Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

A woman, accompanied by a child, casts her vote during the general elections in Mozambique. Credit: UNDP/Rochan Kadariya

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 9 2021 (IPS)

These days there hasn’t been certainly a shortage of reports portraying the decline of liberal democracy around the world.

With rising popularism and a divisive use of social media, we should not be surprised about a general malaise taking roots in most advanced liberal democracies.

From the Freedom in the World 2021 report published by the Freedom House to the Democracy Index 2020 released by the Economist Intelligence Unit to the IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Indices there is more and more evidence that liberal and representatives’ democracies are under duress.

Could the ongoing debate about a New Social Contract, a concept launched by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, help revive one of the essential elements of any democratic society, people’s interest and participation in the civic life?

If his recent re-election at the helm of the United Nations might have dissipated doubts that this new idea was just a fad, what are the chances for this debate surrounding the New Social Contract to become an opportunity to enhance public engagement at local levels without further dividing the gulf between classic liberal democracies on one side and other nations adopting less democratic, more authoritarian political systems?

Provocatively, could such debate instead help nearing such the gap?

To set aside any doubts, inevitably, the New Social Contract is not about enhancing democracy around the world.

This would clearly a utopian proposition for the Secretary General to embrace but rather an attempt to rethink and improve, regardless of the political system being adopted, the norms between citizens and the state.

Initially coined during the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in 2020, Guterres made the case for a more just and inclusive society centered around the fights against inequalities and discriminations because, he said, “People want social and economic systems that work for everyone”.

Members of the Madheshi community of Biratnagar attend a political rally to demand autonomous federal regions and greater representation in parliament. Credit: UN Photo/Agnieszka Mikulska

“The New Social Contract, between Governments, people, civil society, business and more, must integrate employment, sustainable development and social protection, based on equal rights and opportunities for all”.

As vague as it is in terms of boundaries and ultimate goals, the New Social Contract can be seen as a framework that can, not only revitalize our societies but also build a fairer, cleaner and just economy able to overcome the multiple challenges created by the pandemic.

The Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals attached to it, offer the blueprint upon which such idea can be built locally.

Being still a working in progress, the New Social Contract can offer an impetus not only at re-designing the relationships between social partners, governments, unions and businesses but it can also be a source to generate more interest among the population about public life.

Making sense of it especially from the perspective of youth can be challenging but it is essential doing so because we cannot imagine a renewed citizenry without including youth whose vast majorities are uninterested and disenchanted from the public discourse.

A possible pathway to generate new passions for civic life among youth would start from helping them being more informed about what is happening at local and national levels, something that can evolve to higher forms of deep interests.

The last stage of this continuum would be supporting them into embracing forms of direct engagement.

Engagement is driven by a strong interest for the public life and the willingness to turn such desire to know more into contributions, actions on the grounds.

Last year, UNV came up with a new volunteering framework that fully captures the different features and characteristics of giving your time, energies and skills for the public good.

Indeed, volunteerism with its different forms and dimensions, is one of the best tools to involve people and youth in particular in the public life.

That’s why it is not surprising that the upcoming UNV’s State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, is going to explain how volunteerism can be a true enabler for determinant for the New Social Contract.

More opportunities for public engagement will also generate more trust, an essential trait of any healthy and cohesive society and it is here where the ongoing efforts to localize the SDGs can make the difference by bringing people together for the common good, for achieving the goals at grassroots levels.

Achieving the SDGs at this level is not about just actions, about mobilization of resources of human, in kinds or financial nature. It is also about deliberation and here, after this long detour, I am reconnecting with the issue of democracy.

The design of a New Social Contract as a conducive platform to achieve the SDGs locally by involving people on the ground, can be a tool to elevate the quality of democratic discourse, generating platforms for a new form of shared decision making or shared governance.

Interestingly, while political parties wherever they operate, might become a hindrance to such change because their role as gatekeeper of public participation would be eroded, this conceptualization of shared governance might become of interest to nations not adhering to representative, parties dominated liberal systems.

In the field of political science there is a dynamic movement of social scientists exploring the concept of deliberative democracy that would allow, through different means, including sortition, to have new forms of real, rather than token, forms of public involvement and participation in the decision making.

It’s true that so far, most of the attempts putting in practice deliberative democracy have been applied in the contexts with solid liberal democratic traditions.

A diverse range of “experiments” have been carried out with the most successful probably being the Ostbelgien Modell adapted by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community of Belgium where there is a permanent Citizens’ Council that enable an ecosystem of Citizen’s Assemblies.

Ireland in the past used successfully some aspects of deliberative democracy to involve the general public in discussing and debating key constitutional issues that also helped generating consensus on gay marriage gender equality.

This legacy continues with a Citizens’ Assembly that recently submitted a report, after prolonged consultations and deliberations, on the issue of gender equality.

Iceland has been using a hybrid form of public deliberation, though led by a small number of elected citizens but with ample opportunities for people to crowdsource the nation’s constitution.

Other forms, with vary degree of success and with different level of inclusivity and decision-making power, were tried in two provinces of Canada, British Columbia and Ontario.

Within the growing area of deliberative democracy studies, there is now a great interest on the so-called “deliberative micro public” where a limited number of citizens gather to decide on certain issues of common interest.

If you have seen The Best of Enemies, a movie portraying an exercise of public deliberation about segregated learning in the Jim Crow’s United States in the early seventies, you get the idea about what these might look like.

Many of these lessons learned might also be of interest to policy makers whose political systems have not embraced democracy.

With the discussions still going on how the New Social Contract should look like at local levels and with the agenda of SDGs localization being recognized as instrumental to achieve the Agenda 2030, we could have an opportunity to advance stronger forms of public participation in the decision making locally and everywhere.

This would strengthen the meaning of good governance around the world while also creating new space for deliberations in contexts that normally shut them.

Perhaps deliberative participation, a term that might be easier to sell globally, if properly carried out at local levels, could become a cornerstone of the New Social Contract, reinvigorating classic democracy where already exists while creating space for others political systems to evolve and be more inclusive.

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

 

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Food systems, from farm to fork to disposal, account for 21-37% of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Fresh produce at a supermarket. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2021 (IPS)

Before the COVID-19 pandemic upended every sphere of life, the world was lagging on a goal to end hunger by 2030. According to the United Nations, more than 820 million people had already been categorised as food insecure, meaning they lacked access to reliable and sufficient amounts of affordable, healthy food.

The impact of measures to contain the virus, land degradation, climate change and the global extreme poverty rate rising for the first time in over 20 years, make the need for a transition to sustainable food systems more important than ever.

The United Nations Food Systems Summit hopes to bring together the science, finance and political commitment to transform global food systems. The goal is to introduce systems that are productive, environmentally sustainable, include the poor and promote healthy diets.

The Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, a longstanding investor in research, education and high-level events on sustainable food systems has been actively involved in activities in the lead-up to the summit.

IPS interviewed the think tank’s Head of Research Dr Marta Antonelli and dietician Katarzyna Dembska about climate change and diets, successful food systems and the Foundation’s own initiatives to improve education, science and skills for healthy, fair and sustainable food systems.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

========== 

Inter Press Service (IPS):     The UN states that half of all agricultural land is degraded and that with climate change-fuelled desertification and drought, combined with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 34 million people at risk of famine. How can food systems be protected within this grim context?

Katarzyna Dembska (KD): According to the IPCC, land-use change, land-use intensification and climate change have contributed to desertification and land degradation. At the same time, many land-related responses that contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation can also combat desertification and land degradation, as well as enhance food security. Examples include sustainable food production, improved and sustainable forest management, soil organic carbon management, ecosystem conservation and land restoration, reduced deforestation and degradation, and reduced food loss and waste.

Integrated crop and livestock systems are an example of sustainable food production, that increases efficiency and environmental sustainability with a truly circular approach: for example, manure increases crop production and crop residues and by-products feed animals, improving their productivity. Rice-fish integrated systems, with a long history in many Asian countries, are another example of very integrated systems that also contribute to increased food security.

In addition, sustainable land management practices, implementing a zero-expansion policy which do not require land-use change, especially of new agricultural land into natural ecosystems and species-rich forests, has been identified by the Eat-Lancet commission as a key action to achieve the so-called Great Food Transformation.

IPS:     What should the public know about the linkage between diets and climate change?

Marta Antonelli (MA): Food systems, from farm to fork to disposal, account for 21-37 percent of anthropogenic GHG emissions. The adoption of plant-based healthy and sustainable diets is powerful leverage for climate change mitigation, as well as to promote health, longevity and wellbeing. The Double Health and Climate Pyramid, developed as a tool to inform daily food choices, shows that all foods can be part of a diet that is good for us and the planet, with proper frequency of consumption and serving sizes. Vegetables, fruits and whole grains should be eaten daily; legumes and fish are the preferred sources of protein. There is a huge potential that still needs to be unleashed by establishing compulsory food education in schools; including sustainability concerns, besides health-related, in national dietary guidelines; ensuring enabling food environments that make it easy for citizens to adopt healthy and sustainable diets.

IPS: The UN Food Systems Summit in September hopes to help change the way food is grown, processed, packaged and marketed. What are your hopes for the landmark summit?

MA: The UN Food System Summit (FSS) provides an unprecedented opportunity to energise the global journey towards healthy, safe, fair and sustainable food systems, also to deliver the SDGs by raising awareness of citizens and landing concrete commitments. Agreeing upon a common purpose for global food systems is a fundamental prerequisite of any process of transformation. Nations, cities, municipalities, and communities will be enabled to build their own context and culture-specific vision, inspired by this universal purpose. Last but not least, the UN FSS is a unique opportunity to represent the voices of the millions of women who work throughout the food system from farm to fork, contributing to provide global food security, and to put agroecology and regenerative agriculture to the top of the agenda.

IPS:  The Barilla Foundation has been at the forefront of food systems research. Earlier this year, you unveiled the food systems model that incorporates nutrition and climate. Can you tell me about the Foundation’s participation in the summit?

MA: The Barilla Foundation has been actively contributing to the journey towards the UNFSS through different activities throughout the year, including the release of a report on the EU Food Systems; the launch of the educational hub Seeds; and the release of the Double Health and Climate Pyramid with seven cultural versions. In September, a high-level event on the role of food businesses in food systems transformation will be organised in the framework of the initiative Fixing the Business of Food, with the UN SDSN, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investments and the Santa Chiara Lab of the University of Siena.

IPS: What are some of the successful systems currently being implemented?

MA: The Farm to Fork Strategy, set by the European Commission in May 2020, can be seen as an attempt to create a more integrated food strategy in the European Union (EU). It presents a comprehensive approach covering every step in the food supply chain, for the first time in Europe. It recognises the large contribution that food system transformation can give to achieve the decarbonisation target set forth by the European Green Deal, by setting concrete targets by 2030 that seek to address both environmental and public health concerns. The involvement of farmers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers will determine whether the process set forth by the Farm to Fork Strategy will act as a game-changer in the EU.

 

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Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

By Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
PORT LOUIS, Mauritius, Jul 8 2021 (IPS)

June 2021 marked the launch of UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration. This effort aims at reversing the damage that us humans have caused and are still causing to Nature. It is clear that we have to reverse course and spare no effort into making this ‘Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’ a success. Preserving Nature and maintaining its services are critical for our survival on this planet and for our livelihoods.

Unfortunately, the World Bank is already forecasting that in Sub-Saharan Africa, the collapse of ecosystem services will result in contraction of GDP by 9.7% annually by 2030. This dovetails with the seminal work on of Prof. P. Dasgupta entitled ‘The Economics of Biodiversity” which reports that “Humanity now faces a choice: we can continue down a path where our demands on Nature far exceed its capacity to meet them on a sustainable basis; or we can take a different path, one where our engagements with Nature are not only sustainable but also enhance our collective wellbeing and that of our descendants”.

We could ask – How did we get there?

At the heart of the problem lies deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure. The solution starts with the understanding that and accepting a simple truth: our economies are embedded within Nature and not external to it. Yet, every single year, we lose ecosystem services worth more than 10 per cent of our global economic output. A third of the world’s farmland is degraded, about 87% of inland wetlands worldwide have disappeared since 1700, and a third of commercial fish species are overexploited and one million species are on the brink of extinction. Degradation is already affecting the well-being of an estimated 3.2 billion people – almost 40% of the world’s population.

Ecosystem restoration is needed on a large scale as it delivers on multiple benefits and helps us deliver on the sustainable development agenda. Restoration will no doubt curb the risk of mass species extinctions and future pandemics. Restoration of forest landscapes, farming, livestock and fish-producing ecosystems require special care and have to be brought to a healthy and stable state. Reviving ecosystems and other natural solutions could contribute over 1/3 of the total climate mitigation needed by 2030.

For this effort to be sustained on a global scale, institutions require sustained investments and there is growing evidence that it more than pays for itself. Policy makers and financial institutions are only slowly realizing the huge need and potential for green investment.

Agroforestry revival alone could increase food security for 1.3 billion people. Countries like Costa Rica has seen ecotourism grow to account for 6% of GDP by doubling its forest cover.

If by 2030, Mesoamerica and Indonesia could add 2.5BN $ to their economy simply by restoring coral reefs. A restored population of marine fish can deliver a maximum sustainable yield that could increase fisheries production by 16.5 million tonnes, an annual value of USD 32 billion.

Actions that prevent, halt and reverse degradation are needed if we are to keep global temperatures below 2°C. This implies better management of some 2.5 billion hectares of forest, crop and grazing land (through restoration and avoiding degradation) and restoration of natural cover over 230 million hectares.

Large-scale investments in dryland agriculture, mangrove protection and water management will make a vital contribution to building resilience to climate change, generating benefits around four times the original investment.

With careful planning, restoring 15% of converted lands while stopping further conversion of natural ecosystems could avoid 60% of expected species extinctions. Achieving successful ecosystem restoration at scale will require deep changes, including the adoption of inclusive wealth as a more accurate measure of economic progress. This will rest on the widespread introduction of natural capital accounting thus creating an enabling environment for private sector investment, including public-private partnerships.

Progress can be made by increasing the amount of finance for restoration, including the elimination of perverse subsidies that incentivize further degradation and fuel climate change, and also through initiatives that will raise awareness of the risks posed by ecosystem degradation.

Such bold transformations will happen when we start reforming agriculture; by changing how we build our cities; by decarbonizing our economies and by moving to circular economic models.

So far, none of the agreed global goals for the protection of life on Earth and for halting the degradation of land and oceans have been fully met. UNEP report of 2021 reports that only 6 of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets have been partially achieved. Ecosystem restoration alone cannot solve the crises we face, but it is key to averting the worst of them.

We need to rethink and re-create a balanced relationship with nature, not only by conserving ecosystems that are still healthy, but also by urgently and sustainably restoring degraded ones.

For too long, we have been using the planet as a sink for our waste products, such as carbon dioxide, plastics and other forms of waste including pollution. Degradation is undermining our hard-won development gains and is threatening the well-being of today‘s youth and future generations, while making national commitments increasingly more difficult and costly to reach.

We need to change how we think, act and measure success as transformative change is possible – we and our descendants deserve nothing less.

Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
6th President, Republic of Mauritius

 

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A large part of the oil exploration areas in both Botswana and Namibia falls within the Okavango River Basin which flows into the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Fracking is banned in some countries and has been blamed for serious water pollution, among others, and threats to the regional water supply are among environmentalists’ biggest concerns.Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jul 8 2021 (IPS)

Wildlife and environmental campaigners have called for international action as concerns grow over a project to create a massive oilfield in one of Africa’s last wildernesses.

ReconAfrica, a Canadian oil and gas company, has licensed drilling areas in over 34,000sq km of land in parts of northern Namibia and Botswana that overlap with Africa’s Kavango-Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area (KAZA), which includes land in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

A large part of the exploration areas in both Botswana and Namibia falls within the Okavango River Basin which flows into the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which supports the world’s largest remaining population of endangered savanna elephants, as well as dozens of other endangered or vulnerable species such as rhinos, wild dogs, and pangolins. It is also home to 200,000 people.

Campaigners fear the project could do untold damage to the delta’s ecosystem, threatening already endangered wildlife, the environment, and the livelihoods of the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the land.

But as international media attention on the project has also grown, some foreign politicians are raising concerns too.

Last month US Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman Jeff Fortenberry urged senior officials to launch a government investigation of the project under the Defending Economic Livelihoods and Threatened Animals (DELTA) Act, which is designed to protect areas like the Okavango Delta.

And groups working to raise awareness of the project and its potential effects say international co-operation is needed and pressure from outside Africa must be brought to bear to stop the project going ahead for the good of not just the Delta, but the entire globe.

Ina-Maria Shikongo, an activist from Fridays for Future – Windhoek, which has led a public campaign against the project, told IPS: “We have no choice but to get this stopped. Local and international co-operation is needed because this does not affect just us here, but everyone, everywhere.

“ReconAfrica says there is the potential to extract 120 billion barrels of oil from this field. Can you imagine what all the build-up of toxins, from that, the emissions, everything, is going to do to already rising global temperatures?

“Even though we in the global south are feeling the effects of projects like these most, the global north is feeling them now too, with heatwaves. Everything is connected, all over the world. There is only one global carbon budget, and this project will use up a lot of it.”

ReconAfrica began drilling test wells in Namibia at the end of last year and if the tests are successful, hundreds of wells are expected to be drilled in the area.

The company’s own reports have suggested that the oilfield could potentially generate up to 120 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest oil finds for decades.

Although the licences were granted in 2015, criticism of the project has  grown sharply over the last 18 months as details of it have emerged, especially suggestions in company promotions to investors that fracking, which involves blasting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks to extract oil and gas, could be used.

Fracking is banned in some countries and has been blamed for serious water pollution, among others, and threats to the regional water supply are among environmentalists’ biggest concerns.

Shikongo explained: “The big problem is our water. We have a very fragile ecosystem, we rely on the water that is underground. If that water gets poisoned, what is going to happen?

“Wildlife, local people, they all rely completely on our water, and if it is poisoned then you could destroy the local food system.”

Rosemary Alles, co-founder of the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos conservation campaign group, told IPS: “ReconAfrica has continued to deny that fracking is in the works; however, there is no inevitability that the company will not frack, despite its rhetoric du jour. The concern is legitimate. If fracking takes place, the immediate potential impacts in the context of waterways and air pollution will be devastating.”

Meanwhile, there are serious concerns about the impact operations could have on local wild animals, especially some of the 130,000 elephants which the Okavango Delta supports.

Conservationists point out that vibrations used in the exploratory work for the field, including in seismic surveys, can disturb elephants, while the inevitable rise in construction, road-building, and accompanying traffic in the area could push the animals away from established migratory routes and closer to villages and agricultural areas, creating easier access to hitherto inaccessible elephant habitat for poaching and a potential exacerbation of already growing human-elephant conflict.

One expert at a conservation group in the area, who asked not to be named, told IPS: “If this company is allowed to start drilling for oil in the Delta it will be a major environmental crime with inevitably devastating impacts on the natural world. In terms of what it will mean for elephants: until we know the scale of the operation it’s hard to estimate exactly, but history shows that oil extraction always means environmental disaster and this is right in the middle of the last wilderness in the elephants’ last stronghold: the KAZA.”

The project will also impact local communities and farmers, and there are concerns that these groups have not been engaged properly in consultations over the project.

UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has pointed out that there are hundreds of working farms within ReconAfrica’s drilling area. But in a recent press release, the group said that it was “far from transparent how, or indeed if, these communities are being consulted”.

It pointed out that the public consultations on the oilfield project have been either online or in person, and the vast majority of those living in ReconAfrica’s license area have limited or no access to the internet and the COVID-19 pandemic has severely restricted travel and public meetings. The meetings are also regularly conducted in English, which is not the first language for many locals.

“It is unclear whether their voices are being heard,” EIA said.

ReconAfrica has sought to allay all these fears. It has said it has currently been granted licences for exploratory work which do not allow fracking, and its officials have repeatedly said they are only interested in conventional extraction.

It has also issued official statements saying it believes the regional energy industry can be “developed in an environmentally and socially responsible manner that is accountable and supports the development and delivery of much-needed economic and social benefits….” and has pledged to take measures to address potential issues with noise and vibration affecting local wildlife when doing work.

Critics have questioned the validity and integrity of the Environmental Impact Assessments conducted for the project, but the company has rejected this criticism and any suggestions it is not meeting full legal requirements for the project.

In official statements it has stressed that it is “committed to continuing to work closely with, and under the direct oversight of, the governments in both countries, as well as their regional and traditional authorities, to ensure we continue to comply with relevant laws and regulations throughout all the stages of our operation”.

And it has claimed that its public consultations have been well-attended and welcomed by locals – although this is strongly disputed by many who went to them.

ReconAfrica has also highlighted the local economic benefits of the project, saying it will bring jobs and growth to the region – something government officials have also stressed.

Tom Alweendo, Namibia’s Minister of Mines and Energy, said in an interview with international media earlier this year: “Any volume of oil that is commercially viable will mean a lot to our economy. Not only in terms of employment, but income that would come into the treasury.”

However, environmentalists have questioned both the scale of the claimed local economic benefits and the thinking behind such a project given that only weeks ago the International Energy Agency said no new oil and gas fields must be exploited from this year on to ensure global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were brought down to net zero by 2050 and keep global heating within safe limits.

Shikongo, whose Fridays For Future – Windhoek has dubbed the oilfield a “carbon gigabomb”, said: “This project will only generate an income for a very few, but it will take away the livelihoods of millions of people. The oil needs to be kept in the ground.”

She re-iterated calls for global co-operation to stop this, and similar projects, and said there needs to be a move away from the “neo-colonialism” behind such projects.

“We need to stamp out this neo-colonialist system – Africa cannot continue to be treated simply as a resource for the global north. The global south and global north need to work together on this, because it affects us all. We’re all humans,” she said.

Allen added: “All western governments must apply pressure, particularly the USA and Canada. The DELTA Act could prove to be a means to an end. The possibility of bailing out the Namibian government must be on the front burner – it must be a point of conversation.”

 

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With all the major indicators for Afghanistan’s security and development looking “negative or stagnant” as international troops withdraw, the threats that lie ahead cannot be overstated, Deborah Lyons, Special Representative and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) told the Security Council last month. Credit: UNAMA/Freshta Dunia / Kabul, Afghanistan.

By Saber Azam
GENEVA, Jul 8 2021 (IPS)

The Biden administration made a decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan based on the Trump-Taliban agreement. Their last combat soldier may have already left. There is nothing to argue about!

The US had to end its longest war, despite public fear at the highest military echelons of the country that “it would take possibly two years for [the terrorists] to develop [their] capability” and hit back wherever they want.

Simultaneously, NATO member states and their allies have also begun to depart, leaving the population of this war-torn country to face a dramatically uncertain future. It is believed that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of the US’s new strategy to reshape its presence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

They would continue defending their interests but in a different manner. Let us hope that such a move is not a prelude to a more challenging “new great game” with Afghanistan bearing the brunt of it again.

The political and strategic outcome of nearly twenty years of US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan is debatable with contradictory conclusions. However, its financial cost, human loss, and psycho-social effects are terrifying facts.

President Biden and his close advisors have certainly acted in the best interest of the US. The real losers are Afghans. Despite trillions of US dollars poured into their country and extraordinary international support, their leaders could not distance themselves from the old demons.

Soon after they took possession of the country in December 2001, the practice of ethnic and religious discrimination, nepotism, corruption, and inefficiency gangrened the fragile foundation of the regime in Kabul that was essentially a power-sharing system among political traders.

Women carry bundles through a neighbourhood of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Credit: World Bank/Ghullam Abbas Farzami

The rest is a known story! A country ruined with its peoples desperate for peace, security, and livelihood, a forceful come back of the Taliban and their terrorist associates, a questionable outcome of the Karzai and Ghani regimes, a possible new and more ferocious civil war, and a dramatically unstable Southwest and Central Asia region, to name a few significant challenges.

The Taliban have already intensified their brutal attacks on the people and government forces. Their strategy this time around is to occupy the northern provinces of the country first, cut the Central Asian supply routes, and asphyxiate the regime as soon as the last foreign soldier leaves Afghanistan.

Would the terrorist organization succeed? What does the current situation imply for Afghanistan, the Southwest and Central Asia region, and the rest of the world? Of course, no one has a crystal ball, and all prophecies have parenthetically proven unfounded about Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the following assumptions would have reasonable bases.

In Afghanistan, it is clear that the Taliban aim at snatching power by the force of their guns and brutality. Ethnic and religious cleansing would soon follow. The efforts of the terrorist organization to “conquer” the country may temporarily be challenged by the defiance of the Afghan army and the emergence of a new popular resistance movement.

Timid efforts to push for a transitional government with the inclusion of the Taliban and the establishment of another futile power-sharing scheme seem already a dead endeavor, though both Mr. Karzai and Dr. Abudullah dream of leading it.

To safeguard their interests, major regional powers could pressure the beneficiaries of their direct or indirect support in Afghanistan to agree on a “national framework for governance.” This formula would reach its target initially. However, its longevity is not guaranteed.

A chaotic situation could rapidly follow, plunging the country into ethnic and religious rivalries. Some of or all the powers mentioned above may tacitly opt to effectively control parts and parcels of the country by proxy without infringing each other’s “red lines.”

Afghanistan would be divided into pieces. The economic and social survival of the populations in such a scenario would not be sustainable, leading to the collapse of the entire country.

Would another superpower step in to fill the gaps left by the US and NATO! The Russian Federation may have no desire to do so because of the not-so-distant communist and Soviet failure that led to the current state of affairs.

On the contrary, they would probably intervene, should there be any serious threat to Central Asia by the Taliban or their associates. The People’s Republic of China has always pursued a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

However, they would not welcome the Taliban and other terrorist organizations to inspire the Uighur Turkistan Islamic Party, also known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. An alliance between the Russian Federation and China cannot be excluded to counter terrorist intrusion and advance.

India may willingly join any coalition that will effectively fight terrorism and extremism. Such a scenario would prolong the “new great game” and the agony of the Afghan populations.

Therefore, the possibility of a new dramatic civil war in Afghanistan with uncalculated consequences is real, leading to severe violations of human dignity and rights, bloodshed, and the destruction of public and private properties. In particular, women, children, human rights activists, and journalists will pay a high cost.

The Southwest and Central Asia region would face a fragile and tenuous condition, affecting several countries’ peace, stability, development, and economic prosperity. The chaotic situation in Afghanistan can easily migrate to Pakistan.

This country has been playing with fire for several decades by hosting and supporting the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist entities. Despite its nuclear status, Pakistan has numerous internal problems that have been curtained due to the Afghan dilemma.

The Kashmir, Baloch, and Pashtun issues would undoubtedly add to the sharp rise of homegrown extremism in this country, jeopardizing its safety and security.

In case of their success, the Taliban and their associates would endeavor to strengthen Central Asian Islamic extremist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, Tajikistani Ozod, and Hizbo Tahrir in their effort to carry their “jihadist” perception of Islam further to the north, even affecting the west Chines province of Xinjiang.

The Taliban could turn against the Islamic Republic of Iran too. Saudi Arabia and Iranian-backed militia have been fighting each other in Syria and Yemen in particular. Having bitter memories of their defeats, the Salafists could incite the “religious students” to hit within Iran, endangering the well-being prospects of the whole region.

The claims of independence by some populations that feel suppressed or territorial claims by some states could also be fomented, using religious doctrines, resulting in a dramatically unstable Southwest and Central Asia region.

The rest of the world would greatly suffer from the undeniable political and military successes of a terrorist organization such as the Taliban. In general, other similar groups would conclude that violence and terror would be rewarded, even if they faced superpowers.

This will indeed be a dangerous mindset. Terrorist organizations in Asia and Africa, in particular, could be inspired by the “success” of the Taliban and intensify their brutalities. Furthermore, the destabilization of Southwest and Central Asia implies an explosion of the Middle East.

It would automatically lead to severe clashes between or among those who claim leadership of the region. The oil production and supply chain could be the prime target of adversary powers, affecting mainly Europe.

Despite its devastating effects for Southwest and Central Asian populations, engaging in a “new great game” and making Afghanistan a battleground of proxy wars for the third time would not favor anyone, above all the Western giants.

There seems to be a better understanding between the People’s Republic of China and India, who fear the significant rise and success of terrorism, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation, who has successful experience in fighting extremism on the other. This could instead lead to a “new global alliance” detrimental to Western interests around the world.

Expert views diverge on what could be in the best interest of the Afghan people, the region, and the rest of the world. There is no doubt that peace, stability, and serenity in Southwest and Central Asia will provide remarkable opportunities for reliable and equitable trade, cultural exchange, and mutual understanding among the peoples of the East and the West!

The miracle of the old days’ Silk Road was rooted in the peaceful status of the nations it crossed. From Shanghai and Beijing in China and Bengal in India to Venice in Italy, passing through the grueling land of current Afghanistan, the whole of Central Asia, Iran, and Turkey, the caravans journeyed without hurdle.

It resulted in an extraordinary commercial, economic, and financial boom in Europe. Its revival will only provide new enrichment and development opportunities for all. Afghanistan is the key to such revitalization, notwithstanding that with peace and stability in this country, an essential element of fear in the Middle East would also disappear.

This being said, the Taliban would most probably take charge of Afghanistan in the months to come and establish an Islamic Emirate. However, their regime would not survive for more than a few years.

The solution to the Afghan crisis has national challenges, regional impediments, and international hurdles [https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/03/achieve-peace-afghanistan/]. They must all be addressed at once and through a unique peace process.

Unless the fundamental challenges that divide the Afghan peoples for decades, even centuries, are not addressed adequately by the Afghans themselves, the tragedies would continue on their soil. Authoritarian systems, power-sharing attempts, and any form of wheeling and dealing have not and will never succeed. The Afghan people have been determined to live harmoniously in a peaceful and stable country.

However, Afghanistan’s leadership since long proved to be incompetent. Ethnic and religious bias, corruption, nepotism, hoodlum behavior, and lawlessness of those in power marred the efforts to attain democracy, progress, and respectability. There is no way they would prove different now.

A significant impediment to peace is that actors who were (or still are) vitally involved in the making and shaking of political, military, and economic developments of Afghanistan in the last four decades seem incarcerated in a firm position that their past actions were faultless, ignoring that the nobility of leaders is determined by their humility to recognize own mistakes.

Afghanistan desperately needs a young and incorruptible multi-ethnic team of leaders. They must establish a symbiosis with the populations, create the foundations of a democratic society suitable to all components of the country, address national challenges, agree with regional powers on impediments that create discord in Southwest and Central Asia, and secure the International Community’s support in responding to global hurdles.

For this to happen, youth in Afghanistan need to come together now to save their country in the foreseeable future.

A gain in Afghanistan is a reward for all. To strengthen peace and security in the world, it is vital to support without reserve the emergence of future young leaders from within Afghanistan so that they could take charge of the country upon the demise of the Taliban regime within a few years, something that the International Community and policymakers have systematically failed to do, so far!

* Saber Azam is a former United Nations official, writer, and regular contributor to the IPS. He has so far authored SORAYA: The Other princess, a historical fiction that overflies the recent seven decades of Afghan history through the work of a remarkable woman, and Hell’s Mouth, also historical fiction, summarizing the extraordinary work of humanitarian workers during the First Liberian Civil War.

 

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Indigenous people form a human chain in Tangail district, Bangladesh as they demand legal rights to their ancestral forest land. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
TANGAIL, Bangladesh, Jul 7 2021 (IPS)

When the Bangladesh Forest Department felled Basanti Rema’s banana orchard, Rema, a Garo indigenous forest-dweller of Madhupur Forest, felt she was living a nightmare.

Rema, from Pegmari village in Madhupur, Tangail district, had cultivated the banana plants on half an acre in the Madhupur Forest. But the Forest Department claimed that the land on which the bananas were cultivated belonged to the department. 

Rema’s story is not an unusual one as in the past the Garo and other indigenous minorities have been evicted from their ancestral land because of a lack of land rights.

“Land dispute is the main problem as the government declared 9,145 acres of land of Madhupur Forest as ‘absolute reserved forest’, putting our living in our ancestral land at risk,” Jonajetra, a member of the Garo community living inside the forest, told IPS.

He said the Forest Department often filed false cases against the indigenous people for allegedly felling trees. Even children as young as seven and eight years old were being sued.

In a gazette notification from Feb.15, 2016, the Ministry of Environment and Forests declared the land of Madhupur Forest as a forest reserve under Section 20 of the Forest Act-1927.

“The Garo people have been facing various problems in the forest. The Forest Department frequently files false cases against us,” Eugin Nokrek, president of Joyenshahi Adivasi Unnayan Parishad, an indigenous peoples’ organisation, told IPS.

“If we want to build a new house and dismantle our old one, the department obstructs our works. If we want to plant banana or pineapple orchards on our fallow land, we get objections from the Forest Department,” Nokrek said.

Fear of eviction

Despite living in the Madhupur Forest for generations, the indigenous Garo and other minorities have no right to the forest land. And drives by the Forest Department to recover land that has been lost to agriculture and land grabbing, has instilled a fear among indigenous community of losing their ancestral land.  

“We are on the verge of eviction from our ancestral land as the government has declared the Madhupur Forest as an ‘absolute reserved one’. We can be evicted from the forest anytime,” said Nokrek, who is also a member of the indigenous Garo minority.

Decades ago, Madhupur Garh, in Tangail district, used to have 122,876 acres of traditional shal forest. It was broken down as follows:

• 45,565 acres in Madhupur,
• 47,220 acres in Sakhipur,
• 21,855 acres in Ghatail,
• 7,576 acres in Mirzapur and,
• 669 acres in Kalihati upazila.

Of these, 55,476 acres were reserved forests.

According to officials at the Tangail Forest Department, about 80,000 acres of the forest have already disappeared because of indiscriminate tree felling and forest grabbing. The process of land grabbing continues, officials said.

Tangail Divisional Forest Officer Dr. Mohammad Jahirul Haque said the department would continue its drives to recover forest land from grabbers. However, he assured IPS that there was no plan to evict the indigenous people from the forest and they would remain on their ancestral land.

According to Sanjeeb Drong, General Secretary of the Bangladesh Indigenous Peoples’ Forum, legally the Madhupur Forest is under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department but the indigenous people claim it as their ancestral land and had evidence to this effect. 

Drong said the Madhupur Forest was home to the Garo, Barman and Koch ethnic minorities and they had been living there for generations.

Keeping a promise

While the country’s current government is considered friendly to the rights of the indigenous population — the 2008 election manifesto of ruling Awami League announced that once elected it would form an independent commission to resolve the land disputes of indigenous minorities — a fear of the actions of past governments still haunt the indigenous community here.

Nokrek said many indigenous families were evicted from the Madhupur Forest during the 2007 to 2008 period when a caretaker government was in office. Nokrek was concerned if there was a change in power, a new, controversial government could evict them.       

“We are the forest dwellers and we demand legal rights to our land where we have been living for generations. We want legal recognition of our ancestral land so that nobody can evict us,” Nokrek said.

“If we have legal recognition, we will get compensation once the government want to acquire our ancestral land for greater interest,” he added.

Land owners are compensated when their land is acquired for government projects. But, the Garo and other indigenous minorities cannot receive compensation as they have no legal proof of ownership of the land.

“The long-dispute over the land right of ethnic minorities is yet to be resolved… the government has not formed the commission yet. The policymakers should take decisions on how to give the ethnic people’s rights to their ancestral land,” Drong said.

In 1956, the then Pakistan government declared the forest a national park and evicted indigenous people to acquire the forest land. And, upon Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, the Madhupur Forest was declared a national forest or reserved forest.  

“Although Garo people had long been living in the forest, the land lords did not give land rights to them after the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act was passed in 1950. That is why they lost their rights to their ancestral land,” Drong told IPS.

Shrinking Shal Forest thanks to Land Grabs

“The majority portion of the Madhupur Forest has already been grabbed by influential people and local encroachers,” Drong pointed out.

Nokrek said the Forest Department was planting Acacia saplings, instead of traditional shal trees, under the social afforestation programme. “If any such project is implemented, the Forest Department, politicians and influential people find business there,” he said.

Noting that due to the pressure of an increasing population, the forest area was dwindling day by day, the indigenous leader said in recent years, factories and industries were established on forest land through the falsification of documents.

Divisional Forest Officer Haque said there was a total of 122,000 acres of traditional shal forest in Madhupur Garh, of which a vast area was occupied by local grabbers and influential people.

The Forest Department has so far recovered about 19,000 acres of grabbed forest land, he said.

As the forest is shrinking fast in Madhupur Garh, the forest official said, the government has taken a bigger initiative to restore the traditional shal forest and the fallow forest land will be brought under green coverage with the planting of new shal saplings.  

 

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According to UNICEF, Pakistan is facing a serious challenge to ensure all children, attend, stay and learn in school, particularly the most disadvantaged. While enrollment and retention rates are improving, progress has been slow to improve education indicators. Credit: UNICEF/Pakistan/ Asad Zaidi

By Mehnaz Akber Aziz and Julius O. Ihonvbere
ISLAMABAD / LAGOS, Jul 7 2021 (IPS)

Never before have so many children been out of school. 1.6 billion children and young people – more than 90% of students worldwide – have been impacted by school closures during the pandemic. Hundreds of millions of those children have gone without any learning at all, deprived of all the benefits that being in school provides.

In our countries, Pakistan and Nigeria, the situation is even worse.

Both countries have the world’s highest out-of-school populations, taken together our countries account for almost a third of the 258 million children who are entirely excluded from education, despite only making up 5% of the global population.

Pakistan is set to lose a larger share of students from the school system than any other country, with close to a million children expected to drop out, according to the World Bank.

In Nigeria, the worsening and widespread insecurity across the country, and particularly in the northern region, is leading to further school closures and population displacement.

Girls are disproportionately affected by these crises, through entering child labour, as well as teenage marriage and pregnancies, compounding all our fears about the increased risk of sexual violence and exploitation when girls are out of school.

In school but not learning

What’s more, millions of children across the world are in school but not learning.

The World Bank’s ‘Learning Poverty’ indicator – which calculates the number of children aged 10 who cannot read an age-appropriate sentence – found that more than half of children in low- and middle-income countries were in learning poverty prior to COVID, and that the pandemic has pushed this figure up to 63%.

In Pakistan, where 75% of children of late primary age were already in learning poverty prior to COVID, we are deeply concerned for their futures as the pandemic continues its destructive path.

The furthest behind face even graver challenges

The pandemic has also further exposed existing inequalities that prevent children from accessing education and further alienate those in school.

Lessons from past crises have shown us that these inequalities, including social and digital divides, mean those furthest behind and most vulnerable, including those facing marginalisation due to gender, poverty and disability, are at greatest risk of never returning to school.

Children in Nigeria are traumatized by abduction and need support, the UN says. Credit: World Bank/Arne Hoel

In Nigeria, insecurity combined with the economic impact of COVID-19 has pushed 7 million Nigerians into poverty, which has a catastrophic impact on education.

Without sufficient household income, and with the additional risk of attacks on schools exacerbated by the internal insecurity, many Nigerian children are no longer able to remain in school and instead roam the streets, often engaging in petty crimes.

We must ensure that as the world recovers from COVID-19 and seeks to address this rapidly growing education crisis, that those most marginalised remain our priority.

Investment is the key to ending the crisis

Many explanations exist as to why we are in this crisis. Ultimately, however, world leaders have made promises but failed to implement them.

In 2015, the world promised to deliver quality education for all the world’s children. To help deliver that promise, countries made commitments to spend at least 4-6% of GDP and/or 15-20% of total budgets on education.

Yet, six years later and one in four countries do not meet either of the benchmarks on national financing for education.

The financial implications of COVID have put national budgets under unprecedented pressure. Two-thirds of low- and lower-middle income countries have cut their public education budgets since the onset of the pandemic.

In Nigeria, the federal budget for education is the lowest in a decade at just 6.3% of the national budget, and in Pakistan, the 2021-22 budget allocates just 1.5% of GDP to education, continuing deeply concerning trends in both countries.

Rather than cutting budgets, we should be investing in education: funding re-enrolment to get all children back into school along with remediation programmes to address learning loss.

A once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform education

World leaders will convene the Global Education Summit in London on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th July to raise at least US$5 billion from donor governments and leverage billions more in domestic financing commitments.

Donor governments stepping up to fully-fund GPE remains critical, but the Summit could also provide a turning point for progress on national financing of education.

A call to action on domestic financing for education

President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, who is co-hosting the Summit alongside UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has invited Heads of Government in all GPE partner countries to endorse a Call to Action on Education Financing.

The statement commits governments to maintain spending on education above 20% of national expenditure or to progressively increase spending towards this benchmark over the next five years.

It recognises that by improving the volume, equity and efficiency of domestic resources going to education we can deliver on the promise of education we made to the world’s children and fast-track progress towards achieving all development goals.

Ministers of Education are being invited to make commitments to improve the equity and efficiency of public financing for education. To make best use of both domestic resources and donor support for education, we encourage all governments to undertake strategic and holistic reforms to ensure that education financing is utilised most effectively and equitably.

President Kenyatta also calls for concerted action on debt relief and greater flexibility from the international banks in supporting countries’ liquidity. Without debt relief, our countries will be unable to allocate the necessary funding to public services, including education.

In 2020, the federal government of Nigeria spent the equivalent of 83% of revenue to service debt, money that could and should be spent instead on reducing the number of children out of school and providing them with a quality education.

Parliamentary leadership for education, COVID-19 and beyond

As Regional Representatives for the International Parliamentary Network for Education (IPNEd), we are proud to be leading a global charge to call on world leaders to protect, prioritise and increase financing for education.

The past year has shown even more starkly the realities facing children living in Lagos and Lahore for whom returning to school remains a pipe dream. Financing education provides the route to unlock their future and millions more.

The cost of inaction is catastrophic, the benefits will be immense.

Mehnaz Akber Aziz, MNA – PMLN is a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan where she was first elected in 2018. She is Chair of the SDGs Committee on Child Rights and is also the International Parliamentary Network for Education’s Regional Representative for Asia. She completed a Masters in Anthropology at the Quaid-i-Azam University and a Masters in Gender and Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

Prof. Julius O. Ihonvbere, is an elected member in Nigeria’s National Assembly representing Owan Federal Constituency in the Federal House of Representatives where he is also Chairman, House Committee on Basic Education and Services. He is also the International Parliamentary Network for Education’s Regional Representative for Africa. Prior to being elected, he served as Secretary to the Government of Edo State and Chairman of the State’s Strategic Planning Team. He was previously Special Advisor to the Nigerian President on Program and Policy Monitoring.

 

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Menstrual health and hygiene management (MHHM) must be integrated into the response to emergencies. | Picture courtesy: WaterAid India/Altaf Ahmed

By External Source
Jul 6 2021 (IPS)

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed accelerated action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This has also led to significant interest in menstrual health and hygiene management (MHHM) as a critical factor in girls’ education and women’s participation in many spheres of life. 

In India, this has led to the introduction of evidence-based guidelines and schemes to enable access to menstrual hygiene products. In 2015, the erstwhile Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (currently, the Ministry of Jal Shakti) launched national guidelines for menstrual hygiene management for school-going adolescent girls.

This led to the introduction of state-level operational guidelines in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, and Jharkhand. Odisha and Rajasthan introduced schemes to improve access to menstrual products for adolescent girls from poor and marginalised groups. India has also witnessed innovations that expand menstrual hygiene product choice and deliver sustainable menstrual waste management solutions.

In many disaster settings, temporary or mobile toilets and bathing facilities are established. However, menstrual waste disposal remains a challenge. Some simple, temporary solutions include providing containers with lids in or near toilet stalls to collect menstrual waste and digging disposal pits near women’s toilet facilities

While the progress is encouraging, an area that continues to stymie the work on MHHM is the emergency context. Today, a number of states are confronted with the challenge of addressing menstrual health needs amidst dual disasters: cyclones and/or floods and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic that has been devastating in its scale and impact.

Like other emergencies, COVID-19 has had a differential impact, exacting a heavier toll on women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities. Menstrual health and hygiene is an area that most strongly unmasks this.

‘Periods do not stop for emergencies’ has been a common refrain, especially during the first wave of COVID-19, with organisations and the media highlighting how access to essential sanitary pads was abruptly curtailed due to the lockdown and restrictions on transport and mobility.

Some of these challenges have been addressed this year with essential supplies continuing uninterrupted. Yet, for many women and girls, continued access to safe menstrual products, safe and hygienic sanitation facilities, and information on MHHM remains a challenge.

With the closure of schools—which many girls depend on for access to menstrual hygiene products—girls’ ability to manage MHHM with safety and dignity is at risk. Many poor families facing severe economic stress are having to choose between spending on food and other essentials such as rent and buying sanitary pads.

The challenges are not only about access to menstrual hygiene products. Women and girls from low-income households have also been facing difficulties in managing menstruation in the changed circumstances where family members are present at home for most of the day in small, confined spaces. For women and girls living with a disability, who may not have access to caregivers in these circumstances, managing menstruation has been even more trying.

MHHM must therefore be integrated, as a priority, in the response to emergencies to ensure women and girls’ privacy and dignity. Living with dignity, even during disasters, is a fundamental human right. In 2020, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and WaterAid, in consultation with experts and practitioners in the field of MHHM and disaster response across the country, developed a framework for action on MHHM during emergencies in India.

The framework calls for the integration of MHHM across the continuum of emergency response—disaster preparedness, disaster response, and recovery. It also highlights the need to integrate MHHM into sexual and reproductive health services, and protection services where they exist.

A comprehensive approach to MHHM in emergencies includes:

 

1. Providing essential menstrual products 

Product distribution is the mainstay of relief efforts. This may be accomplished through the provision of hygiene kits with sanitary pads and essential items such as underwear, soap, towel, paper to discard used pads, and usage information; the establishment of pad banks or pad ATMs in relief centres; or cash transfers to facilitate the purchase of menstrual products.

Some interventions have considered reusable cloth pads or cotton cloths to meet the needs of cloth users. In supporting product distribution for relief, efforts must keep in mind the product usage patterns and preferences in a community, the need for support materials such as underwear along with sanitary pads, and whether products will be needed once or on a recurring basis.

For instance, adolescent girls often prefer disposable sanitary pads, while older women may prefer cloth during menses. Cloth users may find sanitary pad use challenging, especially if they are unfamiliar with the product and do not typically use underwear. In some emergency contexts such as floods and cyclones, girls and women may struggle to use cloth pads hygienically due to water shortage, lack of privacy, and climate conditions.

 

2. Disseminating information 

Relief efforts by civil society organisations have indicated that product distribution, accompanied by information dissemination about MHHM is most effective in meeting the needs of women and girls during disasters. Girls and women need to know how to use, maintain, and discard products safely with limited resources. Older women may be unfamiliar with sanitary pads and girls may use a product for a longer duration given limited supplies.

Challenges related to MHHM during emergencies may be further intensified by discriminatory norms and taboos that impose restrictions on women and girls. In many communities, girls and women are considered to be impure during menstruation.

They may be segregated from other family members for a few days, may not be allowed to present themselves in front of male members, or may face restrictions around leaving the home and interacting with people outside the home. Norms and practices related to discreet use and disposal of menstrual absorbents also exist.

They act as a barrier when girls and women access menstrual products in constrained circumstances and may place additional psycho-social stress on them during crises. The stigma and taboos related to menstruation have also prevented an integrated public health response to MHHM for many years in both development and emergency settings. Dissemination of accurate and scientific information is an important tool to tackle the discriminatory norms and stigma associated with menstruation.

 

3. Providing safe sanitation and waste disposal solutions

Gender-sensitive sanitation is another essential aspect of MHHM in emergencies. In many disaster settings, temporary or mobile toilets and bathing facilities are established. However, menstrual waste disposal remains a challenge. Some simple, temporary solutions include providing containers with lids in or near toilet stalls to collect menstrual waste and digging disposal pits near women’s toilet facilities.

These should be marked for menstrual waste to aid appropriate disposal. Long-term relief settings or established relief centres can institute other solutions such as quality incinerators and disposal chutes attached to a deep burial pit or burning chambers. Central to disposal is the need for discrete, usable, and culturally relevant solutions. For instance, it may not be appropriate to introduce incinerator solutions to communities that have strong beliefs around the burning of menstrual waste.

Efforts for MHHM product distribution, information dissemination, and ensuring hygienic sanitation during emergencies can only succeed when frontline responders are sensitised and trained to understand and address the needs of girls and women. This is particularly relevant in light of the culture of silence around women’s sexual and reproductive health, including MHHM needs. Incorporating brief sessions on the needs of girls and women, including MHHM needs, in capacity building initiatives for those involved in disaster response can help make the issue mainstream and strengthen the effort to integrate MHHM into emergency responses.

There is a lot to be learned about integrating MHHM into the emergency response from states such as Kerala, Assam, and Bihar that face natural disasters frequently. These states have demonstrated how the integration of MHHM in disaster preparedness can be done in simple ways: routine MHHM interventions delivered in schools and in communities can impart basic information on menstrual health and hygiene and equip girls and women to manage their menses safely during disasters.

Girls can be given information on making their own emergency hygiene kit with sufficient menstrual materials, underclothes, soap, and other essentials. Schools, anganwadis, and health centres can prepare themselves to be depots for menstrual products that girls and women can access when disaster strikes. Such measures also help in the recovery phase.

Some states, such as Odisha, have initiated vulnerability and capacity assessments before disasters using participatory tools to engage communities to predict, plan for, mitigate, and effectively respond to emergencies that are likely to affect them.

Finally, ensuring appropriate budget allocation is critical for integrating MHHM in emergency response efforts. Funds need to be apportioned for menstrual product distribution and facilities that meet MHHM needs. For instance, if mobile toilets are being installed, the budget must accommodate for a sufficient number of separate toilets for men and women.

Fundraising and mobilisation of in-kind resources must consider the duration of the emergency, whether certain supplies may be required regularly, and the number of girls and women who are in need. Menstrual hygiene supplies, akin to food rations, will be required regularly, not just during immediate relief efforts. They must be factored into budgets for continued support to communities till normalcy is restored.

Ensuring that women, girls, transgender men, and gender-diverse individuals are able to manage menstruation with dignity during emergencies is a matter of human rights. We ask you to join us to commit to ensuring MHHM as a basic right to be protected and advanced, in emergencies and beyond.

 

VK Madhavan has spent fifteen years working in rural India on an integrated development approach. He worked with the Urmul Rural Health Research and Development Trust in northwestern Rajasthan until 1998 and then with the Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (CHIRAG) from 2004 to 2012. In the interim, he worked on policy issues with ActionAid, as an independent consultant, and on women’s leadership and governance with The Hunger Project. Since May 2016, Madhavan has been the Chief Executive of WaterAid India.

Argentina Matavel Piccin is the Representative for UNFPA India and the Country Director for Bhutan. In a career spanning close to forty years, she has been at the forefront of programmes that have focused on the rights and health of women and girls and amplified the voice of youth and adolescents.

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

The most important goal of a food system or of agricultural production is to increase food production for our increasing population, but nutrition is essential. Produce stall in Harlem, New York. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 2021 (IPS)

In three weeks, the United Nations will bring together farmers, scientists, policymakers and civil society for the last major event ahead of the September UN Food Systems Summit.

Billed as ‘the people’s summit,’ the Jul. 26 to 28 event will be hosted by the Government of Italy and adopt a hybrid model, with some delegates on-site in Rome and others online.

Its organisers say scientists will present the latest research in transforming global food systems, while policymakers are expected to discuss financing and action to tackle issues like land degradation, conflict and climate change, which are worsening global hunger and food insecurity.

Earlier this year, the Global Network Against Food Crises reported that acute hunger had risen to a five-year high. With the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, biodiversity loss and half of the earth’s land classified as degraded, the grouping warned that finance and urgent action were needed to reverse the rising trend of food insecurity.

General Coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) Million Belay believes that agroecology has a special role to play in hunger eradication.

Belay, a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the Barilla Foundation, researches the transformation of food systems in Ethiopia.

While AFSA will not participate in the UN Food Systems Summit, Africa’s largest civil society group has been organising its own events, based on sustainability, indigenous knowledge and science.

Belay spoke to IPS about the importance of agroecology and how systems such as the Barilla Foundation’s Food Pyramid can help to target hunger at its root.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Could we start with a brief introduction to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa?

Million Belay (MB): The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa is a movement. It is broad-based – we have farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, women and youth networks, civil society networks, consumer networks and faith-based institutions.

Out of the 55 African countries, our members work in at least 50 of them and we work with two hands. On one hand, we fight the corporatisation of Africa. We fight for our lands, our seeds, our water and our lives. On the other hand, we propose a solution. Our solution is agroecology.

IPS: In the face of climate change, rising food insecurity and hunger, there has been a push to agroecology. How important is agroecology to tackling some of these critical issues of our time?

MB: Agroecology is a response to many issues on many fronts.

The most important goal of a food system or of agricultural production is to increase food production for our increasing population, but nutrition is essential. We must eat healthy food and this is an area which is very much impacted by climate change.

Also, when we produce food, the food system should not impact the biosphere, which includes our climate, our diversity, our water and our land. Food production should also be respectful of our culture. We have rich culture, which is the result of thousands of years of practices and traditions by our communities.

These are some of the important factors in the food system process.

The right to food is also very important. Everyone has a right to food.

The question is, therefore, what kind of system ensures this? Currently, unfortunately, the system is productivity-based, it is based on chemicals, on ownership of seeds and ownership of our land. Agroecology comes with a totally different paradigm. It ticks all the right boxes. It is basically based on the knowledge of people and the practices of the people, but it has a cutting-edge science to it as well.

Agroecology is also a social movement. That is why we are using it because at the center of agroecology is the right to food and human rights questions are intimately related to climate change, for example.  Climate impacts our food. Climate impacts our water, our land and our lives. So many things are happening because of the problem that we didn’t create.

Agroecology deals with the soil, it deals with biodiversity which is important for resilience, because it’s based on the diversity of crops and the diversity of practices.

I think what climate change brings us as well is unpredictability into the future. What kind of agriculture is important for an unpredictable environment? You have no idea what is going to come tomorrow. Agroecology helps to answer these types of concerns.

IPS: The international community is preparing for the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). As a food systems researcher, what are your hopes for the summit?

MB: We (AFSA) have already decided to organise a meeting outside of that food summit.

We do not agree with the process of the summit; how is it being handled or controlled or how the agenda is organised. We are not happy and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa has written a letter to the Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit Dr. Agnes Kalibata with a range of demands and they have not been fulfilled.

We however have started our own food policy development process which involves a country-level dialogue in 24 of the countries. They are food systems dialogues that we started even before the UNFSS.

Also, at the African Union level, we are trying to develop a food policy framework for Africa which is based on sustainability.

IPS:  What is your role on the Barilla Foundation’s advisory board and how is the Foundation contributing to food system transformation?

MB: The majority of the board members are from Italy, but the issues that they raise have global impact. In addition to the scientific studies, they organise yearly global gatherings where critical issues about the global food system are discussed.

The outcomes of those global talks are very important to any part of the continent. My role primarily is to bring the African perspective, an African view, in my writings and discussions.

What is important to note is that it is not only the African perspective, but also the input of civil society which is not reflected in so many other spaces.

IPS: The Barilla Foundation continues to invest time and resources into the development of sustainable food systems. What are some of the food systems you think have been successful?

MB: The Foundation is forwarding a food pyramid. It is a very interesting concept that is in development. Previously, it was based on the Mediterranean Diet.

The food system indicators that they are developing are also noteworthy. In terms of a framework for the future, that pyramid and those indices are important for other regions. Other parts of the world can use these models to assess their own food systems.

After participating in one of the Foundation’s events, we organised our own event in Africa. We held the African Food System Summit last year. It was a very large activity and served as an example of what is happening in other parts of the globe.

What is really interesting is the composition of the board. There are people who are in touch with how the politics goes in Europe. There are scientists, really high-level scientists who are working on the impacts of a bad food system. There are university researchers who bring a different perspective and I bring the civil society and social movement side.

 

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Excerpt:

The world is facing rising hunger and food insecurity, biodiversity loss and the impacts of a changing climate. Experts are increasingly looking to agroecology for sustainable food production.

Women in El Salvador are participating in an educational program supported by the World Health Organization that teaches safe hygiene practices and food safety. The WHO works in collaboration with El Salvador’s government and other United Nations partner organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UNICEF, UNWomen, and the World Food Program (WFP). The program aims to address foodborne illnesses and poor nutrition by educating local women who then pass on their knowledge to other women in the community. Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

By Andres Baiza
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 6 2021 (IPS)

If you speak to farmers in El Salvador, many will tell you about the time they were driven to head north across Central America towards the US. The routes to the border are many, but the origins are so often the same: desperation and hope that better employment opportunities can be found elsewhere.

The faces you see of those arriving, in what could be the highest influx to the United States in 15 years, represent the reality in rural El Salvador, where so many people escaping poverty find only a dead-end.

Years of reliance on imported food has held back the development of the country’s agricultural sector, on which so many rural families rely. This has created a vicious cycle that suppresses the domestic market, limits job creation and forces rural workers to look to cities and other countries, particularly rural youth, who are reluctant to work in agriculture because they see limited returns.

For my family, producing on the land has been a way of life for generations, and I am familiar with the challenges that farmers face.

I also know that Salvadoran farmers need not face a binary choice of stay and struggle, or risk everything by moving elsewhere. Instead of carrying a bag of belongings to the border, harvesting a sack of vegetables can represent the way not only out of poverty, but into a position of security and even prosperity, and I have seen how this can work.

Agriculture can offer rural families a pathway to upward mobility and, as we believe at Acceso, a social agribusiness I lead in El Salvador, this is best achieved when the food value chain is “reverse engineered” from market demands backwards, prioritizing farmers’ interests.

By investing in small farmers to help improve their production to meet the demands of large local buyers, and developing solutions to aggregate their produce, we have shown how to create new and more secure incomes and livelihoods that offer rural communities a better alternative right here in El Salvador.

Dionel, a young farmer I work with in the highlands of Chalatenango, considered emigrating to the US seven years ago, but changed his mind when he found he was able to sell his produce consistently, and no longer had to rely on unpredictable informal markets.

For him, Acceso’s model created the market structure that provided income security and allowed his family to be empowered financially. For Dionel and others, this kind of investment in rural areas is vital because, as he says, “that is where the communities with the least job opportunities are found.”

Strategic investments into creating sustainable and profitable jobs can go a long way. Efraín, a 57-year-old farmer, knows this all too well. He has been to the US twice, but returned when he heard about improvements in the agriculture sector back home.

Now, he is part of our Acceso farmer network as well, benefiting from training on good agricultural practices and guaranteed market opportunities. The results speak for themselves: farmers have realized crop yield increases of more than 60 percent in just one year, while farmers’ incomes were more than 250 percent higher in 2020 compared to 2017.

It is not just yields that are increasing, but varieties too. Having started off planting chilli peppers, Efraín is now growing many more crops introduced by Acceso, which then aggregates the produce to sell to supermarkets and restaurant chains.

Increasing the number of crops has required more farm workers on his field, so not only has Efraín benefitted from diversifying his farm, others in his community have also been given the chance of a livelihood. Efraín’s goal is to see his business continue to grow, creating more opportunities for jobs, incomes and economic growth – and reasons to stay – for Salvadorans.

High quality, locally-grown produce is stocking the local supermarkets, something that wasn’t possible just six years ago when low volumes of produce were sourced locally by Acceso’s customers like Subway, Super Selectos, and others. Now, with more market structures in place, imports have decreased; for example, for Super Selectos from as much as 90 percent to less than 50 percent.

This has been made possible in part by Acceso’s work with farmers to improve access to quality seeds and affordable credit, which in turn has led to reliability and variety of produce.

New processing facilities have also meant that farmers’ produce can be handled, stored and packaged according to the standards required by major supermarkets and restaurant franchises.

Improving resilience throughout food value chains has proven to be critical. When the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit, certain market sectors, including restaurants and hospitality, slowed down.

Yet the continued reliance on supermarkets and stores for essential food meant farmers like Juan Carlos, who has worked with Acceso for seven years, could continue to benefit despite shifts in the market.

This stability means that he has continued to earn a living throughout the pandemic, and Juan Carlos no longer considers migration. For him, “staying in the country is the best option.”

The El Salvador I know is full of hard workers who want to prosper in their home country and see their children grow up and succeed. Ask many of the farmers I work with, who tried to migrate, and they will tell you that border crossings are often the last resort. Given the opportunity, they choose to remain or return to their homeland.

This logic can be applied to countries around the world. Instead of building walls, we should be building connections between farmers and markets for more secure jobs, economies, and prospects for rural families.

The vision of Acceso is simple: invest in opportunities, rather than barriers, and reduce the need for migration.

Acceso El Salvador, the leading smallholder sourcing company in El Salvador that sources more than 60 types of fruits and vegetables, and fish and seafood from smallholder farmers and fishers and sells to the largest national supermarket and restaurant chains.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is General Manager, Acceso El Salvador

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Jul 6 2021 (IPS)

As rich countries have delayed contagion containment, including mass vaccination, in developing countries, much weaker fiscal efforts in the South have worsened the growing world pandemic apartheid.

Lessons from first wave
Despite limited fiscal resources and modest external support, government efforts also need to address unsustainability, inequality and other problems due to extant economic, social and environmental arrangements.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Early relief and recovery measures assumed that the pandemic would be short-lived and reversible. Hence, such measures were rarely sustained, let alone expanded in developing countries despite the growing need for them.

Appropriate social protection measures are needed for the longer term beyond those deemed temporarily necessary. The adverse effects of livelihood disruptions should be mitigated with income maintenance for employees and the self-employed whose livelihoods have been severely jeopardised.

Governments must try to maintain family incomes, enabling them to spend to survive, thus keeping the economy ticking and businesses afloat. With effective contagion containment, such programmes enable earlier resumption of economic activities, i.e., recovery.

Sustaining businesses, nurturing economies
A few, mainly developed countries have tried to minimise business destruction, worker layoffs and welfare losses. Developing country governments must also help revive and sustain economies and livelihoods to prevent pandemic recessions from becoming protracted depressions.

Few businesses and sectors can survive without adapting. Business survival options could include redeployment, infrastructure and facility repurposing, and staff retraining. Other options include additional credit to businesses, tax payment deferrals and even social protection.

Many businesses, especially those with less reserves, need help avoiding liquidation and paying employees. Governments may need to consider adapting American bankruptcy law to enable businesses to continue operating to work themselves out of temporary pandemic predicaments.

As early as April 2020, the pandemic had hit many businesses in over 130 countries, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. Two of three were hard hit globally as well as in Africa, with a fifth expecting to close within a quarter!

Anis Chowdhury

Of course, more lending and tax breaks mainly benefit the better-off, rather than those in greatest need, most vulnerable or adversely affected.

Although policymakers typically insist on targeting and means-testing for the poor, they rarely demand the same for businesses. But some ‘easy’ targeting is desirable to identify needy, but salvageable businesses.

One size cannot fit all
Business disruption has broader implications, threatening national economies. If relations necessary for viable economic transactions – such as trust among entrepreneurs, workers and customers – are disrupted, they will need to be rebuilt, typically requiring much time and expense.

Such ‘transactions costs’ incurred in building trust, seeking and keeping clients and customers, obtaining credit, recruiting workers and sustaining other longer-term relations are typically ignored. Hence, conventional economics is considered a poor guide to understanding the economy and designing policy.

Keynesian economists typically saw governments as the ‘employer-of-last-resort’ in response to economic downturns. But governments can also help by becoming ‘payers-of-last-resort’, enabling businesses to remain solvent, e.g., on condition of keeping, instead of firing involuntarily idle workers.

Conditions for access to policy support should be strict enough to deter abuse, but not participation. Strict verification and correction can wait, even until after the worse is over.

Disbursed state grants or subsidies, later found excessive, can be converted low interest loans. Governments can recover these later, rather than treat beneficiaries as fraudulent criminals.

Economies are certainly not homogeneous, monolithic or unchanging. And COVID-19 slowdowns are unlike previous recessions. As these are invariably uneven in impact, various sectors, industries and businesses are affected differently.

Hence, no single policy can possibly be suitable for all countries, at all times. Much has to be learnt quickly ‘by doing’, i.e., from experience, including those of others. Lessons may be both positive and negative, and rapid learning is crucial for improving policy design and implementation.

Who can we count on?
Without both effective contagion containment and mass vaccination, it will be impossible to control the pandemic. And with little external support, containment, relief and recovery measures in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will be all the more difficult.

Thus, the worst is yet to come in the global South, which must now brace itself for the dire consequences of delayed pandemic suppression and limited fiscal efforts. Meanwhile, the North seems unmoved by the International Monetary Fund’s warning of a dangerous new economic divergence globally.

The 870 million vaccines that the world’s seven richest large nations (G7) pledged to poor countries last month will immunise half that number, from late 2021. This is only eight percent of the 11 billion doses needed, noted former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

But despite ungenerous rich Western countries, the Fund has called for US$50bn to accelerate vaccination worldwide. It expects this to end the pandemic, enhance global output by US$9 trillion, and yield a trillion in additional tax revenue.

LMICs need to urgently respond to fast spreading pandemic surges. They also need to do so effectively, feasibly and equitably, expecting little help from the North. Domestic borrowing – enabled by central banks, sound policy design and South-South cooperation – will be crucial to success in these circumstances.

Relief, recovery, reform
With delays, new, more dangerous COVID-19 variants will threaten developing countries, as more effective contagion containment and fiscal efforts are slowed by the North. These will exacerbate avoidable tragedies and old inequalities.

Developing countries have no choice but to get the economy going despite reduced fiscal and monetary space and more debt. Greater government spending to address the pandemic can be financed with more domestic borrowing from central banks.

Foreign exchange is mainly needed to service foreign debt and pay import bills. Forex requirements can also be reduced by swap arrangements and restricting non-essential imports. Greater South-South cooperation can also enhance resilience and rebuilding for the future.

Recovery should not simply mean a return to the status quo ante. The decade before the pandemic left much to be desired, and there is little reason to restore it. The unsustainable, financialised and unequal pre-pandemic economy should be transformed to achieve more equitable and sustainable development.

After all, the North now undermines the very globalisation it once imposed on the South. Hence, it is imperative to instead establish new, more equitable, pacifist and principled international relations, under multilateral auspices, promoting cooperation.

 

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By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

The visit of the Vice President of the United States to Mexico on June 8 served to address various issues on the bilateral agenda . The media gave importance especially to the migration issue, but Mrs. Harris gave a prominent place , also , to the labor question. Her appointments deserve some comments.

Saul Escobar Toledo

In the meeting she held with labor leaders, activists, and experts as well as in her press conference, the vice president argued that Biden´s government is “one of the most pro worker, pro unions in the US history ” . She publicly pledged to support the organization of unions and collective bargaining in the US and Mexico. She insisted that there is a coincidence with the administration of President López Obrador and that this common vision will bring greater economic prosperity and improve the standard of living of workers in both nations. She argued , to some extent , the benefits of union and collective bargaining since, she said, this leads to ” fair ” results for both parties, employees and employers. Our goal , she added, is that the new approach, settled in the USMCA (United States, Canada and Mexico Trade Agreement that replaced NAFTA) will ” translate into decent jobs on both sides of the border” . Later, a budget addition of 130 million dollars was announced to support technical assistance and programs for the implementation of the Mexican labor reform, and the eradication of child and adolescent labor. This expansion is linked to 610 million dollars that had already been contemplated for those same purposes. Of these, 100 million will be invested in the next six months.

Canada, the third partner of the T-MEC had announced through its ambassador in Mexico, on June 2, that its government will allocate 27 million dollars for programs that allow changes in the labor practices , promote reform and its implementation. That is, he said, to support Mexican workers and the promotion of democratic unions.

US policy has not consisted only in words and money. For now, there are already two complaints for labor reasons that have been formally taken up by the Biden government at the highest level under the mechanism proposed by the T-MEC (USMCA). As the commercial representative, Katherine Tai , in charge of presenting the complaint said, now it is about “defending the workers at home and abroad.”

One of the complaints refers to a conflict in a company called “Tridomex”, an auto parts factory located in Matamoros (a city of the northern border), where, they claim , collective bargaining and free association were seriously affected . The investigation is ongoing and if it were found , indeed, there were these faults , it would have to be repaired or, where appropriate, apply sanctions on the company including additional tariffs or bans on its exports. It must be said that this company is a subsidiary of Cardone Industries , based in Philadelphia , dedicated to the manufacture of auto parts . This is a good example of a maquiladora, the type of sweatshop where for many years there have been systematic violations of labor rights and the absence of representative unions and legitimate collective contracts (supported by the workers) .

This was the second complaint in a month formally filed by US authorities . The first was against a General Motors plant , where more than six thousand people work, located in Silao, Guanajuato. They found, also, serious irregularities committed during a voting process arranged to find out if workers were supporting a contract negotiated by an old and corrupt union. The scandal even reached US Congress; a special commission demanded that the company should not meddle in union affairs.

The new trade policy of the US represents a major shift. During many decades Washington has defended its companies and investors at all costs, supporting repressive measures against workers, direct intervention of the CIA (Central of Intelligence Agency) , and even violence against governments that have tried to be, as Ms. Harris said, favorable to workers and their organizations . The US administration had never shown solidarity for unions and the defense of labor, more so, when workers struggle against the arbitrariness committed by the subsidiaries of the large manufacturing consortiums located outside its territory.

This major change is due to several reasons, including strong pressure from the unions. The vice president clearly alluded to this situation when she spoke with the Mexican labor activists . Apparently, a political gap has opened in that nation, in which either a government with a progressive and pro-labor line is imposed; or there is only the ultra – conservative option of the Republican right whose central figure continues to be Trump. An Obama- or Clinton-style centrism does not seem a good alternative right now.

However, it is not clear how far the new direction of the Biden administration will go. Within his own party there is resistance to some of the president’s proposed changes , such as tax reform. In the case of Mexico , we don´t know yet what the reaction of the companies will be, which, for now, have denied their responsibility in the violation of labor rights. Will the top managers of the companies accept to change their labor schemes and open negotiations with the workers on fair terms, as the vice president said , or will they continue to keep “business as usual” with various legal maneuvers? If sanctions were applied, would they rather decide to leave Mexico and go back to the US? Maybe this last option would be welcome and supported by the US government.

Despite these uncertainties, and the damage caused by the pandemic including a slow recovery of the Mexican economy, the new US trade policy opens an opportunity for Mexico to change its relations with its commercial partners. The so – called “comparative advantage”, based in very low wages and poor working conditions in Mexico, has played up to now an important factor to attract foreign investments. To change this scheme the government of Lopez Obrador must not only carry out enhanced surveillance of labor laws as their commercial partners are claiming and is part of USMCA. In the medium term, it would have to propose a new industrial policy that would make it possible to attract foreign investment, while increasing wages and contractual benefits. For this to happen, so foreign companies would not be tempted to withdraw from Mexican territory, the government would need to offer incentives based on a more modern infrastructure; a better qualification of the workforce ; and more resources for research and development of science and technology.

In the medium and long term, sustained improvement in wages of the Mexican working class would imply a new agreement with the United States and Canada. Much more ambitious than what was already agreed in the T-MEC or USMCA: a new scheme of development cooperation is needed. A new kind of relationship between companies of foreign capital and Mexican workers, based on better jobs, with the support of the governments of the three nations would be viable only if it rests on a sustained increase of productivity . And the latter would require a relevant hike in investment based on modern technologies and production processes .

A change of this magnitude would need time and a favorable political environment in the North American region. New winds are blowing , but it is not clear if they will go far enough.

saulescobar.blogspot.com

 

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Twenty years after the blackout that prompted nine months of rationing to keep the power grid from collapsing, Brazil may see a repeat of the traumatic situation, this time with a more obvious climate change undertone. Scarce rainfall in the October to April rainy season in south-central Brazil reduced to critical levels the flow in […]

South Sudan’s national flag (centre) flies at UN Headquarters following its admission as the 193rd Member State. Credit: UN/E. Schneider

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

When the United Nations renovated its building at a cost of over $2.1 billion, as part of a seven-year refurbishing project back in 2014, the seating in the cavernous General Assembly hall was increased from 193 to 204—primarily in anticipation of at least 11 new member states joining the world body sooner or later.

But the pace of new member states joining the UN, primarily from half a dozen breakaway regions dominated by separatist movements, has remained slow.

East Timor, described as the first new sovereign state of the 21st century, broke away from Indonesia and joined the UN in May 2002.

The UN played a significant role in supporting the democratic process in the country, now known as Timor-Leste. The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was deployed from 1992 to 2002 to administer the territory, exercise legislative and executive authority during the transition and support capacity-building for self-government.

Meanwhile, the Republic of South Sudan (population: 11.3 million), which seceded from Sudan, was the last of the 193 UN member states, joining the world body in July 2011.

But at least one potential member state— Kosovo– has been knocking at the door trying to seek admission rather unsuccessfully primarily because of opposition from one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC).

The UN’s relatively new member states, beginning in the 1960s, included Singapore (1965), Bangladesh (1971) and six republics, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, resulting from the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Still, if political fantasies become realities, a lineup of new U.N. member states may include potential breakaway regions, including Kurdistan, Western Sahara, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Catalonia, Scotland and Palestine—not forgetting Tibet and Taiwan whose membership will be shot down by China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC.

But currently the most likely candidate is Tigray which is moving towards an independent state after nearly eight months of fighting against Ethiopian military forces, described as one of Africa’s most powerful, this time backed by Eritrea.

If it does happen, Ethiopia would have generated two breakaway states: first Eritrea which became independent of Ethiopia in 1993, and now Tigray, with a population of 7.1 million.

The Tigray Independence Party (TIP) has long campaigned for secession from Ethiopia which it described as an “empire”.

Debretsion Gebremichael, the leader of Tigray, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “even if the conflict ends soon, Tigray’s future, as part of Ethiopia, is in doubt”.

In the Times report on July 4, Gebremichael said “The trust has broken completely. If they don’t want us, why should we stay?”. Still, he added, nothing has been decided because “It depends on the politics at the centre”.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the UN, told reporters on July 2 the Security Council has held six closed-door meetings “and the situation in Tigray has not improved.”

She said the open meeting last week was the first opportunity to show that African lives matter as much as other lives around the world.

“But an open meeting is not enough,” she said, pointing out that “what we need to see is action on the ground.”

“We need to see a ceasefire that is permanent; that all of the parties agree to. We need to see the Eritrean troops return to their own border. We need to see unfettered access for humanitarian workers. “We need to see accountability for the atrocities that have been committed.”

“And at this moment I just want to express, again, our sympathy for the many losses of lives, including for MSF (Doctors Without Borders) staff who were killed recently,” she declared.

Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) says the Tigray People’s Liberation Front is in control of most of the Tigray region, including major towns.

William Davison, ICG’s Senior Analyst, said the Front has achieved these gains “mainly through mass popular support and by capturing arms and supplies from adversaries.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week he is deeply concerned with the present situation in Tigray.

“It is essential to have a real ceasefire paving the way for a dialogue able to bring a political solution to Tigray.” He said the presence of foreign troops is an aggravating factor of confrontation.

“At the same time, full humanitarian access, unrestricted humanitarian access must be guaranteed to the whole territory. The destruction of civilian infrastructure is totally unacceptable,” he declared. 

Excerpt:

South Sudan’s independence from the rest of Sudan was the result of a January 2011 referendum held under the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the decades-long civil war between the North and the South.

By External Source
Jul 5 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Jan Egeland has been the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since August 2013, a role which oversees the work of the humanitarian organisation in over 30 countries affected by conflict and disaster.

In June 2021, he was appointed Eminent Person of The Grand Bargain initiative. Within this role he is responsible for promoting and advocating for the advancement of The Grand Bargain’s commitments to better serve people in need. It is a two-year position he will hold alongside his day-to-day NRC position.

From January to May 2021, Egeland was appointed by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, as Chair of the Independent Senior Advisory Panel on humanitarian deconfliction in Syria.

In 2015, he was appointed by former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, as Special Adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria. Within this position he chaired the humanitarian task force responsible for the safety and protection of Syrian civilians. He stepped down from this role on 1 December 2018.

From 2011 to 2013 Jan Egeland served as the European Director at Human Rights Watch. He was appointed Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General for Conflict Prevention and Resolution from 2006 and 2008.

Prior to that, Jan Egeland was UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006. In that role he helped reform the global humanitarian response system and organized the international response to the Asian Tsunami, and crises from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lebanon.

In 2006, Time magazine named Jan Egeland one of the “100 people who shape our world.”

He served as Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs from 2007 to 2011. He was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Colombia from 1999 to 2001, where he led shuttle diplomacy efforts between armed groups and the government.

From 1992 to 1997, Jan Egeland served as State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has also been Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross and has held leading positions at Amnesty International.

Jan Egeland has 30 years of experience from international work with human rights, humanitarian crises and conflict resolution, and was among the initiators of the peace negotiations that led to the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993.

Jan Egeland published ‘A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity‘ in 2010.

ECW: World Refugee Day commemorates the resilience of refugees around the world. This year’s theme is inclusion, noting that together we heal, learn and shine. With this in mind, how do you see NRC moving forward with ECW and other organizations, to ensure that refugee children are included in education programmes in host communities so it is a win-win situation for all involved?

Jan Egeland: When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, about 1 billion students had their access to education completely disrupted. A year on, and three quarters of a billion students remain affected. The past year and a half has been particularly tough on displaced children and youth, who often do not have connectivity or access to distance learning that many school goers in richer nations had.

At NRC, we promote including displaced children and youth in formal education systems, in line with global policy to mainstreaming refugees into national education systems. We strive to be a champion for durable solutions, by prioritising recognised certification of learning so that displaced children and youth can continue their education and use their skills through local integration, resettlement or return.

Only when it is not possible or appropriate to include refugees in formal education systems, e.g. in cases where government policy or the age of learners are barriers to inclusion, will we engage in alternative learning opportunities. Working with ECW and other partners, NRC will continue to advocate for governments to include refugee children in their national education programmes.

ECW: The Norwegian Refugee Council works in more than 30 countries around the world as a global advocate to help those forced to flee their homes. With 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide and so many urgent needs, which are the refugee emergencies that you feel have most been forgotten by the international community and why is it so important to address them, now?

Jan Egeland: The three most forgotten crises in the world today are DR Congo, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, according to NRC’s World’s Most Neglected Displacement Crises report. These countries have become utterly neglected in terms of the scale of humanitarian needs, a massive lack of funding, as well as media and diplomatic inattention.

DRC is top of that list. We see it as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. A lethal combination of spiralling violence, record hunger levels and total neglect has ignited a mega-crisis that warrants a mega-response. But instead, millions of families on the brink of the abyss seem to be forgotten by the outside world and are left shut off from any support lifeline.

When I visited DRC in May, it gained international attention momentarily when a volcano erupted in Goma. Sadly, when there is no volcanic eruption, the thousands that flee their homes each day go unnoticed. They do not make headlines, they seldom receive high-level donor visits and are rarely prioritized by international diplomacy. This is the case for many of the crisis areas we operate in.

It is therefore so good to see ECW’s emergency investment in DRC, from which NRC has received new multi-year funding that runs through to 2024. We hope the international community follows suit and better supports these neglected crises, otherwise the human suffering will continue and likely worsen. Many conflicts risk spreading across regions, embroiling countries that are comparatively more stable. For example, insecurity in Venezuela, South Sudan and Nigeria have all led to refugee crises in neighbouring countries.

ECW: As strategic partners of Education Cannot Wait, the Norwegian Refugee Council and other partners develop and implement plans to address refugees’ needs. A key advantage of the arrangement is funding to address not only emergency relief and early recovery responses, but to also link this to sustainable development. What are some impactful NRC/ECW projects and how are the funding needs?

Jan Egeland: NRC is doing important work in education that supports longer-term sustainable development. For example, ECW supports NRC’s Better Learning Programme in the Middle East, a programme designed to provide learners with mental health and psychosocial support to deal with the trauma and stress of being forced to flee. Through the ECW investment, we strengthen regional capacity to integrate school-based mental health and psychosocial support into education programming, advocate for enhanced mental health services for children and youth, and ensure the programme is available as a public good that can be scaled up and replicated across education in emergency projects.

In Nigeria, we are partnering with ECW for the first time this year through the country’s multi-year resilience programme. Working with other NGOs, including local actors, the UN and the government, we will target nearly 3 million young people, half of whom are displaced, over the next three years. The programme will build and renovate classrooms and learning spaces, support stipends for teachers, and increase continuity of learning by working with local partners to keep children and youth in school. Part of this programme also focuses on working with local and national educational authorities to develop capacity and have the resources to promote, administer and manage quality education programmes. This will be essential for long-term progress for Nigeria’s next generation.

ECW: Congratulations! While continuing to lead the Norwegian Refugee Council, this month you also assume the position of ‘Eminent Person of the Grand Bargain.’ The Grand Bargain was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit with a key goal being to increase the amount and effectiveness of aid delivery to people in need. How will you promote, and seek funds, for refugee children’s education?

Jan Egeland: The Grand Bargain aims to shift resources away from draining backroom activities to frontline delivery. This means that by making our work more efficient, we will release more resources for those who need it, including education for children and youth.

At the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting in June, we agreed to make our efforts in the next two years more focused and strategic, and in addition to accelerating localisation of aid, our priority is to increase quality funding. This would make our programmes much more predictable, which is especially important in planning reliable and quality education programmes. Strengthened engagement of local actors and participation of people affected by crises are also key priorities of the Grand Bargain. If we get these objectives right, we will have more stable, secure, meaningful school programmes for all children.

ECW: The World Humanitarian Summit recognized that children’s education in crisis situations must be part of a life-saving response. Refugee children are among the furthest left behind in responding to crises. Why is it so important to continue refugee children’s education from the outset of their refugee experience until they safely return home, or a longer-term solution is found for them and their families?

Jan Egeland: Education is a fundamental human right for all children and youth. Quality education provides children and young people with the skills, capacities and confidence they need to allow them to live lives that they have reason to value. Education also creates the voice through which other rights can be claimed and protected. These rights are particularly important for refugee and other displaced children and youth, and quality education provides protection, a sense of normality and hope for the future. Evidence consistently shows that education is a top priority for people who are displaced, and it should be made available from the onset of an emergency.

NRC works with displacement-affected and refugee children and youth to support them with education throughout the whole learning cycle – including after they finish school. We provide young women and men with opportunities for post-primary education, including technical and vocational education and training, agricultural training, and tertiary educational opportunities.

These opportunities are essential to the development of young people, to ensure that they have opportunities to pursue longer-term solutions and remain contributing members of the communities to which they belong, especially if they return home.

ECW: Climate change-induced disasters increasingly contribute to forced displacement, with +30 million people fleeing disasters in 2020; up 5 million from 2019. Such disasters mean many refugees are forced to flee multiple times, making them even more vulnerable. What are the main challenges in addressing climate change as it affects refugee children and what are NRC and partners doing to address them?

Jan Egeland: All aid organisations can, and should, do more to address climate change. At NRC, we are working to do better. We are currently in a process called ‘greening the orange’ – developing a new climate strategy, through which we aim to become carbon neutral in the future. This was a pledge I made at the Global Refugee Forum in 2019. Greening the Orange started as a grassroots initiative by staff and it will lead our climate work internally and externally.

In the meantime, we are already working on education projects that are climate-friendly. For example, in Colombia we are running a renewable energy and education project called Zero Carbon Education. In this project we installed an energy system with nine solar panels at a school in the Colorado community. This lit up six school classrooms, a kitchen, a communal church and two outdoor lamps for a sports centre. The project also provided environmental training on recycling practices, ecology and sustainable food to promote environmental awareness in school. The installation of the solar panels was accompanied by the construction and adaptation of a community garden for students and teachers. The children and adults received the panels and learned to maintain the new solar energy system through trainings.

We need to implement more projects like this across the world that tackle education and climate change at the same time.

ECW: We’d love to learn a bit more about you on a personal level. Could you tell us what are the three books that have influenced you the most – personally and/or professionally – and why you’d recommend these books to other people?

Jan Egeland: The first book I read as a child was “Nobody’s Boy” about the orphan Remi who was sold to a street musician at age 8. It made a huge impression on me, as I was the same age as Remi.

Then in my student years I was shocked by reading Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” about the systematic exploitation and imperialism in South and Central America.

Now I am fascinated by “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. It is a masterly account of the historic Jesus.

 

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In March 2021, the UN Human Rights Council was given a mandate to collect and preserve information and evidence of crimes related to Sri Lanka's 37-year long civil war that ended in 2009. Meanwhile, Western nations taking a cue from the Human Rights Council’s highly critical resolution on Sri Lanka appear to be tightening the noose. Credit: UN Photo / Violaine Martin. 43rd session of the Human Rights Council.

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

For well over a century Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, has been known to the world as the ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean’ for its multifaceted attractions. That is until blurb writers ruined it all with hyperbolic epithets that obscured the country’s magnetic charms, which attracted visitors from around the globe.

But one particular epithet has lived up to its name. Called ‘a country like no other’, Sri Lanka is increasingly beginning to prove this true – though not for the reasons that originally prompted it.

Over the years, groups of professional politicians and those drawn to the sphere, not to serve the public but by thoughts of self-aggrandisement and avarice, have dragged this once prosperous country, with its many natural resources and strong democratic institutions, towards its nadir.

From being Asia’s first democracy, with universal franchise granted in 1931– even before independence from Britain in 1948– political commentators and increasingly the public now fear that the country is teetering on the brink of militarism, with retired and serving senior officers in key positions in the civil administration, and others appointed to virtually oversee Sri Lanka’s 25 administrative districts.

While there is both international and local disquiet over the deterioration of democratic values, of more immediate concern is the country’s dire economic state. The situation is so critical that less than two weeks ago, the respected Sunday Times wrote that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government is ‘steps away from bankruptcy’.

At the same time, well-known economists were pressing alarm bells, warning about the possible breakdown of the banking system ‘causing a collapse of the economy’. The direct cause of the current crisis was the sudden hike in fuel prices in late June, which is bound to have a ripple effect on other commodities and services.

Bakers are already threatening to raise their prices, which could well have happened by the time this article appears.

A thermometer gun is used to take a boy’s temperature in Sri Lanka. Credit: UNICEF/Chameera Laknath

With the prices of staples such as rice and vegetables unbearably high, the average consumer, already burdened by the steepening cost of living, is being pushed to the wall by a government that came to power some 20 months or so ago promising to reduce poverty and improve living standards.

Rising living costs are compounded by a still uncontrollable Covid pandemic. This has compelled the government to impose lockdowns and curb travel – restrictions which are haphazardly lifted and re-imposed, despite the best medical advice – as daily wage earners run out of cash to buy food for their families and meet other domestic needs.

Political commentators and increasingly the public fear that the country is on the brink of militarism

Last month, the Sri Lanka Medical Association urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to continue lockdown restrictions without interruption–”considering that over 2,000 Covid 19 cases and over 50 deaths are being reported daily” and also the detection of the highly dangerous Indian variant’.

At the time of writing, health authorities reported another 52 fatalities and put the daily count of positive cases at 2,098. But such statistics seems to matter little to politicians and their military and medical cohorts, tasked with combating the spreading pandemic but ignoring the accumulating data and the advice of specialist medical professionals.

Meanwhile, the vaccination of the population, according to a pre-determined programme, has been disrupted by politicians who have drawn up their own priority lists and even threatened doctors and health workers who refused to accept their dictates, raising law enforcement issues and public criticism.

Those with power and influence find backdoor means to gain access to vaccinations, at the expense of an increasingly frustrated and angry public, who stand in long queues for hours awaiting their turn.

While the overall Covid containment programme is reportedly in a mess, along with an economy going steadily downhill, another pearl turned up in the Indian Ocean close to Colombo port. The X-Press Pearl, a Singapore-registered container ship, was carrying noxious cargo, including a leaking nitric acid container. With Qatar and India refusing to admit the vessel for repairs, it turned up in Colombo

That poisonous pearl spewed nitric acid into the ocean and then self-immolated, burning for days before part of it went down on June 2. As a result of the incident, more than 150 marine animals, including 100 turtles, 15 dolphins, three whales and scores of birds and fish beached in various parts of the country, not to mention the kilometres of beach covered with plastic pollutants, leading a UN representative in Colombo to describe the episode as a ‘significant damage to the planet’.

Meanwhile, the original pearl of the Indian Ocean is struggling to keep its head above water. The Sunday Times’ economics columnist Dr Nimal Sanderatne, an agricultural economist, former central banker and academic, painted a bleak picture in his weekly column in late June: ‘The external finances of the country are in a perilous state. External reserves have fallen, the trade deficit is widening, the balance of payments deficit is increasing and there are foreign debt repayments of about US$4 billion during the rest of the year.’

His views about the parlous state of the economy were echoed by several other economists, including the spokesman of Sri Lanka’s main opposition party SJB, Dr Harsha de Silva, and Dr Anila Dias Bandaranaike, a former assistant governor of the Central Bank.

In a desperate bid to boost reserves, Sri Lanka went for a currency swap of US$200 million with Bangladesh, once a struggling new nation in South Asia. Prudent economic policies and management, and national interest, brought Bangladesh to its current flourishing status.

When the currency swap was announced, one Sri Lankan wag remarked that it would have made more sense if Sri Lanka had swapped its advisors for those from Bangladesh, and the swap should be permanent to protect the country’s self-respect

Only a country that has lost its political sense and perceptiveness, or has abandoned all concern for its struggling people, could seek government sanction to import nearly 300 vehicles costing Rs 3.7 billion for its 225 parliamentarians and unnamed others, in the midst of a severe foreign currency crisis, when begging and borrowing seem the only options.

What is even worse, Sri Lanka’s premier state bank was ordered to open letters of credit one month or so before cabinet approval had been sought. Whoever ordered this remains unknown to the public at the time of writing.

Critics of the government say it is fast losing its one-time popularity as ill-considered and sudden policy decisions are heaped on existing economic and health problems, such as the snap decision to ban chemical fertiliser and pesticides, so essential right now for agriculture and export crops such as tea.

Scant wonder the government is being assailed by even close associates of the Rajapaksa family. One such is the head of the Catholic Church, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, who, in a strongly critical statement recently said that ‘even nature seemed to be turning against the rulers’.

Meanwhile, western nations taking a cue from the UN Human Rights Council’s highly critical resolution on Sri Lanka last March appear to be tightening the noose.

At the end of June, the European Parliament moved a resolution, with almost 90 per cent voting for it, urging the EU authorities to consider suspending the Generalised System of Preference (GSP Plus) trade concessions to Sri Lanka, which would be a serious blow to exports.

Later the Core Group of Western nations that sponsored the UNHRC resolution issued a statement condemning Sri Lanka’s human rights situation and new changes to the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Bleak times lie ahead.

Source: Current Affairs Magazine

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London

 

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Estimates reveal that there are 40.3 million people in slavery worldwide as part of a US$32 billion business. Credit: UN images.

By External Source
Jul 4 2021 (IPS)

Few people want to buy products that involve the exploitation or enslavement of the workers who make them – but that’s exactly what most of us do on a daily basis.

Estimates reveal that there are 40.3 million people in slavery worldwide as part of a US$32 billion business. Extreme labour exploitation and other forms of modern slavery are embedded within the supply chains of many of the products and services that we choose to consume regularly, such as laptops, mobile phones and clothing.

This raises important questions: how responsible are we for the slavery that is directly connected to our consumption, and what role should consumers play in reducing the demand and supply of products and services made by exploited workers?

How responsible are we for the slavery that is directly connected to our consumption, and what role should consumers play in reducing the demand and supply of products and services made by exploited workers?

On the one hand, the few examples of government legislation – including the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act – clearly place some level of responsibility on consumers to be informed, to act, and to make choices that help to eradicate modern slavery. These actions include reporting suspected instances of exploitation and boycotting known products of slavery.

In contrast, however, others are increasingly arguing that it’s not up to consumers to police modern slavery. Commentators such as Sarah O’Connor and Emily Kenway remind us that the causes of slavery are systemic, embedded within the processes and structures of commerce and governance. They rightly suggest that slavery and forms of extreme labour exploitation cannot be reduced without addressing the structural role of government and business.

 

Consumer-citizen action

Global supply chains are complex and generally not visible or well understood by consumers. So asking them to take responsibility for how products are made may let businesses (who do understand this) and governments (who do have the power to change things) off the hook. Government and business do need to do more to address slavery in production systems through, for example, greater transparency, but where does that leave the role of the consumer?

Focusing on UK consumer understanding of modern slavery, our research highlights a more complicated and active role for consumers in challenging the exploitation of workers who produce the goods and services they consume.

It points to the broader observation that shoppers are often “complicit” when it comes to the social and environmental consequences of their consumer choices. Indeed, we find that consumers are not ignorant of the risks of slavery and extreme labour exploitation. More worryingly still, some consumers explicitly express their indifference towards such issues.

Reviewing the Modern Slavery Act and similar legislation reveals how our current system relies on consumers to report and boycott instances of slavery as a key mechanism in the overall eradication plan. We agree with the likes of Kenway that shifting responsibility away from businesses and governments and on to the consumer risks relieving these powerful players of their duties and commitments.

Yet, should this argument be used to negate all attempts to mobilise consumers? While it’s right to be suspicious of attempts to pass the buck on to consumers, we argue that removing all responsibility from consumers and insisting that the realm of consumption remains a seemingly benign and apolitical arena is not a useful way forward either.

The considerable consumer inertia in response to scandals in the UK such as Boohoo – which saw the company accused of sourcing its clothes from factories with poor health and safety records and paying staff less than the minimum wage – illustrates a need to sensitise consumers to the slavery in their consumption, and to elevate their power to act. This may be framed as calling on consumers to take positive citizenship action (lobbying) or negative action (boycotting).

It is important to recognise that consumer-citizens are not unfamiliar with taking action on important issues. For example, the understanding that we have environmental responsibilities as consumers is well rehearsed. It is accepted that “we must place on the consumer at least some of the responsibility for making the economy sustainable”, as Tim Jackson writes in Material Concerns: Pollution, Profit and Quality of Life.

Imagine action on climate change that didn’t include a role for consumers in taking some level of responsibility for their own impact through the consumer choices they make. Changing how we consume is a vital link in transitioning to a cleaner and more just society, even though businesses are disproportionately responsible for carbon emissions. It should be no different when we consider modern slavery.

While we don’t support the shifting of unrealistic levels of responsibility on to consumers when it comes to ridding society of modern slavery, our research does point to an important role for consumers, revealing that they do want to take action – just not on their own.

They want to be partners in this modern slavery equation, particularly with business and government. Greater consumer interest, involvement and action over modern slavery is bound to raise more, not fewer, questions about the role and responsibilities of other groups involved, leading to greater transparency.

The consumer perspective should be viewed as a useful ally to business and government strategies in the campaign to eradicate modern slavery. In our roles as consumer-citizens we can use our voices and actions to support and encourage positive change. And we must also focus our energies on holding those with greater power and involvement to account.

Deirdre Shaw, Professor Marketing and Consumer Research, University of Glasgow; Andreas Chatzidakis, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of London, and Michal Carrington, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, The University of Melbourne

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

One of the flyers pasted on a tree in the city of Sonsonate, in eastern El Salvador, which on Jun. 28 called for help to find Flor Maria Garcia, 33, missing since March. The next day, the young woman's body was found in a vacant lot near Cojutepeque, the city in the centre of the country where she lived with her husband, Joel Valle, arrested as the main suspect in the case of femicide. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)

The pain that María Estela Guevara feels over the disappearance of her niece Wendy Martínez remains as intense as it was four years ago, when she learned that the young woman, then 31, had vanished without a trace in eastern El Salvador.

“I still feel the same pain, I want to know what happened to her,” Guevara, 64, who has always considered Wendy her daughter because she raised her from a very young age after she was orphaned, told IPS between sobs.

Guevara’s plight is shared by thousands of families in El Salvador who have lost relatives who simply failed to return home one day and were never heard from again.

At least 2,383 complaints of missing persons were reported in 2019, against 2,457 in 2018, according to the report Desaparición de personas en El Salvador (Disappearance of people in El Salvador), published in April by the non-governmental Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho (Foundation of Studies for the Application of Law – FESPAD). The document covered the period 2014-2019.

The phenomenon has been occurring for years in a highly polarised political context in which the governments in power have sought to downplay the problem in order to show that they are efficiently fighting crime, and the political opposition has sought to draw attention to it.

A grieving process that never ends

Wendy went missing on Sept. 30, 2017 in San Miguel, the capital of the eastern department of the same name. She was studying cosmetology and that day she left at 7:00 a.m. to fix the hair of several clients.

“She said she was coming home again at 11:00 a.m. to give her nine-year-old daughter lunch, but she never returned,” Guevara said. “I kept calling her until 12:00 at night, and she never answered.”

Wendy Martínez’s aunt and daughter have been waiting for her to return since 2017, when the then 31-year-old disappeared without a trace in the city of San Miguel, in eastern El Salvador, after leaving home early one September morning to fix clients’ hair. CREDIT: Courtesy of María Estela Guevara

Disappearances – nothing new in El Salvador

The phenomenon of disappearances is not new in this Central American country that was torn apart by a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 dead and 8,000 missing.

In the wake of the armed conflict, El Salvador has experienced a maelstrom of violence, mainly at the hands of youth gangs that over time have grown into powerful organised crime groups that control significant chunks of territory in this poverty-stricken country of 6.7 million people.

Gangs have historically been behind many of the cases of missing persons, as they attempt to leave no evidence of their crimes, said analysts consulted by IPS, but without ruling out the involvement of other actors in recent years.

“There is certainly a high probability that this pattern (of gangs) will continue,” lawyer Zaida Navas, legal head of State of Law and Security at Cristosal, an NGO that works to defend human rights in Central America, told IPS.

She added: “But disappearances are also the result of murders in cases of femicide, and executions by organised crime groups that are not necessarily gangs, and also due to personal disputes.”

One of the latest femicides was the high-profile case of Flor María García, 33, who had been missing since Mar. 16.

That day, her husband Joel Valle reported to the authorities that Flor María was missing. According to him, she had left home early in Cojutepeque, a municipality in the central department of Cuscatlán, to head to the capital, San Salvador.

Valle, a dentist, said Flor María had gone to pick up materials for the dental clinic where she worked as his assistant.

But in a twist to the case, authorities arrested Valle on Jun. 25 as the main suspect in his wife’s disappearance, and charged him with the crime of disappearance of persons.

“We always had doubts about him; we as Flor’s family knew that she suffered psychological and economic violence in her home,” her brother, Jorge Garcia, told IPS a few days after Valle was arrested.

He added: “We found it strange that the day she disappeared, he, Joel, only sent us a WhatsApp message at about 7:00 at night, asking if she was with us, in Sonsonate,” the city where Flor María was originally from, in the west of El Salvador, and where her family still lives.

The authorities found Flor María’s remains on Jun. 29 in a vacant lot on the side of the road near Cojutepeque, under tons of dirt and gravel.

The charges will be changed from disappearance of persons to femicide, the authorities said.

“I should have warned my sister, I should have insisted that she leave him when the incidents of psychological and economic, and even physical, violence occurred,” Garcia added.

It is no consolation, but Flor María’s family will be able to give her a religious burial and begin the mourning process.

However, many other families have no sense of closure, as long as their relatives remain missing.

The numbers game

Given the strained relationship between the government of Nayib Bukele and his political opponents, the issue of missing persons has once again gained national prominence, with the president defending his security programme, the Territorial Control Plan, as the reason for the drop in murder rates.

But his opponents say that while it is true that homicides have declined, cases of missing persons are on the rise.

According to government figures, homicides have dropped significantly since Bukele took office in June 2019 and began to implement the plan.

When the government took office, there were 50 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador, a rate that has dropped to 19 per 100,000, said Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro in a television interview in March.

But establishing how many people are missing in the country, and whether the number is increasing, decreasing or remaining steady when comparing time periods, is not an easy task, said analysts consulted by IPS.

This is true above all because there is no official census of cases, but three separate institutions keeping track of figures that are sometimes in line with each other and sometimes quite different: the National Civil Police, the Attorney General’s Office and the Dr. Roberto Masferrer Institute of Legal Medicine, and each one handles its own data based on the complaints received.

“I think the most honest – although I don’t know if the most rigorous – answer is that the official figures allow us to conclude that we have a partial view of reality, historically,” lawyer Arnau Baulenas, legal coordinator of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University’s Human Rights Institute, told IPS.

He clarified that he was not only referring to the current Bukele administration, but that this has been a problem for decades.

A report by the Efe news agency, based on official figures, stated at the end of May that in the first four months of 2021, reports of missing persons had increased by 112 percent compared to the same period in 2020, climbing from 196 to 415.

“But it is very difficult to assess whether the increase in complaints filed actually means there are more cases, because there is a counterargument: that people are reporting cases more because they see that the authorities are taking action,” Baulenas said.

He added, however, that “Such a sharp rise would indicate that disappearances have indeed increased.”

Bukele, for his part, said on Mar. 26 that as homicides have gone down, investigators are better able to investigate other crimes.

“It is not the same to investigate 40 homicides as three homicides a day,” he said in reference to the drop in the daily murder rate.

Meanwhile, María Estela Guevara does not lose hope of one day finding out what happened to Wendy on that day in September 2017.

“Her little girl is now 13 years old, and she still has hopes that her mom will come home, she tells me not to remove things from Wendy’s room, in case she comes back,” said Guevara with a heavy voice.

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By External Source
Jul 2 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Bangladesh government does not fully meet the minimum standards for elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so and has demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period, considering the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on its anti-trafficking capacity and therefore remained on Tier 2, according to a US Department of State report.

The report titled “2021 Trafficking in Persons Report” further said these efforts included initiating more prosecutions, particularly of labour traffickers, beginning to operate its trafficking tribunals and collaborating with foreign governments on a transnational trafficking case.

“The government also opened an investigation into—and Parliament revoked the seat of—a member of Parliament involved in bribing a Kuwaiti official to fraudulently send more than 20,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers to Kuwait,” the report added.

“However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. The number of convictions decreased, while law enforcement continued to deny credible reports of official complicity in trafficking, forced labour and sex trafficking of Rohingya, and child sex trafficking, including in licensed brothels, and did not demonstrate efforts to identify victims or investigate these persistent reports,” it further said.

“While international organizations identified signs of trafficking in hundreds of migrant workers returning from Vietnam, the government, instead of screening them for trafficking indicators, arrested them on vague charges, including for damaging the country’s image.

“The government continued to allow recruiting agencies to charge high recruitment fees to migrant workers and did not consistently address illegally operating recruitment sub-agents, leaving workers vulnerable to traffickers. Victim care remained insufficient. Officials did not consistently implement victim identification procedures or refer identified victims to care, and the government did not have shelters or adequate services for adult male victims.”

The report also gave a set of recommendations which included increasing prosecution, taking steps to eliminate recruitment fees charged to workers and so on.

To read the full report: https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/banglad…

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

A UN meeting on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 26 September. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)

After more than a decade of rising tensions and growing nuclear competition between the two largest nuclear-weapon states, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at their June 16 summit to engage in a robust “strategic stability” dialogue to “lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”

Just as importantly, the two men also reaffirmed the commonsense principle, agreed on by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

The summit communiqué, albeit modest and overdue, is a vital recognition that the status quo is dangerous and unsustainable. It is a chance for a course correction that moves the world further from the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

Now, each side must walk the talk. The first step is promptly beginning a robust, bilateral, results-oriented nuclear risk reduction and disarmament dialogue.

With the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement, expiring in 2026, there is little time to negotiate new arrangements necessary to further reduce the bloated U.S. and Russian strategic and nonstrategic nuclear stockpiles.

Second, if the two presidents are serious about nuclear wars being unwinnable, they need to formally declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter or respond only to a nuclear attack, not non-nuclear threats.

Once a nuclear weapon is used first by design, accident, or inadvertence, there is no guarantee that all-out nuclear war can be averted.

Given the catastrophic effects of even limited nuclear use, neither side would be the winner.

Daryl G. Kimball

Unfortunately, current Russian and U.S. nuclear use doctrines suggest that each side believes regional nuclear wars can be fought and won because such wars somehow can be kept limited.

In its 2020 iteration of policy, Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons…in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”

Whether Russia might contemplate an even lower threshold for use in a regional conflict has been the subject of much debate.

In 2018, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) expanded the “extreme circumstances” under which the United States would contemplate first use of nuclear weapons to include “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” against “U.S., allied or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”

The document says “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” could include chemical and biological attacks, large-scale conventional aggression, and cyberattacks.

These U.S. and Russian nuclear use policies are far too permissive and risky and must change. In a March 2020 Foreign Affairs essay, Biden said, “I believe that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack.” As president, Biden must put those words into practice.

Third, if a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought, the United States and Russia should not be expanding their capabilities to fight and prevail in such a war.

Russia has an obscene arsenal of some 1,500–2,000, lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons, and the United States believes this arsenal is poised to grow in the years ahead. The Trump administration meanwhile proposed to double the types of lower-yield nuclear options in the U.S. arsenal.

Even though Biden, as a presidential candidate, said “[t]he United States does not need new nuclear weapons,” his fiscal year 2022 budget proposes funding for a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, one of the two new low-yield options pursued by Trump to provide additional strike options in a regional war.

Another way in which the “nuclear war cannot be won” statement can serve as a steppingstone to global risk reduction would be for all five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5) to support that principle.

At a P5 meeting last year, China proposed a joint statement along these lines, but the United States vetoed the idea. Shortly before the Biden-Putin summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi revived the proposal.

When the Security Council’s permanent members meet in France later this year on nuclear matters, it should endorse the Biden-Putin statement to signal a shared interest in avoiding nuclear war and agree to launch an expanded set of talks on nuclear risk reduction and arms control.

In addition, Washington and Beijing could launch their own bilateral strategic stability dialogue to explore practical ideas for heading off destabilizing nuclear competition.

Luckily, nuclear weapons have not been used in combat since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But someday, our collective luck is certain to run out, with catastrophic consequences, unless the leaders of the world’s nuclear-armed states act now to forestall a new nuclear arms race and rediscover the path to a world free of nuclear weapons.

 

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The writer is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association in Washington DC.