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Gender, Education and Drop Outs

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 12:06

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

While COVID 19 is keeping the world and news media in its constant grip and national politics often come to the forefront, it might be easy to forget urgent and nevertheless related matters. One is how global education has suffered and how children and youngsters have been forced to cope with a different reality. This aspect like so many other of human existence is gendered and while addressing education it is relevant to talk about changing gender roles as well.

Wonder Woman, DC Comics

The global plight of girls and young women has for several years been rightly emphasized. However, this focus may overshadow a phenomenon that increasingly is occurring in both developed and developing countries – boys are increasingly dropping out from schools, while young men to a higher degree than young women are not attracted by higher education. A recent article in the magazine The Atlantic pointed out that US colleges and universities currently enroll six women for every four men, a gender gap that is getting wider with every year.

The phenomenon is far from unique to USA. All over the world, more women than men are currently entering tertiary education. In all OECD countries with available data, women have a higher degree frequency than men. The average is currently 72 percent among women and 61 percent among men and everywhere the gap is widening. Several reasons have been put forward for this trend, most common is to emphasize that young men might value connections and contacts more than higher education, while female students usually view education as more than a means to make money. It has been found that more young women than men assume that education is an essential part of their development and personal independence, something that generally has been related to the clearing away of barriers to women’s education and an opening up for their access to professions requiring advanced higher education. Women are increasingly competing with men for advanced professions. Skills are becoming more crucial than gender. Still, the gender gap in remuneration continues to persist.

However, the connection between gender and education continues to be complicated. In several countries, the importance of gender roles is more pronounced in schooling at first – and secondary levels, than at the tertiary one. Economic concerns tend to be decisive for children’s schooling. Even if poor parents don’t pay school fees, money is spent on transportation, textbooks and clothing. Since schooling could mean that a girl will spend less time helping at home, a poor family might consider sending her to school as detrimental to its well-being. To a higher degree than boys, responsibilities like, cooking, cleaning and taking care of sick parents and babysitting siblings, still tend to fall on girls.

Furthermore, schools may be far from home and if lessons take place in the evenings, roads, schools and homes may have limited, or no electricity and light at all. All over the world, girls and boys are harassed and abused on their way to school and girls are disproportionately targeted. The school might also be a place of discomfort and danger, and not only fellow students but even teachers may behave like predators. A situation worsened in conflict and crisis-affected areas. Schools are often targeted by rebel groups; education suffers, schools stop functioning. During such, and other, emergencies, gender is an important factor. In several areas, schools providing education for girls are particularly targeted and refugee girls are half as likely to be in school as boys in the same situation.

Some poor parents may assume that it is not worth the effort and loss of earnings to educate their daughters – they might be married off to a man who will take responsibility for them. It is thus common that poor parents consent that their daughters marry before they reach the age of 18, explaining that this will protect them from harm and social stigma. However, an uneducated child bride is more likely to experience early pregnancy, undernourishment, domestic violence, and pregnancy complications. Furthermore, she will generally, due to dependency on her spouse’s whims and needs, as well as lack of education, be unable to gain financial independence. Girls’ lack of schooling is detrimental to national growth and general health. Providing efficient and free education to girls benefit the entire society, fomenting not only equality and general well-being – child marriage rates decline, but family health also improves, while child and maternal mortality rates fall, and child stunting drops.

In developing countries drop-outs from school tend to be most common among girls and early marriages and pregnancy are the main reasons for this. Teen mothers may find it impossible to continue their schooling due to lack of daycare, while other young women may decide that it is preferable to leave school and start a family early. If they lack a spouse and/or support of a family it is even harder for them to continue an education and survival becomes their main goal. If opportunities in the labour market, not the least in the “informal” sector, are attainable any desperate person may choose those earnings which in the short term are preferable to a continued investment in schooling.

More recently, it has to a higher degree than before been noticed that gender roles might also be detrimental for boys’ education. Social change affects them as well as it affects girls. For example, in Mongolia poor families depending on cattle herding tend to take their boys out of school and as farm lands and rural economy evolves, families find it more economically rewarding to keep boys in farming, rather than sending them to school. In Mongolia, 65 percent of those children not finishing secondary school are boys and the trend continues, while female domination is reported in the entire education system.

In many poor countries, opportunities for jobs after graduation are limited, making alternative lifestyles more attractive, even if they might go against accepted values and behaviour. There is always an allure of rapidly and easily gained money through unskilled work and illicit activities, instead of dreary and unpaid schooling, combined with the risk of not obtaining a job answering to skills developed through education. Just like girls might be needed for household chores, boys and young men may be expected to support poor, often single-headed households with work that cannot be obstructed by schooling. Such a situation might in poor districts with an inadequately supported school system be worsened by violence in and around schools, making it untenable for youth to continue attending, while illicit activities may offer more attractive alternatives than staying in school. Predators are lurking to abuse and exploit boys – criminal gangs and militia recruit youngsters, supported by prevalent myths about male superiority and temerity.

Marginalized areas in both wealthy and poor nations suffer from boys dropping out of school and ending up in illicit activities, which make them prone to violence. Jamaica is for example struggling with boys from poor families increasingly dropping out of school, ending up in unemployment, idleness, reckless behaviour and even worse – criminality. In Jamaica, boys’ participation in secondary schooling is rapidly declining. At all levels, girls are outperforming boys and young women are more than twice as likely as young men to enter tertiary education.

It is in higher education that differences between young men’s and women’s attendance is becoming even more apparent than at first – and secondary levels. The latest OECD report on education states that the gap between female and male attendance at tertiary levels of education is with every year increasing with at least one percentage point. In 2020, overall education levels combined, enrollment rates were on average 7 percentage points higher for 20-24 year-old women than for men. The largest gap in this age group was found in Slovenia (20 percentage points) and the gap was at least 15 percentage points in Argentina, Israel and Poland. On average across OECD countries with available data, boys are more likely to repeat a grade than girls and represent 61 percent of the number of repeaters in lower secondary education.

These ratios are even wider in the Gulf Emirates, where boys are dropping out of secondary school at a rate of up to 20 percent in a single year. This while girls and young women surpass their male counterparts in attendance and outperform them at all levels and across all subjects. In the Emirates this tendency may be explained by the fact that men are privileged and may to a higher degree than women count upon good connections and general support. Even in a country like Saudi Arabia, the only Islamic country (so far – Afghanistan is moving in the same direction) that has a separate system of female education and where women’s access to the labour market is restricted, more than 60 percent of higher education graduates are women.

These are just a few examples of how education, both positively and negatively, is affected by gender and socioeconomic change. Equality is beneficent for any social system and while addressing an area like education the entire spectrum of gender and access must be taken into consideration, meaning that different needs and prerequisites for boys and girls must be part of the equation. Society is constantly changing and education changes in close symbiosis with it. Nevertheless, for the benefit of us all we must strive for guaranteeing that this change fosters equal rights and general well-being, something that will not be achieved if gender aspects are ignored.

Sources: Thompson, Derek (2021), “Colleges Have a Guy Problem,” The Atlantic, 14 September. https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education and https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance_19991487

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Categories: Africa

New Pan-African Payments System Provides Big Relief for African Traders

Fri, 11/26/2021 - 07:55

The launch of PAPSS will save $5 billion yearly and boost intra-African trade. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

When Fidelis Adele, the CEO of Freetown-based Solid Graphics, a printing and communications company, needed to order some printing equipment from Nigeria in September, he paid an extra $165 on top of a $10,000 bank transfer to the seller. Yet it took three days for the money transferred in Sierra Leone to be credited to the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria.

“I paid $30 as transfer fee, $35 as SWIFT charges and another $100 bank charges,” Adele told Africa Renewal. SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global network that processes international payments.

Adele did not attempt to use financial services companies such as Western Union or MoneyGram because the “exchange rate for those companies is just bad.”

The other option would have been to fly to Lagos, a three-hour journey, carrying the physical cash along. “I have done that a few times,” he said, “but it is not cost-effective unless it’s a huge amount, and it is risky.”

Traders across Africa experience similar ordeal paying for goods or services across borders. In the process they lose valuable time and money.

This cumbersome and time-consuming process “costs us [Africans] about $5 billion in [money transfer] charges each year,” according to Benedict Oramah, President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), who said, in an interview with Africa Renewal: “We are a poor continent. We shouldn’t waste money like that.”

Payment system launched

To address the situation, Afreximbank has partnered with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat to launch the Pan-African Payments and Settlement Systems (PAPSS), a platform that facilitates instant cross-border payments in local currencies between countries.

Kingsley Ighobor

The PAPSS has been piloted successfully in the six countries that make up the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ)—Nigeria, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Guinea. Because of its multi-currency and bi-lingual makeup, WAMZ is considered a microcosm of the continent.

On using WAMZ for the pilot, Prof. Oramah says: “The six WAMZ countries have different currencies. One of the countries is Francophone and the others are Anglophone. You have a big economy like Nigeria and then you have smaller economies. So, anything that can go wrong in other parts of Africa would have gone wrong in the WAMZ, and we will have been able to address it during the piloting phase.”

The operational rollout of PAPSS was announced at the end of September, meaning that countries’ central banks, which will be the clearing agents, can now coordinate with Afreximbank, which is the main clearing agent and provider of settlement guarantees and overdraft facilities.

Afreximbank doled out $500 million to service West Africa and intends to provide a further $3 billion for an Africa-wide PAPSS operation.

Analysts expect African traders, especially those in West Africa, to begin to take advantage of the platform by the end of 2021.

Oramah, who is based in Cairo, Egypt, explains the hurdles faced by African traders in personal terms: “I want to transfer money to Nigeria from Egypt. It goes through a corresponding bank in a country outside of Africa before it arrives in Nigeria. I pay charges before the person in Nigeria gets it.

“And it takes time. Sometimes it takes weeks. So, we [Afreximbank] calculated how much that costs the continent—forget about the time—it costs Africans $5 billion yearly.

“Also, if I am in Egypt, and I want to watch my favourite Nollywood movies, I probably have to remit in US dollars. But the PAPSS changes that for you. All you need do is pay the Nigerian producer in Nigerian Naira.”

The CEO of PAPSS Mike Ogbalu says that during the piloting phase in West Africa, bank accounts in different countries were debited and credited within 10 seconds. He has assured of a robust technology that can handle large transactions.

How PAPSS works

Sending money using the PAPSS is a five-step process:

In announcing the rollout of PAPSS, Afreximbank says that by “simplifying cross-border transactions and reducing the dependency on hard currencies for these transactions, PAPSS is set to boost intra-African trade significantly.”

Intra-African trade is currently at a meager 17 per cent.

The PAPSS is also expected to lead to increases in value addition to products, jobs creation and more earnings for traders.

Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of AfCFTA Secretariat, said PAPSS will lead to efficient cross-border trade transactions and put Africa on a new economic trajectory.

“There are 42 currencies in Africa. We want to make sure that a trader in Ghana can transfer Ghanaian cedi to a counterpart in Kenya who will receive Kenyan shillings,” Mene told Africa Renewal in an earlier interview.

Adele agrees that PAPSS will help his business. “If I can take the Leones to a bank here [in Sierra Leone] and pay for printing products in Nigeria, and the money is instantly deposited in the beneficiary’s account in Nigeria, that would be extraordinary,” he says.

Until briefed by Africa Renewal, Adele was not aware of the PAPSS, underscoring the communication challenge of raising intra-African traders’ awareness about the platform.

Oramah notes, however, that a campaign is underway to market and promote the PAPSS, hoping that by the end of the year African traders will be informed enough to use the system.

Source: Africa Renewal, which reports on, and examines, the many different aspects of the UN’s involvement in Africa, especially within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Categories: Africa

How to Tackle Africa’s Employment Crisis

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 14:58

Youth at the Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal has a large youth population, half of which is under the age of 18. By 2025, 376,000 youth are expected to enter the job market that offers only 30,000 jobs. And this number will rise to 411,000 in 2030, according to the Wilson Centre. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Johann Ivanov
ACCRA, Ghana, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

The Covid-19 pandemic aggravated Africa’s already severe employment crisis. The solution lies in a long-term political and economic transformation.

Africa is facing a severe employment crisis. But if nothing is done to find a solution, it could get much worse in the not-too-distant future, as World Bank projections from 2017 show: By 2035, Africa’s working age population will expand by 450 million.

At the same time, however, only 100 million jobs are expected be created in the same period. And that was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit: Africa was severely affected and its economies experienced a contraction by 2 per cent in 2020. UNECA estimates that almost 30 million Africans have been pushed below the extreme poverty line.

In the years prior to the pandemic, especially between 2016 and 2020, Africa had experienced solid economic growth. Yet, such growth was mainly driven by high commodity prices and has not translated into the creation of sustainable employment. That’s particularly concerning when looking at Africa’s demographics.

By the year 2050, Africa’s youth (15-35 years) is expected to double to 830 million people and the total population of the continent will reach about 2,5 billion people. Today, Africa is the world’s youngest continent – in 2020, it’s median age was 19,7 years. And Africa will remain the world’s youngest continent for decades to come.

Johann Ivanov

In this context, current estimates show that Africa needs to create between 10 to 18 million jobs annually solely to absorb the youth entering its labour markets. However, only around three million formal jobs are created at the moment and the majority of Africa’s youth is destined to remain in the informal economy, which comprises more than 80 per cent of the continent’s workforce.

A progressive approach to employment

It is a modern-day tragedy that millions of young Africans will not be able to find employment, have enough resources to support their families, or realise their full potential. And although there is a very active and informed international debate around generating employment, it does not seem to generate viable solutions that would lead to significant changes in the employment situation.

All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Africa’s employment crisis is so complex that it requires fundamental thinking about the direction of structural transformation on the continent. Do the approaches of gradual industrialisation that worked for East Asia also work in Africa?

To what extent is free trade part of the problem and not part of the solution to the employment crisis? How can there be real change if governments are undemocratic, corrupt, and forestalling reforms?

A progressive approach to tackling the employment crisis in Africa, which could inspire and inform both leaders in Africa and European policy-makers, is long overdue. This progressive approach is based on two interdependent sets of principles – political and economic. Here are some ideas.

First and foremost, the political side means putting in place solid democratic institutions to organise and oversee structural transformation and economic reforms. All too often, governments seem to only pay lip service to democratic processes and institutions.

Without accountability, enforced through democratic institutions, the popular will won’t be reflected in the developmental model. Without the corrective function of democracy, development will lead to more inequality and benefit just the privileged few.

Political reforms also need to include a bold stance against corruption. Africans are fed up with governments that are primarily concerned with remaining in power to pocket the state’s resources.

State capture needs to be confronted by shifting power from the executive to a politically independent and efficient judiciary that is able to enforce accountability and democratic principles.

Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

Broad societal coalitions, including democratic trade unions, NGOs, activists, environmental groups, and progressive political leaders have to take the lead here and articulate their demands for a democratic turn towards more accountability. In particular, women have to play a key role in this process as they are disproportionately affected by the current employment scenario.

Together, these groups need to pile more pressure on governments to actively involve civil society, academia, labour representatives, and the private sector in building strategies to create employment and monitor the execution of employment programmes. This is not just an inconvenient exercise, but a crucial attempt to improve the quality of political decisions and outcomes.

The economic principles have to be pursued and demanded with the same energy as the political ones. Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the state, controlled by democratic institutions and an active civil society, to ensure that economic growth actually translates into employment creation.

For that to succeed, systems of revenue mobilisation have to be improved. Firstly, the focus could be put on the commodities sector – a major source of income in many African countries. Many are exporting oil, gold, metals, cocoa but struggle to negotiate agreements that guarantee a fair share of these exports.

More funds could be extracted from multinationals operating in Africa. Moreover, some parts of the vast informal economy in Africa, remaining in the informal sector for tax evasion reasons – like some professionals in the urban economies –, could be another source of revenue. Loopholes in the tax system also have to be plugged proactively.

African states have to invest heavily into public goods such as education, healthcare, energy, and digitalisation. The basic infrastructure is key for the transformation of the economies.

The construction sector, for instance, could be one of the areas where significant employment can be generated. In public tender processes for large infrastructure projects, financed either by African countries or international financial institutions, African companies should get a preferential treatment.

Significant state investment is required into well-designed public works programmes across the continent. Those are both a strategy towards poverty reduction and generation of employment. A constant evaluation of public works programmes and reasonable exit strategies are necessary to keep costs under control.

Moreover, states have to roll out programmes for providing bank accounts to all citizens – the transfer of basic income could be an element for direct support.

A decades-long project

It is an illusion to believe that all of the employment challenges can be solved by states only. The main source of employment will remain the private sector and most employment will be created in urban areas, mainly in the services sector.

So called ‘industries without smokestacks’, namely tourism, agri-business, remote office services, creative industries, have some potential for employment creation. To generate long-term sustainable employment and decent jobs, however, will require significant transfer of knowledge and technology from developed countries to African ones.

Last but not least, trade among African countries – accelerated through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which has started its operations on 1 January 2021 – could lead to economic growth and employment effects. At the same time, free trade may have adverse effects on immature industries in Africa.

That’s why pockets of industries should rather be nurtured and protected against competition. Also, areas that are going to be affected by potential negative effects of AfCFTA, need to be compensated for their losses.

Tackling Africa’s employment crisis is a process that will take years, if not decades. Small steps are more realistic than leapfrogging fantasies. All too often, however, the political conversation is preoccupied with a shortsighted emphasis on how favourable economic factors may stimulate employment creation.

But it is key to understand that solid political and economic principles, overseen by the people primarily affected by the transformation, must walk hand in hand – as both are determining a progressive approach to economic growth and employment creation in Africa.

Johann Ivanov is the Resident Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Ghana Office and coordinator of the Economic Policy Competence Center (EPCC) for Sub-Saharan Africa operating from Ghana. Previously, he worked as Deputy Resident Director with FES India and desk officer at FES headoffice in Berlin. He holds a BA degree in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a MSc in International Political Theory from the University of Edinburgh.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

Categories: Africa

Safety of Women Journalists

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 12:13

By External Source
Nov 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November), UNESCO is raising awareness for the continued violence, threats and harassment that women journalists and female media workers face all around the world.

Their safety is put at risk by offline and online attacks, ranging from violence, stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape to even murder. In addition to being attacked on the basis of their work as journalists, they are the targets of gender-based violence. These attacks seek to silence the voices of women journalists and threaten freedom of speech by interrupting valuable investigative work. They distort the media landscape by threatening diversity and perpetuating inequalities both in newsrooms and in societies.

To improve the safety of women journalists and to address the threats they face, UNESCO and its partners take effective measures through research, capacity-building and awareness raising.

During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, please help raise attention for the safety of women journalists.

Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression publishes essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression, is publishing the essay collection “#JournalistsToo – Women Journalists Speak Out”, which chronicles personal experiences of harassment by eleven journalists from ten countries. The publication is supported by UNESCO and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. The essays describe the many – often intersectional – threats women journalists face simply for doing their work. But they are not the stories of victims. Rather, they are testaments of courage, resilience, solidarity and the refusal to be silenced. As Irene Khan highlights, “It is unacceptable that women journalists are attacked and abused for doing their job. It is high time we listen to the voices of the women themselves”.

Online course on Safety of Women Journalists by UNESCO and partners available in self-directed format

To improve the safety of women journalists, UNESCO, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and the University of Texas at Austin’s Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), addressing the gender dimensions of journalists’ safety. Experienced instructor Alison Baskerville provides frameworks to mitigate and manage risks associated with reporting for women.

The course is available in English in a self-directed format and will soon be accessible in Spanish and French.

Access the course materials here

UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling” reveals orchestrated campaigns behind online violence against women journalists

The UNESCO discussion paper “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists” points to a sharp increase in online violence against women journalists and reveals how these attacks are inextricably bound up with disinformation, intersectional discrimination and populist politics. 73% of surveyed women journalists reported having experienced online attacks while 20% said they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with online violence. The study, conducted in cooperation with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), is unprecedented in its scope and methodology, with a global survey of 901 journalists from 125 countries. It also includes two big data case studies assessing over 2.5 million social media posts directed at prominent journalists Carole Cadwalladr from the United Kingdom and Maria Ressa – this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and winner of the 2021 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize – from the Philippines.

Read the full paper here

Online violence against women journalists harms everyone. Let’s end it!

When a women journalist is attacked online, she is not the only one that suffers. Online violence harms women’s right to speak and society’s right to know. To tackle this increasing trend, collective solutions are needed to protect women journalists from online violence. This includes strong responses from social media platforms, national authorities and media organizations.

During the 16 Days Against Gender-Based Violence, help us end online violence by sharing UNESCO’s campaign materials.

Find out more about UNESCO’s work on the Safety of Women Journalists

Categories: Africa

Ethiopia’s Civil War Fueled by Weapons from UN’s Big Powers

Thu, 11/25/2021 - 08:19

From the early days of UN peacekeeping to some of today’s most vital operations, Ethiopian men and women have played an important role in the UN’s efforts to advance peace in the world’s hot spots. The country’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations dates back to 1951, as part of the UN multinational force in the Korean War. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)

In Hollywood movies, the legendary Wild West was routinely portrayed with gunslingers, lawmen and villains—resulting in the ultimate showdown between the “good guys and the bad guys”.

Linda Thomson-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council early this month that the warring parties in the devastating 12-month-long civil war in Ethiopia involve the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Eritrean Defense Forces, the Amhara Special Forces, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front.

And invoking a Hollywood metaphor, she remarked “there are no good guys here”.

The battle is perhaps best characterized as a showdown between one set of bad guys vs another set of bad guys –despite the fact that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who is currently leading the conflict, triggering accusations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

As in many ongoing conflicts and civil wars—whether in Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Syria, Palestine, Iraq or Ethiopia, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, China and Russia, are sharply divided and protective of their allies — and their prolific arms markets.

But the conflict in Ethiopia has also resulted in a “monumental humanitarian disaster” where UN agencies and relief organizations are being hindered by the Ethiopian government from delivering food and medical supplies for political reasons.

Still, who are the merchants of death in this vicious conflict which has “already claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced upwards of 2 million people,” and where rape is being increasingly used as a weapon of war.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is providing emergency food assistance to more than 800,000 people affected by conflict in the Afar and Amhara regions of northern Ethiopia. Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill

According to figures released by international aid organizations, tens of thousands of people are reportedly displaced in Amhara and Afar regions because of active fighting in multiple locations; about two million rendered homeless overall and about seven million urgently in need of humanitarian assistance.

Ambassador Thomson-Greenfield told delegates it is time for all parties to immediately halt hostilities and refrain from incitement to violence and divisiveness.

The bellicose rhetoric and inflammatory language on all sides of this conflict only aggravate intercommunal violence. It is time for the Government of Ethiopia, the TPLF, and all other groups to engage in immediate ceasefire negotiations without preconditions to find a sustainable path toward peace, she said.

And it is long past time for the Eritrean Defense Forces to withdraw from Ethiopian territory.

“It is time to put your weapons down. This war between angry, belligerent men – victimizing women and children – has to stop,” she declared.

But one lingering question remains: where are these weapons coming from?

China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been identified as the primary arms suppliers to Ethiopia.

“The time when the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) almost solely relied on aging Soviet armament, mixed in with some of their more modern Russian brethrens, is long gone.”

“Over the past decade, Ethiopia has diversified its arms imports to include a number of other sources that presently include nations such as China, Germany, Ukraine and Belarus”.

Arguably more surprising is the presence of countries like Israel and the UAE in this list, which have supplied Ethiopia with a number of specialised weapon systems, according to a Blog posting in Oryx.

Alexandra Kuimova, Researcher, Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS in terms of volume (measured in SIPRI’s TIVs), Russia and Ukraine were the largest supplies of major arms to Ethiopia over the last two decades, accounting for 50 per cent and 33 per cent of Ethiopia’s imports in 2001-2020, respectively.

Deliveries from Russia included an estimated 18 second-hand combat helicopters and combat aircraft transferred to Ethiopia between 2003-2004.

The most recent deliveries included an estimated four 96K9 Pantsyr-S1 mobile air defence systems imported by Ethiopia in 2019. Deliveries from Ukraine included an estimated 215 second-hand T-72B tanks received by Ethiopia between 2011-2015.

She said there are also European states transferring major arms to Ethiopia since 2001. For example, Hungary supplied 12 second-hand Mi-24V/Mi-35 combat helicopters to Ethiopia in 2013. French Bastion vehicles delivered to the state in 2016 were financed by the US. Deliveries from Germany included 6 trainer aircraft in 2019.

Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS: “The perception of such conflicts as being simply an African problem ignores the fact that much of the killing would not be possible were it not for Western arms sent to the combatants.”

In most civil wars, however, small arms and light weapons were critically important, and were often backed up by major conventional weapons.

Since 2011, China has emerged as one of the largest arms suppliers to Ethiopia. Some of the known deliveries from China included a single HQ-64 air defence system delivered in 2013 and 4 PHL-03 300mm self-propelled multiple rocket launchers received by Ethiopia in 2018-2019.

Ethiopia also imported about 30 armoured personnel carriers from China between 2012 and 2014, said Kuimova.

Other media reports have provided information on the presence of Chinese Wing Loong and Iranian Mohajer-6 drones in Ethiopia. In addition, several media outlets claim that Turkey is negotiating arms deals on selling an identified number of Bayraktar TB-2 armed drones to Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, in one of the world’s worse conflict zones, namely Yemen, the air attacks are mostly by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, equipped with arms primarily from the US and UK, two permanent members of the Security Council.

According to SIPRIs Kuimova, there is not much known about transfers of major arms to Eritrea. She said it appears that the country has not received any major weapons since 2009 when the UN arms embargo on Eritrea came into force. The embargo was lifted in 2018, however, no deliveries of major arms have been documented since then.

Between 2001-2007, Eritrea’s imports of major arms included two second-hand modernized S-125-2T air defence systems supplied by Belarus in 2005. Bulgaria supplied 120 second-hand T-55 tanks in 2005. Between 2001-2004 Russia delivered 4 combat aircraft to Eritrea, and an estimated 80 Kornet-E anti-tank missiles between 2001 and 2005. Deliveries from Ukraine included 2 second-hand combat aircraft.

“We are currently collecting, analyzing and verifying open-source information on deliveries of major arms to both Ethiopia and Eritrea over the last year,” she said.

But lack of transparency in armaments in the cases of both importer states and exporters make it difficult to determine the order and delivery dates and the exact numbers and types of weapons transferred over the last years.

For example, Ethiopia has not been submitting reports on its imports of arms to the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA), the main UN transparency instrument on conventional weapons, since 1997.

And China, one of the largest exporters to Ethiopia over the last decade, stopped submitting reports to UNROCA in 2018. In addition, China has not reported information on its arms transfers to Ethiopia in the previous years.

Categories: Africa

Wave

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 19:01

By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Rising sea levels, extreme climate conditions such as severe storms faced by Bangladesh, one of the primary victims of anthropogenic climate change, the country is set to be the worst sufferer from climate change by 2025, far worse than any other country.

Bangladesh, with a population of over 166 million, is imperilled due to its position between two key rivers, the Brahmaputra and Ganges. Many regions in the country are also prone to drought. As a developing country Bangladesh does not have enough financial resources for protective or reparative measures.

The photo story ‘Wave’ by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, an award wining Bangladeshi photo journalist, captures images of people who face this crisis as a human problem. Bangladesh is a small, overpopulated country in Southeast Asia with primarily an agro-based economy. Besides, climatic hazards like cyclones, floods, drought, soil salinity, and river erosions are more frequent nowadays. These two facts contribute to the increasing number of climate refugees forced to migrate to the cities, worsening the socio-economic problems. The barrages [1] built across the rivers inside the border of India have resulted in both flooding and drying of the river beds in Bangladesh. Major rivers like Padma, Jamuna, Meghna, Brahmaputra, and smaller rivers in the coastal region erode when the water level rises. Due to prolonged droughts, the temperature is increasing every year at an alarming rate. Sadly, people can’t adapt to this rapidly changing climate and are on the brink of socio-economic insecurity. The waves, whether present or absent, don’t bring any hope for these people. When they hit, they take away the valuable land and lives. When the waves are gone, nothing is left but parched, cracked riverbeds.

[1] A report on the impact of Farakka barrage on the human fabric. Manisha Banerjee, on behalf of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP).
http://sandrp.in/dams/impct_frka_wcd.pdf

The two rivers Jamuna and Brahmaputra are surrounded by Islampur, a sub-district of Jamalpur, one of the most climate-vulnerable places in Bangladesh. The Jamuna River is the ferocious, devastating and eating village after village by eroding its banks. Islampur town is at risk; the protecting dam is not built sustainably. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Dohar, a sub-district of Dhaka, is bordered by Padma River. The mighty Padma during the summer behaves like a monster and eats its surrounded lands, and even changes the usual floating path. It creates enormous erosion and displaces inhabitants on both sides of the river. Due to the change in climate, floods cause environmental degradation. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are removing the remaining structures and belongings as the River Padma is about to swallow the area. River Padma at Mawa is aggressive in the summer and very often it erodes massively, displacing people and their belongings. Mawa, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Women, children and the elderlyare the most vulnerable due to the climate crisis. In Islampur, during floods, low-income households in the villages suffer the most. A woman is in search of food relief to feed her children. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The vast area outside Rajshahi City is flooded on both sides of the Padma River banks. People have been experiencing adverse calamities; the change in ecology affects adapting to the new norms of hot weather. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Many places of Dohar, Dhaka, are washed away and many people moved to other cities while many others still live there as they have nowhere to go except to move back slowly away from the river. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The frequent floods across Rajshahi division by the River Padma are causing massive economic loss, displacement, and health hazards. The whole ecology and biodiversity have changed, and even animals are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The River Jamuna has caused floods in the whole territory of Islampur, and villagers are waiting for flood relief. They had to shift their houses and belongings. Many of them were starving as relief was insufficient. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Climate Crisis is leading to school drop outs. The rivers swallow up many schools; children with their families had to move from place to place with no sustainable livelihoods near the big rivers. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Frequent changes of the riverscapes are problematic for the fishermen as they have to shift their homes. The village markets get moved too and the villagers go to different places to secure their livelihoods. Climate Crisis makes it harder for everyone in terms of its economic impact and other socio-geographical effects.
Mawa, Dhaka, Bangaldesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Categories: Africa

Ongoing Pandemic Push Africa’s Children Out of School

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 10:44

Quality, safe, gender-responsive and inclusive education for Africa’s children increasingly out of reach, say experts. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Kenya’s secondary schools’ administration has been in the eye of a storm since schools reopened in October 2021. Since then, students have set on fire 35 schools and counting, forcing the government to announce an unscheduled break from school – ahead of the planned December 23 closing.

Sarah Kitana, a secondary school teacher in Kathiani, Machokos County, tells IPS that fewer students are in classrooms after a year of COVID-19-driven disruptions and the ensuing prolonged out-of-school period. This is even more evident in rural areas.

“Those that returned are finding it very difficult to cope with the new fast-paced learning to make up for the lost time. Secondary school students take on eight to 13 subjects. Some schools have their students waking up at 3.00 am to be in class by 4.30 am and to end the day at 10.45 pm,” she says.

“These are efforts to help bring some normalcy to a disrupted, restructured and shortened academic calendar. It will take up to January 2023 for Kenya’s school calendar to regain some normalcy.”

Pre-COVID Africa and more so, sub-Saharan Africa was already off-track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

In 2019, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics indicated that of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion, as, over one-fifth of children between ages six and 11, one-third of 12 to 14-year-olds and 60 percent of those aged 15 to 17 were not in school.

In July 2021, UNICEF announced that at least 40 percent of all school-aged children across Eastern and Southern Africa were out of school due to COVID-19 and other pre-pandemic challenges facing the persistently fragile education system.

UN data shows there are at least 15 countries with active armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Civil war, adolescent girls’ pregnancies, child marriages, access challenges due to disabilities, climate change-induced displacements, COVID-19 economic shocks will only increase the number of out of school children, says Josephat Kimathi, an educationist at Kenya’s Ministry of Education.

Missing out on education can have lifelong impacts. Save the Children’s July 2020 forecasts suggested that children, at that time out-of-school due to pandemic-driven school closures, could lose out on $10 trillion in earnings.

In 16 out of Kenya’s 47 counties, a baseline survey by UNICEF found that more than 27,500 children with disabilities were out of school.

Not only has an entire generation’s education disrupted in the history of humanity, Kimathi says quality, safe, gender-responsive and inclusive education for Africa’s children is increasingly out of reach.

“In comparison, Kenya is a fairly stable country. But the fact that 1.8 million children and adolescents aged six to 17 years are out of school. Another 700,000 small children, aged four to five years, cannot access early childhood interactive opportunities to prepare them for entry into primary school speaks volumes about less stable nations,” Kimathi tells IPS.

One in four children in Africa live in conflict zones. A new analysis by Save the Children of 12 countries at extreme risk of increased school dropouts show that apart from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the rest are African countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal.

Across Africa, Kimathi says, the poorest children in rural, drought-stricken, minority and marginalized communities will suffer the most from the devastating effects of the pandemic.

Grace Gakii, a Nairobi-based gender expert, says the pandemic is already pushing even more girls out of Africa’s education system. At least one million girls in Africa may never return to school, according to a 2021 report by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Pre-COVID, nine million girls between six and 11 years, compared to six million boys of the same age, living in sub-Saharan Africa will never go to school, according to UNESCO.

Gakii speaks of escalating challenges in arid, semi-arid and pastoralist communities to enrol and retain girls in school and fears losing gains made.

Elangata Enterit boarding primary school in Kenya’s pastoralist community of Narok South is a perfect example of success. In 2007, the school did not have a single girl sit for the crucial and compulsory Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).

With intervention, the number of girls sitting for KCPE rose to 30 students in 2016 and continues to grow.

Despite 42 countries in Africa providing free and compulsory primary school education and the Africa Union Member States striving to invest at least 20 percent of their domestic budget in education, before COVID-19, UNESCO data shows that 100 million children were out of school in sub-Saharan Africa.

In July 2020, Save the Children estimated that the pandemic-driven “recession will leave a shortfall of $77 billion in education spending in some of the poorest countries in the world over the next 18 months.”

Kimathi says that Africa will need context-specific education plans to help build resilience against shocks to an already weak education system to get back on track. It will also need money to implement the action plans. Finally, it will require proactive measures to keep children safe and systems to track and ensure that the continent stays on course.

He lauds Kenya’s efforts to accelerate the implementation of the right to education for all children.

This includes the ongoing ‘Operation Come to School Programme’ targeting 16 rural Counties notorious for out-of-school children.

This, he says, is critical to achieving SDG 4, especially in light of dire predictions by UNESCO estimating that 50 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa will not complete secondary school education by 2030.

Categories: Africa

Feminism Weaponized Against Trans People

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 07:30

LZ is an advocate for women, trans people, and gender minorities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Amidst an “alarming rise in hateful discourse” against transgender people globally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned last month that this community still lacks safeguards against abuse. Credit: UN Women/Dar Al Mussawir

By Cleo Kambugu and Lori Adelman
NEW YORK / KAMPALA, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

There is a resurgence of anti-trans sentiment right now. It’s not only Dave Chapelle’s toxic rants in his most recent Netflix special: we see it across social, political and cultural arenas including in JK Rowling’s ongoing embrace of trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs); the introduction of bills designed to harm trans kids in the US; Uganda’s Sexual Offenses bill, which violates international human rights; and “gender-critical” academics like Kathleen Stock profiting from their inflammatory rhetoric.

These recent examples are alarming, and their impact is devastating for trans people globally. But transphobia is not new. And we won’t make true progress on gender liberation until we address it head-on, including by reclaiming the feminist movement as unabashedly pro-trans.

Cis and trans people’s liberation are linked. The same logic that drives the policing of trans people’s genders also reinforces the anti-feminist notion that a woman dressing “provocatively” is more deserving of violence; that a Black woman’s natural hair renders her less professional or deserving of respect; or that cis men shouldn’t display emotion or risk being perceived as weak.

Many transphobic arguments promote a kind of reproductive essentialism that could be ripped straight out of a page from the Handmaid’s Tale, insisting, for example, that only people who menstruate and/or have a womb are women.

Beyond reducing women down to their bodies in ways that align deeply with patriarchy, such an approach also misgenders cis women who are infertile or can’t menstruate.

Cleo Kambugu

On the flip side, fighting for the self-determination and bodily autonomy of trans people can help us build a stronger feminist movement that fights and wins on issues like defunding the police/abolitionism, promoting expansive, family-friendly policies and practices, ending workplace discrimination, and gaining reproductive justice for all.

Queer and trans activism can help to defy and free us from deeply engrained patriarchal ideals about what is “normal” or “natural” for women, men, and all of society. And dismantling the gender binary can also help us question other systems that aren’t serving us and imagine a different, better world.

Feminist abolitionist Angela Davis has summed it up thus: “The trans community has taught us how to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal…if it is possible to challenge the gender binary, then we can certainly, effectively, resist prisons, and jails, and police [and on and on].”

Despite these linkages, feminism is too commonly being invoked not as a platform for mobilizing in support of trans rights but as a cover for bigotry. The feminist movement is increasingly co-opted by organized and well-resourced opposition to trans rights, including (majority white women) TERFs who generate swells of attention and sympathy for exploring “debates” like whether trans women are forcing themselves upon lesbians (they’re not) or transitioning too late to deserve our support (also, no).

Even beyond TERFs, plenty of feminists participate in microaggressions; erasures of the trans experience; invasive inquiries about trans people’s bodies; and more. Such ideas and behaviors are entertained in otherwise progressive spaces because they are ostensibly coming from self-identified feminists or voices that have traditionally supported the rights of the marginalized like Chapelle’s own. This has to stop.

If trans lives and identities have long been and continue to be a politically potent rallying cry for people who seem not to care very much for trans people, we need a counter narrative urgently from folks who feel differently.

Lori Adelman

Following the release of The Closer and Netflix’s refusal to remove it as well as their firing of B Pagels Minor, a Black trans employee, for their organizing around the issue, there have been a deluge of articles talking about trans people.

It’s rare to hear from trans people themselves who are fighting not only for survival, tolerance, and visibility — but for the space to thrive. But it’s also too rare to hear from non-trans feminists reclaiming the movement and centering our trans sisters in the work.

Feminists must forcefully counter transphobia and especially the pernicious narrative that we are pitted against each other in the quest for liberation. Affirming trans women as women and trans men as men is a good start, but feminists and all progressives must get beyond tolerance to extend radical support and solidarity to our trans siblings including with funding and across borders.

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel once said “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Trolls, TERFS and bigots monopolize so much attention when it comes to trans people and their rights in part because there is no similarly organized and funded corollary within feminism advocating for an alternative view.

This silence is deafening, and directly enables and empowers TERFs and their agenda.

Feminism has its roots in gender liberation, not policing. If we cut our chains, we are free, but when we cut our roots, we die. Just as they would fight misogyny, feminists also need to fight back against transphobia in culture and media (which has real world consequences), in the law, in academia, and in politics.

In the words of the great Angela Davis, feminism should be capacious. A feminist who uses hateful logic to deny trans people rights and resources isn’t a feminist at all. But until we speak up, we will be spoken for.

Cleo Kambugu is a Trans activist, Director of Programmes at UHAI EASHRI and the protagonist of The Pearl of Africa. She is based in Uganda.

Lori Adelman is a Vice President at Global Fund for Women and co-hosts the feminist podcast Cringewatchers. She is based in New York.

Categories: Africa

No Vaccine for the Pandemic of Violence Against Women in Latin America

Wed, 11/24/2021 - 02:35

Despite restrictions due to covid, women from various feminist, youth and civil society groups gathered in the central Plaza San Martin in Lima and marched several blocks demanding justice and protesting impunity for violence against women, on Nov. 25, 2020. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)

Despite significant legal advances in Latin American countries to address gender-based violence, it continues to be a serious challenge, especially in a context of social crisis aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic, which hits women especially hard.

“Existing laws and regulations have not stopped the violence, including femicide (gender-based murders). There is a kind of paralysis at the Latin American level, on the part of the State and society, where we don’t want to take much notice of what is happening, and women are blamed,” said María Pessina Itriago, a professor and researcher and the director of the Gender Observatory at UTE University in Quito.

Pessina, a Venezuelan who lives in the Ecuadorian capital and spoke to IPS by telephone from the university, said violence against women is ageold, and “we are still considered second-class citizens who are not recognized as social subjects.” And this dates way back – to the slaughter of “witches” in Europe in the Middle Ages, for example, she added."It hasn’t been easy to achieve my independence, have my own income and raise my children. I have suffered humiliation and slander, but I knew who I was and what I wanted: to live in peace and have a home without violence." -- Teresa Farfán

“The genocide of women is something that has not stopped and now in the context of the pandemic has become more serious. I believe that, in reality, the pandemic that we have experienced for many years is precisely this, that of gender violence,” she remarked.

Her reflection came ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated on Thursday, Nov. 25 and kicks off 16 days of activism up until Dec. 10, World Human Rights Day.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Women warned in March that globally one in three women suffers gender-based violence. And that the problem, far from diminishing, had grown during the covid pandemic and the restrictions and lockdowns put in place to curb it.

The study “Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence”, which analyzed data from 2000 to 2018, is the most far-reaching produced by WHO on the topic.

The report, published in March of this year, stresses that violence against women is “pervasive and devastating” and affects one in three women with varying degrees of severity.

For Latin America and the Caribbean, the study puts the prevalence rate of violence among women aged 15 to 49 at 25 percent.

María Pessina Itriago is a professor, researcher and director of the Gender Observatory at UTE University in Quito. CREDIT: Courtesy of María Pessina

A regional epidemic during the global pandemic

With respect to femicides, the Gender Equality Observatory of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports that 4640 women died from this cause in 2019. The organization also called attention to the intensification of violence against girls and women during the pandemic.

The panorama is compounded by the gendered impacts of the pandemic on employment, which reduces women’s economic autonomy and makes them more vulnerable to violence.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the region of the Americas experienced the largest reduction in female employment during covid, a situation that will not be reversed in 2021.

Peruvian sociologist Cecilia Olea, of the non-governmental Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM), which is made up of 17 organizations from 11 countries – nine South American nations, Mexico and the Dominican Republic – said there have been significant advances in the last 30 years in the fight against gender violence.

Among them, she cited the fact that States recognize their responsibility for the problem and no longer consider it a private matter.

She also pointed out that Latin America is the only region in the world with a specific human rights treaty on the issue: the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, known as the Convention of Belem do Para after the Brazilian city where it was approved in 1994, which established women’s right to live free of violence and set the framework for national laws to address this violation of women’s rights.

However, Olea said in an interview with IPS in Lima that the legal and regulatory framework has not been accompanied by political strategies to change the social imaginary of masculinity and femininity, which would provide incentives to modify the culture of inequality between men and women; on the contrary, she said, the violence forms part of a culture of impunity.

“Males feel free to oppress and governments are failing in their responsibility to guarantee comprehensive sex education throughout the educational system, in primary school and technical and higher education; this program exists by law but implementation is deficient due to lack of training for teachers and the opportunity to train people in new forms of masculinity is lost, for example,” she remarked.

Olea, a feminist activist and one of the founders of the AFM, said that not only do governments have a responsibility to prevent, address and eradicate gender violence, but there is also an urgent need to ensure health services; justice with due diligence, as the current delays revictimize and inhibit the use of regulatory instruments; and budgets to correct the current shortfall that prevents a better response to this social problem.

Peruvian sociologist Cecilia Olea, a member of the Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM), which brings together feminist networks from 11 Latin American countries, takes part in a demonstration outside the Peruvian Health Ministry in Lima, demanding reproductive rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Cultural change in the new generations

Raised in a machista home, Pessina rebelled against gender norms from an early age and her constant questioning led her to come up with a new definition of how a good person should act.

“I believe that good people do not tolerate injustice or inequality of any kind, which is why I became a feminist about 15 years ago and I am very happy to be able to contribute a grain of sand with my students,” she said.

Pessina said the challenges to progress in the eradication of violence against women are to provide public policies with a budget to make them work; and to achieve an alliance between the State, civil society organizations and feminist movements to create a road map that incorporates excluded voices, such as those of indigenous women.

“The places where they can file reports are not near their towns, they have to go to other towns and when they get there they often cannot communicate in their own language because of the colonialist view that everything must be in Spanish, and there are no interpreters,” she complained.

Another part of the problem, she said, is that “the State itself blocks complaints and keeps these people marginalized, and they are not taken into account in the countries’ statistics on violence.”

The third challenge was to work with the media in Latin America because of their role in the construction of imaginaries, in order to generate the figure of the ombudsperson focused on gender to ensure that information is treated in a way that contributes to equality and does not reproduce discriminatory stereotypes.

Pessina said that what is needed is a cultural transformation driven by the new generations, in favor of gender equality.

“We see more young feminist women activists mobilizing to make it happen and they will make a turnaround; not now, but maybe in a decade we will be talking about other things. These new generations not only of women but of men, I think they are our hope for change,” she said.

Quechua Indian woman Teresa Farfán, in the foreground, stands with two other rural women with whom she shares work and experiences in her Andes highlands community in Peru. She is convinced that telling her personal story of gender-based violence can help other women in this situation to see that it is possible to escape from abuse. CREDIT: Courtesy of Teresa Farfán

“I wanted a home without violence”

Teresa Farfán reflects the lives of many Latin American women who are victims of machista violence, but with a difference: she left behind the circle of gender violence that so often takes place in the home itself.

She is 35 years old and describes herself as a peasant farmer, a single mother and a survivor of an attempted femicide. She was born and lives in the town of Lucre, an hour and a half drive from the city of Cuzco, the capital of ancient Peru, in the center of the country.

Like most of the local population, she is dedicated to family farming.

Nine years ago she separated from the father of her children who, she says, did not let her move forward.

“He wanted me just to take care of the cows, but I wanted to learn, to get training, and that made him angry. He even beat me and it was horrible, and at the police station they ignored my complaint. He kicked me out of the house and thought that out of fear I would come back, but I took my children and left,” she told IPS during a day of sharing with women in her community.

At her moment of need she didn’t receive the support of her family, who urged her to return, “because a woman must do what her husband says.”

But she did have supportive friends who gave her a hand, both inside and outside her community, as part of a sisterhood of Quechua indigenous peasant women like her in the Peruvian highlands.

“It hasn’t been easy to achieve my independence, have my own income and raise my children. I have suffered humiliation and slander, but I knew who I was and what I wanted: to live in peace and have a home without violence,” she said. A wish that remains elusive for millions of Latin American women.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, which kicks off 16 days of activism on the issue around the world.

Categories: Africa

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: What Went Wrong During India’s COVID-19 Response

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 15:25

During the pandemic, there was little support from the government when it came to making funding and resources available to the nonprofits that were working closely with communities. | Picture courtesy: Digital Empowerment Foundation

By External Source
Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

From its devastating economic impact and the migrant crisis to the startling death toll, the COVID-19 pandemic in India unfurled one crisis after the other. The glaring gaps in our system, which had always been there, became even more prominent during the pandemic. There is one question at the back of everyone’s mind that still remains unanswered: What went wrong?

No entity can operate in isolation, be it the government, the private sector, or civil society. During times of crisis, the government must ensure that all cogs in the wheel continue to work effectively. Civil society—local communities and nonprofits—must enable delivery of public services up until the last mile. And, finally, the private sector needs to step up in terms of financial resources and leveraging of networks and influence.

Nonprofits in 13 states and union territories were able to provide meals to more people during the lockdown than the concerned state governments - Would a collaborative relationship between the government and the social sector have aided a better response to the COVID-19 crisis?

However, when the pandemic was at its peak in India, these three entities failed to come together and work collaboratively to cushion the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the people.

The missing link between the government and the social sector

According to our village-level digital entrepreneurs in the SoochnaPreneur programme at Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), the four essential systems that were massively hit by the pandemic were education, healthcare, finance, and citizen entitlements. When the pandemic was raging, our SoochnaPreneurs reported that all people wanted was food and rations, a device to access online education for their children, the ability to talk to a doctor or health worker to learn how to keep themselves safe, and to make some money to meet their daily needs from the confines of their homes. Ironically, given the stringent nature of the lockdowns, all this needed access to the internet.

However, across the country, lack of access to resources, high levels of digital illiteracy, and the deepening digital divide exacerbated by the pandemic acted as major roadblocks in India’s COVID-19 response. Even as the government announced relief packages—food grains and cash payments—the mechanisms of delivery to beneficiaries at the last mile were unclear.

For instance, common service centres (CSCs), which are supposed to work as access points that enable digital delivery of services such as banking and finance across rural India, were mostly non-functional. During the pandemic, the government claimed that people could use their local CSCs to access various digital services including telehealth and registration for vaccinations. However, like any other office, shop, or business centre, almost all CSCs had closed their operations due to the strict lockdown rules in various states.

With government services not always being available, the social sector stepped up. Whether it was making access to digital tools and digital literacy a priority or the distribution of essentials, nonprofits across the country filled in the gaps. According to one report, nonprofits in 13 states and union territories were able to provide meals to more people during the lockdown than the concerned state governments.

The question that arises is: Would a collaborative relationship between the government and the social sector have aided a better response to the COVID-19 crisis?

For instance, the distribution of food grains could have been made efficient from the get-go if, rather than having long queues of people waiting at shops, organisations with the digital know-how had been allowed to deliver ration at the doorsteps of people with a biometric machine in hand. This synchronisation and management of resources is something that should have been under the government’s purview, while a partnership with civil society organisations could have helped with execution and delivery. Considering that hundreds of thousands of nonprofits working at the grassroots were tasked as frontline workers, the government could have tapped into this already existing infrastructure and network.

The lack of trust between the social sector and the government didn’t help. During the pandemic, there was little support from the government when it came to making funding and resources available to the nonprofits that were working closely with communities. For instance, while local nonprofits worked as service providers during the pandemic, funds lying with local government bodies could have been diverted to their operations to successfully navigate the panic-like situation brought on by the first lockdown when everything came to a halt.

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2020, also imposed difficult conditions on what could be considered eligible expenses for nonprofit organisations, thus creating more obstacles in raising and distributing crucial aid. Even as the prime minister called for nonprofits to step in, many organisations found their hands tied due to certain rules imposed in the middle of the pandemic.

Moreover, during the first lockdown, there was a diversion of CSR funds to PM Cares. At present, not only is there a lack of transparency on how these funds have been deployed, but this diversion of funds has also been a huge blow to nonprofits who have been struggling to look after their own employees and their organisations while providing relief to communities on the ground.

The private sector did not step up either

There was lack of communication and collaboration across business, and a piecemeal approach was adopted. Industry associations could have encouraged CEOs and company heads to interact with each other and solve issues on a larger scale. For instance, industry bodies such as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), and Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) could have deployed their resources to help manage the mass migration of workers from industrial towns and urban centres more systematically and humanely.

In pre-pandemic times, CSR within corporates would ask nonprofits to work in areas where they have manufacturing facilities and offer localised support. Corporates could have extended this reasoning during the lockdown as well and enlisted the support of their nonprofit partners to help those workers and informal sector migrants who were homebound, while providing the nonprofits with the required monetary and infrastructure support.

There was also a reluctance from corporates to innovate in times of need. Since DEF works on digital integration to fight poverty, we reached out to many CSR funders to provide funds for buying smartphones, tablets, projectors, and other electronic devices to provide digital infrastructure in the villages. However, it took us more than a year to convince some of them to help us offer support to people with no digital access and empowerment through our Digital Daan initiative.

It is important to contextualise the social and economic support at the time of disaster and that can happen only if there is a relationship of trust between the stakeholders.

What the social sector could have done better

The onset of the pandemic brought with it uncertainty for most nonprofits. In addition to lack of funding and overstretched resources, many nonprofits had to take up the role of relief workers and divert efforts from their primary objectives, which would have been domestic violence, child protection, water and sanitation, and so on.

One important factor missing in this entire conversation was the inability of many nonprofits to adopt digital tools to improve operations, efficiency, and delivery of services. While webinars became a recurring feature in their calendars, thus creating a space for knowledge sharing, grassroots nonprofits were often not a part of these dialogues. Smaller nonprofits were also overwhelmed with work on the ground due to the needs of their communities coupled with inadequate support from either their funders or governments; hence, many of them had little time or resources to think or build their capacity to go digital.

The pandemic did however push several nonprofits to adopt digital tools for operations and delivery of services. Larger nonprofits with their own networks, adequate funding, and a strong digital presence were able to leverage digital platforms. However, many of the smaller nonprofits and those at the frontlines had to innovate to reach beneficiaries digitally.

Moreover, with the government aggressively pushing Digital India—from telehealth to online education and even the vaccine roll-out—it became imperative for organisations to incorporate digital and technological solutions in their everyday operations. Many nonprofits therefore had to work on building in-house digital capacity and infrastructure during the pandemic, while also serving their communities and raising funds.

In the case of mobilising money, digital platforms could have been a powerful tool for the sector, and they did help many nonprofits raise funds. However, this was not the case for the entire social sector.

According to the India Giving Report 2021 by the Charities Aid Foundation, individual donations were at an all-time high during the pandemic. Crowdfunding platforms such as GiveIndia provided people easy access to donate to various causes. However, this giving may not have been as diversified—the absence of reliable information online acted as a barrier for many givers while donating. Therefore, givers may have chosen to stick to organisations they trusted. And many local nonprofits with limited digital know-how had to rely on local giving or local resource mobilisation.

For example, our colleague Mohamed Arif, whom we lost in the second wave, was in charge of DEF’s digital centre at Nuh, Haryana. He was digitally savvy and active on social media and was thus able to raise approximately INR 25 lakh (in cash and food grains, and other essentials) through his personal Facebook profile and networks.

However, while the pandemic did push many nonprofits to incorporate technology-led solutions, I find that urgency dwindling again. Digital empowerment of the sector requires sustained efforts wherein organisations put aside certain funds every year for digitally upskilling their employees, maintaining digital collaterals, and modifying their approach to include technology in their everyday operations.

I see the pandemic as an inflection point in the future of nonprofits and civil society as a whole. Which organisations survive this period of transition will largely depend on how well they can adapt to these changing times. According to me, one of the key changes the sector will have to make to stay relevant is to become more digitally aligned.

Osama Manzar, the author of this article, is the founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation. He is a Senior Ashoka Fellow, a Chevening Scholar, and has served on several boards such as the Association for Affordable Internet, Association of Progressive Communications, World Summit Awards, and Down To Earth. He specialises in creating digital models for poverty alleviation and has travelled to more than 10,000 villages. Get in touch with him on Twitter: @osamamanzar

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Categories: Africa

From Fruit Waste to Gourmet Grub

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 14:52

UNEP estimates that 50 percent of post-harvest losses occur in vegetable and fruit crops. However, innovative agro-processors have found a way to process Morula fruit into jams and other products. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

When Bonolo Montle’s neighbours discarded bucketsful of fallen ripe morula fruit from their backyard, she saw food and fortune going to waste.

Montle took a tasty interest in the fruit of the morula (Sclerocarya birrea), a hardy indigenous tree that grows naturally across Africa. The morula fruit is rich in vitamins and nutrients, with eight times the vitamin C of oranges.

Montle – a serial entrepreneur and agro processor – has turned the morula waste fruit into award-winning, low to zero-sugar preserves and jams through Maungo Craft, a social enterprise co-founded by Montle and Olayemi Aganga in 2017. In addition, the company makes marmalades and sugar-free onion and baobab chutney.

Maungo Craft is helping eliminate food waste while providing delectable food and creating jobs in the agriculture value chain.

“We saw a great opportunity and decided to make preserves with the morula fruit that typically goes unused in Botswana,” Montle, the Managing Director of Maungo Craft, tells IPS.

“Too many people saw morula as a nuisance. We saw an opportunity to come together and have some fun cooking jam,” said Montle explaining that they saw an opportunity to make a little money at the local farmer’s market in the capital city, Gaborone.

“We learned on our journey that when it comes to creating cosmetic morula oil, cosmetic processors go through 300 tonnes of morula fruit pulp to get to 12 tonnes of morula cosmetic oil. We thought to ourselves, what happens to all of that fruit,” Montle recalls.

As the world battles food and nutrition insecurity – more than 280 million people were undernourished in Africa in 2020 – food loss and food waste are a growing challenge.

Food waste is a result of overproduced food during industrial processing, distribution, and consumption. The food is never eaten and thrown away. Food loss refers to food lost at the time of cultivation, harvesting and processing and preservation. This food doesn’t reach consumers.

Factors driving food loss and waste include the absence of or poor agro-processing skills and facilities by smallholder farmers and poor and inadequate storage facilities, which means farmers cannot store perishable food or preserve it for future use.

Hot Sauce made from underutilised morula fruit. Credit: Maungo Craft

Inefficient processing and drying, poor storage, and insufficient infrastructure are instrumental factors in food waste in Africa, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. The FAO estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest food losses are worth US$ 4 billion per year – or enough to feed at least 48 million people.

In many African countries, the post-harvest losses of food cereals are estimated at 25 per cent of the total crop harvested. For some crops such as fruits, vegetables, and root crops, being less hardy than cereals, post-harvest losses can reach 50 percent, UNEP says.

Describing morula as an amazing fruit, Montle said the fruit could be used for food and skincare products. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates the value of the global morula oil market to be worth $56.9 million by 2025 on a return of 4.4 percent.

Food losses for perishable crops such as fruits and vegetables exceed 20 percent, while for certain leafy greens and tropical fruit, the figure is more than 40 percent, according to the projections by the FAO.

A small percent of morula fruit is processed or value-added in Botswana, contributing to food waste.

Maungo Craft works with local vendors, from suppliers of spices to suppliers of fruit pulp, creating jobs for more than 1000 fruit harvesters in the value chain. Aganga explained that the company has mutual relationships with companies that use the seed in the morula fruit to make cosmetic skincare oil, while they use the fruit that would otherwise go to waste.

“Morula is an underutilised fruit also known as ‘orphan crop’ once integral in the food system,” says Aganga, Head of Production at Maungo Craft which has received 13 awards, including an endorsement of one of its products by Martha Stewart’s kitchen, an International Food Celebrity.

“The reintegration into our food system of fruits and crops like morula is integral in fighting and adapting to climate change. This, along with the delicious taste of many underutilised fruits, meant that using such fruit is of prime importance to us.”

Double Pyramid for Africa, food choices and systems that are perfect for people and the planet. Credit: BCFN

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) advocates adopting healthier and sustainable diets at local and international levels while mitigating climate change and supporting food companies.

Researchers at BCFN have designed a Double Health and Climate Pyramid that communicates features of a balanced, healthy, and sustainable diet by advising on the appropriate frequency of consumption of all food groups, like prioritising vegetables and fruit adapted to local conditions.

The Double Pyramid highlights the positive impact of nutritional balance on people’s health and protecting the environment. The Double Pyramid shows that foods that should be eaten more frequently are also those that have a lower environmental impact on our planet. On the contrary, foods that should be eaten less frequently tend to have a greater environmental impact. Therefore, within a single model, the relationship between two different but equally relevant objectives can be seen: health and environmental protection.

“Food represents the second most important factor of global sustainability (following the energy industry): it is, therefore, a priority for all concerned in the food production chain to reduce its environmental impact since whoever does not take part in finding a solution is part of the problem,” the BCFN comments.

Montle said the company is expanding into the local market and eying export markets in South Africa and the United States.

“We shall also create new products for our customers to experience those underutilised foods,” said Montle. “We put our ‘Culture in a Bottle’.”

Categories: Africa

Yet Another Scourge: A Third of All Women are Subjected to Violence

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 12:41

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

Thirty percent of women and girls suffered physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most frequently by an intimate partner. And more than 70 percent of all sold, bought and enslaved victims of human smuggling and trafficking are women and girls — three out of four of them are sexually exploited.

These are just some of the brush strokes of a gloomy picture on the still prevailing violence practiced against women and girls, one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations, which remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.

These are figures drawn from recorded cases. Thus, it is not hard to imagine that the numbers and percentages are much higher.

Is an international day enough?

Every year, 25 November marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. According to this year’s, in general terms, it manifests itself in physical, sexual and psychological forms, encompassing:

intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide);
sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment);
human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation);

Like in previous years, the 2021 International Day will mark the launch of 16 days of activism that will conclude on 10 December 2021, which is International Human Rights Day.

Different forms of violence against women and girls

According to the World Day, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defines violence against women as: “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

In this, UN Women –which works to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential– reports that fewer than 40 percent of the women who experience violence seek help of any sort.

Low- and lower-middle-income countries disproportionately affected

UN Women also reports that, globally, violence against women disproportionately affects low- and lower-middle-income countries and regions.

And that 37 percent of women aged 15 to 49 living in countries classified by the Sustainable Development Goals as “least developed” have been subject to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in their life.

Also, 22 percent of women living in “least developed countries” have been subjected to intimate partner violence in the past 12 months—substantially higher than the world average of 13 percent.

According to this world entity, adult women account for nearly half (49 per cent) of all human trafficking victims detected globally. Women and girls together account for 72 percent, with girls representing more than three out of every four child trafficking victims. Most women and girls are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

In the Middle East and North Africa, 40–60 per cent of women have experienced street-based sexual harassment.

Meanwhile, 1 in 10 women in the European Union report having experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15.

Also meanwhile, at least 200 million women and girls, aged 15–49 years, have undergone female genital mutilation in 31 countries where the practice is concentrated. Half of these countries are in West Africa.

There are still countries where female genital mutilation is almost universal, where at least 9 in 10 girls and women, aged 15–49 years, have been cut. (See: Daughters of a Lesser God (II) 200 Million Girls Mutilated)

Moreover, 15 million adolescent girls worldwide, aged 15–19 years, have experienced forced sex. In the vast majority of countries, adolescent girls are most at risk of forced sex (forced sexual intercourse or other sexual acts) by a current or former husband, partner, or boyfriend. Based on data from 30 countries, only one per cent have ever sought professional help.

Add to all the above that 1 in 5 women are married before reaching the age of 18. (See: Daughters of a Lesser God (I) 800 Million Girls Forced to Be Mothers).

Any hope?

By September 2020, 52 countries had integrated prevention and response to violence against women and girls into COVID-19 response plans, and 121 countries had adopted measures to strengthen services for women survivors of violence during the global crisis, but more efforts are urgently needed.

UN Women also reports that at least 155 countries have passed laws on domestic violence, and 140 have laws on sexual harassment in the workplace.

“However, even when laws exist, this does not mean they are always compliant with international standards and recommendations, or that the laws are implemented and enforced.”

All the above facts and figures are not only shocking; they reflect the scary reality of millions of women and girls in yet another case of the staggering inequalities prevailing in the world.

Categories: Africa

Climate Change with 8 Billion Humans

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 11:07

The planet with 8 billion humans and continuing to grow must be seriously addressed in climate change negotiations, argues the author. Credit: UNHCR

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

With world population approaching 8 billion humans, the demographic growth of nations is unfortunately largely ignored by governments whenever climate change is considered.

Government leaders at COP26, for example, did not address limiting the global demand for energy, water, food, housing, land, resources, material goods, machinery, transportation, etc. by reducing the growth of their respective human populations. By and large, the officials as well as their economic advisors are not prepared to acknowledge that population stabilization and degrowth are essential for addressing climate change.

Moreover, many countries, including Canada, China, European Union members, Iran, Israel, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, continue to push for the further growth of their populations. China, for example, has moved from a one-child policy to a three-child policy to increase its population of more than 1.4 billion.

Many countries, including Canada, China, European Union members, Iran, Israel, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, continue to push for the further growth of their populations. China, for example, has moved from a one-child policy to a three-child policy to increase its population of more than 1.4 billion

Russia has adopted a number of policies to increase its low birth rate, including maternity capital program, Procreation Day, state funding for new mothers, welfare benefits to families with young children and tax breaks for larger families. The United States relies heavily on immigration, more than one million immigrants annually, to increase its population, which is projected to reach 400 million by around midcentury.

Rather than immigration, most European Union Members aim to increase their populations by raising below replacement fertility levels. The mood in many parts of Europe is reflected in the German poster saying: “Wir können unsere eigenen Babys machen, wir brauchen keine Ausländer” (We can make our own babies, we don’t need foreigners). Hungary, in particular, has been outspoken in its opposition to immigration and foreigners, and straightforward in its policies, programs and financial incentives aimed at helping Hungarians have all the babies they want.

Also, Iran recently adopted a bill that limits sterilization, abortion and free distribution of contraceptives in the public health care system unless a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health, all aimed at raising its birth rate and increasing its population of 85 million by tens of millions over the coming decades. And Israel promotes population growth of its Jewish population and expansion of settlements as a prerequisite for security and economic development and its current population of 8.7 million could increase to 15 million by 2050.

Throughout most of human history demographic growth was relatively slow. The rapid growth of world population is relatively recent, having occurred largely during the second half of the 20th century with record breaking rates of growth and population increases. World population reached 1 billion around 1804, doubled to 2 billion in 1927, doubled again to 4 billion in 1974 and will double again to 8 billion by 2023 (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations Population Division.

World population’s 10 billion mark is expected to occur around mid-century, with much of the growth taking place in less developed countries. Africa’s current population of about 1.4 billion, for example, is expected to double to 2.8 billion by 2056. Particularly noteworthy, Nigeria’s population, which increased more than fivefold over the past 70 years, is projected to double again, reaching 423 million by around midcentury and displacing the United States as the world’s third largest population.

It’s time to end the charade and acknowledge the disastrous consequences of a world with 8 billion humans is having on climate change. For example, based on the performance to date of Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, the United States, the top 7 emitters of greenhouse gas emissions accounting for nearly two-thirds of global emissions and half of the world’s population, the world is unlikely to achieve the goals needed to address climate change nor respond effectively to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss (Figure 2).

Source: Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

Additional insight into greenhouse gas emissions is offered by per capita comparisons of major countries. While in 2018 the world average of tons of CO2 equivalent per person was approximately 6, the United States and Russia had the highest per person levels of 19 and 18, respectively. The per person levels for the world’s billionaire plus populations, China and India, were considerably lower at about 8 and 2, respectively (Figure 3).

Source: Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

It also appears unlikely that the world will achieve the global goal adopted by 196 parties in 2015 in the legally binding international treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement, to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. Moreover, to preserve a livable climate on the planet, the world community of nations will not likely be able to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions net 0 by 2050.

While it is widely recognized that climate change is a global emergency, the international system of nations is failing to deal with this challenge as well as related global problems due to national ambitions. To effectively address this failing, some believe that a new worldview of planetary politics is called for, with the survival of the biosphere to be designated an international objective relevant to all nations. However, moving away from the primacy of national sovereignty to a planetary approach appears unlikely any time soon.

One significant demographic response to climate change is human migration, both internal and international. Increasingly, people are migrating to escape climate change’s disastrous consequences, including rising sea levels, lengthy droughts, deadly heat, polluted air, devastating floods, raging wildfires and violent storms.

The planet is all but guaranteed to see 5 feet of sea level rise in the coming decades. This rise is especially threatening to no less than a dozen island nations, including Fiji, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. In addition, by the end of the decade approximately 50 percent of the world’s population will live in coastal areas that are exposed to storms, tsunamis and floods.

Also, exposure to extreme heat, which has tripled from 1983 to 2016, now impacts roughly a quarter of the world’s population. Longer and hotter heat waves have become a regular feature of climate change. Low income communities, especially in developing countries, are most vulnerable with more than two-thirds of global households lacking access to air conditioning.

Governments will need to decide on how best to address climate-induced population displacement, which is already a reality for millions worldwide. Over the next several decades, tens of millions of “climate migrants” are expected to be displaced by extreme heat, droughts, sea-level rise, or other severe climate events within and across countries. Some are calling for a United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and climate change.

Other expected demographic responses to climate change are reduced fertility and increased morbidity and mortality. Hot weather, for example, can worsen reproductive health and maternal health outcomes as well as lead to later birth rates and harm to infant survival.

Also, climate change is considered the single biggest health threat facing the world’s 8 billion humans. Changes in the planet’s climate are expected to have serious consequences on the social, economic and environmental determinants of health, including air, water, food and shelter.

WHO reports that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause 250 thousand additional deaths annually from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress. Also, others estimate that global warming could lead to the premature deaths of more than 80 million people over the remainder of the century.

Whenever climate change is discussed, written about, or mentioned, the demographic growth of nations can no longer be ignored or dismissed by governments. The planet with 8 billion humans and continuing to grow must be seriously addressed in climate change negotiations.

In brief, the stabilization and degrowth of human populations are essential for limiting the ever-increasing demographic created demands for energy, water, food, land, resources, housing, heating/cooling, transportation, material goods, etc. that are responsible for the planet’s climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Categories: Africa

Protecting Environmental Water from Antimicrobial Resistance

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 08:42

By Lina Taing and Rachel Kaiser
HAMILTON, Canada, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

The overuse and misuse of antimicrobial medicines and chemicals has become the main driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and drug-resistant infections that threaten human health and the global economy.

Given that development, the UN designated November 18-24 as World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, to remind us all to handle antimicrobials with greater care.

Antimicrobials – which range from antibiotic and antiviral medicines to disinfectant and antiseptic chemicals – help prevent or treat human, animal and plant infections and have contributed immensely to health and progress worldwide.

Now, however, common antibiotics, as well as first-line antimicrobials for infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria, are becoming less effective.

The World Health Organization reports that 700,000 people die from drug-resistant diseases every year. If this threat continues unchecked, 10 million people are predicted to die every year and the world will lose USD $100 trillion by 2050.

Most worrying, an estimated 90% of the world’s urban growth is anticipated in Africa and Asia, where populations are most vulnerable to drug-resistant bacteria. Increasingly, multilateral organizations and national governments are adopting measures to reduce unnecessary antimicrobial use by humans, including in our food chain.

From 2000 to 2015, human consumption of antibiotics increased 65%, led by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where GDP has risen in parallel with antibiotic use, overuse and misuse.

Meanwhile, antimicrobial use in animal farming is nearly triple that of human consumption and is on track to reach 200,235 tons in animals and 13,600 tons in aquaculture by 2030 as producers work to reduce infection and increase animal growth.

Data on antimicrobial use in plants is limited, but the presence of resistant bacteria has been detected on 25% of plant-based foods from all world regions, indicating that food likely is contributing to greater AMR.

The excessive use of antimicrobials in humans, animals, and plants also puts environmental health at risk. But environmental transmission via soil, air, or water receives relatively little attention as an AMR driver.

Depending on the drug, humans and animals can excrete waste with up to 90% of antimicrobial compounds or metabolites still active, which can end up untreated in the environment.

Unsafe disposal of antimicrobials and wastewater from hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, municipal treatment plants, and farms are recognized as hotspots for the introduction and evolution of more resistant strains (i.e., superbugs).

This pollution can consequently compound human AMR exposure through contaminated soils and water supplies that sustain our environment, or are used to produce food, for drinking, cleansing and recreation.

Increasing access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and raising capacity for wastewater treatment are the primary environmental interventions to reduce the spread of AMR.

However, current statistics paint an alarming picture of whether these efforts are enough to address environmental risks, as a quarter of humanity does not have access to safe water and just over half of the world’s wastewater is treated. Of particular concern are large swathes of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, which report limited treatment of, or have no data on, domestic and industrial wastewater flows.

At current rates of progress, universal WASH and wastewater treatment is unlikely to be achieved soon, which highlights the need to put into place now additional measures that protect environmental waters from these AMR exposure pathways.

Environmental waters are aquatic environments that can function as both AMR reservoirs and pathways and their protection, therefore, is critical in AMR stewardship. Environmental waters refers to the world’s diverse natural and man-made water bodies, ranging from wetlands that shelter wildlife and nurture local ecosystems, to groundwater and surface waters from which we draw supplies or discharge wastewater into.

One could argue that environmental water AMR protection is inherent in measures that reduce antimicrobial use upstream, and enhance WASH and municipal and industrial wastewater treatment strategies downstream.

But wastewater treatment from a major contributor to environmental pollution – agriculture – tends to be overlooked, despite the facts that this industry uses the largest amount of antimicrobials, 70% of global freshwater, and discharges the majority of its wastewater and runoff untreated into the environment.

The combination of poor WASH coverage and inadequate domestic, industrial, and agricultural wastewater treatment puts half a billion people that rely on unimproved water from polluted environmental waters at greater risk of AMR exposure and infection.

Safeguarding environmental waters represents a major void in current AMR stewardship efforts, despite water protection being recognized in 2018 as the “first step” to reducing environmental AMR pollution.

The UN should support surveillance, regulation and enforcement of water and land protection legislation and development of AMR-related water quality standards – to prevent and mitigate environmental AMR risks, as well as equitably address human, animal, and environmental AMR threats.

Lina Taing is a Water and Health Researcher, and Rachel Kaiser is an Intern at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), a Canadian-based think tank supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

Categories: Africa

Climate Injustice at Glasgow Cop-Out

Tue, 11/23/2021 - 08:05

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

The planet is already 1.1°C warmer than in pre-industrial times. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years. Despite the pandemic slowdown, 2020 was the hottest year so far, ending the warmest decade (2011-2020) ever.

Betrayal in Glasgow
Summing up widespread views of the recently concluded Glasgow climate summit, former Irish President Mary Robinson observed, “People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty,… nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster”.

Anis Chowdhury

A hundred civil society groups lambasted the Glasgow outcome: “Instead of a multilateral agreement that puts forward a clear path to address the climate crisis, we are left with a document that takes us further down the path of climate injustice.”

Even if countries fulfil their Paris Agreement pledges, global warming is now expected to rise by 2.7°C from pre-industrial levels by century’s end. Authoritative projections suggest that if all COP26 long-term pledges and targets are met, the planet will still warm by 2.1℃ by 2100.

The United Nations Environment Programme suggests a strong chance of global warming disastrously rising over 1.5°C in the next two decades. Earlier policy targets – to halve global carbon emissions by 2030, and reach ‘net-zero’ emissions by 2050 – are now recognized as inadequate.

The Glasgow UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) was touted as the world’s ‘last best hope’ to save the planet. Many speeches cited disturbing trends, but national leaders most responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions offered little.

Thus, developing countries were betrayed yet again. Despite contributing less to accelerating global warming, they are suffering its worst consequences. They have been left to pay most bills for ‘losses and damages’, adaptation and mitigation.

Glasgow setbacks
Glasgow’s two biggest hopes were not realized: renewing targets for 2030 aligned with limiting warming to 1.5℃, and a clear strategy to mobilize the grossly inadequate US$100bn yearly – promised by rich country leaders before the Copenhagen COP in 2009 – to help finance developing countries’ efforts.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

An exasperated African legislator dismissed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use as an “empty pledge”, as “yet another example of Western disingenuousness … taking on the role of ‘white saviour’” while exploiting the African rain forest.

Meanwhile, far too many loopholes open to abuse remain, undermining efforts to reduce emissions. Further, no commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies globally – at US$11 million every minute, i.e., around US$6 trillion annually – was forthcoming.

No new oil and gas fields should be developed for the world to have a chance of getting to net-zero by 2050. Nevertheless, governments are still approving such projects, typically involving transnational corporate giants.

Various measures – e.g., ‘carbon capture and storage’ and ‘offsetting’ – have been touted as solutions. But carbon capture and storage technologies remain controversial, unproven at scale, expensive and rarely cost-competitive.

The Glasgow outcome did not include any commitment to fully phase out oil and gas. Meanwhile, the language on coal has been diluted to become virtually toothless: coal-powered plants will now be ‘phased down’, instead of ‘phased out’.

Offsets off track
Offset market advocates claim to reduce emissions or remove GHGs from the atmosphere by some to ‘off-set’ emissions by others. Thus, offsetting often means paying someone poor to cut GHG emissions or forcing them to pay someone else to do so. With more means, big business can more easily afford to ‘greenwash’.

Carbon offset markets have long overpromised, but underdelivered. As they typically exaggerate GHG emission reduction claims, offsetting is a poor substitute for actually cutting fossil fuel use. Meanwhile, disagreements over offset rules have long stalled international climate change negotiations.

Buying offsets allows GHG emitters “to keep polluting”, albeit for a fee. Highly GHG emitting activities by wealthier individuals, companies and nations can thus continue, after “transferring the burden of action and sacrifice to others” – typically to those in poorer nations – via the market.

For Tariq Fancy – who managed ‘sustainable investing’ at BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager – the market for offsets is a “deadly distraction”, “leading the world into a dangerous mirage, … burning valuable time”.

Meanwhile, most established offset programmes – e.g., the United Nations’ REDD+ programme or the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism – have clearly failed to meaningfully reduce GHG emissions.

More than 130 countries have committed to achieve net-zero by 2050. But net-zero targeting has actually allowed the world to continue kicking the can down the road, instead of acting decisively and urgently to verifiably cut GHG emissions.

Hence, it is seen as a cynical “scam”, “nothing more than an expensive cover-up for continued toxic emissions”. Trading non-verifiable offsets – supposedly to achieve net-zero – allows continuing GHG emissions with business almost as usual.

Loss and damage?
Vulnerable and poor nations have argued for decades that rich countries owe them compensation for irreversible damage from global warming. In fact, no UN climate conference has delivered any funding for losses and damages to countries affected.

Rich countries agreed to begin a ‘dialogue’ to discuss “arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimize and address loss and damage”. Representing developing nations, Guinea expressed “extreme disappointment” at this ruse to delay progress on financing recovery from and rebuilding after climate disasters.

Developed nations account for two-thirds of cumulative emissions compared to only 3% from Africa. Carbon emissions by the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were more than twice those of the bottom half between 1990 and 2015!

Low-lying small island nations – from the Marshall Islands to Fiji and Antigua – fear losing much of their land to rising sea levels. But their longstanding call to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund was rejected yet again.

South Pacific island representatives have expressed disappointment at lack of funding for losses and damages, and the watered down language on coal. For them, COP26 was a ‘monumental failure’, leaving them in existential peril.

Although historical responsibility for GHG emissions lies primarily with the wealthy countries, especially the US and the European Union, once again, they have successfully evaded serious commitments to address such longstanding problems due to global warming.

Climate injustice
For the UN Secretary-General, “[o]ver the past 25 years, the richest 10% of the global population has been responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions, and the poorest 50% were responsible for just 7% of emissions”.

The World Bank estimates that, if left unchecked, climate change will condemn 132 million more people into poverty over the next decade, while displacing more than 216 million from their homes and land by 2050.

Meanwhile, poorer countries – who have contributed least to cumulative GHG emissions – continue to suffer most. To address climate injustice, rich countries – most responsible for GHG emissions and global warming – must do much more.

Their finance for developing countries ought to be much more ambitious than US$100bn yearly. Financing terms should be far more generous than currently. Also, funding should prioritize adaptation, especially for the poorest countries most at risk.

Categories: Africa

Corporate Fear Drives Caribbean Vaccine COVID-19 Mandates

Mon, 11/22/2021 - 14:09

The private sector and some government agencies have demanded that staff vaccinate, especially in the tourism industry that drives many regional economies. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Nov 22 2021 (IPS)

When face-to-face Cabinet meetings resumed in Jamaica following more than a year of virtual meetings due to COVID-19, Ministers lined up to have their immunisation cards inspected.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the Government “has to lead the country towards normality”.

“The way to do it is for every Jamaican to comply with the infection, prevention and control measures that have been established, which will eventually be relaxed the higher the level of vaccination,” he said after the October 12 meeting.

In the current atmosphere, outbreaks, no-movement days that shut down commerce and vaccine hesitancy send ripples through the economy. So, while Jamaica has no national vaccine mandate, private sector companies and some government agencies are already demanding that staff vaccinate.

In addition to several vaccination drives that target employees, Jamaica Private Sector Organisation joined the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce and the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association to put their support solidly behind a campaign for a national mandate.

The groups say that with the low vaccination rates almost two years into the pandemic, Jamaica is being left behind in achieving population immunity, putting the country’s recovery at risk. The groups contend that the social and economic impact will be devastating, and “the ripple effects will continue for years to come”. But even with growing support for a mandate, opposition leader Mark Golding opposes one. Only about 17 percent of the Jamaican population is vaccinated.

Across the region, governments have already implemented mandates. In Guyana, nationals who want to enter any public buildings, including banks, restaurants, supermarkets and schools, must show proof of vaccination. In the twin-island state of Antigua Barbuda, opposition legislators accused House Speaker Sir Gerald Watt of acting beyond his powers after he prevented them from participating in the sitting of the Senate because they did not show proof of vaccination.

With each outbreak, concern for the tourism industry that drives many regional economies grows. Many countries now have vaccination policies for incoming adult travellers. These include Anguilla, Grenada, St. Barts, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands.

And even as governments ponder mandates, they are also bracing for civil unrest and legal challenges from workers. In a recent opinion, the Jamaican Bar Association said nothing was preventing the Government or employers from implementing mandates. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States outlined its position in a 16-page document titled: “The Legal Dimensions of Mandatory/Compulsory Requirements for COVID-19 Vaccinations, August 2021”.

According to the report, that countries could legally pursue mandatory vaccination laws.
“Having demonstrated … that mandatory vaccination is constitutionally appropriate given the leeway granted in favour of public health imperatives, it is submitted that employers could justify a requirement in a pandemic context, at minimum where the workplace is a high-risk environment, such as health-care, or essential services, or for workers more at risk at the workplace, such as frontline workers interacting with the public,” the document said.

But while public health legislation specifically addresses restrictions in times of pandemic, those who oppose mandates argue that they are a breach of human rights.

President of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, Helene Davis-Whyte, is expecting a national mandate if efforts to boost vaccination numbers fail. She argued for a comprehensive public awareness programme with consultations before such a step is taken and cautioned that a “draconian approach” could discourage some people.

“We are not necessarily opposed, but what we are saying is that you have to do more work because we don’t think that enough work has been done,” she told journalists recently.

And so, armed with their individual legal opinions, governments have been implementing the rules they say will protect their countries. By October 2021, at least seven governments across the region had instituted COVID-19 mandates for government workers.

In August, in Guyana, police were called to evict staff members in the education ministry’s head office who had entered the building without proof of vaccination. Earlier that month, there were mass protests in St. Vincent and Barbados. And in July, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves was hit on the head and injured by an angry protestor during anti-mandate demonstrations in St Vincent.

Barbados, like Jamaica, has not officially backed a vaccine mandate, but Holness acknowledges he may have to make the decision soon. But even with no national mandate in Jamaica increasingly, civil servants find they must be vaccinated to work.

The Ministry of Tourism has raced ahead to vaccinate the 170,000 people who work in the sector. Already workers who come in contact with cruise ship visitors must be fully inoculated.

And as the country eyes a return to full-time school, it’s the turn of teachers and school staff. Medical workers have already been issued a mandate. In the private sector, more than 80 per cent of staff are vaccinated.

In the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, where several companies became hotspots during the height of the first wave, vaccination is compulsory. In Jamaica, COVID-19 restrictions and 14-days of lockdown cost the sector US$42 million (J$5.88 billion) in revenue.

But it is in the region’s tourism industry that mandates have become the norm. Hoteliers and other service providers seek to prevent lawsuits and shutdowns by demanding that staff be fully vaccinated. In the Bahamas, workers and visitors must be fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated visitors face a 14-day quarantine. Jamaica is aiming for a 100 per cent vaccinated workforce.

A growing number of countries have instituted vaccination policies for incoming adult travellers. These include Anguilla, Grenada, St. Barts, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands.

Meanwhile, the private sector’s desire for a return to normalcy and increased economic activity could push many toward a vaccine faster than any government mandate could.

Categories: Africa

Mother of Summits: Sweet and Sour Diplomacy, but Nothing Cooked!

Mon, 11/22/2021 - 12:30

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Nov 22 2021 (IPS)

It has been said that when Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. The summit of the leaders of world’s two strongest powers, the United States and China, came face to face at long last. Albeit virtually. Still, this was undoubtedly the “mother of summits” this year. There were two telephone conversations earlier, but according to US officials this nearly four hours of summitry was far more “candid intense, and deeper interaction”. If there was one single take-away from this meeting, it was the establishment beyond all reasonable doubt of the incontrovertible fact that the US and China were indeed the two most influential global state actors. The decisions between the two, represented by their leaders, would profoundly impact the rest of humanity far into the future.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Given that in terms of deliverables, the consensus among all analysts was that nothing significant was expected, the event was important in that it put to rest the bickering between the subordinates that was pushing the world towards a precipice. It was about time the supreme political masters, Joe Biden of the US and Xi Jinping assumed the reins of control of the most important relationship of our times. Both sides were intellectually convinced that the stiffest possible competition between the two was on the cards. The challenge was to manage this in a way to prevent a conflict that would be catastrophic. This was one point on which, luckily, there was understanding on both sides.

There was not much on anything else. Prior to the meeting that Biden was focussed on writing the rules of the engagement of China “in a way that is favourable to our interests and our values and those of our allies and partners”. Unsurprisingly, Xi and the Chinese did not play ball. Both sides basically emphatically stated their positions on issues and showed nary an inclination to concede an inch to the other. In the end, as was expected, there were no breakthroughs. The irreconcilable positions remained in- tact, with a vague call by both sides for more cooperation.

A virtual meeting is bereft of the positive influences of informal chats, banquets, and the opportunity of developing personal camaraderie. Still, both leaders exuded friendly demeanours, and Xi called Biden “an old friend”. On Taiwan, the dialogue was tough. Xi reminded Biden of the US position on the Peoples ‘Republic being the sole legitimate government of China , reinforced by here communiques issued in 1972, 1979 and 1982. Following the talks the White House clarified that the “One China’ was also guided by the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances committing the US to opposing” unilateral efforts to change the status quo”. Xi made it clear that Taiwan for China was a “core issue”; it was a province of China, and any support to its independence was akin to playing with fire. “Whoever plays with fire will get hurt” was a message he strongly underscored.

There seemed a glimmer of hope on one front, though. In the past China has refused to be drawn into any nuclear arms control agreements given that its arsenal was far smaller than those of the US and Russia. But recent significant qualitative improvements of its capabilities have been worrying the US. At the meeting China showed willingness to talk on the subject. However, there is no possibility of agreements beyond the rim of the saucer because the Chinese will naturally demand steep cuts in US numbers which will be unacceptable to Washington. However, there could be forward movement through diplomatic engagements on matters such as Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), will the positivity that would entail.

There is a fundamental difference in the approach of China and the US to negotiations. The US believes in a kind of “a la carte” method of choosing areas where it believes there is scope for collaboration while competition, and even confrontation, continues others. The Chinese on the other hand reject this as “cherry picking” and see the agenda as a comprehensive package. What is the use of understanding on one subject, while differences on another cam lead to war? Unless this basic divergence is resolved, negotiations are unlikely to be able to yield any worthwhile results. Discussions will continue to be both sweet and sour, as the summit deliberations were, but nothing seriously palatable will get cooked!

Xi has in the meanwhile has consolidated his own power in China to a point that he may be set obtain a third term of office. More importantly, he is viewed as the navigator in the journey towards national rejuvenation leading to China becoming a modern fully developed nation by 2049 which will bring him yet closer to the status of the Great helmsman, Chairman Mao Zedong, himself. All these were the outcome of the Sixth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party which met last week and adopted a “historical resolution” that buttressed Xi’s power and position.

Incidentally, in the history of the party this was the third historical resolution. The first was adopted in 1945 under Mao four years prior to the revolutionary victory, and the second by the ‘reformist” Deng Xiaoping. While Mao was the one who restored a sense of pride among the Chinese people enabling them “to stand up” and Deng made them rich through his reforms, Xi, by the dint of this “thought” (which supersedes “theory” in Chinese political lexicon) gave them strength and shared prosperity. In an abstruse political milieu where the count of numbers means a great deal, a Xinhua communique on the meeting mentioned Xi’s name at least fourteen times, compared to seven of Mao and Five of Deng. That tells a lot.

Consequently, it is now all but certain that Xi will be elected to an unprecedented third term in office as party General Secretary at the 20th Party Congress next year. There is also some talk that he may assume the title of “Chairman” as well which will bring him at par with Mao. The plenum also elevated Xi Jinping Thought to 21st Century Marxism, completing the process of “Sinicization” of Marxist philosophy. Xi has been pragmatic in welding the conservatism of Mao, but shunning his repressive methods, with the reforms of Deng, correcting the “capitalist excesses”, and bringing China on a socialist path that would lead to a “modern society” with “shared prosperity “. Small wonder that many Chinese observers are beginning to see him as a “Philosopher King” in the mould of Plato in the West and Confucius in the East, a perfect mix for the cauldron of power and authority. An interesting footnote is that the Chinese Communist Party formally announced its third “historical resolution”, cementing Xi’s powers hours after the Summit, though it was leaked earlier, which pointed to a thought-through calibrated set of actions.

Nowhere the same degree, Joe Biden also seems to have achieved a modicum of success of his own despite powerful head winds. He has managed to create a sense of cohesion among America’s allies, though his path has had numerous pitfalls and bumps. Importantly he has managed to secure the passage into law of the massive legislation in terms of the US $1.2 trillion bill on a revamp of infrastructures, to “build back better”, a campaign pledge. This for him is no mean achievement, proving that persistence pays. But for him and his Democratic Party the future is not as rosy as that what appears to be for his Chinese counterpart. A Republican win in the Presidential race is a distinct possibility. That could lead to turmoil and backlash in US domestic politics, requiring the identification of a common foe to rally the nation. China is the obvious candidate. If, consequently, the “ultimate red line” for China, such as on the issue of Taiwan is crossed, a catastrophe could follow.

Surely the Chinese have made those calculations. From now to then, China and Xi will, while seeking to avoid an immediate conflict, be preparing to, in the words of the Global Times seen as a State media outlet, “to deal with the biggest storms in the world, the most powerful and comprehensive siege from the US and its allies”. Halfway down this decade it will be high- risk for one to wager too much in favour of peace!

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

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

Categories: Africa

It’s Time to Find Solutions to the Gendered Consequences of the Pandemic

Mon, 11/22/2021 - 07:43

A profound shock to our societies and economies, the COVID-19 pandemic underscores society’s reliance on women both on the front line and at home, while simultaneously exposing structural inequalities across every sphere. Responding to the pandemic is not just about rectifying long-standing inequalities, but also about building a resilient world in the interest of everyone with women at the centre of recovery. Credit: UN Women

By Megan O'Donnell, Shelby Bourgault and Lotus McDougal
WASHINGTON DC/SAN DIEGO, Nov 22 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the globe, but the data and evidence show that women have borne the brunt of the crisis. While inequalities in health, economic power, and other areas existed long before the pandemic began, the pandemic has widened these gaps.

Women have suffered greater economic losses than men during the pandemic. They’ve lost their jobs at greater rates than men and were more likely to see decreases in their income. For example, women comprised 60 percent of job losses between February and April 2020 in South Africa, a study in Chad estimated more women will lose wages as a result of COVID-19 than men (61 percent vs. 57 percent), and a study of 29 countries found that a larger percentage of women lost employment during COVID-19 than men (42 percent vs. 31 percent).

Women business owners also suffered disproportionate losses during the pandemic. Studies found that women-owned businesses were more vulnerable to profit loss and closure during the pandemic. Across South Asia for example, women’s businesses closed at a rate of about 50 percent compared to men’s at 39 percent.

Women’s greater economic losses are in part driven by their role as primary caregivers. The pandemic brought on school closures around the globe which in effect, increased the childcare burdens of women (more than men) and inhibited their ability to engage in paid work.

On the one hand, work from home can allow women to spend more time with children and more easily combine paid work and unpaid care, but on the other hand, it can hinder work-life balance and negatively impact job performance.

Further, very few women workers around the world have the types of jobs that can be done from home, which means that these increased childcare burdens are putting economic empowerment further out of reach for many women.

During the course of the pandemic, research has also revealed a spike in gender-based violence in many places around the world – as lockdowns forced people to stay at home with abusive partners. For example a study from Peru found that both young men and young women experienced an increase in physical domestic violence during lockdown, and that those who had previously experienced violence were more likely to experience it again.

In Zimbabwe, a qualitative study of informal women workers also documents increased instances of gender-based violence due to staying home with abusive spouses.

In Bangladesh, a study on intimate partner violence finds that, overall, 45 percent of women surveyed had experienced intimate partner violence during COVID-19, and that women in arranged marriages, from rural areas, and with lower levels of education were more likely to experience violence.

It’s clear that women’s health and economic standing have been disproportionately hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. But while extensive research and data has begun to paint the picture of just how devastating the pandemic has been for women, there has been very little research to date on what policies or interventions have been effective in addressing and reversing these new and growing inequalities.

Where limited evidence does exist, it suggests that policy measures to respond to the pandemic have not equally reached and benefited women. As world leaders work to pursue a gender-equal recovery, they must ensure that COVID-19 recovery policies in all areas consider the impact on women and are designed to reach and benefit women.

They must not only look at problems — but also fund and implement evidence-based solutions, including those aimed at getting cash into the hands of women who have lost employment and income, addressing their disproportionate unpaid care burdens, and preventing gender-based violence.

Megan O’Donnell is a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and leads the think tank’s COVID-19 Gender & Development Initiative; Shelby Bourgault is a researcher with the gender program at the Center for Global Development and Lotus McDougal is a researcher at UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Center on Gender Equity and Health.

Categories: Africa

‘The Brutal Death of a Child’s Dream’

Fri, 11/19/2021 - 17:35

Globally, nine million additional children are at risk of being pushed into child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which could rise to 46 million without access to critical social protection coverage. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 19 2021 (IPS)

Kailash Satyarthi,  an Indian social reformer and co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, spoke in a recent international forum about the devastating impacts of child labour.

“Nothing is as brutal as the death of a child’s dream,” said Satyarthi, who campaigned against child labour in his homeland. “We should feel the moral responsibility that we have to fulfill the dreams of these children.”

The Global Solutions Forum was held in the context of the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, and it brought together representatives from government ministries, farmers’ organisations, workers’ groups, and development banks, businesses, as well as children, youth advocates, and former child labourers.

The Nobel Peace laureate’s words came ahead of the 2021 World Children’s Day, marked 20 November. The Day’s theme is–ironically: A Better Future for Every Child.

The nation of 160 million plus children

These children form a nation of 160 millions plus victims, the double of a big European country’s -Germany- total population. They do not know each other, but they are all victims of the current prevailing human rights abuses.

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

Millions of them are trapped in hazardous work, and they are also easy prey to human trafficking.

Two-thirds in the rural sector

Given that more than two thirds plus –or 70%– of all these boys and girls are rural workers, Qu Dongyu, the director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has urged ways to stamp out the practice –which he called “a serious violation of human rights,”– by the year 2025.

For them, Qu stressed that effective action and strong and coherent leadership from agri-food stakeholders across the globe is critical. “Child labour deprives boys and girls of their childhood, their potential and dignity, while also being harmful to their physical and mental development.”

Although not all work carried out by children is considered child labour, “much of it is not age-appropriate, and many vulnerable families, especially in rural areas, have no choice.”

Also in services and industry

While the agriculture sector accounts for 70% of children in child labour, it is followed by 20% in services and 10% in industry.

As well, nearly 28% of 5 to 11-year-olds and 35% of those aged 12 to 14 in child labour, are out of school.

Child labour is more prevalent among boys than girls at every age but when 21 hours per week of household chores are taken into account, the gender gap in child labour narrows.

Reasons behind

Contributing factors include low family incomes, few livelihood alternatives, limited access to education, inadequate labour-saving technologies, and traditional attitudes surrounding children’s participation in agriculture.

In sub-Saharan Africa, population growth, recurrent crises, extreme poverty, and inadequate social protection measures have led to an additional 16.6 million children in child labour over the past four years, according to this year’s report Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward, elaborated by the International Labour Organisation(ILO) and the UN Children Fund (UNICEF).

More victims

“Additional economic shocks and school closures caused by COVID-19 mean that children already obliged or forced to work, may be working longer hours or under worsening conditions, while job and income losses among vulnerable families may push many more into the worst forms of child labour,” according to Guy Ryder, the ILO director general.

Not an escape

Ryder also underlined that child labour did not have to continue indefinitely. “Child labour is not an escape road from poverty, it actually prolongs poverty; it makes poverty inter-generational,” he said.

This year’s World Day Against Child Labour, warned in its campaign: ‘Victims’ Voices Lead the Way’ which is aimed at putting a spotlight on victims’ untold stories, and on their roles in the fight against trafficking, warned that progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years, reversing the previous downward trend that saw the number put to work fall by 94 million between 2000 and 2016.

Cyber crimes

The UN Secretary General urged States to take action against human trafficking, where a third of all victims are children.

“The COVID pandemic has pushed as many as 124 million more people into extreme poverty. And “many millions” have been left vulnerable to the scourge of human trafficking.

“Criminals everywhere are using technology to identify, control and exploit vulnerable people,” the UN chief said, adding that children are increasingly targeted through online platforms for sexual exploitation, forced marriage and other forms of abuse.

Governments are aware, or at least they should. This practice against ten of millions of children is just one of the long list of human rights violations.

This is also the case of 1.000.000.000 child-girls who are either mutilated or forced to be mothers or both. Let alone the discrimination and marginisation against the millions of children who are forced to work… just because they are poor.

Categories: Africa

Time Honoured Food Traditions, Pleasing for Palate and Planet

Fri, 11/19/2021 - 17:11

Alia Chughtai (standing at the back), a journalist with filmmaker Akhlaque Mahesar (right, behind the table), and others in their team at Aur Chaawal (And Rice). Chughtai believes in using local fresh ingredients that are healthy and planet-friendly. Her method of cooking fits in with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition’s Double Pyramid. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Nov 19 2021 (IPS)

Balance is the absolute key, says Alia Chughtai, a journalist who started a catering service with filmmaker Akhlaque Mahesar, by the name of Aur Chaawal (And Rice), two years ago.

She knows what she is talking about. Suffering from gastrointestinal issues, Chughtai’s journey towards healthy eating started a decade ago. Once she understood the science behind nutrition and what balance of eating meant, she understood what her body had gone through. And thus began her quest for cleansing it.

“I couldn’t have garlic or onions for eight straight weeks,” the two most essential ingredients one cannot imagine cooking desi (slang for Pakistani) food without, she told IPS.

Two years ago, Chughtai decided to turn her food journey into a small side business.

“I got into this because there was a personal need for clean desi food without the bad oil, chemical-laced spices and food colouring,” she said. Today her fight is against processed food which she believes is the reason behind the multitude of ailments in people, and she swears by “heartily grown vegetables and fruits”.

“But it’s not a solo ride,” she said. For a well-oiled business to run successfully and expand, the pair have divided their tasks. While Chughtai oversees the day-to-day operations and “menu ideation”, Mahesar looks after the background logistics.

Surmai (fish) korma and rice with crispy okra and fried chillies on the side. One of the balanced dishes found at Aur Chaawal. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

While navigating the ‘farm to fork’ path, trying to find the balance between sustainability, nutrition, and access, Mahesar said they try their best “to use locally grown, locally made products”.

In turn, the duo has become acutely aware of fairer returns for small businesses and farmers.

“Ours is a small business, and we are all for supporting other small businesses,” said Chughtai’s partner.

The pandemic also acted as a catalyst for many Pakistanis to think and produce locally.

“We try to source as much as possible from around Pakistan, including the different types of cheeses and even the pasta,” he said.

But looking for quality produce requires quite a bit of research, which they both enjoy doing.

“We get a month’s supply of spices from small towns in Sindh; a certain species of chillies from Muzaffarabad, in the Punjab province; saffron and buckwheat from Hunza, in Gilgit-Baltistan region and saag (mustard plant) from Lahore, also in Punjab. They substitute ghee (a type of clear butter) for oil to cook in, which they get from Matiari, also in Sindh, weekly.

Fayza Khan, president of the Pakistan Nutrition and Dietetic Society (PNDS), strongly feels those in the food business must preach and practice healthy and sustainable eating, advocate for science-based diets, recommend reduced intake of meat and highly processed foods and demand from the government better labelling on packaged food.

To “reduce the burden of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases”, those in the food business should “play their part” in promoting healthier ways of cooking food and minimizing food waste.

Frowning upon overconsumption of fat-laden food, including bakery products, fast food, and sweetened beverages, she said: “Nutrition and lifestyle-related chronic diseases in Pakistan among adults as well as in children including the prevalence of obesity and an onset of diabetes in young age is spreading fast.”

Khan, therefore, recommends “traditional foods” which are healthier if “home-cooked with better cooking techniques”.

Finding the balance between food systems and the planet. Credit: BCFN

And that is what the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) advocates: that healthy diets, especially traditional foods, play a significant role in food sustainability as they have a low environmental impact.

For example, the Mediterranean diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish rather than red meat, and cereal-based products, such as pasta, and cooked in olive oil, help prevent heart disease. Little wonder Italians are ranked healthiest in the world. Italy has the highest number of centenarians in Europe.

As Chughtai and Mahesar fine-tuned their business model, they have increasingly understood the integrity of sustainable food strategies and started employing caution to minimize any environmental or climate impact it may be causing.

“As an entrepreneur in the food business, it is our responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions, of animal welfare and protection of small farmers and workers in the food business,” said Chughtai.

“We initially used bagasse bowls and containers,” she explained but had to opt for cheaper recycled packaging boxes because bagasse was too expensive.

“We use regular reusable plastic boxes which we refill with food for 10% discount on the food,” she said, adding: “People don’t want to pay higher costs for desi cuisine!”

They also compost their wet kitchen waste and use it as manure for their vegetable roof garden, where they grow their red bell peppers, chillies, broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant, gourd, and some herbs.
But Chughtai, says Aur Chaawal, is not just a business; it is a quest for “clean food”.

It took her several years to find out that the root cause of her stomach issues, said Chughtai and said everything pointed toward the pre-packaged spices with their overdose of flavourings and colours. Averse to them, at Aur Chaawal, they use the old-fashioned pestle and mortar to pound fresh garlic, smash the ginger or chillies or grind the whole spices into powder.

“Our cooking may be labour intensive, alright,” she admitted, but insisted it was “clean and healthy”.

Chughtai may not be aware of it, but Aur Chaawal has uses Barilla Foundation’s Double Pyramid model of placing the health and climate pyramids side-by-side, encouraging healthy eating for humans and remaining respectful of the planet.

In a city like Karachi, which has a deluge of caterers, food joints and restaurants and a huge population of discerning gourmands, securing 10,000 followers on Instagram, and a steady daily clientele of between 35-45, in just two years, is no mean feat.

“We have to be innovative,” said Mahesar, but puts their success down to the awareness among their regular customers (that include many working women who want her to cook for their family), that the Aur Chaawal menu will be nothing but wholesome.

The business also caters to those who are counting their calories. But Chughtai insisted a one-size-fits-all formula does not work for here.

On average, she said, every body’s plate should be 1/4th filled with protein, 1/2 with greens and 1/4th with complex carbs”.

But she emphasized: “Everyone is different; you have to eat according to your health needs.”

For instance, on her plate, the portion of protein would be 1/3rd protein since she was low on iron. And this, she said, was the mistake many nutritionists in Pakistan make.

“You cannot apply the 1400/1500 calorie rule to everyone!” said Chughtai, who was fortunate to train under Adrian Leunga, a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer and who helped “reconfigure my brain about good food and bad food”.

One day, when her inner writer gets restless, she plans to document her “journey”. She intends to travel from the coastal villages to the mountain peaks and include recipes she picks up “of the unconventional eats and the ones we’ve adapted because Karachi is such a smorgasbord of ethnicities” in a “beautifully designed” compilation.

Till then, having brought up eating home-cooked food made by her mother, she said, Aur Chaawal will continue serving “clean” meals using the healthiest, organically grown produce and spices for their customers.

Categories: Africa

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