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In northern Ghana some 50% of people lack access to safe drinking water. Credit: UNDP Ghana

By Lyla Mehta and Alan Nicol*
EAST SUSSEX, UK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of a global pandemic, when the presence of water in our lives has never seemed more important, its future availability has also never been more uncertain.

Water scarcity is now such a threat that it is even possible to trade in ‘water futures’ – joining commodities like gold and oil on Wall Street, with traders hedging against future water availability.

So, while farmers and pastoralists struggle to know when the next rainfall will come, and women and children walk for hours to collect water from distant water points, further commodification and financialization of water has arrived, with huge implications for basic rights to water.

Our future water safety and security will only be guaranteed if we work to reflect water’s multiple values in coming years – including social and cultural as well as economic and financial.

Globally, we seem almost inured to the fact that across the world women and girls spend up to 200 million hours every day walking an average of six km to collect water. These depressing facts flash up in our news feeds across the same screens that now make it possible to trade in ‘water futures’ on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Between these ‘two screens’ lies an almost perverse linkage between global policy seeking to achieve the SDG targets under Goal 6 and a global financial world seeking investment gains under new financial instruments.

Today of all days is a good time to pause and take stock.

Every 22 March since 1993 the international community has marked ‘World Water Day’ and this year’s theme is valuing water. Our own personal valuing of the resource has been starkly demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those of us with taps have diligently increased our handwashing with soap and water, while 2.5 billion people globally continue to struggle even to access a basic daily quantity.

Eleven years ago, the UN recognised access to safe drinking-water and sanitation as a human right, and yet for many poor households their basic rights – and their health – remain jeopardised during this pandemic.

And it’s not just about domestic use. Multiplicities of values attached to water converge around farming households in, for instance, rural Africa. To a young female farmer staring up at the clouds in Eastern Tanzania unpredictable rainfall under an uncertain climate directly affects her family’s food security as well as her cash income for school fees derived from the sale of sorghum to the local brewing industry.

The value of rainfall is therefore multiple and multi-scale – to her crops and income, to the groundwater recharge for domestic supplies, and, more widely, to an agricultural value chain supporting an important part of the economy.

Domestic and international investors, encouraged by national policies focussing on foreign direct investment, often seek to ‘grab’ this land, having implications for both this farmer’s land and water rights as well as environmental sustainability.

Despite general recognition that the value of water is much more than its nominal price in different contexts, since the landmark Dublin conference of 1992 economic and financial values have tended to prevail over values embedded in culture and society.

These have led to policies embracing privatization, full cost recovery and “efficient” uses of water, often leadings to prepaid meters and controversial cut-offs especially in poor urban localities. Moreover, we live in an age when engineering and economic principles can override environmentalists’ concerns as well as local and affected people’s values attached to land, river and forests.

The controversies of large dams on India’s Narmada River, for example, illustrate the huge environmental, human and social costs that have been ignored by dam-builders and the State in the name of ‘development’ despite research disputing these claims.

At the heart of all such contestations is a politics of value determination in which, very often, the least powerful and most marginalised lose out. This essentially governance problem remains a global challenge – and not just in the Global South.

The concerns and complaints around water contamination of poor black residents in Flint, for example, were routinely ignored, leading to a major water crisis in the city, linked to systemic biases around race and class. And in parts of the UK water companies continue to allow raw sewage to flood our rivers – affecting their ecological and amenity values.

For the future, therefore, we need to recognize how a hierarchy of water values needs a process of deliberative governance with which to encapsulate all our human wellbeing, dignity and ecological sustainability priorities.

It also needs to avoid over-objectifying the resource in remote financial and other instruments and recognise how consumption patterns and values of the rich and powerful can undermine poor people’s values and basic rights to water.

So, on World Water Day 2021, when we next wash our hands for another 20 seconds, let’s champion the often hidden and overlooked values of water security worldwide.

*Lyla Mehta is with the Institute of Development Studies and Alan Nicol at the International Water Management Institute

 

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The post The Value of Water Goes Far Beyond its Stock Price appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post The Value of Water Goes Far Beyond its Stock Price appeared first on Inter Press Service.

COVID precautions at Safe Water Network iJal Station in India. Credit: Safe Water Network

By Nathan Yardy
NEW YORK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

The global community is celebrating World Water Day 2021. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, the importance and value of water for all people has never been clearer. Access to safe water is essential for public health and thriving communities.

Before COVID, we knew that 4 billion people, or about two-thirds of the world’s population, face severe water scarcity at least one month every year. One of the most important defenses against the coronavirus, washing hands with soap and water, is out of reach for 2 out of 5 people worldwide simply because they do not have access to basic handwashing facilities.

As we reflect on World Water Day 2021’s theme of “valuing water,” we know that water is an essential part of human life and is experienced and valued in different ways across different cultures and communities.

One of the easiest ways to think about the value of water is by simply looking at the prices people are willing to pay for access and consumption. This market determination can be an effective reference point for understanding the value of any natural resource in a quantifiable metric.

Governments, national and local, place a related market value on water often by committing to various levels of subsidization to ensure their constituents have affordable access. Socially-conscious water organizations, like Safe Water Network, invest in optimization and ways to increase efficiency to drive down costs to keep water accessible at prices that enable communities to thrive.

Recent moves by governments to mandate free access to water during the COVID crisis have challenged the sustainability of the water sector.

New household connection customer in Nobewam, Ghana. Credit: Safe Water Network

Consumer demand is critical to the financial viability and longevity of a water system. Sustainable safe water has a price, and investing in markets within local communities to manage and distribute water drives a strong sense of ownership and encourages self-sufficiency over the long term.

Safe Water Network’s oldest running small water enterprise in India, the Nizampally iJal Station, recently celebrated 10 years of operation. Over the last decade, it has served as a template for the hundreds of additional iJal Stations that have been launched in the state of Telangana since. Its longevity is a testament to Nizampally’s desire and capability for community management.

Small business owners, restaurateurs, and beverage producers place their own value on water when they are able to build trust with their customers by using clean water in the food and drinks they produce.

When these business owners are able to locate their operations near a reliable source of safe water, they are also able to cut costs when they can avoid hiring people to fetch water from a distance. For example, restaurant operator Martha Kumi of Asikuma, Ghana, used to hire individual water vendors to fetch up to 2000 liters of water a day from a hand dug well 3 kilometers away for food preparation and cleaning—a major business expense.

With safe water available 24/7 at her place of business, she is able to hold onto more revenue and increase her profits.

Water is valuable to a community in a myriad of other ways beyond market prices and business practices. Equitable access to safe water ensures that people are able to expend energy on other priorities in their lives beyond meeting this essential human need.

Clean water is crucial in the areas of health service and public health. Doctors and other health professionals are able to deliver better and more efficient health service to their communities.

During the COVID crisis, soap and water have been a core pillar of effective disease prevention practices and essential for essential health workers to maintain sanitary working conditions and their personal protection routines.

When a healthcare facility has a reliable source of safe water, patients can trust that proper cleaning practices are in place and are able to receive care without bringing their own water. This trust is particularly important for major medical procedures when access to clean water is vital for cleanliness and better health outcomes, including for pregnant women who would otherwise need to transport their own water to delivery.

Martha Kumi, restaurant owner. Credit: Safe Water Network

Access to clean water is valuable for all communities, but in the COVID-19 pandemic era, direct connections and automated water ATMs allow for convenient and safe use of water while maintaining necessary social distancing. In one community in Ghana’s Ashanti region, 500 households have been connected by Safe Water Network since the start of the pandemic, with many families willing to pay small upfront connection fee if it meant they could reduce their risk to COVID-19 exposure outside of the house.

Household connections to safe water also provide value for education, when both teachers and students are able to access water conveniently at home or at school, saving time otherwise spent fetching water from a distant source, enabling more regular attendance of classes and effective engagement in teaching and learning.

An August 2020 joint report by UNICEF and the WHO revealed that 1 in 3 schools around the world had either limited drinking water service or none at all before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During COVID-19, the value of water has become strikingly obvious for public health. But water is valuable to all of us for many reasons and sustainable access to safe water is necessary for communities to thrive. Safe Water Network is working to bring a proven model of small water enterprises to millions of people in India and Ghana.

On this World Water Day 2021, let’s recommit to meeting the vision of Sustainable Development Goal 6 of ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030. We have a long way to go before achieving this ambitious goal, but we must prioritize and invest in sustainable water models.

 

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The post Access to Safe Water Never Loses Value appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Communications Manager at Safe Water Network

 
The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post Access to Safe Water Never Loses Value appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash

By Adekemi Adeniyan
EKITI, Nigeria, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

The mouth is a barometer of social inequities — it reflects the injustices in our society. As George Cuvier, an 18th century naturalist said: “Show me your teeth, and I will tell you who you are”. To me, as a dentist, the mouth is like a microscope that reveals more than just tooth decay. It exposes us to a world where people lack access to water, health, quality education and live on low income.

So, when the FDI World Dental Federation unveils a “Be Proud of Your Mouth” campaign for World Oral Health Day (WOHD) 2021 celebrated on March 20, it needs to go beyond encouraging individuals to adopt good oral health routines such as brushing and flossing. It also needs to urge countries, leaders, policymakers and communities to tackle the social inequities that affect the mouth. It starts from addressing the social determinants of oral health.

70% of the Nigerian population have a form of periodontal disease and untreated cavities. This is a whopping 140 million people, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom and France combined

Research by the World Health Organization shows that the social conditions in which people live have a great influence on their health and has linked increases in oral health diseases to social determinants such as education, income, food, race, and geographical location.

As a rural dentist working with vulnerable and underserved communities in Nigeria, I’ve had first-hand experience working with children at risk of oral health diseases, such as dental caries, Noma, and dental fluorosis. Most of them brush their teeth daily, but they lack access to clean water, nutritious food, and dental care facilities. Their teeth pay the price.

Studies show that 70% of the Nigerian population have a form of periodontal disease and untreated cavities. This is a whopping 140 million people, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom and France combined.

In the heavily populated northwest part of Nigeria, NOMA, a face disfiguring disease often caused by malnutrition, is one of the most prevalent oral health diseases. Between 2011 and 2017, The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control recorded over 37,646 cases. This is a public health crisis for a disease with 90% mortality rate.

Yet, only 15.5 % of the people living in rural parts of Nigeria have access to a dental facility. There is a lack of dental workforce which is an essential component of oral health access for vulnerable and underserved populations. In 2018, only about 850 out of the 4,358 registered dentists in Nigeria work in rural areas.

One patient, a young girl I worked with, had two of her teeth removed due to a defect caused by a vitamin deficiency. She comes from a village with no access to clean water and her family lives on less than US $1 per day. To complicate matters, the nearest dental facility was a two hour walk from where she lived. This is more than the experience of one girl; it is the experience of many living in communities saddled with social inequities.

What then is the way forward for a country like Nigeria? Clearly, there is a need for innovations, commitment of resources, and full engagement to improve oral health.

The Nigerian dental health system is badly underfunded by the government, which is currently just 0.41% of the country’s health budget. Service delivery is left largely to private markets; with health insurance not covering essential oral healthcare services. This needs to change.

We need the government to allocate more resources to building and equipping dental clinics in rural areas with community support to then train community health workers and dental technicians to take over many where there is no dentist available.

Task shifting, an act of assigning tasks to non-specialists who have received the necessary training in communities where there is shortage of specialists, has been a major success in healthcare for countries like Rwanda and Mozambique. Nigeria can learn from these countries.

Mobile dental clinics are another innovative way to provide oral health services to vulnerable and underserved communities, reaching patients who live far from conventional clinics. This may not totally eradicate the problem of access but it is a start.

Educators and dental professionals should work together to develop an oral health curriculum for primary schools that is both competent yet culturally sensitive to raise awareness on oral health at an early age. They also need to ensure that we have food policies that guarantee healthy food in schools.

Some may say it’s cheaper and better for resource-strapped countries like Nigeria to improve oral health by emphasizing personal responsibility for brushing, while the government focuses on more life-threatening diseases like COVID-19, HIV, cancer, Lassa fever, and tuberculosis.

Even though oral diseases are not usually seen as life-threatening, they are strongly associated with mortality.  A recent study shows that people who suffer from poor oral health have a higher risk of cancer, heart diseases and complications from COVID-19. Poor oral health is a major factor that exacerbates these diseases.

I am not saying addressing oral health inequities is an easy task. However, these inequities shape people’s choices and decisions. Brushing and flossing alone is not enough to have a healthy mouth. By tackling inequity we can raise a generation of people who are proud of their mouths and productive in society.

 

Dr Adekemi Adeniyan is a rural dentist breaking down barriers to oral health for underserved communities to ensure equitable access for all in Nigeria.

The post Oral Health Should be a Development Priority appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Since 2016, inhabitants of three municipalities in the central Mexican state of Puebla have managed to block construction of the Puebla 1 private hydroelectric power plant, by means of a lawsuit arguing that the mandatory indigenous consultation was not carried out and that the megaproject will cause environmental damage. This screenshot from a video shows a protest in one of the municipalities by the Fundar Centre for Analysis and Research. CREDIT: IPS/Fundar

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

Indigenous farmers on communally owned lands have blocked since 2016 a private solar farm in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan by means of legal action, due to the company’s failure to hold consultations with local native communities and the risk of environmental damage.

“They opened up roads without the knowledge of the local communities. A consultation was held in another municipality, but not here,” Aurelio Mugarte, a Maya indigenous man, told IPS by telephone.

Like his neighbours, Mugarte farms on the San José Tipceh ejido, 1,468 hectares of public land given to the community to farm.

The solar power project is divided into Ticul A and B and is owned by Vega Solar Energía, a Mexican subsidiary of the U.S.-based Sun Power, whose majority shareholder is the French oil giant Total SE. It involves the clearing of some 700 hectares of jungle in an area that is sensitive due to its biodiversity and its karst terrain, which is porous and prone to sinkholes.

The state of Yucatan is on the Yucatan Peninsula, which also includes the states of Campeche and Quintana Roo and is the second most important terrestrial ecosystem in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest.

Local communities have filed two lawsuits against the park, which would cover parts of the municipalities of Muna, Sacalum and Ticul, some 1,300 km southeast of Mexico City.

The plant is a product of the 2013 energy reform that opened the generation and commercialisation of energy in Mexico to domestic and foreign private capital. Transmission and distribution of electric power were left in the hands of the state-owned Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

As a result of the reform, the government held three electricity auctions in 2016 and 2017 for the construction of generators that would sell their production to the CFE. In 2016, Vega Solar Energía was one of the winners with Ticul A and B, which will install about 1.22 million solar panels to generate about 600 megawatts (Mw).

“The reform affected us and allowed companies to come in,” Mugarte complained. “The government sought to favour the company. If renewable energy is going to destroy nature, I don’t see the benefit.”

Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018, wants to reverse the energy reform introduced by his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto in August 2013, at least as far as electric power is concerned.

Electric counter-reform

The new electricity law, enacted on Mar. 9, favours CFE plants over private generators, even though they are more expensive.

As of now, in the Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM), managed by the state-owned autonomous National Energy Centre (Cenace), the electric power generated by the national electricity system must be sold first, before the power from private corporations, especially from wind and solar sources.

The government and its party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), did not touch the constitution as was done in 2013. But the changes reverse the energy reform that opened generation and commercialisation to private capital.

The 2013 reform sought to promote competition in the market and lower rates. But CFE argued that it was harmed by the changes and that it lost money as the power it generated was relegated. In January, 98 generators participated in the MEM, including CFE and private operators.

With the electricity counter-reform, Cenace has to first sell the energy generated by CFE hydroelectric plants, then electricity from fossil fuels and other sources of that state-owned company, then wind and solar power from private generators, and lastly electric power generated with gas and steam in privately-owned combined cycle plants.

The Puebla 1 Hydroelectric Project would divert the Ajajalpan River in the central Mexican state of Puebla, thus damaging the main water source of three municipalities in the northern highlands of that Mexican region. CREDIT: IPS/Fundar

It also requires the autonomous Energy Regulatory Commission to declare invalid the self-supply permits obtained by individuals to generate their own electricity from sources such as gas, hydroelectric, wind and solar power, in what is known as distributed or decentralised generation.

It also subjects future generation permits to the energy ministry’s planning criteria, which means they are placed under government provisions. In addition, the new regulations eliminate the requirement for electricity auctions.

The application of the new law is temporarily suspended by order of a judge, although it is assumed that it will go ahead.

In Latin America’s second largest economy, with a population of 126 million people, electricity consumption currently stands at around 270,000 gigawatt hours, half of which is provided by CFE and the rest by private operators.

The sources of electricity are primarily fossil fuels (around 76 percent), hydroelectricity (about eight percent), wind (6.59 percent), solar (four percent), nuclear (three percent) and geothermal (1.5 percent).

The communities affected by megaprojects feel that the counter-reform gives them a respite, since they will no longer be under the shadow of private companies. But they are not free from the CFE, which has historically ignored their demands.

“We don’t think the changes benefit us, because the energy is not for us,” said Mugarte, whose area is powered by electricity generated by a thermoelectric plant fired by fossil fuels.

The energy reform left local communities at the mercy of the CFE and the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and private companies, as they could not refuse the installation of a project.

Although it requires a social impact assessment and consultations with indigenous communities, these were carried out after the planning and design of the project and became a mere formality.

As a result, affected peoples have opted to sue in court for the lack of what they consider to be a consultation free of pressure, prior to the design and construction of the projects and with adequate and timely information.

The same scheme has been repeated in other regions of the country as in Yucatan.

In the central state of Puebla, the company Deselec 1-Comexhidro aims to build the Puebla 1 hydroelectric plant to supply electricity to the Mexican subsidiaries of the U.S. retail chain Walmart, a restaurant chain and a clothing chain.

“Yes it has changed things somewhat, because it allows the energy to be Mexican, since it was privatised,” José Galindo, a member of the Totonaco indigenous people of eastern Mexico, told IPS by telephone from the municipality of San Felipe Petatlán in Puebla. “But nevertheless it is worrying. They want to continue managing the oil, the contamination, and they want more hydroelectric dams to be built, which will continue to obstruct the watersheds.”

Galindo, a member of the non-governmental Totonaco Regional Council, made it clear that “we do not feel more supported by the CFE, and we do not feel that we have better quality energy.”

Since 2016, residents in three municipalities of Puebla have been blocking a hydroelectric megaproject on the Ajajalpan river, their main water source, through two legal actions. The so-called Puebla 1 Hydroelectric Project would build two dams, Ahuacoya and Zoquiapa, the first of which would be 45 metres high and would have a generating capacity of 60 Mw.

“There was a simulation of indigenous consultation. They already had the permits a few years ago, and all they did was tell the people what they wanted to do. The government institutions were part of the simulation. They never informed us of the project,” said Galindo, whose municipality of 4,000 inhabitants is some 230 kilometres south of Mexico City.

Prior to the legislative approval of the changes in the electricity commercialisation system, authorities and organisations of 14 indigenous peoples requested to participate in renewable generation.

They raised the need for “a new model of social and democratic energy transition, without the participation of large multinationals or private megaprojects.”

Since 2018, disgruntled communities have managed to stop at least six renewable projects in Yucatan and a hydroelectric plant in Puebla.

The CFE does not plan to invest in renewable energy, because it favours fossil fuels, large hydroelectric plants and nuclear energy.

Communities such as San José Tipceh and San Felipe Tepatlán only want the projects to be cancelled.

“We want the environmental licence to be denied. If renewable energy is going to destroy nature, I don’t see the benefit. Let them put it in the desert or in a place that does not affect nature,” Mugarte said.

For his part, Galindo hopes the hydroelectric plant will be cancelled. “That would be very important, because there are many violations of rights. I wish that each town could have and control its own energy,” he said.

Related Articles

• Making Seawater Potable in Mexico Has High Costs and Environmental Impacts
• Mexico Sticks to Natural Gas, Despite Socioenvironmental Impacts
• Mexico’s Plan to Upgrade Hydropower Plants Faces Hurdles
• Expansion of Renewable Energies in Mexico Has Victims, Too

The post Indigenous Communities in Mexico Fight Energy Projects appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNDP

By Volkan Bozkir *
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

Water is integral to sustainable development, but we are well behind on the goals and targets that we have set ourselves.

By current estimates:
– Some 2.2 billion people – almost a third of the global population – continue to lack access to safely managed drinking water;
– 4.2 billion people – more than half of the planet’s population – live without safely managed sanitation;
– 2 billion people don’t have a decent toilet of their own;
– and 3 billion lack basic handwashing facilities – even in the midst of a global pandemic.

If I may be candid: it is a moral failure that we live in a world with such high levels of technical innovation and success, but we continue to allow billions of people to exist without clean drinking water or the basic tools to wash their hands. And make no mistake, this is a global failure that has far-reaching implications for all of us.

We must remember:
– Water is life. We simply cannot live on this planet – and certainly not in any healthy capacity – if we are deprived of this most basic human need. Our entire agricultural system – all of the food we consume – is dependent upon water supplies. The same extends to all other life on this planet. Every ecosystem, every species, depends upon water.
– Water is sustainability. Safe drinking water systems and adequate sanitation is essential to ensure cities and towns grow sustainably. Without these core services and needs met, our ability to provide education, healthcare, and jobs and livelihoods will suffer.
– And Water is empowerment.

While we have recognized women’s central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water, the implementation of this core principle remains far from adequate.

For women and girls across the globe, the daily trek to collect water can be an impediment to accessing education, healthcare, or work. We cannot empower people, we cannot raise them up, when they are held back.

Delivering on Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) and guaranteeing water and sanitation for all is a win across the board. Water is both an economic good and an SDG accelerator, facilitating progress on each of the other SDGs.

For this reason, we must see the recovery from COVID-19 as an inflection point in the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, and re-focus our efforts on sustainable and integrated water management.

I could point to dozens of examples where the lack of water or sanitation is impacting people around the world, but the most obvious and most topical is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The fact that billions of people have had to face this pandemic without basic handwashing facilities and that health providers in some of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) do not have running water is impossible to reconcile, especially when we live in a world of such abundance and of such profound innovation.

This stark example of global inequality can and must spur us to action.

While we cannot go back and change what has happened, we must acknowledge our failings and use this opportunity to root out the systemic gaps that have allowed the crisis to flourish. When the next global pandemic or crisis strikes, and we know that it will, we will have no excuse for having not acted now.

Delivering on SDG6 and guaranteeing water and sanitation for all is a win across the board. Water is both an economic good and an SDG accelerator, facilitating progress on each of the other SDGs.

For this reason, we must see the recovery from COVID-19 as an inflection point in the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, and re-focus our efforts on sustainable and integrated water management.

In light of all that I have outlined, our discussions and statements today must focus on tangible, concrete actions that deliver for the people of the world.

Among the many areas where I hope to see progress is support for the SDG6 Global Accelerator Framework, which promises to deliver fast results at scale, with an emphasis on COVID response and recovery.

The Framework, and other efforts like it, offer a clear path to ramp up progress at the country level, yet they remain vastly underfunded. As it is, the OECD notes that there is a critical need for investments in water infrastructure to the tune of $500 billion dollars by 2030.

For this reason, I call on the international community to provide greater financial and capacity-building support to water and sanitation related activities, particularly through their support to COVID-19 recovery.

In doing so, I ask that you consider and prioritize countries in special situations, notably LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS, and that you make every effort to support those who have borne the brunt of the water-deficit, particularly women and girls.

Finally, I ask that we, as an international community, work closely with civil society groups and with young people to strengthen water-related goals and activities.

Young people and local groups, with their ear to the ground and their nimble ability to act, are often the first to usher in new technologies or approaches; we must take advantage of this tool and empower all people in this process.

Governments alone cannot achieve the 2030 Agenda and strong engagement of stakeholders is essential for the achievement of all SDGs. It is therefore important that we enable stakeholders from different sectors, ranging from civil society and academia, to the private sector, to fully participate in discussions in related events.

For this purpose, I have designated a special part of the panel discussion, dubbed “CSO Spotlight”, to give as many stakeholders as we can accommodate an opportunity to voice their concerns, visions, plans, successes and lessons, and calls for action.

In closing, allow me to emphasize that our discussion today is not just about liquid in a bottle…It’s presence or absence means so, so much more.

It is about dignity.
It is about opportunity.
It is about our health and our ability to survive.
And it is about equality.

*Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in his address to the High-level Meeting on the Implementation of the Water-related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda on March 18.

 

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The post A Moral Failure: Billions of People with No Access to Clean Drinking Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post A Moral Failure: Billions of People with No Access to Clean Drinking Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

While technology has opened up opportunities for women journalists to communicate, they now reproduce and amplify harassment and abuse of the professionals across platforms. Credit: Erick Kabendera/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

“Email and social media access attempts, extremely aggressive comments, photo montages, massive defamation and intimidation campaigns on WhatsApp. This is what women journalists are facing for doing our job,” said Brazilian journalist Bianca Santana.

Santana addressed a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)-led virtual event to tackle online harassment and abuse against women journalists on Thursday, Mar. 19.

She told the forum that the online and ICT worlds can be dangerous places for women journalists.

The UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan said during the forum that perpetrators of online abuse of women journalists use the internet to launch vicious and amplified attacks.

She reminded the gathering that she has experienced online abuse firsthand. A former consulting newspaper editor and human rights activist in Bangladesh, she has been a target of gender-based violence, sexual violence and harassment.

“On one hand, the victims – the women – are much more vulnerable in this virtual world because of the amplification of the attacks. At the same time, the perpetrators are much more protected because of their anonymity and the impunity they enjoy,” she said.

According to a 2020 report by the UN Human Rights Council titled ‘Combating violence against women journalists,’ not only are women attacked online at a rate far exceeding men, but they also face increasing sexualised content and stalking.

UNESCO partnered with the permanent missions of Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom to the United Nations to host the virtual event.

Canada’s representative Robert Oliphant said his country is contributing to programmes that support women journalists, through the non-profit Article 19. That organisation states that while technology has opened up opportunities for women journalists to communicate, they now reproduce and amplify harassment and abuse of the professionals across platforms.

“In today’s world attacks take place both on and offline. Women journalists face sexual harassment, intimidation, violence and in the worst cases, they’re killed,” said Oliphant. “Too often authorities do little to bring those responsible to justice.”

Quoting figures from a UNESCO-International Centre for Journalists study on online attacks on women journalists, UNESCO’s Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists Guilherme Canela said the attacks are widespread.

“Different platforms and different forms of online violence against those women journalists and very concerning is that of 20 percent of them reported suffering some sort of offline violence connected to the online threats that they have received. This is very scary,” he said.

Over 900 women journalists from 125 countries took part in the study.

• 73 percent of respondents in the study said that they had experienced online violence in the course of their work,
• 25 percent had received threats of physical violence, and
• 18 percent were threatened with sexual violence.

“The violence and threats are gender-based. When the violence is against women journalists there is an extra component. The tone of the violence, the language is related to sexual images, sexual comments,” Canela said.

The partners say these crimes are geared at undermining and silencing women journalists, which in turn are attacks on democratic freedoms, including the right to free and open expression.”

“We cannot preserve and protect freedom of expression for half of society if we do not take action against this kind of harassment. The attacks also have a direct impact on the right of society to access a plurality of information and perspectives,” said Teres Ribeiro, Representative on Freedom of the Media at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Article 19’s Senior Legal Officer Paulina Gutierrez said online attacks against women journalists deny women their right to privacy, freedom of expression, participation in public debates.

“We can see women limiting their journalistic reporting, we can see them self-censoring; deciding not to publish anymore their public views or opinions on very important topics for public discussion,” she said.

“We need to remember that the right to freedom of expression is an essential means to tackle discrimination and gender-based violence.”

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The post How Technology Reproduces & Amplifies Harassment & Abuse of Women Journalists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A woman in Madagascar walks for up to 14km a day to find clean water. Credit: UNICEF/Safidy Andrianantenain

By Jonathan Farr
LONDON, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

For many, the last year will be remembered as the time our day-to-day lives screeched to a halt. As Covid-19 spread mercilessly across the world, wreaking havoc on health and livelihoods, world leaders, health experts and scientists grappled with how to protect populations and stem the tide of the virus.

It is right that attention has been focused on the immediate threat posed by the pandemic; the global death toll has surpassed 2.6 million people and we have suffered the worst decline in the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But while coronavirus has consumed every aspect of our monotonous daily existence for the past year, as we build back, we have a moral responsibility to ensure nobody is left behind as we tackle an even bigger global crisis – climate change.

With our world warming at an alarming rate, it is becoming harder for the world’s poorest people to get clean water. WaterAid’s latest report: “Turn the tide: The state of the world’s water 2021” highlights how people are losing access to clean water and why it is a matter of utmost urgency that we take steps to protect people living in the most climate vulnerable countries of the world.

The 2.2 billion people who do not have a reliable and safe supply of water are without the most fundamental protection against climate change. Extreme weather such as prolonged droughts dry up water sources like springs and wells, while rising sea levels and flooding pollute poorly protected water supplies, threatening to put progress on bringing clean water to all back decades.

With no clean water to drink, cook or wash with, communities falter and people get sick – putting their lives and livelihoods at risk.

By 2040, the situation is predicted to be even worse, with climate change exacerbating the water crisis and helping to make water perilously scarce for 600 million children – that’s 1 in 4, and an increase of 20 per cent since 2010.

To highlight the impact climate change has on people’s access to water, WaterAid created a giant sand portrait on Whitby Beach in the UK ahead of World Water Day on 22 March. It showed an image of 12-year-old Ansha from Ethiopia carrying water on dry, cracked ground, reflecting the impact of drought, while the incoming tide that swept the fleeting art away shows how rising sea levels and excess rainfall can contaminate water.

It is a stark reminder that climate change is happening now and those who have done least to cause it are living with its consequences. Having a reliable source of water is a frontline defence; it means being able to drink clean water every day, whatever the weather.

Less than 1% of total global climate investment goes to basic water infrastructure and services. And whilst there have been endless promises of billions of dollars ($100 billion per year was pledged as part of the UN Climate process in 2009, which has not been delivered) too much is being spent in wealthier countries, rather than providing basic services in poorer communities to help protect against climate change and other threats.

Very few low-income countries are among the top recipients of public climate finance for water, despite being the most vulnerable to climate change. Of the 20 countries receiving the most climate funding for water programmes,19 are middle-income countries.

WaterAid is calling for change. On 31 March, the UK Government will host a virtual Climate and Development event to build momentum towards this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26). WaterAid is urging high income nations to significantly increase their climate finance for adaptation.

This includes fulfilling their previous commitments to give half of the total of climate adaptation finance to vulnerable communities to help them cope with the harsh reality of living with climate change.

The good news is that this is an entirely solvable problem. There is, in most cases, with the right infrastructure, resource management and investment, water available to meet everyone’s domestic needs.

The Covid crisis has shown what we can achieve to protect people in an emergency. We need to draw on that same strength to ensure the next generations never need worry about something as fundamental as having clean water close to home.

For more information: www.wateraid.org

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Senior Policy Analyst for WaterAid

 
The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post Clean Water Vital for Protecting Those on the Frontline of Climate Change in Post-Pandemic World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Masha Khromchenko stands in the kindergarten classroom that took a direct hit from a shell in the Luhansk region, Ukraine. The UN Security Council has demanded an end to attacks on schools worldwide. Credit: UNICEF/Christopher Morris

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

The horrendous killings of children in military conflicts and civil wars – both by national armed forces and militant groups – have triggered widespread condemnation by human rights organizations worldwide.

But a “list of shame” singling out some of these perpetrators have been politicized leaving out some of these countries under fire, including Afghanistan, Israel (in the killings in occupied territories), Somalia and Yemen (where the killings are blamed on the aerial attacks by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).

According to Human Rights Watch, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been repeatedly criticized for letting national armed forces and non-state armed groups off the hook for grave violations against children in war.

The list, first requested by the UN Security Council in 2001, is described as the “linchpin” for UN efforts to protect children in war.

The numbers, however, are staggering, according to a new report released by the Eminent Persons Group, including Lt-General (Ret) Romeo Dallaire, the former UN force commander during Rwanda’s genocide; Yanghee Lee, former chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Benyam Dawit Mezmur, a child rights expert; and Allan Rock, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

The group, which released its report last week, has numerous examples of armed forces or groups (typically government forces) that have been omitted or removed from the “list of shame” — notably the Saudi and UAE-led coalition, Israeli forces, Afghan forces, and Myanmar’s military, Tatmadaw

Afghan security forces have reportedly killed or injured more than 4,000 children since 2014 but have not been listed.

In 2014, Israeli forces killed 557 Palestinian children and injured 4,249, largely during fighting in Gaza. But Israeli forces were not on the list of shame– even though the number of children killed was the third highest in the world that year.

In Somalia, the armed group Al-Shabab has been repeatedly listed for sexual violence against children, but the Somali National Army has not been listed, despite comparable numbers of cases.

In 2020, Guterres “delisted” the coalition led by Saudi and United Arab Emirates for killing and maiming children in Yemen, as well as Myanmar’s army for recruiting and using child soldiers.

Yet each was responsible for hundreds of violations the previous year, according to the report.

Jo Becker, Advocacy Director, Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS that Guterres has been reluctant to hold all perpetrators to account since he first took office about four years ago.

Asked whether Guterres is paying politics in a year he is seeking re-election, Becker said: “So his failure to list all perpetrators is definitely not just an issue of this being an “election year.”

She said the UN Security Council first requested the annual list, and over the past two decades, has carefully created the UN’s framework for children and armed conflict.

As the architects of the agenda, they should insist that the Secretary-General ensure it functions as it was intended, and that he list all perpetrators, without exception, Becker declared.

But without an accurate list, the UN’s children and armed conflict framework is seriously undermined. The experts urged the secretary-general to change his approach and list all perpetrators “without fear or favor.”

Without such action, they warn, children will be put at even greater risk, said HRW. “The secretary-general should take the experts’ recommendations to heart and put the protection of children first”.

Mouin Rabbani, Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Co-Editor, Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS it doesn’t take more than a passing glance at the list of perpetrators included in, and excluded from the list, to understand that these assessments are not the product of a rigorous examination of the evidence, and thus do not represent the conclusions of an appropriately professional process.

“It seems to me indisputable that political factors are in play. In part this consists of the traditional deference to the powerful and their clients, which is compensated for with sanctimonious outrage – which would otherwise be justified – against the weak and marginalized”.

In part, he argued, it reflects electoral considerations, with Guterres gearing up for election to a second term. And in part it reflects financial concerns, with the UN continuing to suffer a budget crunch and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia being once again given a pass.

While there is much discontent with the glaring omissions in the list, which no one has failed to notice, it seems unlikely that the General Assembly will act to rectify, since it is composed of governments and many of them are subject to similar pressures and inducements, said Rabbani.

Asked for a response to the report from the eminent group of experts, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on March 17: “First of all, I have to say we appreciate the views expressed”.

“We have worked… diligently with many partners, including NGOs, and everyone is working towards the same goal: improving the protection of children and wiping out the scourge of children being forced as combatants and, of course, as victims of conflict.’

He pointed out that the Secretary General’s report is one critical tool that is meant to generate action. “I think, year after year, the report and the associated work of all our colleagues on the ground and in New York is to change behaviours in the most difficult circumstances. Our goal is to end and prevent grave violations against children. Each year, we report on progress and setbacks”.

There’s a lot of focus on the list per se, but I think it’s also critical to read the full narrative in the reports every year, which lays out in detail how children are impacted by the conflict and the work that is being done to better protect boys and girls, notably through Plans of Action.

“And I think we have seen, over the years, improvements in some areas with Plans of Action being signed by different combatants. There’s always going to be discussion among people of the conclusions of the report, the methodology, the observations, the recommendations”.

“We stand by them, and we’re always happy to engage with relevant partners in how to improve the system,” he added.

  

The post UN Sanitizes Killings of Children in Armed Conflicts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Catherine a nurse at Jinja referral hospital in Uganda. (file photo) During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, caseworkers — the majority of whom are women — attended work daily. The 65th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is currently being held. This year’s them is women's full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Credit: Lyndal Rowlands/IPS.

By Nalisha Adams
BONN,Germany, Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, while many sought safety being at home, women in the healthcare, child care, aged care, teaching and services fields — who hold the majority of jobs in those occupations — went to work everyday. 

“The tragedy was those workers on whom we depend most, the fabric of society, are actually amongst the lowest paid,” said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. She was speaking during a side event to the 65th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that is currently taking place from Mar. 15 to 26.

The year’s commission theme is ‘Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’.

Yesterday’s side event titled ‘On the Path to Economic Justice and Rights: Working towards Women’s Economic Empowerment’ was organised by the government of Germany as well as the Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights. The coalition is one of six themed coalitions that exist within Generation Equality, a UN Women campaign that promotes gender equality.

The high-level side event aimed to discuss women’s participation and decision-making in economic life. Globally women present the majority of the working poor with less than half of women of working age in paid employment.

Germany’s Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Dr. Gerd Müller, said the quest for economic justice and equal rights was made even more difficult by COVID-19, which brought existing inequalities into sharp focus.

He said that women and girls in Africa, Asia and Latin America were particularly hard hit.

“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, women and girls enjoyed fewer rights, had less access to education and resources and often lived and worked under appalling conditions. And now they are being hit by the fallout from the pandemic, the lockdown and the economic decline.

“Typically women were often the first to lose their jobs. Many girls will never return to school because they have to work in cottage industries in order to help support their impoverished families, or because they have an unplanned pregnancy or have been married off,” Müller said, adding that violence against women and girls had also increased worldwide. He called this a disaster and tragedy.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, acknowledged that violence against women, which she called ‘a shadow pandemic’ had increased.

“We also know that those who are experiencing violence and those who are experiencing job losses in large numbers are women in their 20s and 30s who have young children and still need to contribute to look after their families,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

“What are we going to do to assist women make a re-entry to the labour force as well as address the economic fall out that they will experience?” she asked.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said there was also a skills gap to address, as women were affected by the gender digital gap, they would not likely qualify for the new jobs that were likely to be created post-pandemic.

She also noted that women were carrying the burden of unpaid work at home, which required them to be at home and give up work.

She said a number of obstacles had emerged from the pandemic that affected the sustainability of women in the labour force.

Burrow said women were at “the forefront of every aspect of a labour market that is broken”.

“Are governments, are employers serious about rectifying the inequality of income, gender and race? If we are, then we need jobs, jobs and jobs because women have fallen out of the labour market and fallen into precarious work,” Burrow said.

She said because governments failed to regulate the labour market, 60 percent of workers worked in the informal market — the majority of whom were women.

A woman farmer selling her produce at a local market in Casamence, southern Senegal. (file photo) In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of those in informal employment, which is typically low-skilled with poor working conditions, are women. A UN high-level side event aimed to discuss gender equality, women’s participation and decision-making in economic life. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

These women, she said, had no rights, no minimum wage and their work conditions were not subject to compliance.

“So [they are] absolutely at the forefront of survival everyday. And then you have 40 percent of workers in the formal economy, but a third of those are in precarious or in insecure work. Again, the majority are women,” Burrow said.

Women are also most likely to be in low-paying, insecure and informal work and earned on average, in developed economies, 20 percent less than men. In developing economies the gap is believed to greater. Women are also highly represented in the sectors that are hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mlambo-Ngcuka noted that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action still remained the most ambitious and far-reaching framework for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Beijing Declaration sets out common goals, definitions and values for countries that are UN Member States in achieving gender equality.

“Twenty-five years later we have still not been able to implement it fully but it is still important for us

to do your best to implement it,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

“As we have not achieved everything that we wanted to achieve in the Beijing Declaration. We are therefore at that stage where we have to review how far we have come and Generation Equality is borne out of a realisation that we have a long way to go.

“We have also realised that the implementation of the SDGs have not moved as far and as fast as we wanted it,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said that Generation Equality helped advance gender quality on the following three fronts by:

• advancing the Beijing Declaration
• advancing the the SDGs, and
• responding in a gender-responsive way to the pandemic.

She said the Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights was an action-orientated coalition that “with very concrete actions that we are going to take”.

“We are asking you to join us in this action coalition because these are the that issues we intend to address. We are hoping that in this action coalition we will look at the disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work that women are carrying.

“We will look at gender-based violence, including sexual violence in the workplace, and we are also going to be asking member states to ratify the ILO [International Labour Organisation] convention on sexual harassment and violence in the work place,” she said, adding they were looking at closing the gender pay gap as well as looking at the need for women to have protected and decent jobs.

She said in the event of another pandemic “we should not find ourselves in this situation again where there is a bloodbath of jobs that are occupied by women because they are unprotected and women have no benefits”. She said they also wanted to eliminate the $1.5 trillion credit gap that affects women.

Diane Ndarbawa, president of Manki Maroua, an association of girl-child mothers, from northern Cameroon, spoke about the constraints that women in rural areas face in accessing economic opportunities. 

She said that in Central Africa and Cameroon in particular, there were several constraints that resulted in the low rate of participation by women in economic decisions, often relegating them to them to second place when it came to economic decision-making. Some of these constraints included; a lack of information on laws, policies and programmes related to economic opportunities; a lack of control over the required documentation (particularly the drafting of project and activity reports); poor computer and digital technology skills, and the misinterpretation of traditions and religions; among others.

“As a young woman there are additional constraints. In my region where there is violence and insecurity linked to extremism and traditions, young women limit themselves to small craft businesses,” she said.

She said the establishment of Generation Equality Action Coalitions would improve the participation of young women in economic activities in sub-Saharan Africa’s rural areas, particularly in Cameroon’s extreme north. Far North Cameroon has been caught in the midst of a Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin.

“Our participation in this multi-stakeholder process gives young women and associations the strength to contribute and influence decision-making bodies at all levels,” she said.

“It would be important to advance the rights of young women and girls by involving, by raising awareness with the population, more specially, parents, religious leaders, local leaders,  showing them the importance of the empowerment of young women,” Ndarbawa said.

Meanwhile, Müller said Germany had stepped up support for action to empower women and girls and the work of the UN. He said Germany had allocated €38 million in additional funding to help promote gender equality during the current pandemic.

“If we are serious about our desire to recover better together, we will need women and girls who are empowered and therefore strong. Now more than ever,” Müller said.

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The post Achieving Gender Equality for Women’s Re-entry to the Labour Force Post COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The 65th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that is currently taking place from Mar. 15 to 26. A UN high-level side event aimed to discuss gender equality, women’s participation and decision-making in economic life.

The post Achieving Gender Equality for Women’s Re-entry to the Labour Force Post COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS.

By External Source
Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

Due to growing insecurity, Nigeria is gradually becoming one of the most dangerous places to live. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index identified the country as the third most affected by terrorism. There was a sharp increase in Boko Haram’s targeting of civilians by 25%, and killings by herdsmen increased by 26%, compared with the previous year. The two countries higher on the index are Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, 2,769 violent deaths were recorded between February 2020 and February 2021 in Borno State alone. Similarly, ransom-kidnapping by armed groups has increased substantially in the past five years. Over $18 million was paid as ransom for kidnapped victims between 2011 and 2020.

My research published last year highlights why children have become targets for the armed groups in northern Nigeria. This paper focuses on children in the Boko Haram conflict, which has for over 10 years ravaged the northeastern part of Nigeria and around Lake Chad

While insecurity is common in Nigeria, the northern region has been most affected. This is due to Boko Haram attacks, banditry, farmers-herdsmen conflicts, kidnappings and ethno-religious conflicts. Sadly, children have not been spared.

In the northeast, children have been murdered, abducted and used as sex slaves, forcefully recruited as child soldiers, and suffer from diseases and malnutrition at the Internally Displaced Persons camps. The United Nations says almost 4,000 children were killed in just a year, 2015 to 2016. UNICEF reported that an estimated 1.9 million people are displaced – and about 60% of them are children; many under the age of five.

The rising phenomenon has further manifested in the recent wave of attacks on schools and kidnapping of students.

My research published last year highlights why children have become targets for the armed groups in northern Nigeria. This paper focuses on children in the Boko Haram conflict, which has for over 10 years ravaged the northeastern part of Nigeria and around Lake Chad.

Despite the reality that children have increasingly become the face of insecurity in northern Nigeria, the literature has been silent on issues related to child security. My study therefore aimed to address the perspective of children in the conflict.

I found that children were of strategic interest to both the terrorists and the state security forces. I concluded that child security had not been given sufficient attention in Nigeria, and that child security should be included in peace-building efforts in northeastern Nigeria.

 

Children and conflict in northern Nigeria

The dimension of children in violent conflicts in northern Nigeria gained momentum in 2013 when Boko Haram adopted the strategy of direct attacks on schools, hospitals and centres for internally displaced people.

It started with the midnight raid of a dormitory in Gujba, Yobe State, leading to the murder of 44 schoolboys by the terrorist group in September 2013. Five months later, another boarding school was attacked, and 59 boys were murdered in the same state. In April 2014, 276 schoolgirls were abducted in Chibok in Borno State.

UNICEF in its 2018 report said that the group had kidnapped over 1,000 children since 2013. Between 2015 and 2016, the UN estimated that 3,909 children were killed.

In the past five years, the rise of banditry added a new and dangerous dimension to attacks on children. On December 11 2020, 333 students were kidnapped in Kankara, Katsina State. On December 20 2020, 80 students at an Islamic school were kidnapped in Mahuta, Katsina State. Twenty seven students were abducted in Kagara, Niger State, on February 17 2021.

The latest occurred on February 25 with the abduction of 317 schoolgirls in Jangebe, Talata-Mafara local government, Zamfara State.

 

Why children are prime targets

Our study used a qualitative approach, relying on data from institutional reports of intergovernmental agencies like the United Nations, United Nations Children’s Fund, and International Organisation for Migration; non-governmental agencies like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, Mercy Corps, Open Doors and media reports.

The research showed that children were of strategic interest to the armed groups for many reasons. First, targeting children proved effective as a tool to negotiate for the release of members of the group in prison and receive huge ransoms to purchase weapons and fund their operations.

Second, the armed groups were interested in children to gain local and international attention to show their strength, seek international collaborations with similar groups, and amplify their demands on the state authorities.

Third, children were useful for their military operations, especially for terrorist groups. They could plant explosives, act as human shields or suicide bombers, and spy on the other parties because they didn’t arouse suspicion.

Fourth, the attack on schools corresponded with the central ideology driving terrorism in the region, which was based on opposition to Western education. The increased attacks showed the plan was to make the region insecure for teaching and learning.

Fifth, girls were of interest to the armed groups for sexual exploitation. Abducted girls were sometimes raped or forced into marriages in the camps.

 

Nigeria must safeguard its children more

Child security has not been given sufficient attention in Nigeria. This explains the successful attacks on children in recent times. Child security underscores the essence of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, which Nigeria is a party to.

The government must show serious commitment to children’s security by tackling the rising problem of insecurity ravaging the country. The paper underscores the need for specialised programmes that can address the peculiar challenges of children involved in the conflict zones and not merely incorporate them into adult-focused or general programmes.

The international community, including important nongovernmental organisations promoting children’s rights and welfare, must also compel the authorities to secure the children and internationalise the problem of child insecurity in Nigeria.

Hakeem Onapajo, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Nile University of Nigeria

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

The post Why Children Are Prime Targets of Armed Groups in Northern Nigeria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Overview of the Club des Pins, venue of the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, held in Algiers, Algeria from 10 to 25 October 1967. Credit: National Center of Archives, Algiers, Algeria/ Group of 77

By Branislav Gosovic *
GENEVA, Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

I observed the Group of 77 (G77) shortly after the 1964 Geneva Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the 1968 UNCTAD 2 in New Delhi and the 1972 UNCTAD 3 in Santiago. The Group was influential at the time, benefiting from several factors helpful for its functioning which are no longer present, namely:

High level leadership.

Major developing countries and their leaders, who spearheaded the establishment and rise of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and then of G77, maintained close interest in activities of the two groupings. They also believed in the importance of collective action of the Global South at the UN, and provided high level political drive and direction. This kind of involvement of leaders has not been common recently.

UNCTAD Secretariat support.

The G77 enjoyed substantive and logistical back-up from the UNCTAD secretariat in Geneva, and in New York where its Division on Development Finance was located. This secretariat was staffed by committed personalities, both from the North and the South, with required expertise and political outlook.

The UNCTAD secretariat acted as a “public service” offered by the UN to developing countries to assist them in their unequal, political and economic encounter with the B Group of developed countries, who controlled the world economy and were unhappy to see the Third World pressing its demands in an organized manner in the UN.

The UNCTAD secretariat also provided G77 with intellectual back-up, and assisted it to mount initiatives in trade, finance and development fields. It also offered the infrastructure, logistical and administrative support necessary for Group’s functioning.

Following the launch of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the General Assembly, and of other joint NAM – G77 initiatives when the two groupings worked closely together, the B Group launched a drive to weaken and gradually end UNCTAD secretariat’s support for developing countries’ group actions arguing that this favouritism was contrary to the “neutral” posture international civil servants were required to assume in the North-South tug-of-war.

Official logo of the Group of 77 since 1967

Focussed, limited of agenda.

In the beginning, the G77 agenda was focussed on trade and development within purview of UNCTAD. This helped the Group evolve its positions on key items of interest to developing countries, i.e. commodities, manufactures, invisibles, development finance, transfer of technology, restrictive business practices, as well as to organize its work, to involve developing countries governments in Group action, and to mobilize expertise and human resources required.

Activities of the Group were structured by Trade and Development Board, standing committees and conferences held every four years, patterned on the1964 Geneva Conference.

This provided a framework and timetable for a continuing process and a set of objectives for Group’s work. As the principal locus of G77 activities gradually shifted to UN HQs in New York in early 1970s and scope of its work diversified, the Group was not able to evolve its own strong support structure needed to cope with many demands of the wide-ranging UN agenda.

A few years later, I was on the South Centre staff when it cooperated closely with the Group of 77 (1991-2005), as well as with NAM, during the chairmanships of Indonesia and Colombia (1992-1998). To the extent of its limited capacities, the Centre served as their detached “outfit” to undertake assignments.

There was a demand for Centre’s “pro bono” services and its contributions were used and appreciated, illustrating the need for continuous substantive support for both G77 and NAM in their work.

Today, the twin groupings of the Global South confront a wide-ranging global agenda, acting on two parallel tracks: G77 is predominantly concerned with the socio-economic questions, while NAM is focussed on political and security issues.

Raúl Prebisch, first Secretary-General of UNCTAD, attending the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, held in Algiers, Algeria from 10 to 25 October 1967. Credit: National Center of Archives, Algiers, Algeria/ Group of 77

The two domains overlap and are interrelated, and should be dealt with in an integrated, coordinated manner. While the relations between them are cordial, coordination is ad hoc and close working relations needed to deal with these questions are lacking.

It is not easy to keep up successfully with demands that the panoply of issues on UN agenda present, more so as the Global South does not have its own organization to back it up.

The G77 relies on the support of its own valiant very small technical secretariat and keeper of its institutional memory, which however does not have substantive capacities necessary to deal with multiple needs.

NAM, in turn, has traditionally eschewed having its own institutional support and depends on the foreign ministry of the country which happens to chair the Movement during a given three-year period.

The importance of greatly improved organization of developing countries at the global level has been self-evident for decades. It is essential for achieving their greater cohesion and utilizing more fully the potential of South-South cooperation, and for increasing their collective and national influence and role in the United Nations and on the world scene.

It is also necessary for exercising political and intellectual counterweight vis-à-vis the domineering, well-organized and equipped North.

When chairing the South Commission, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, used to say “Countries and peoples of the South must work together and stand up to be counted!”

He felt that a global organization of the South would help the Third World to stand up, interact, think, work and act together, and play an important role in giving direction to multilateral policies and in shaping global futures.

It can be argued that by not building purposefully their institutional strength in the world arena, the developing countries have in effect disempowered themselves. Still, much can be done today to improve the presence of the Global South on the world scene. Developing countries have the means, resources and brains for this historic undertaking and necessity.

The idea of establishing a global organization of the South is now six decades old. When the matter was raised in the South Commission, Manmohan Singh, member of the Commission and its Secretary-General, felt that this was unrealistic given myriads of obstacles, but concluded “unless someone was to serve it to developing countries on a silver platter”.

Accepting the validity of his perceptive observation, one should consider how to provide a “silver platter” that would help leapfrog potential obstacles and opposition to the idea, and revitalize the process of gradually building-up this still-missing, South-South piece of global governance architecture of such great importance.

In the rise of the Global South, a primordial role was played by a few visionary national leaders (Nasser, Nehru, Tito) who contributed to conceptualizing ideas and goals, and then spearheaded the initiative to translate these into practice by launching NAM in 1961 and via NAM paving the way for emergence of G77 in 1964.

Later, such was the case of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, who sought and got support of 1986 Harare NAM Summit for the establishment of the South Commission, and then convinced Mwalimu Nyerere to accept to be its Chairman.

During his chairing of the South Commission, Mwalimu Nyerere grasped the critical role of organizational support for the Global South and devoted the last decade of his life to this idea, which resulted in establishing the South Centre as an IGO intergovernmental think-tank of the Global South.

This was a major breakthrough, but only a first step which did not match the modest “South Secretariat”, a medium sized (35 professionals) multifunctional set-up recommended by the South Commission in its report 1990 “The Challenge to the South”.

At the 2000 South Summit in Havana, a group of developing countries’ leaders headed by President Obasanjo of Nigeria, then chair of G77, launched the initiative to upgrade the institutional machinery of the Global South by “taking over” the South Centre and transforming it into a “coordinating commission” for improving implementation and follow-up of agreed policies and decisions of the Summit.

However, since it was poorly conceived, covertly prepared without any consultation with those concerned, and foisted on the Summit at the last minute, the idea was opposed by many countries and did not get off the ground.

The next upcoming South Summit, on hold due to covid19, offers an opportunity to launch a thorough preparatory, coordination and consultation process required for establishing an Organization of the Global South. Drawing on the rich experiences accumulated, and lessons learned, it could agree on a project and a facility for such an organization.

An innovative institution is needed to serve as the home of the Global South, a nursery of ideas and initiatives of common interest, and a reference point on complex issues on the UN agenda.

For a start, functions of a “South secretariat” recommended in the South Commission’s 1990 report “The Challenge to the South”, a high-level panel, including some elders who have taken part in earlier endeavours and persons with hands-on-experience of South-South cooperation, can be set up to launch this project of historic importance for the Global South in its efforts to overcome dependence and figure prominently in the changing world geo-political map.

* Branislav Gosovic was on the staff of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), and South Commission. His last post, before retirement, was with the South Centre in Geneva 1991-2006.

 

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Globally, women are grossly underrepresented in scientific research and development. Credit: Bigstock

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, Mar 17 2021 (IPS)

Over a month ago, the world celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. But the celebrations ring hollow when there’s still been no meaningful progress in the representation of women in the research sciences field.  At present, less than 30 percent, of scientific researchers worldwide are women, a percentage that has been the same for almost a decade.

Despite this lag in progress, consistently, and predictably so, from the United Nations, to professional societies, to Universities, there is often the message shared that “Every girl can be a scientist”. As a woman scientist, who is very lucky to be in science, because, without luck, and I mean, nature’s luck, I would never been a scientist, I know this statement isn’t true right now.

The truth is, the way our society and systems are set up, few girls, especially girls like me, from rural communities, can ever be scientists. How do we expect them to be scientists without the resources and facilities to allow them to experience the magic of science? How do we expect them to get into science when they do not have societal role model scientists that look like them?

And even if they are lucky like me, how do we expect them to succeed, if many end up in institutions that are still grappling with low representation of women in science? How?

These are the questions I struggle with every time I hear the overly optimistic and unrealistic statements that are not backed up by policies to support them. Moreover, it is also clear that the ongoing pandemic has amplified these challenges.

I am an optimist too and I hope to see – want to see – equal representation of women in the sciences. To get there, though, we must envision and implement big changes.

First and foremost, there is need to avail resources and all necessary infrastructures to introduce girls from all communities, including marginalized communities, to science. This means investing in creating research labs and community science centers and science museums.

These spaces present excellent spaces for young and curious students including girls to interact with science. In the United States, there are several science centers that are doing a great job. From Maryland Science Center to Orlando Science Center to Museum of Science + industry Chicago.

Alternatively, university institutions, research centers and other professional societies can work with organizations present in marginalized communities to provide the platforms for girls and women from marginalized communities to access science at an early age.

I still remember my first day at a modern lab at Kenyatta University and how it mesmerized and aroused curiosity in me. Now imagine, if we arise the curiosity for many more girls and at a younger age, then the statistics will change

The American Association for Advancement of Sciences, for example, has the Science Linkages in the Community Initiative that works with and trains community based partners in an effort to ensure that younger students have hands-on, inquiry based STEM activities. Museum spaces. Such programs should continue.

From firsthand experiences, I know what access to the right infrastructures can have. I still remember my first day at a modern lab at Kenyatta University and how it mesmerized and aroused curiosity in me. Now imagine, if we arise the curiosity for many more girls and at a younger age, then the statistics will change.

Second, once exposed to science at a younger age, girls and women need concerted mentoring, funding and encouragement. The truth is science, like any other career has its good and bad days. Mentoring schemes that continue to support women at the early years, where they are likely to transfer to other non-science disciplines, is necessary.

Mentors have played a critical role in my journey as a scientist-holding my hand, providing support and encouraging me every milestone of my journey. We cannot afford to lose any women through the pipeline.

Third, as they continue to move through the pipeline, and early into the college years, it is important once again that they are supported. Fully paid internships and mentoring programs at these stages are key. At the same time, funding and scholarships are also key, so that they dedicate most of their time while in college in pursuing science without having to work multiple jobs.

Reflecting on my science journey, funding through scholarships and fellowships by universities and numerous organizations including the American Association for University Women and the Schlumberger Faculty for the Future were very instrumental. Without them, I would not have afforded to stay and pursue a career in science.

At the undergraduate level, there also needs to be a clear job pipeline. Career offices and undergraduate studies should provide as many opportunities as possible so that these future scientists are exposed to and discover several pathways to take. At the graduate level, support, mentoring and access to opportunities are also key.

This is extremely crucial as at this point, many make the decision to either stay in science or to finally transition to other careers. Additional resources such as grant writing courses could also go a long way.

Once they make it into science careers, whether in universities, research institutions, or in private and tech companies, it is important to also be supported. Data evidence suggest that women researchers still face so many challenges –from-sexism, workplaces that are not diverse enough, to inflexible work hours to allow women researchers to balance work and family responsibilities.

Therefore, universities and workplaces should put in place policies to correct these issues. Importantly, when policies are instituted, there needs to be well articulated metrics about how they will track success and evaluate whether the policies are working.

Let’s create the right policies and support systems to ensure that many more girls and women pursue and stay in science – then we can truly celebrate.

 

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

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A displaced Yemeni woman stands outside a makeshift shelter that she shares with her extended family. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said while the Biden administration is ‘stepping up its diplomacy’ to end the war, peace is impossible if the Houthis continue their relentless attacks against the Yemeni people and Yemen’s neighbours. (file photo) Courtesy: IOM/O. Headon

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen has warned that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, is rapidly deteriorating as Yemenis, including women and children, face hunger, injury and death.

Martin Griffiths told a UN Security Council briefing on Tuesday that one million internally displaced people are also at risk, amid escalating combat.

“Fighting forces on both sides have suffered heavy losses in this unnecessary battle. I see shocking reports, as I am sure we all do, of children increasingly getting drawn into the war effort and deprived of their future,” he said.

In 2011, Yemen became a hot spot in the Arab Spring, the surge of pro-democracy protests in the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa. The country’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to cede power to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, after 3 decades of authoritarian rule. Hadi’s term in office was however tumultuous and by 2014 Yemen was locked in civil war. The crisis escalated the following year when insurgent Houthi forces seized the capital Sanaa and a number of western cities.

The UN said in December that the war had claimed almost a quarter-million lives. That figure included over 3,000 children.

Griffiths reminded the Security Council that both Yemenis and migrants are suffering. He called for an independent investigation into a massive blaze at an overcrowded detention center in the country’s capital last week. The fire killed 40 people and injured close to 200 others – mostly Ethiopian migrants. Human Rights Watch said the incident was caused by the Houthi’s ‘reckless use of weapons’.

The UN Envoy warned that incidents like the deadly fire represent just a fraction of the pain and suffering wrought by the protracted war. He told the council famine has arrived “to add to the tragedy of Yemen”.

“It is logical therefore and it has been incumbent upon the parties for a very long time, and now more than ever, to agree to stop the fighting and to silence the guns,” he said.

“A nationwide ceasefire, along with the opening Sana’a airport and ensuring the unhindered flow of fuel and other commodities into Yemen through Hudaydah ports, are urgent humanitarian imperatives.”

Meanwhile, the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said the world is ‘running out of time’ and failing to meet the financial goals needed to tackle the crisis. A donor conference held in March raised $1.7 billion for the cause, half of what is needed to stave off large-scale famine.

“I again call on everyone to do everything you can – including money for the aid operation – to stop the famine,” Lowcock said.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said while the Biden administration is ‘stepping up its diplomacy’ to end the war, peace is impossible if the Houthis continue their relentless attacks against the Yemeni people and Yemen’s neighbours.

“Unfortunately, Houthi attacks have continued unabated since December, when they attempted to assassinate the new Yemeni cabinet. And today, the Houthi offensive in Marib is taking the lives of more Yemeni men, women, and children. They are also cruelly detaining innocent people,” she said.

Describing the situation in Yemen as ‘hell on earth,’ the U.S. Ambassador said it is time for heightened commitment by all concerned nations, to contribute money and aid to Yemen.

“Millions of Yemeni people remain in dire need. For them, the words that we say here in the Council can only go so far. The important thing is that we act, and we act now, as we have heard from all of our speakers today,” she said.

“We all expressed to a number here on this screen our shock at the situation. We all called for an end to the violence, and we all declared our support for the Yemeni people. Let’s translate these statements into actions.”

 

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Pexels /Artikel auf Deutsch lesen/ Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES)

By Anja Papenfuss
BERLIN, Mar 17 2021 (IPS)

Women get freezing cold in trains and in big city offices because the air conditioning is set for men’s sensitivity to the cold. They spend the whole theatre interval (when visits to the theatre were still possible) in the queue because there are too few toilets.

What may appear to be more of a nuisance – a lack of public toilets for women – is a life-threatening problem in many countries in the world. In some federal states in India, women have no access to toilets and fritter away valuable time looking for a safe place. If they don’t find it, they are often sexually harassed or even killed.

City authorities don’t record these special needs, and they are therefore not taken into account. But the problem is broader. In a large number of areas, data is not collected by gender. That’s true for example in medical research, which is mostly geared towards men for convenience’s sake.

It’s also true in traffic planning, giving preference to cars that are overwhelmingly used by men, although the majority of women globally travel by foot or by bicycle. In winter, it’s first the streets that are cleared although most accidents take place on pavements.

In her book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, the British author and feminist Caroline Criado-Perez has collected such facts and data from all areas of life, cultures and parts of the earth on just 500 pages.

Anja Papenfuss

Criado-Perez shows the huge gaps in data to the detriment of women in the workplace, in the design of basic commodities, in medicine and in public life. The ubiquitous discrimination of women is underscored with sobering figures.

And they prove what we have only presumed up until now: the world is not only partly but almost exclusively geared to men’s needs. She calls it ‘one-size-fits men’.

When data bias becomes life-threatening

The fact that the data gaps are so grave is also because we live in the digital age. Data is the new gold. With data, people can earn a lot of money and some base far-reaching decisions on it every day. That’s why it makes a huge difference whether data is taken from men or from women for an algorithm and with which data artificial intelligence is fed.

Criado-Perez comes up with the example of job-related assessment tests: Men always got the job if applications were only evaluated by artificial intelligence because both the questions and the answers referred to male views of life.

Another example: when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra introduced an anonymous musical test, the number of female musicians rose from 0 to 45 per cent. The same phenomenon can be observed in the evaluation process for scientific essays: If neither authors nor evaluators are known, then more essays come in from female academics and receive a higher mark.

If there’s a will, there’s a rather simple way: it doesn’t cost more money to collect data from women and about women to include them in the decision-making.

In the health sector too, women are mostly overlooked. For example, they are often given the wrong treatment when they have a heart attack because they often show ‘untypical’, i.e. non-male symptoms. Women are 17 per cent more likely to die in a car accident than men. Why?

Because it’s almost exclusively male dolls that are used in crash tests. Agricultural equipment and machines are only designed for men. Men are usually taller, have bigger hands and more strength.

Women, who use equipment or machines that are not suited for them on a daily basis, have health problems and are more likely to have accidents. Men are the measurement for all things. Or why, for an evening meal, are the costs for the food and the hotel allowed as expenses but the travel and babysitting costs are not? Criado-Perez has collected a huge number of similar examples.

A few successes

The good news is that this can be changed. If there’s a will, there’s a rather simple way: it doesn’t cost more money to collect data from women and about women to include them in the decision-making.

It doesn’t cost more money to take female instead of male test subjects for research. In many areas it would make economic sense to take women more into account. If infrastructure and research are geared more towards women, this does not only lead to women being treated equally but also leads to cost savings. As cost savings are highly valued in our capitalist world, this transition becomes more likely.

But for this to happen, many voices need to come together and demand the ‘gender data gap’ to be closed. Perhaps that includes those men who have read the entertainingly written book and have been persuaded that their view of the world is not the only right one.

The author has even had a few (rather symbolic) successes: Thanks to her perseverance, an image of Jane Austen can now be found on the British 10 pound note. Alongside the image of the Queen, she is the only woman on a British note. It’s also down to Criado-Perez that the statue of a female lawyer stands on Parliament Square in London next to many hundreds of male statues.

*Anja Papenfuss was previously head of FES’s Press Department, and before that, she worked as a policy officer in its political analysis unit. She edited the German-language sister magazine, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft. She studied political science in Bonn and Berlin.

Source: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Berlin

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Global Editor in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's Communications Department*

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District Manager, HRLS Program, conducts a client workshop in the presence of the Upazila Nirbahi Officer, Sakhipur Upazila, Tangail. Cedit: BRAC

By Jenefa Jabbar
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

The 410 Legal Aid Centers that I manage in Bangladesh for BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Services received approximately 35,900 requests for assistance in 2020. Almost all of them involve gender-based violence against women and girls.

In Bangladesh, gender-based violence comes in many forms: physical abuse; husbands throwing wives out of the home in domestic disputes; husbands demanding that their wives get more dowry money from their families, and child marriage, among others. The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the problem, as unemployment and other financial stresses have grown. BRAC documented a nearly 31 percent (8,709) increase in reported incidents of violence against women and girls in 2020 compared to the same time last year (4,566).

The problem, however, is global. The United Nations estimates that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives. In some nations, that number rises to 70 percent.

Through our experience, BRAC has developed an integrated five-step approach to addressing gender-based violence. This approach includes prevention, protection, partnership, rehabilitation, and monitoring. It can be replicated worldwide to defeat gender-based violence.

Prevention requires increased awareness of gender-based violence. This must be done on every scale – from global to local, justice-seeker to duty-bearer. Leaders and the public need to understand the extent and nature of the problem, the factors that influence it, and what can be done. Leaders of government, civic institutions, and religious groups need to help change the norms that have made such violence so pervasive for so long.

At BRAC, we conduct Human Rights and Legal Education (HRLE) classes with our own specially designed curriculum to inform women of their basic legal rights in cases of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, community violence, child marriage, inheritance, and trafficking, among others. In 2020, we reached out to 53,994 women and girls through these classes and provided advice and counselling to 10,492 women by phone, as the pandemic caused people to be in lockdown. In addition, BRAC organizes workshops with local community leaders on the legal rights of women and girls and the leaders’ responsibilities.

HRLS Officer provides legal assistance to a justice-seeking client in Nangalkot Upazila, Comilla. Credit: BRAC

BRAC also supports community-based women’s groups called Polli Shomaj, which are active in 54 of the nation’s 64 districts, working to stop child marriages and other forms of gender-based violence and to help women access relevant resources. In 2020, they prevented 1,091 child marriages – an increase of 196 percent over the same period in 2019.

Protection should also be pursued through proper implementation of the laws against gender- based violence. Unfortunately, the court system in Bangladesh has a backlog of 3.7 million cases, which gives perpetrators comfort that they are unlikely to be punished.

BRAC enables access to justice through alternative dispute resolution in cases that can be appropriately resolved without formal courtroom litigation. In other cases, BRAC provides court case support through its 350 enlisted panel lawyers across the country. In 2020, BRAC’s Legal Aid Centers resolved 19,854 complaints through alternative dispute resolution and filed 2,469 civil and criminal cases.

Partnership enables collaboration with government agencies and nongovernmental organizations to combat gender-based violence. Through partnerships, BRAC assists survivors of violence in getting immediate medical and shelter support and in lodging complaints at police stations. BRAC works with other service providers to assist the government in fulfilling its commitment to ensure access to justice.

Rehabilitation – both social and economic – is another vital area for mainstreaming the survivors of gender-based violence. They must be supported rather than shunned, and they must have the financial resources to survive without their abusive husbands. BRAC has succeeded in recovering a sizable amount of money for victims of gender-based violence, through alternative dispute resolution and court cases. In 2020 alone, BRAC’s Legal Aid Centers recovered $5.1 million (US) for victims. Recovery of those funds not only exacts a cost to the perpetrator; it supports the victim in her quest to establish a life free of such violence. A woman free of violence but left destitute has not received justice.

Survivors must also be re-empowered through skills training, so that they can find jobs, and through ongoing education, so that they can graduate. Re-empowerment must also be aligned with rehabilitation. The stigma of being abused must be eliminated. The norms that perpetuate gender-based violence must change.

Monitoring is essential, as it provides the latest data to increase awareness of gender-based violence and energize efforts at prevention. Monitoring should be performed by government but often falls to nongovernmental organizations – both to collect the data and provide an independent assessment. Regardless, government participation is vital.

Monitoring is needed in advance of incidents to help prevent them. Checking a girl’s birth certificate, for instance, in advance of marriage can help prevent child marriage. Monitoring is also needed to understand trends – in gender-based violence itself, criminal cases filed, judicial outcomes, and changing circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone must step forward to end gender-based violence. This five-step integrated approach marks the path. It is time for all of us to join in the march to a new day when gender-based violence is no more.

The author is Director of Human Rights and Legal Aid Services and Social Compliance at BRAC, based in Bangladesh.

 

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Credit: @ Mahnaz Yazdani

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

Inequality characterizes the world we live in, predisposing how we act and think. We perceive our existence as composed of dichotomies – men and women, young and old, black or white, as well as a difference between those who have and those who do not have access to wealth, health, education and influence. Dichotomies are also born out of comparisons, about how things are now and how they could have been, how they were before and how they are now.

COVID-19 is on the mind of a majority of the world’s population and as in everything else what is happening to us it is influenced by inequalities. Many are exhausted from isolation and worries: personal and economic losses mingle with ignorance about what COVID-19 really is and how it will develop. Among the many factors governing decisions concerning the pandemic are preconceived differences between nations and age groups.

During a briefing on the 18th of June and 2nd of July last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) proposed A Global Framework to Ensure Equitable and Fair Allocation of COVID-19 Products. The recommendations were based on statistics indicating that one percent of the world’s population are healthcare system workers, while eight percent are 65 years and older, and a further 15 percent adults have “comorbidities”, which place them in high risk for fatal COVID-19 infections.

Most governments have declared they intend to follow WHO’s recommended allocations for a vaccine roll-out, by prioritizing “health- and social care workers” as the first group to receive the COVID vaccine. These people are in “developed countries” estimated to constitute three percent of the population. The second stage of vaccinations will benefit individuals who are at “high risk” and/or “above 65 years of age” (approximately 20 percent), while a third stage will benefit “further priority groups”, whose need is based on their health conditions (20 percent).

It may be emphasized that WHO’s Allocation Framework was foremost recommended to be applicable to “low income countries” and “low and middle income countries”, while making it free for “self-financing” nations to acquire a preferential access to a still limited global access to COVID vaccines. This means that wealthy nations are free to enter into advance purchase agreements with manufacturers and thus capture the constrained supply of vaccines, most of them have already secured preferential access, meaning that they currently control a larger proportion of the vaccine supply.

However, under a scheme called Covax WHO intends to, in cooperation with the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), ensure that 92 “poorer countries” will receive access to vaccines, at the same time as 98 “wealthier countries”. Currently Covax has raised 6 billion USD, but at least another 2 billion USD are still needed to meet its target for 2021.

Vaccines produced in the UK, US, Europe, Russia and China have already been approved and bought and are now being distributed in countries around the world. High-income countries are currently holding 4.2 billion doses of COVID vaccines, while low-middle income nations have obtained 670 million, meaning that rich nations, representing 14 percent of the world’s population, so far has bought up more than half of the most promising vaccines.

Accordingly, poor countries are still lagging behind in the race for obtaining enough vaccine, while several of the Covax signatories, which have provided funding to the programme, are directly negotiating their own deals with pharmaceutical companies. Accordingly, they may be undermining the initiative by taking doses off the market, risking that demand will continue to outstrip supply. Of course, every political leader wants to protect her/his own population first, though during a global pandemic no country can be safe until all countries are protected.

The facts above are clear for all to see, though they are just the tip of an iceberg of inequalities connected with COVID-19. One aspect that so far has not been widely acknowledged is the degree to which youngsters and children are affected by and suffering from the effects of COVID-19. They are actually those who are scheduled to be the last ones to obtain the COVID vaccine. This group does not only include adolescents, but the entire so called Generation Z, i.e. the demographic cohort which grew up with internet and portable digital technology and whose majority now is taking care of the sick and elderly, as well as maintaining the production and services that support us all.

Small children are also hard hit by COVID-19. The number of children under five dying from avoidable diseases increased considerably last year, since the pandemic in many nations has paused the fight against infectious diseases and overturned vaccination programs. Children and young people are also experiencing increased abuse and neglect due to COVID-19. Particularly young people, and women to a higher degree than men, are suffering from closure of schools, universities and diminished job opportunities. A worrisome trend is that at least 13 million girls are assumed to have been married off at an earlier age than before, mainly due to school closures and missed education- and job opportunities.

For those of us who have children and grandchildren, young and old, COVID-19 now confirms that our generation has let them down. With good reason, our young ones raise their voices accusing us for belonging to a generation that has been willing to sacrifice its children for its own welfare. It is only when we ourselves are being threatened that we have been prepared to take drastic action. Young people might tell us: “Look what you have left behind as heritage to us – a wrecked climate, a polluted earth and weapons of mass destruction, and now you demand that we remain secluded at home to prevent you from being infected with COVID-19.”

When I observe young people and children around me it is easy to discern the difficulties they have to cope with. How they struggle with themselves and their existence. Most young people feel worse now, than before COVID-19. They worry more about their future, while fewer and fewer think life is meaningful. Youngsters, finding themselves in a period of life when social interaction is crucial for their development and well-being, are now being secluded between four walls in homes that many of them are forced to share with frustrated, ageing and nagging parents.

The majority of the world’s children did not go to school last year and it has been demonstrated that the education of those students who received distance education have slipped behind. Danish researchers found that eight-graders in Copenhagen who due to COVID-closure did not go school gained an average of 7.6 kilos, of which 3.3 kilos were pure fat. Children simply stopped moving. In other areas the effect may have been the opposite when children from poor families have missed their school lunches.

A survey by the German Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) found that students on average had halved the time they spent on learning and homework, while Germany’s weekly magazine, Der Spiegel, warned that poorer education entails a risk of physical and mental illness, while reporting that education economists had calculated that four months of closed schools reduced a future annual income by 2.5 percent.

It has been stated that the financial crisis that shock the world 15 years ago led to around 10,000 more suicides than normal. Currently, European and American organisations working to prevent suicides are warning that their hotlines are getting overworked. The economic distress of millions of young people and struggling families trying to make ends meet, due to lay-offs and decreasing job opportunities in the wake of COVID-19, does not bode well for the future.

Unfortunately, I do not think I am an alarmist. It is high time we concern ourselves with the welfare of the world’s children and young people. Let as take the COVID-19 as a warning and let us remind ourselves that we cannot act in a laissez-fair manner by avoiding what parents have done before us – considering the well-being of their children to be their main priority.

Main sources: BBC: Covax: How will Covid vaccines be shared around the world? 24 February https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55795297, Ifo Insitute: COVID-19 school closures hit low-achieving students particularly hard. 15 November 2020 https://www.ifo.de/en/node/60075 Gardell, Jonas; Vi offrar barnens hälsa och framtid i covidstrategin, 1 March https://www.expressen.se/kultur/jonas-gardell/vi-offrar-barnens-halsa-och-framtid-i-covidstrategin/

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

 

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented threat to development in the Asia-Pacific region that could reverse much of the hard-earned progress made in recent years. The good news is we know how to tackle this challenge. Recovery from the pandemic and our global efforts to deliver the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 must go hand-in-hand. The Goals provide a compass to navigate this crisis, faster and greener, everywhere and for everyone.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Results from the 2021 edition of the Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report published today by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) show that the region fell short of its 2020 milestones for the Goals, even before entering the global pandemic. The region must accelerate progress everywhere and urgently reverse its regressing trends on many of the Goals and targets to achieve the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In the last decade, Asia and the Pacific has made extraordinary progress in good health and well-being (Goal 3), which may partly explain its relative success in reducing the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its population. Yet despite these hard-won gains, the region faces many challenges, such as providing an adequate healthcare workforce, reducing premature deaths and improving mental health.

As we find our way out of this pandemic, we must focus efforts on more equitable and greener growth. The environment and the most vulnerable population groups should not pay the price for our economic ambitions and rapid industrialization (Goal 9, another area of faster progress for the region).

The most alarming observation in the new ESCAP report is regressing climate action trends (Goal 13) and life below water (Goal 14). The Asia-Pacific region is responsible for more than half of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Adverse impacts of natural disasters on people and economies increase year-by-year. The quality of the oceans continues to deteriorate due to unsustainable human activities, and economic gains from sustainable fisheries are decreasing.

The COVID-19 pandemic was another urgent signal that our unsustainable consumption and production put unbearable pressure on ecosystems. Unless there is a transformative change towards a sustainable future, pandemics will emerge more often, with more damage to our societies and economies. Wildlife and ecosystem conservation are vital to prevent future pandemics and the transfer of diseases from animals to humans.

Robust evaluation of progress on the SDGs is disrupted by lack of data. Data availability on the indicators has increased in the region in recent years as more countries prioritize the SDGs. However, challenges remain, and we need to do more to fill data gaps on nearly half of the official indicators without sufficient data to tell us the true story of progress.

It is too soon to see the real impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on progress towards the SDGs. However, early studies from UN agencies in the Asia-Pacific region show no single Goal is safe against the pandemic’s negative impact. In particular, the “leave no one behind” objective of the SDGs is at high risk. Early data show that mothers and children, students, informal workers, the poor, elderly, refugees and asylum seekers are extremely vulnerable. Simultaneously, despite a short-term dip in air pollution during strict lockdowns, the pandemic’s negative environmental impacts have already emerged. Additionally, there are concerns that the economic recession caused by COVID-19 might lead to a decline in investment in protecting natural environments.

Recovery measures are an excellent opportunity for us to rethink our options for development pathways that are inclusive, more resilient and respect planetary boundaries. As we enter the Decade of Action to deliver the 2030 Agenda, we need to reinforce our collective commitment to the SDGs and let it provide our compass for building back together, better and greener.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

 

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By Simi Mehta and Ritika Gupta
NEW DELHI, India, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues that the world is collectively facing at the moment. It is contended that strengthening the global response is pertinent to combat the threat of climate change.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in 1992 that entered into force on 21 March, 1994, primarily aims to prevent anthropogenic interference in the earth’s climate system and stabilize Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

With this aim, the Conference of Parties* meets every year to assess progress and review documents by countries on their plans to combat climate change.

COP and the Paris Agreement

The Conference of Parties (COP) is the core decision making body of the UNFCCC. The Parties are the States that have ratified the Convention. Their task is to review its implementation by reviewing the various documents and emission inventories submitted by Parties.

From the first COP meeting held in Berlin, Germany in March, 1995 there have been 25 meetings so far. The 26th COP meeting, 2020 was scheduled to be held in Glasgow, United Kingdom, but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and is now scheduled for November 1-12, 2021.

The COP meetings have resulted in several important decisions and agreements. For instance, COP 3 was one of the most important meetings held in Kyoto, Japan that led to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. It called upon the developed countries to reduce their GHGs and established legally binding obligations under international law. Similarly, the Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 countries at COP 21 in Paris in 2015.

It is a legally binding international treaty on climate change that aims to limit global average temperature to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degree Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. However, the implementation of this agreement requires comprehensive economic and social transformation. It works on a 5-year cycle of goals and actions carried out by countries.

In 2020, countries were supposed to submit their plans for climate action – known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, which was postponed to 2021 in the COP 26 due to the pandemic. The NDCs are the goals and actions that the countries communicate as their plan to undertake to reduce their GHG emissions to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Means of implementation of India’s NDCs

The Paris Agreement provides a framework for financial, technical and capacity building to the countries that require it. Climate finance is particularly important as it is needed for mitigation and adaptation efforts by the countries.

As such, the agreement reaffirms the need for developed countries to offer financial assistance to those needing it for reducing their GHG emissions and also in their pursuit of climate-resilient development. India’s climate actions have mostly been funded by domestic resources.

However, to achieve the goals set forth, the substantial scaling of the climate action plans should be complemented by financial resources and assistance from developed countries. There would also be additional investments required for strengthening resilience and disaster management.

The Paris Agreement also discusses technological development and transfer for achieving the goals of the Agreement. India has advocated for global collaboration in Research & Development (R&D), with regards to climate change adaptation and mitigation, particularly in clean technologies. It has also advocated for enabling their transfer, and free Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) costs to developing countries.

The Agreement emphasizes upon climate-related capacity building for developing countries and exhorts the developed countries to extend their support for the same. In this area, India aims for a manifold scaling up of the country’s renewable energy targets and India’s climate change goals which are linked to the implementation of policies such as the programme on Smart Cities, Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) and the cleaning of rivers.

What are India’s NDCs?

India ratified the Paris Agreement a year after the submission of its Intended National Determined Contribution (INDC). Its NDCs for the period 2021 to 2030 are as follows –

● To put forward and further propagate a healthy and sustainable way of living based on traditions and values of conservation and moderation.
● To adopt a climate-friendly and a cleaner path than the one followed hitherto by others at a corresponding level of economic development.
● To reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 33%–35% by 2030 below 2005 levels.
● To achieve about 40 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030 with the help of the transfer of technology and low-cost international finance including from Green Climate Fund (GCF).
● To create an additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
● To better adapt to climate change by enhancing investments in development programmes in sectors vulnerable to climate change, particularly agriculture, water resources, Himalayan region, coastal regions, health and disaster management.
● To mobilize domestic and new and additional funds from developed countries to
implement the above mitigation and adaptation actions to bridge the resource gap.
● To build capacities, create a domestic framework and international architecture for quick diffusion of cutting-edge climate technology in India and for collaborative research and development for such future technologies.

Union Budget 2021-22

To achieve the above goals, India has begun to tread on the objectives of promoting a variety of renewable energies, such as by the introduction of newer, more efficient and cleaner technologies in thermal power generation, reduction in emissions from industries, transportation sector, buildings and appliances, waste etc.

The implementation of the Green India Mission remains a priority. This Mission is a comprehensive program towards sustainable environmental development through which the country can protect, restore and enhance forest cover and other afforestation programmes, along with planning and implementation of actions and schemes to enhance climate resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change.

The Union Budget was presented by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2021. Some of the key proposals to enhance India’s comprehensive environment protection efforts include: Hydrogen Energy Mission in 2021-22 for generating hydrogen from green power sources; Capital infusion of ₹1,000 crore to the Solar Energy Corporation of India; ₹1,500 crore to the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency; Centre’s clean air programme with a fund of ₹2,217 crore for air pollution control in 42 cities with a million plus population; Voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and unfit vehicles; Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0: Allocation of ₹141,678 crore over a period of five years from 2021-2026; Allocation of₹4,000 for Deep Ocean Mission for five years; Launch of Jal Jeevan Mission (Urban), with an outlay of ₹ 2,87,000 crores to be implemented over 5 years for universal water supply in all 4,378 Urban Local Bodies with 2.86 crores household tap connections, as well as liquid waste management in 500 AMRUT cities..

India’s progress so far

Even though India’s GHG emissions have more than doubled between 1990 to 2015, when India entered its liberalisation period, it still remains less than other G20 nations. Among the G20 nations, India has one of the most ambitious targets set for reductions in GHGs.

Experts believe that India has remained on track to achieve its NDC by 2030, which will be catalysed with the adoption of its National Electricity Plan, which aims to achieve 47% capacity from non-fossil sources by 2027.

Any complacency cannot be afforded. A decrease in the budget allocation for the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change from ₹3100 in 2020-21 to ₹2869 is not an encouraging signal.

This is especially true for the renewable energy sector where India needs to stepping up its planning and implementation as we move towards the attaining the Agenda 2030. Since the energy sector contributes massively to the production of GHGs, tackling this area could contribute to fulfilling its NDCs.

India needs a consolidated mitigation plan which should include reducing fossil fuel subsidies, phasing out coal, better coordination between the central and state governments and raising self-sufficiency by domestic manufacturing in the renewable sector.

With regards to the NDC about creating an additional carbon sink, not much is being done in the afforestation/reforestation sector. There is a lack of data pertaining to the Green India Mission and reports show that the Mission has been consistently missing its targets due to a lack of funding at the centre and state level.

There needs to be a dedicated ministry or committee responsible for afforestation, which should be funded adequately and take the recommendations of an expert panel on mapping and planning. The Clean Air Program for air pollution control in 42 cities with a million plus population and the Hydrogen Energy Mission has the potential to reduce India’s carbon footprint are important steps in the right direction.

India is well on its track to achieve its 2030 climate targets. However, it needs to do more in the mitigation and adaptation sector by creating a holistic mitigation plan. The COVID-19 pandemic and extreme environmental events such as Cyclones Fani and Amphan and droughts in several parts of the country highlight significant setbacks in terms of achieving the yearly targets and the overall goals by 2030.

Even though the COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown temporarily brought down emissions to some extent wherein we witnessed the nature in its pristine form, it will continue to rise unless a green COVID-19 recovery strategy plan is created and followed.

Simi Mehta is CEO and Editorial Director of Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), New Delhi and Ritika Gupta is Assistant Director of IMPRI.

 

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Young farmers who have land are failing to access bank loans despite the Zimbabwean government touting farming as the final frontier that will guarantee the country's food security needs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

It is not everyday that a young farmer registers success in his enterprise and vows this is what he will do for the rest of his life. Yet this is the story of Lihle Moyo, a 27-year-old farmer from Gwanda, about 160km south of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.

With little to no experience in farming, Moyo says he took over his father’s plot and turned it into a thriving poultry, cabbage, tomato and onion farm two years ago as an experiment.

“I had just finished college and had nothing to do, no source of income,” Moyo told IPS.

He pooled resources with assistance from siblings working outside the country to finance the installation of a borehole, water storage tanks, a generator and initial start-up capital for the project on his father’s eight hectares of land.

His success is outstanding in a country where farming has proven to be a headache for local farmers, especially in the aftermath of the country’s much criticised land redistribution programme that saw Zimbabwe morph from net food exporter to dipping into its scarce forex reserves to import grain.

“Not many young people I know are interested in farming because where are they are going to get start-up capital,” said Moyo on being asked why other young people like himself have not been too eager to take up farming.

While commercial famers in Zimbabwe previously received agro-loans from banks, financial institutions have been reluctant to lend to farmers who benefitted from the land reform exercise citing lack of collateral and security for farmers.

The same has plagued young farmers who, like Moyo, have land but are failing to access bank loans despite government touting farming as the final frontier that will guarantee the country’s food security needs.

Farmers are therefore expected to source their own resources despite the government launching schemes that provide free inputs such as seeds and free fertiliser.

“Even if you get these free things, you still have to think about how you are going to maintain your farm. And in any case one still has to contend with the fact that not every young farmer wants to plant maize. We want to try other things,” Moyo said. 

Other aspiring young farmers such as 30-year-old Dumisile Gumpo, also from Gwanda, have given up on large-scale farming ambitions.

“I am only farming now on my parents’ land because of the rains,” Gumpo said. “After the rains, it means I will wait again for the next rainy season,” he said.

Gumpo plants traditional staples that include maize, pumpkins and peas.

“I would love to do farming all year round but I don’t see how when I have no cash to venture into other things such as poultry or even installing a borehole,” he said, expressing the frustration of many young farmers in Zimbabwe.

To make matters worse, the Gwanda region where the two young farmers are based is well-known for illegal mining activities whose promise of instant riches have attracted thousands of young people from across the country. 

Experts have noted that youth agriculture has failed to take off in Africa because of policy inconsistencies by governments and poor research on the needs of young farmers.

According to the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), there are about 1.2 billion people aged between 15 and 24, with 600 million residing in rural areas globally.

IFAD has noted that especially in the midst of COVID-19, the “re-invention of the agricultural sector is indispensable today,” and young people are going to be at the centre of that revolution.

The Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) project sponsored by IFAD and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) runs the Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa.

The project seeks to understand the factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness and rural farm economies among other areas of focus.

Researchers, however, are wary that there has been little traction in driving youth participation among African countries.

“Policy makers, government agencies, and other stakeholders need to come up with incentives that will attract youth involvement in agriculture practices if CARE-IFAD goals are to be realised,” said Esther Kwaamba, an agricultural economist at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.

“From research, the trends are the same among youths. They are not involved in agriculture because of lack of finance, access to land, poor infrastructure and agriculture machinery being expensive,” Kwaamba told IPS.

While IITA says there is need to increase “youth engagement in profitable agriculture and agribusiness is critical for sustainable development,” young farmers such as Moyo and Gumpo find themselves in a position where they have to teach themselves the ropes while they go.

“I have no business model, I just do what I think needs to be done. For example with the poultry project, I lost a lot of chicks when I first started because I had no clue about the business of raising chickens,” Moyo told IPS, exposing the difficulties many farmers face in a country where inflationary pressures have pushed many business to the ground.

While Zimbabwe has in the past distributed youth economic empowerment loans, Moyo says it has always been difficult to access these loans as farming is not seen as an enterprise that guarantees immediate returns.

“We have seen in the past young people being given loans but even for any project it has always been hard to get anything from government imagine telling them about your big ideas about farming,” he said.

Experts say the problems for young farmers are far-reaching as there remains a dearth of informed approaches to the youth involvement in agriculture.

“There is lack of you-specific research-based evidence to inform the design of youth-relevant policy and development programmes,” said agro-economist Dr. Shiferaw Fekele, in a presentation to CARE Intermediaries training focusing on youth research youth in Africa.

“There is need for more scholarly research to explore well-informed business opportunities in agriculture,” Feleke said.

A better approach to addressing this, according to Fekele, would be to have “youths researching youth” because “youths have a better grasp than anyone else of their peers’ real needs, aspirations, challenges and perspectives on agriculture”.

This rings true for Moyo and Gumpo, whose experience could well be a pointer for other youths on what needs to be done to attract more young people to farming in a country where tens of thousands of university graduates are without jobs alongside unskilled young people who leave school without hope of gainful employment.

“There is a need to strengthen the capacity of young Africa scholars in generating, appraising and disseminating evidence based-results and also strengthen the ability of key stakeholders to use evidence-based approach in policy development related to youth empowerment,” Fekele said.

The CARE project is already working with young researchers to inform the future action plans of national government that will lead to better youth policies.

These concerns could mean it is still a long way before young farmers such as Moyo add to the continent’s food security needs and take up land’s labour as a fulltime and lifelong occupation.

 

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Sculpture of Enrique de Malacca <ahmadfuadosman.com>

By Felice Noelle Rodriguez and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 16 2021 (IPS)

Globalisation’s beginnings are symbolised by Ferdinand Magellan’s near circumnavigation of the world half a millennium ago. But its history is not simply of connection and trade, but also of intolerance, exploitation, slavery, violence, aggression and genocide.

Magalhães, conquistador
The Philippines today struggles with this history. Some Filipinos highlight the warm native reception extended to Magellan’s fleet and the first Catholic mass, reminiscent of American Thanksgiving mythology. For others, native resistance to conquistador aggression, captured by Danilo Madrid Gerona’s biography of Magellan, is more memorable.

In 1494CE, Pope Alexander VI, now of Borgias TV series infamy, united the Iberian Catholic kings behind the Inquisition. His Tordesillas treaty, after Christopher Columbus’ 1492 ‘discovery’ of the New World under Spanish royal auspices, gave the Portuguese rights to Brazil and all lands east of it, with Spain getting the rest of the Americas.

Felice Noelle Rodriguez

Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498 with the help of an Arab trader. In February 1502, he returned to demand that the ruler of Calicut (Kozhikode) expel all Muslims. When rejected, da Gama bombarded the port city and severely maimed those he captured.

Under Portugal’s second Viceroy to the East, Afonso d’Albuquerque, Fernão de Magalhães distinguished himself in several Portuguese naval sieges, attacks and sackings of ports in southern India and beyond.

Portugal had its eyes on Malacca well before arriving there. For the Portuguese chronicler Tome Pires, Malacca then was the greatest port in the world.

Magalhães arrived with the first Portuguese expedition to Malacca in 1509, returning in 1511 with a thousand men under Albuquerque’s command to capture it.

Magalhães was later injured in the 1513 Portuguese invasion of the Maghrib (Morocco). This aggression had begun almost a century earlier under the legendary Prince Henrique, Henry the Navigator. Later, after failing to get what he believed to be his due, Magalhães moved in 1517 to Sevilla, the base of the Spanish Inquisition and navy.

Magallanes, near circumnavigator
As Ferdinand Magallanes, he persuaded Spanish King Carlos V to sponsor his proposed circumnavigation to get to the Moluccas spice islands in Southeast Asia by sailing west, as allowed by the Tordesillas treaty. The monarch provided him with five ships, crew and provisions for the expedition.

On 16th March 1521, Magallanes’ depleted fleet of three ships arrived in the eastern Visayas in the central Philippines. The ships had sailed through the straits at the southern tip of the Americas which now bears his name. Sailing on to Cebu, he demanded native acceptance of his God and King, plus tribute.

He twice attacked the small neighbouring island of Mactan, where the Cebu airport now is, razing two villages who did not comply. Anticipating the third attack before dawn on 27th April, Lapulapu – a local leader, with the name of a grouper fish species – prepared to resist.

Portrait of the slave circumnavigator <enriquedemalacca.com>

Over-confident and arrogant, Magallanes shunned offers of reinforcements. Lapulapu’s mobilised village defence force greatly outnumbered and prevailed against his. Thus, the 500th anniversary recalls a rare victory for native resistance against the conquistador.

Of the five ships in his original fleet, only the smallest, Victoria eventually returned to Spain in 1522 under Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano. Nevertheless, despite the loss of most of his ships and many crew, the King still made a huge profit.

Slave, the first circumnavigator?
But there is another, largely untold story. After the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511, Magalhães left with a captured teenage slave, whose original name no one knows. Perhaps to honour Henry the Navigator, Magellan renamed him ‘anRyk’, probably a Catalan version of the name.

A favourite slave of Magellan, anRyk served as his interpreter and was to be freed upon his death. However, the ship’s captain refused to honour the will. Unsurprisingly, anRyk deserted. Thus, he may well have become the first to circumnavigate Earth, as some claim he returned to live out his life near Malacca, avoiding the Portuguese there.

In 1957, a history teacher in Singapore named Harun Aminurrashid published a novel to inspire children in the newly independent Malaya. The hero was a character loosely based on what was known about anRyk, whom he lionised as Panglima (Commander) Awang.

Thus, we have the heroic figure of Panglima Awang. Almost Spartacus-like, the captured defeated slave becomes the hero. Recent portraits as well as a sculpture of Enrique da Malacca by the Malaysian multimedia artist Ahmad Fuad Osman strengthen this image.

A Man of All Nations
Today, anRyk is claimed by several contemporary Southeast Asian nation states. Some Malaysian historians have reified the fictive Panglima Awang. Thus, Malaysian memorialisation has involved not only making history from fiction, but also creating new myths from history.

Indonesian claims rely on self-appointed Magellan chronicler Antonio Pigafetta’s suggestion that anRyk was from Sumatera; others claim he was from the Moluccas, Maluku today. Some Filipinos insist he stayed there, becoming Filipino before there was even a Philippines. More than anyone else, anRyk symbolises island Southeast Asia, the Nusantara.

In Iberia, in Europe, in the West, there is a subtle debate over personalities and dates. For the Portuguese, the circumnavigation began under Magellan’s leadership in 1519. For their neighbours, the Spaniard Elcano led the Victoria back in 1522. His diverse crew allows pan-European claims, ignoring most slaves, presumably of colour, who were not deemed worthy of mention in the official ship manifests.

Imperialism today is, in many ways, a far cry from what it was five centuries ago. Yet, there are many continuities and parallels, including racisms, cultural, including religious intolerance, exploitations and oppressions of various types despite changing forms, relations and even vocabularies.

The voyages of exploration and conquest were driven by greed. Nonetheless, God, king and country have been readily invoked to legitimise avarice and atrocities. Invoking 21st century intellectual property norms, globalisation today involves vaccine imperialism, apartheid and genocide.

Dr Felice Noelle Rodriguez is a Filipina historian. She is now a Scholar-in-Residence in Kuala Lumpur and Visiting Fellow at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University.

 

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