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Credit: Nepali Times.

By Sonia Awale
KATHMANDU, Dec 2 2020 (IPS)

The global pandemic hijacked 2020 and reset priorities, but countries now need to regroup and renew their commitment to cap global warming at well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed in Paris in 2015.

On 12 December, it will be the fifth anniversary of the signing of the landmark climate accord when 196 countries, including Nepal, will be presenting their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce the impact of the climate crisis.

NDCs are voluntary commitments by countries to reduce their carbon footprints, but there are fears that a world in the throes of a Covid-19 induced economic crisis will follow through on past commitments—even as scientists warn that the earth is warming much more rapidly than forecast five years ago in Paris.

The Himalaya is literally a hotspot because the mountains are warming faster than the global average. But activists say Nepal’s own ‘Enhanced NDC’ does not go far enough in mitigating carbon emissions, or adapting to the impact of the climate emergency.

The Himalaya is literally a hotspot because the mountains are warming faster than the global average. But activists say Nepal’s own ‘Enhanced NDC’ does not go far enough in mitigating carbon emissions, or adapting to the impact of the climate emergency

The document has been put up for public comment and is subject to revision. Its highlight is that Nepal for the first time mentions ‘net-zero emission’ as a future goal.

But the document does not give a timeline to achieve it, and only says that the country will formulate ‘a long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategy’ sometime next year.

In the region, Bhutan has already declared itself carbon neutral—meaning its forests absorb more than the CO2 it emits. China, responsible for 28% of total annual carbon emissions, recently pledged peak emission before 2030 and attain net-zero by 2060. President-elect Joe Biden as committed that the US, which contributes 15% of CO2 annually, to zero carbon emissions by 2050, as have Japan, South Korea and the UK.

India, the fourth largest CO2 emitter globally, is lagging but has been investing heavily in solar power, and by setting targets to electrify railways and phasing out diesel and petroleum vehicles by 2030.

Nepali activists say the country’s NDC could have gone much further to set realistic firm pledges, since it is starting from such a low carbon base.

“We could have easily set a target of net-zero by 2050. In fact, we can achieve it by 2030 if we are really committed,” says environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar. “Our emission is negligible, we are a low-carbon economy and have much cleaner sources of energy like hydroelectricity at our disposal.”

In 2014, a report showed that Nepal’s forest area had doubled in 25 years, and it absorbed half of Nepal’s total emissions from burning fossil fuels. However, another report last year showed that carbon emission was rising faster than vegetation cover, and frequent wildfires were themselves pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Manjeet Dhakal, adviser to the Least Developed Countries support group at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says: “I’m pretty confident we will achieve net-zero by 2050. But what is important in this discussion is that, while we may be among the smallest emitters, our emissions are increasing and forests are not absorbing CO2 as they used to.”

 

 

Nepal’s annual per capita carbon emission is one of the lowest in the world at 0.29 tons. In comparison, an average American pumps 16 tons of carbon every year, and Qataris burn 37 tons. However, Nepal’s per capita emission is rising significantly due to the growing import of petroleum products and thermal electricity from India.

As new roads are built and more vehicles imported, Nepal’s main driver of fossil fuel consumption is the transportation sector. Motorcycles account for 80% of all vehicles in Nepal, and phasing them out for battery-powered two-wheelers would significantly reduce petroleum imports.

Electric public transport will need subsidies from the government and investors but it also means utilising Nepal’s clean energy from hydropower and further reducing our carbon footprint. Last fiscal year, Nepal’s petroleum import reached Rs200 billion— 2.2 times higher than the country’s total income from exports. Imports of diesel, petrol, aviation fuel and LPG went down slightly in 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdowns.

Switching to electric public transport and battery vehicles to reduce the petroleum import bill by just 10% would save Rs21 billion a year. This will also clean up the air. Air pollution killed 41,000 people in Nepal last year. This winter that risk for patients with respiratory issues is combined with Covid-19 complications.

Bishwo Nath Oli, Secretary at the Ministry of Forest and Environment agrees. “We plan to produce 15,000MW of clean energy by 2030 and we need a strategy so that it is properly consumed and utilised. Electrification of transport is the best way to go about it, along with electric stoves and biomass to cut emissions significantly.”

Nepal’s Enhanced NDC has set a target of turning 25% of all private passenger vehicles sales, including two-wheelers, to electric. It also aims to make 20% of all four-wheel public transport battery-powered by 2025. Most of Nepal’s three-wheel vehicles are already electric.

Planners hope to increase these numbers to 90% and 60% by 2030. Similarly, in 10 years Nepal aims to develop 200km of electric rail network.

But activists are sceptical. Prime Minister KP Oli had declared in 2018 that 25% of all vehicles in Nepal would be electric by 2020. However, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada scrapped tax subsidies for electric vehicles in this year’s budget, although his successor has restored some rebate for smaller battery-powered cars.

But even if these targets are met, they are too conservative, says Bhushan Tuladhar. “Our targets are often too ambitious or too relaxed. With the new NDCs, we can see this pattern in sectors such as industry, waste and agriculture which are either too vague or too conservative,” he adds.

Planners have also not taken into account that the cost of electric vehicles is already at par with diesel vehicles of the same capacity, and will decline further as the price of lithium-ion batteries continues to fall. Increased affluence means more people will opt for two-wheelers and automobiles, most likely electric, especially as India and China phase out production of diesel and petrol vehicles.

While Nepal’s voluntary commitment sets a target to reduce coal consumption and air pollution from brick and cement industries by 2030, it does not mention how, and by how much. The NDC document only says the government will ‘formulate guidelines and establish mechanisms’ by 2025 to monitor emissions from large industries.

On the waste sector, the NDC says that by 2025, 380 million litres/day of wastewater will be treated before discharge to natural courses, and 60,000 cubic meters/year of faecal sludge will be managed. But it has targeted only 100 of Nepal’s 753 municipalities for waste segregation, recycling and waste-to-energy programs by 2030.

Nepal’s 2016 NDC pledged to increase forest cover to 40% of the total area, and here the country exceeded the target and current forest cover stands at 44.74%. The new NDC has included more community forests, and says 60% of Nepal’s area will be forest, pledging to stop deforestation of the Chure range.

Similarly, intercropping, agroforestry, conservation tillage and climate-smart agricultural technologies are all mentioned in the NDC, but missing conspicuously from the discussion is farm mechanisation.

Nepal aims to increase hydroelectricity generation  rom the current 1,400MW to 15,000 by 2030. Of this, 5,000MW is an unconditional target, and the remainder is contingent on funding from the international community. In fact, Nepal will need $25 billion to meet its NDC targets, and most of this will be dependent on foreign aid.

Manjeet Dhakal admits the targets in the new NDC may not be ambitious, but he says they are realistic. He adds: “For the longest time Nepal was the most vulnerable to climate change. But time has come for us to show our leadership and commitment to net-zero by implementing the targets set.”

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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By Education Cannot Wait
Dec 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Nyagoa Dak was born to a world in chaos. Her story is one of loss, of redemption, of struggle and of triumph.

At a very early age, Nyagoa lost her parents to the conflict in South Sudan. As the conflict escalated, she escaped with her grandmother to Ethiopia in 2014. There they settled in the Pugnido refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Gambella region.

When they arrived there were no educational programmes for refugees – let alone a girl with a disability like Nyagoa. Unable to walk, the bright-eyed six-year-old was left out of many of the activities in the camp. She didn’t play with other children. She didn’t go to school. Nyagoa was a forgotten child living in a forgotten crisis.

With funding from Education Cannot Wait, Save the Children mobilized parents, teachers, children and the community to get refugee and host community children and youth back in school in Pugnido.

Through the Parent Teachers and Student Association, volunteers like Sara started cleaning the school and reaching out to children living in the area. Through this work, they met Nyagoa and her grandma. No child should be left behind. Especially a child as sweet and courageous as Nyagoa. So they decided to carry the little refugee girl on their shoulders to her preschool classes. Nyagoa had made a friend.

More friends were soon to follow. RaDO, a local organization that supports children with disabilities, provided Nyagoa with a wheelchair.

“I don’t have any word to express my happiness. Thanks to Save the Children, Sara and her friend, I am attending school and playing with friends. My situation is changed,” says Nyagoa.

Nyagoa’s teacher couldn’t be more proud of this joyful and brilliant girl, who’s found her place amongst the other preschool children. “You can read from her face the sense of ‘Yes, I can learn.’ There is nothing more inspirational than being in school for a child like Nyagoa and we need to mobilize the community to bring more and more children with disabilities to schools.”

One of the beneficiaries of the ECW-supported programme, Nya Banytik Hoth, 14, grade 4, learns at Makod Primary and Secondary School in Tierkidi Refugee Camp, Gambella Region. Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2018/Mersha

Responding to COVID-19
Nyagoa’s journey is far from over. After seven months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in Gambella are only now reopening.

Through Education Cannot Wait’s COVID-19 education in emergencies response, Save the Children and other partners are providing schools with disinfectants, water and sanitation facilities, and training on prevention and protection methods to slow the spread of the virus. Children are benefiting from expanded psychosocial support, gender-responsive education, and early literacy programmes. And teachers are receiving advanced training on math and early childhood development to ensure they have the tools they need to provide quality learning outcomes for special-needs children like Nyagoa.

The Big Picture
Ethiopia hosts the second largest refugee population in Africa. While drought, conflict, poverty, displacement and unequal access to education still exist, the nation as a whole is making impressive strides in providing access to education for refugees, internally displaced people, and other at-risk children, and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

The gains in enrollment are impressive. With support from a US$15 million Education Cannot Wait initial investment implemented by UNICEF and other supports, the primary gross enrollment ratio for refugee children in Ethiopia rose to 67 per cent in 2019, up five per cent from the year before.

Education Cannot Wait expanded this investment through a multi-year resilience programme. Launched in 2019, the programme is led by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education in partnership with Save the Children International, UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait and the Education Cluster.

ECW’s catalytic grant is designed to activate resource mobilization efforts from donors, civil society organizations, the private sector and philanthropic foundations to fully-fund the programme, which will cost an estimated US$161 million over three years. The programme is designed to reach close to 750,000 girls and boys displaced by the crises in Ethiopia.

Nyagoa received a wheel chair and returned to school. Credit: Save the Children / Ethiopia

“This is an opportunity for aid partners to work together in breaking the cycles of inequality, illiteracy, poverty and hunger that too often come with forced displacement and jeopardize a child’s development. It’s a new vision for how nations can address the pressing educational needs of internally displaced children, refugees and returnees. We must step up to address this challenge and I call on all partners to join our efforts and contribute to this multi-year resilience programme to ensure no child is left behind in Ethiopia.” – Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

In Ethiopia, which hosts the second-largest refugee population in Africa, ECW funding boosted access to education for refugee children and youth (mainly from South Sudan) in the regions of Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambela.

Learn more about the impact of ECW funded programming in Ethiopia in our 2019 Annual Report.

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Patients seeking treatment at the Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Credit: World Bank/Dominic Chavez

By Davide Malacrino
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 2 2020 (IPS)

Wealth begets wealth. This simple concept of privilege has added to growing discontent with inequality that has escalated under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A paper co-authored this year by economists from the IMF and other institutions confirms that wealthier people are more likely to earn higher returns on their investments. It also shows that the children of wealthy people, while likely to inherit that wealth, aren’t necessarily going to make the same high returns on investments.

Detailed data on wealth are extremely rare, but 12-years of tax records (2004-2015) from Norway have opened a new window into wealth accumulation for individuals and their offspring.

The Nordic country has a wealth tax that requires assets to be reported by employers, banks and other third parties in order to reduce errors from self-reporting. The data, which are made public under certain conditions, also make it possible to match parents with their children.

The data show that an individual in the 75th percentile of wealth distribution who invested $1 in 2004 would have yielded $1.50 by the end of 2015—a return of 50 percent. A person in the top 0.1 percent would have yielded $2.40 on the same invested dollar—a return of 140 percent.

Another significant finding: High returns both bring individuals to the top of the wealth scale and prevent them from leaving it. Controlling for age, parental background and earnings, moving from the 10th percentile to 90th percentile of wealth distribution increases the probability of making it to the top 1 percent by 1.2 percentage points compared to an average probability of 0.89 percent.

Why do rich people earn high returns? Conventional wisdom suggests that richer individuals put more of their assets toward high risk investments, which can result in higher returns.

But our research finds that wealthy people often earn a higher return even on more conservative investments. Richer individuals enjoy pure “returns to scale” to their wealth. Specifically, for given portfolio allocation, individuals who are wealthier are more likely to get higher risk-adjusted returns, possibly because they have access to exclusive investment opportunities or better wealth managers. Financial sophistication, financial information, and entrepreneurial talent are also important.

These characteristics make the returns to wealth persistent over time. This research is the first to quantify this mechanism and show that it is likely to matter empirically.

Do high returns persist across generations? The answer is a qualified yes. Wealth has a high degree of intergenerational correlation, but there are important differences in how returns to wealth accrue across generations.

The children of the richest are likely to be very rich, but unlikely to get as high returns from this wealth as their parents did. This suggests that while money is perfectly inheritable, exceptional talent is not.

IMFBlog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.

 

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Excerpt:

Davide Malacrino is an Economist in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

 
The UN agency devoted to ending AIDS as a public health threat is calling on top politicians and governments across the world to ensure the right to quality healthcare is upheld, and not just a privilege to be enjoyed by the wealthy.

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Guido Barilla, Chair of the Barilla Foundation, says the future of food is in our hands if we act to fix the problems in our food system. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

For Zimbabwean organic farmer, Elizabeth Mpofu, access to healthy food is liberation.

Millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. Scores do not have access to nutritious food owing to an inequitable global food system focused on industrial mass food production. The food from this system is less nutritious, more expensive and less friendly to the environment.

How to achieve just, equitable food systems where more people do not only have enough to eat but have nutritious food was the central question food experts sought to answer at the one day ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’. The international dialogue was co-hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutirition (BCFN) and Food Tank and forms a critical part of the discussions ahead of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.

“We should not be talking about food security in the world today but about food sovereignty, if we are seeking to end hunger and malnutrition,” Mpofu told IPS in a telephonic interview from her farm in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province. It is here that where she grows drought-tolerant sorghum and finger millet, cowpeas, groundnuts on ten hectares of land.

“Food sovereignty is about giving farmers control over how they grow food, what food they grow, what seeds they use and how they consume that food because it is food grown in a sustainable way,” said Mpofu. This is a subject close to her heart as she doubles as the general coordinator of the international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, which advocates for an agroecological approach to farming. The methodology promotes resilient and sustainable farming and food systems through agroecology, diversified health and nutritious food systems.

Farmer Elizabeth Mpofu on her maize plot. Courtesy: Elizabeth Mpofu

A sustainable food system

The world needs a new food system where all actors from farmers, civil society, researchers, chefs, policymakers and business leaders act together to create a more sustainable food future for all, was a crucial message in Tuesday’s dialogue.

Guido Barilla, chairman of BCFN, said the Covid-19 pandemic had shown how interconnected we all are with each other and the planet.

“This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed but to ensure we are all nourished and to do so while looking after the environment tackling the climate crisis and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met,” Barilla said calling for a fundamental shift in attitude and making radical choices to build a transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future.

“I am not afraid of the change we need to make, the future of food is in our hands, said Barilla. “Let’s make the future grow. And the list of potential improvements, from farm to fork, could be long and exciting.”

Asma Khan, an Indian-born British chef and owner of the Darjeeling Express Restaurant in London, called for a shift in eating patterns of buying and eating less to cut food waste. 

“COVID was a lesson that food systems are vulnerable and that we are all connected,” Khan said urging that restaurateurs can promote food equity by respecting food and seeing food as an opportunity to make a difference.

“Let us not use food as our right … you don’t have a right to eat as there are many people waiting to eat …  Hunger is relentless,” said Khan.

“It is important that we respect the fact that we have a privilege to eat. I really would want to honour the food we eat because there are many people who do not have this opportunity and we should be responsible. There is no justification to throw away food.”

Khan’s comments led to a discussion by farmers who outlined the the myriad of challenges – from access to land, land grabs, poor skills, climate change and impact of COVID-19 that they face.

Speaking at a panel session on Farmers Feed the World, Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, said land was a vital issue in empowering farmers in the United States. She called for reparations for indigenous communities and black communities who lost their land through expropriation.

“When we talk about reparations, we really need to look at land reform and distribution, and there are models such as the North East Farmers of Colour and the Black Family Land Trust which have ways of putting land into permanent protection so that it can be used for full developing agriculture,” said Penniman. She noted that the US government realised the need to put land in trust to ensure that people dispossessed of land could have the chance to return to farming.

In Africa, land grabs have affected farmers and the agriculture sector.

Land grabs are some of the biggest injustices are farmers have faced, said Edie Mukiibi, vice president of Slow Food International. He advocated the building of a movement to ensure that farmers are recognised for their roles in food production and that agroecological approaches be prioritised.

James Maes, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), agreed that farmers across the world faced similar challenges. However, contexts were different, he said, and there was a need to uphold the farmers’ rights to produce food. A change of narrative was needed on food systems debates.

“I would question the need to reset food systems. I believe resetting comes at a huge economic and social cost for those already involved in that food system,” Maes said, noting that the perspective should be on improving and empowering farmers to build resilience and to enhance their production.

As a farmer, Mpofu had a positive perspective on sustainable food systems:

“We have been talking about food security year in year out. We need to stop filling bellies and start promoting nutrition, and this lies in agroecological approaches.”

 

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By External Source
Dec 1 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Pacific Governments, agencies, donors and civil society now have a central source of reliable and current data to help them to make decisions that affect Pacific Islanders.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has backed The Pacific Community (SPC) to create and launch the Pacific Data Hub, which will fill data gaps in the Pacific and provide trusted and evidence-based information to decision-makers.

New Zealand is currently the primary funder, putting $6.5 million over nearly four years into the SPC-led Pacific Statistics and Data project, a region-wide regional initiative out of which the Pacific Data Hub was created. Early on in the project, Australia also provided in-kind support.

“Many of the problems facing the Pacific are too big to tackle alone. The Pacific Data Hub will enable a more joined-up response to development issues,” said Belinda Brown, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Consul-General in New Caledonia.

“It provides a platform to share knowledge and build an ongoing cycle of evidence, which will drive learning and better outcomes over time.”

The platform serves as a digital gateway to information from Pacific countries, development partners, academia and research organisations and the private sector, and will act as a single, authoritative point of entry for all Pacific data, information and publications.

“Access to reliable data enables us to make decisions that are informed by evidence. The Pacific Data Hub will increase confidence in the decisions we make through the New Zealand Aid Programme, and is particularly important at a time when we are helping countries address COVID-19 and respond to its wide-ranging socio-economic impacts,” Ms Brown said.

SPC Director General Dr Stuart Minchin said this is an exciting time for the Pacific, as the Pacific Data Hub had been nearly two years in the making.

“The Pacific Data Hub has been entirely created and developed in the Pacific, by the Pacific, with the guiding objective of improving the lives of the Pacific peoples. We’re excited about the launch and by what this will do for the Pacific well into the future,” he said.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

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Credit: Whitehouse.Gov

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 is on track to be the deadliest and one of the most catastrophic epidemics since the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, which infected about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population at the time. The number of deaths was estimated somewhere between 17 and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million worldwide.

The first observations of illness and mortality were documented in December 1917 at Camp Greene, North Carolina. To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized reports of casualties, but as newspapers in neutral Spain were free to report the epidemic deaths, it was wrongly named “the Spanish Flu”.

The Covid-19 pandemic will also have widespread and long-lasting political, economic, and social consequences, challenging many equations on the international arena and perhaps even changing the balance of power between the United States and China. One of the main effects of the pandemic in the international context has been in the way that different countries have dealt with it.

Unfortunately, it is the nation that is bearing the main cost of the mismanagement, arrogance, selfishness and inaction of the president. President Trump’s approach to the pandemic has been abysmal and the nation has been paying the price of that inaction

Covid-19 was first reported in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province, in December 2019. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) China office heard the first reports of a previously-unknown virus behind a number of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The Chinese government responded immediately to the initial outbreak by placing Wuhan and nearby cities under a de-facto quarantine encompassing roughly 50 million people in Hubei province.

The WHO quickly warned other countries of the highly infectious virus and, as early as January 30, it designated Covid-19 a “public health emergency of international concern”. Then, on March 11, it officially declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. The statement by its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus read: “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.”

So, WHO warned the world about the existence of the deadly Covid-19 virus on January 30, and on March 11 classified it as a pandemic and bemoaned “the alarming levels of inaction.” Due to the total lockdown of Hubei province, the Chinese limited the spread of the virus and brought it under control. Consequently, as of 29 November 2020, Covid-19 has infected 92,300 and killed 4,742 people in China.

However, the situation has been starkly different in many other countries. The figures in the United States as of 29 November 2020 are 13,216,193 cases and 265,897 deaths, by far the largest number in the world. In other words, China has experienced 0.34 deaths per 100,000 people, while the figure for the US is 77.19 per 100,000 people, or 227 times greater. The United States has about four percent of the global population, but over 20 percent of Covid-19 cases. The number of Covid patients in hospitals has reached a new record high.

Even India, with four times the US’s population and with much more limited public health facilities, has suffered 9,309,787 cases and 135,715 deaths, just over half the number of US deaths. Similarly, the figures for Russia are 2,196,691 cases and 38,175 deaths.

It is often argued that the low number of cases in China has been due to the authoritarian nature of the state, but other democracies such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and some European countries have fared much better than the United States too.

Australia has had 27,885 cases and 907 deaths, New Zealand 2,050 cases and 25 deaths, South Korea 33,375 cases and 522 deaths. Germany, like the rest of Europe, has suffered badly as the result of Covid-19, but there have been only 1.04 million cases and 16,011 deaths. This means that with a population four times that of Germany’s, the number of deaths in the United States is nearly 16 times higher.

Consequently, while China, South Korea, New Zealand and some other East Asian countries have been able to allow their citizens to attend work and school, and enjoy restaurants, theatres and sporting events, the United States and much of Europe have languished under lockdown for a much longer period. While China has seen a growth of 4.9% between July and September compared to the same quarter last year, the United States and much of Europe are in the throes of deep recession.

In the United States the economic fallout for the working class has been severe. Unemployment has skyrocketed with 45.4 million new unemployment claims since March, and at least 1/6th of those with jobs before the pandemic now out of work. As many as 40 million renters may be facing eviction by the end of the year.

So, the reason for this disparity between the countries with higher levels of mortality and those with much fewer cases has nothing to do with being authoritarian versus democratic. It has been mainly due to the lack of management, denial of science, putting personal interests ahead of the public good and closing one’s eyes to reality.

Even before the start of the pandemic, in May 2018, the White House disbanded the pandemic response team. In July 2019, the administration decided to eliminate the post of the epidemiologist in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As a result, the country was ill-prepared to cope with a major pandemic.

On January 22, when many cases of Covid-19 had been detected in the United States, the President boasted: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” At other times, he called the report of the pandemic a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats to harm his re-election chances.

Initially, the president praised China’s handling of the coronavirus, saying: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi.”

However, later on, instead of following what President Xi had done to contain the virus, Trump blamed China for the spread of the pandemic in the United States, calling it “the Chinese virus”.

As late as February 27, he said: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” Instead of introducing a lockdown, on March 4 he said: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

Instead of listening to the experts, he began advocating the use of untested drugs, such as “drinking hydroxychloroquine.” His justification for advocating it was: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

He gave exaggerated figures about the number of tests that were carried out or the PPE that had been distributed, but hospitals were suffering from a lack of equipment and low levels of tests. The Atlantic reported that less than 14,000 tests had been done in the ten weeks since the administration had first been notified of the virus, though Vice-President Mike Pence who had been put in charge of the pandemic had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time.

At one point, the president advocated injecting disinfectant, saying: “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

It was basically this lack of scientific outlook, mismanagement, relying upon his own ill-informed feelings, lack of concern for the public good, with excessive attention paid to his re-election that contributed to the United States having one of the worst cases of the pandemic in the world. It has already cost the lives of more than a quarter of a million Americans, devastated many lives, brought the economy to a halt and may cost the country trillions of dollars before it is over.

It is the job of the president to lead, to guide, to inform and to set an example. However, President Trump failed miserably on all counts. He belittled the danger of the pandemic, ignored the experts, refused to wear a mask and even encouraged his followers to do the same, with the result that the number of infections and deaths is still showing an upward trend.

The pandemic might have cost President Trump his second term, but taking wrong decisions has a cost. Unfortunately, it is the nation that is bearing the main cost of the mismanagement, arrogance, selfishness and inaction of the president. President Trump’s approach to the pandemic has been abysmal and the nation has been paying the price of that inaction.

His unscientific approach can also be seen in relation to the issue of climate change which is a much more serious and long-term threat that is facing mankind and for which there are no vaccines. As one of the most technologically-advanced countries, the United States needs a president who at least does not effectively campaign against scientific facts.

 

Farhang Jahanpour is a British national of Iranian origin. He is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. He taught Persian Literature at Cambridge University for five years and for more than 30 years he taught courses on the Middle East at the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford. He also served as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at BBC Monitoring for 21 years.

 

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A mother and doctor tend to a young girl with COVID-19 at an intensive care ward in the western region of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Evgeniy Maloletka

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka , Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

According to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths.

And according to the latest ILO reports, as job losses escalate due to lockdowns, nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing livelihoods, access to food and the ability to survive. The World Economic Forum states that ‘With some 2.6 billion people around the world in some kind of lockdown, we are conducting arguably the largest psychological experiment ever.’

As governments and corporations tighten political authoritarianism and technological surveillance, curtailing privacy and democratic protest, much of humanity is succumbing to anxiety, depression and a sense of powerlessness. Countries with some of the harshest lockdowns, such as India, have seen significant increases in suicides.

Pandemic Narrative and Dissent

Dominant global political and economic institutions and the media present their pandemic narrative as based on scientific authority. However, there is increasing dissension on the origin and prevention of the virus within the biomedical profession. Many physicians and scientists are questioning if COVID-19 is a natural occurrence or the product of a leak from a lab experimenting with coronaviruses and bioweapons.

There is concern over the accuracy of PCR tests and false positives, as well as the classification of deaths simply as COVID-19 deaths when an overwhelming number of deaths are related to pre-existing illnesses or comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart disease. Even according to November 25, 2020 CDC statistics, COVID-19 was the sole cause of death mentioned in only 6% of the deaths.

The disproportionately higher rates of Covid deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives, for example, are due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease than among more privileged U.S. communities.

The Covid pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.

Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. The top five U.S. billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this period.

Among the pandemic profiteers are CEOs of companies like Zoom and Skype providing video conferencing, and Amazon providing online shopping to citizens under lockdown. Yet the success of these companies has not translated into better wages and safety conditions for their employees.

However, the political and ideological power of the billionaire class and their influence over domestic and global policymaking are increasing. Relevant in this regard is billionaire Bill Gates’ central role in the development and marketing of vaccines and interest in use of vaccines as a method of population control.

The pharmaceutical industry, i.e. Big Pharma, (including vaccine manufacturers) are known for inflating prices, avoiding taxes and manipulating the political process to maximize profit. Unfortunately, this corrupt industry is a key player in the race to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The incoming Biden administration in the US has received extensive funding from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they have not agreed to cut the cost of a possible coronavirus vaccine developed with federal research dollars.

Rather, the Biden administration, also heavily funded by the big tech, finance and defense sectors, is poised to facilitate ‘The Great Reset;’ the initiative to remake the post-pandemic world order by the World Economic Forum.

The ‘Great Reset’

The World Economic Forum (WEF), which identifies itself as ‘the international organization for public-private partnership,’ (i.e., like the Council on Foreign Relations, a geopolitical corporate power agency) sees the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery.’

Speaking at a conference organized by the WEF in June 2020, former US Secretary of State, John Kerry expressed concern:

“Forces and pressures that were pushing us into crisis over the social contract are now exacerbated……The world is coming apart, dangerously, in terms of global institutions and leadership.”

The ‘Great Reset’ envisioned by the WEF seeks to address these challenges by radical global restructuring. It seeks to reinvent ‘the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons…to build a new social contract…,’ with sustainable development and resilience as its ultimate objectives.

At its next annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos, Switzerland in January 2021, the WEF is expected to adopt the Great Reset and also incorporate youth leaders from around the world into the initiative through a virtual summit.

The stated goals of sustainability and resilience are laudable, but many are questioning the true objectives of both the WEF and the Great Reset. The pandemic simulation called Event 201, for example, was conducted in October 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 outbreak by the World Economic Forum in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The simulation predicted up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus. Many are wondering why these powerful organizations, having apparently already run the exact scenario as a test, failed to prevent or at least prepare the world for the imminent viral outbreak.

The global political economy has been moving in the direction of increasing technological and market integration through social media, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In the wake of COVID-19, the trends towards digitalization and commoditization of economic and social relations have increased.

The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to accelerate and solidify these trends as well as expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals. In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.

The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones…´ But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless, appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.

Resistance

The mainstream media establishment tends to cast all critiques of the dominant Covid narrative and solutions as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Yet, more and more people are questioning the narrative on the origin and management of the pandemic and, instead, see the need to shift to a truly democratic, just and ecological civilization.

Many of the anti-lockdown protests around the world have had a limited focus on social restrictions and personal freedom, desires usually in tune with the individualism of globalized consumer culture. While these have gained some attention in the mainstream media by their acceptability, the more focused and progressive demands for social and economic rights by civil society groups have received scant attention.

These include demands by numerous groups, such as Oxfam International, to make COVID-19 medicines and vaccines free and fair for all. There is also a demand for a global public inquiry, to be led by independent scientists, to gather evidence on the origin and evolution of COVID-19. In addition, there is a call for an International Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal, to bring perpetrators of the pandemic to justice, whether they be from the US or China.

The overall objective of these demands is in greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses. The demand for enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention calls on the ‘nations of the world, China, Russia, the US, to come together to enforce better verification systems for preventing the production of biological weapons in the future, before the world is put through multiple pandemics to come’. These are concerns to be included in an alternative ethical, wise and compassionate ‘Great Reset.’

The Covid pandemic is a turning point, an opportunity to change. The reset we need now is not the creation of a ‘post-human, post-nature’ world defined by unregulated corporate-led growth of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We need to balance digitalization and commoditization with an ecological reset, a way of living that respects the environment, promotes agroecology, bioregionalism and local communities.

We need to raise our consciousness and understanding of humanity as a species in nature, our connectedness to each other and the rest of planetary life.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Asoka Bandarage, a scholar and practitioner, has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke (where she received tenure), Georgetown, American and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad. Her research interests include social philosophy and consciousness; environmental sustainability, human well-being and health, global political-economy, ethnicity, gender, population, social movements and South Asia.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 recessions have hit most countries, requiring massive fiscal responses. While most developing countries struggled with mounting debt even before the pandemic, many developed countries also face unprecedented macroeconomic pressures despite earlier spending cuts due to ‘fiscal consolidation’ policies.

Anis Chowdhury

Tax, not aid?
Before the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) head Angel Gurria acknowledged, “Much of [the tax not collected] is lost abroad in illicit flows. Developing countries also lose tax revenue from aggressive tax planning by multinational corporations. This cannot go on.”

Earlier, then OECD Development Assistance Committee chair, Erik Solheim foresaw an end to official development assistance (ODA): “Nothing would please me more than seeing the end of ODA, and for development to be financed through taxes, normal trade relations, long term investments and sustainable businesses.”

Solheim also observed: “Developing nations need to be in control of their own revenues and economic resources through sound taxation … The fight against corruption and tax havens is crucial in this context…The amount of money leaving developing countries in the form of illicit financial flows each year is many times greater than the amount of aid coming in”.

However, before and at the conference, developed economies ganged up to block developing country efforts to enhance international cooperation to stem such illicit outflows, especially tax evasion.

Losing resources
The UN-initiated Financial Accountability, Transparency & Integrity (FACTI) interim report has made staggering estimates of lost resources that could contribute to development:

• 10% of world output held in offshore financial assets
• criminal money laundering worth 2.7% of global output
• US$7 trillion of private wealth hidden in mainly secret, tax havens
• US$500~600 billion yearly in lost global corporate tax revenue due to ‘profit-shifting’ by transnational corporations (TNCs)
• US$20~40 billion yearly in bribes in developing and transition economies

Illicit financial outflows
According to Global Financial Integrity (GFI), developing countries have lost US$13.4 trillion in unrecorded capital flight since 1980, via trade mis-invoicing and tax evasion, primarily by TNCs and ‘high worth’ individuals, with US$1.1 trillion lost in 2013 alone.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

TNCs also steal money from developing countries through ‘same-invoice faking’, i.e., by shifting profits among subsidiaries by false trade invoicing. The GFI figure of illicit funds transfers does not include same-invoice faking, but estimates losses of US$700bn yearly from goods trade alone.

If trade in services is included, net resource outflows total about US$3 trillion yearly, 24 times more than OECD countries’ aid in 2014. In other words, developing countries lost $24 for every $1 of aid received in 2014, depriving them of much needed finance and government revenue for development.

Estimates of trade mis-invoicing in Africa during 2000-2016 averaged US$83 billion annually, totalling US$1.4 trillion, i.e., about 5.3% of Africa’s output value, worth about 11.4% of its trade in that period.

Such illicit outflows are greatest for Asia. Outflows grew by an average of over 9% yearly during 2004-2014, reaching around US$330 [272~388] billion in 2014. The equivalent of 7.6% of tax revenue in the Asia-Pacific region may have been lost to fraudulent trade declarations in 2016 alone.

OECD not inclusive, legitimate
Tax avoidance by TNCs frequently involves tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), enabled by loopholes in tax governance and the law.

In 2013, G20 leaders endorsed the OECD BEPS action plan, requesting it to recommend international standards and measures to tackle corporate income tax (CIT) avoidance. CIT evasion cost US$100~240 billion annually, i.e., 4~10% of global CIT revenue. In response, the OECD initiated the Inclusive Framework on BEPS and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

Developing countries are invited to participate on condition they commit to implement and enforce standards and norms they did not design or decide on, having been excluded from negotiations. Thus, the claim of developing country ‘inclusion’ in the OECD BEPS framework is misleading, to say the least.

Besides illegitimacy and other problems of exclusion, the proposals may also be inappropriate for developing countries. As the FACTI report observes, “Lack of inclusiveness in setting international norms results in implementation gaps and weakens the global fight against illegal and harmful tax practices”.

Digitalisation challenge
Rapid digitalisation presents new challenges, as TNC assets and profits can be easily moved among tax jurisdictions. Ensuring accurate company reporting on actual revenue and profits from each location is necessary for fairer taxation, but the status quo enables evasion instead.

Digitalisation threatens revenue collection as taxation practices try to catch up with innovations in tax evasion. Recent more ‘technology-driven’ businesses – increasingly involving ‘hard to value’ intangible assets such as patents and software – also require improving international corporate taxation.

Traditional assumptions about links between income, profits and physical presence now seem irrelevant, requiring new approaches, principles and norms. For example, countries with many users or consumers of digital services currently get little or no tax revenue from companies denying any physical presence.

But new international corporate taxation in this age of digitalisation should benefit all, both developing and developed countries. With marginal costs close to zero, all revenue can be taxed without adversely affecting digital services supply.

Current tax systems cannot prevent egregious tax avoidance by digital TNCs. For some time, the OECD has been discussing tax avoidance by digital TNCs within the BEPS framework without reaching consensus, mainly due to US opposition.

“With no consensus on taxation of the digital economy, some countries have resorted to unilateral measures”, noted the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters. But such actions have provoked retaliation, e.g., the US threatened new tariffs on French exports following France’s attempt to tax tech giants.

Systemic challenges, cooperative solutions
Poor financial accountability, transparency and integrity – enabling illicit financial flows – is a global problem. As the FACTI report emphasised, the problem needs global solutions, while taking country circumstances into account.

It noted, “all aspects of this problem require action and ownership in developed and developing countries; in source, transit, and destination countries; in public and private sectors; and in small and large countries alike… there are no silver bullets or single measures”.

Governments around the world face severe fiscal pressures responding to COVID-19 economic crises with adequate relief and recovery measures as revenue collection shrinks. As other donor countries emulate the recent UK foreign aid budget cuts, aid-reliant developing countries will face more financing challenges.

As the OECD noted, domestic and external financing levels and trends already fell short of SDG spending needs well before the COVID-19 crises. External private financial inflows to developing economies could drop by US$700 billion in 2020 compared to 2019, 60% worse than the 2008 global financial crisis impact.

Hence, tackling resource haemorrhage from developing countries has become all the more urgent as even developed countries scramble for more fiscal means. This could finally catalyse the long-needed cooperation on international tax matters led by the UN, still the most inclusive and legitimate platform for multilateral cooperation.

 

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By External Source
Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

World AIDS Day this year finds us still deep amid another pandemic – COVID-19. The highly infectious novel coronavirus has swept across the world, devastating health systems and laying waste to economies as governments introduced drastic measures to contain the spread. Not since the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1990s have countries faced such a common health threat.

This explains why UNAIDS has selected the theme “Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility” for this year’s World AIDS Day.

Infectious diseases such as these remain a major threat to human health and prosperity. Around 32.7 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses in the last 40 years. At the time of writing, 1.4 million people had already died from COVID-19 in just one year.

The HIV/AIDS response played out over a much longer trajectory than COVID-19. But it is, in some respects, a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together

These diseases take incredible expertise, collaboration and dedication from all levels of society to track, understand, treat and prevent.

The HIV/AIDS response played out over a much longer trajectory than COVID-19. But it is, in some respects, a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together. The work of organisations such as the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS and the International AIDS Society help to coordinate rapid sharing of information and resources between healthcare providers and communities.

The Global Fund and PEPFAR have mobilised resources that have helped to reduce morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income regions. AIDS-related deaths have declined worldwide by 39% since 2010.

These and other groups have also fought against high drug prices that would render medication inaccessible to many in the developing world. In South Africa, the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, a day’s supply of the simplest antiretrovirals cost about R250 in 2002. Today easier, more palatable treatment taken once per day costs a few rands.

Collaboration and co-ordination has also meant that medications have been developed and tested in populations across the world. And once available, global guidelines and training opportunities ensure that healthcare provision and quality is standardised.

Many of these achievements did not come without a fight. Dedicated and sustained activism, at a political and community level were required to drive down drug pricing for the global South and is constantly required to ensure inclusive distribution of resources.

The corollary is also true – areas where the world continues to struggle arise predominantly where there’s a lack of solidarity and agreement. These include a lack of political support to implement evidence-based protection mechanisms for vulnerable or stigmatised populations. For example the legalisation of homosexuality. This results in continued but avoidable HIV infection and related mortality.

These lessons need to be taken on board as the world prepares for the next phase of managing COVID-19. All the interventions that helped contain and manage HIV and AIDS are critical in ensuring that no country, regardless of developmental status, and no population, especially those that face stigma and battle to access healthcare services, are left behind.

 

Building on existing systems

The lessons learnt from HIV and AIDS can be used to inform the COVID-19 response as the challenges are similar.

Many of the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials are taking place in multiple countries, including South Africa. The capacity to conduct these studies, including the clinical staff and trial sites, are well established as a result of decades of HIV/AIDS research. There are fears that developing nations might be excluded from accessing an effective COVID-19 vaccine. But global mechanisms are now in place to avoid this and to, instead, encourage and enable global solidarity, some of which were championed by the HIV/AIDS response.

The Access to COVID-9 Tools (ACT)-Accelerator, established by the World Health Organisation in April 2020 in collaboration with many other global organisations, governments, civil society and industry, have committed through the pillar known as Covax, to equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine as well as diagnostic tests and treatments. These global institutions and mechanisms require continued support.

With the deployment of an effective vaccine, an end to COVID-19 might soon be in sight. For HIV, vaccine development has been more complex and disappointing. The global community needs to remain committed to promoting access and support for the many incredible prevention and treatment options that are available. The unprecedented effort on the part of private industry in the COVID-19 vaccine response shines a light on what can be achieved when all interested parties engage. The HIV and TB vaccine endeavours need a similar effort.

These are not the only pandemics the world will face. In fact, there are strong predictions that the emergence of new pandemics will increase in the future. This is due to the effects of globalisation, climate change and proximity to wildlife.

The best hope for humanity is to not lose sight of what these pandemics cost us in terms of loved ones, in terms of freedom and economically. We must prepare now collectively across countries and across all levels of society. These preparations need to be grounded in the lessons learnt from HIV/AIDS and re-learnt from COVID-19.

 

Social solidarity

The success of the global response to current and emerging pandemics will rely on the ability of the less vulnerable to acknowledge their shared responsibility and respond to those calls.

An important truth of the HIV epidemic is that it doesn’t discriminate. No infectious disease acknowledges political borders and everybody is at risk of being infected or affected. If nothing else, because of this we need to continue to work together on a global scale knowing that “no one is safe, until everyone is safe”.

Carey Pike, Executive Research Assistant at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation contributed to this article.

Linda-Gail Bekker, Professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town

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

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Only 35.6 percent of all enrolled children received some kind of learning materials or activities from their teachers. | Picture courtesy: PxHere

By Upamanyu Das
Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

School closures due to the nationwide lockdown in March 2020 meant that children were disengaged with formal education for a prolonged period. The resulting talks around e-education exposed India’s digital divide, with only 24 percent of households having access to the internet.

Children studying in government schools were hit particularly hard, with a recent study indicating that more than 80 percent of government school students (in Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh) hadn’t received any educational materials during the lockdown.

With this backdrop, Pratham Education Foundation conducted surveys for its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2020. The first round of the report (called Wave 1) has been published, and through it Pratham attempts to fill the national data gaps on the status of rural education during the lockdown. It explores the provisions of remote-learning (educational materials), and how accessible these provisions were in rural India, as well as how often they were used.

To write the report, Pratham conducted a survey in late September 2020. Based on a random sample of participants drawn from the ASER 2018 database, the survey saw participation from 52,227 households and 8,963 teachers from 16,974 villages in 26 states and four union territories.

Data was collected for each child between the ages of five and 16 in each household, and in schools it was collected for the grade that teachers could provide the most information for. Here are some highlights from the report.

 

Children’s school enrolment

The report notes that there has been a marked shift in the number of children enrolled in government and private schools in 2020:

• Roughly, there are three to four percent more children enrolled in government schools than private institutions, as compared to 2018. This is true across all academic grades, for both boys and girls.
• For children between six to ten years of age, there as been a sharp increase in those not enrolled in school (from 1.8 percent to 5.3 percent). This can be explained by schools being shut, which implies that admissions for the Grade 1 are on hold.

 

Household resources

A family’s resources can influence the support they provide towards their children’s learning in a variety of ways. The report attempted to capture these varying support mechanisms:

• Parent education levels: Only 31.3 percent and 16.6 percent of surveyed mothers and fathers, respectively, had no schooling. In contrast, 53.1 percent of mothers and 70.8 percent of fathers had completed more than five years of school.
• Access to smartphones: For 22.5 percent children whose parents had ‘low’ education levels, there was a 45.1 percent chance of their household having a smartphone, with an 84 percent chance of the child bring enrolled in a government school. While for 27.6 percent children whose parents had ‘high’ education levels, there was a 61 percent chance of having a smartphone at home, with a 69.5 percent chance of the child being enrolled in a government school.
• Textbooks: Having relevant textbooks at home is crucial for a child’s learning. The report indicates that schools have fared fairly well in this regard, with 84.1 percent of government school children and 72.2 percent of private school children having relevant textbooks for their grade.
• Learning support: Taking all children across different grades together, close to three-quarters of all school children received school-related help from their family members. This was more pronounced for younger children, with 81.5 percent children in Grades 1 and 2 receiving help from family members as compared to 68.3 percent children in Grade 9 and above. Expectedly, parents with higher education levels were better equipped to help their children. In cases where parents had completed Grade 9 or more, approximately 45 percent of children received help from their mothers.

 

Access to and availability of learning materials and activities

Only 35.6 percent of all enrolled children received some kind of learning materials or activities from their teachers:

• The proportion of children in higher grades (Grade 9 and above) receiving learning materials was 37.3 percent, while the same for children in lower grades (Grades 1-2) was 30.8 percent. The numbers were consistently higher for children in private schools compared to government schools across all grades.
• Among those who did receive learning materials, 67.3 percent of government school students and 87.2 percent private schools students received them on WhatsApp. Government schools tended to use phone calls and personal visits more often than private schools.
• Of the enrolled children who didn’t receive any learning materials, 68.1 percent of parents cited schools not sending materials, while 24.3 percent households stated not owning a smartphone as the reason. This number was almost five percent higher for government schools than private schools.

 

Children’s engagement with remote-learning

Of the 35.6 percent households which did receive learning materials during the survey week, most reported that children engaged in some kind of educational activity during that week:

• For children in all schools, 59.7 percent reported using textbooks.
• Students in higher grades were more likely to engage with online classes or video recordings than their younger counterparts. For students in Grade 9 and above, 27.5 percent accessed videos or recorded classes and 16.3 percent accessed live online classes. The same numbers for students in Grades 1 and 2 were 16.6 percent and 7.3 percent.
• Recorded video lessons and online classes were more accessible for private school students, with 28.7 percent reporting using video recordings and 17.7 percent reporting using live online classes. The same numbers were for government school students were 18.3 percent and 8.1 percent, respectively.

 

Involvement of schools

The survey also examined how schools understand their ability to maintain contact and conduct remote learning with their students.

Of the total 8,963 teachers surveyed, more than half were from primary schools, while most of the remainder were from upper primary schools. Half of them responded for Grades 2, 4, or 5; and more than a quarter for Grades 6, 7, or 8:

• Teachers reported having the phone numbers of at least half of their students. However, the necessary training provided to them was inadequate, with only half reporting having received any training.
• Two-thirds of all respondents reported that they had shared learning materials in the previous week, while another 21 percent had shared materials at least once during the lockdown. Another 86.8 percent had shared textbooks with all children in the selected grade.
• Seven out of every ten schools respondents reported receiving help from a variety of community actors in order to reach and support children.

Existing inequalities in education have only been further exacerbated during the lockdown. The report makes clear that a large number of children are in danger of being pushed out of formal education, and the marginalised populations, as always, remain at greater risk.

 

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

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Protecting and improving food systems will be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity, the United Nations says. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
BONN, Germany/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

In March, after the World Health Organisation first declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations activated a global corporate emergency mechanism for the first time. It had already written to all donor countries asking for $1.9 billion in front-loaded funding, and had begun emergency procurement. Its priority was to sustain life-saving assistance first.

And as the world’s countries began unprecedented nationwide shutdowns, including international travel bans, the closure of schools, shops, and indirect restrictions on local transport and food supply chains, WFP aimed to keep open transport corridors for passenger and cargo movement.

The U.N. agency, which won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its response, had already estimated that some 270 million people — increased from 135 million pre-COVID-19 — would become acutely food insecure if not assisted. In addition, 690 million people do not have enough to eat.

But responding to the development emergency, WFP noted that in addition the pandemic was placing significant stress on existing food systems.

Protecting and improving food systems would be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity and will enable “quicker and more inclusive recovery”, the agency noted.

Addressing “the impending global food emergency and avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic, while seizing upon the opportunity of resetting food systems,” is a focus of the upcoming online dialogue, ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’, which will be hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and Food Tank on Dec. 1.

“The current crisis is showing us we went wrong somewhere along the way. We need to rethink the whole food system to move forward,” said Edie Mukiibi, Vice President, Slow Food International and participant in the event.

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla. Courtesy: Barilla Group

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla, believes that resetting food systems is possible in less than a decade: “We need a positive movement to accelerate, empower, refine, and design a more sustainable future, and raising awareness in people – companies, citizens, institutions- that another future is possible.”

“If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances,” Barilla said, adding, “Another very important aspect is related to the individual commitment of each and every one of us.”

Danielle Nierenberg, a food systems advocate and founder of Food Tank, a U.S. think tank for food, said that in doing this smallholder farmers play a key role as well.

“We need farmers in decision making roles and policies that affect them whether it is dealing with the pandemic, climate crisis or how to create more equity in the food system, especially for women and girls.

“We need participatory research where farmers work with economists, researchers and extension workers to do the research that will help them improve yields or develop their practices and use different kind of technologies. Innovations are not often taken up because farmers are not involved in them,” Nierenberg told IPS.

Excerpts of the interview with Barilla follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the further strain it has placed on the the global food system, how can we move forward to ensure that the world’s people are fed in a sustainable way?

Guido Barilla (GB): The COVID-19 pandemic shows just how interconnected we all are, not only with each other but also to the planet itself. This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed, but to ensure we are well nourished and to do so while looking after the environment, tackling the climate crisis, and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met.

Faced with this situation, we must have the courage to change – agri-food companies, retailers, institutions, chef, citizens – because there is no alternative to sustainability. We need to make radical choices and today we are here to build a truly transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future (contributing with our ideas and recommendations to the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit).

IPS: We only have 10 years to reach the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Is this enough time to change global food systems? And how can we do it in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic?

GB: From my point of view, 10 years is rather long enough to generate a revolution, and the next 5 years will be crucial. If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances:

• between the generations, to find a common language and common objectives to pursue;
• among the actors along the agri-food chain, to find joint solutions to build a truly regenerative, restorative, and resilient food system;
• between rich and poor countries to call Governments for a global partnership for agriculture, food security and nutrition in order to promote better coordinated and coherent global action;
• between civil society and private sector, to never lose sight of people’s real needs.

 

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Transforming food systems means farmers producing adequate and nutritious food for consumers. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

A world free from hunger is possible but only if we change how we grow and eat food. And resetting the food system — including all aspects of production, processing, marketing, distribution and the consumption and nutrition of food — is key to securing a sustainable food future post COVID-19.

“We need not return to the normal we had before COVID-19 but we need to create a new food system that has opportunities to make changes.

“There is a real commitment from all sectors now not just looking at food security but nutrition security too. For a long time we have focused on quantity and calories. COVID-19 has exposed that we also need to focus on quality. Diet-related diseases are a major risk factor for mortality from the virus,” says Danielle Nierenberg, a world-renowned researcher, activist, food system expert and co-founder of the United States think tank, Food Tank.

The global food system is under strain. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) projects that agriculture production needs to grow by 70 percent to feed more than 9 billion people in the world by 2050.

But hunger, malnutrition, obesity, and food waste and loss are on the rise. There are increasing impacts of climate change and now COVID-19.

“We have seen supply chain disruptions as a result of COVID-19 and how our global food system is fragile and vulnerable. Farmers have had to pivot and make changes after supply chain disruptions that have seen schools, restaurants, and hotels close down. Farmers have had to find new markets,” Nierenberg, who is also recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award, tells IPS.

Resetting the food system is everyone’s business, she adds. This includes farmers, policy makers and researchers to ensure sustainable and resilient ways of growing healthy and abundant food for all.

“We need a food revolution in agriculture now. We need agriculture that is more sustainable and more resilient and that prepares us for shocks, climate crisis and global pandemics,” Nierenberg tells IPS in an interview ahead of the ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’, an international dialogue co-hosted by the Barilla Foundation and Food Tank that will take place online on Dec. 1.

The high level dialogue will highlight the critical role of farmers in feeding the world and managing natural resources, food business in progress towards the 2030 Agenda as well as chefs in redesigning food experiences.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Danielle Nierenberg, a food systems advocate and co-founder of Food Tank. Courtesy: Food Tank

Inter Press Service (IPS): Food systems is the buzz word on the global food agenda, why food systems?

Danielle Nierenberg (DN) : You have producers, farmers, civil society groups, key decision makers and business leaders all looking at issues of food and agriculture holistically. Food systems are complex because they are interlinked to everything else that goes on in the world.

Food impacts everything we do; from the economy to social, racial, [and] cultural equity. So looking at food through a systems lens, we can see the interconnections and how much our daily existence is linked to how we produce and consume food, hence the interest in food systems.

IPS: How do we transform food systems to deliver what we need rather than what we are getting now?

DN: We need commitment and unity from all sectors. Policy makers will have to be enlightened, businesses will have to change and produce farmers will have to diversify. That will be the key outcome from COVID-19. We cannot rely on mono-culture systems because they are fragile. Eaters too have to change some of their practices. More people are cooking from home because they have to and are learning how to eat better, nutritious food but they will have to demand that change. Food Tank has been using the term ‘citizen eater’ – someone who votes with their fork as well as their vote. They vote for the kind of food system they want, this is one way to go. Consumers have a lot of power that they have not used effectively.

IPS: Are we on track to meet the SDGs? 2030 is 10 years away but we still grappling with  hunger, malnutrition and under nutrition, especially in the developing world.

DN: Absolutely. The poorest and most vulnerable are suffering not because of COVID-19 but due the climate crisis. I tend to be an optimist. The SDGs set out some major commitments which I think are achievable over the next nine years. We need real commitment. COVID-19 has set us back with hunger on the rise and there will be likely 80 million hungry people this year than they were last year. More needs to be done to make sure these people are getting the food and nutrition they need.

The problem has always been one of distribution and not of lack of food. There is now attention being paid to food loss and food waste. We are foreseeing a lot of food going to waste this year as farmers produced but they have had no markets. For farmers to gain markets we need better technology and innovation to help them to do that.

What is different this year is we are seeing increased hunger in the global north countries too. There are massive lines at food banks in United States and parts of Europe where so many people are affected who never experienced hunger before. This is a wake-up call to the world to act if we are to achieve the SDGs.

Zimbabwean smallholder farmer, Kwanele Ndlovu, shows part of her produce at her farm in Nyamandlovu district, Zimbabwe. Danielle Nierenberg, a world-renowned researcher, activist, food system expert and co-founder of the United States think tank, Food Tank, says that because of COVID-19 people are now concerned about their health and are looking for nutritious foods, instead of processed foods. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

IPS: The theme for this year’s dialogue, ‘resetting the food system from farm to fork’. Tell us more.

DN: This is one of the very first events leading up to the U.N. Food Systems Summit that will take place in the fall of 2021.

We are bringing together leading thinkers from around the world on food and agriculture. The topics we have outlined are some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed at the U.N. Food Systems Summit. We are setting the stage for what happens next year. Inclusivity is needed and farmers should be part of these discussions.

We have farmers like Edie Mukiibi, the Vice President of Slow Food international; Leah Penniman, an author, educator and farmer in the U.S. doing a lot to improve the lives of black farmers; chefs like Massimo Bottura who is interested in reducing food loss and food waste and another chef, Dan Barber, who has achieved significant results in creating regenerative agriculture system at his farm and restaurant. 

Bobby Chinn, a TV personality and chef from Cairo teaches students about sustainable agriculture practises. We have economists too, like Jeffery Sachs and Chris Barrett, who are thinking about how to create a new food economy.

We also have experts looking at the intersection between food and technology and how technology can help farmers produce better quality food and a more democratised food system where everyone has access to food.

Agnes Kalibata, the U.N. special envoy for the Food Systems Summit and President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will close the event and talk about where we go from here over the next ten months before the summit happens.

IPS: Lastly, how would food systems transformation look like for smallholder farmers, who keep the world fed?

DN: Gosh. If we transform the food system, we should be recognising farmers. Farmers lack the respect all over the world. They are not honoured for the work they do, not just as producers but as stewards of the land and business people. They are the ones who keep us fed but we think of them as second class citizens, people who are not smart enough to do anything else. If we can honour the brilliance of farmers that will go a long way in transforming our food and agriculture system.

 

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No cause to celebrate as COVID-19 has created setbacks on the aims of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It’s been 25 years since the declaration was signed. Credit: Markus Winkler / Unsplash

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

This year, the world commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, instead of celebration; however, its progress has been impeded by the COVID-19.

The so-called ‘new normal’ where people have been forced to stay at and, if possible, work from home has resulted in the pushing back of the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment targets.

Earlier this year Alia El-Yassir, the United Nations Women Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia remarked that “Women’s organizations and civil society at large should be an integral part of COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.”

Her comments about women being on the front lines of the pandemic are as true today as they were in April when she made them.

“They (women) know what needs to be done and we urge all development partners to seriously consider the solutions they offer so that we can continue to ensure the principles of equality and social justice.”

While there have been many such calls this year, several online platforms, like Fuzia and The Female CEO, have risen to the challenge, creating connections between women and other groups, and creating a forum for support and online training and education.

This is crucial as the statistics are far from encouraging.

According to a report published by the Center for American Progress, four times as many women as men dropped out of the labour force in September, roughly 865 000 women compared with 216,000 men in 2020. There were nearly 10 million mothers of young children in the labour force in 2019, and it is estimated that the risk of mothers leaving the labour force and reducing work hours to assume caretaking responsibilities amounts to $64.5 billion per year in lost wages and economic activity in the United States alone.

As front-line responders, health professionals, community volunteers, transport and logistics managers, scientists, homemakers, work from home mothers, caregivers, and teachers, women have been actively involved, battling the crisis of the COVID19 lockdown and economic crisis.
The pandemic has vastly affected restrictions in women’s rights and access to justice, increases in women’s unpaid work at home, loss of employment, and income by women, who globally dominate the insecure informal economy.

Globally the lockdown and social distancing have also triggered additional risk of domestic violence. It has been reported by the United nations that on an average 25%-35% rise has been noticed in domestic abuse reporting calls, globally.

As the world faces this unprecedented time, the world has shifted from a brick-and-mortar presence to massive dependency on technology and supporting infrastructure.

Fuzia’s focus is females of all ages and demographics – and while the digital platform started before COVID-19 – it has adapted to the new reality.

Apart from women, it’s become a content provider supporting the LGBTQ community, and it doesn’t exclude men.

With discussion boards, job training, skill set improvement, guest speakers, and motivational posts Fuzia has been supporting 4 million followers from her various social media outlets to stay focused and evolving all through the pandemic.

In an article published in The New York Times in October, it referred to employers saying that many workers, including those who are older, are nervous about returning given the health threat.

According to the UN News, more than nine in 10 of the world’s workers continue to live in countries with some sort of workplace closures. Regionally, the Americas have been worst affected by far, with working hours diving 18.3 percent. Europe and Central Asia saw a 13.9 percent fall, followed by Asia and the Pacific (13.5 percent), Arab States (13.2 percent) and Africa (12.1 percent).

In most cases, globally, people with children, particularly women, are struggling to return to jobs because they have limited childcare options with schools and day-cares all or partly closed.
In such instances working from home and acquiring new skills to adapt to a new world has become a must.

This is where online platforms have come into their own. Fuzia, for example, offers a plethora of training events. A few of their engagement efforts are interview preparation help, better communication training, work from home tips and tricks, balancing a calm mind and body while being under lockdown.

Periodic hosting of live sessions with Q&As and discussions with industry leaders keeps the audience engaged.

Their recent interviewees have included Shelleye Archambeau, who has been named as the second most influential African American in technology by Business Insider, a known author and also a Fortune 500 board member. In discussion with Fuzia co-founder Shraddha Varma, Archambeau advised job seekers looking to ‘ace’ an interview to understand the subtext of the questions and the one about learning new skills was a test of a candidate’s resilience and their attitudes to “investing” in themselves.

Another top interviewee was Tricia Scott, founder and editor of The Female CEO. The discussion revolved around networking and community online support – something which both platforms specialize in.

Fuzia was represented at the Women Economic Forum 2018 and engages million active users from various social media outlets at present. Riya Sinha and Varma launched the virtual community dedicated to empowering women using digitized tools. They have created a platform which diminishes the lines between geographical locations and time.

Through the content offered on the platform, any user from any location around the globe can access information and take part in learning a new skill.

Fuzia nurtures the creativity of women through live sessions, contests, shout outs, select features and campaigns, online learning, webinars, workshops, experiential learning, contests, and more.

As the platform is open to all age groups and sexual orientation it boasts a judgment-free zone. Mutual respect and tolerance are highly valued. These initiatives help women, who are the majority of the users, develop their skills, gain the courage to be expressive, and excel. They also link up the right skill at the right places giving the women who are yet to be successful a proven theory that works.

A huge portion of the females who use Fuzia are from remote areas, and Fuzia has targeted these women for skills training online – and during the pandemic, increased the range of courses and training online.

 

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A healthcare worker at a testing facility collects samples for the coronavirus at Mimar Sinan State Hospital, Buyukcekmece district in Istanbul, Turkey. Credit: UNDP Turkey/Levent Kulu

By Riccardo Petrella
BRUSSELS, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

The holding of this Special Session (the 37th in the history of the UN) is of considerable importance. It is a unique opportunity to define and implement joint actions at the global level to fight the pandemic in order to ensure the right to life and health for all the inhabitants of the Earth. As the President of the UN General Assembly wrote in his letter of convocation: “Let us not forget that none of us are safe until we are all safe”.

This is a historic moment. The future of the UN is at stake, and above all the capacity of our societies to give life a universal value free from any subordination to market, economic and power “reasons”.

Health, life, is not a question of business, profits, national power, domination or survival of the strongest. The right to health for all is not only a question of access to care (medicines, vaccines….).

This special session is also very important because it represents a great opportunity for us citizens. It encourages us to express our priorities and wishes, to put pressure on our elected leaders so that their decisions comply with the constitutional principles of our States and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Peoples.

As the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth, we have already intervened in September with the UN Secretary General in defense of a health policy without private patents for profit and free of charge (under collective financial responsibility.

On 23 October, at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) level, the “rich” countries of the “North” (United States, European Union, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan…) rejected the request made by South Africa and India, supported by the WHO (World Health Organisation) and other countries of the South, to temporarily suspend the application of patent rules in the fight against Covid-19.

The suspension was intended to allow people in impoverished countries fair and effective access to coronavirus treatment. We deeply deplore it. With this rejection, the aforementioned countries have flouted the political and legal primacy of the right to health according to the rules and objectives set at the international level by WHO over the “logics” and market interests promoted by WTO. This is unacceptable.

Is humanity at the beginning of the end of any global common health policy inspired by justice, responsibility and solidarity?

Inequalities in the right to health have worsened as part of a general increase in impoverishment. According to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report of the World Bank the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021.1

The vaccine market is valued at about $29.64 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $43.79 billion at a CAGR of 10.3% through 2020. The sector is marked by a high degree of concentration: four major pharmaceutical groups dominated in 2019 in terms of turnover generated by the marketing of vaccines.

Leading the way is the British company GlaxoSmithKline, followed by the American Merck and Pfizer, with 7.3 and 5.9 billion euros respectively, and then the French company Sanofi with over 5.8 billion euros last year.

The concentration of vaccine production is also impressive. Europe currently accounts for three-quarters of global vaccine production. The rest of the production is divided mainly between North America (13%) and Asia (8%). In Europe, there are pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, Novartis and Bayer.

The resulting social fractures from above-mentioned trends make it more difficult to implement measures and actions in line with common, shared objectives, in the interest of all, especially the weakest who are at risk.

The spirit of survival and nationalist, racist and class divisions have been reinforced. With a few exceptions, the commodification and privatisation of health systems have contributed to the transfer of decision-making powers to private global industrial, commercial and financial subjects.

National political powers, which are responsible for the processes of commodification and privatisation, are less and less able to design and impose a global and public health policy in the interest of the world’s population.

Mainstream narratives, values, choices and regulation practices must change

The world situation is dramatic. This does not mean that it’s impossible to reverse to-day’s trends. Here below we mention the solutions that Agora of the Inhabitants has submitted to the attention of the president of the UN General Assembly in view of the Special Session on Covid-19.

Our proposals were the subject of a consultation with associations, groups, movements and citizen networks during the month of November. We have received 1,285 signed personal emails of support from 53 countries.

First, the Special Session must strongly reaffirm the principle that the health of all the inhabitants of the Earth is the greatest wealth we possess. Health matters, health is a universal right. It should not belong only to those who have the power to purchase the goods and services necessary and indispensable for life. Our States must stop spending almost 2 trillion dollars a year on armaments and wars.

The health of 8 billion human beings and other living species is more important than the power of conquest and extermination. To this end, it is necessary to change the priorities of global finance by investing in the economy of global public goods (health, water, knowledge/education.

The Special Session should: – propose the creation of a public cooperative financial fund for health, as an integral part of a Global Deposits and Consignments Fund for Global Public Goods; – commission UNIDIR or a commission of independent experts to submit a study report on immediate reductions in military expenditure and the reconversion of its allocation to the development, production and distribution of public goods and services in the health and related fields of water, agro-food and knowledge.

Second, universal rights to life imply that the goods and services indispensable for life should no longer be subject to private appropriation nor to exclusive collective appropriation. Therefore it is necessary to build the common future of all the inhabitants of the Earth by promoting and safeguarding the common public goods and services indispensable for life.

Water, health, seeds, housing and knowledge and education, are the most obvious common public goods. They cannot be dissociated from universal rights. Patents on life (and artificial intelligence) are a strong example of the dissociation between goods that are indispensable for life, such as medical care goods (infrastructure, medicines, and so on) and the right to life.

Hence, we propose:

• to recognise that health (goods and services) is a global common public good that must be safeguarded, protected and valued by the community, under the responsibility of democratically elected public authority institutions, at the different levels of societal organisation of human communities, from the local to the global community of life on Earth;
• approve the abandonment for the period 2021-2023 of application of the rules concerning patents on living organisms, in particular on all the tools for combating the Covid-19 pandemic (diagnostics, treatment, vaccines). The monopolies left to patent holders have no relevant social, ethical, economic and political value. To this end, the Member States of the United Nations and its specialised agencies, representatives of all the peoples and citizens of the Earth, commit themselves, for want of anything better, to use as of now existing instruments of international law such as compulsory licensing;
• decide to set up a global Task Force, under the aegis of the UN, to revise the legal-institutional regime of intellectual property in the Anthropocene, the aim of which would be to abandon the principle of the patentability of living organisms for private and profit-making purposes and to define a new global regime on intellectual property in the light also of the experience accumulated in recent years in the field of artificial intelligence.

Third, it is of fundamental importance to abandon submission to the dictates of “In the name of money”. “You are not profitable? You are not indispensable. In any case, your life is not a priority”. It is not because a person is not profitable for the capital invested that he or she is no longer indispensable. Being without purchasing power does not mean becoming without rights. Life is not money. Living beings are not commodities, resources for profit.

To this end, the Special Session should:

• highlight the need for the re-publicization of scientific research (basic and applied) and technological development. The pooling of knowledge and health protocols, medicines and vaccines must be part of the immediate measures to be taken. In this perspective;
• propose the approval of a Global Compact on Science for Life and Security for all the inhabitants of the Earth;
• to convey in 2022 a UN world conference on the global common public goods and services. The current mystifying use of the concept of ‘global public goods’ in relation to Covid-19 vaccines underlines the urgency and importance of the proposal.

Fourth, a global health policy requires a global political architecture capable, above all, of outlawing predatory finance. The “global security” of the global public goods in the interests of life for all the inhabitants of the Earth can be achieved by creating global institutions with corresponding competences and powers.

The Earth inhabitants do not need new winners, new global conquerors. They need world leaders and citizens who are convinced that the future of life on Earth requires a new and urgent Global Social Pact for Life. In 25 years’ time, the UN will celebrate the centenary of its founding.

The Special Session must make it clear that there can no longer be a debate on small adjustments to the global regulatory model known as “multilateralism”.

The Special Session should:

• recognise Humanity as an institutional subject and key actor in the global politics of life. The opening of a Global Common House of Knowledge, based on the existing pooling of knowledge, experiences, technical tools (case of Costa Rica concerning health…) will be a significant concrete step forward;
• propose the urgent creation of a Global Public Goods and Services Security Council, starting with health, water and knowledge.

It is time for governments and citizens to get or regain common control of health policy. The Special Session must set the record straight. The right to health for all is not only a question of (economic) access to care (medicines, vaccines…) but, more, a question of building the human, social, economic (such as employment…), environmental and political conditions that shape an individual and collective healthy state.

Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth

1 Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, is likely to affect between 9.1% and 9.4% of the world’s population in 2020.

 

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Excerpt:

Riccardo Petrella, an Italian national living in Belgium is Emeritus Professor, Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), with Honorary Degrees (Honoris Causa) from eight universities in Sweden, Denmark, France, Canada, Argentina and Belgium. His research and teaching fields have been regional development, poverty, science and technology policy and globalisation.

 
The UN General Assembly is holding a Special Session on the Covid-19 pandemic at the level of Heads of State and Government on 3 and 4 December.. It took more than a year of discussions to overcome the opposition of certain states, notably the United States and President Donald Trump.

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Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa

By Aeneas Chapinga Chuma
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 27 2020 (IPS)

As COVID-19 swept across the globe, one thing became clear: a well-functioning, well-resourced, agile and resilient health system can mean the difference between life and death.

For Africa, the economic costs of the health pandemic were high. The prescription was often worse than the illness as Africa’s poor found themselves without work, food and even access to health care as economies were locked down across the continent in a bid to contain the virus.

The World Bank predicts that a pandemic-fuelled depression could lead to as much as 3.3 percent drop in growth this year – pushing the region into its first recession in 25 years.

We will not defeat COVID-19 without Africa in the global response. Africa cannot be muted in the global conversations and its leadership must play a role not only in identifying the problems but also in seeking the solutions


This health pandemic has serious socio-economic consequences. What COVID-19 has taught us is that the state has a critical role to play. It was the state, not the private sector, to which citizens looked to and which rose to the occasion when the pandemic struck. 

This was true in Africa as much as it was in Europe and other developed countries and calls for a rethinking of the importance of state capacities and capabilities in sectors of public significance. 

Now, rather than see the pandemic as the end, we could view this crisis as an opportunity for a collective effort to forge our own path at the global table for health.

We need to ask ourselves what global solidarity and shared responsibility would look like for the continent. We know that Africa has many lessons to share.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has taken a strong lead in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Right from the start organizations leading the AIDS response were mobilized with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria allocating up to US$ 1 billion to help countries fight COVID-19. 

The Africa CDC requires more resources if it is to play an even bigger role. 

Where will those resources come from? African countries need to rethink development and how they can build local capacity if the continent is to play its part in the global strategy.

UNAIDS has been clear that we will not defeat COVID-19 without Africa in the global response. Africa cannot be muted in the global conversations and its leadership must play a role not only in identifying the problems but also in seeking the solutions.

To this end, UNAIDS was among the first to join the African CDC’s newly created Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT) as part of the Africa Joint Continental Strategy for the COVID-19 response.

The partnership aims to close the gap in testing by supporting the efforts of African countries to rapidly scale up their capacity to test and trace – a crucial step in reducing infections and deaths. PACT also calls for the rapid establishment of an Africa CDC-led system for pool procurement of diagnostics and other COVID-19-related response commodities.

COVID-19 does not discriminate in who it targets but economic and social determinants of ill-health are strong predictors of who might die from the virus. We cannot allow Africa’s poor to bear the greatest risk without support.

COVID-19 and AIDS are colliding epidemics, and, in many countries in the eastern and southern African region, sexual and gender-based violence is a third and silent triplet. 

The UNAIDS “World Aids Day Report, Prevailing Against Pandemics by Putting People at the centre”, has noted that the global commitment to fast-track the HIV response and end AIDS by 2030 is now off track. 

Indeed, agreed milestones for 2020 have been missed. But Africa can take comfort that the architecture, human resources and lessons learned from the AIDS response hold invaluable lessons. 

We now know that the evidence points to people-centred 2025 targets around comprehensive HIV services, context specific integration of services and the removal of societal and legal impediments to an enabling environment for HIV services. Together these three elements form a powerful whole with people living with HIV and people at greatest risk of HIV infection at its core. 

Shrinking budgets mean less investments in the HIV response. Our report shows clearly that the collective failure to invest sufficiently in comprehensive, rights-based, person-centred HIV responses comes at a high price: from 2015 to 2020, there were 3.5 million more HIV infections and 820 000 more AIDS-related deaths than if the world were on track to achieve the 2020 targets.

We must have a global response for both HIV and COVID-19. While recent vaccine announcements have brought some hope, UNAIDS calls for vaccines and treatments which are available for all and is active in the global movement for a People’s Vaccine. 

But this will not be an easy task. The COVAX initiative coordinated by WHO, Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness needs our vigilance to ensure access for the world’s poor.

The decline in AIDS-related deaths—a 39% drop from 2010 to 2019—demonstrates what can be done. We have made important progress towards zero new infections, zero AIDS-related deaths and zero discrimination. 

But we are far from our goal.

We must now double our efforts for both HIV and COVID-19.

Our goal for HIV is clear: we want people-centred and context specific integrated approaches that lead to at least 90% of people living with HIV or at heightened risk of HIV infection to be linked to services needed for their overall health and wellbeing. And we need a global COVID-19 strategy that works for everyone.

We cannot do the necessary without Africa at the table. And our experience of such phenomenon is that if Africa is not on the table, it will be on the menu—and that would be disastrous. 

 

Aeneas Chapinga Chuma is currently the interim Director for the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa based in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

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In 2019, Ethiopia experienced the fifth-worst food crisis worldwide. Credit: FAO/IFAD/WFP/Michael Tewelde

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 2020 (IPS)

The numbers are staggering— as reflected in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic which has triggered a new round of food shortages, famine and starvation.

According to the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) 690 million people do not have enough to eat. while130 million additional people risk being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of the year.

“Hunger is an outrage in a world of plenty. An empty stomach is a gaping hole in the heart of a society,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week pointing out that famine is looming in several countries.

Striking a personal note, Guterres said he could have never imagined that hunger would rise again during his time in office as Secretary-General.

The WFP singled out 10 countries with the worst food crises in 2019: Yemen, Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti. The list is expected to increase by end of this year.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council last April: “There are no famines yet. But I must warn you that if we don’t prepare and act now – to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade – we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.”

Against this grim scenario, resetting the future of food is possible, say the Barilla Foundation and Food Tank, which are jointly sponsoring an international online dialogue December 1 to “present concrete solutions to rethink our food systems– from farm to fork.”

The discussions are expected to help set the stage for the United Nations Food System Summit to be held in 2021.

The spread of COVID-19 has demonstrated the fragility of global food systems, “but it also offers opportunities to transform the way we produce, distribute and consume food.”

Guido Barilla, Chairman, Barilla Group and Barilla Foundation, said: “We need a positive movement to accelerate, empower, refine, and design a more sustainable future, and raising awareness in people – companies, citizens, institutions- that another future is possible.”

Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder of Food Tank, told IPS the pandemic has had a huge impact on the world’s food and agricultural systems.

“Ironically, there will be record yields for many grains this year, but the disruptions in the supply chain caused by the pandemic as well as the global climate crisis and increasing conflict in several countries is leading to a hunger pandemic as well,” she pointed out.

Hunger, as many experts have pointed out, is not because the world doesn’t produce enough food, but a problem of distribution that has been exacerbated by concerns over health and lack of national leadership and political will in many countries, including the United States, to ensure that no one goes hungry, said Nierenberg.

Jeffrey Sachs, Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University and Director, U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, said: “Changing the food system is a complex challenge, but the first step is to know where we want to go, and that’s toward a healthy diet produced with sustainable agriculture.”

Abby Maxman, Oxfam America’s President & CEO, told IPS COVID-19 is the final straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, inequality, and climate change.

“The pandemic is fuelling hunger in the world’s worst hunger hotspots such as Venezuela and South Sudan, and it is creating new epicentres of hunger in countries such as India, South Africa, and Brazil where millions of people who were barely managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic,” she said.

She also pointed out that COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses of a food system which prioritizes the profits of big food and agriculture companies over the needs of food producers and workers.

“We’re hearing the same refrain all around the world – families are very worried as they are forced to make impossible decisions – do they risk catching the disease as they go out to earn money to buy food? Or stay home and watch their children go hungry?”

It’s not actually a choice for most. Governments must contain the spread of this deadly disease but it is equally vital they take action to stop the pandemic killing as many – if not more – people from hunger, said Maxman.

The future of the global food systems is in our hands. Let’s make the future grow! Credit: Barilla Foundation

The Advisory Board of the Barilla Foundation, described as an independent foundation that works on proposing concrete actions to solve issues around global food systems, has proposed a strategy to transform the food systems through shared and systemic solutions and a global collective commitment.

The online international dialogue is expected to highlight the critical role of farmers in feeding the world and managing natural resources, food business in progressing towards the 2030 Agenda, and chefs in re-designing food experiences. The prospects of technology and innovation, the role of food as prevention and the most recent policy developments, including the EU Farm to Fork Strategy, will also be discussed.

Asked if the availability of two vaccines by early next year will contribute to alleviate or end the food emergency, Nierenberg told IPS that while the vaccines are promising and will health ensure the health of millions and millions of people, the pandemic has shown us how fragile our food and economic systems are–it exposed a lot of cracks that were already there, but that have grown wider since the pandemic.

“We’ll need more than vaccines to make sure that food is considered a human right and that people around the globe have access to a living wage and safe, affordable, and accessible food,” she declared.

Oxfam America’s Maxman told IPS the exciting news about vaccines is providing hope of getting out of this global nightmare, but the scientific breakthrough is only part of the equation.

Equally important, she said, is making sure every single person on this planet can get it as soon as possible. But at the moment, rich countries, including the US, are already hoarding more than half of the vaccines to be developed by the companies with the leading five vaccine candidates.

“With only 4% of the world’s population, the US has already reserved almost 50% of the Pfizer’s total expected supply in 2021. That’s why Oxfam is calling for a people’s vaccine: a global public good, freely and fairly available to all, prioritizing those most in need here at home and around the world”.

To protect everyone no matter their wealth or nationality, corporations with the leading candidates for an effective COVID-19 vaccine must commit to openly sharing their vaccine technology to enable billions of doses to be made as soon as possible at the lowest possible price, Maxman declared.

Asked about the impact of waste, obesity and overconsumption, Nierenberg said: “I think NOW is the time for a real resetting of the food system”.

“It’s clear that agriculture needed to be revolutionized pre-pandemic—and we can’t return to the way things were”.

These unprecedented challenges, she noted, provide enormous opportunities to create a food system that can’t be broken—one that is truly regenerative and restorative, and that leaves no one behind.

“We can’t go back to “normal.” Normal left us vulnerable, and this crisis has widened the cracks in a food system already in need of repair. But this is our time to pivot. Right now, we can develop long-lasting solutions to nourish both people and the planet,” declared Nierenberg, recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award and who spent two years volunteering for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic.

Maxman said: “The global food system is broken. We must rebuild a fairer, more resilient, and more sustainable food system”.

The fact that eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe illustrates just how broken our food system is, she noted.

“In the short-term, governments need to make sure that local food systems can continue to function, people can access and afford to buy nutritious food, and producers can continue to grow and produce the food needed for local communities”.

But as countries recover from the crisis, governments must prioritize investing in small-scale producers, ensuring that women food producers do not face discrimination, taking steps to make sure food producers can adapt to climate change, and demanding that big food and beverage companies pay workers a living wage, she declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

 

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Credit: SIPRI

By Diego Lopes da Silva
STOCKHOLM, Nov 27 2020 (IPS)

Autocracies are once again the global majority. The 2020 Democracy Report of the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-DEM), ‘Autocratization surges, resistance grows’, raises the alarm that while the world in 2019 was substantially more democratic than it was in the 1970s, an ongoing trend of autocratization may reverse this scenario.

Democratic institutions in countries as diverse as Hungary and Mali are weakening, leading to consequences of as yet unknown dimensions. A likely outcome is an increase in military spending: there is a significant body of evidence showing that autocracies spend more than democracies on their militaries, all else being equal.

This SIPRI Topical Backgrounder discusses the possible consequences of growing autocratization on military spending. Understanding the interaction between political regimes and military spending is of interest to scholars as well as to policymakers, as many of these autocratizing countries—such as Brazil, India and Turkey—increasingly bear importance in the international security landscape.

It also examines the case of Brazil in light of the findings of the 2020 Democracy Report and looks at how Brazil’s recent autocratization has affected its military spending.

Is the world becoming more autocratic?

The 2020 Democracy Report documents the acceleration and deepening of autocratization around the world. V-DEM defines any substantial decline on its Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) as autocratization. Simply put, it refers to the erosion of liberal democratic institutions.

The LDI captures the extent to which individual and minority rights are protected against a potential ‘tyranny of the majority’ and the state. Institutional features such as civil liberties, separation of powers, a constitutionally constrained executive, and a strong and independent judiciary are of special concern to this index.

Autocracies—political regimes where civil society’s influence and control over decision making is limited and unevenly distributed—are, for the first time since 2001, the majority in the world. The number of liberal democracies has fallen from a peak of 45 countries in 2010 to 37 in 2019.

Levels of democracy have fallen throughout regions: as a population-weighted average, Latin America’s 2019 democracy index receded to 1992 levels, while in the same year Eastern Europe’s reached its lowest point since the end of the Soviet Union.

Hungary is a notable example. It is the first electoral authoritarian member of the European Union according to V-DEM’s methodology and the most extreme case of autocratization of the decade 2009–19, followed by Turkey, Poland, Serbia and Brazil.

Why would autocratization affect military spending?

In a nutshell, the literature puts forward two main hypotheses on the relationship between military spending and democracy. Far from being exclusionary, these hypotheses complement each other; empirical cases are likely to display features in accordance with both explanations.

The first hypothesis—the democratic control hypothesis—claims that liberal democracies spend less on their militaries as a means to avoid heightening threat perceptions and leaving fewer resources available to other valued social goods.

Thus, politicians seeking election or re-election may be more inclined to reduce military spending to provide more resources for health and education, for example. They would do so to please constituents and therefore maximize their chances of remaining in power.

Democratic institutions provide the channels through which civil society can express its preferences, reward politicians who abide by them and sanction those who do not.

A second hypothesis—the autocrat–military hypothesis—concerns the rent-seeking behaviour of the military. According to this theoretical strand, competition for resources is fundamentally different under democratic and autocratic regimes.

In democracies the military should not resort to violence as a means of securing resources; it must compete for budget allocations with other state bureaucracies on an equal footing. Conversely, autocratic regimes tend to rely on the military for internal repression. In these regimes, the military can bargain for larger budget allocations in exchange for political support.

There is evidence to support the association between military spending and democracy: countries with well-functioning democracies tend to spend less on their militaries, both as a share of gross domestic product (GDP)—military burden—and as a share of government expenditure.

A study published in 2015, for instance, found that full democracies—those scoring highest in democratic quality—spend on average almost 40 per cent less than full autocracies—those scoring lowest in democratic quality—on their militaries, all else being equal.

There is also some evidence suggesting that presidential democracies spend more on the military than parliamentary systems. Among autocracies, military regimes have higher military spending levels than single party and personalist regimes. The link between political regimes and military spending is well established in the literature.

These findings suggest that if the current trend of autocratization continues, military spending is likely to rise. The effects are already noticeable: some countries moving towards autocracy are either increasing military spending or changing budgeting practices. The following section discusses some preliminary findings on the relationship between autocratization and military spending in Brazil.

The autocratic surge in Brazil: President Bolsonaro’s relationship with the armed forces and military spending

According to V-DEM’s 2020 Democracy Report, Brazil ranks fifth among the top 10 autocratizing countries of the decade 2009–19. Democratic levels began to decline in Brazil in 2014, after a corruption scandal involving President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party. A political crisis ensued ultimately leading to Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016.

The impeachment process was highly controversial, casting serious doubt on the quality of Brazilian democratic institutions. Autocratization accelerated after far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2018. Bolsonaro has made clear on several occasions that his commitment to democratic institutions is weak, going as far as to claim that ‘the dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill’ dissidents, referring to Brazil’s latest military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.

Bolsonaro is a former army captain and has appointed a retired army general as vice president. He has populated the state bureaucracy with military personnel and relies heavily on the military to govern.

When Bolsonaro took office in 2018, fewer than 3000 military personnel occupied civilian positions in the state bureaucracy; by 2020 that number had risen to over 6000. Many key positions in the government are or were occupied by retired army officers, such as the minister of health, the minister of mines and energy, the minister of defence and the national security adviser.

The military has backed Bolsonaro against political opponents as well as against other government branches. In May 2020, Bolsonaro’s national security adviser, Augusto Heleno, a retired army general, warned that the Supreme Court’s ongoing inquiries into the president’s supporters may lead to ‘unpredictable consequences for national stability’.

Following Heleno’s statement, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro—President Bolsonaro’s son—said that an institutional break, in other words a democratic rupture, in Brazil is only a matter of time.

The relationship between Bolsonaro and the military has had consequences on the allocation of government resources. The presidency presented a budget proposal to Congress in August 2020 calling for a 4.83 per cent increase in the defence budget for 2021.

The Ministry of Defence was successful in lobbying for 8.17 billion reais (US$1.5 billion) for investments in arms acquisition programmes, much higher than in previous years. The Ministry of Defence has even more ambitious plans in mind to enlarge the military budget: the latest version of the National Defence Strategy, submitted to Congress in July 2020, proposes raising Brazil’s military spending from the 1.4 per cent of GDP average of the past decade to 2 per cent of GDP.

Although the proposition is based on that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—since 2002 NATO member states have agreed to spend at least 2 per cent of their GDP on their military—Brazil’s proposed approach is fundamentally distinct from the one taken by NATO. The NATO 2 per cent military burden is a political guideline, not a legal obligation.

The Brazilian proposal, however, appears to aim at setting national defence expenditure at 2 per cent of GDP in the Annual Budget Law. While the means to do so are not yet clear, the language in the document implies, or at least creates potential for, the establishment of a legal mechanism securing a minimum allocation per year (2 per cent of GDP) to the military irrespectively of approval by Congress. If that is indeed the case, it would severely weaken democratic control over the budgetary process.

Discussions about raising military spending in Brazil are taking place during exceptionally challenging times. Firstly, since 2017 Brazil has been under a new fiscal regime that limits government spending for the following 20 years.

The expenditure ceiling links any increase in federal primary expenditure to the previous year’s inflation, ensuring that spending does not grow in real terms. The fiscal regime heightens the zero-sum game of resource allocation, as government branches must now compete for shares of a substantially smaller pot of money.

If the proposal for a 2 per cent military burden is approved, it would automatically decrease the resources available to other ministries.

Secondly, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has hit Brazil particularly hard. In the six months following the first registered case, Brazil reached 4.3 million cases and over 133 000 deaths. In June 2020 COVID-19-related fatalities averaged 1000 deaths per day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed Brazil’s health system and put a strain on public resources. Raising military spending amid the most severe health and economic crises Brazil has ever experienced will considerably limit the country’s ability to respond effectively to COVID-19.

Had the 2 per cent military burden proposition been approved in 2019, military spending would have grown from $28 billion to $40 billion annually. The difference, $12 billion, is more than a tenth of the 2020 budget allocated by the Brazilian Government to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

This simple comparison provides a tangible example of the opportunity costs involved in raising military spending amidst such a severe health crisis.

The quid pro quo between Bolsonaro and the military supports to some extent the hypothesis that autocracies rely on the military. Brazil is not a full autocracy; it is still a democracy with functioning institutions.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Bolsonaro relies heavily on the support of the military to govern and thus Brazil does display some of the features of the autocrat–military hypothesis.

Moreover, Brazil also fits the democratic control hypothesis. The proposal to fix the military burden at 2 per cent—if carried out without the approval of Congress—would be a significant setback to Brazilian civil society’s ability to influence public expenditure. In that sense, it represents a weakening of democratic control.

Military spending in autocratizing countries

If the current trend of autocratization leads to higher military spending, the consequences would certainly be damaging for international security and economic development. Higher military spending could lead to heightened threat perceptions, and thus ultimately increase the likelihood of conflict.

Likewise, larger military budgets might mean that fewer resources would be available for spending on health and education or to effectively aid a post-pandemic economic recovery. While some may argue that military spending could benefit economic growth, extant evidence suggests otherwise.

The effects of growing autocratization on military spending are becoming increasingly clear in Brazil, where Bolsonaro intends to raise military spending to 2 per cent of GDP. The government presented this proposal amidst a pandemic that has hit the country particularly hard and under an austere expenditure ceiling.

The Brazilian case may forebode a trend: if other autocratizing states, such as India and Turkey, follow suit, we can expect rising levels of military spending. Studying the relationship between military spending and political regimes is of utmost importance to anticipate the shifts autocratization may bring to international security.

This Topical Backgrounder has only scratched the surface of this relationship. A more in-depth analysis of the Brazilian case, alongside cross-country comparisons, might provide a clearer picture of the issue.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Diego Lopes da Silva is a Researcher with the Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

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