Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Selim Jahan
Apr 16 2021 (IPS-Partners)

When we were growing up in the sixties during the time of the Cold War between the USA and the then Soviet Union, we would often hear about a possible Third World War. Sometimes, the situation would get so heated that people would fear the Third World War might not be far away. I still remember the events in 1961, when the threats and counter-threats between President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev over the Bay of Pigs reached such an extreme level that a Third World War seemed imminent.

Sixty years have passed since then—and no, there hasn’t been a Third World War in all those years. At the beginning of last year, such a war seemed to be a far-fetched possibility, rooted only in imaginations. But in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it doesn’t seem to be so anymore. In fact, I’m willing to argue that a Third World War has already started last year and we have been fighting it ever since.

Make no mistake, Covid-19 has imposed a war and there is no getting away from it. The whole world has been trying to fight back against this invisible, common enemy of humankind. Just like the waves, this war has been splashing on the shores of country after country. The enemy has also been changing its traits and tactics. It doesn’t spare anyone—big or small, rich or poor, male or female.

So far, globally 221 countries and territories have been affected by Covid-19, more than 138 million people have been infected, and nearly 3 million people have died. I am aware that in terms of numbers, this is quite small compared to the death tolls of the First and Second World Wars. But in an advanced world dominated by science and technology, this is quite a high number. And all these lives were lost or ravaged not because of the use of weapons, but because of a virus. We have seen the destructive power of this enemy in countries like the USA, the UK, Brazil and India.

This war has rattled human lives and livings, destroyed economies, and changed day-to-day human relations and interactions. We are locked inside the house. The modus operandi of work has changed dramatically. Children are no longer going to school. People have been losing jobs, shops and businesses have closed down, and the economies have become stagnant. The ways of human greetings have also changed. People are not touching each other, and are refraining from going to each other’s house. The world is fighting this enemy using two weapons—first, by following health protocols, for example, regularly washing hands, wearing masks and maintaining social distance; and second, by taking vaccine which, although necessary, is not a sufficient instrument by itself to overcome Covid-19.

But it is important to recognise that with the Covid-19 vaccines, a new threat in the form of “vaccine nationalism” is also emerging, which is detrimental to the fight against Covid-19. This would have implications on global political economy in terms of power shifts and power relations among countries, as well as the power structure of the system. Because of a mismatch between the global demand for Covid-19 vaccines and their global supply, three trends are quite clear: First, every country is looking at its own interest and trying to protect its own people with the vaccines. As a result, every country is trying to get as many vaccine doses as it can. Second, the demand for Covid-19 vaccines is global but the vaccines are produced by a few countries. So, these vaccine-producing countries are also pursuing a policy of trade protectionism as far as the distribution of vaccines is concerned. Third, the vaccines are being used in power diplomacies by the rich countries.

Remember that with the advent of various vaccines, some countries moved fast to secure vaccines from various production points. Some countries were successful and some were not. Canada is an example where lack of access to vaccines in the global market delayed its whole inoculation programme at home. US President Joe Biden, after being elected, warned that vaccines produced by US firms would first be used to meet domestic demand before exporting them to other countries.

Given the context of European Union (EU) and Brexit, the situation in Europe has been much more complex. Since its birth, the UK-produced AstraZeneca vaccine faced criticism not from the scientific community but from the political leaders of the EU, including the French president and the German chancellor. The relentless efforts by the EU political leadership to discredit AstraZeneca were, according to some analysts, a backlash to the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Over the months, a number of EU countries abandoned the AstraZeneca vaccine and as a result, their vaccination programmes suffered a severe blow. The EU also put conditions that no EU country can export Covid-19 vaccines to non-EU countries and the export must be confined to EU members if there is a need by another EU country. Last week, the UK has also announced similar restrictive measures.

Because of all the dynamics of political economy of rich countries, the availability of such vaccines to the developing world would suffer. Already, some developing countries have run out of their initial supplies and are now turning to China and Russia, the efficacy of whose vaccines is often questioned. In this new world with new realities, in the coming days, the power of a rich country would be determined to a large extent by the stock of vaccine it has and its production capacity. That country will use its vaccine power to extend its geopolitical strength. Among the developing countries, there will be those preferred by the developed countries as far as the supply of vaccines to those countries is concerned. Covid vaccine may be a crucial determinant in informing and influencing the future global system.

Clearly, we are in the midst of a very different kind of a global war. And people are dying in great numbers every day. The First and Second World Wars lasted for about five years, and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for about two years. How long would the present Covid-19 war continue?

Selim Jahan is a former Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Covid-19: The Makings of a Third World War appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Apr 16 2021 (IPS)

Sandra* had a baby born of rape. The young Nigeria woman had plans of a better life in Europe, but when her ‘recruiters’ abandoned her in Libya she was sexually assaulted and abused. 

But after being deported back to Nigeria Sandra and her young son face daily discrimination and abuse about the boy’s parentage, even from her own mother and friends. She shares with IPS the effect this verbal abuse has had on her little boy and the impact on her mental health.

“I feel bad, I feel bad a lot. I feel very terrible for what my son is going through. He is not supposed to go through this kind of pain no matter what. It is not his fault, he is not the one who caused it,” she says.

*Not her real name.

 

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

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The post Trafficking Survivor & Son Born of Rape Face Daily Discrimination Upon Return to Nigeria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In this video Sam Olukoya interviews a young woman who was trafficked from her home in Nigeria after recruiters promised her a better life in Europe. Instead she was abandoned in Libya and sexually assaulted and abused. 

The post Trafficking Survivor & Son Born of Rape Face Daily Discrimination Upon Return to Nigeria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams won the prize for her work to eradicate landmines in 1997. She is pictured here speaking at a youth protest at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates held in Merida, Mexico. Courtesy: Albany J Alvarez/ Nobel Women’s Initiative

By Sven Lilienström
STOCKHOLM, Apr 16 2021 (IPS)

Landmines are among the most insidious and cruel weapons of all, because they do not distinguish between armed soldiers, civilians or even children.

According to the Landmine Monitor 2020, explosive devices hidden in the ground killed or injured at least 5,554 people worldwide last year alone — that’s an average of 15 deaths and serious injuries per day.

With her International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), Professor Jody Williams (70) has been advocating a ban on landmines for almost 30 years, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her commitment.

Excerpts from the interview:

Professor Williams, thank you for taking the time for this interview with the Faces of Peace initiative. To begin, we would first of all like to ask you: What does “peace” mean for you personally?

WILLIAMS: Peace is not simply the absence of armed conflict. That is the baseline on which sustainable peace can be built. For me, sustainable peace is peace built on human security, not national security. We do not need more, “modernized” nuclear weapons.

We do not need fully autonomous weapons that on their own can target and kill human beings. We need to use our resources so that the needs of people are met, not the needs of arms producers.

People should be able to live dignified lives, with equal access to education, health care, housing, etc. We need to focus on human security for sustainable peace, not national security to protect the infrastructure of the state. Peace and security should be people centered!

On 3 December 1997, 122 states signed the treaty for the banning of landmines. You and your campaign received the Nobel Peace Prize for this. How did you, as an American, come on the topic of landmines?

WILLIAMS: Actually, I was asked by two organizations – the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and a German humanitarian relief organization, “Medico International” – if I thought I could create an international coalition of nongovernmental organizations to pressure governments to ban antipersonnel landmines.

It was an amazing challenge that totally sparked my interest so I accepted that challenge and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was born. Today, some 164 nations are part of the Mine Ban Treaty.

Speaking of the Landmine Monitor 2020: With 5,554 dead, the global death toll remains high 23 years after the ban on landmines. Is this a sobering figure? What else can the international community do?

WILLIAMS: It is a very sobering question and demonstrates how long it takes to clean up the mess as chaos caused by war and violence. The international community must maintain its focus on supporting countries still plagued with landmines and that are working on mine-clearance.

The danger of landmines – especially improvised explosive devices – still exists. And the world has not become more peaceful anyway. What are the biggest threats to peace in 2021?

WILLIAMS: To my mind, the global obsession with weapons and violence while at the same time painting people who believe that peace is possible as intellectual “light weights” who don’t understand the harsh reality of the world are the two sides of the double-edged sword that keeps the world believing that only more weapons will keep us safe.

The biggest threats are the “modernization” of nuclear weapons and the new “revolution” of weapons – killer robots. The weapons are fully autonomous and can target and kill human beings on their own. A devastating “marriage” of artificial intelligence and weapons of war!

Bombs do not kill ideology: Just in office, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered an airstrike in Syria – and another was called off at the last minute. What are your thoughts about that?

WILLIAMS: As you point out, bombs cannot kill ideology. In fact, bombing and other acts of violence can strengthen ideological conviction and make recruiting new people easier. I did not support Obama’s extensive use of drone warfare either.

And speaking of Joe Biden: The US has so far not signed the Ottawa Convention. What do you think the chances are of this happening during Joe Biden’s presidency? Does the world need US leadership?

WILLIAMS: I cannot predict what Biden will do regarding the Mine Ban Treaty. But it is very likely he will roll back Trump’s policy and align his administration’s policy with that of the Obama administration, which brought the US very close to compliance with the treaty even if it was not signed.

Professor Williams, you are also chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. What exactly does this initiative do and how can one support your important work?

WILLIAMS: The Nobel Women’s Initiative was launched in 2006. It brings together five women recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, who use our influence and access to shine a spotlight on grassroots women’s organizations in conflict areas around the world working for sustainable peace with justice and equality.

*About the Faces of Democracy and Faces of Peace initiatives:

With almost 100 prominent figures from politics, business, the media and society – including the former President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway Erna Solberg, the President of the Republic of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid, the German Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas and OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger – the Faces of Democracy initiative is now in its fifth year of existence.

The first “faces” of the 2019 founded Faces of Peace initiative are SIPRI Director Dan Smith, the Chairman of the Atlantic Brücke e.V. Sigmar Gabriel, the OSCE CiO 2019 and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic Miroslav Lajčák and the Chief of Staff of the 69th Submarine Brigade of the Northern Fleet Vasili A. Arkhipov.

 

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The post World Moving Towards a “Devastating Marriage” of Artificial Intelligence & Weapons of War appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative & Faces of Peace initiative.

The post World Moving Towards a “Devastating Marriage” of Artificial Intelligence & Weapons of War appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Senderos latinos / Latino paths, Honduras, 2019

By Vijay Prashad
Apr 15 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On a Sunday night on 21 March 2021, gunmen stopped Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante (age 41) as he walked from this mother’s home to his own in the village of Nueva Granada near San Antonio de Cortés (Honduras). The gunmen opened fire in front of a catholic church, killing this leader of United Communities in front of his children. Forty bullets were found at the scene.

Jorge Vásquez of the National Platform of Indigenous Peoples said that Juan Carlos Cerros had been threatened for his leadership of the Lenca peoples and their fight to protect their land. Carlos Cerros was killed, Vásquez said, ‘because of the work we do’. None of his killers have been arrested.

Two and a half weeks later, on 6 April, Roberto David Castillo Mejía entered the Supreme Court in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Castillo, the former president of Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA), the company behind the Agua Zarca dam project on the Gualcarque River, came to face charges that he was the mastermind in the 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, the leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisation of Honduras (COPINH). The next day, on a plea from the defence, the Court agreed to suspend the trial for the fourth time.

Before the suspension, the legal team representing Berta and her family presented new evidence that established a wider conspiracy that involved the Atala Zablah family. The lawyers filed paperwork that showed confirmation of a payment of $1,254,000 from DESA to Potencia y Energia de Mesoamerica S.A. (PEMSA). This money went from DESA’s chief financial officer, Daniel Atala Midence, to David Castillo, who then funnelled it to the military officer Douglas Bustillo, who coordinated the assassination of Berta.

In 2013, DESA had initiated the construction of a hydroelectric dam without consulting the Lenca community, who consider the river to be a sacred and common resource. Berta Cáceres opposed the Agua Zarca dam and defended the land of the Lenca people. As Vásquez said of the murder of Carlos Cerros, Berta too was killed for the work she did. She was killed, her family says, by a conspiracy that involved the Atala Zablah family, the main financial backers of the dam project. The Atala Zablah family’s company, Inversiones Las Jacaranda, raised their money – despite pleas from Berta – from FMO (a Dutch development bank), FinnFund (a Finnish development investor), and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (a multilateral development institution).

Bertha and Laura Zúniga Cáceres at a mural made by el Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 2021.

‘We are in a lot of uncertainty’, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, the daughter of Berta Cáceres, told me; ‘the justice system in Honduras has never cared about this’. The ‘this’ in her statement relates to the role of DESA and its executives. The authorities have been shielding the Atala Zablah family and the ruling party, which had itself tried to collude in the cover-up.

In 2009, the US government actively participated in and egged on the oligarchy to undertake a coup d’état against the left-leaning government of Manuel Zelaya. Since then, Honduras has been governed by the far-right National Party, whose current leader and Honduran president is Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). After Berta Cáceres was assassinated, President Hernández’s minister of security Julián Pacheco Tinoco wrote to Pedro Atala Zablah, one of the leaders of the Atala Zablah family and a board member of DESA. He wanted to assure Atala Zablah and his family that the government would not pursue the case with any seriousness; the case, he said, would be seen as a ‘crime of passion’. Zúniga Cáceres tells me that ‘neither did the army act alone nor did the company act alone either’. There is, she says, ‘coordination between the economic and military power centres, which is the essence of the dictatorship under which we live in Honduras’.

This week, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published a dossier on the 2009 coup and on the regime of JOH. It looks at how these processes have created a climate of impunity for class violence by the elites – such as the Atala Zablahs – against leaders such as Berta Cáceres and Carlos Cerros, brave people who defend the dignity and land of all people in Honduras. We researched and wrote the dossier with COPINH and Peoples Dispatch (special thanks to Zoe Alexandra). The dossier, Pity the Nation: Honduras Is Being Eaten From within and without, comes in three parts:

1. Part 1 details the fact of the 2009 coup, authorised by the United States government of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
2. Part 2 unmasks the structure of extreme right terror sown by the coup regime, which has its tentacles deep in the world of narco-trafficking.
3. Part 3 provides three examples of the broad attack on the Honduran Left: the assassination of Berta, the attack on the trade unions, and the forced disappearance of Garifuna leaders in July 2020.

The third section ends with a quote from Miriam Miranda, a leader of the Black Fraternal Organisation of Honduras (OFRANEH): ‘We are tired of the lies from the government of Honduras. [Government reports] have no substance. They don’t say anything. They make a joke of us, the Garifuna people. We do not want lies. We want the truth. We want life to be worth more in our country. We have to build new paths. We will continue fighting so that this becomes a reality’.

In Yoro, Honduras, the people speak of the lluvia de peces, or the rain of fish, which they commemorate with a festival during the rainy season. Miracles such as this, it is hoped, will rescue people from the tribulations of hunger. Roberto Sosa (1930-2011), one of the great poets of Honduras, was born in Yoro, but he moved away from the miraculous toward the politics of the people and the Left. In 1968, he published his finest collection of poems, Los pobres (The Poor), which won the Adonáis Prize. The headline for this newsletter comes from one of the poems from this collection, La Casa de la Justicia. Here’s an extract:

I entered
the House of Justice
of my country
and found it to be
a temple
of snake charmers.

….

Grim judges
speak of purity
with words
that have acquired
the brightness
of a knife. The victims – in constrained space –
measure terror in a single blow.

Roberto Sosa’s line, ‘I entered the House of Justice of my country and found it to be a temple of snake charmers’, has been quoted often in the immediate aftermath of the 2009 coup and in the years that have followed. After the coup, Sosa said that Honduras had been turned ‘into a jail country’ (en un país cárcel). ‘Today, the entire country is militarised’, Sosa said, but he took refuge in the ‘massive and organised resistance that has not stopped demonstrating against the coup government, a resistance that does not retreat’.

There is no retreat even today. None for the people of Honduras.

The post I Entered My Country’s House of Justice and Found a Snake Charmer’s Temple appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Map of countries with projected austerity cuts in 2021-2022, in terms of GDP, based on IMF fiscal projections. Credit: I. Ortiz and M. Cummins, 2021

By Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins
NEW YORK and NAIROBI, Apr 15 2021 (IPS)

Last week Ministers of Finance met virtually at the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to discuss policies to tackle the pandemic and socio-economic recovery.

But a global study just published by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, international trade unions and civil society organizations, sounds an alert of an emerging austerity shock: Most governments are imposing budget cuts, precisely at a time when their citizens and economies are in greater need of public support.

Analysis of IMF fiscal projections shows that budget cuts are expected in 154 countries this year, and as many as 159 countries in 2022. This means that 6.6 billion people or 85% of the global population will be living under austerity conditions by next year, a trend likely to continue at least until 2025.

The high levels of expenditures needed to cope with the pandemic have left governments with growing fiscal deficit and debt. However, rather than exploring financing options to provide direly-needed support for socio-economic recovery, governments—advised by the IMF, the G20 and others—are opting for austerity.

The post-pandemic fiscal shock appears to be far more intense than the one that followed the global financial and economic crisis a decade ago. The average expenditure contraction in 2021 is estimated at 3.3% of GDP, which is nearly double the size of the previous crisis. More than 40 governments are forecasted to spend less than the (already low) pre-pandemic levels, with budgets 12% smaller on average in 2021-22 than those in 2018-19 before COVID-19, including countries with high developmental needs like Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Liberia, Libya, Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The dangers of early and overly aggressive austerity are clear from the past decade of adjustment. From 2010 to 2019, billions of people were affected by reduced pensions and social security benefits; by lower subsidies, including for food, agricultural inputs and fuel; by wage bill cuts and caps, which hampered the delivery of public services like education, health, social work, water and public transport; by the rationalization and narrow-targeting of social protection programs so that only the poorest populations received smaller and smaller benefits, while most people were excluded; and by less employment security for workers, as labor regulations were dismantled. Many governments also introduced regressive taxes, like consumption taxes, which further lowered disposable household income. In many countries, public services were downsized or privatized, including health. Austerity proved to be a deadly policy. The weak state of public health systems—overburdened, underfunded and understaffed from a decade of austerity—aggravated health inequalities and made populations more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Today, it is imperative to watch out for austerity measures with negative social outcomes. After COVID-19’s devastating impacts, austerity will only cause more unnecessary suffering and hardship.

Austerity is bad policy. There are, in fact, alternatives even in the poorest countries. Instead of slashing spending, governments can and must explore financing options to increase public budgets.

First, governments can increase tax revenues on wealth, property, and corporate income, including on the financial sector that remains generally untaxed. For example, Bolivia, Mongolia and Zambia are financing universal pensions, child benefits and other schemes from mining and gas taxes; Brazil introduced a tax on financial transactions to expand social protection coverage.

Second, more than sixty governments have successfully restructured/reduced their debt obligations to free up resources for development. Third, addressing illicit financial flows such as tax evasion and money laundering is a huge opportunity to generate revenue. Fourth, governments can simply decide to reprioritize their spending, away from low social impact investments areas like defense and bank/corporate bailouts; for example, Costa Rica and Thailand redirected military expenditures to public health.

Fifth, another financing option is to use accumulated fiscal and foreign reserves in Central Banks. Sixth, attract greater transfers/development assistance or concessional loans. A seventh option is to adopt more accommodative macroeconomic frameworks. And eighth, governments can formalize workers in the informal economy with good contracts and wages, which increases the contribution pool and expands social protection coverage.

Expenditure and financing decisions that affect the lives of millions of people cannot be taken behind closed doors at the Ministry of Finance. All options should be carefully examined in an inclusive national social dialogue with representatives from trade unions, employers, civil society organizations and other relevant stakeholders.

#EndAusterity is a global campaign to stop austerity measures that have negative social impacts. Since 2020, more than 500 organizations and academics from 87 countries have called on the IMF and Ministries of Finance to immediately stop austerity, and instead prioritize policies that advance gender justice, reduce inequality, and put people and planet first.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF
Matthew Cummins is senior economist who has worked at UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank.

 

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Credit: Alexander Suhorucov from Pexels.

By Héloïse Hakimi Le Grand
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 15 2021 (IPS)

Gender stereotyping in the media has a significant impact on how women and gender minorities are perceived. In turn, it affects their opportunities to fully and effectively participate in public life.

Lack of inclusivity in the media is one reason for widespread gender stereotyping. Recent findings from the 2020 Global Media Monitoring Project show that the news media falls far short of being an inclusive space for women, for example. The study found that women are subjects or sources in the news just 26% of the time, and that only 31% of experts consulted for televised COVID-19 stories were women.

The news media falls far short of being an inclusive space for women - Women are subjects or sources in the news just 26% of the time, and only 31% of experts consulted for televised COVID-19 stories were women, finds study 2020 Global Media Monitoring Project

To discuss what we can do to counter stereotypes about women and gender minorities in news coverage, NGO CSW65 –– the civil society side of the UN Commission on the Status of Women –– convened a panel discussion, moderated by ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. The panel explored the media’s role in mitigating gender stereotypes, and the potential for regulatory frameworks to counter its prevalence in the media.

Panelists were Chiara Adamo, head of “Gender Equality, Human Rights and Democratic Governance” at the European Commission, Motunrayo Alaka, founder of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism in Nigeria, Taboom Media’s Founding Director Brian Pellot, Colombian senator and former FARC commander Victoria Sandino, and Melanie Tobal, the founder of Publicitarias.org.

The session was co-hosted by CFI, Fondation Hirondelle, Free Press Unlimited, the Global Forum for Media Development, International Media Support and SembraMedia.

Here are some key takeaways.

 

Education

Education is the most effective approach to fighting gender stereotyping in the media, the panelists said. The goal is to train newsrooms so that reporters can consciously rid themselves of their own biases. “Often, the media pursues stories because it wants to meet a deadline and there is not too much time to learn the nuances of the issue,” said Alaka.

Education initiatives should start with the basics, said Tobal, since many people don’t even understand what gender stereotypes are. Many journalists think that taking gender into consideration when covering a story, and actively trying to fight the stereotypes that come with it is a trend they can quickly master, she added. “They want magic solutions, like a checklist or a quick workshop, or a quick talk and send,” she said. “But the issues are very complex.”

Pellot’s Taboom Media works to improve media coverage of LGBTQI+ rights. Without training, such topics are often misunderstood, and lack of education on LGBTQI+ issues can lead to further gender stereotyping. Pellot and his team train journalists on the concepts of informed consent and anonymity, for example, as they relate to LGBTQI+ individuals.

“Everyone has met a woman in their life, they know women. But the same is not necessarily true for sexual and gender minorities,” said Pellot. As such, educating newsrooms about LGBTQI+ coverage is focused on learning basic terminology and expanding the definition of gender.

 

Incentives

Newsrooms and journalists often have little incentive to change how they incorporate gender perspectives in their reporting. Panelists agreed that these initiatives need to come from leadership.

If activists and organizations can make it clear that better coverage of women and gender minorities is essential for sustainability, more newsrooms might seek training and create better incentives for their staff. As Barnathan pointed out, if a news outlet excludes 50% of its audience it will have a hard time thriving for much longer.

Adamo urged media funders to leverage their power to require change. For example, the European Commission, of which she is a part, runs the Creative Europe Media Program to support the development, promotion and distribution of European media works. “For the next seven years, we will ensure that those who request Creative Europe funds commit to gender equality in their company strategies,” she said.

 

Regulations

Regulation is a complex and delicate debate, said Adamo. Regulators need to make sure different human rights at play do not conflict. For instance, regulations should not unduly diminish freedom of expression for the sake of protecting gender equality.

There are ways to go about it that work, she said. In 2018, the European Commission introduced an audiovisual media directive prohibiting broadcast news from containing content that incites hate or violence on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, for example.

“Conflict exacerbates stereotypes that lead to violence against women and minorities,” said Sandino. The Colombian senator explained that regulations aren’t meant to hinder the free press, but to set up an inclusive ethical framework. She praised newsroom gender quotas as one option, adding that there should be a minimum percentage of women required for senior positions, as well.

Regulations are necessary, but they are a long route to change, said Alaka. These efforts always need to be supplemented by local, independent and immediate initiatives, such as training.

Tobal, based in Argentina, suggested that the country could bridge regulation and education by extending a current law there that requires training on gender perspective, diversity and violence for state workers to include the media as well.

 

Leadership

Sandino considers media ownership a key facet of the fight for change. “In Colombia, there is no woman owner of media. All conglomerates are handled by men. We need [women in charge] of information management, language, elimination of stereotypes and creating the space for women,” she said.

The women in charge must also be equipped to affect positive change, too, other panelists noted. “It’s not just that we’re getting more women in the space that’s important, it’s that the women that are getting into the space must have the right understanding of what they are going into the space to do, what power they have, and what they are going to change,” said Alaka. “They are going to program in a different way, they are going to frame in a different way, they are going to staff in a different way. The agenda is just different when they understand.”

 

Sources

The panelists agreed on the need to diversify sources and cite more women experts on all issues. Oftentimes, journalists go to their same sources repeatedly, out of convenience. The media, however, can help turn women sources who aren’t usually consulted into top experts in their fields, or for specific stories, Alaka noted.

“The media can make newsmakers,” she said. By adding women experts to their source lists, journalists can help change the perception of women in society.

Reducing gender stereotyping in the media won’t just result in better reporting, it will radiate to the rest of society. “The advantage of the media is that it goes beyond just taking care of itself. It can take care of the rest of society, too, and that’s why it’s important to get the media right so that we can help the rest of society,” said Alaka.

 

 

 

This story was originally published by IJNET, International Journalists’ Network

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Hydrophone launch. Credit: The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO)

By Jesse Ausubel and Ed Urban*
NEW YORK, Apr 15 2021 (IPS)

Travel and economic slowdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic have combined to brake shipping, seafloor exploration, and many other human activities in the ocean, creating a unique moment to begin a time-series study of the impacts of sound on marine life.

Our community of scientists has identified more than 200 non-military ocean hydrophones worldwide and hopes to make the most of the unprecedented opportunity to pool their recorded data into the 2020 quiet ocean assessment and to help monitor the ocean soundscape long into the future.

Our aim is a network of 500 hydrophones capturing the signals of whales and other marine life while assessing the racket levels of human activity. Combined with other sea life monitoring methods such as animal tagging, the work will help reveal the extent to which noise in “the Anthropocene seas” impacts ocean species, which depend on sound and natural sonar to mate, navigate and feed across the ocean.

Sound travels far in the ocean and a hydrophone can pick up low frequency signals from hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away.

Assessing the risks of underwater sound for marine life requires understanding what sound levels cause harmful effects and where in the ocean vulnerable animals may be exposed to sound exceeding these levels.

In 2011, experts began developing the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), launched in 2015 with the International Quiet Ocean Experiment Science Plan. Among our goals: to create a time series of measurements of ambient sound in many ocean locations to reveal variability and changes in intensity and other properties of sound at a range of frequencies.

The plan also included designating 2022 “the Year of the Quiet Ocean.” Due to COVID-19, however, the oceans are unlikely to be as quiet as they were in April, 2020 for many decades to come.

COVID-19 reduced sound levels more than we dreamed possible. IQOE, therefore, is focusing project resources to encourage study of changes in sound levels and effects on organisms that occurred in 2020, based on observations from hundreds of hydrophones worldwide in 2019-2021.

Of the 231 non-military hydrophones identified to February 2021, the highest concentrations are found along the North American coasts — Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic — Hawaii, Europe, and Antarctica, with some scattered through the Asia-Pacific region.

Several have agreed to their geographic coordinates and other metadata being shown on the IQOE website (https://www.iqoe.org/systems).

Sparse, sporadic deployment of hydrophones and obstacles to integrating measurements have narrowly limited what we confidently know.

We are therefore creating a global data repository with contributors using standardized methods, tools and depths to measure and document ocean soundscapes and effects on the distribution and behavior of vocalizing animals.

New software, MANTA (at https://bit.ly/3cVNUox), developed by researchers across the USA and led by the University of New Hampshire, will help standardize ocean sound recording data from collaborators, facilitating its comparability, pooling and visualization.

As well, an Open Portal to Underwater Sound (OPUS), is being tested at Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany to promote the use of acoustic data collected worldwide, providing easy access to MANTA-processed data. The aggregated data will permit soundscape maps of entire oceans.

Meanwhile, scientists over the past decade have developed powerful methods to estimate the distribution and abundance of vocalizing animals using passive acoustic monitoring.

The fledgling hydrophone network contributes to the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a network of observing assets monitoring currents, temperature, sea level, chemical pollution, litter, and other concerns worldwide.

Precious chance

Seldom has there been such a chance to collect quiet ocean data in the Anthropocene Seas. COVID-19 drastically decreased shipping, tourism and recreation, fishing and aquaculture, naval and coast guard exercises, offshore construction, port and channel dredging, and energy exploration and extraction. The concurrent price war that caused oil prices to dive to zero further quieted maritime energy activities.

The last comparable opportunity followed the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, which disrupted not just air travel; they also led to a shipping slowdown and ocean noise reduction, prompting biologists to study stress hormone levels in endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy.

With their 2001 data, research revealed higher September stress hormone levels over the next four years as the whales prepared to migrate to warmer southern waters where they calve, suggesting that the industrialized ocean causes chronic stress of animals.

We are on the way to timely, reliable, easily understood maps of ocean soundscapes, including the exceptional period of April 2020 when the COVID virus gave marine animals a brief break from human clatter.

Let’s learn from the COVID pause to help achieve safer operations for shipping industries, offshore energy operators, navies, and other users of the ocean.

Additional information about MANTA is available at https://bitbucket.org/CLO-BRP/manta-wiki/wiki/Home, and about the IQOE at https://bit.ly/3sDTkd

We invite parties in a position to help to join us in this global effort to assess the variability and trends of ocean sound and the effects of sound on marine life.

*Jesse Ausubel is the IQOE project originator and Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, New York City; Edward R. Urban Jr of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research is the IQOE Project Manager

 

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Activist-Nodeep-Kaur-Speaking-at-Farmers-Rally-at-the-Kundli-Manesar-Palwal-Expressway-in-Haryana. Credit: Sania Farooqui

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Apr 15 2021 (IPS)

On 12 January this year, somewhere in the outskirts of the capital, New Delhi, 24 year old Dalit activist Nodeep Kaur was arrested by the Haryana police for protesting outside a factory. During the lockdown in 2020, Nodeep joined a local workers’ rights organization called Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan (MAS) in the Kundli Industrial Area in Haryana. In January Nodeep was accused of allegedly manhandling management and staff of an industrial area during a protest and also assaulting the police team.

Nodeep had been participating in the farmers’ protest against the central government’s new agricultural reforms as well. She was taken into custody and accused in three separate cases and was charged under sections of the Indian law which included, attempt to murder, extortion, unlawful assembly, rioting and criminal intimidation. She has been granted bail, but her cases are still pending. Nodeep’s case was covered extensively by International media when Meena Harris, niece of American Vice President Kamala Harris, called for her release.

Nodeep’s crime, she told IPS, “I am a woman, I am Dalit and I am giving voice to the people who are often very easily suppressed.”

“They arrested me, they beat me up, ill-treated me, even inside the prison there was so much bias between upper caste and lower caste people. I was tortured a lot, I couldn’t walk, I was in so much pain, they didn’t give me access to a doctor, and kept me in isolation for days. I am grateful that I came out alive and I am here, where I am meant to be, with my people, with the working class and with the farmers,” Nodeep Kaur told IPS.

Nodeep hails from a family of activists and her parents have been associated with farmers’ union in Punjab. In 2014, her mother Swaranjeet Kaur led protest demanding justice for a minor Dalit girl who was gang raped in their village. She faced multiple death threats, was arrested and kept in custody for days.

“I am who I am today because of my mother. Our society is not created equal, there is so much caste based bias and if you are a woman, and a woman from my background (Dalit), its a bigger challenge. From a very young age I learnt to fight not just for myself but for others as well,” said Nodeep.

Dalit-Activist-Nodeep-Kaur. Credit: Sania Farooqui

In February, when Nodeep was granted bail, one of the first few statements she made right after coming out of the prison was, “I will definitely go to the Singhu border and sit with the farmers”. A few months into this, today as we speak, Nodeep has become one of the strongest voices that is leading the farmers protest in the country.

“This solidarity that you see today between the farmers and the working class is so powerful. Can you imagine what all can happen now that we are all united and standing up for each other?” says Nodeep. “My battle started with fighting for unpaid wages and unfair treatments of the working class in an Industrial area, and from there, today, I am here supporting and giving my voice to the farmers. I don’t know how or when it happened, but they call me their leader, and I am not going to let them down.”

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh have been protesting at several Delhi’s borders since November last year against three farm laws. The farmers have been demanding a repeal of the farm laws – Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers Empowerment and Protection Agreement on Price Assurance and farm Services Act 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

The farmers have also demanded a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for their crops and also to withdraw the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020, as they fear it will eventually lead to an end to subsidised electricity.

“All we are asking for is to withdraw these three laws which will deregulate the sale of our crops,” said Sukhdev Singh, State General Secretary of Bharti Kisan Union to IPS.

“Our biggest concern is that the recent laws that have been enacted by the central government will completely dismantle the MSP system, only the private players will benefit and us farmers we will end up out of business. We cannot afford to shut down the “mandi system”, that’s how we make money. Over 300 farmers have so far died while camping and protesting at these borders in Delhi. We have already lost so much, but our fight will continue,” Sukhdev Singh said.

The farmers protest is considered to be one of the biggest protests that has taken place in india, not just for its size and magnanimity but also because it has put women in the forefront who are now often seen leading the protest despite being asked to leave.

Activist Nodeep Kaur with a Farmer. Credit: Sania Farooqui

“This is a revolution, we are here to raise our voices, if we don’t do this today, what will our future generations have,” says *Ratinder Kaur, a 65-year-old farmer from Punjab. Ratinder has been camping at Singhu border since January 2021, and plans to stay on at the border as her husband returns to Punjab to cut crops this week.

“How can anyone tell us we can’t participate? We women are farmers too, we go to the field, we farm, we do other labour incentive work and we also look after our families,” Ratinder says.

International Humanitarian group OXFAM states that nearly 80% of the full-time workers on Indian farms are women, they comprise 33% of the agricultural labor force and 48 % of the self-employed farmers yet only about 13% women own land. The agrarian societies in India are extremely patriarchal societies, characterized by deeply entrenched feudal structures where women and men rarely have equal access to resources.

Closing this gender gap is essential in order to accelerate the pace of growth in the agricultural sector. Gender based discrimnation continues to thrive in the country in different ways, for the women farmers in India, they are yet to be recognized as farmers in Indian policies, ”thereby denying them of institutional supports of the bank, insurance, cooperatives, and government departments,” says OXFAM.

“Do you know why we call Nodeep our leader? She is just like us farmers, strong and resilient. Nothing can stop her, and when she goes up on the stage and talks, everybody listens,” says *Kiranjeet, a 57-year old farmer from Punjab who joined the protestors camping at Tikri border and then at Singhu border since March.

“I have left my children back home in Punjab, and I am going to be staying here, just like my other farmer sisters. It’s important for us women to fight this fight, when inflation hits, when prices go up, when there is no money at home, we know how much we have struggled to get the next meal.

“Nodeep is the future, we need youngsters like her, and so many other sisters who came out to support us. When one woman speaks, so many others join her. Our husbands have gone back home, its crop cutting season and now we are going to be here for the next few months, it’s our right and our fight,” Kiranjeet says.

The farmers protest is not the first time women in India took on leadership roles in both political movements and mass protests. Women constituted a significant proportion of street protesters during the anti-CAA protests in the country since December 2019. The biggest challenge in India however remains how to transform their leadership into equal representations in high-level government positions, without gender, caste and religious bias.

The very idea that the farmers movement in the country is transforming women’s presence and influence within their own patriarchal and often caste based biased set ups, there is no pushing them back into a space of invisibility. “Without women there is no revolution,” says Nodeep. “We (women) have gone through so much, have fought so much, have survived so much, they thought they could put inside a prison and I will keep quiet. I am here to fight and I am here to stay, come what may, they have made their people’s leader, and I am not going to let them down,” says Nodeep.

*Names changed to maintain identity

 

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Apr 14 2021 (IPS-Partners)

“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity,” Nelson Mandela once said. Today, the humanity of 128 million children and adolescents living in countries is impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters, where virtually every single one of their human rights are being challenged. The most central one, and in all too many cases, their only hope – their inherent right to an inclusive quality education, as enshrined in international human rights conventions – is brutally challenged, if not also willfully ignored or denied.

Yasmine Sherif

It is hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that this is still happening in the 21st century.

During ECW’s travels to witness first-hand their reality under COVID-19 in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, we have stood face to face with children, youth, teachers, ministers and communities suffering violence, dispossession, extreme poverty, displacement and a chronic fear of whether they will survive. We have seen their silent and painful struggle to exercise or deliver on the inherent right to an education. What they are facing is not the hope of humanity, but rather the despair of utter inhumanity.

We can make a difference in all their lives; so why don’t we? Despite the economic recession wrought upon the world by COVID-19, there is still an abundance of financial resources in the world, which – if more equitably distributed – could be used to invest in their right to an inclusive and continued quality education. Wealthier governments and the private sector can afford to be humane and invest in humanity. It is not just a privilege or even duty to do so, but it is also what makes us humane. The future, dignity and empowerment of 128 million children and youth across the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia urgently require access to a continued quality education. To deny or ignore their right to a quality education is inhumane.

This week, the Education Cannot Wait Fund’s ‘Case for Investment’ was unanimously approved during our High-Level Steering Group – chaired by The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education – and composed of development ministers, director generals of development, heads of UN agencies, private sector CEOs and high-level representatives of civil society. The European Union and Canada were the first to announce contributions in support of ECW’s Case for Investment during the same meeting. With another 19 ECW strategic donor partners and many more out there yet to join ECW, we are optimistic that we can – and will – join forces to reach our target for 2021/22 of just $400 million.

ECW’s Case for Investment seeks to renew the global promise made by world leaders and the private sector during the 2016 Humanitarian Summit when establishing the Education Cannot Wait Fund. The promise that no child or youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises shall be denied their right to a quality education. This promise will and must be honored. It has never been more urgent, as the world faces an unprecedented global education crisis, with the original estimate of 75 million children and youth left furthest behind now sharply and rapidly increased to 128 million due to COVID-19.

ECW urgently needs at least an additional $400 million to bridge its funding gap for the period 2021-2023 to ensure that an additional 4.5 million crisis-affected children and adolescents – especially 2.7 million girls – receive an education over the next three years. This will bring the total number of children reached by ECW between 2017–2023 to 9 million.

Reaching our funding target means that ECW is able to provide seed funding for Multi-Year Resilience Programmes for at least 26 countries over the next three years, while also leveraging an additional $1 billion towards the outcomes of the programmes. Our seed funding provides certainty and predictability to partners who work together around the clock across the humanitarian and development divide in delivering quality education in the world’s most complex and protracted crises. The ECW model is proven. It works. All that is needed now is the financing.

In the coming months and year, ECW’s Case for Investment will serve as a blueprint to attract the resources required, while also building momentum for a major financing pledging event in early 2022. We will work with all our partners to cement inter-sectoral linkages to ensure a holistic, ‘whole of child’ approach to education, and place special focus on girls and children with disabilities among the millions affected by wars, forced displacement and climate change induced disasters.

“Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue and abiding love,” said the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Now we need to move from human rights conventions and summit commitments to truly deliver on the right to a quality education by making our promises a reality for 128 million children and adolescents in the most crisis-affected parts on the globe.

Now is the time to turn the vision of education for every child and youth in conflict, crisis and forced displacement into concrete results. As H.E. Rangina Hamidi, the first female Minister of Education of Afghanistan in the last 30 years – and role model for all Afghan girls – says in our Newsletter interview: “The time to invest in education is now.“

We still have an opportunity to leave behind a legacy of humanity for future generations. We still have a chance to unleash our own humanity to honor the humanity of those left furthest behind. Let us take action together, now.

The author is Director, Education Cannot Wait

 

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María Luz Rodríguez stands next to her solar oven where she cooked lasagna in the village of El Salamar in San Luis La Herradura municipality. In this region in southern El Salvador, an effort is being made to implement environmental actions to ensure the sustainable use of natural resources. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/ IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador, Apr 14 2021 (IPS)

A score of coastal communities in El Salvador are staking their bets on sustainable development as a form of life that does not overexploit natural resources diminished by years of government neglect and a lack of environmental awareness, using instruments ranging from ecological cookstoves to mangrove reforestation.

“We learned to coexist better with the environment, to use it but without degrading it, especially the mangroves; without the mangroves there would be no fish in the wetlands,” Daniel Mercado, president of the San Luis La Herradura Local Development Committee, told IPS.

The coastal villages of this and other surrounding municipalities are located in the Estero de Jaltepeque, a complex ecosystem where a variety of animal and plant species live in the mangroves, bodies of water and wetlands.

El Estero is a nature reserve whose watershed covers 934 square kilometres in the coastal region of the central department of La Paz, in this Central American country of 6.8 million people.

Some 600 families in these communities received support to promote a sustainable development model that has yielded good results. The investment of more than 400,000 dollars came from the Small Grants Programme of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Many of these people now use environmentally friendly stoves, such as rocket stoves: circular stoves that require very little wood and produce little smoke.

In addition, the firewood comes from living fences made of gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) trees, which provide firewood, thus protecting the mangroves from people looking for fuel.

The complement to the rocket stove is the so-called magic stove, a circular box made of polystyrene, a material that retains heat.

Once the soup or stew has boiled on the stove, the pot is placed in a magic stove and covered, and the cooking is completed. This saves on both wood and time, as people can do other chores in the meantime.

Solar ovens have also been introduced, made up of a box with a lid which functions as a mirror that directs sunlight into the interior, covered with metal sheets.

Other components of the project, which ended in 2018, include the implementation of sustainable agriculture and fisheries.

The beneficiaries had to work planting mangroves in order to receive support from the programme. As a result, 500 hectares of mangroves have been preserved or restored and sustainable practices have been implemented on 300 hectares of marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

However, preserving the mangroves is still a challenge because people from other communities come to cut down the trees, and government authorities do little to prevent it, Mercado said.

In any case, sustainable development can be tasted in food cooked on ecological stoves and in other initiatives carried out along the Pacific coast of this small Central American nation, where awareness of the need for sustainable development is growing among local inhabitants.

For more information, you can read this story: Recipes with a Taste of Sustainable Development on the Coast of El Salvador.

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The UN Security Council is now the battleground for a new Cold War between the US and China. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2021 (IPS)

A new Cold War – this time, between the US and China —is threatening to paralyze the UN’s most powerful body, even as military conflicts and civil wars are sweeping across the world, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

The growing criticism against the Security Council is directed largely at its collective failures to resolve ongoing conflicts and political crises in several hot spots, including Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Ukraine and Libya — and its longstanding failure over Palestine.

The sharp divisions between China and Russia, on one side, and the Western powers on the other, are expected to continue, triggering the question: Has the Security Council outlived its usefulness or has it lost its political credibility?

The five big powers are increasingly throwing their protective arms around their allies, despite growing charges of war crimes, genocide and human rights violations against these countries.

Last week, Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director at Human Rights Watch, called on Britain “to step up as penholder on Myanmar and start negotiating a Security Council draft resolution on an arms embargo and targeted sanctions against the military”.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/02/china-russia-throw-protective-arms-around-myanmar/

Over 580 people, including children, have been killed since the February 1 coup: “it is time for the Security Council to do more than issue statements and begin working towards substantive action,“ she warned.

But in most of these conflicts, including Myanmar, arms embargoes are very unlikely because the major arms suppliers to the warring parties are the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, Russia and China.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/03/worlds-worst-humanitarian-disaster-triggered-deadly-weapons-us-uk/

US President Joe Biden has described the growing new confrontation as a battle between democracies and autocracies.

In a recent analytical piece, the New York Times said China’s most striking alignment is with Russia, with both countries drawing closer after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The two countries have also announced they will jointly build a research station on the moon, setting the stage to compete with US space programmes.

“The threat of a US-led coalition challenging China’s authoritarian policies has only bolstered Beijing’s ambition to be a global leader of nations that oppose Washington and its allies,” the Times said.

Ian Williams, President of the New York-based Foreign Press Association and author of ‘UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War’, told IPS that in the early years, with a secure majority in the General Assembly (GA), the US could pretend virtue and eschew using the veto. The embattled Soviets resorted it over and over.

“But as with so much UN and international law, the Israeli exception had the US making up for lost time. Now the Russians have been catching up with vetoes for Serbia and Syria”.

China, he pointed out, avoided using the veto unless Taiwan or Tibet was mentioned. In the old days there was a hint of an ideological element — Third World and Socialism versus Imperialism.

“But now it is entirely transactional, veto holders looking after their clients and allies, so no one should entertain illusions about China and Russia acting in a progressive and constructive way. But the US is no position to point fingers about Syria while it protects Saudi Arabia and Israel”.

“We can hope that the majority of members will grow indignant enough to try to effect indignation. But sadly, historical experience suggests many governments have almost unlimited tolerance for mass murder in far-away countries of which they know little,” he noted, including Darfur, the Balkans, Rwanda and now Myanmar.

The breakthrough would be the US saying, end the Occupation and then inviting others to join in a reaffirmation of the Charter.

“But since I don’t really believe in the tooth fairy, I would have to settle for a coalition of the conscious-stricken in the GA united for peace – and international law and order”, said Williams, a senior analyst who has written for newspapers and magazines around the world, including the Australian, The Independent, New York Observer, The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Asked about the killings in Myanmar, and the lack of action in the UNSC, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on March 29: “We need more unity in international community. We need more commitment in the international community to put pressure in order to make sure that the situation is reversed. I’m very worried. I see, with a lot of concern, the fact that, apparently, many of these trends look irreversible, but hope is the last thing we can give up on.”

Vijay Prashad, Executive Director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, who has written extensively on international politics, told IPS the United Nations is an essential institution, a process, in many ways, rather than a fully-finished institution.

The agencies of the UN – including WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR, he said, provide vital service to the world’s peoples; “and we need to make these institutions more robust, and we need to ensure that they drive a public agenda that advances the UN Charter’s main goals (namely to maintain peace, to end hunger and illiteracy, to provide the basis for a rich life, in sum).”

The Security Council is a victim of the political battles in the world, he argued.

“There is no way to build a better framework to handle the major power differentials”., said Prashad, author of 30 books, including most recently ‘Washington Bullets’ (LeftWord, Monthly Review),

“It would be far better to empower the UN General Assembly, which is more democratic, but since the 1970s we have seen how the US – in particular – undermined the UNGA to take decision making almost exclusively to the UNSC”.

Ever since the fall of the USSR, he said, the UN Secretary-General has become subservient to the US government (“we saw this shockingly with the treatment of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali”).

The new ‘Group of Friends to Defend the UN Charter’, which includes China and Russia, is a positive development, said Prashad, the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a former professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters on March 31: “And then in terms of working with my counterparts in the Security Council, I know that there are areas – and this is a discussion that I’ve had – with both my Russian and Chinese colleagues – we know that there are red lines”.

“There are areas where we have serious concerns, and we’ve been open and we’ve been frank about those concerns. In China, what is happening with the Uyghurs, for example. With Russia, in Syria, and there are many others. We know what the red lines are”, she added.

“We tried to bridge those gaps, but we also try to find those areas where we have common ground. We’ve been able to find common ground on Burma (Myanmar). With the Chinese, we’re working on climate change in, I think, a very positive way. We’re not in the exact same place, but it’s an area where we can have conversations with each other.”

“So as the top U.S. diplomat in New York, it is my responsibility to find common ground so that we can achieve common goals, but not to give either country a pass when they are breaking human rights values or pushing in directions that we find unacceptable,” she declared.

Meanwhile, harking back to a bygone era, during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, the United Nations was the ideological battle ground where the Americans and the Soviets pummeled each other– either on the floor of the General Assembly hall or at the horse-shoe table of the UN Security Council.

Perhaps one of the most memorable war of words took place in October 1962 when the politically-feisty US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (1961-65), a two-time Democratic US presidential candidate, challenged Soviet envoy Valerian Zorin over allegations that the USSR, perhaps under cover of darkness, had moved nuclear missiles into Cuba—and within annihilating distance of the United States.

Speaking at a tense Security Council meeting, Stevenson admonished Zorin: “I remind you that you didn’t deny the existence of these weapons. Instead, we heard that they had suddenly become defensive weapons. But today — again, if I heard you correctly — you now say they don’t exist, or that we haven’t proved they exist, with another fine flood of rhetorical scorn.”

“All right sir”, said Stevenson, “let me ask you one simple question. Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba?” “Yes or No? Don’t wait for the translation: Yes or No?”, Stevenson insisted with a tone of implied arrogance.

Speaking in Russian through a UN translator (who faithfully translated the US envoy’s sentiments into English), Zorin shot back: “I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does. In due course, sir, you will have your reply. Do not worry.”

Not to be outwitted, Stevenson howled back: “You are in the court of world opinion right now, and you can answer yes or no. You have denied that they exist. I want to know if …I’ve understood you correctly.”

When Zorin said he will provide the answer in “due course”, Stevenson famously declared: “I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over.”

*Thalif Deen is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That.” The 220-page book is filled with scores of anecdotes– from the serious to the hilarious– and is available on Amazon worldwide and at the Vijitha Yapa bookshop in Sri Lanka. The links follow:
https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
https://www.vijithayapa.com/

  

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This family in Tuvalu* is at the frontline of the effects of climate change. The water is only 10 metres from their house at high tide. Tuvalu rarely exceeds 3 metres above sea level, and at its widest point it spans about 200 meters. Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. Rising sea levels combined with extreme weather events is contributing to the inundation of low-lying areas. Coastal erosion is also a major problem in Tuvalu, particularly on the western side of the islands. Credit: Mark Garten/UN Photo

By Liu Zhenmin
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2021 (IPS)

Millions of lives lost. Trillions of dollars in economic damage. Over 120 million more people pushed into extreme poverty. The human and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic is almost unimaginable – a once-in-a-century catastrophe.

But in fact, the pandemic heralds a new normal – a world of systemic risks, where disasters and shocks do not remain local, but can have unpredictable and escalating global consequences. Humankind must come to terms with our fragility and heed the harsh lessons COVID-19 has taught us.

Our economies and societies are ever more interconnected. This is a source of prosperity and efficiency, but also makes us vulnerable to contagion and cascading crises. Global risks – pandemics, financial crises, climate change – increasingly undermine the progress we have made in the fight against poverty.

Unless we adjust, the Sustainable Development Goals will almost certainly be out of reach.

What are COVID-19’s lessons for us? What investments are needed to reduce systemic risks and better prepare for the next crisis? The United Nations’ 2021 Financing for Sustainable Development Report sets out recommendations for long-term investments in prevention and risk reduction. It also identifies measures to make development finance more resilient to shocks – and prevent disasters from derailing development progress.

Managing risks should be a routine aspect of all financial management. But COVID-19 has demonstrated that this is often not the case. The pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in both public budgets and corporate balance sheets which have been growing over the last decade, leaving countries ill-prepared for the current crisis. More than half of the poorest countries are now either in or at risk of debt distress.

Countries will need a multi-instrument approach. For example, debt management needs to better account for growing risks.

UN Under Secretary-General for Economic & Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin. Credit: UNDESA/Predrag Vasić

Official lenders can help. Going forward, they should routinely include state-contingent clauses in their loans to vulnerable countries, to have automatic standstills in debt service in case of disasters and shocks.

Lenders can also support the poorest countries with risk-transfer and insurance mechanisms for low-frequency high impact events such as climate-related disasters, as well as budgetary instruments such as contingency funds for more frequent but less costly shocks.

Much of the corporate world was also caught flat-footed when COVID-19 hit, due to high leverage and just-in-time supply chains without built-in redundancies to accommodate shocks. Massive public support packages have prevented a systemic financial crisis and helped many companies weather the storm. But such support may be less forthcoming next time.

Private investors must take into account all material risks in their investment decisions – including longer-term social and environmental risks — just as they now increasingly account for climate risks. This will require, as a critical first step, mandatory disclosure of environmental, social and development impacts of corporate behaviour.

But it’s not enough just to manage material balance sheet risks more effectively. We have to break the cycle of spending large sums on post-disaster support while neglecting new risks we create along the way.

We must focus on investments in prevention, in risk reduction and in resilience. As these are a public good, the public sector must take the lead in ensuring they are provided and funded.

Policy makers must make sure that incentives to private investors are fully aligned with sustainable development. That can include measures such as adequate pricing of carbon emissions and other externalities, bans of single-use plastics, or requirements to conduct due diligence from suppliers on social risks.

Political cycles often make investments in prevention – with uncertain or long-term pay-offs – seem unattractive to governments. Yet public finance can be a powerful tool to reduce risks, through investments in climate mitigation, and in structural and societal resilience.

Structural resilience includes investments in resilient infrastructure or early warning systems; societal in strengthened social protection mechanisms that can deliver rapid and scaled up support in times of crisis.

Many developing countries will need additional financial and technical support. For example, aid programmes have so far not sufficiently prioritized health system strengthening, which is crucial to survive the next pandemic.

No country can do it alone. Systemic risks tend not to respect national borders. Both climate mitigation and the COVID-19 pandemic underline the need to work together. It is not only that developing countries with limited resources need international support to address the fallout from crises not of their making, but these crises cannot be solved without a global approach. Just as it is in everyone’s interest to have vaccinations for all; it’s equally true for carbon-neutral development pathways.

The world needs new forms of international cooperation that amplify the voices of the most vulnerable countries in global decision-making processes. Only when their priorities are fully reflected, will the risks to their sustainable development be adequately addressed.

*Secretary-General António Guterres visited Tuvalu as part of a trip to the South Pacific to spotlight the issue of climate change ahead of the Climate Action Summit in September in New York. In addition to Tuvalu, the trip took him to New Zealand, Fiji and Vanuatu. In each country, the Secretary-General met with government leaders, civil society representatives and youth groups, to hear from those already impacted by climate change and who are also successfully engaging in meaningful climate action.

 

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The post COVID-19 Teaches Us to Better Manage Global Systemic Risks appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is UN Under Secretary-General for Economic & Social Affairs

The post COVID-19 Teaches Us to Better Manage Global Systemic Risks appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Saber Azam
GENEVA, Apr 13 2021 (IPS)

Three recent developments bring about again the reasoning on the dire need to immediately reform the United Nations (UN) and avoid its predictable slide to redundancy.

First, the tragic killing near Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of Italian Ambassador Mr. Luca Attanasio on 22 February 2021 engendered a shock within the diplomatic community. Unfortunately, the assassination of top envoys and diplomats has regularly occurred for a long time.

The emissaries of Xerxes the Great, the fourth Achaemenid Emperor of Persia, were killed by Leonidas I, the King of Sparta, in 481 BC. More recently, Mr. Richard Sykes, Ambassador of the United Kingdom in the Netherlands, was gunned down by a terrorist organization on 22 March 1979.

Mr. Philippe Bernard, Ambassador of France, was killed on 28 January 1993 in Kinshasa in Zaire (now the DRC). A terrorist organization assassinated Mr. Christopher Stevens, Ambassador of the United States in Libya, and three of his colleagues on 11 September 2012 in Benghazi. These are a few among countless diplomats who lost their lives in the exercise of their functions.

UN senior officials have also been targets of thugs and extremist groups. Most notably, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, seven members of his delegation, six Swedish aircrew, and two Swedish soldiers lost their lives on 18 September 1961 in a plane crash near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (currently Zambia).

The aircraft was apparently shot at by a ground-air missile. Mr. Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine, was killed by a terrorist organization on 17 September 1948 in Jerusalem.

Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative for Iraq, fourteen of his colleagues, and seven other people were murdered by a terrorist attack in Baghdad on 19 August 2003. Numerous other distinguished staff, police, and military personnel serving under the UN flag have, too, lost their lives in the line of duty.

Fateful missions have been part of the UN field staff reality in recent years. Peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in conflict-affected areas of the world are particularly hazardous and vulnerable.

However, the murder of Ambassador Attanasio, representing an influential member state, within the framework of a UN humanitarian mission is indeed a development that crosses a new line in some’s barbaric behavior. Does it signify that increasingly the UN becomes an instrument for political or financial haggles?

With the number of terrorist and other proscribed organizations swelling in Africa and Asia, there is a growing fear that humanitarian missions will routinely become targets of unlawful armed individuals or groups, hence preventing help to reach the neediest, averting monitoring of the programs by donors, and increasing further the tragic possibility of hostage-taking and loss of lives.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a perfect example of a situation where neither the diplomatic missions nor the UN can effectively have access to their funding beneficiaries. This allows an increased level of corruption by gangs who initiate insecurity for their unlawful gains, making humanitarian efforts questionable. A profound reflection on how the UN should do business in conflict-affected areas must be undertaken.

Second and as stipulated recently [http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/03/high-ranking-un-jobs-political-birthright-big-powers/], a significant number of senior UN positions are attributed through political understandings to the citizens of the five permanent members of the Security Council or Western and industrialized countries.

It has so far been a sad reality, and the UN culture does not seem to have evolved in a positive direction. While the organization needs desperately funding and political support to accomplish its noble tasks, it can only better flourish by having competent leaders, fair shares of responsibilities among “all nations, big or small,” and apply diversity in its real sense effectively.

Political pressure and games of influence play an essential role when senior positions, including that of the Secretary-General’s, are attributed. The so-called “transparent, inclusive, and merit-based appointment process” to headhunt the ablest candidates from all countries has always been a mirage.

As a result, many leadership positions are either rotating among citizens of the most powerful countries or occupied by individuals for a very long period, causing sclerosis that has already triggered brain and spinal damage to the system.

Besides, a sizeable number of senior staff rotates from one position to another, preventing the organization from the much-needed new blood. Such a practice renders innovation, transparency, competency, fairness, and diversity illusive. The majority of Member States increasingly believe that their concerns are not taken into account and voices not heard!

Third, the candidacy of Ms. Arora Akanksha, a young UN audit coordinator, to challenge the incumbent Mr. António Guterres is refreshing and audacious. In the past, only senior staff presented their candidacies – one of them, Mr. Kofi Annan, succeeded to be endorsed by the Security Council and elected – but only when a superpower vetoed the incumbent.

In principle, a staff never runs against the occupant of the position who is a candidate for a second term. Ms. Arora declared that “we are not living up to our purpose or our promise. We are failing those we are here to serve.” Does it imply that frustration grows among dozens of thousands of devoted staff members who justifiably realize that their leadership’s rhetoric becomes increasingly moot?

Most people idealize the actions and ethics of international entities. They seem puzzled by the quiet acquiescence of certain senior leaders of multilateral bodies to those who propel them to the supreme functions for fear of not being re-elected.

Defending human values and rights, mainly when issues are politically sensitive, must constitute the guiding principles for deeds! Reaction to the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement in the United States was a serious test for UN leadership as a whole and the Secretary-General in particular.

Indications that some preferred silence, endeavoring to get into Mr. Trump’s inner circle instead of denouncing police brutality, judicial discrimination, and unfair treatment of people of color was appalling. Now, their muzzled tweeter accounts loudly advocate for equal rights and social justice!

Ms. Arora’s candidacy should not be considered an accidental occurrence, though her chances are very slim. It may undoubtedly demonstrate an accumulation of ordinary staff members’ long-standing deep annoyance. The conclusion that some have given “away the store as part of [their earlier] campaign [and their] re-election effort will follow the same path” must be considered a matter of great concern by decision-making states.

In conclusion, the UN is at a very crucial crossroads. Inefficient and complaisant leadership is to blame. It must be underlined that authority, responsibility, and accountability are inseparable.

Unequivocal implementation of international standards, and rise against those who infringe them, be it states, big or small, institutions or individuals should be the prime concern of any leader. Moreover, fulfilling the indispensable requirements stipulated in articles 100.1 and 101.3 of the UN Charter must not be jeopardized for any given personal, political, or other reasons.

It is not too late to make the UN a credible international body again and avoid its looming redundancy. However, it has to be reformed profoundly. The Biden administration can be the precursor of such a change. The following aspects of the comprehensive suggestions about the necessity to preserve its integrity and efficiency [http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/08/reform-united-nations-organization/] require immediate actions:

A – The mandate of political positions, i.e., Assistant Secretaries-General, Under Secretaries-General, and Secretary-General, must be brought to one term of only five years at the end of their current terms. This will significantly reduce political pressure and fear for re-election on incumbents and allow faster rotation, increasing the chances of talented individuals from within the system and developing countries to compete.

In addition, the post of Secretary-General will alter quicker, hence making it possible for all continents to claim leadership of the organization more equitably. It is inconceivable that Latin America, with no permanent seat in the Security Council, an area of over 20 million square kilometers, and a population of over 650 million persons, had only one Secretary-General.

In contrast, Europe with three permanent members in the Security Council, an area of about 5.4 million square kilometers, and a population of 485 million individuals (UK, France, and the European part of the Russian Federation excluded as they are permanent members of the Security Council) had four!

It is high time that continental inequalities be addressed equitably through the proposed measure so that even Australia and New Zealand could achieve their justified desire of leading the organization. Besides, the last sentence of article 97 of the UN Charter should be legally interpreted in such a way to allow gender equity. A Security Council or General Assembly resolution would be enough to enact such a fair measure.

B – The confusion over mandates of different entities must be clarified immediately. With the idea of delivering as one, every organization claims to have a role in responding to a challenge. Useless, and on some occasions harmful, competition for relevance and funding adds to the delayed or inadequate response, tarnishing the image of the UN.

A conclusive interagency discussion under the guidance of the Security Council or General Assembly can quickly draw a framework to prevent mandate overlapping while a more profound reform would be needed to streamline charters/statutes of different bodies (see point C below).

C – Other proposed reforms (mandates, UN actions in conflict-affected areas, structures, management, culture/ethics, and delivering as one) would be time-consuming. As specified in the proposed reform of the UN referenced above, external experts of some ten world-class personalities with critical views about the organization must come together with a resolution and, under the supervision of the Security Council to elaborate an implementable strategy, time-bound action plan, and budgetary requirements.

[*] Saber Azam is the author of SORAYA: The Other Princess, a historical fiction overflying the latest seven decades of Afghan history through the eyes of a bright woman and Hell’s Mouth, depicting the excellent work of humanitarian workers in Ivory Coast during the First Liberian Civil War between 1994 and 1997.

 

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The post Profound Reform or Redundancy – United Nations’ Quandary? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer* is a former United Nations official who served in Europe, Africa, and Asia

The post Profound Reform or Redundancy – United Nations’ Quandary? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) has pioneered the food pyramid, which recommends both nutritious and good food for the planet. In its latest report, it makes recommendations for Africa. Credit: Anaya Katlego / Unsplash

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 13 2021 (IPS)

With the two extremes of global hunger and obesity on the increase, a new report suggests a radical reset for food and nutrition to ensure the long-term sustainability of livelihoods and the environment.

According to a new Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) report, 690 million people globally lack sufficient food. COVID-19 has worsened these conditions, and it’s projected that between 83 and 132 million more people will join the ranks of the undernourished because of interrupted livelihoods caused by the pandemic.

A BCFN report, “A one health approach to food – The Double Pyramid connecting food culture, health and climate”, raises concerns that in some African countries, the consumption of cheap sources of high-quality protein, vitamins, and minerals – such as eggs – remains low. The report will be launched on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

The Double Pyramid combines a health and climate pyramid that “serves as a guideline for daily food choices in enhancing people’s awareness and enriching their knowledge about the impacts of food choices to encourage dietary patterns that are healthy for humans and more sustainable for the planet.”

According to aid agencies, the model will resonate with the needs of perennially food stressed countries in the Global South, where climate change and food security have affected the livelihoods of millions who have only one meal a day.

“The African Double Pyramid attempts to illustrate that it is possible to respect local traditions and preferences while recommending a frequency with which foods should be consumed to promote improved health and a low impact on the environment,” says the report.

The experimental African Double Pyramid covered five countries – Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Researchers noted that while the African continent was diverse, “generally, some common traits can also be found, such as the single-course meal based on a starchy ingredient.”

But as Marta Antonelli, the Barilla Foundation’s head of research, told IPS, food politics have become a matter of different strokes for different folks.

“Different areas of the world have different priorities to look at. The principles of a sustainable and healthy diet can be applied in all contexts and inform a new approach towards food,” she said.

“Today, food systems fail to provide adequate and equitable food for all and pose an unsustainable burden on the environment. Health and the environment need to be considered together when addressing food systems, which are an extremely powerful leverage to improve both,” Antonelli.

The report comes when the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says more than 3 billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. This is a paradox the Barilla Foundation has tackled in its past reports where it showed malnutrition in all of its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight/obesity was increasing. Its Global Nutrition Report showed that 88% of countries face a serious burden of either two or three forms of malnutrition, namely undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency or overweight or obesity. Recent findings include that child and adult obesity have increased in almost all countries, burdening already struggling global health care systems.

Still, some African countries present immediate challenges to meeting the Double Pyramid model.

In a news release dated March 29, the World Food Programme’s Zimbabwe country director Francesca Erdelmann said more than 2.4 million people in urban areas struggled to meet their basic food needs.

“Reduced access to nutritious food has resulted in negative impacts for many. Families will find it difficult to put food on the table. The fortunate ones will skip meals while those without will have to go to bed with an empty stomach,” Erdelmann said, adding that “for the most vulnerable people, hunger will have a lasting effect on their lives.”

The Barilla report notes that healthy diets’ affordability is “compromised especially in low- and middle-income countries” while also calling for the reduction in the cost of nutritious foods. It also calls for a reorientation of agriculture priorities towards more nutrition-sensitive food and agricultural production.

The call could prove difficult for African countries that include Zimbabwe, where agriculture remains underfunded. The government has long struggled to convince smaller holders to plant more nutritious and drought-resistant crop varieties.

“Our children do not like food prepared with small grains. They are used to maize meal. That is why we continue growing maize,” Fanyana Jamela, a smallholder in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, told IPS.

Nathan Hayes, a senior Africa analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, says more needs to be done if countries, such as Zimbabwe, are to meet the recommendations of international agencies regarding food and nutrition.

“Over the long-term, Zimbabwe must increase the volumes of domestic food production and improve the distribution of food to improve food availability and to allow Zimbabweans to meet their nutritional needs,” Hayes told IPS.

“Even with a good harvest this year, food insecurity will remain significant in Zimbabwe, and the country is a long way from achieving agricultural self-sufficiency,” he said.

Among other policy recommendations to promote the Double Pyramid’s success, the Barilla report says there is a need to “promote training and education programs to support smallholder farmers to grow sustainably and access markets for nutritious food,” which was found lacking in many countries surveyed for the report.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 13 2021 (IPS)

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged all governments to support a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 21%. The US is working with other G20 nations to get other countries to end the “thirty-year race to the bottom on corporate tax rates”.

Anis Chowdhury

Corporate tax vital
For Yellen, “governments [should] have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government”.

The Biden administration has unveiled a plan to reverse Trump’s tax cuts and raise US corporate tax rates from 21% to 28%. Crucially, it wants to increase tax rates on US firms’ overseas profits – global intangible low-tax income (GILTI) – from 10.5% to at least 21%. This should be calculated on a country-by-country basis including all tax havens, i.e., low- or no-tax locations, to minimise evasion.

The US Treasury is also keen to reach international agreement over a digital tax for online giants such as Amazon and Facebook. This sharply contrasts with Trump’s threat of retaliation against countries attempting to tax US-based tech giants.

The Economist estimates that in the past decade, the ‘big five’ – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google – paid only 16% of their profits in tax.

Race to the bottom
The Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – promoted Reaganite ‘supply side economics’ from the 1980s, claiming excessive tax rates discourage labour supply and entrepreneurship.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

However, contrary to proponents’ claims, most tax cuts have resulted in net revenue losses, with Trump’s cuts resulting in a shortfall of US$275 billion, or 7.6% of previously expected revenue.

As countries raced to the bottom, offering increasingly generous tax incentives to attract investments by transnational corporations (TNCs), the average worldwide statutory corporate tax rate fell from 40% in 1980 to 24% in 2020.

Countries also lose revenue as TNCs use legal loopholes to minimise tax payments, e.g., by abusing differences between national tax rules and bilateral double taxation agreements. They strive for ‘double non-taxation’ to avoid paying tax in all jurisdictions.

Thus, US$500–600bn, or around 10–15% of annual global corporate tax revenue, is lost yearly to TNCs shifting profits to tax havens, using base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) book-keeping.

Harming developing countries
Corporate income taxation is much more important for developing countries, e.g., comprising 18.6% of tax revenue in Africa, 15.5% in Latin America and Caribbean, and 9.3% in OECD countries in 2017. Clearly, tax competition and TNC tax avoidance hurt developing countries more. As share of GDP, Sub‐Saharan Africa has lost most, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia.

Tax reforms
Developing country governments undertook reforms reducing often progressive direct income tax systems in favour of supposedly neutral, but actually regressive indirect taxation on consumption.

Senior IMF Fiscal Affairs Department staff recommended taxing labour instead of capital, considered too mobile to tax. An IMF paper even endorsed complete abolition of corporate income tax!

Encouraged by the World Bank’s now discredited Doing Business Report, developing countries competed to cut corporate tax rates, falling by a fifth from 1980. Consequently, low and middle-income countries have lost US$167–200bn annually, around 1–1.5% of GDP.

The Economist observed weak links between tax rates and investment as well as growth rates. OECD research showed that tax incentives hardly attracted foreign direct investment, while IMF research found ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ tax competition cost unnecessary revenue losses to many developing countries.

A G20 report found the fiscal cost of tax incentives in low-income countries “can be high, reducing opportunities for much-needed public spending …, or requiring higher taxes on other activities”.

Tax avoidance
Estimated annual revenue losses to rich OECD countries due to tax havens range from 0.15% to 0.7% of GDP. Low-income countries (LICs) and even lower middle-income countries lose relatively more corporate tax revenue than high-income countries (HICs).

LICs account for some US$200bn of such lost revenue, typically a higher GDP share than for HICs. This is much more than the US$150bn or so that LICs receive annually in official development assistance.

Digitisation
Digitisation and changing business models are making it more difficult to determine the actual location of economic activities. Thus, digitisation enables BEPS, reducing revenue due to under-reported taxable income.

Consequently, in 2017, developing countries lost US$10bn in revenue from e-commerce compared to HICs’ US$289 million loss. Least developed countries lost US$1.5bn while sub-Saharan African countries lost US$2.6bn.

UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2019 noted, “Foregone fiscal revenues from digitisation are particularly high for developing countries because they are less likely to host digital businesses but tend to be net importers of digital goods and services”.

Developing countries’ voice
Supported by the G20, the OECD has been working on BEPS since 2013. The OECD BEPS initiative seeks to check tax base erosion by setting a global minimum corporate income tax rate and taxing TNCs selling cross-border digital services. OECD and G20 countries now aim to reach consensus on both by mid-2021.

However, despite being hurt more, developing countries have long been shut out from discussions of international tax norms, policy and regulatory design. The OECD BEPS Inclusive Framework (IF) now includes developing countries which agree to enforce it despite being excluded from its design.

Thus, while IF developing country associates supposedly participate on an ‘equal footing’, they have no decision-making role, reminiscent of their earlier colonial status! Apparently, ‘equal footing’ only refers to BEPS 4 Minimum Standards enforcement.

Unsurprisingly, although raised during IF consultations, developing country concerns – such as allocating tax rights between ‘source’ and ‘residence’ states, taxing the informal economy and taking account of their different needs and circumstances – remain largely unaddressed and unresolved.

With such failures implying legitimacy deficits, BEPS measures are unlikely to benefit developing countries very much. It is increasingly clear that the BEPS project and IF were never intended to help developing countries.

UN must act now
So far, the European Commission (EC) and other powerful countries have responded positively to Yellen. Her proposal has also been endorsed by the IMF and the UN High-Level Panel for International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI).

Corporate tax rules currently favour rich countries where most TNCs are based, regardless of domicile for tax purposes. Countries must work together to accelerate more inclusive, equitable and progressive multilateral tax coordination.

The OECD’s tenuous monopoly on international tax cooperation discussions has so far failed the world. Creating fairer international tax arrangements requires inclusive multilateral consultations well beyond current processes. These should be led by the UN, the only forum where all countries are represented fairly.

A UN Tax Convention, with universal participation and IMF technical support, can help countries come together to find lasting comprehensive solutions. This must happen soon to pre-empt the OECD from further abusing its exclusive approach, inadvertently jeopardising lasting progress.

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The Barilla Foundation New Double Pyramid includes seven cultural pyramids including ones for specific regions like South Asia where these rice workers come from. Other cultural regions include Latin America, East Asia, Nordic and Canada, USA, Mediterranean and Africa. Credit: Deepak Kumar / Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Apr 12 2021 (IPS)

Following an extensive scientific review, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) is preparing to launch a new food systems model which incorporates nutrition and climate.

Researchers from the Foundation teamed up with counterparts from the Frederico II University of Naples to produce the New Double Pyramid, to be unveiled at a virtual event on April 14. It builds on the Foundation’s previous model, which consisted of the traditional food pyramid, promoting the nutritional value of food and an environmental pyramid, exploring the impact of food production on the environment.

According to the researchers, the new model will consist of a health and a climate pyramid. The health pyramid has the most common foods globally, clustered in 18 groups of items that are similar in their nutritional features and impact on health. Researchers conducted a comprehensive search of scientific data linking the consumption of each food group to health outcomes. They paid particular attention to the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke, which are the leading causes of death and disability globally.

The climate pyramid traces the connection between animal-based products and climate change. It also lists foods, including plant-based products, which have a low climate impact.

“The implementation of healthy diets within sustainable food systems is one of the most powerful tools to achieve the so-called “planetary health,” the understanding that human health depends on natural systems and can no longer be conceived independently from its impact on the planet’s condition,” Endocrinology and Metabolic Disease Professor at the Frederico II University of Naples, Gabriele Riccardi told IPS.

Riccardi, who is a member of the BCFN Foundation’s Advisory Board and a former President of the Italian Society of Diabetology, told IPS that in the past, the concept of health was applied to individuals, without adequate consideration for the impact of personal behaviours on the health of the general population. He said the COVID-19 pandemic was bringing a shift in perspective.

“Most people are now aware that wearing a face mask or undergoing vaccination is important not only to protect themselves but also to preserve the health of the general population. Within this context, health gains at the personal level cannot be achieved at the cost of depriving other people of some of their chances of being in good health,” he said.

“This is likely to occur if the health of a population group is based on an unsustainable lifestyle eroding the Earth’s natural systems that provide essential benefits like food, water and shelter on which all human beings depend.”

The new Double Pyramid launch collaborates with the non-profit organisation Food Tank, which promotes sustainable means of hunger, obesity, and poverty alleviation.

Food Tank President and Founder Danielle Nierenberg said that along with the health and climate pyramids, the Foundation had developed seven cultural double pyramids that investigate how people can eat healthily in different regions of the world.

“For example, the Mediterranean Diet is often lauded as sort of this perfect diet, but many cultures – indigenous cultures like those of Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have diets that include pulses, legumes and healthy fats and oils. They are more culturally appropriate and can help farmers and eaters alike not only live better lives but make better incomes,” Nierenberg told IPS.

The seven cultural pyramids are Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, Nordic and Canada, USA, Mediterranean and Africa. The Foundation’s model is adapted to these food cultures, and the intention is to promote a balanced diet for health and longevity while reducing the carbon footprint to the world.

“We’re really excited to partner on another virtual event. Our first one was in December. This will kick off the sessions that will take place this year in the lead-up to the United Nation’s Food Systems Summit.”

The research findings bring a new angle to the issue of dairy product consumption. Riccardi says recent evidence “does not support different attitudes to the consumption of these products based on their fat content.” For example, comparing full-fat to reduced-fat dairy products. He says instead, the new pyramid concludes that overall moderate consumption does not increase cardiovascular diseases.

The new pyramid shows that fermented products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are associated with a reduced risk of those diseases in the dairy category. They should be the preferred option for consumers.

Riccardi told IPS that through the Double Pyramid, the research team would also present a major new finding of how different types of meat vary in their relationships with health.

Barilla Foundation Chairman Guido Barilla, President of the World Wide Fund for Nature Pavan Sukhdev, and Michelin Star Chef Chiara Pavan are among speakers scheduled for the April 14 event.

• The Double Pyramid will be launched on April 14. It promotes a one health approach to food by connecting food culture, health, and climate

 

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Claudete Volkswey and her husband smile together on their poultry farm in the municipality of Toledo, in the southwest Brazilian state of Paraná. The poultry shed is now heated using biogas instead of the wood-burning stove that used to keep her up at night, stoking it every two hours to keep the chicks warm in their first few weeks of life, as she explained at the South Brazilian Biogas and Methane Forum seminar, in her participation via videoconference. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Apr 12 2021 (IPS)

“Biogas is worth gold to us, we can no longer live without it,” Claudete Volkswey, a poultry farmer in the municipality of Toledo, in the southwestern state of Paraná, Brazil, said enthusiastically about the new source of energy that has allowed her to get a good night’s sleep again, because she no longer has to get up to stoke the fire every two hours.

Ademar Luiz and his wife, Zenilde Nunes Luiz, also celebrate the alternative energy source that has freed them from the complications of firewood and has made it possible to have hot water round the clock, a blessing in the cold winters of Laurentino, a municipality in the southern state of Santa Catarina.

In the Northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, biogas forms part of the movement that is helping to overcome rural poverty in that semiarid ecoregion by disseminating so-called social technologies, the best known of which is rainwater harvesting tanks for human consumption and irrigation in family agriculture.

Spreading the use of biodigesters, the same way the rainwater tanks have been widely adopted, totaling more than 1.3 million today, is the dream of Ita Porto, coordinator of Diaconia in the Sertão do Pajeú, an area comprised of 20 municipalities in the interior of the northeastern state of Pernambuco.

“For this to happen, they have to become a public policy, as the rainwater tanks are. This would add energy security to the water and food security that are already taken into account by the government,” Porto told IPS by telephone from Afogados da Ingazeira, where one of Diaconia´s main offices is located.

Her ecumenical Christian-inspired social organisation is an active participant in the Articulação Semiárido do Brasil (ASA), a network of 3,000 diverse associations aimed at development in the semiarid Northeast based on coexistence with the ecosystem, in contrast to earlier failed official strategies to “combat drought”.

There are about 800 units of the Sertanejo Biodigester, a model designed by Diaconia, built in Brazil, most of them in the semiarid Northeast. The initiative won a mention in the third edition of the Biodigester Network for Latin America and the Caribbean’s RedBioLAC magazine, in 2019.

Biogas is becoming an important energy source in this South American country of 212 million inhabitants, both for electricity and heat generation and for the production of biomethane to replace fossil fuels.

The enormous amount of agricultural, industrial and urban waste represents a potential of which only two percent is currently used, according to Alessandro Gardemann, president of the Brazilian Biogas Association, which groups companies and producers in the sector.

The advance of commercial production is made in sanitary landfills, in large agricultural and industrial units. In the south of Brazil, the expansion of pig and poultry farming is driving the biodigestion of their excrement, to boost profits, reduce costs and meet growing environmental demands.

They can play an important role in the energy system, providing power and balance, in the face of the major growth of intermittent sources, wind and solar, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But it is the family biodigesters, noted for their proliferation rather than their size, that generate the most visible social and environmental benefits.

For Claudete Volkswey and her family, biogas meant keeping the poultry shed housing about 19,000 chickens and chicks on their farm warm without having to wake up “two or three times” in the middle of the night, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures, to stoke the wood-fired oven that was the previous source of heat.

This biodigester is on a small farm in the semi-arid region of the state of Pernambuco in Northeast Brazil. In general, local families now use biogas for cooking, replacing cooking gas cylinders, which are expensive in comparison to the income levels in this part of the country. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

“Our health is at stake,” Volkswey said in her presentation via videoconference at the South Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Forum, which took place from Mar. 29 to Apr. 1, virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The manure, which is like gold for biogas production, comes from the 9,000 “nursery” piglets that Volkswey’s son is raising on the family farm in Toledo, a municipality that concentrates the largest number of pigs in Brazil: around 1.2 million.

The cost of firewood used to be as high as 2,800 reals (about 500 dollars) a month. The biodigester that has heated the poultry shed for the past nine years was costly, as it was one of the first in the western part of the state of Paraná, “but it was worth it,” said Volkswey.

Not having to forage for or buy firewood is another advantage cited by Ademar Luiz, also a pioneer in biogas in his municipality, Laurentino, 120 kilometres from the coast of Santa Catarina.

He built a small biodigester in 2008, to try it out. Six years later he built a larger one that allowed him to fuel the stove and heat water for the household round the clock. He no longer uses firewood or the electric shower heater, which saves the family 90 dollars a month.

Farmers Ademar Luiz and Zenilde Nunes Luiz decided to produce biogas to cook and heat water in their house in Laurentino, a municipality where winters are cold in the southern state of Santa Catarina, saving on firewood and electricity. This screenshot was taken from their presentation at the South Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Forum, held in late March in Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Luiz only uses the manure from his four dairy cows. He used to have 30 and produced 600 litres of milk a day, in addition to raising other cattle, but he sold almost all of them two years ago, when he was 56. It became difficult for him to care for so many animals because of his back trouble.

Producing milk is hard work and a dairy farm is like “a prison” as you have to be there every single day. “But I like it,” he told IPS by phone from his farm, where he also grows corn and soybeans. “With a tractor and harvesting machine, I can do it,” he added.

Luiz confessed that before he had the biodigester he used to dump the manure into the river, “for the bad luck of those who live downstream.”

There are many environmental benefits, because the biodigesters protect water, forests and the climate, as well as eliminating odors and mosquitoes.

A screenshot from Claudete Volkswey’s videoconference presentation at the South Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Forum shows the poultry shed where she raises some 19,000 chickens. She decided to produce biogas on the family farm, using a biodigester fueled by the manure from the pigs that are also raised on her farm, and abandoned the use of the wood-burning stove, which would keep her or another family member up at night as it needed to be stoked every two hours to keep the newly hatched chicks alive on nights when temperatures sometimes drop below freezing. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

In addition, biodigestion converts the waste into fertiliser and as a result, he said, his corn harvest grew.

“That’s why I don’t understand why other farmers don’t join the move to biogas, the manure is free. I am the only one using a biodigester in this municipality,” he lamented. The necessary investments are paid off with what is saved in just a few years and are easily financed in the banks, he said.

His wife was also reluctant at first. She only approved of the novel system after discovering that the beans and chicken stew cooked on the biogas stove didn’t smell like manure, he joked.

Ita Porto emphasises that women benefit the most. In general, they are the ones in charge of fetching firewood and, because they do the cooking, their health is affected by constantly breathing smoke from burning wood or charcoal.

This biological digester was built by a regional university to supply biogas to a bakery run by a women’s cooperative in Pombal, a municipality in the semi-arid ecoregion in the Northeast Brazilian state of Paraiba. This waste-to-energy generator provides half of the electricity used by the bakery, which sells a large part of its products to the lunch programme in local schools. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

A World Bank study released in 2020 estimated that 2.75 billion people still use wood or charcoal for cooking. Many die of lung cancer, respiratory damage and heart disease as a result.

Widespread replacement of traditional stoves with safer and healthier cookstoves would have dramatic health, environmental and social effects, experts say.

Incipient and scattered actions are promoting the use of biogas in Brazil.

In the state of Ceará in Northeast Brazil, the non-governmental Centre for Labour Studies and Worker Advisory Services (CETRA) has been running a project since 2017 that envisages the construction of 1,800 biodigesters with support from several national and international institutions, Porto explained.

The route to massive dissemination of the technology could open up if one or more Brazilian states adopted this alternative as public policy, the activist asserted.

Related Articles

• Combining Biogas and Solar, the Best Energy Deal in Brazil
• Producing Energy from Pig and Poultry Waste in Brazil
• Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil

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A Security Council meeting in progress. Credit: United Nations

By James A. Paul
NEW YORK, Apr 12 2021 (IPS)

Commentators talk about a “new Cold War” between the United States and China. They sometimes conclude that the geopolitical rivalry between these two major powers has ruined the effectiveness of the UN Security Council through hostile vetoes and other barriers to Council action.

In fact, however, damaging rivalry on the Security Council is nothing new. The Council has always been hobbled by vetoes and other special privileges of the Permanent Members.

Geopolitical rivalry between the Permanent Five – the US, UK, France, China and Russia –has been a standard feature of the Council since its earliest meetings seventy-five years ago, repeatedly preventing the body from fulfilling its mandate.

Today’s US-China clash has affected the Council, of course, but not nearly as severely as Great Power rivalries in the past.

Some analysts have argued over the years that the Council’s ten Elected Members have moderated the body’s oligarchic tendencies and given it a more effective and “democratic” character. But this is a pipe dream.

Elected Members have a very secondary role, even when they are rich or very populous, like Germany or India. They have a short, two-year term in office and the Council’s rules are stacked against them. The Permanent Members act ruthlessly (if decorously) to hold onto their privileges and to gain global advantage.

Planning for the foundation of the United Nations was undertaken during World War II, by the “Big Three” – or the “Three Policemen” as President Roosevelt liked to say in private. The US, Britain and the Soviet Union sought to take control of world “security” and ensure domination over their own spheres of influence.

As the archives make clear, they wanted control over natural resources and markets for their products and other material benefits – though of course this control was presented in more palatable terms like “preserving the peace.”

Eventually, before the UN Charter was finalized, France and China were invited to join the oligarchy as junior partners. The rest of the nations had to accept the arrangement: take it or leave it.

Over the years, there have been many forms of conflict among the five. The first systemic rivalry pitted old imperial rivals – Britain and France – against more recent powers – the United States and the Soviet Union.

As independence movements challenged the colonial overlords and liberation wars erupted, “Big Three” solidarity collapsed and the Council was unable to act. Britain and France, using vetoes and other means, systematically blocked Council action that would threaten their colonial authority.

The Council could not even hold debates or discussions on most colonial conflicts, not matter how brutal and bloody. Algeria, Kenya, Vietnam, and many other wars disappeared from the Council’s purview.

From the earliest years, then, it became clear that the Security Council was not an instrument for even-handed peacemaking (as many internationalists and peace-advocates had hoped) but a scene of politely ferocious diplomatic rivalry and maneuvering for global advantage.

The colonies won their independence eventually, with help from the UN General Assembly, but not thanks to the Security Council.

Then there was the “Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union, flaring up in the late 1940s and continuing until the late 1980s. Each sought hegemony in the decolonizing global order.

This rivalry, too, had a great impact on the Security Council and led to many vetoes and organized inaction on wars and conflicts worldwide. The Soviets used the veto on conflicts in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other places, while the United States and its allies similarly blocked Council action on Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba, Cyprus, Western Sahara, and many other lands.

The multiple rivalries around the globe resulted in Council gridlock that was considerably worse than what we see today. The Council in those days met infrequently and its production of resolutions and statements was sparse.

UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden holding a press conference at UN Headquarters on 24 March 1960. Credit: UN Photo

UN military action in the Congo in the early 1960s appeared to be an exception, but the results in the end were hardly encouraging. UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld perished in a highly suspicious airplane crash in the African jungle; a military dictator soon emerged in Congo to protect Western mineral interests.

In 1989, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a brief period of Council cooperation and more jointly-agreed activity. Council Meetings increased in frequency, vetoes waned and resolutions increased dramatically in number.

There was brief hope that the Council would at last be effective. But this honeymoon did not last long and rivalries soon re-emerged. China, the least active member of the Council, began to extend its global ambitions and to take its Council role seriously.

Russian vetoes and blockages came to the fore again. The Western three, as always, did not hesitate to use their muscle and their blocking power –and they frequently denounced their Council rivals in heated terms. Inevitably, Council action suffered.

But the Council remained far more active than it was in its first fifty years. Wherever we look, past and present, there is no idealized period of lasting cooperation and commitment to peaceful outcomes.

Rivalry and proxy wars still prevail in the global landscape between the titans. What a tragedy that these powers are in charge of solving the very problems that – much of the time – their rivalry creates!

China’s huge economic success and its large population give it a big advantage in the geo-strategic sweepstakes today. It’s hard to remember the passive China that did so little in the Council just two decades ago.

Whatever its current self-interest in Council matters, China is not hostile and negative towards the UN as is its nemesis, the United States. China’s alliance with Russia adds to its clout in the Council and in diplomacy more broadly.

The United States, meanwhile, is hobbled by its negative approach to multilateralism. Bristling with military power and inclined to bullying other countries, the US is still the capo dei tutti capi, the boss of bosses on the world stage. But for how much longer and with what impact on the Council’s future?

The US-China rivalry has not altered the Council dramatically, but it reminds us that there is now a fifth rival that the other four must take closely into account. Council decision-making has a radically new geometry.

The US-China clash may last for years, but it certainly will not be the last major Council fault-line. As long as the oligarchy of the Permanent Five persists, there will future diplomatic battles and future barriers to constructive Council action.

We can and must hope for more. To be truly effective in the future, the Council must be substantially reformed. The Five Policemen, the Council’s oligarchs, should have no place in a democratic and peaceful institution.

But how do we successfully change this archaic structure? Certainly not by creating new Permanent Members and endorsing new national power centers. There are already five too many foxes in the global chicken coop!

Fundamental change will have to come from below, from public pressure, from campaigns that demand a real peace, not Cold Wars without end.

* As Executive Director, James Paul was a prominent figure in the NGO advocacy community at the United Nations and a well-known speaker and writer on the UN and global policy issues. He is the author of “Of Foxes and Chickens”—Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer* served as Executive Director, Global Policy Forum, from its foundation in late 1993 through the end of 2012.

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Rangina Hamidi

By External Source
Apr 12 2021 (IPS-Partners)

H.E. Rangina Hamidi is the first female Minister of Education of Afghanistan in the last 30 years. Minister Hamidi was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, fled with her family to Pakistan in 1981 during the Soviet Occupation and eventually immigrated to the United States. She attended high school in the United States and received her B.A. degree with a double major in Religion and Gender Studies at the University of Virginia.

In 2003, Minister Hamidi returned to Afghanistan to help rebuild her country. Using her leadership and management skills, she founded Kandahar Treasure in 2008, the first women-owned and women-run social enterprise in Kandahar Province. Kandahar Treasure grew to provide over 400 women sustainable income with the production of exquisite hand-embroidered textiles for apparel and home décor. The products are marketed nationally and internationally. While it is critically important to empower women financially, Minister Hamidi realized the importance of education after experiencing that foundational change in women’s lives will come through education only.

Today Minister Hamidi continues to champion the rights of girls and women, supporting new education initiatives designed to achieve goals for universal and equitable education as outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She has made it her personal mission to become the role model for many girls in Afghanistan who will one day change the future of their country.

ECW: In Afghanistan, over 3.7 million children are out of school; at least 60 per cent being girls. Yet, this represents significant progress for the country. Can you tell us more?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: As the first female Minister of Education in the last 30 years, I take pride in the journey this ministry has made. We have come a long way since 2001 in terms of educational outcomes. The Ministry of Education has taken significant steps in rebuilding the education system to safeguard and advance children’s rights to education.

To go from approximately 800,000 students and very low numbers of girls in 2001 to more than 9 million students in 2020 – of whom 39 per cent are girls – is a major achievement. Today, most students who begin their primary school will complete their educational journey in Afghanistan. This represents progress.

Such an unprecedented expansion in access is always compounded by huge qualitative challenges which I heavily feel each day including raising primary attendance rates beyond the rate of 55 per cent. The key goals of my ministry are to introduce drastic reforms aiming at improving the quality, and increase enrolment in primary education to 100 per cent. Bringing all the out-of-school children back to school in a conducive learning environment is a major goal we have set for ourselves. As a woman minister it is my particular goal to work on increasing the enrollment and retention of girls in schools.

ECW: In 2018, together with the Ministry and our education partners, ECW rolled out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Afghanistan to address the education needs of such out-of-school children. How relevant and impactful has this programme been in the lives of out-of-school girls and boys, particularly those accessing education for the first time?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: Aiming to enroll half a million out-of-school children, the ECW-financed Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) represents a significant platform to help the Ministry of Education to achieve its target of enrolling children in schools.

The focus on out-of-school children and use of community-based education as the education service provision modality aligns perfectly with the ministry’s target and policy priorities. Multi-year design and catalytic seed funding are innovative approaches as lack of funding too often disrupts our children’s continuity of learning.

Today, Afghanistan’s MYRP can boast having more than 150,000 first-time school goers with 58 per cent of girls continuing their learning and overcoming challenges, including COVID-19, which was a major setback for the whole education sector. Close to half (48 per cent) of teachers recruited through the MYRP are women.

I also welcome the comprehensive inclusive education strategy for children with disabilities in community-based education initiatives being piloted by the MYRP.

Additionally, one of the important features of the MYRP is the robust in-country governance mechanism, which is led by the Ministry of Education with active participation of donors, multilateral agencies like the World Bank, United Nations agencies like UNICEF and UNESCO, and civil society actors. This mechanism enhances the programme’s effectiveness and alignment.

ECW: The MYRP still needs to mobilize US$108 million to be fully funded and reach all 3.7 million out-of-school girls and boys. What is the government’s strategy to reduce the financing gap? Is the funding gap factored into both the Humanitarian Response Plan and the National Education Sector Plan?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: Thank you for asking such an important question. From the bottom of my heart, I thank HE President Ashraf Ghani for allocating AFS 49.8 billion (US$646 million) towards education, which is 11.6 per cent of the national budget. This demonstrates commitment of the senior most leadership of the country even during this difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, donor support remains critical for education programmes and projects in Afghanistan. One significant source of such funding is the US$49.5 million ECW catalytic grant for the MYRP. I am grateful to all the donors contributing to the global pooled fund of ECW – particularly Sweden and Switzerland, who have earmarked US$13.5 million for the MYRP in Afghanistan.

Investment in the MYRP helps to enhance the coherence between emergency and development aid efforts, while promoting peace. We trust that additional donors will contribute generously, following the path shown by our friends from Sweden and Switzerland with earmarked funding. Similarly, I urge all donors to honour their pledge made in the donor conference, which will help us to achieve our Humanitarian Response Plan and other ambitious strategic plans.

ECW: Afghanistan has a young population with a median age of 18 years, creating a huge burden on the education system. Can you describe the challenges faced by Afghan girls and boys to access quality basic education? What are the Ministry of Education’s priorities and strategies to meet them?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: We recently completed a sector review that shows significant educational achievements for fellow Afghan children. However, we do have substantial challenges to overcome. These include shortage of school infrastructure; insecurity, which disproportionately affects girls; lack of an adequate number of qualified teachers, especially female teachers, which impacts girls’ enrolment; and inadequate teaching and learning materials. The Ministry of Education is in the process of implementing a reform agenda which will revise the national curriculum, which will require new textbooks to be disseminated and teachers to be trained. The new reform agenda will be implemented in light of the challenges that the Ministry of Education has faced in the last two decades as the focus of the ministry is now on the quality of education.

The Ministry of Education’s Strategic Plans are forward-looking, which focus on bridging the existing gaps while aiming to expand the provision of education services. To achieve these goals, we are leveraging 21st century innovations such as the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to establish digital learning platforms, improved use of data to make evidence-based decisions, and expanded knowledge sharing platforms to connect stakeholders across the country.

The ECW-supported MYRP is an essential vehicle in rolling out the National Education Sector Plan. I firmly believe this programme will contribute toward national efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, not only in the education sector, but also in terms of ending hunger and poverty, ensuring gender equality, and leaving no one behind.

We have recognized community-based education as a formal learning pathway for the children in hard-to-reach, insecure, underinvested, marginalized and culturally sensitive areas and established a community-based education division under the direct supervision of the Deputy Minister for Education HE Dr. Attaullah Wahidyar. The community-based education policy and corresponding strategies will certainly benefit from the experiences of the MYRP in Afghanistan, such as learning assessment, tailored teachers’ training strategy, and students’ transition plans, to mention a few.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit children disproportionately as it poses additional barriers to education. In Afghanistan, 4.1 million children between 6 and 18 years of age are expected to be deprived of schooling due to COVID-19. The pandemic has already affected an academic year for all students in cold climate provinces, while delaying the start of the new academic year in warm climate provinces. We are closely engaged with all education actors to address the possible dropout and learning loss due to COVID-19, especially in community-based education learning environments.

ECW: Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better on a personal level. Can you tell us what education means to you personally, and why? Can you also share with us three books that have influenced you the most personally and/or professionally, and why you’d recommend them to other people to read?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: In 1987 living as a refugee Afghan child with my family in Quetta, Pakistan, my sister and I were privileged to be born in a family where education was viewed as a right and it was not an exclusive right of boys only. My parents worked hard to find money to enroll their children in private schools because refugee children were not allowed to be enrolled in Pakistan’s government schools. Unfortunately, community elders who were actively engaged in the fight against the soviet invasion did not think that it was appropriate for girls to get an education. To them there simply was no need of education for girls’ future. We were pulled out of school out of the fear of facing harsh repercussions of having our faces burned with acid – which was the punishment for not obeying rules at that time. My father made the brave decision to go to the USA in 1988 because he saw no future for his daughters if he remained where he was. Today I am the result of his decision he made in 1988. Education changes girls’ futures.

The three books that have influenced me in shaping who I am are:

• Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism:Abdulaziz Sachedina
• A Thousand Splendid Suns:Khaled Hussaini
• Ghost Wars: Steve Coll

These three books speak about my passion in life: Islam in the modern world, Afghan women’s issues and the current situation of Afghanistan. These three books among others have left a mark on me.

ECW: Finally, are there any other key points you would like to share with our readers around the world on the importance of working together with ECW and its partners to address education in emergencies, so that together, we can help get crisis-affected children and youth back to learning with the fierce urgency of now?

H.E. Rangina Hamidi: As the leader of the education sector in Afghanistan and custodian of Afghan children’s education, I commend ECW’s collaborative approach which ensures more effective and coordinated responses among all education stakeholders. The MYRP in Afghanistan is already yielding positive results and we hope the programme’s duration can be expanded to allow all of the 150,000 early-learners to at least complete the primary cycle of education. We also call on additional donor support to ensure it can be brought to scale to support more children who continue today to be deprived of a quality education.

Today, Afghanistan is on the road to recovering from decades of conflicts and multiple crises. Our government, together with partners such as ECW, is taking bold steps to put education at the center of these recovery efforts. I invite world leaders, policymakers and donors to stand with Afghanistan’s girls and boys. The time to invest in education is now, it is the steppingstone towards a brighter, more prosperous and peaceful future for our children.

 

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When the previous US administration pulled its aid, the impact was enormous on the Palestinian people. As a result, funding for hospitals in East Jerusalem dropped, which would then go on to affect Palestinians during the pandemic. Photo by Ahmed Abu Hameeda on Unsplash

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 9 2021 (IPS)

The Trump administration’s decision to cut off assistance to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) caused considerable hardship for Palestinian refugees during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly those in Gaza where a majority of the population are refugees and poverty is rampant due to Israel’s blockade, Khaled Elgindy, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), told IPS.

Elgindy, also a Director of Programme on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at MEI, shared his insight with IPS following the U.N. event “Delivering Critical Assistance for Palestine Refugees: Challenges and Opportunities in a Complex Context.”

At the panel, numerous speakers gathered to share the current situation Palestinian refugees are facing because of a combination of different issues: the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, as well as the “protracted conflict” they were in before the pandemic hit.

The plight of the community at the intersection of a global pandemic and a massive conflict was articulated poignantly in a story shared at the panel by Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

Lazzarini said he saw “despair growing” in the refugee camps across the region and he was alarmed during his recent visits to camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

On one visit in south Lebanon, he met with a Palestinian refugee who said he constantly asks himself whether he would die from COVID, from hunger, or while trying to cross the Mediterranean on a dingy.

“People are struggling in their daily lives to make ends meet. People are struggling daily to ensure one meal for their family,” Lazzarini said. “No one should be made to feel so desperate.”

Gwyn Lewis, Director of UNRWA Operations in the West Bank, further highlighted the grave socio-economic issues Palestinians are facing.

“With the pandemic, we’ve seen quite a dramatic impact on the economy — 40 percent households on the West Bank kept seeing their income decline by more than half [and] unemployment increased in the camps, by as high as 23 percent. In Gaza, unemployment has hit 49 percent which is very, very dramatic,” Lewis said.

Lewis’ concerns were echoed by other experts who spoke with IPS following the event.

Yara M. Asi, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Central Florida, said while Palestinians were already in a precarious place even before the pandemic, the economic loss from the lockdown hit them hard.

“When the pandemic hit, the economy was essentially closed for weeks,” she told IPS. “All gatherings were cancelled, including weddings, which is a huge industry in the summer months.”

Lewis of UNRWA also pointed out that the socio-economic condition is “dire”, while the community lives in parallel to the continuous issues with the occupations, including “settlement activities and demolitions.”

There was also concerns for Palestinians not getting enough vaccines and how that might continue to affect their livelihoods.

“The pandemic isn’t over yet and Palestinians do not yet have a significant vaccination campaign, so [the economic fallout] could be much greater,” Asi told IPS. “Meanwhile, Israel has neglected its duties as an occupying power during the pandemic, only providing some shipments of masks and testing kits and then a nominal number of vaccines.”

Hamada Jaber, from the Palestinian Centre for Policy & Survey Research, echoed this concern.

“The biggest challenge now is the ability of the Palestinian Authority to secure the vaccine for all citizens that are willing to take it,” Jaber, a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem, told IPS. “For now, it seems that the Palestinian Authority failed to secure the vaccine and failed to manage the little vaccines that it has in a transparent manner.”

The panel took place on the same day that U.S. President Joe Biden restored a higher than $200 million aid package to Palestine that former president Donald Trump had revoked.

When the previous administration pulled its aid, the impact was enormous on the Palestinian people, Asi said. As a result, funding for hospitals in East Jerusalem dropped, which would then go on to affect Palestinians during the pandemic.

“Of course, during COVID, people are still getting cancer, and having high-risk pregnancies, and experiencing any other number of health ailments,” she said. “So, unfortunately these cuts have really limited the ability for these hospitals to serve these patients.”

But Elgindy of MEI doesn’t believe the funding will do enough. He said the aid is “rather modest and is unlikely to have a significant impact on the Palestinian economy.”

Going forward, Asi said the first priority is to make vaccines available to Palestinians.

She identified the importance of economic support that Palestinians will need, but said there is a long-term lesson as well.

“I hope the lesson learned from this is that occupation is not sustainable. Israel cannot choose to exercise both maximum control over Palestinian life while assuming no responsibility for it, and limiting the ability of the Palestinian Authority to handle it themselves,” she said. 

Lazzarini summed up the issue in just a few words: “During a global pandemic, no one will be safe until the most vulnerable are safe.” 

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