save time from commuting in the city.

Often children accompany the women journalist as she works while they play on the premises. Here press conferences are organised and exclusive interactions with newsmakers.

July this year was a terrible month for journalists around Asia.

On July 3, journalist Hasibur Rehman Rubel left his office in the Kushtia district in western Bangladesh, never to return. On July 7, his decomposed body was found in a river.

On July 7, Peer Muhammad Khan Kakar, a Pakistani journalist, was arrested in the Loralai district of southwest Balochistan on complaints related to his Facebook posts.

On the same day in July, Ressa’s prison sentence was increased by several months. A court in the Philippines affirmed the libel conviction of Ressa, Rappler’s head and co-founder.

Two days later, on July 9, members of a television team were attacked in Sri Lanka. The paramilitary police Special Task Force assaulted journalists reporting a protest in the capital city of Colombo.

The BBC reported that a video journalist in Colombo was allegedly punched by a member of the Sri Lankan army, his phone snatched, and footage deleted.

What is the solution to the vicious attack on journalists today? According to Varadrajan, it is unity amongst all media persons that can together fight the assault on the media and freedom of speech in the country.

Despite differences in political beliefs, scribes need to stand by each other today like never before. Varadrajan suggests building a team of lawyers to defend media persons in court.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By External Source
Noumea, Aug 17 2022 (IPS-Partners)

When University of Arizona political economy professor, William Mishler needed Kiribati census and household income data for a project he was working on with Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) he turned to the Pacific Data Hub (PDH) to access the microdata he needed.

The PDH is a central repository of data about the Pacific and from the Pacific. It is a collection of different data platforms and tools and a programme of work that encourages data sharing and access for increased transparency and evidence-based decision and policy making across the region.

The Pacific Data Hub – Microdata Library is one aspect of the PDH where microdata is preserved, cataloged and documented.

’Microdata’ refers to data that contain information about people, that has been anonymised but otherwise retains the detailed individual responses to the original survey, to reduce the risk of respondents being identified.

In the past, microdata from the Pacific has been difficult to access. Traditionally there has been a conservative approach to the release of microdata in the region however, through the PDH’s work this is changing and a broad acceptance of the value of microdata for research, transparency and accountability is growing.

Central to this are government statisticians who oversee access to country microdata. It was thanks to Aritita Tekaieti, Republic Statistician in Kiribati, who saw the value in the request and released the microdata that enabled William to access the information he needed.

“Finding so much data on this small island country accessible in a single place and so well documented has been an unexpected treasure”, said William when we caught up with him to discuss his work and the role data plays in it.

Thanks for your time William, can you tell us a bit about your background and work?

My academic research traditionally has been focused on citizen participation and representation in the policy process as part of a more general concern with promoting democracy and democratization.

Virtually all my work over the years relies heavily on rigorous statistical analyses of survey research, which, when done well, is one of the best ways to understand public opinion and one of the best, as well, to give voice to otherwise voiceless people. I see public opinion surveys as fundamental tools for democracy. Indeed, I was co-founder and director for the better part of two decades of the New Democracy Barometer, a bi-annual survey conducted in ten Central and Eastern European Countries during the early years of their post-communist economic and political transitions. I also was co-director of the New Russia Barometer tracking public opinion in Russia from 1991 through 2012.

Parallel to my academic work, I have worked for many years as a consultant to a variety of Non-Profits working with USAID and, more recently, to the Millennium Challenge Corporation on projects promoting both democracy and economic development. It is my work with MCC on promoting productive employment in Kiribati that has prompted my interest with data on Pacific Island Countries in general and Kiribati in particular.

What role does data play in the work that you do?

MCC, and specifically the Gender and Social Inclusion Team at MCC, for whom I work directly, are committed to using data driven research to identify the constraints to private investment and entrepreneurship that are the most binding on inclusive economic growth in the country. In addition to macro-economic data on the economy of the countries in which MCC works, we also rely heavily on survey research and other individual-level data to help us understand how macro-economic forces impact individuals and sub-groups in society, especially those who are economically most at risk and traditionally have been marginalized and neglected.

In Kiribati, surveys not only allow us to assess the economic situations confronted by women and youth, but they also enable assessments of the economic and social forces affecting different islands and villages.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered in accessing data on the Pacific?

Being new to research on PICT countries, I, personally, have been pleasantly surprised by how much survey data is available for Kiribati and other Pacific countries. Our work to date in Kiribati has used a variety of surveys including both the 2010, 2015 and preliminary 2020 Census data, but also the 2006 and 2019 Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (including the Village Resources Module of the 2019 HIES), the 2018-2019 Social Development Indicator Survey (MICS6), and the Transparency International 2021 Pacific Global Corruption Barometer.

There have been relatively few challenges to accessing these data. The Kiribati National Statistics Office and the Pacific Data Hub have been extremely generous in providing access to the data they have collected or archived. The data portals are well organized and well documented. The steps for gaining permission to access the data are clear and easy to follow. And the approval process has been fast and uniformly positive. Even data listed as “unavailable” has been made available.

The only limitation to the data that MCC has encountered is the difficulty experienced, in some data sets, of identifying respondent’s islands and villages. These have been anonymized in some surveys for the very good reason of protecting the identities of respondents who might otherwise be easily be identified in small islands and villages by virtual of a respondent’s age, family size, and position, etc. This limitation, however, has proved of minimum importance, however, since most analysis are focused on Island Groups and not specific islands other than South Tarawa, which is easily to identify from contextual data.

How are you using the Pacific Data Hub in your work?

MCC is using Pacific Hub data in combination with data from the World Bank, ILO, and other sources for a variety of purposes. First, the MCC country team for Kiribati is large and diverse, but few of its members have spent any substantial time in country or had any detailed knowledge about the country’s economy or society before starting this project. Moreover, the current international pandemic has made travel to Kiribati all but impossible. Pacific Data Hub data thus provided many of us our first opportunity to become familiar with the country, to “meet” its citizens, and to begin to understand the parameters of daily life on the islands.

Second, the data have allowed us to undertake a variety of more focused analyses of economic life on the islands: who is employed or in in search of employment, in what occupations, with what income and benefits. What limits productive employment for women and youth as well as men? How does household production, fit into the economic situation? How much do households rely on overseas remittances including international labor migration.

Third, the data are being used to test a variety of hypotheses generated by our conversations with Kiribati government officials, NGO leaders, and other Donor groups regarding the root causes of the constraints to private investment and entrepreneurship that have been identified in the country. All of this is intended to ensure that any programs MCC develops in cooperation with the Kiribati government is based on the best possible data we can assemble.

The Pacific Data Hub (PDH), is a central repository of data about the Pacific and from the Pacific. The platform serves as a gateway to the most comprehensive collection of data and information about the Pacific across key areas including population statistics, fisheries science, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and resilience, public health surveillance, conservation of plant genetic resources for food security and human rights.

By David McCoy
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 2022 (IPS)

Global Public Investment. A short and simple phrase. But one that means so much.

At its most basic, GPI means public money being used to invest in goods and services that are of global benefit. There is no shortage of goods and services that need GPI, whether they be used to prevent or respond to environmental catastrophe, international war and conflict, or the next pandemic.

We live on a single, small and fragile planet and greater levels of GPI are needed to help us look after our planet; and invest in the global institutions and services needed to provide security and health for all.

This is why over the last few years a group of committed individuals and organizations have worked to establish new ideas and thinking around GPI. Following an extensive period of consultation and discussion, an Expert Working Group has just produced a report on how we make GPI a reality.

The report describes the need for GPI, and how governments may contribute and participate in the governance and effective use of public finance for the common good.

Importantly, GPI offers a new model of development finance that can replace the ineffective and colonial forms of donor aid with an approach that is based on true multilateralism, fairness and shared benefit. Central to the idea of GPI is a simple slogan: all contribute, all benefit, all decide.

Nothing perhaps illustrates the need for GPI than the new fund being created to finance pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The fund, to be managed by the World Bank, has been built to fail according to many experts because of structural flaws that consolidate decision-making power in the hands of a small group of wealthy nations and philanthropies.

The English-language launch of the Expert Working Group’s report on July 27th took the form of a brief presentation of the history and principles of GPI followed by a three-woman panel discussion. Helen Clark (former prime minister of New Zealand), Jayati Ghosh (Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts) and Marianna Mazzucato (Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value) each spoke to the relevance of GPI.

Importantly, the panel noted that for the GPI funding model to work, it must be accompanied by other political and economic efforts. These include restoring and rebuilding the status and capabilities of public departments and institutions after decades of neoliberal attacks on the public sector as well as ‘in-sourcing’ critical public functions that have been commercialized and privatised.

The panel also noted the need to rise to the political challenge of reforming the financial system so that enough public funding can be generated and so that we can better redistribute wealth across society.

This will require, among other things, an end to the tax abuses perpetrated or enabled by trans-national corporations, banks, accountancy firms and corrupt officials.

While the panel focused its discussion on GPI, the broader financialization of society and the role of private finance was not neglected. Indeed, it was argued that private finance needs to be part of the solution to meeting society’s needs. But equally, laws and regulations are needed to stop the social and environmental caused by the rapacious, short-term and unregulated flows of private finance capital that have grown over the past few decades.

It’s clear that transformative and structural social, political and economic is needed if we are to succeed in rescuing the planet, democracy and civilization from further degradation.

Is GPI one element of the new social, political and economic structural settlement that we need? I think it is. But see for yourself.

Professor Dr David McCoy is a public health doctor and currently a Research Lead at the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). Follow him on Twitter @dcmccoy11.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Refugee tents in a camp in Greece. UN report shows refugees may be affected by poor health outcomes. CREDIT: Julie Ricard/Unsplash)

By Juliet Morrison
United Nations, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

While refugees globally face insecurity and uncertainty, a new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that they also face poorer health outcomes.

The World report on the health of refugees and migrants, published on July 20, 2022, was the first to survey studies of various refugee health outcomes, including mental health.

The report highlighted that refugees are not inherently less healthy than host populations but that various social factors, including changes in income, substandard living conditions, and barriers to other services, can result in poorer health and well-being.

Refugees from conflict-affect areas are also at a higher risk of developing mental disorders like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. While rates vary by population and region, one study cited by the WHO estimated the burden of conditions to be 22.1 percent.

But experts caution that estimates of PTSD in the field may be overstated because of the difficulty of discerning a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) response from a normal behavioral response to trauma.

The WHO report also dove into the importance of mental health, which Dr Timothy Mackey, a global health professor at the University of California San Diego, told IPS is often neglected.

According to one report, only 0.3% of international assistance for health went to mental health care between 2006-2016. Refugees can also be excluded from accessing health services in certain countries based on their migratory status.

The neglect of mental health care is often because of limited resources and capacity, added Mackey. Healthcare issues that are more visible and studied extensively tend to be more significant priorities.

“[Mental health] is harder to advocate for than a lot of the more quantifiable diseases like an infectious disease outbreak, or diabetes, or heart disease or cancer, where you may have more compelling global disease burden statistics.”

Despite this, Mackey added that addressing mental health can be a real benefit for countries as treating mental health leads to many positive effects.

“Because there can be such clear acute trauma, and especially in the early stages of the lifecycle with children, [mental health issues] can have very lasting impacts for economic productivity or long-term health outcomes. […] Addressing mental health is a preventative component. It can save health systems money, and it can lead to better long-term outcomes.”

But disorders are only one aspect of mental health. Some academics advocate for treating refugees holistically – taking into account the overall well-being of refugees in addition to visible health problems.

This means examining the social factors affecting a person’s mental state, like living and working conditions. The WHO report revealed that both could play a big role in overall refugee well-being.

According to one study, Palestinian refugees from occupied territories had a reduced risk of mental disorders when they were in secure housing in Lebanon. Another study on Southeast Asian refugees in Canada showed a significant improvement in mental health once refugees had access to the labor market and could generate income.

Hussein Alzribi, a former refugee from Syria, is familiar with how a lack of security can affect well-being. He fled Syria in February 2016 and underwent a brief transitory period in Greece before settling in the Netherlands.

Unable to practice law as a refugee, Alzribi told IPS that his stretch of unemployment felt hopeless.

“I couldn’t practice my profession, I didn’t know who to ask, and I had no money. There was nobody to give me guidance and help.”

He has since co-founded a non-profit that provides coaching to help refugees find employment. His co-founder, Bev Weise, told IPS that their non-profit, Refugee JumpStart, is a great support to refugees.

She said that being employed and generating income makes them feel part of society.

Dr Michaela Hynie, a psychology professor at York University in Canada, echoes this claim. In her research, she’s found many of these problems around refugee well-being to be rooted in social exclusion and systemic problems, rather than individual issues.

She stressed to IPS that many of the concerns of refugees she’s encountered center around a lack of stability and security.

“We default to mental health, which allows us to then say it’s about the individual and they have a mental health problem, and we need to teach them to be resilient as opposed to they’re in a system that is preventing them from establishing the things that we need for mental health.”

She argued that to improve refugee well-being, governments should focus on finding ways for people to thrive and find opportunities.

Most countries do not have policies on refugee well-being. Many are also far from considering refugee health in a comprehensive way that takes well-being into account, Mackey told IPS.

Getting to that place requires prioritizing refugee health. The WHO has stressed this requires focusing on data collection. Refugees are largely invisible from health data because large-scale surveys tend not to disaggregate their results by migratory status. This can make public officials “oblivious” to health issues within their borders.

The WHO stated that more data could enable better monitoring and strengthen compliance with refugee-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets.

“It is imperative that we do more on refugees and migrants’ health, but if we want to change the status quo, we need urgent investments to improve the quality, relevance, and completeness of health data on refugees and migrants,” Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO’s Deputy Director-General noted in the report’s press release.

Data collection is necessary for meaningful policy development, she added.

“We need sound data collection and monitoring systems that truly represent the diversity of the world population and the experience that refugees and migrants face the world over and that can guide more effective policies and interventions.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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During the first three months of the year, the Quebrada Santander Rural Sanitation System supplied three to four truckloads of water daily to supply the empty tanks in the neighboring town of Pichasca - solidarity typical of these systems in Chile, which did not endanger the supply of its members and was supported by special subsidies to cover the water emergency. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
RENGO, Chile, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Local leaders of the Rural Sanitation Services (RSS) warn that the digging of illegal wells by large agro-export companies in Chile is aggravating the effects of drought and threatening drinking water supplies and social peace.

Leaders of these programs also emphasize that the new constitution that may emerge from the Sept. 4 plebiscite would guarantee the human right to water, which would strengthen its management and that of river basins, in addition to facilitating a response to the water crisis to prevent it from triggering protests and social conflict.

Water rights were commercialized during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and between 1994 and 2006 the governments in power during the democratic transition sold the large water utilities to foreign companies, which have controlled the water supply in Chile’s cities since then.

The water supply in rural areas, considered unprofitable by these companies, was left in the hands of the country’s 2,306 RSS, which were institutionalized and transformed into Rural Sanitation Services in 2020 by a legal reform. They operate throughout this long narrow South American country of 19.5 million people and have 7,000 leaders and 6,000 workers.

The RSS, made up of cooperatives, local residents’ committees and other social organizations of different sizes, have the role of guaranteeing the drinking water supply in rural areas, with the State as supervisor and infrastructure provider. It is possible that in the future they will also take on responsibility for sanitation.

These systems benefit 2.1 million people, to whom they provide water at a lower price than the distribution and sanitation companies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 90 percent of the RSS never stopped serving their users, and despite the quarantine most of them paid their monthly fees, to maintain the system.

The Directorate of Hydraulic Works (DOH) of the Public Works Ministry told IPS that during the 2021-2022 period it will invest some 57 million dollars in seeking new sources of supply, and in the conservation and integral improvement of the systems. For 2023 the projected investment is 14 million dollars.

Maintenance is an ongoing job at the La Alianza RSS in the town of Choapino, some 105 km south of Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Relief for growing water stress

The Chilean economy is based on mining, especially copper, and large agricultural exports, two industries that require large amounts of water in a country with limited water resources.

The result is growing water stress, which accentuates the tension between powerful industries and human consumption and small-scale agriculture, aggravated by the private management of an essential resource such as water.

Against this backdrop, the RSS have alleviated access to water, but as recurrent droughts and other climatic impacts accentuate the water deficit, their role is becoming more difficult, without a substantial change in the right to water.

Francisco Santander, treasurer of the RSS in Quebrada Santander, in the Andes foothills 450 km north of Santiago, told IPS that “the first well we drilled by hand with 20 members in 1999. Now there are 45 of us.”

“The largest 50-meter well was dug five years ago. It is one of the deepest in the municipality of Río Hurtado. We bought a piece of land and applied for a drilling project. The money was provided by the DOH,” he said in an interview from his hometown.

The investment included pumps, a solar panel for energy, gabions (a basket or container filled with earth, stones, or other material), a well and a 50,000 liter tank.

“Last summer, faced with the drought crisis, we sold water to Pichasca (a neighboring town). They asked us for help. We gave them up to four truckloads a day for their tanks and they paid with an emergency subsidy. Our well is holding up well under a moderate level of consumption,” Santander proudly explained.

The solar panel was the first in Rio Hurtado and reduced energy costs by one-sixth. It contributes to the low price charged for water: 1.3 dollars per cubic meter and 2.2 dollars as a basic service fee.

Gloria Alvarado with the RSS in El Patagual, which serves 800 members in Pichidegua, a municipality of 18,000 inhabitants 165 km south of Santiago, was president of the National Federation of Rural Drinking Water and was a member of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the new constitution that voters will approve or reject in next month’s plebiscite.

Speaking to IPS from El Patagual, as a national expert, she warned about the critical water situation caused by climate change and drought, which is aggravated by overuse, poor distribution of rights and deficient watershed management.

A view of the 75-cubic-meter water storage tank installed at La Alianza, in Choapino, where the office also operates to attend to the needs of members and receive payment of their bills. The users of these rural sanitation systems, which are common in Chile, are not usually late with their payments, because thanks to these systems they have water in a country where water management has mostly been privatized. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“Petorca (a municipality 205 km north of Santiago) has a very green side with avocado plantations, but has another where the people have no water to drink and are supplied by water trucks. It is difficult for a 50-meter RSS well to compete with a 200-meter well,” she said, complaining about the agro-export companies.

She also alluded to the heavy use of water by forestry companies in southern Chile and mining companies “which until recently had no obligation to report their water use,” as they now do thanks to Article 56 of the new Water Code.

In Chile’s central valley, the plantations of fruit exporters have expanded exponentially, without any limits on their expansion, which has left many areas at water risk, Alvarado said.

“There is no land use planning or protection of the ecological function of the land. Today rural drinking water is at serious risk because there is unequal competition between those who extract for human consumption and those who extract for commercial and industrial use,” she said.

“Seventy-nine percent of water rights are in the hands of one percent of Chileans. It is inequitable and many families suffer the consequences,” she said, complaining that an essential resource has been transformed in Chile into a tradable commodity.

José Rivera is the administrator of the 500-family RSS in La Alianza in Choapino, in the municipality of Rengo, 105 km south of Santiago.

The town is part of the central region of O’Higgins, the largest exporter of fruit, wine, pork and chicken, “which basically means it exports water,” he said during a visit by IPS to the La Alianza facilities. As a result, he said, “we used to make 30-meter wells here, today we dig 100-meter wells, and in the nearby municipality of Machalí we dig 200 meters.”

According to Rivera, who is secretary of the National Federation of RSS Chile, another problem in O’Higgins is that for the last 10 years wells have been dug stealthily and without oversight.

“Farmers have so many plantations that they began to extract groundwater and make clandestine wells. There are thousands of wells” that nothing is known about and which are subject to no controls, he said.

Their RSS has two wells: one is 80 meters deep and the other 100. One collects water in a 75,000-liter metal tank and the other in a 200,000-liter concrete tank. A third 200,000-liter tank is planned.

“Before, we were basically the only ones who used groundwater. Today the agribusiness companies are replacing river water with groundwater and we have no inspectors in the General Water Directorate. They have no resources and no authorization to enter a farm,” Rivera said.

One solution, in his opinion, would be the use of drones to investigate unregistered wells.

“The biggest problem, and I’m speaking for the association, is that there is a war of wells. If I dig a 40-meter well, the farm will dig a 100-meter well and so on and so forth. The State will not have resources and neither will we. And there will be another outbreak of social unrest,” he predicted.

Rivera calls the situation “a silent water earthquake,” after touring the region and seeing the thousands of hectares of land planted.

“The coastal dry land is full of olive trees, where there were none before. Pichidegua is full of avocado trees. It is a crime because we have no water. The powerful, who own 500 or 1000 hectares, take water from here and transport it to the hills, where there are more and more plantations,” he said.

Meanwhile, “there are small farmers with five or six hectares who are without water,” he said, describing the situation as “serious, a powderkeg.”

José Rivera, administrator of the La Alianza RSS, checks the instruments of the new flow measurement system that indicates, second by second, how much water is in the tank and how much is being consumed in the water starters installed in the houses of each of the members of this rural sanitation system, a social organization unique to Chile, which alleviates the water deficit in the country. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Water as a human right

Alvarado said the solution to water management lies in the new constitution.

The text approved by the Constitutional Convention “will redistribute the right to use water,” she said. “It will put an end to the ownership of rights, which will be converted into use authorizations.”

She said that one of the origins of the water crisis is that there is an over-granting of rights that exceed the actual water sources and that there are very few water inspectors.

“An autonomous National Water Agency will be created and there will be integrated basin management in which users will be on an equal footing,” she said.

Rivera said the large landowners deceive small farmers by telling them that if the new constitution is approved they will be left without water, while “the constitutional proposal actually states that water is a public good.”

A step in the right direction

He highlighted, as a positive step, the promulgation in April of this year, under the government of leftwing President Gabriel Boric, of the reformed Water Code “for which we fought for 15 years.”

“The new law is very good because it protects rural areas and indicates that no one can ask for a concession in a rural area. They cannot privatize. Urban sanitation companies cannot enlarge their area of operation,” he stressed.

“We were recognized as RSS and today we can dig wells and draw water if it is for survival and basic consumption,” he added.

“Nobody wanted to change the Water Code, nobody wants to change the constitution…who is ‘nobody’? the economic powers-that-be. They do not want to change. We have to change,” he argued.

The production floor of an apparel exporting factory in Bangladesh. Credit: ILO/Marcel Crozet

By Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Rebeca Grynspan and Pamela Coke-Hamilton
GENEVA, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

We are in the toughest period the world economy has faced since the creation of the multilateral system more than three-quarters of a century ago. A quadruple shock of COVID, climate change, conflict and cost-of-living has undone years of hard-fought development gains.

As financial conditions tighten, even countries that had seemed on track to prosperity and stability now stare into the abyss of debt distress, fragility and uncertainty about the future.

Coordinated, multilateral action is necessary to tackle the crises we face. Both aid and trade have key roles to play in reversing the impacts of this quadruple shock and putting the world back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

We head the three international agencies that comprise the Geneva trade hub – the World Trade Organization (WTO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC).

The WTO makes and monitors the rules for global trade. UNCTAD delivers research and consensus-building to guide governments. ITC helps small business go global, especially firms led by women and young entrepreneurs. We work together so that trade works better for development.

All three of us share a deep commitment to trade-led prosperity. All three of us understand that a world in crisis means no more business as usual. And all three of us want our organizations to “walk the talk” on making aid and trade deliver for real people.

To guide aid and trade towards a better world, policymakers need to pivot in three fundamental ways.

First, make trade greener. Global trade can play an important role in a transition to a low-carbon economy. Preliminary research at the WTO suggests that removing tariffs and regulatory trade barriers for a set of energy-related environmental goods would reduce global CO2 emissions by 0.6% in 2030 just from improved energy efficiency, with additional potential gains from innovation spillovers and as lower prices accelerate the shift towards renewable energy and less carbon-intensive products.

Second, make trade more inclusive. Promoting greater trade by small businesses and greater participation by women and youth make companies and countries more competitive, drives economic transformation and reduces poverty.

Yet ITC business surveys found that one only out of every five exporting companies is women-led. WTO data show that micro, small and medium-sized firms represent around 95 percent of all companies globally but only one-third of total exports.

Third, make trade more connected. In our networked world, the future of trade is through digital channels and platforms, especially for small businesses. During the pandemic, we saw how doing business online went from being useful to critical for survival. UNCTAD data shows that digitally delivered services reached almost two-thirds the level of global services exports.

These themes were discussed at the Global Review of Aid-for-Trade, which took place 27-29th July in Geneva.

The event took place one month after the WTO’s successful Twelfth Ministerial Conference, which put trade multilateralism back on track and delivered a landmark agreement on fisheries subsidies, and two months before the COP27 meeting in Egypt (November 6-18) that could determine the world’s chances to keep the 1.5C target alive.

The data shows promising signs that aid-for-trade is tilting towards greater sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity. OECD and WTO data reveal a record high of nearly US$50 billion in aid for trade disbursements in 2020, of which half were either climate or gender related, and one-third supported the digital economy.

Despite growing budgetary pressures at home, it is critically important to continue and increase these aid-for-trade flows.

Apart from a stronger thematic focus on sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity, maximizing the contribution of aid for trade to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires a resolute focus on the “where” and “how” of delivering development results.

This means a focus on those countries whose trade and development needs are highest – particularly Least Developed Countries and fragile/conflict-affected countries – and regional initiatives like African Continental Free Trade Area, to ensure they become stepping-stones to wider and more inclusive regional value chains and trade-led growth.

It means partnership across international organizations. The WTO, UNCTAD, and ITC already collaborate on initiatives like the Global Trade Helpdesk, which simplifies market research by bringing key trade and business information into a single portal, as well as on support to cotton-exporting countries in Africa.

Last but certainly not least, it means mobilizing public and private finance. The IFC estimates a worldwide US$300 billion financing gap for women, and the global trade finance gap has nearly doubled from an already-staggering $1.5 trillion. Without access to finance, firms cannot grow, diversify or formalize.

We want to end with a call to action. Creating a more sustainable, inclusive and connected future is the moon shot of our times. Aid, trade and multilateralism – working together – are part of the solution.

It is normal and understandable that governments act to shore up their own economies in troubled times. But we must act now to ensure that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable can still see a pathway to prosperity through global trade.

The joint opinion piece is authored by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UN Conference on Trade and Development, and Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director, International Trade Centre.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are slowing, even contracting, as prices rise again. Thus, the World Bank warns, “Surging energy and food prices heighten the risk of a prolonged period of global stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.”

In March, Reuters reported, “With surging oil prices, concerns about the hawkishness of the Federal Reserve and fears of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, the mood on Wall Street feels like a return to the 1970s”.

Anis Chowdhury

Stagflation in the 1970s
Worse, it seems few lessons have been learnt from the last stagflation episode. There is no agreed formal definition of stagflation, which refers to a combination of economic stagnation with high inflation, e.g., when unemployment and prices both rise.

When growth is weak and many are jobless, prices rarely rise, keeping inflation low. The converse is true when growth is strong. This inverse relationship between economic activity and inflation broke down with supply shocks, particularly oil and other primary commodity price surges during 1972-75.

Non-oil primary commodity prices on The Economist index more than doubled between mid-1972 and mid-1974. Prices of some commodities, e.g., sugar and urea fertilizer, rose more than five-fold!

As costlier energy pushed up production expenses, businesses raised prices and cut jobs. With higher food, fuel and other prices, rising costs, coupled with income losses, reduced aggregate demand, further slowing the economy.

Fed chokes economy to cut inflation
Years before becoming US Fed chair in 2006, a Ben Bernanke co-authored paper noted, “Looking more specifically at individual recessionary episodes associated with oil price shocks, we find that … oil shocks, per se, were not a major cause of these downturns”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

They concluded, “an important part of the effect of oil price shocks on the economy results not from the change in oil prices, per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”. Their findings corroborated others, e.g., by James Tobin.

Following Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, other economists also found “in the postwar era there have been a series of episodes in which the Federal Reserve has in effect deliberately attempted to induce a recession to decrease inflation”.

The US Fed began raising interest rates from 1977, inducing an American economic recession in 1980. The economy briefly turned around when the Fed stopped raising interest rates. But this nascent recovery soon ended as Fed chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates even more sharply.

The federal funds target rate rose from around 10% to nearly 20%, triggering an “extraordinarily painful recession”. Unemployment rose to nearly 11% nationwide – the highest in the post-war era – and as high as 17% in some states, e.g., Michigan, leaving long-term scars.

Interest rate hikes reduced needed investments. Outside the US economy, these sharp and rapid interest rate hikes triggered debt crises in Poland, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Korea and elsewhere.

Earlier open economic policies meant “the increase in world interest rates, the increased debt burden of developing countries, the growth slowdown in the industrial world…contributed to the developing countries’ stagnation”.

Countries seeking International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial support had to agree to severe fiscal austerity, liberalization, deregulation and privatization policy conditionalities. With per capita incomes falling and poverty rising, Latin America and Africa “lost two decades”.

Stagflation reprise
The IMF chief economist recently reiterated, “Inflation is a major concern”. The Bank of International Settlements has warned, “We may be reaching a tipping point, beyond which an inflationary psychology spreads and becomes entrenched.”

Central bankers’ anti-inflationary efforts mainly involve raising interest rates. This approach slows economies, accelerating recessions, often triggering debt crises without quelling rising prices due to supply shocks.

Economic recoveries from the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC) remained tepid for a decade after initially bold fiscal responses were quickly abandoned. Meanwhile, ‘quantitative easing’, other unconventional monetary policies and the Covid-19 pandemic raised debt to unprecedented levels.

GFC trade protectionist responses, US and Japanese ‘reshoring’ of foreign investment in China, the pandemic, the Ukraine war and sanctions against Russia and its allies have reversed earlier trade liberalization.

Higher interest rates in the rich North have triggered capital flight, causing developing country currencies to depreciate, especially against the US dollar. The slowing world economy has reduced demand for many developing country exports, while most migrant worker remittances decline.

Interest rate hikes have worsened debt crises, particularly in the global South. The poorest countries have seen an $11bn surge in debt payments due while grappling with looming food crises. Thus, developing country vulnerabilities have been worsened by international trends over which they have little control.

Lessons not learned
Supply-side cost-push inflation is very different from the demand-pull variety. Without evidence, inflation ‘hawks’ insist that not acting urgently will be costlier later.

This may happen if surging demand is the main cause of inflation, especially if higher costs are easily passed on to consumers. However, episodes of dangerously accelerating inflation are very rare.

Acting too quickly against supply-shock inflation can be unwise. The 1970s’ energy crises sparked greater interest in energy efficiency. But higher interest rates in the 1980s deterred needed investments, even to reverse declining or stagnating productivity growth.

Raising interest rates also accelerated recessions. But similar commodity price rises before the 1970s’ and imminent stagflation episodes – involving energy and food respectively – obscure major differences.

For instance, ‘wage indexing’ – linking wage increases to price rises – enhanced the 1970s’ inflation spiral. But labour market deregulation since the 1980s has largely ended such indexation.

The IMF acknowledges globalization, ‘offshoring’ and labour-saving technical change have weakened unionization and workers’ bargaining power. With both elements of the 1970s’ wage-price spirals now insignificant, inflation is more likely to decline once supply bottlenecks ease.

But the wage-price spiral has also been replaced by a profit-price swirl. Reforms since the 1980s have also enhanced large corporations’ market power. Greater corporate discretion and reduced employees’ strength have thus increased profit shares, even during the pandemic.

In November 2021, Bloomberg observed the “fattest profits since 1950 debunks wage-inflation story of CEOs”. Meanwhile, the Guardian found “Companies’ profit growth has far outpaced workers’ wages”.

Corporations are taking advantage of the situation, passing on costs to customers. The net profits of the top 100 US corporations were “up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%”!

Meanwhile, many more consumers struggle to meet their basic needs. Interest rate hikes have also hurt wage-earners, as falling labour shares of national income have been exacerbated by real wage stagnation, even contraction.

Hence, policymakers should ease supply bottlenecks and address imbalances to accelerate progress, not raise interest rates causing the converse. Thus, they should rein in corporate power, improve competition and protect the vulnerable.

Allowing international price rises to pass through, while protecting the vulnerable, can accelerate the transition to more sustainable consumption and production, including cleaner renewable energy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Action taken against stall-owners at the Refugees Bazaar in Peshawar. Afghan refugees say they are unfairly targeted by the authorities. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Aug 15 2022 (IPS)

Afghan refugees living in Pakistan face a host of problems, ranging from seeking medical treatment to shelter, business, police harassment and violence. Many of those affected have been there for four decades.

“Whenever we go to the local hospitals for treatment, we don’t get good services. As a result, we bank on unqualified doctors who charge a lower fee, but the treatment they provide us isn’t up to the mark,” Jamila Bibi, 48, told IPS. She lives in the Khyber district near the Torkham border with Afghanistan.

Bibi says she developed a gynaecological problem, but the local hospital denied her treatment.

“Later, we took a loan from our relative and went to a private hospital, but my condition had worsened. Doctors removed my uterus and sent a specimen to exclude cancer as the cause of the complications,” the bed-ridden mother of three said.

Most wealthy Afghans prefer to visit Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, to seek treatment in private hospitals. Many facilities in their home country don’t offer quality treatment because of ongoing conflicts that have plagued the area since 1979.

Afghans living in Pakistan and those seeking treatment and who want to visit Pakistan aren’t satisfied with how they are handled at the border and in the country.

“We reached the border on June 15 to undergo surgery for bilateral kidney stones in Peshawar, but the police kept us waiting for three days. When they cleared our documents and we reached the hospital, we were told that both (of my wife’s) kidneys had been infected and we had to stay for a month to cure the infection,” Muhammad Sattar, a Kabul resident, said.

Sattar, a carpet dealer, says doctors said his wife could have been operated on sooner had she arrived earlier, preventing the spread of the infection.

Dr Umar Amir, who deals with Afghan patients at the border, said that on an average day, 120 patients were allowed to come to Pakistan after checking their medical documents. “There is no delay in processing their documents,” he told IPS.

Pakistan is home to 3.3m registered refugees, most of who arrived after the Soviet Union’s invasion in 1979.

“One million (32 per cent reside in 54 refugees village, and 68 per cent in urban areas across Pakistan,” UNHCR’s spokesman Qaisar Khan Afridi told IPS. In addition to its dedicated refugee programmes, UNHCR has been supporting the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) initiative, which aims to mitigate the impact of the protracted refugee presence and promote social cohesion between Afghan refugees and their Pakistani host communities.

Since its launch in 2009, the programme has helped over 12 million people (85 per cent of beneficiaries are Pakistanis) across the country through some 4,300 projects worth more than USD 200 million.

Through RAHA, UNHCR has been strengthening the capacity of existing government hospitals and educational institutes.

“We don’t have any option except staying in Pakistan as Afghanistan is in ruins. We cannot go back due to extreme violence, lawlessness, and lack of economic activities,” said Muhammad Suhail (34). A scrap collector in Peshawar’s Karkhano Bazzar (Industrial Market), he says they were looked down upon by host communities.

Most of the refugees do odd jobs. He said they work as vendors, in tandoors (bread baking), rickshaw-driving, fruit, and vegetable-selling.

Only a few wealthy refugees, who own shops dealing in gold, crockery, grocery, cloth and general stores, are happy, and they even send money back home to support their relatives.

“We arrived here in 1988 and have a well-established business of cloth. We have employed 33 Afghans and have no issues with local police and host community,” Said Rehman (62) said. “My three sons and two daughters are married, and their children study in Pakistani educational institutions on seats allocated for Afghan refugees.”

Rehman disagreed with the impression that Pakistani were hostile towards Afghans. “Some residents were friendly, and others weren’t, but can we blame all the local people for disrupting the Afghan’s lives? Many of our relatives have married local men and women,” he said.

In Refugees Bazaar in Peshawar, Afghans say they face harassment from municipal authorities.

“Every day, the officials come and arrest our shopkeepers, which has badly harmed our businesses,” Ghulam Rasool, a cloth merchant, told IPS. Afghans own 95 percent of the shops at the bazaar which specialise in Afghan cultural goods.

“We purchase clothes from the market and get them stitched in Afghan style. We feel convenient in negotiating prices with the Afghan shopkeepers selling cosmetics, foot wears, fruits, meats and so on,” Shaheen Begum, a house woman, told IPS.

“In Pakistani shops, we face difficulties due to language barriers,” she said. “We often find the market closed due to raids by local authorities.”

Municipal officer Javid Khan said that many Afghan shopkeepers and vendors encroach on roads and were arrested for violating the laws. But the vendors were freed when they assured the authorities they would abide by the regulations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Women receive food rations at a food distribution site in Herat, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Sayed Bidel

By Sima Bahous
NEW YORK, Aug 15 2022 (IPS)

In the year that has passed since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan we have seen daily and continuous deterioration in the situation of Afghan women and girls. This has spanned every aspect of their human rights, from living standards to social and political status.

It has been a year of increasing disrespect for their right to live free and equal lives, denying them opportunity to livelihoods, access to health care and education, and escape from situations of violence.

The Taliban’s meticulously constructed policies of inequality set Afghanistan apart. It is the only country in the world where girls are banned from going to high school. There are no women in the Taliban’s cabinet, no Ministry of Women’s Affairs, thereby effectively removing women’s right to political participation.

Women are, for the most part, also restricted from working outside the home, and are required to cover their faces in public and to have a male chaperone when they travel. Furthermore, they continue to be subjected to multiple forms of Gender Based Violence.

This deliberate slew of measures of discrimination against Afghanistan’s women and girls is also a terrible act of self-sabotage for a country experiencing huge challenges including from climate-related and natural disasters to exposure to global economic headwinds that leave some 25 million Afghan people in poverty and many hungry.

The exclusion of women from all aspects of life robs the people of Afghanistan of half their talent and energies. It prevents women from leading efforts to build resilient communities and shrinks Afghanistan’s ability to recover from crisis.

There is a clear lesson from humanity’s all too extensive experience of crisis. Without the full participation of women and girls in all aspects of public life there is little chance of achieving lasting peace, stability and economic development.

That is why we urge the de facto authorities to open schools for all girls, to remove constraints on women’s employment and their participation in the politics of their nation, and to revoke all decisions and policies that strip women of their rights. We call for ending all forms of violence against women and girls.

We urge the de facto authorities to ensure that women journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society actors enjoy freedom of expression, have access to information and can work freely and independently, without fear of reprisal or attack.

The international community’s support for women’s rights and its investment in women themselves are more important than ever: in services for women, in jobs and women-led businesses, and in women leaders and women’s organizations.

This includes not only support to the provision of humanitarian assistance but also continued and unceasing efforts at the political level to bring about change.

UN Women has remained in country throughout this crisis and will continue to do so. We are steadfast in our support to Afghan women and girls alongside our partners and donors.

We are scaling up the provision of life-saving services for women, by women, to meet overwhelming needs. We are supporting women-led businesses and employment opportunities across all sectors to help lift the country out of poverty.

We are also investing in women-led civil society organizations to support the rebuilding of the women’s movement. As everywhere in the world, civil society is a key driver of progress and accountability on women’s rights and gender equality.

Every day, we advocate for restoring, protecting, and promoting the full spectrum of women’s and girls’ rights. We are also creating spaces for Afghan women themselves to advocate for their right to live free and equal lives.

One year on, with women’s visibility so diminished and rights so severely impacted, it is vital to direct targeted, substantial, and systematic funding to address and reverse this situation and to facilitate women’s meaningful participation in all stakeholder engagement on Afghanistan, including in delegations that meet with Taliban officials.

Decades of progress on gender equality and women’s rights have been wiped out in mere months. We must continue to act together, united in our insistence on guarantees of respect for the full spectrum of women’s rights, including to education, work, and participation in public and political life.

We must continue to make a collective and continuous call on the Taliban leadership to fully comply with the binding obligations under international treaties to which Afghanistan is a party.

And we must continue to elevate the voices of Afghan women and girls who are fighting every day for their right to live free and equal lives. Their fight is our fight. What happens to women and girls in Afghanistan is our global responsibility.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The writer is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women