Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Mozn Hassan

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Ten years ago on this day, January 25, one of the biggest revolutions in the world took place in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, as protestors poured into the streets chanting slogans of “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice”, demanding one of the region’s longest-serving and autocratic President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Three weeks later, on February 11th, Mubarak stepped down as president, leaving the Egyptian military in control of the country.

Amnesty International in a statement said, several female protestors at Tahrir Square were taken into military custody on March 9th, 2011 – the day after International Women’s Day – and subjected to grave torture, including being beaten, prodded with electric shock batons, subjected to strip searches and forced to submit to ‘virginity tests’ and threatened with prostitution.

Major General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), said that “‘virginity tests’ had been carried out on female detainees in March to “protect” the army against possible allegations of rape”.

When the administrative court issued a ruling against this practise and called it illegal, a military court acquitted the physician who performed these tests, sending out a clear message of impunity.

A decade after the January 25th Revolution in Egypt, the country continues to thrive on this culture of impunity. A 2013 United Nations study found that nearly all Egyptian women – 99 percent of those surveyed has been victims of sexual harassment. Egypt has continued to deny accusations of these grave human rights violations and sexual violence. In 2020, Rights groups estimated some 60,000 detainees in Egypt are political prisoners, including activist, journalists and lawyers

Mozn Hassan, one of Egypt’s most outspoken voices on human rights, founder and Executive Director of Nazra for Feminist Studies has been working on building an Egyptian feminist movement and support women human rights defenders through legal and psychological intervention in the country much before the Egyptial revolution took place in 2011.

Nazra for Feminist Studies was established in 2005 in Cairo, where it continued building the feminist movement in Egypt and the MENA region.“We are losing everyday, but the feminist movement in Egypt is not a failed movement,” says Mozn Hassan to IPS News.

“Being an independent feminist voice can cost you a lot, targeting by state actors, asset freeze, travel ban, charges of supporting women to have “irreponsible liberty”, or facing threats of charges that could bring you to life time in prisons, are just a few examples,” said Mozn.

Since June 2016 a travel ban has been imposed on Mozn Hassan, following previous incidents of jucidial harassment against Nazra for Feminist Studies, including summons in relation to foreign funding case. In January 2017, Cairo Criminal Court ruled to freeze assets of Mozn Hassan and her non-government organization Nazra for Feminist Studies. Last year in July 2020, the Criminal Court of North Cairo rejected the appeal of the travel ban, later postponing the review of a request to cancel this ban.

“What is happening to Nazra is a clear example of how patriarchal and conserverative individuals cannot accept feminism and feminist acts. I am only one amongst other human rights defenders who has been charged for supporting women to have ‘irresponsible liberty’.

“We have seen different types of pain, loss and grief. We saw systematic sexual assaults; we are seeing friends celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in jail in the time of Covid-19. At the same time, we are also seeing women’s movements struggling and fighting to have rights, something that has never happened in the Egyptian constitution,” says Mozn.

In November 2019 United Nations member countries at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council in Geneva criticised Egypts human rights crisis and called on to end torture and ill-treatment, investigate crimes comitted by security forces, allow non governmental organizations and activists to work independently, and protect human rights while countering terrorism.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and several UN experts have repeatedly condemned abuses in Egypt. Several countries have also urged Egypt to make serious measures to halt violations against women.

“Being an activist is hard, being a feminist is harder and being a person who is not part of a social gang, even harder in Egypt. It really is a choice,” says Mozn.

A decade after the revolution in Egypt that overthrew the long-time dictator, what followed the country was economic collapse, job losses, deteriorating human rights conditions, brutal military dictatorship, failing public healthcare systems, and extreme poverty. The committee to Protect Journalists ranked Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, in detaining journalists.

The only way to continue is to understand why we are doing what we do, to continue believing in what is right, says Mozn. “We are gaining support from people, there are small changes but without the process of freedom and democracy in place, the costs will always be higher than gains. We need a holistic vision compiled with political will to move forward.”

“Solidarity is the secret that makes us continue doing our work, and heal from those who want to stop us. Solidarity has been the key aspect of our resilience at Nazra and for me personally as well,” says Mozn.

Sania Farooqui is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

 

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Women ragpickers in Delhi scavenging through a pile of refuse for recyclable material. Credit: Dharmendra Yadav/IPS

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Developing countries as a group have been growing faster than developed countries for several decades. As a result the ratio between average incomes between the two sets of countries – albeit still very large – has been shrinking.  This is good news. The other piece of good news is that over this period the number of people living in extreme poverty has also been dropping – from 1.9 billion in 1990 to about 650 million in recent years.  China has recently declared an end to extreme poverty. 

The bad news is that much of increased income and wealth in many developing countries has been concentrated at the top with relatively little going to the poor.  This includes big, fast growing countries such as China and India. 

As a result the bulk of the population in developing countries is living in a society where income inequality is increasing.  This matters for two reasons:  

• Firstly, that the increase in average GDP in the developing countries is not translating as fast as it should into generalised well-being indictors such as such as higher education, real wages, average height and life expectancy. This is very disappointing.  
• Secondly, people are not as happy as they could be.  After all happiness is impacted not just by how much they earn and consume, but also about their place in society and how they stand compared to others. The widening gap between the poor and the rich in many countries creates a sense of depravation and injustice. This makes them highly susceptible to political turbulence and instability, both of which have a high cost in terms of economic performance and wellbeing.

Is the increase in inequality an inevitable part of the development process, or at least of the early stages of growth?  Is it true that one “cannot redistribute poverty”? Is it true that rich tend to save and invest more and therefore some concentration of income and wealth is necessary to generate higher growth? Is it true that only a rich and privileged business class has the confidence and appetite for risk and innovation that is a prerequisite for development?  There is strong evidence that the answer to all the above questions is a “NO”. Growth and development can go hand in hand with reduced inequality and better living standards for the poor.

Developing countries are very much on their own in charting out a pathway out of the current situation of inequality and poverty. The developed countries that used to be on the forefront of well balanced growth have for some time abandoned this role

Historic evidence comes from Western Europe which during the early part of the last century, managed to increase wellbeing indicators in line with, or sometimes even faster, than GDP growth.

To some extent this was due to technical innovations such as those in preventive and curative medicines, but a lot had to do with improved social services in health and education, opening up to trade, social protection programmes, and increasing civil rights, particularly to minorities and vulnerable groups.

More recently, experience in several Latin America countries show how more democracy and strong social welfare programmes can reduce inequality and improve the lives of the poor. 

The need to address inequality has been made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic.  The past year has exacerbated inequality by increasing unemployment, cutting workers’ wages and hitting the poorest and most vulnerable communities. 

Weak social safety nets and poor public health systems have left the poor in a dramatic situation. COVID-19 has particularly hit women who have reduced access to health services and jobs. There has been a sharp increase in domestic violence against women and girls. 

Given this worsening situation, can anything be done to make growth more equitable?  Most certainly – in fact there are several things that can be done and they fall into two broad categories – more “pro-poor” growth, and well-designed social welfare programmes.  

One of the most important pro-poor policies relates to macro-economic stability. It is often not appreciated how vulnerable the poor are to inflation, recessions, overvalued exchange rates and high interest rates.  Keeping these key macro–economic variables under control is imperative. It is not going to be easy as Governments battle the COVID crisis but has to be done. 

The other major element of a pro-poor growth strategy is increasing access for the poor to the essential prerequisites for a productive life.  These include improved infrastructure that meet the needs of the poor such as clean water and sanitation, as well as improved electricity and transport services. 

Equally important are better access to health and education; and to physical and financial assets, in particular credit and land in both rural and urban areas.  Of increasingly importance is access to digital services which are an essential prerequisite to accessing new technologies and productivity growth.

Finally, it is essential that developing countries work together to maintain an open trading system which allows them to produce in line with their endowments and skill levels.  

Clearly not all the poor will be able to take advantage of the improved opportunities created by pro-poor growth.  Factors that exclude them include geographical isolation, gender bias, disabilities, ethnicity or sometimes pure and simple bad luck where things “just don’t work out”.  

Currently only a fraction of the population of developing countries has access to comprehensive social protections programmes and safety nets.  This needs to increase dramatically – not as a form of charity but as a form of social responsibility.    

Unfortunately developing countries are very much on their own in charting out a pathway out of the current situation of inequality and poverty. The developed countries that used to be on the forefront of well balanced growth have for some time abandoned this role.  

Income inequality in the developed world also started increasing in the 1980s. This happened not only in highly market oriented economies such as the USA, but also in historically egalitarian countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

And this is not just as a result of technical or market-driven changes that favour for example the “tech-giants”, but also reflects policy choices such as reduced taxes for the richest.  

The tendency for Governments in developed countries to favour the rich was exacerbated during the 2008 financial crisis where vast amounts of public money were provided in the form of support to the financial institutions and large-scale industrial enterprises considered “too big to be allowed to fail”. 

Early indications are that something similar may happen with the post-COVID recovery effort. Substantial amounts of public funds may end up going to large firms – rather than to the poor – which may exacerbate the trends towards rising inequality. 

In the coming decades, the developing countries have a historical chance not only to closing the gap in terms of average incomes gap with developed countries, but also improving the quality of this growth. 

 

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and one in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric – both from the University of Amsterdam – as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre). She provided research and editorial support. 

 

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By PRESS RELEASE
GENEVA, Jan 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the Global Education Cluster (GEC), the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), Switzerland, UNICEF, the University of Geneva, UNESCO and UNHCR are delighted to announce the launch of the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies.

The Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies is an ambitious commitment towards the realisation of the right to education for crisis-affected and displaced children and youth and comes at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs. Of the world’s approximately 257 million primary and secondary school-age children out of school, 127 million live in countries affected by emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation. We are witnessing a global crisis in which children and youth are at heightened risk of losing years of education.

The urgent need to respond effectively to the education needs of the world’s most vulnerable children and youth is why the co-signatories pledged at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum to making Geneva the Global Hub for Education in Emergencies. The members will work together towards three main goals:

• Growing demand for change: The Hub is a catalyst for partners to come together to increase their prevention and response to education needs in emergencies. It will strengthen policy and integrated approaches across the humanitarian, development, migration and peace spectrum, as well as with other sectors such as health and climate, to better prioritise and deliver quality, inclusive education in emergencies for crisis-affected children and youth through the increased collaboration of International Geneva actors and beyond, including linking up with other relevant initiatives.
• Inspiring commitment: Bringing together the Geneva strategic community of committed thought leaders will inspire political will and influence agenda setting so that governments and partners see education as a top priority before, during and after emergencies and in protracted crises.
• Boosting country-level impact: All children and youth affected by armed conflicts, violence, disasters, epidemics and forced displacement must have their right to a quality education realised. The Hub aims at boosting the country-level impact of education in emergencies preparedness measures and responses through better data, evidence on what works and innovative research and solutions that support the delivery of safe and quality education while building resilient education systems.

Overall, the Hub will be a catalyst to accelerate progress towards SDG 4 in crises and displacement contexts and help realise the commitments set out in the Global Compact for Refugees.

About the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies

Humanitarian crises, conflict and displacement deny millions of children and youth their right to education. Of the world’s approximately 257 million primary and secondary school-age children out of school, 127 million live in countries affected by emergencies. Nearly 30% of the world’s primary and secondary school-age children and youth live in crisis-affected countries. However, prior to the COVID19 pandemic, they accounted for almost half of all out-of-school children. The situation is even starker at primary level: in 2019, less than one-third of primary-school-age children resided in crisis-affected countries, but almost three-quarters of those out of school resided in these countries.

That is why at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum, Switzerland pledged to promote Geneva a Global Hub for Education in Emergencies to leverage the Geneva international community by convening actors and creating synergies for joint action so that all crisis-affected and displaced children and youth have their right to education fulfilled, respected and protected. The pledge was co-signed by Education Cannot Wait, the Global Education Cluster, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies, UNICEF, the University of Geneva, UNESCO and UNHCR.

The Geneva Global Hub focuses on school-aged children and youth, meaning access and completion of quality pre-primary, primary and secondary education, including non-formal educational pathways and transition to the formal national education system, in line with SDG 4.1. and 4.2. The Hub is also involved in research and evidence-creation for education in emergencies and data. Furthermore, the Hub’s focus includes all crisis-affected and displaced children and youth, regardless of their status (i.e. refugee, host community, internally displaced children and youth, as well as those affected by conflict, violence, disaster and epidemics).

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By Michelle Belisle
NOUMEA, New Caledonia, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education for peace and development. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 challenges all nations to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by the year 2030. As we think about this in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging post-COVID-19 environment, what does inclusive and equitable education look like and how do we ensure that lifelong learning opportunities are benefitted by all?

EQAP Director Michelle Belise

Pacific Island Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) results have provided us with rich data that identifies trends in literacy and numeracy for primary school students in the region. The PILNA data in recent cycles have also provided additional insights that speak to learning more broadly in terms of the learning skills that primary students are developing. PILNA 2018 data indicates that problem-solving and critical thinking skills are a challenge for many students in the Pacific region. For example, over 70% of year 6 students struggled with questions that required interpretation and reasoning in numeracy. Similarly, over 50% of students were unable to provide an explanation for their responses to questions in literacy that asked them to interpret what they had read or to make a decision or support an opinion, based on their reading.

At the senior secondary level, student results for the South Pacific Form Seven Certificate (SPFSC) have shown similar trends in recent years. Higher-order questions requiring students to apply their knowledge and problem solve in subjects across the spectrum, but particularly in the sciences and maths, are challenging. Students are generally able to respond to questions by applying recall or direct application of skills and knowledge, but struggle when asked to inter-relate multiple concepts, to address real-world situations or to extend their thinking into a more abstract use of skills and knowledge.

“…traditional education has frequently focused on problems that already have solutions…”

How do we equip learners for the demands of lifelong learning in an ever more rapidly changing world? Traditional education has focused on skills and facts, the kind of education many of us have experienced and the kind of education that has long been a staple of formal education systems around the world. It has frequently focused on problems that already have solutions and in supporting students in getting to those solutions. In recent years there has been increasing recognition that if learning is a lifelong effort, education needs to provide learners with skills that will allow them to solve problems that don’t yet have solutions.

Learning in the twenty-first century should be less focused on facts and figures, which are far more readily available than was the case in past centuries. Instead, education for lifelong learning must emphasise the importance of critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information, as well as collaboration and digital literacy skills. Gaining these skills, however, involves different ways of engaging in learning that are often not as readily available in large classrooms or in settings where students are not encouraged, or perhaps even overtly discouraged, from questioning what the teacher is saying. The efforts to develop the many skills needed by learners are complicated by the added challenge of disruptions to learning caused by the pandemic and efforts to fill the gaps with distance learning and virtual gatherings.

As we navigate the COVID crisis, we have a unique opportunity to reset standards in education, by providing the tools to ensure future generations embrace critical thinking both here in the Pacific, and globally.

Michelle Belisle Director, Educational Quality and Assessment Programme Pacific Community (SPC)

 

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A former United Nations staff member, a UN volunteer in New York city, shows medical supplies that were donated to fight COVID-19. Credit: United Nations/Robert Macpherson

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

After the pioneer Global Technical Meeting on Volunteerism last July, a recently-held on-line follow up helped gathering new insights from experts and practitioners from the world on how to move forward with positioning volunteering at the center of development agenda.

The main outcome of the July’s forum, jointly organized by UNV and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, was a new blueprint, the global Call for Action, aimed at boosting and reinvigorating the role volunteerism in promoting a better, more equal and more sustainable world.

We have now a new strategic approach that can truly leverage the power of volunteering by focusing on innovation, inclusion and informal actions, the latter a big breakthrough that recognizes how deeply ingrained the foundations of volunteerism are in so many societies and cultures, especially in less economically developed nations.

There is now also a new momentum to break away with a silos approach that saw volunteering as an “add on” in an already packed development agenda.

Instead, its complementarity role together with balancing local and informal traditions while embracing social innovation, including data driven new technologies, is now going to shape a new volunteering paradigm.

It also recognizes it as a tool for personal and professional development that could benefit those excluded from the benefits of the globalization, for example youth out of the job market and out of education as well as other disenfranchised citizens.

Thanks to the online follow conversation enabled by UNV, we know that on the grounds there are many best practices and such forums help establishing a global community of volunteerism promoters that can learn from each other and move forward the agenda.

Among the insights, many developing countries normally considered as “laggers” are instead pioneers in policies, legislation and institutions focused on volunteerism.

For example, Nigeria, also thanks to the active role of the civil society, has developed a very interesting blueprint to promote volunteerism across the country.

In Togo there is a specific law enacted in 2011 regulating volunteerism and since 2014 the National Agency for Volunteering in Togo, ANVT, is the national enabler of volunteering action within the country.

Always in Western Africa, Sierra Leone has a network of volunteering promoting agencies while Kenya has a national volunteering policy and a national volunteering service program directly promoted by the President of the country.

Young volunteers clean garbage from the Yamuna River banks in India. Credit: UNDP India/Sudhanshu Malhotra

In the Asia Pacific region, the Philippines has one of the strongest volunteering “infrastructures” while Nepal, another country rich in local forms of self-help, is also working on a volunteering policy.

Yet despite these positive stories, volunteering keeps being sidelined and struggles to gain the deserved “notoriety” within the development agenda.

The fact that the Global Technical Meeting was entitled “Re-imagining Volunteerism” is itself heartening because, after all, with the new Decade of Action started, we really need to double our efforts to re-vitalize volunteerism not just as a tool for a better and more effective policy making that is able to involve and engage the citizens, but also as a way of living to be embraced by more and more people.

In a way volunteering or the BIG V as I like to call it, should become a new norm, a new way of living that should be literally become a natural component of our lives.

It is not going to be easy but we have to give a big try not only at policy level but also at grassroots levels, better recognizing what already exists while also conquering new grounds, making volunteerism more attractive and appealing for those who never embraced it in life.

Locally, Alice Chadwick and Bianca Fadel in a paper for the International Association for Volunteer Effort, IAVE, that in the past 6 months held a series of important online discussions, highlight how “community volunteering should not be a means of delivering externally defined agendas, but rather should start from the premise that community-based volunteers are already designing and delivering responses to challenges based upon their community’s priorities and in turn building their own resilience”

They call this approach “supportive solidarity” in which external forms of help, including formal volunteering, strengthen rather than erase localized forms of community centered development.
Galina Bodrenekova, a pioneer of volunteerism in Russia, highlights the importance of volunteering centers that could be run by local NGOs but also by local youth clubs.

Affordability and cost-effectiveness indeed are going to play a big part if we want to expand such local infrastructures to be able to attract, together with new online platforms, new volunteers.

Involving and engaging learning institutions at all the levels is going to be paramount: while universities could do much more to promote a culture of altruism and solidarity, primary and secondary schools have a big role to play as well.

Now we need more awareness, visibility and willingness to do more.

We also need more resources.

Certainly, UNV and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement have a huge task ahead and hopefully they will receive the much-needed support from the international community to scale up their operations and help making volunteering becoming a natural choice for the majority of world citizens.

Partnerships are going to be key as recognized by the global Call for Action: locally, nationally and internationally, we need more collaborations, we need more synergies and a stronger and better marketing “plan” to attract more people to service.

While harnessing the traditions already on the ground, we need big corporates to step up their game.

Many of them already promote corporate volunteerism but we need to do more to create a global enabling system to strengthen volunteerism everywhere.

The national volunteering awards, often supported by UNV globally, should become the “grand finale” of months of joint activities implemented by networks, formal and informal as well, engaging local actors eager to promote volunteerism.

Perhaps we need some global icons to help leveraging volunteerism as one of the best mechanisms to achieve the SDGs and ensure a more resilient and sustainable planet.

There is no challenge faced by the planet Earth that cannot be addressed by also tapping into volunteers’ skills and creativity.

The ongoing climate action activism is one of the best expressions of this force in action.
Perhaps we need partnerships with national and global social media companies that are now in need to mend many of their practices.

Maybe we could partner with global broadcasters to showcase every 5th of December, the International Volunteer Day, the global best practices and engage the masses.

At policy level, we need to make stronger the case of volunteerism.

If we want to achieve the SDGs, we need more volunteers not to play the role of substitutes of the governments but rather be there on the ground as their allies.

This would be one of the best ways to do what in jargon is called “localizing” the SDGs.

Negotiations are going on to decide the format of the 2021 High Level Political Forum where members of the United Nations will voluntarily disclose their national efforts to achieve the SDGs.

There will be a whopping 44 nations, some of them presenting their results and future plans for the first time while others doing it for a second or even third time.

Would it make sense to make it mandatory in these Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) as these presentations are called, to embed the contributions of volunteerism in their overall efforts?
Some nations are already doing it but without being given the due credit and recognition.

To make the Decade of Action a truly success, we need to have stronger volunteerism enabling and promoting systems everywhere, locally and globally.

It is truly the time to be bold and innovative.

E-mail: simone_engage@yahoo.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-galimberti-4b899a3/

 

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

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Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Jacqueline Murekatete, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF). highlighted the importance of centring these discussions on genocide around survivors. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Women and young girls are disproportionately affected by conflict and genocide, and that is why they should be a central part of conversations on the issue, according to Jacqueline Murekatete, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF).

“Survivors need to be invited to the table to share their testimonies,” Murekatete told IPS. “When people hear personal stories they’re more likely to want to get involved. It makes a huge difference to have their testimony.”

It’s also crucial for the narrative to distinguish between women survivors and survivors who are young girls in order to highlight the nuances of how young girls are affected when they are subject to sexual violence at a tender age, she said.

“I have friends who were raped at the age of nine. A nine-year-old child being raped and some of them being infected with HIV/AIDS means their whole life can be ruined. Raising awareness about the fact that it’s not just women, it’s also little girls, really elevates what genocide is. When you see children who are nine or ten, being gang-raped — it’s another level of violence, of evil that needs to be brought to light,” Murekatete said.

Jacqueline Murekatete. Courtesy: Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF)

Murekatete spoke with IPS following a U.N. panel on “Women and Genocide” last week. The panel specifically highlighted the issue of how women were impacted during the Holocaust — where between 1941 and 1945 Nazis systematically murdered over 6 million Jewish men, women and children — and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 — where in just 100 day over 800,000 people, ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were murdered.

Dr. Sarah Cushman, Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, discussed the issue of gender and the Holocaust.

“Gender has been a part of Holocaust studies from the start,” she said. “Early explorations centred on the notions of a German crisis of masculinity – scholars saw this as a response to World War I.”

This supposed threat to their masculinity was “fertile soil for the emergence of a masculinist bellicose revival in the form of the Nazi party, and the person of Adolf Hitler,” she added.

“I don’t necessarily think they were trying to preserve ‘the gender hierarchy’ per se, but rather they sought to reestablish Germany as a masculine nation among other nations,” Cushman told IPS. “They viewed the ‘Jewish influence’ as creating a liberalistic, soft, effeminate and ineffective democracy. They aimed to put an end to that (among other things).”

Cushman was joined by Sarah E. Brown, Executive Director of the Centre for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College, who spoke on the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The genocide left thousands of orphans like Murekatete, who lost her family at the age of nine. Murekatete currently runs GSF to make sure other survivors have a safe haven to process their trauma.

Excerpts of the full interview below.

The gates of World War II concentration camp, Auschwitz. Approximately 1.1 million people — of whom 960,000 were Jewish — were killed in the biggest extermination camp from World War II. Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you share how you realised as a woman, there are different implications of a genocide for you?

Jacqueline Murekatete (JM): I was nine when the genocide happened. I was a young girl, not a woman. Growing up in the aftermath of the genocide, and now as I work with genocide survivors, I have spoken with so many girls and women who have suffered so much because of their gender. During a genocide, every member of the targeted group suffers but women and girls have a higher level of suffering in that most of them are always victims of sexual violence.

During the Rwandan genocide, rape wasn’t just a random act. The Hutu extremists actually got on the radio to encourage Hutu men to make sure they rape Tutsi women and Tutsi girls before they killed them.

IPS: Sarah Brown said at the talk Hutu men ‘deliberately impregnated’ Tutsi women to make sure there are ‘Hutu children’ and also knowingly passed on HIV/AIDS. Can you speak to that?

JM: There have been women who were infected by Hutu men knowingly, who told the women they were going to die a very, very slow death. Many of these women contracted HIV/AIDS during the genocide. Although it’s been more than 25 years, the consequences of the genocide are still a daily reality for them. Some say they can’t forget because they still take pills everyday for HIV/AIDS.

Many say, everyday they look at their child and she/he looks like their rapist. So for these women, everyday is a reminder of what they suffered and they are still living with the physical and mental consequences of the genocide.

The relationship between these moms and their children was and remains very complicated. Many gave up their children for adoption because everyday was a reminder of what happened to them. Meanwhile, in some cases, these children were the only relatives these women had because the women or the girls’ families had been killed.

IPS: Sarah Brown also said women were given more leadership roles following the genocide, and the Rwandan government removed a bunch of laws that made women second-class citizens. Are women’s rights in Rwanda better after the genocide?

JM: This partly happened out of necessity. In many villages, sometimes you’d find that there were so many men that had been killed that women would end up taking roles that they had never taken on before.

This led to a cultural shift in women doing more work and having more leadership roles — including in politics. As women came into positions of power, a lot of women’s rights got better. For example, women couldn’t own property in Rwanda, and that has changed; and domestic violence is addressed with more access to services.

IPS: Can you elaborate on why it’s crucial for survivors to be present — and highlighted — at talks about genocides?

JM: I always highlight the importance of including people who are the actual survivors in conversations, for them to come and share their stories. I always say, we cannot be here debating about people’s lives who are not at the table, it’s just wrong. There is progress being made, but there’s still a long way to go in making sure that the voices that need to be at the table are actually at the table.

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jan 23 2021 (IPS)

Looking back upon 2020, we all bear the scars of a devastating year; none so much as girls and boys around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for over 1.6 billion children and youth globally and continues to do so. It has also deepened socio-economic inequities and heightened insecurities around the world, further impacting the lives of girls and boys everywhere. Ongoing, protracted conflicts, forced displacement and the worsening climate crisis were no less forgiving.

Yasmine Sherif

2020 was, in short, a brutal year for the world’s children and youth – most markedly upon the 75 million children and youth whose education had already been disrupted by emergencies and protracted crises, and who are now doubly-hit by COVID-19 – and the impacts continue to this day. It is crucial that we take a moment to reflect upon and mark the International Day of Education on 24 January 2021. It is exactly now that we need to reinforce our commitment to education as the crucial tool to carve a path forward for all the world’s children and their futures, as was hammered home to me again on my recent trips to Burkina Faso and Lebanon – both reeling from multiple crises.

Conflict and insecurity have driven a million people from their homes in Burkina Faso in recent years. Educational facilities have been targeted, teachers and students have been attacked and school closures due to attacks doubled from 2017 to 2019, disrupting the education of more than 400,000 children.

Teachers and students in Kaya, the fifth-largest city in Burkina Faso, where many displaced families have fled to from insecurity and violence, showed me their tragic, challenging reality last week. Schools severely lacked infrastructure to house students, teaching materials were missing, and water and sanitation were non-existent. Some classrooms have tripled in size, now holding over a hundred pupils each.

On top of this, the pandemic resulted in the closure of all schools for several months in 2020. Currently, there are more than 2.6 million children out of school and in the six most severely affected regions of Burkina Faso, the primary school completion rate is only 29%.

Yet even in these ill-equipped and overcrowded schools, hope and positivity have not been extinguished and are being kept alive by teachers, workers and the irrepressible enthusiasm of the students themselves. Rodrigue Sawodogo, a nine-year-old boy displaced by conflict, told me, “I would like to become a policeman to save my country, because I want everyone to live in peace.”

The crisis in Burkina Faso and in the whole Central Sahel region is among the fastest deteriorating in the world. We can either watch and do nothing at all to help give a chance to children like Rodrigue to achieve their dreams, or we can actually act right now, by investing in children and adolescents to empower them to achieve their full potential and to become positive change agents for their communities.

Education Cannot Wait – the global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises — in partnership with the Government of Burkina Faso, UNICEF and Enfants du Monde, has launched a multi-year programme that aims to provide education to 800,000 children and adolescents in crisis-affected regions in the country. ECW is providing an initial $11.1 million for three years of seed funding. But that is not enough. We are calling on public and private donors to raise a further $48 million to reach every vulnerable child.

Just a few weeks before my visit to Burkina Faso, I also travelled to Lebanon in December 2020 to review the education crises the country is facing and to advocate globally for more funds to facilitate access to education for all. Lebanon hosts the largest proportion of refugees per capita of the local population in the world. Since 1948 it has been home to a large Palestinian refugee community, while more than one million Syrians have crossed the border since 2011.

Compounding economic, health and political crises are putting over a million children and youth at risk in Lebanon. According to ECW’s 2019 Annual Results Report, over 630,000 Syrian children and 447,400 vulnerable Lebanese children faced challenges accessing education.

The banking system has collapsed and more than half the country is living in poverty, according to a 2019 report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. And that was before COVID-19 deepened the economic recession and before Beirut’s port was ripped apart by a catastrophic explosion in August, killing 200 people, leaving 300,000 homeless and damaging 140 schools. Within a month of the blast, ECW approved a $1.5 million emergency fund to rapidly rehabilitate 40 schools and to support 30,000 girls and boys to resume learning.

During this latest mission, ECW worked alongside the Lebanese government, local NGOs and United Nations partners to establish multi-year resilience programmes in Lebanon. These aim to bridge the gap between short-term humanitarian responses and longer-term development interventions. A similar multi-year resilience programme for the education sector is about to be launched for Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Education is a development sector and it requires sustained investments to save millions of girls from early marriage, early childbirth and boys from joining armed terror groups.

To do so, Education Cannot Wait needs the funds required to fully fund these multi-year programmes. We are urgently appealing to public and private sector donors to help close the funding gap to provide inclusive, quality education to both internally displaced, refugee children and to vulnerable host communities.

Our past does not define our future. The violence, insecurities and crises that have defined 2020 will only inspire us to do more, to act quicker and to build a stronger and more resilient foundation. On this International Day of Education, we hope you can take a moment to reflect upon how education has impacted your life. Are you ready to share your privilege with others less fortunate?

We encourage you to think about the millions of children in multiple crises and how we all share a responsibility to help. We have all been affected by the pandemic. We share a common humanity and a common human experience. Let us serve the most vulnerable – crisis-affected children and youth – and let us be there for them when they most need us. Let our moral choices be translated into financial support. Let’s make Sustainable Development Goal 4 a reality for all those left furthest behind.

The author is Director, Education Cannot Wait

 

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Cancels Canadian Tar Sands Pipeline Keystone XL

By Stephen Leahy
Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

I wasn’t going to stop for the school bus stuck in the mud outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta in the heart of the Canada’s tar sands industry but my kids insisted. It had been raining most of the week and the grassy field was soaked and slick. We stopped and got out and looked at the 12,000 kilogram bus uselessly spinning its wheels, digging deeper into the mud. Someone got the driver to stop, essentially saying you’re making a bad problem worse.

Stephen Leahy

No one had a vehicle large enough to tow or push the bus which would have likely become mired as well. A few other people came by, and collectively, we came up with ideas. I thought it an impossible task for a handful of people barely able to stand in the muck ourselves. A few trials, some planks of wood and a gleeful bouncing up and down inside the back of the bus produced the unexpected result of freeing the vehicle.

I was surprised we’d done it and by my own feelings of intense satisfaction at what we strangers had collectively accomplished. By not making a bad problem worse, we figured out a way to solve it together.

Keystone XL would have added 110 millions tons of CO2

President Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL (KXL) oil pipeline is an example of not making a really bad problem worse. The Need-to-Know here is that KXL would have added up to 110 million tons of climate-heating CO2 into the atmosphere every year for at least 50 years a study in journal Nature Climate Change reported in 2014. That’s country-sized emissions — enough to put it on the list of the top 35 worst carbon-polluting countries in the world, as I wrote in Vice at that time.

I first learned of KXL more than ten years ago and ended up writing a dozen articles about it, including how Canada’s spy agencies were monitoring KXL protestors as potential threats to national security. The 36-inch diameter pipe was intended to pump 830,000 barrels of bitumen per day from the Alberta tar sands down to US Gulf Coast for refining. Calgary-based TransCanada Pipelines, now renamed TC Energy, originally claimed the pipeline was needed for US energy security, but environmentalists said it was to be refined into diesel and exported to Europe. An interesting Need-to-Know today is that the US doesn’t need the oil and Europe doesn’t want dirty diesel. In fact, Europe bought nearly 1.4 million electric vehicles in 2020, more than any other country in the world.

Here’s where things got interesting in 2020

TC Energy began pipeline construction in Alberta after Jason Kenney’s provincial government agreed in March 2020 to fund the first year of construction with a C$1.5 billion investment. Kenney also guaranteed C$6 billion worth of loans, all as part of an effort to jump-start the northern portion of project ahead of the US Presidential election. Last summer about 90 kilometres of pipeline was built in Alberta.*

As expected on Inauguration Day President Biden signed an executive order rescinding KXL permits. Expect Jason Kenney to scream loud and long. Although it’s really Albertans who should be screaming about the blatant waste of their tax money on the long predicted cancellation of the project.

The last thing an escalating climate crisis needs is to increase fossil fuel infrastructure. That’s a clear case of making a very bad problem much worse. To repeat another Need-to-Know: The 2015 Paris climate agreement means all countries agreed to phase out fossil fuel use. That’s essential in order to keep climate change under 2 degrees C.

Instead of wasting $1.5 billion on the doomed KXL pipeline, Alberta’s Kenney should have used that public money to help workers in the oil industry with re-training and financial support during the required phase down of the industry.

A Need-to-Know is that the fossil fuel industry is not a major employer in Canada or most countries. It’s a capital intensive sector, not job intensive. Less than 1% of Canada’s workforce are employed in those industries in total. A 20-year phase out of Canada’s fossil fuel sector is entirely doable and would not disrupt the economy, said economist Jim Stanford in a new report.

Undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear

A 20-year phase out would reduce fossil employment by about 8,500 positions per year—as many as Canada usually creates every 10 days. The industry already shed twice that number of jobs in 2020 due to poor oil prices and pandemic-induced recession. Most of those jobs aren’t coming back. Stanford, who heads the Vancouver-based Centre for Future Work said:

“It is now undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear from most uses in the foreseeable future.”

The industry and it’s supporters will continue to deny the undeniable, making a bad situation worse. For example the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims the cancellation of KXL “….will put thousands of Americans out of work…” The very influential US Chamber has been a long-time denier of climate change and played a key role in getting former President Trump to pull the US out of the Paris agreement.

Continuing to deny the undeniable is why many once-prosperous past societies collapsed anthropologists report in a new study: “When Good Governments Go Bad”. In studying 30 different societies they concluded that collapse could very likely have been avoided but citizens relied on their leaders to act in societies’ best interests. Instead, leaders protected their own interests, and those of the elite in society.

Let’s not continue to repeat past mistakes.

*Note: In 2012 KXL was split into two projects with a southern leg from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast and northern leg from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska. Construction for much of the southern leg was completed in 2014.

Stephen Leahy is an award-winning environmental journalist and author based in Canada. He was lead international science and environment correspondent at IPS and now publishes Need to Know: Science and Insight, a free weekly bulletin bringing fresh ideas and perspective on the pandemic, and existential crisis of climate change and unravelling of nature’s life supports.

 

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Excerpt:

Cancels Canadian Tar Sands Pipeline Keystone XL

The post President Biden Refuses to Make our Climate Crisis Worse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Likuangole in Pibor County, one of the counties that have been hardest hit in the past years due to relentless conflict and organized violence as well as catastrophic floods. Crerdit: Marwa Awad

By Marwa Awad
Likuangole, South Sudan, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

Located in Jonglei state, one of the most underdeveloped regions of South Sudan, Likuangole is a town badly hit by floods and often battered by conflict. Despite the lack of secondary schools and industry, its residents aspire to transform their lives. But real investment is needed to spur development.

The constant threat of insecurity hangs over the town of Likuangole in South Sudan, with persistent tit-for-tat attacks over land, livestock, water that make peace in the world’s youngest country a challenging prospect in 2021.

It is one of nine towns in greater Jonglei, one of the most under-developed regions of South Sudan. Its people have very few opportunities for economic growth besides cattle and sheep herding, and subsistence farming. Chronic bouts of organized and localized violence fuel divisions between communities.

But this year brought even more suffering as devastating floods swallowed up homes, farmlands and livestock, wiping out harvests and cutting off the region from land access. Farmers see little point in cultivating in the face of such constant setbacks. With their livelihoods destroyed and access to food disrupted, people are pushed ever closer to the brink.

Aerial shot of Jonglei State, one of the most inaccessible and isolated regions of South Sudan. Credit: Marwa Awad

Martha Thiro, 29, says that she never stops worrying. “The women in Likuangole live in continuous fear. The floods may have stopped, the water is subsiding, but I don’t know whether to be happy or afraid, because the end of the floodwaters means violence will return.”

Martha prepares herself and children ahead of these looming raids, which tend to occur at set times in the year. “The children know they must run to the bush and find shelter near trees where the Gul or Lalob fruit grows,” she says. Gul is a bitter-tasting red fruit found in the wild bush. It is used as a source of food for people hiding when the violent attacks occur.

With 26,000 residents, Likuangole is one of 55 hard-to-reach areas where WFP must airdrop food to support isolated populations. Floodwaters and the damage they cause have meant doubling food assistance and extending distributions for longer periods to make up for the scarcity of food grown because of violence and climactic shocks. In the past two months, WFP reached 80,000 people in the Pibor area.

But food aid alone is not the solution for bringing peace to South Sudan. Tackling the deeply rooted isolation and inequity that often breeds conflict, poverty and hunger must go beyond immediate food needs. WFP aims to create an enabling environment for South Sudanese communities through alternative livelihoods that allow people to make a living and live in peace.

Too much time on their hands

To reach the remote town, we took a motorboat across the Pibor river. The skipper checks the fuel and soon we are gliding across smooth waters at speed. Large trees and bushes line the muddy riverbanks. As rays of sunshine glisten on the water and birds soar in the sky, you could almost forget that beneath this beguiling landscape lies long-standing conflict, deep hunger and abject poverty.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

Likuangole’s shore is lined with sinking houses, surrounded by children swimming in murky floodwater to cool off, and women washing clothes. Without any infrastructure, the town is bare, with no clearly marked roads, making movement nearly impossible. Residents use muddy pathways and skirt around puddles.

Surrounded by swamps, pasturelands contaminated with standing water from this year’s floods, and no schools or skills training, young men loiter with very little to do. Bored and restless, they pace up and down the market dirt road. With no work or any social outlet, these young men see no opportunity besides joining gangs to capture cattle from other communities. In this scarce environment, cattle raiding becomes one of few ways to become socially mobile and acquire the social status needed to afford marriage.

Secondary schools or any educational institutions are non-existent, save for one primary school. Illiteracy and the lack of learning means that children are left idle, their potential wasted. “We need schools for the children to learn and have the knowledge to live in a peaceful way,” Martha says. More than 2.2 million South Sudanese children are out-of-school.

At the end of the meagre market is a young man in his 30s who told us that his hometown needs more than airdrops of food. “Can you teach us how to become carpenters?” he asks, adding that woodworking would be a popular source of livelihood for men in Likuangole.

Another man nearby chimes in: “Your food helps us survive, but a job would give us a future.” The residents who were scattered in the quiet marketplace now joined our group and offered more ideas. To avoid the flooded areas they live in, the nearby towns of Boma and Labarab – a two to four days walk – could house the training workshops needed for carpentry. Both towns remain drier than most of their surrounding all year round.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

It was heartening to listen to the residents’ aspirations for a better life. Generating more livelihood possibilities in and around remote hotspots such as Likuangole will set the groundwork for self-reliance and stability.

In other less troubled areas across South Sudan, WFP creates alternative livelihoods for young people by training young men and women to build much community assets such as roads to connect their villages to local markets or training in constructing dykes to control flooding. These access roads bring opportunities to isolated communities by linking them to economically vibrant areas.

Investing in such training programmes that teach people the skill of building critical assets such as wells and multi-purpose ponds has helped to reduce fighting amongst communities over precious water resources. These livelihoods opportunities offer dividends. For one, it lifts villages out of isolation and the subsequent poverty that comes when livelihoods are limited or nonexistent. Beyond that, it gives local communities an opportunity to put their heads and hands together and work on a unifying project that benefits the collective, harnessing a sense of connectedness that can be an antidote to violence.

In Likuangole, there is a market for carpentry, the two young men said to me. Basic furniture is needed by families while the forests offer plenty of trees which men and women forage for firewood. A carpentry project as such would engage the idle youth and jobless men, thereby tackling inequity and isolation and giving people the independence to generate their own income. Even in times of desperate humanitarian need and catastrophic food insecurity, these critical livelihoods activities must continue operating. They go hand-in-hand with emergency food assistance in preventing the rapid deterioration of humanitarian conditions.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

For 2021, humanitarian organisations must go beyond emergency aid and gear up their livelihoods programmes in the Pibor area because of the unparalleled levels of food insecurity there as well as the scarcity of livelihoods opportunities. For South Sudan to thrive, we cannot lose sight of our contribution to peacebuilding programmes which need to grow and remain permanent across the year if we are serious about helping South Sudanese build a prosperous future for themselves.

Bottom line: If donor governments are serious about helping South Sudan, they must invest in early development projects and support WFP’s livelihoods work. Food rations alone will only serve to create dependency, and this is not a sustainable approach to the nascent country.

The writer is an official of the World Food Programme, the 2020 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

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Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan. Credit: Fiji Department of Information

By Miles Young and Ashley Bowe
SUVA, Fiji, Jan 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On Friday, 15 January, Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, was elected the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council for 2021. As the first Pacific islander to hold this position, the President has a unique opportunity to enhance the protection and promotion of human rights in Fiji and the Pacific, and to amplify Pacific voices on human rights issues at the global level. The presidency reflects the Pacific’s growing presence on the international human rights stage and comes at a time of increasing marginalisation, social exclusion and poverty arising out of COVID-19; opening the door for the President (and Fiji) to promote a human rights-based and people-centred approach to ‘building back better’.

The growing influence of the Pacific

Over the past few years, the Pacific has experienced positive developments in the area of human rights. As the recent ‘Human Rights in the Pacific: A Situational Analysis’ (SPC & OHCHR, 2021) highlights, there have been 14 ratifications/accessions of the core nine human rights treaties among Pacific Island Countries (PICs) over 2016-2020. Fiji is one of the first countries in the world to become party to all nine. While impressive, the challenge for PICs, including Fiji, is to convert these commitments into actual benefits for their people, through the realisation of the rights set out in the treaties.

There have been encouraging signs. For example, the Pacific has long considered climate change through the human rights lens. In 2020, Samoa hosted the 84th Outreach Session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC84’), the first time any of the UN treaty bodies has held a regional session outside of Geneva or New York, despite repeated attempts for decades to do so. CRC84 showed the tangible benefits that come from a UN treaty body meeting directly with the very people they are meant to serve. In 2019, PICs agreed to the ‘Pacific Principles of National Mechanisms for Implementation, Reporting & Following-up (‘NMIRFs’). The principles ensure more effective implementation, reporting and tracking of human rights commitments and obligations, and enhance public transparency in this area (Fiji had pledged to establish such a mechanism in its bid for the presidency). Countries across the globe have expressed interest in adopting and adapting these principles for their own NMIRFs. Samoa currently has one of the most comprehensive rights and development tracking tools, and the open-source software on which it is built is being used or considered in countries across the world.

We have also seen a greater Pacific presence in Geneva, where the UN Human Rights Office is headquartered, with Fiji and the Republic of the Marshall Islands becoming members of the Human Rights in 2018 and 2020, respectively. Having assumed the presidency of the Council against this backdrop of increasing Pacific standing on the global human rights stage and growing political support and leadership for implementation, it is incumbent upon Fiji to build on this momentum.

What is the Human Rights Council?

The Human Rights Council was established by the United Nations in 2006, and consists of 47 member states, elected by secret ballot, to protect and promote human rights. The Council can investigate alleged violations of human rights and examine thematic or systemic issues. Members are elected by the UN General Assembly (all UN member states), with consideration given to equitable geographical representation as well as the human rights record of candidates and their voluntary pledges to protect and promote human rights.

While not a perfect system, the Council has significantly improved the UN’s effectiveness in respect of its human rights mandate since its establishment in 2016, not least through the creation of the Universal Periodic Review – a peer review of each country’s human rights record every five years with recommendations for improvements and the monitoring of and technical support for implementation. Unlike the UN Security Council, there is no veto and members have equal voting rights, enabling the Council to be more responsive and nimble in responding to human rights issues and contributing to its growing influence and credibility.

Role of President, Human Rights Council

The presidency of the Human Rights Council rotates on a yearly basis between the five regional groups of the UN. The President is required to set the agenda for the Council and play a role in the appointment of independent experts to the special procedures. The President is able to build consensus and make statements seeking solutions to specific problems – these are then adopted by the Council and given the same authority as regular resolutions.

Convention dictates the appointment of each new President is through informal diplomatic channels, with one agreed candidate proposed to the Council. This looked to continue for the 2021 presidency until an 11th hour bid by Bahrain (and later Uzbekistan) led to an unprecedented secret ballot, with Ambassador Khan receiving 29 of the 47 votes. The fact that the 2021 presidency was so fiercely contested demonstrates increasing recognition of the importance of this role.

What this means for the Pacific

While the context and nature of the presidency offers multiple opportunities for the Pacific, it also entails a significant degree of national and regional responsibility. Foremost, this is an opportunity to amplify Pacific voices within the Human Rights Council so as to raise awareness and stimulate action on priority human rights issues for the region, including on climate change. Prime Minister of Fiji, Honourable Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, highlighted this when he said, “(Fiji’s) leadership comes at a critical time for humanity, as the climate emergency threatens human rights on a global and generational scale.” The proposal for a Special Rapporteur on Climate Change is likely to come before the Council during Ambassador Khan’s tenure and she will be critical to whether such a role is established. Coinciding with Fiji’s presidency will be the United States’ re-engagement in the climate change agenda and its timely return to the Paris Agreement.

The Pacific is chronically under-represented on the global stage; consequently, our voices are seldom heard and our issues rarely prioritised. The presidency can bring the Pacific experiences, issues and expertise to the fore. An area which deserves highlighting is how the Pacific’s values and diverse cultures are an enabler of human rights. In our region, human rights are often seen as a foreign import, an externally imposed system and framework. However human rights are written into the constitutions and legislation of every Pacific island nation, including one which pre-dates the UN Declaration on Human Rights. The principles underpinning the international human rights system, such as dignity, respect, protection and community, are central to Pacific communities.

Contextualising human rights enhances community understanding and ownership. The aim of contextualisation is not to find a middle ground, but to harness the vast power of traditional knowledge to communicate human rights standards, find solutions to human rights issues, and generate local understanding and ownership of implementation. Contextualisation of human rights is difficult – hard conversations are necessary around how a society wishes to move forward. Fiji’s presidency has the opportunity to open up these conversations and, in doing so, unlock the vast potential of Pacific culture to enable and uphold international human rights and further demonstrate to the world what this region can offer as a leader in this field.

Looking ahead

Naturally, the presidency will place Fiji and its human rights record under the spotlight. Membership of the Council requires a state to uphold high human rights standards (General Assembly resolution 60/251) and the presidency further elevates that responsibility. Work undertaken as President in Geneva must not distract from domestic efforts to give effect to the rights contained within the human rights treaties and the constitution to which Fiji is bound. The ‘Human Rights in the Pacific: A Situational Analysis’ (SPC & OHCHR, 2021) documents areas of concern and the public will play close attention to how Fiji addresses these domestic matters during its tenure as President of the Council.

While the presidency is an historic occasion, of greater importance is the opportunity it presents to show the world that the recent achievements and commitments in the Pacific are not anomalies but an indication of the unique role the region can play when it comes to human rights.

Miles Young and Ashley Bowe, Director and Advisor, respectively, of the Human Rights & Social Development Division of the Pacific Community (SPC). SPC is an international development organisation owned and governed by its 26 members, including 22 Pacific island countries and territories. The HRSD Division supports SPC members in the areas of human rights, gender equality and social inclusion, youth and culture.

 

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Credit: Unsplash /Melanie Wasser.

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Shubha Nagesh
ABUJA, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

Dealing with COVID-19-related city lockdowns has been exceptionally stressful, particularly for those parents who have had to balance work, personal life, children and elderly, providing home schooling or facilitating virtual learning, managing infection control within the home, and more, all while being disconnected from support services.

Beyond all this, other mediators and moderators play a key role in outcomes for parents and children, including their function and adaptation – sociodemographic, exposure, negative events, personality traits, and the experience of death among close family and friends.

It is therefore unsurprising the results of C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health 2020 survey of child health concerns.

Clear links exist between mental health indicators and child-parent conflict and closeness, with anxious parents being particularly vigilant to responding to cues of children’s distress by encouraging them to express their opinions and providing support and acceptance of their decisions
The poll is a national sample of parents to rate the top health concerns for U.S. children and teens aged 0-18 years. A breakdown of the results shows the top ten concerns as follows: overuse of social media/screen time (72%); bullying/cyberbullying (62%); Internet safety (62%); unhealthy eating (59%); depression/suicide (54%); lack of physical activity (54%); stress/anxiety (54%); smoking/vaping (52%); drinking or using drugs (50%); and COVID-19 (48%).

The findings also show that parents’ biggest concerns for young people are associated with changes in lifestyle and mental health consequences of the pandemic.

There are fewer similar studies from the Global South; one study from China showed that the quarantine’s impact on children’s emotion and behaviour is mediated by the parents’ individual and group stress, with a stronger effect from the latter.

Parents who reported more difficulties in dealing with quarantine showed more stress, which in turn, increased the children’s problems. A study from Singapore explored work-family balance and social support and their links with parental stress. It revealed that lockdowns can be detrimental to parenting and marital harmony, especially for parents with poor work family balance and weak social support.

Clear links exist between mental health indicators and child-parent conflict and closeness, with anxious parents being particularly vigilant to responding to cues of children’s distress by encouraging them to express their opinions and providing support and acceptance of their decisions.

Previous studies have revealed that family structures who hold on their own in difficult times will best thrive and get past pandemic and other similar situations.

India’s lockdown declared without advance notice, saw many nuclear families from cities shift back to their ancestral towns for economic reasons. The lack of jobs, particularly in the informal sector, lack of resources to enroll children in online schooling and being cut off from health services and public transport made families shift back into joint family structures to support one another in times of uncertainties.

In Nigeria, the most severe impact of the pandemic on parenting is the loss of livelihoods among low-income families who earn daily within the informal economy – 65% of economic activities are within the informal sector. Most of them do not own bank accounts and may not have savings. The lockdown impacted these informal sector workers the most and consequently their ability to parent effectively.

Thus, the impact of pandemics on the mental health outcomes of children and their families must be explored as a distinct phenomenon. We suggest three ways to enable this:

Improve access to psycho-social support for families, parents and children during lockdowns in pandemic situations. Globally, there is second wave of the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, the country is in total lockdown. This implies that families continue to deal with the challenges identified by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll.

Governments, civil society organisations, public health administrators must begin to assign social workers to visit families and help them deal with the mental health consequences of lockdowns. Conduct outreaches to provide emotional and mental health support for children and families in low-income communities with poor internet access.

An example from India is the The Mental Health Action Trust (MHAT) in Northern Kerala, that developed a unique mental health initiative that has a strong focus on empowering local communities and implementing mental health services through more than a thousand volunteers who run the community service.

Use technology to provide remote to support to parents and children. When families are informed on how lockdowns could affect them, they are better prepared to deal with such challenges. Nigeria’s leading non-profit organization providing mental health support, Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative, has been reaching out to individuals through social media to help them deal with mental health consequences of the pandemic.

They do this via the Project COVID-19. Services provided include mental health assessment and linkage to counsellors, monthly virtual conversation café using WhatsApp to discuss coping skills and providing support to keep isolation journals. Such organisations are few in the global south and should be supported by government, international donors and the private sector to take their services to scale.

Finally, COVID-19 has changed the workplace and it is no longer business as usual. A significant amount of stress is attributed to juggling work life and home, employers should better support their employees to ease some of the pressure.

Companies should promote frequent check-ins and flexibility, more relaxed patterns of work schedules, incorporate breaks between intense work meetings, encourage recreational online family gatherings, time offs and financial incentives etc. Company health plans should include mental health care. Connecting families to mental health services is another great way to support parents, and therefore families.

COVID-19 is a reminder that countries must invest in epidemic preparedness. These investments should be family-centred to ensure that parents and caregivers are equipped to provide the best parenting possible.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi McWilliams Nsofor is a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. Ifeanyi is the Director Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch.

Dr Shubha Nagesh works for the Latika Roy Foundation in Dehradun, India. She is a senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. Shubha strives to make childhood disabilities a global health priority.

The post Protecting Mental Health of Families in a Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Director Yasmine Sherif speaks to crisis-affected children in Burkina Faso. ECW has launched a multi-year programme in the country, providing $11 million in funding, but a further $48 million is needed. Courtesy: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri
ACCRA, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises – was on the ground in Burkina Faso last week with its Director, Yasmine Sherif, to launch a new multi-year programme that aims to provide an education to over 800,000 children and adolescents in crisis-affected areas.

ECW is providing $11 million in seed funding now, but a further $48 million is needed from both public and private donors over the next three years. Burkina Faso, located in the Central Sahel, is experiencing, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), ‘the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian and protection crisis’, with more than one million people displaced.

“The Central Sahel is among the most forgotten crisis regions in the world, and Burkina Faso is one of the most forgotten country crises globally. ECW is fully engaged in investing in education across the Sahel over the past two years, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger,” Sherif told IPS in a telephone interview from Ouagadougou.

Sherif had just returned from Kaya, the fifth-largest city in Burkina Faso, northeast of the capital, where she spent time with crisis-affected children, teachers and families. She saw much suffering there. “They sit in punishing heat, trying to learn. They don’t have the tents, school buildings or school materials. Water is missing, sanitation is missing, and they have fled incredible violence. Their eyes are hollow. These children are suffering,” she said.

Stanislas Ouaro, Minister of National Education and Literacy for Burkina Faso, said education in the country is suffering from both ongoing violence and insecurity, as well as the COVID-19 crisis. While the security crisis has seen more than 2,300 schools close, the COVID-19 pandemic further resulted in a nationwide shutdown of schools during several months in 2020.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

While the security crisis in Burkina Faso has seen more than 2,300 schools close, the COVID-19 pandemic further resulted in a nationwide shutdown of schools during several months in 2020. Courtesy: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

Inter Press Service (IPS): What has been the impact of the first ECW emergency programmes in the focused countries particularly Burkina Faso?

Yasmine Sherif (YS): What we see today is that more children and youth are now able to access schools across countries in the crisis-affected areas.  We see more girls, including adolescent girls, attending school and this is through ECW investments which support a holistic package of activities, from pre-school through secondary school. Today, we have invested about $40 million in these countries and the activities that we have provided include mental health and psycho-social support, which is highly important for children and adolescents who are affected by crisis. We have also responded to the COVID-19 pandemic very fast. We were among the first responders to COVID-19, providing sanitation and water facilities and building materials, as well as support for remote learning solutions for the communities.

IPS: You are currently on mission in Burkina Faso. At the end of last year, UNHCR stated that Burkina Faso is now the world’s fastest-growing displacement and protection crisis with more than one in every 20 inhabitants displaced by surging violence inside the country. More than 2.6 million children and youth are out of school in Burkina Faso, with another 1.7 million students at risk of dropping out of school. What are you finding on the ground?

YS: UNHCR was here on a mission recently and called on the world to take action and when they called for action, we had an obligation to act. So, this is why we prioritised our mission to Burkina Faso as a direct response to the call of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Now, what do we see on the ground? We see a high number of displaced communities. There are one million people who are internally displaced in Burkina Faso, as well as 20,000 refugees from neighboring countries and we also have the host communities where many of them live. These include children who have fled insecurity and violence; their villages have been burnt down and they have found security in government-controlled areas.

We visited the town of Kaya in Burkina Faso and we could feel there was more security there. But more resources are needed to provide these children and youth with the education that they deserve, which is challenging because an area of violence and insecurity is a barrier to education.

The government is very committed, the President, the Minister of Education – civil society organizations, NGOs, the United Nations – are all working together in strong partnership to provide resources and personnel to make education available in a secure environment for children and adolescents.

 

IPS: As you mentioned, you have recently returned from a field trip to Kaya. What have people, students, particularly girls, told you about the situation there? 

YS: In Burkina Faso, you see that the girls are strong but they are disempowered because they do not have the tools, they are disempowered because they do not have access to education – that is what we see and that is why we need more funding. If you want to empower girls’ education, you have to contribute the resources – because the political will is there, representatives are there to run the programme to ensure a collective outcome for girls – and learning tools. How can they concentrate and study under an insecure condition and environment? So again, resources are needed and urgently.    

IPS: Earlier this month ECW announced some $33 million in funding for Mali, Niger, the Central Sahel and Burkina Faso. Of this $11 million is being provided as a catalytic grant to Burkina Faso but $48 million is needed in additional funds over a few years. What does this mean in terms of the scope and scale of the task ahead?   

YS: The more funding we receive and the more we are able to close the funding gap, the more we can achieve the vision and goal and take action. No one can say there is no capacity to increase, we have great capacity in civil society, in UN agencies and there is great political will of the government. Now it is up to wealthier countries to provide the funding needed, and we want them to be partners because ECW is a global fund where our donor partners sit on our governance structure. Our partners provide the funding, are part of making the decisions and help fund our shared vision of quality, inclusive education for girls, for children with disabilities, for those that fall behind.

IPS: ECW focuses on collaborating with other agencies implementing the fund’s multi-year resilience programmes. How important are these partners in the execution and ultimately the success of these programmes?

YS: Our partners are absolutely essential – civil society organisations, UN agencies, and of course the leadership of the government – they are the ones working among the people, they are doing the work on the ground, they are making the sacrifices. Our job is to facilitate and make their work easier, to mobilise resources and to bring everyone together. Our partners on the ground have the credibility and they are the sources of the solution for communities who are struggling to provide for their children and their young people. They are our heroes and they keep us going.

IPS: Stanislas Ouaro, Minister of National Education and Literacy for Burkina-Faso, said that the security crisis resulted in the closure of more than 2,300 schools and the COVID-19 pandemic further resulted in the closure of all schools in Burkina Faso for several months. Why is continuity of education so important for children in crisis situation? 

YS: You know when a child does not go to school, when a girl is out of school, she is more likely to marry early, she is more likely to get pregnant early and as a result very likely to never attend school. So, the main impact of keeping her out of school is that you have disempowered her. If a boy is out of school, he is more likely to be recruited into an armed group, more likely to pick up arms and by doing that his opportunity for a proper education to be a productive citizen has been destroyed.

The longer they are out of school amidst the insecurity, the pandemic or any other crisis, the more likely that they will never come back and the vicious cycle of unintended pregnancies, trafficking, forced recruitment, extreme poverty and lack of livelihoods will continue. That is why any country affected by conflict and crisis is important to us. We have a brilliant, committed Minister of Education who was educated here in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso was one of the most progressive country in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in education five years ago but, because of the Sahel and Burkina Faso crisis, it has dropped back. So, we need to get them back to school quickly, we need to ensure safety of schools, we have to get protective measures for COVID-19, but the key is to also end the conflict and restore stability.

IPS: ECW’s programmes have given special attention to girls’ education, can you share the impact this decision is having on the beneficiaries?

YS: ECW has made a commitment to see a minimum of 60 per cent of girls in school through affirmative action. We believe that gender equality starts by empowering the girls through education and through our investments, we have seen more girls in school and we have also seen more girls now attending secondary education. So, there is direct correlation between our affirmative action, our financial investment and the number of girls who are now enjoying quality education. 

IPS: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

YS: Education is an investment in humanity, we are investing in the human mind, the human soul and spirit and it is more costly to ignore that investment than to make that investment.  Investing in a human being and a human being in crisis is a moral choice and I appeal to everyone to make the moral choice, the political choice and the financial choice that will create that reward. Be human, be authentic and be called to creating a better world.

 

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Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Jamila Akweley Okertchiri speaks to Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Director YASMINE SHERIF about the new multi-year programme that aims to provide education to over 800,000 children and adolescents in crisis-affected areas in Burkina Faso

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Selimatha Salifu, a former child labourer from Ghana, is now a teacher working with children and encouraging them to continue their education. Salifu is one of two former child activists who addressed United Nations officials, business, faith, union, education and youth leaders from around the world at the virtual launch of the ‘Fair Share to End Child Labour’ campaign on Jan. 21.

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

Selimatha Salifu of Ghana is a former child labourer who has vowed to do her part to bring attention to the plight of the world’s over 150 million child labourers. Raised in a fishing community, she recalls her days buying fish to sell, working from daybreak till nightfall to contribute to her family. She credits the General Agriculture Workers Union for rescuing her and ensuring she enrolled in school.

“I’m a teacher by profession now and I work with kids. I want to appeal to children going through the same thing. I was once like them. I want to tell them that they shouldn’t lose their youth and they can have hope that they’ll come out of this successfully. They won’t be on the streets forever. They will not be at the riverside day in day out to put something on the table for their families.”

Salifu is one of two former child activists who addressed United Nations officials, business, faith, union, education and youth leaders from around the world at the virtual launch of the ‘Fair Share to End Child Labour’ campaign on Jan. 21.

The initiative is organised by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Global March to End Child Labour and decades-long child rights advocate. It demands a fair share of resources, policies and social protection for children, in order to end child labour. The campaign was launched on the same day the United Nations officially declared 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.

“We have seen that the injustices, inequalities, miseries, denial of education, child labour, sexual exploitation of children, trafficking and so many other problems have been exacerbated during the pandemic, but these injustices were already there,” the Laureate said. “When we call for a fair share, we are calling for creating a new culture of justice and equality.”

The most recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) stated that the challenge of ending child labour ‘remains formidable.’  While almost 100 million children have been saved in the last two decades, 64 million girls and 88 million boys are in child labour globally – almost 1 in 10 of all children. Director General Guy Ryder said the fair share campaign ‘goes to the heart’ of the ILO’s social justice mandate and complements ongoing efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 8.7, which targets the elimination of child labour by 2025.

“We all know that the fight against child labour is complex, the causes of child labour are complex and through this Fair Share campaign, I am convinced that we are doing something very important.”

Director General of the World Health Organisation Dr. Tedros Adhanom reminded the partners that the social and economic shocks wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic point to 66 million children falling into extreme poverty. This is in addition to the estimated 386 million children already in that bracket. He said a campaign like this will help maintain pressure on international organisations and other partners to keep their promises to the world’s children.

“The most disadvantaged children are the most affected, with no access to social and legal protection, leaving them vulnerable to social exclusion and exploitation including child labour. We cannot allow this to happen. We must ensure that these children and their families have their fair share of resources and social protection,” he said.

The Campaign’s Nobel Laureate leader has applauded the young people from around the world who have answered the call to action and are dedicating the time to ridding the world of child labour. The Youth Voice was prominent in Satyarthi’s 2020 100 Million campaign – over 100 young people demanded that world leaders guarantee a fair share of pandemic recovery funds gets to marginalised populations. The youth leaders have confirmed their support for the new initiative.

“We are committing to use our convening power to mobilise our constituents to reach out to their members of Parliament, to their Senators, to their Prime Ministers, to their Presidents, to allocate a fair share of the national resources to end child labour.  I call on everyone, especially young people and students, to join this campaign in whatever small way.  We should not rest until every child is free, safe and educated,” said Peter Kwasi, Secretary General of the All-Africa Student Union.

Other partners at the campaign launch included the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). With former child workers and youth on the frontline and the backing of leaders and international institutions, the campaign is hoping that its demands will see 2021 as a turning point in the history of the movement to end child labour.

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The post Personal Testimonies, Pledges Mark the Start of the ‘Fair Share to End Child Labour’ Campaign appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

152 million children are subjected to child labour. Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi has brought together former child workers, international organisations, global youth, business and education leaders for a global campaign to save them

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Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, briefs the members of the UN Security Council. Iran and US are both accused of undermining the 2015 nuclear deal. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Jan Eliasson and Dan Smith
STOCKHOLM, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

A deadly pandemic to control. An urgent nationwide vaccination programme to roll out. An economic crisis to navigate. Political divisions and distrust deep enough to spark mob violence and terrorism.

The 46th President of the United States faces a barrage of critical domestic challenges from day one.

Nevertheless, one matter of foreign policy will need to be at the top of his agenda: there will be barely two weeks left to save the 2010 strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, New START, from extinction.

New START is the last nuclear arms control treaty left standing between the USA and Russia. It sets caps on the deployment of the long-range portion of the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals and is due to expire on 5 February.

Fortunately, both incoming president Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have indicated their willingness to extend the treaty without conditions. So, it is likely to be a smooth process.

Amid the mistrust that colours today’s geopolitical landscape, far harder arms control challenges lie ahead.

The crisis in arms control

The past four years have seen major parts of the international arms control architecture weakened or dismantled. The 1987 Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty) collapsed in 2019.

In 2018, the USA unilaterally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)¬—the 2015 ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran signed up to by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council along with Germany and the European Union.

In November last year the USA formally withdrew from the 2002 Treaty on Open Skies, which allowed countries across the Euro-Atlantic space, from Anchorage to Vladivostok, to carry out unarmed surveillance flights over each other’s territory in order to monitor military activity.

Russia has now announced it is following suit.

The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is also looking precarious. Much of the world is frustrated at the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the NPT—the USA, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom—as well as Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which will enter into force on 22 January, was born of this frustration.

While the US presidency of Donald J. Trump has been particularly detrimental to arms control, problems were growing long before, and are far from being resolved.

‘Arms control for a new era’

Joe Biden brings to the presidency an impressive depth and breadth of experience in the field of arms control and international negotiation.

He made a commitment to ‘arms control for a new era’ a prominent part of his electoral platform and characterized the extension of New START as ‘a foundation for new arms control arrangements’.

New arms control arrangements are certainly needed. Without them, there is a serious risk of the further spread, and potential use, of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

It is also necessary to deal with an increasingly unpredictable, and expensive, arms race based on competition in technologies rather than numbers of weapons and characterized by the increasing entanglement of nuclear and non-nuclear technologies.

Several factors, such as missile defence, advanced conventional capabilities, hypersonic weapons, the accelerated militarization of outer space and the potential application of artificial intelligence to strategic weapons, are affecting the nuclear calculus and strategic stability.

It is unclear how these factors should be addressed in arms control negotiations. The task of designing a new approach to arms control is, in itself, dauntingly complex. And negotiations will take place in a far from ideal context.

Complicating factors

Delivering a new, effective arms control architecture will demand creativity, cooperation and compromise on all sides. Joe Biden has said that the USA will lead the process. But his team will face severe constraints.

The challenges around returning to the JCPOA—something Joe Biden has said he hopes to achieve—are illustrative. The JCPOA was proving a successful non-proliferation tool until the US withdrawal.

But it was only entered into by the USA in the face of strong opposition from the Republican Party, which has not weakened in the interim. In addition, there are a number of other problems and external factors that could distract attention from urgent work on the JCPOA.

Even with control of both houses of the US Congress, it will be difficult for Joe Biden to obtain the support needed to approve future arms control treaties with Russia (or other states).

Thus, the incoming president may well be restricted to executive orders, which are limited in scope and can easily be revoked by future US administrations.

Congressional approval will also be necessary to terminate certain sanctions on Iran in 2023, as is required under the terms of the JCPOA.

Recent US actions have also damaged the USA’s international reputation in many quarters—among both adversaries and allies—which will further complicate arms control diplomacy.

A collective challenge

The world faces a range of potentially destabilizing realities in the coming decades, from climate change and other environmental crises to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of the big picture is that the geopolitical order is shifting, with new regional powers and new alliances in which the USA is less influential.

In arms control, as in many other areas, the international community needs to find new ways of working to secure our common interest.

We should hope that the successful extension of New START will be the prelude to a gradual resurgence of arms control, non-proliferation, disarmament and risk reduction. But, as with the other big issues of our time, success will depend on all key actors stepping up.

 

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Excerpt:

Ambassador Jan Eliasson is Chair of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Dan Smith is Director, SIPRI

The post Biden’s Arms Control Ambitions are Welcome—but Delivering Them will not be Easy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Launching of “Reverse the Trend” and welcoming the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Credit: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

A war-mongering president, with his finger on the nuclear trigger— and who threatened to attack North Korea and Iran– was unceremoniously drummed out of office on January 20.

And two days later, the world rejoiced the historic entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – a landmark event greeted by peace activists and anti-nuclear campaigners worldwide

But still there are two lingering questions: Does the TPNW, along with the inglorious departure of an irrational Donald Trump from the White House, make chances of a nuclear war only a remote possibility?

Or do the 14,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of nine nuclear-armed States – the US, UK, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel– still pose an existential threat to humankind?

“Let’s be clear, there are no safe hands for these unsafe weapons of mass annihilation,” Dr Rebecca Johnson, former president of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), told IPS.

“That’s why so many governments decided to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons in 2017, along with all the activities that enable or assist anyone to possess, deploy and use them,” she pointed out.

“It’s not just about the competence of leaders and sizes of arsenals, though both are worrying. Until all nuclear weapons are eliminated, humanity will continue to face extinction level threats,” Dr Johnson added.

She said one nuclear detonation can escalate into nuclear war. That’s a terrible but feasible scenario that could be triggered by intention, miscalculation or accident.

“And let’s remember that the resources squandered on nuclear weapons mean these governments are putting less money and attention into what we need to meet our real human security needs, from Covid to Climate destruction,” she argued.

As of now, neither the United States nor the 8 other nuclear armed nations have joined the Treaty, which prohibits the development, testing, production, manufacture, acquisition, possession, deployment, along with the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons, as well as providing assistance for, or encouraging such acts.

“But just because they aren’t signed on to the Treaty doesn’t mean it won’t affect them,” said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.

“Every nation will feel the moral force of the Treaty. All nuclear weapons, including the 3,900 in the US stockpile, have been declared unlawful by the international community.”

Addressing the UN General Assembly in September 2017, Trump warned that “the United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy (nuclear-armed) North Korea.”

And following a drone strike which killed an Iranian military general, a belligerent Trump vowed in early 2020 the U.S. would respond to any Iranian strikes on “any Americans” or “American assets” by striking 52 preselected sites in Iran, including some that have cultural importance to Iranians.

Of the nine nuclear armed states, four are in Asia and embroiled in ongoing conflicts– India vs China and Pakistan vs India while North Korea has continued its war of words with neighbouring non-nuclear South Korea.

Meanwhile, nuclear-armed Israel is in an ongoing military confrontation not only with Iran but also with Palestinians for decades.

Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, told IPS the existential threat of the deployed ready arsenals of nuclear weapons in the thousands in the hands of fallible human beings in nine states remains.

“By accident, miscalculation, unforeseen, unpredictable circumstances, design by fools, or even actual madness the unspeakable could be unleashed.”

Trump’s leaving the White House diminishes this hazard, but it does not end it, he noted.

“The TPNW is a clarion call to the states with these devices to fulfill their legal obligation to commence good faith negotiations to achieve their verifiable, enforceable, legal, universal elimination. There are real threats before us that weaponry cannot solve — climate change, ending poverty and pandemics,” said Granoff.

He argued the more the weapons are perfected the less security is obtained.

“The TPNW is a codification of the reality that these devices of death are deployed in an illegal manner that cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants and certainly causes immeasurable unnecessary suffering in contravention of international humanitarian law”.

The states with the weapons, for the sake of humanity, should either join the treaty with protocols they have negotiated, work on adjusting the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention to their liking, or immediately commence another process to achieve the same end — the security of a nuclear weapons-free world, he said.

“It is time for new paradigm – Human Security!”, declared Granoff, recipient of the Rutgers University School of Law’s Arthur E. Armitage Distinguished Alumni Award and a 2014 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The TPNW reached its 50th ratification last October, fulfilling the conditions of its entry into force.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Treaty represents a meaningful commitment towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons, which remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.

“The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), with 183 States Parties, has abolished biological weapons, and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), with 193 States Parties, has abolished chemical weapons,” says Paul Walker (USA), Vice Chair of the Arms Control Association and Right Livelihood Laureate in 2013.

“It is now time to abolish the third class of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons.”

Dr Johnson told IPS there are thousands of weapons in nine nuclear arsenals, with many kept on high alert in accordance with nuclear deterrence policies that fly in the face of facts, evidence and human psychology.

“While it is to be hoped that the Biden-Harris Administration will move quickly to extend New START and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at last, the only way we can prevent nuclear war is by persuading all our governments to join the TPNW and contribute to its full implementation,” she said.

“I’ve been working on nuclear treaties for four decades so I know that won’t happen overnight. But they should at least engage constructively, attend TPNW meetings as observers, and contribute to collective steps to establish effective compliance, monitoring and verification capacities. That’s what we’re calling on the British government to do this year, and we hope others will too,” Dr Johnson declared.

https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Acronym-UK_TPNW_-19Jan2021.pdf

  

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Ruins of Nagasaki about 800 metres from the hypocenter in mid-October 1945. Lessons of Nagasaki survivors should motivate the world to eliminate all nuclear weapons – UN chief. Credit: UN Photo/Shigeo Hayashi

By Alyn Ware
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

Many of us around the world breathed a sigh of relief yesterday (Jan 20) as the ‘nuclear football’ (the briefcase with nuclear weapons codes and communication links for the President to launch a nuclear attack) was passed from Mr Trump to President Biden, as the new president was inaugurated.

This change of administration comes as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons enters-into-force (Jan 22) and as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of UN Resolution 1 (1) which established the global goal for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

One year ago the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to Midnight, indicating the very high risk to humanity from nuclear weapons and climate change. These recent developments give some hope for reducing the risk of nuclear war and for making progress toward nuclear disarmament.

With 4000 operational nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, over 800 of them on high alert ready to be fired in minutes, having had a somewhat irrational US Commander-in-Chief over the past 4 years, with the authority to unilaterally launch these weapons on a whim, has been nerve-wracking.

Will the new US administration end the threat of a nuclear war, undertake initial disarmament steps, and bring the nuclear-armed States together to negotiate for phased, verified and enforceable nuclear disarmament? We don’t know.

But there are some positive signs. Joe Biden was Vice-President for Barack Obama, who launched a very ambitious effort to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world, but only achieved incremental measures to support this goal – such as the new START agreement, Iran agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), some global measures on nuclear security and the start of a process to achieve a Middle East Zone free from Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction.

President Obama was unable to reign in nuclear weapons development and production due to a congress that insisted on increasing the nuclear weapons budget and supporting new nuclear weapons systems. Indeed the entire Republic Caucus in the Senate refused to ratify the new START Treaty with Russia unless the President agreed to nuclear weapons modernization and an increased budget.

In addition, President Obama was unable to significantly lower the role of nuclear weapons in US policy. He attempted to adopt a no-first-use or sole purpose policy twice in his presidency, but was beaten back by domestic opposition and by NATO allies insisting on the first use option to ‘protect’ them from Russia.

President Biden might be able to advance on both these issues. He has a Democratic majority in Congress whose leadership has indicated support for no-first-use. And there is growing support in allied countries for stepping back from the nuclear brink.

Indeed, a policy of no-first use has now been supported in declarations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The declarations are adopted by consensus by all member parliaments including the European countries, Canada, USA, Russia and the former soviet countries.

There is also growing support publicly and in the US Congress to cut nuclear weapons budgets in order to focus more on human security issues like climate protection and the pandemic.

This includes a new Defense Spending Reduction Caucus in Congress calling for a 10% reduction in military spending to free up resources to address the pandemic. Cutting a significant portion of the nuclear weapons budget would be the easiest way to make this 10% cut. The Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditure (SANE) Act, introduced in the US Senate by Senator Markey and in the House by Rep Blumenauer, indicates how substantial savings on the nuclear weapons budget could be made by immediate unilateral cuts. With Democrats now controlling both houses, there is possibility for progress on these.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a renewed global call by non-nuclear states for the achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world.

The US, other nuclear armed States and the allied states have all said that they will not join the treaty. It is unlikely that a Biden Administration will change the US position, let alone convince other nuclear armed states to join the TPNW. And if the nuclear armed and allied countries don’t join, they are not bound by it.

However, a number of civil society statements released in conjunction with the entry-into-force of the TPNW (see below for links to them) have highlighted that all countries, including the nuclear armed and allied states, are bound by existing international law that prohibits the threat or use of nuclear weapons and requires the elimination of these weapons.

The TPNW did not arise in a legal vacuum. The threat or use of nuclear weapons was already affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1996 as generally prohibited under international humanitarian law, i.e. the laws of warfare which are binding on the nuclear armed states.

The Court also affirmed an obligation under both treaty and customary international law to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons. And the UN Human Rights committee in both 1984 and more recently in 2018, affirmed that international human rights law, which is also binding on the nuclear armed States, established similar prohibitions and obligations.

Mr Trump did not appear to respect the law, unless it served his agenda. However, President Biden is much more committed to law, and could be persuaded by these legal developments to act in good faith and with determination to advance the objective of a nuclear-weapons-free world through a number of concrete steps.

In addition, States parties to the TPNW could make a significant impact on the nuclear armed States by banning the transit of nuclear weapons in their territorial land, sea and airspace. Or they could make an impact on the nuclear arms race by ending public investments in the nuclear weapons industry.

So far, none of the states joining the TPNW have followed up with such implementing measures (although some States had adopted such measures prior to the TPNW). The First Assembly of the States Parties to the TPNW, which will occur within the next year, provides an opening to encourage the TPNW countries to do so.

Civil society action will be necessary to move the governments to take action. If this becomes a priority, then there is a possibility that these political openings will enable humanity to finally abolish nuclear weapons to assure a sustainable future.

Civil Society statements:

• Abolish nuclear weapons to assure a sustainable future: Joint statement by World Future Council members and Right Livelihood Laureates on the occasions of the Entry-into-Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the 75th anniversary of UN Resolution 1 (1)
• It’s time to end the nuclear era! Statement of the Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee on the occasions of the Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the 75th anniversary of UN Resolution 1 (1)
• Statement of Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and Western States Legal Foundation on the Imminent Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

 

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The post Will Biden Administration Respond to the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, End Threat of a Nuclear War & Bring Nuclear-armed States Together to Achieve Global Nuclear Disarmament? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Alyn Ware is Peace and Disarmament program Director for the World Future Council and Right Livelihood Laureate in 2009.

The post Will Biden Administration Respond to the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, End Threat of a Nuclear War & Bring Nuclear-armed States Together to Achieve Global Nuclear Disarmament? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

Impeachment or no impeachment, Trump is out of the White House. Trump goes with an approval rating of 34%, far behind his predecessor Barack Obama’s 60%. A majority, 54%, said Trump ought to be removed from office before January 20, according to a new CNN poll, for his role in the January 6 events, when Trump incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol.

Battle for America’s soul
“Has America lost its soul?”, asked Peter Singer, the famous ethics and morality philosopher. More than 70 million, or 47% of Americans voted for Trump. With 21,000 votes in three key states, Trump would have defeated Biden.

Anis Chowdhury

Trump lies shamelessly. He takes pride in gaming the system to evade paying taxes. He incites racial hatred and violence, even demeaning the families of those who gave their lives for America. He celebrates white supremacists as patriots, and shows no empathy for close to 400 thousand Americans who died of COVID-19. He ignores science, and shows no respect or tolerance for opponents.

The list goes on. But most importantly, he undermined the highest office of the country by abusing it to promote his person and business interests.

Yet, so many Americans ignored Trump’s immorality and voted for him in an election which Biden declared to be a “battle for the soul of America”. Trump not only got the highest votes ever for a sitting president, but even increased his votes by over five million from 2016.

What caused this moral or ethical divide in America? Why did Biden fail to win half its soul? America’s fault-lines run through the middle, due to decades of rising wealth and income inequality.

Wealth inequality
Between 1990 and 2020, as US billionaires increased their wealth by 1,130%, US median wealth increased by only 5.4%. As the combined net worth of America’s 614 billionaires grew by $931 billion during the pandemic, ‘turbocharging’ inequality over seven months from mid-March, a week after Trump declared a national emergency.

The US has not had decent income or wealth redistribution at least since the 1960s. From 1963 to 2016, the lowest 10% of Americans went from having no assets at all to being US$1,000 in debt. Meanwhile, families in the top 10% multiplied their wealth five-fold. Most shockingly, families in the top 1% grew their wealth seven fold between 1963 and 2016.

Earning inequality
For most US workers, real wages have barely budged in decades despite low unemployment in some periods. For example, average real wages during Trump’s final years had about the same purchasing power as 40 years ago. Average real hourly earnings in March 2019 amounted to US$23.24 in 2019 dollars, matching only the long-time peak of March 1974, and only around US$3 above the early 1960s level.

Furthermore, wage gains in recent decades have mostly flowed to the highest paid workers. Since 2000, workers’ average weekly wages in the lowest tenth of the earnings distribution have risen 3% (in real terms) while real earnings of the top tenth have risen 15.7% to US$2,112 a week – nearly five times the average of the bottom tenth (US$426). Real wages either rose less or fell at the middle and bottom of the distribution, while real wages of the 90th percentile increased for the workforce as a whole from 1979 to 2019.

Earnings disparities by race, colour, gender and ethnicity are even worse. At the 90th percentile, wage growth was much higher for White workers and lower for Black and Hispanic workers. By contrast, middle (50th percentile) and bottom (10th percentile) wages grew less (e.g., for women) or declined in real terms (e.g., for men).

Job insecurity
Such earnings and wealth inequalities cannot be explained away by skills or education levels, or by including benefits, or by looking at total compensation, or by changing the price deflator (adjustments for inflation). On the contrary, they are due to policy decisions that have reduced the leverage of most workers to achieve faster wage growth.

One is job insecurity, as admitted by Alan Greenspan in his 1997 Senate testimony: “Atypical restraint on compensation increases has been … mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity”, partly attributable to “domestic deregulation”. The situation has become worse since.

A 2016 study confirmed that the US labour market has become “more treacherous”. The rise of the ‘gig economy’ is still “too small to affect the broader workforce”. There are much deeper causes: job creation has been spotty and often inadequate, while new jobs are typically inferior to their predecessors.

The 2017-2019 three year period saw employment growth and declining unemployment. Yet, 6.3 million workers – aged 20 and over – were displaced from their jobs. Only around 65% of those who lost their long-term jobs could find similar ones after three years, with many earning less.

Deeper malaise
Rising inequality and insecurity are results of “a stubborn reliance by policymakers on markets to do the work of government, and the racism and sexism, sometimes written into law, that blind policymakers to injustice and to economic sense”, as Heather Boushey notes in her recent IMF blog. Growing monopoly power of corporations, and increasing financialization of the economy, with a concomitant rise of the rentier class, not only led to polarisation, but also fundamentally weakened the US economy.

The generous tax cuts received by corporations since the 1980s went to buy back shares, fatten obscene executive packages, and pay dividends instead of re-investing to boost productivity and create more decent jobs.

US economic problems are deep-rooted: “By early 2020 even before the pandemic reached the US, manufacturing jobs had stalled out, and factories shed workers in four of the six months through March”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s China trade war also did not reduce overall US trade imbalances which have continued growing, soaring to a record US$84 billion in August 2019. US importers have shifted to goods from Vietnam, Mexico and other countries, but the trade deficit with China has risen amid the pandemic to where it was at the start of the Trump administration.

Trump still a hero!
But Trumpism is likely to stay, although his approval ratings just before leaving office, is among the worst since Gallup began regularly tracking presidential approval from the 1940s. Equal to Jimmy Carter, Trump still does better than Harry Truman’s 32%, George W. Bush’s 31% and Richard Nixon’s 24%.

The CNN poll is skewed along party-lines – nearly all Democrats (93%) favoured removing Trump from office before January 20, while just 10% of Republicans felt the same. Among Republicans, his approval rating has remained largely positive even after the deadly US Capitol attack; nearly nine in 10 Republicans approving Trump’s job performance.

Ending Trumpism
Thus, ending Trumpism will need more than impeaching Trump. The Bidden-Harris agenda must include Republican Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting as well as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and social agenda to address America’s deep-rooted socio-economic malaises that are undermining its democracy.

Teddy Roosevelt confronted the bitter struggle between capital and labour head-on in 1901, threatening to nationalize coal mines and settle in favour of labour. He took on JP Morgan, then the most powerful financier, barely six months into his presidency. He was a hunter, yet dedicated some 200 million acres for national forests, reserves and wildlife refuges as part of his “Square Deal” of domestic programmes.

Teddy could not be bullied by corporate capital. He was a conservative, who initiated far-reaching progressive reforms and started the conservation movement. He rose above party politics and did what thought right for America as a whole.

He broke away from the Republican Party when it became more conservative, and challenged his Republican successor William Taft in the 1912 elections after Taft failed to deliver his promise of progressive reforms.

Teddy’s fifth cousin, FDR led the US economy out of the Great Depression with his ambitious New Deal, defying fiscal conservatism and pressure from Wall Street. He thus redefined the impact of the federal government on the lives of Americans.

His vision of global institutions laid the foundation for the post-WWII Golden Age lasting nearly three decades. He also stood firm against the European colonial powers to advance the decolonization agenda.

 

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The post Trump Is Gone, Trumpism Lives On appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Greta Thunberg (right), Climate Activist, speaks at the opening of the UN Climate Action Summit 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

On the first day, hours after inauguration of the new Biden-Harris administration, President Biden signed an Executive Order-rejoining the United States in the Paris Climate Accord.

President Joe Biden is also expected to roll out an ambitious climate change agenda and initiatives to mitigate the crisis, shrink the nations carbon emissions, convene a U.S. climate summit, and give voices to vulnerable communities impacted by climate change. He has already unveiled a very competent climate change team and appointed John Kerry as the special climate change envoy.

Already,  the youth, who understand they do not have an alternative planet, have been very instrumental in climate change related activism-demanding politicians to act on climate change. Their continued activism on climate change matters including the school strike for climate

It is also clear that the new U.S. President believes in science, as seen in his recent unveiling of the science team, and his promise to elevate the Office of Science and Technology Policy into a Cabinet-level position.

These BOLD moves are commendable, especially in a time, when the science and evidence on the impact of climate change is clear. For instance, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that tracks climate trends, reported that 2020 was tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record.

In 2020, we also experienced many climate change linked extremes – from hot and dry conditions to wild fires in Australia, Brazil, California and Siberia, to flooding in Michigan  to droughts in Zimbabwe and Madagascar to locust invasions in Kenya and India.

In 2021, climate change linked extremities like flooding have already started to happen as seen in Oregon and Washington State , in Panama, Jamaica and in Paraguay. These events would have not been possible without the climate changes driven by the warming earth.

At the current rate, the Earth is on track to warm over 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Without a doubt, President Biden’s sense of urgency and his plans to mobilize the entire Federal Government to combat climate change are definitely going to make an impact. When you are facing such an existential crisis-bold actions matter.

Even with all these important efforts, still missing out in the ambitious climate change agenda is the role of youth.

They must be included and given a platform to showcase their ideas and solutions while meaningfully engaging with Federal and State decision makers. One way to include them is for the President to appoint a climate change youth envoy person and a council consisting of youth from all the 50 states, particularly including those from vulnerable states like the southeastern states. The United Nations already has one. The U.S. can emulate this.

Already,  the youth, who understand they do not have an alternative planet, have been very instrumental in climate change related activism-demanding politicians to act on climate change. Their continued activism on climate change matters including the school strike for climate, led by Greta Thunberg and other activists around the world is commendable. Even as leaders failed, these youth voices were key to ensuring that the climate change debate did not grow cold.

Importantly, there must be training and workforce development that targets the youth so that they can acquire the skills that will be needed to tap onto the promised 10 million clean energy jobs that will be created in the process of tackling climate change. The youth will bear the full brunt of climate change, and failure to involve them now is a failure by humanity. They too have a crucial role in addressing climate change.

We also need to value youth’s message and listen to science and researchers.

Researchers across the Universities and other research institutions are hard at work understanding the impacts of climate change and generating solutions to mitigate it. There is need to increase the funding that goes to climate science and the other research that addresses the effects of climate change including its effects on agriculture and food insecurity while developing solutions that are implementable with immediate effect.

In addition, new lines of funding for climate-related research can be rolled out by agencies such as the National Science Foundation and United States Department of Agriculture.

Finally, science communication will continue to be important. Key messages emerging from research and the initiatives taken by Federal Government to mitigate climate change should be communicated clearly and consistently to all stakeholders, including the public. Doing so will continue to elevate the role of science and science advancements in generating solutions to our everyday challenges including climate change.

Tackling climate change will require strong leadership by the government. Confronting the impacts of climate change necessitates the participation of everyone including the youth. As the U.S. returns to the Paris Climate Accord, it must bring everyone with it, fund more science research and communicate messages clearly.

 

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

The post As the United States Rejoins the Paris Climate Accord and Boldly Confronts Climate Change Crisis- Forget Not the Youth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Sierra Juárez forest, in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. The UN Forum on Forests was among the first intergovernmental processes to take steps to assess the impact of COVID-19 on forests. In Latin America and the Caribbean, closed forest-based tourist attractions has meant a significant loss of revenue for some countries. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 Pandemic has affected every sector of society and a global assessment by the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) confirms that its shocks have extended to forests on every region on earth.

Impact severity varies across the Regions; Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Europe and other states, North America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific, but they range from an increase in illegal harvesting of forest products to loss of critical funding for forest protection agencies.

“The UN Forum on Forests was among the first intergovernmental processes to take steps to assess the impact of COVID-19 on forests,” Alexander Trepelkov, Officer-in-Charge of the UN Forum’s Secretariat told IPS. “This is a critical step in determining how investing in forests can help countries to recover better from the pandemic towards an equitable and sustainable future,” he added.

Forests cover about one-third of the earth’s land area and provide livelihoods for millions of people, including members of rural communities and indigenous tribes. The assessment warns that the pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerabilities of those communities.

• According to the assessment, African forests are among the hardest hit by COVID-19 and efforts to curb its spread. The report from that region stated that forest management activities have been either postponed or cancelled, illegal harvesting has increased and eco-tourism, particularly in the East and South of the continent, has ‘grounded to a halt due to movement restriction measures.’
• The Asia-Pacific region, which focused on Thailand and Nepal, reported a slowdown in major areas of forestry sector operations, including reforestation.
• The report on Canada and the US spoke of disrupted forest management and research, that resulted in mill closures and halts in production that impacted livelihoods.
• In the Western Europe region, researchers noted that hospitality agencies that offer forest-based recreational events were severely impacted by global travel restrictions, adding that women make up the majority of employees in this area and have been disproportionately impacted by the ensuing unemployment. 
• Eastern European states reported delays in sustainable management programmes.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, closed forest-based tourist attractions meant a significant loss of revenue for some countries.

Jamaica’s Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park and UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site was one of the sites which closed temporarily, early in the pandemic.

“The national park has places that we encourage people to visit. We initially had shut down our sites, but later on, as there was greater understanding of how the disease spreads and realising that protocols could be put in place, we followed the UN and the Health and Tourism Ministries’ guidelines,” Dr. Susan Otuokon, Executive Director of Jamaica’s Conservation and Development Trust, told IPS.  Like conservation bodies the world over, the Trust, which manages the site, has been trying to fulfil its mandate amid challenges that include reduced funding and the need for distancing when many projects demand physical meet-ups.

“Some of the work that we do in terms of training for sustainable livelihoods with communities and having community meetings, it is challenging so we have had to revisit some of our outreach methods,” said Otuokon, adding that, “we’ve been lucky that some of our funding has not been affected, but some, particularly from government, has been reduced and that has impacted us, particularly our admin and support side.”

While forests are not immune to the shocks of COVID-19, a recurring theme in the global assessment is the acknowledgement by respondents that those ecosystems are critical to any plan to ‘build back better’ and respond to COVID-19. Recommendations on the way forward point to forests as pillars for sustainable job creation, food production, fuel sources and ecotourism services.

“Forests offer nature-friendly solutions for sustainable COVID-19 recovery” said the UNFF’s Trepelkov.  “Healthy forests are vital to addressing many pandemic-induced challenges, including economic recession, increased poverty and widening inequalities.

Some of the assessment’s regional reports also acknowledge those who, despite the limitations, continue to strive for sustainable forest management over the pandemic period. It is something the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust Director has seen among her staff.

“We have national park rangers who decided they were still going out in the field, they were still working, they put on their masks and went out because they really believe that their work is very important, in terms of protecting the forests, trying to reduce clearing by farmers, both large and small scale, at a time like this when our water supply is even more critical and we need to maintain our forests,” said Otuokon.

The UNFF expert group is meeting from Jan. 19 to 21, to discuss the findings of the assessment.

 

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The post Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on the World’s Forests appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

A global assessment commissioned by the UN Forum on Forests concluded that COVID-19 has affected forests across the globe – hurting ecotourism, impeding conservation efforts and in some parts, crippling forest management budgets. But the authors are optimistic that the role of forests in post-pandemic recovery has never been clearer

The post Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on the World’s Forests appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Joe Biden takes the oath of office as the 46th President of the United States. Credit: Twitter.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jan 21 2021 (IPS)

What for Donald Trump was an insult, for Joe Biden is an acknowledgment: the new president of the United States is the establishment in its purest form. No other similar case is remembered of having reached the presidency with a better preparation. For almost half a century he has been “inside the beltway.” It is the sector occupied by the District of Columbia, which claims to be recognized as a state, surrounded by a huge highway. Biden would be perfectly accepted as a traffic guard, without passing the exam.

But as he will settle at his desk in the Oval Office, as soon as he would open the folders smeared by the previous White House tenant, he will be horrified. The agenda that awaits him is a challenge for the innate ritualism of the perennial senator from Delaware. But he won’t be daunted by the task.

He has a paradoxical advantage over his predecessor: Biden is a good loser. A similar case of enthusiasm in betting on the presidency is not detected in recent memory. He has been rejected in previous attempts for the nomination of his party.

On the domestic agenda, Biden must try to clarify the current state of America’s everlasting and elusive identity. Never since Huntington’s suicide attempt by applying his thesis of the clash of civilizations to the core of American identity, no one has inflicted a similar wound to the American soul.

Joaquín Roy

Biden will have to correct the doubt that to be a citizen of the United States you only need to want to be. Trump dangerously questioned it. To verify this nonsense, you only have to inspect the data of the vast majority of the assailants in Congress. That impression is also replicated by a global portrait of an uncomfortable majority of Trump’s more than 70 million voters.

The United States, which is an idea, not a country, must be resurrected by Biden. Trump acted like some kind of evil prince who kissed a sleeping witch. Biden will return her to eternal sleep. In turn, he will choose to rescue from kidnapping the beautiful princess who was silent for four years.

As it will be seen through the rest of the impeachment process, Biden must ensure internal security with a balanced message of toughness against any violation of the law. Leaving a crass example of insurrection unpunished would be a fatal mistake.

To straighten the nature of the social fabric, once and for all, Biden will do well to fulfill his project of facilitating the passage to legal residency and citizenship for the millions immigrants in limbo. They are already within the country.

A different problem is how to deal with the ones who are opting for desperate marches towards the border. Biden will have to made deals with Mexico to cooperate.

Ironically, this pressure from immigration is at the same time the given certification of the strength of the United States. The minute no one would like to migrate to the heart of the country, the United States would cease to exist.

Looking at the prospects for the 2022 election, Biden will have to lead his strong electorate in order to make the current results in Congress and Senate to consolidate and grow. It will depend on the perception that the new measures that have been implemented are not lost.

Abroad, as part of the swift return to multilateralism, Biden must accelerate the recovery of sidelined officials in the State Department. At the same time, he will have to replace the multitude of directly appointed ambassadors by true professionals. In this diplomatic terrain, Europe must be given urgent priority.

The external face of the United States must send a clear message to Putin that the courtship with Trump is over. For Washington, the message should be that cooperation with the European Union and the consistency of NATO are above personal whims. Biden will also have to end the ambiguity about the relationship with the uncomfortable medieval Arab monarchies. Same about the support for the current Israeli government. China should receive a clear message.

In Latin America, Biden will have to proceed with caution. If the new wave of “pink” regimes is confirmed, driven by the disgust of the electorates in the face of government disasters, crime and corruption, Biden would do well to treat each case individually.

It is not ruled out that he will proceed to toughen the relationship with Venezuela, but he will probably choose to a subtle reestablishment of Obama’s policy towards Cuba. The hardening of attitude towards Havana generally reinforces the tough reaction of the Cuban government. The result is that the most affected continue to be the long-suffering Cuban citizens.

And if Biden does not succeed in some of those chapters of the busy schedule, as a “good loser”, he will take note and opt to correct the defects and end successfully his presidency. And then – why not? – opt for a re-election, or at least hand over the power to Kamala Harris.

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