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Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of COVID-19 public health lockdowns in China. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2021 (IPS)

China must end its campaign against individuals seeking redress for COVID-19 linked abuses and the human rights lawyers and activists who help them, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said as reports ranging from allegedly trapping them inside their homes, to chaining alleged lock-down violators to metal posts emerge.

This comes as the World Health Organisation team has arrived in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the outbreak and just as China announced today, Jan. 14, its first COVID-19-related death in 8 months.

In a statement last week, the New York based rights group said that “under the pretext of COVID-19 lockdowns”, Chinese authorities unleashed cruel measures against its citizens. HRW said the government is attempting to silence its critics, through surveillance, intimidation and lengthy prison terms.

HRW China Researcher Yaqui Wang told IPS that governments and the international community should apply pressure on the Chinese government to end the abuses.  

Yaqiu Wang is a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. Courtesy: Human Rights Watch

Inter Press Service (IPS): You cited international human rights law, which dictates that state restrictions due to public health needs must be lawful, necessary and proportionate. Based on reports on the ground, are restrictions in China flouting those conditions?

Yaqiu Wang (YW): Right. There were measurements undertaken by the Chinese government that seemed to be unnecessarily harsh and failed to respect human dignity. For example, officials were seen sealing apartment doors to prevent people from leaving their homes.

Some residents were chained to metal posts for purportedly violating stay-at-home orders. Videos circulated online showed residents yelling from their homes in despair. In Xinjiang, authorities forced some residents to drink traditional Chinese medicines.

According to international human rights law, when quarantines or lockdowns are imposed, the authorities are obligated to ensure access to food, water, health care, and care-giving support.  Yet, during the Wuhan lockdown, you saw on the Chinese internet many chilling stories: A boy with cerebral palsy died because no one took care of him after his father was taken to be quarantined. A woman with leukemia died after being turned away by several hospitals because of concerns about cross-infection. A mother desperately pleaded to the police to let her leukemia-stricken daughter through a checkpoint at a bridge to get chemotherapy. A man with kidney disease jumped to his death from his apartment balcony after he couldn’t get access to health facilities for dialysis. 

Bear in mind, these stories are just the tip of the iceberg given the stringent censorship people in China are living under. Information critical of the government is swiftly removed. More often than not, people don’t even bother to voice their criticism or tell their stories knowing they could be punished.

IPS: You expressed concern about human rights abuses being carried out under the guise of public health lockdowns. What are some of the ways citizens say they are being intimidated?

YW: For example, in the name of cracking down on false information about the pandemic, the authorities have detained hundreds, if not thousands, of people for “rumour-mongering,” censored online discussions of the epidemic, curbed media reporting, and imprisoned citizen journalists.

IPS: How concerned are you about surveillance tactics that intercept citizens’ communications platforms? Are you worried that citizens will be afraid to come forward and voice any concerns?

YW: That is now the digital reality of people living in China. Whatever you say publicly on Chinese social media or privately through Chinese messaging apps is open for the Chinese government to see. If you criticise the government, even privately, you can be harassed, or worse, imprisoned. The perhaps more pernicious effect is that knowing the risks, many choose to self-censor. 

The fear permeates the Chinese society, long existed before the pandemic.

IPS: You stated that residents also fear detainment and harsh punishments, including lengthy prison sentences if they speak out. Are those fears founded on hearings taking place during the pandemic?

YW: Since the outbreak in Wuhan, authorities detained several citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan. A court in Shanghai sentenced Zhang Zhan to four years in prison after convicting her of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The situation and whereabouts of Fang Bin, a businessman in Wuhan who has been detained for posting videos of city hospital, remain unknown. Beijing-based activists Chen Mei and Cai Wei, whom the police detained in April for archiving censored COVID-19-related information, remain in a detention center awaiting trial.

IPS: Are there measures in place to assist citizens who do come forward, but would require some level of anonymity in reporting grievances?

YW: It has actually become very difficult. One the one hand, many securer communication tools, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, are banned in China. It is increasingly difficult to circumvent censorship and obtain secure communication because unauthorised VPNs are increasingly banned in China. So, people are left to use domestic apps, and these apps are heavily surveilled and censored. For example, all WeChat accounts are attached to a phone number which is attached to your national ID card. The Chinese government has pretty much eliminated anonymity in the Chinese digital space. 

IPS: You are calling for an end to intimidation and surveillance of those critical of the government’s COVID response. Bearing in mind the realities on the ground in China, are you hoping that, at the very least, you can shed light on what is going on?

YW: Yes, so people outside of China are aware of the abuses going on inside China. We hope governments and the international community can put pressure on the Chinese government to cease the abuses.

 

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President Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By H.L.D. Mahindapala
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan 14 2021 (IPS)

Democracy is fragile. It is more fragile that the window panes of the Congress that were smashed by the mob unleashed by President Donald Trump. It is the ultimate symbol of the desecration of American democracy.

The world watched in horror as the misinformed, misguided, politically driven mob went berserk destroying not so much the material that stood in their way but the fundamental values of the holiest shrine of democracy that came crumbling down with not a single guardian of the law in sight to stop it.

It was a sad spectacle. A delusional Trump, who refused to accept the grim realities facing him, tried every trick in the book to retain power which he had lost. The voters told him to go. The courts told him to go – 62 times, sometimes by judges appointed by him.

The states which he tried to bully told him to go. Some of his best friends and advisers told him to go. He didn’t budge. He believed fanatically in his narrative that his victory was stolen by Biden. His perennial penchant to wallow in his own lies was pathological.

When all his legal and political tactics failed, he tried violence. He instigated the mob and told them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue because “we can never get back our country with weakness”. His legal side-kick, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd that there should be a “trial by combat”.

The veiled messages were quite transparent. Like Hitler, Trump made use of the democratic processes and democratic institutions to undermine the very foundations of democracy. His power was in manipulating the racist slogan of “Making America Great” which meant reinforcing the power of the White Supremacists.

He was aided and abetted by the Right-wing racist media, particularly the media run by “Uncle Rupey” Murdoch – a favoured guest at Mar-a-Lago club owned by Trump. His media lackeys at Fox News – Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson etc.,– have been blind devotees of Trumpism. They white-washed and justified every move made by Trump, even the violence unleashed at the Congress.

Buoyed by the adulation of his followers (72 million voted for him) he once told a campaign rally : “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I would not lose voters.” His meteoric rise cast a spell on America. His White nationalism swept across America, from coast to coast, making him a folk hero.

He rose to be the new symbol of America. The grassroot forces were rallying behind him with a fervour not seen before. He resonated with their aspirations and their hates.

So, when the voters turned against him it shattered his own beliefs. He had vested so much of faith in his own powers that he refused to face the reality. He began with a bang.

His idiosyncratic style that mesmerised the base of the Republican Party made him the most formidable force overnight. The message went along with it with his brash style. Together they galvanised the broader base of White America. He created a new political culture with his incessant tweets, political messages, aimed at creating (successfully!) an alternative reality.

The traditional conservatives who ruled the Republican Party lost their grip. He became the Republic Party and the stalwarts fell in line behind him. The power he acquired overnight was intoxicating and also toxic. Trumpism was the ideology worshipped by his Republican and non-Republican loyalists.

He became law unto himself and he believed, quite seriously, that he was “the chosen one”, the messiah sent to save America and the world. He believed in his mystical power to overcome all obstacles, including Corona virus which he did thanks to the specialist services of the military hospital.

His garish theatrics on the international stage too enhanced his stature at the base. He was relying solely on his base. All what he did was mainly to impress and consolidate his base and he believed that he was invincible as long as the base was with him. He became a one-man band. It as the college-educated, sophisticated urban voters that rejected him.

In the end, the big man was brought down by a small bug : Coronovid-19. He lost his glamour with each death. Lost in the myths of his own invincible powers – he referred constantly to whatever he did as the greatest in history — he thought he could ride over the pandemic by dismissing it lightly as another kind of flu.

But the menacing virus caught up with him and made him pay for his idiocy. His anti-science, anti-minorities, anti-climate change, anti-internationalism, pro-authoritarian regimes were a medley of policies that he could sell to his base with applause. But the educated class was running away from him. The rural areas stuck with him in the last election. But the sophisticates revolted.

All told, he found himself drifting away too far from the mainstream. The more he drifted away the more he lost touch with reality. He refused to recognise the new realities sprouting under his feet and destabilising him. He fancied that he had the power and the following to go against the will of the people. Like all authoritarian figures he was hoping to rewrite history in his own fashion. But after going along with him initially, after taking a few steps with him for a short while, history turned against him.

In the end he brought down the great Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and reduced it to zilch. He did a Ranil Wickremesinghe. He lost the Presidency. He lost the House. And he lost the Senate. He lost even his most loyal aide who stood by him throughout his troubled reign, Mike Pence, the Vice-president.

He was stepping out too far from the traditional, acceptable framework that held America together. Most of all, he divided the formidable Right-wing of America. Brining the Right-wing under his leadership will be the biggest headache for the Republicans.

His success or failure in the opposition will depend on his ability to unite the Right-wing forces under his wing. After the failure of his attempted “coup” it is doubtful whether he could rally the Right around him. He lost his spell in the debacle at the Congress. He can never live it down. It will haunt him for the rest of his days.

He has alienated practically everyone except, perhaps, his family. Today he is a lonely man nursing his emotional wounds. His only escape route is to blame everyone else for his fall, created by his own self-destructive strategies.

But it is too early to write him off. He will not walk out of the White House as a dead man. He still has some clout in his base. In his own way, he has radicalised American politics. He has injected a new strain of hate into the liberal political culture of America. It is just not his version of Munroism trying to make America Great in isolation from within.

His inward-looking view is not mere navel gazing. He has touched and livened the raw nerve of America that was buried deep in its culture. He represents that side of America which is brash, rash, garish, loud, vigorous, inward-looking, narrow-minded and ready to break through all obstacles even if it means doing it the crude way.

In a sense – and without meaning to demean the genius of Walt Whitman – he represents the athletic, energetic, confident power of Whitmanasque America that was ready to break through all obstacles in its predatory explorations of conquering the wild west, destroying civilisations, devastating the pristine glory of untouched nature and polluting every inch of land, lakes and loftiness filled with pure air in its virgin state.

He had no idea of the other side of America : the tender, sensitive, caring, cultured, quiet world of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Thoreau. He was the farthest away from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath – the great American classic that idealised the socialist society. Donald Trump stood only for one man: Donald Trump. America has never seen the likes of him ever before. And it is not likely to see another one soon. But he leaves behind a menacing legacy: he has sown the seeds of American fascism to grow in the declining years ahead.

America after Trump will trend towards more violence. It can be a dangerous place as seen by Trump’s behaviour of encouraging the mob to march down Pennsylvanian Avenue. Trumpism is the first manifestation of all the organised crudities of the red-necked White Supremacists which have deep roots in America.

The rise of Trumpism has been the triumph of Right-wing proto-fascists who have been struggling underground to capture power within the liberal framework of the great democratic laboratory of the world. It exploits of the political and social fears of this deep layer of American society.

The promise of making America Great has been a marketable euphemism to enthrone the power of the White Supremacists. The power Trumpism lies in this hidden agenda.

Trump is the personification of all the crudities of this sub-layer of the American political culture. He is the absolute opposite of Barack Obama, the refined, cultured, symbol of finesse that has given a shine to the best in the American political tradition.

The way he and his family conducted themselves in the White House was comparable to the aristocratic Kennedys who raised a new wave of hope to America and the world. After Obama the fall of America into the hands of Trump is like the fall of Adam into the disastrous temptations of the Snake in the Garden of Eden. Adam also fell when he became a Trump – “a pussy-grabbing” rake.

Is he an aberration? Yes and no. He is an aberration because he is the first of his kind. But America has the potential to produce many more Trumps. He must be considered as a pathfinder for the deep roots of American authoritarianism that has been lying untapped all these years.

He is the maverick who dared to come up from outside and take over the establishment giving respectability and acceptability to the hidden roots of American authoritarianism that was waiting for a leader. He has captured the minds of rural base and psychologically terrorized the American Right, including the elite in the Republican Party leaders.

Mick Romney and the late John Cain are two leading Republican who had the guts to challenge him. But the rest are hedging their bets. They are scared that with his political clout in the Republican base he could tip the scales in their electorates with his approval or disapproval at the next election.

He will still remain as a force — but a divisive force in the Right. Of course, there is a chance that he will be the first president of America to go to jail. The string of charges is so numerous that under the law of averages he is bound to be convicted on at least one of them, according to legal experts.

This will be his biggest nightmare. But the Right-wing of America will not let him die. His legacy that came from the embedded right-wing extremists will go underground and pose a serious threat to Joe Biden. He has the backing of the heavily armed Oath Keepers, Proud Boys who have vowed to fight if Trump loses. He has also dodged condemning the KKK, neo-Nazis, anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-feminist, anti-gay and the minorities who are favoured by the liberal left. They are his backbone.

He will survive in their hearts and minds and will mobilise their forces to bring him back in 2025, if they can. With his political clout in the base, he still could influence the outcome of Congress and Senate electoral results. So, even the Right-wing establishment will be in a dilemma not knowing how to handle him.

But hold on for a minute. I must add the latest news. The 5 a.m. news (Saturday morning) says that Twitter has chopped off Trump’s right hand. For the first time Twitter has permanently – I repeat permanently – suspended his account “due to risk of further incitement of violence.” This could paralyse – at least temporarily – Trump who claims that he has a following of 88 million twitters.

He has relied on it so much that he had dismissed the mainstream media as irrelevant. He called them the “fake news” and ridiculed them because he could dish out his narrative to his loyal followers through Twitter. Now he is faced with a communication problem. His success depended solely on manipulating the news.

Along with Twitter Facebook and Instagram he ran his own news programs. Now all three have cut him off. His lies gained currency mainly through Twitter. Furthermore, twittering has been his main job when he is not watching television, or playing golf. Now he is a loner, well and truly.

On top of this big blow comes the news that the Republicans are breaking ranks to attack him. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has openly called for the resignation of the President. Lindsay Graham, one of his loyal followers, stood on the floor of the Senate, after the mob attack, and said : “It’s over. The election is over. It’s over.” If Sen. Graham thought the issue was over he was wrong. Trump’s angry loyalists mobbed him at the airport and shouted: ”Traitor! Traitor!”

The worst is the move from both sides of the House to impeach Trump. He has set another precedent of being the first President to be impeached twice. Evidence of the President inciting the mob to unleash violence too is mounting. Sen. Mike Lee has recorded that at 2.26 p.m. when the mob was running berserk Trump had asked him to object to the certification of the electoral votes.

Even at that critical moment he was obsessed with the overturning of the election result. Legal experts say that, in the middle of the biggest security threat to the Congress, he was not concerned as the Commander-in-Chief about the security and law and order of the nation but his own fortunes.

The task before Joe Biden is monumental. America is a patient dying at the new rate of 20,000 a week now. That is the latest figure for the first week of January. Trump, the Grim Reaper, is the first President who leaves behind a legacy of burying the second highest number of Americans since the Civil War which claimed 600,000 victims. Trump has passed 300,000 mark.

Mercifully, he has agreed to depart peacefully after desecrating the sacred political temple enshrined in the American Constitution – the Holy Bible that guides America.

The last gamble of Trump was to resort to violence. That backfired on him. Even the Republican ranks, who were lukewarm, were shocked by the physical threat that endangered their lives inside the Congress. Hopefully, he will depart without causing any havoc between now and Janaury 20 – the inauguration day.

Joe Biden has his job cut out for him. He has to heal, repair, patch up, bandage, operate, and keep America in a nursing home until she recovers fully. To do that, he may have to go for a New Deal of the Rooseveltian type. Hopefully he may not have the need to sack the Supreme Court which obstructed Roosevelt’s deal to serve the people.

Fortunately, Trump, with his swagger and bluster in the last rally in Georgia, removed the main political obstruction that was in Biden’s path when the Republicans lost the two Senate seats. Biden now has the presidency and both houses of Congress in his hands though the razor thin margin is still dicey.

In the post -Corvid-19 phase, the American mood will be amenable to accept Rooseveltian “socialism”. Lifting the victims of the pandemic and poverty will strike a chord in the heart of America. Law-makers from both sides of the Congress will find it difficult, morally and politically, to say no the urgent needs of victims of Trump.

Trump will continue to make the headlines. Biden will have to look after the breadlines.

Initially there won’t be much of an opposition from the Right-wing which is discredited. Their fear-mongering with cries of “communism” and “socialism” will not have the same impact as that of McCarthy – another lying Goebbels. The post-Corvid-19 phase needs compassion not fear. Biden is expected to walk in the footsteps of Obama, particularly in healthcare.

The pandemic has created the right political climate for restoring the Obama care program. Biden has all the tools necessary to lift America from the depths of Trumpist disasters. He can’t lose because he has no other path to follow other than the compassionate route to recovery.

 

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The post America’s Descent into Depths of Disastrous Trumpism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

H.L.D. Mahindapala is a Sri Lankan journalist who was Editor, Sunday Observer (1990-1994), President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991-1993) and Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1994).

The post America’s Descent into Depths of Disastrous Trumpism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A wind energy generation plant located in Loiyangalani in northwestern Kenya. The plant is set to be the biggest in Africa, generating 300 MW. This renewable energy project was supported by the African Development Bank. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Jan 13 2021 (IPS)

2021 is going to be critical, not only for curbing the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, but also for meeting the climate challenge.

But as Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) was clear to point out, the climate challenge is essentially an energy challenge. And as large polluters continue to commit to targets of net zero emissions by 2050, the world could — in theory — potentially address the climate challenge.

“The energy that powers our daily lives our economies also alone produces about 80 percent of global emissions,” Birol noted while addressing the virtual COP26 Virtual Roundtable on Clean Power Transition earlier this week on Jan. 11.

And as the UN plans to focus on building a global coalition for carbon neutrality by the middle of this current century, there will be increased focus and a push towards providing clean, renewable energy to all by 2030.

Clean and renewable energy was the focus of discussion of this weeks COP26 Virtual Roundtable on Clean Power Transition.

Birol said the good news was that China, the European Union, UK and Japan have ambitious 2050 net zero emission targets. He said he was positive that once he took office, United States President Elect Joe Biden would make similar commitments and other major developing nations may join. The joint global emissions by the current countries committed to the net zero emission targets amount to 60 percent of the world’s emissions.

“The issue is how to transform these ambitions into real energy action,” Birol said. He said in light of this the IEA was going to introduce the world’s first roadmap to net zero emissions by 2030, scheduled to be released on May 18 so that it can be used for input for COP26.

The roadmap will outline how the world needs to transform the energy sector, how much investment is needed and what needs to be done to reach the target and “provide a concrete plan for all of us”.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, also addressed theCOP26 Virtual Roundtable on Clean Power Transition, saying that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, an urgent transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy was needed but also that developing countries needed to supported with this shift.

Noting the figures of some 789 million people across the globe without access to electricity — the majority of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, Guterres said that while all nations need to be able to provide electricity to all, this energy needed to be “clean and renewable so it does not contribute to the dangerous heating of our planet”.

According to the IEA, while the number of people without access to electricity has decreased over past years — with some two-thirds of the world’s progress occurring in India “where the government announced that more than 99 percent of the population had access to electricity in 2019, thanks to the ambitious Saubhagya Scheme launched in October 2017” — reaching a low in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed past gains particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Sub-Saharan Africa, home to three-quarters of the global population without access to electricity, has been particularly hard hit, and recent progress achieved in the region is being reversed by the effects of the pandemic: our first estimates indicate that the population without access to electricity could increase in 2020 for the first time since 2013,” IEA states in its SDG7 Data and Projections report.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, co-chair of UN-Energy, and co-chair of the COP Campaigns Energy Transition, said it would be impossible to achieve zero emissions without delivering sustainable energy to all.

“We have to make something clear. The energy transition story is also the energy access story, especially in Africa. We must recognise that we cannot achieve net zero emissions by 2050 without delivering sustainable energy for all by 2030,” she said.

Ogunbiyi, who was the first female Managing Director of the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency, went on to say that 2021 was a pivotal year for Sustainable Development Goal 7 which focuses on access to affordable and clean energy for all.

She said with less than 10 years to go on the SDGs, the world must “now turn towards supporting bold and ambitious plans that will deliver impact at scale to help achieve SDG 7 by 2030”.

Dr Akinumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), which is also a member of the COP26 energy transition council, outlined what the bank was doing in support of energy transition across the African continent.

Adesina acknowledge that Africa had the lowest levels of access to energy in the world with 570 million people without electricity.

“The challenge for Africa is simple. Africa has so little electricity. This presents a real opportunity to build reliable, affordable and sustainable energy systems for Africa,” Adesina said. He said this is one of the reasons why the bank had launched the Light Up and Power Africa project as one of its High 5 priorities for transforming the continent. Since 2015 the bank has provided electricity for 16 million people by focusing mainly on renewable energy, Adesina said.

Indeed, his comments comes as just last week the AfDB announced it would roll out a second giant electricity-generation project this time in the the Sahel. The first, largest solar power project in the world is funded by the bank and based in Morocco.

The bank stated that the Desert-to-Power project — which covers 11 countries from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, and includes the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — when completed, “will turn the Sahel into one of the largest solar-power-generating areas in the world”. The AfDB went on to state that the $20-billion programme “aims to produce 10 gigawatts of electricity by 2025, providing 250 million people with power, of whom at least 90 million will be connected to the electricity grid for the first time”.

“The bank has been at the forefront of transformative renewable energy projects in Africa, including large-scale concentrated solar power projects, in Morocco…which are the largest in the world, the wind to power project which is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said, adding that the AfDB would no longer support coal projects.

“Unlocking that renewable energy future will ensure that we have a clean Africa, however, there are some challenges,” he said, explaining that this included the intermittency of solar and wind, the need for baseload power for grid stability, and the prohibitive costs of energy storage with policy and regulatory environments for renewable energy.

Adesina said the bank expected to invest $10 billion over the next five years in the energy sector.

Meanwhile Ogunbiyi  highlighted the importance of commitments as well as their financing and technical support for successful transition to renewable energy.

“Both the COP26 campaign and the UN high-level dialogue on energy need to be mutually reinforcing, just as energy access and energy transition are support another,” Ogunbiyi said. She said that the UN energy compact — an outcome of the UN high-level dialogue on energy — would be where countries can pledge their new ambitious commitments on sustainable energy in writing.

As member states, organisations, countries and cities sign up to the UN energy compacts, Ogunbiyi said it was critical that the international community rally around these commitments and support them with financing and technical assistance.

Meanwhile, Birol said critical to achieving net zero emissions was bringing the world’s countries together and providing momentum within an international context.

COP26 will be hosted by the United Kingdom and held in Glasgow, Scotland Nov. 1 to 12 and could provide the impetus for this momentum.

The UK announced the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme — a £38 million fund that will focus on supporting developing nations transition to green energy.

Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, Commissioner for Energy and Infrastructure at the African Union said the that 900 million people in Africa depended on charcoal and firewood for cooking.

“This is not only an economic problem but mainly a moral issue and cause,” Abou-Zeid said.

Indeed the access to energy is also about human rights.

Last September, Ogunbiyi led a panel at the UN Global Compact’s Uniting Business Live event, where Chebet Lesan, founder of renewable energy startup BrightGreen discussed how their work in providing renewable cooking energy to vulnerable communities across Kenya and East Africa was impacting on a basic human right.

BrightGreen recycles post harvest waste, waste left on farms after harvesting, and then processes the waste into fuel that is easily adaptable by customers.

“They don’t need much change in behaviour in switching cost because the customers we are dealing with are very risk adverse and very money tight,” Lesan explained.

She said in response to a question on how to accelerate energy services to Africa, she said a key indicator was how good energy access services improved the lives of people in Africa.

“We are beginning to understand that as much as we are in the cooking energy space, our work is directly impacting the most basic human rights, even outside energy,” Lesan had said.

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Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS.

By Esther Ngumbi
Jan 13 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and disrupted food systems and food supply chains in developed and developing countries alike. In the United States, millions of Americans struggle to put food on the table. Around the world, according to the United Nations over 270 million are hungry, and this is expected to continue to increase. 

As a brand new year begins, I can’t help but think what must be done to mitigate these worrying trend?

First and foremost, there should be continued monitoring of the food insecurity statistics. Real time data to know where food insecurity is highest, and interventions are needed the most should continue to be collected by agencies like United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, Feeding America, United Nations World Food Programme.

Collecting real time data and using data intelligence to tackle food insecurity can be extended to cover the entire agricultural food chain-from production, distribution, processing, supply and consumption

Moreover, collecting real time data and using data intelligence to tackle food insecurity can be extended to cover the entire agricultural food chain-from production, distribution, processing, supply and consumption.

As an example, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has real time mapping platform that shows production, distribution, processing and consumption within Maryland’s food system via its Maryland Food System Map Project.  Around the world, the United Nations World Food Programme continues to track and monitor hunger and food insecurity through its real time HungerMap.

In the end, this kind of real time collected data should be used to identify gaps. In addition, insights obtained should be used to inform decision makers in country governments, nonprofit institutions, food banks and other people responsible for designing programs and policies to address food insecurity in 2021 and beyond. In the long-term, data obtained from real time mapping of food insecurity can be used to distribute food more equitably and reliably.

Accompanying data and on the ground reality should be the continuation of actions that have proven to be critical in 2020 in efforts to address hunger. Throughout 2020, Feeding America and many foodbanks and food pantries have stepped up to the challenge of feeding everyday people.

It is important that they are restocked and the people working there enumerated well. Restocking foodbanks can be achieved through government funding and donations by businesses and individuals who are in a position to do so.

Among the strategies that proved important in 2020 were home and community gardens. These gardens flourished for the best part of the year across many states, with many people venturing into planting their own gardens. In 2021 and beyond, citizens who want to garden come spring should be encouraged and supported with resources and knowledge about how to successfully grow the crops they choose to.

Luckily, many states have Land-Grant Universities such as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Purdue University that can assist through the Cooperative Extension Service.  As such, Universities should find ways to unpack useful and guiding knowledge in formats that can easily be used by citizens as they look to start gardening.

Consistently, throughout the pandemic, many citizens relied on local food solutions and their local farmers and producers to meet their food needs. Moving on in 2021, everyday people should continue to think locally whenever possible.

Of course, thinking locally when it comes to meeting food insecurity may not always be possible, especially with food deserts in many under-resourced areas and with usually higher prices at farmers markets.

Finally, there is room for more innovative solutions such as food dispensing ATM machines, food finding and food redistribution apps,   and as such, we should continue to look for solutions from food security experts and everyday people that are facing food insecurity challenge and highlight those that are making an impact.

Tackling food insecurity will continue to need all of us to step up. Every action, every strategy counts.

 

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 Can the World Tackle the Food Insecurity Crisis in 2021? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dignity factory workers producing garments for overseas clients, in Accra, Ghana. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Franck Kuwonu
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2021 (IPS)

African countries opened their markets on 1st January under the continental free trade agreement and duty-free trading of goods and services across borders is now underway despite the COVID-19 pandemic and other teething problems.

The new market, created under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement is estimated to be as large as 1.3 billion people across Africa, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $3.4 trillion. This has a potential of lifting up to 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty, according to the World Bank.

Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat

“This is not just a trade agreement, this is our hope for Africa to be lifted up from poverty,” said Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat, at the virtual launch event.

It is also expected to boost intra-African trade, promote industrialization, create job, and improve competitiveness of African industries on the global stage.

The pact will also empower women by improving their access to trade opportunities. Women make up the largest share of informal traders, representing 70 per cent to 80 per cent in some countries.

“Today is a historic day for Africa. In 1963 the founders of the Organization of African Unity had a vision of creating an Africa common market. The start of trading under the Africa continental free trade area today is an operational start towards the Africa common market. It has been a long journey of focus, determination and resilience,” said Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, at the launch.

He added that the common market brings real hope for inclusive and sustainable industrialization across Africa.

However, for a smooth rollout, countries have to agree on some of the remaining issues such as the Rules of Origin, which are a key element in international trade as they are the cornerstone of preferential trade arrangement such as AfCFTA.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) defines Rules of Origin as “the criteria used to define where a product was made” and are important for implementing other trade policy measures, including trade preferences (preferential rules of origin), quotas, anti-dumping measures and countervailing duties (non-preferential rules of origin). Duty and restrictions in several cases depend on the source of imports.

Countries that have ratified the AfCFTA agreement appeared to have agreed on the Rules of Origin on over 81 per cent of tariff lines.

As of today, Africa is in a position to start trading on over 81 per cent of products on preferential terms. These goods form part of the initial trading, while negotiations on the remaining 20 per cent are ongoing and are expected to be concluded by July 2021, according Faki.

But even as trading formally starts, the road to full implementation remains long. “It’s going to take us a very long time,” said Mene

“If you don’t have the roads, if you don’t have the right equipment for customs authorities at the border to facilitate the fast and efficient transit of goods… if you don’t have the infrastructure, both hard and soft, it reduces the meaningfulness of this agreement,” Mene told the Financial Times, before the launch.

Still, the promises of a free trade area are “transformative”.

The formal start of trading was given the official go-ahead at an extraordinary meeting in December 2020 where AU member states called on “women, youth, businesses, trade unions, civil society, cross border traders, the academia, the African Diaspora and other stakeholders to join them as governments in this historic endevour of creating the “Africa We Want” in line with the Agenda 2063.

The summit gave the official go-ahead for formal trade to start on the first day of the new year.

Over the years, regional economic community such as EAC, the ECOWAS and the SADC have tried to achieve these economic goals. The AfCFTA is set to bring these efforts together.

Franck Kuwonu

It was in 2012 that AU member States formerly agreed to usher in a continental free trade zone and gave themselves 5 years to achieve the goal. But it was only in February 2016, within a year of the initial deadline, that negotiations started in earnest.

Two years later in March 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda, the treaty was signed by 44 countries. So far, 36 countries have ratified the treaty as of 4 December 2020 (see table). It entered into force on 30 May 2019 and trading started on 1st January 2021. Was it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, trading would have started six months earlier in July 2020.

It took just under 5 years from negotiations to implementation. Just about the same number of years that was initially envisioned in 2012.

 

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Franck Kuwonu, Africa Renewal

The post Africa’s Free Trade Area Opens for Business appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Yard signs at polling place in South Phoenix. Credit: Peter Costantini.

By Peter Costantini
PHOENIX, Arizona, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

The Valley of the Sun is a vast, flat stretch of Sonoran Desert, etched by arroyos and studded with small, jagged peaks. It spans about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west to east and 40 miles (64 kilometers) north to south in south-central Arizona (the state that borders southern California to the east). After cruising through southward on one of the tangle of freeways that vein the expanse, we can leadfoot it another 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast to Tucson across much the same hardscape, only gradually gaining elevation. The saguaro cacti grow more thickly, but the higher cordilleras maintain a discreet distance most of the way.

Along Interstate 10, irrigated fields of alfalfa and cotton still unroll green corduroy out to the horizon. But if we could drive through time-lapse photography of the past half-century, farms and desert would be inexorably replaced by malls with supersized parking lots fed by seven-lane arterials.

Earth-toned subdivisions of single-story ranch houses with dirt or paved yards would sprout profusely, and in their driveways would throng hosts of one-ton, dual-rear-wheel pickup trucks with dazzling chrome grilles. Miles of warehouses and car dealerships would sprawl willy-nilly across the thorny aridity, leapfrogging over undeveloped tracts of sagebrush and gravel.

As the years passed, the flows of water in the irrigation canals that bring it to fields and houses and golf courses would dwindle, as the Colorado River and its tributaries were diverted to growing populations and agricultural valleys across the Southwest and California.

If we could watch the residents of those houses over fifty years, we might notice an increase in elderly snowbirds retiring southward to a warm place. More recently, refugees from California real-estate prices would appear. All along, we would see growing numbers of families who looked like they had come from south of the border – including quite a few whose ancestors had been here since before the border was there. (Of course if we could go back a few centuries, nearly all the residents would look a lot like them.)

Many of them would go out in the mornings to weed and harvest those green fields and build the houses and clean the hotel rooms and do the other back-torqueing work that turns the Valley’s wheels of commerce. If the time-lapse visuals had a soundtrack, their accents might migrate from sibilant norteño to Spanglish to Arizona twang. And in recent years, more of their kids would be going off to class at the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, or a community college.

The Valley of the Sun is still indisputably a warm place – that hasn’t changed. Phoenix, at its center, is the hottest city in the United States by some measures, with daily high temperatures averaging over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) from mid-May through mid-October. Last summer, the mercury peaked at 118 degrees (47.8 Celsius), and it has previously hit 122 (50 Celsius). From the air, slot canyons look like deep cracks in the earth through which you can almost glimpse the glow of the infernal brimstone below.

The politics, too, is hot enough to fry an egg on. And it’s contentious enough that the egg would probably end up scrambled.

View of downtown Phoenix across South Phoenix. Credit: Peter Costantini.

 

Cowboy conservatism: riding off into the sunset?

This year, Arizona flipped from Republican to Democratic in presidential and U.S. Senate races, and the Valley of the Sun led the way. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden squeaked by Republican President Donald Trump by 0.3 percent, roughly 10,500 votes, to win Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton by 3.5 percentage points in 2016, so the 2020 vote shifted nearly 4 points towards the Democrats. This turnround was driven in part by a nearly 10 percent increase in voter turnout over 2016, a significant part of it in Hispanic communities.

(Note: The U.S. president is elected by an electoral college system rather than by popular vote. Each state is assigned a number of electoral votes roughly proportional to its population. The candidate winning the most popular votes cast in a state, regardless of the margin, wins all of the state’s electoral votes – except in two states. In 2016 and 2000, the Republican candidate won the most electoral votes nationally and thus the presidency, but the Democratic candidate won the national popular vote.)

In the contest for a U.S. Senate seat, Democrat Mark Kelly comfortably defeated Republican incumbent Martha McSally by about 2.3 percentage points. In 2018, Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema had won Arizona’s other U.S. Senate seat, also against McSally.

Before that, Arizona had two Republican U.S. senators since 1994. This year, in another drift to the left with libertarian overtones, state voters legalized recreational marijuana by 60 to 40 percent. And by 3.5 percentage points, they approved a tax surcharge on high incomes to fund education, sponsored by the Democrats and teachers’ unions.

A big factor in this slippage of political fault lines has been the mobilization of the state’s growing Hispanic population and other communities of color by grassroots organizations, led by mostly young local organizers.

A time-lapse sequence of politics here would show Arizona’s leftward crossing of the electoral boundary this year as the culmination of a gradual trajectory away from cowboy conservatism towards political and ethnic diversity.

Before 2020, a Democratic presidential candidate had carried the state only once since 1948. In 1964, Arizona offered up as Republican presidential candidate Senator Barry Goldwater, a locked-and-loaded Cold Warrior well to the right of most of his party. His campaign was buried in a Democratic landslide by the incumbent president, Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The old Arizona’s rock-ribbed right projected its hegemony into this century, often coalescing around racist anti-immigration policies. In 2010, Arizona passed Senate Bill 1070, known as “the show me your papers law.” It required local police to stringently enforce immigration laws, even though immigration enforcement in the U.S. is a federal function.

Polls showed that the law was popular with conservatives, and five other states passed similar laws. Unsurprisingly, this led to racial profiling and harassment of those who appeared to be “Mexican”, and 100 thousand undocumented immigrants reportedly left Arizona.

The long-time sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, became a national conservative celebrity by encouraging his deputies to harass anyone they suspected of being immigrants. He also confined jail inmates in tents in 100 degree heat, forced male prisoners to wear pink underwear, and put some of them to work on chain gangs. “He was our Trump before Trump came along,” one Arizonan told me. In fact, after Arpaio’s 2017 conviction on criminal contempt, for ignoring a court order to end racial profiling of immigrants, Donald Trump granted his first presidential pardon to the former sheriff.

Over the past decade, Hispanic groups have grown strong by pushing back against the free-range bigotry and nativism of the state’s Republican establishment. They began with sit-ins at the state capitol against SB 1070, and eventually litigation by civil-rights groups that reached the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back or restricted most of the law.

In the electoral arena, their organizers engineered the recall of state legislator Russell Pearce, the law’s primary sponsor. Community advocates and victims sued Arpaio repeatedly, turning him into an expensive political liability for the county, and finally sealed his electoral defeat in 2016. These groups have also worked to defend asylum seekers, Dreamers, and undocumented immigrants against deportations and the many other depredations of the Trump administration.

Each election, community organizations have sent growing brigades of high-energy, bilingual high-school and college students out into their own residential neighborhoods and shopping districts to mobilize voters. They’ve also developed creative ways to reach potential voters online: for example, the non-profit Arizona Center for Empowerment runs a web site called Votería AZ that uses images and names based on the popular Mexican game Lotería, similar to Bingo, to engage voters to register and vote.

“One of our biggest programs is voter registration – it’s been front and center since SB 1070,” explained Fred Oaxaca, Data Manager of One Arizona, a coalition of these groups. “Every year thus far has always been the biggest voter registration that we’ve done.” When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, he told me in a video call, they wanted to keep all their people safe, so their operations had to pivot suddenly from “everyone out in the field to phones, texts and online.”

Pandemic restrictions hurt their field work, he acknowledges, but he considers their efforts successful nonetheless. Scanning a monitor, he says that in 2018, there were 617 thousand total registered Latinx voters, some 294 thousand of whom turned out to vote, around 47 percent. This year, 802 thousand Latinx voters were registered – an increase of 30 percent – and 375 thousand had voted just by mail-in ballot when we talked. When the final tally is published in February, including in-person and drop-off voting, he expects to see a big increase in total Latinx voter turnout.

A lawsuit brought by several community and civil-rights groups won a ruling obliging the state to move back its deadline for voter registration from October 5 to October 15. During this 10-day extension period, those groups registered an additional 35 thousand voters, according to Eduardo Sainz of Mi Familia Vota (My Family Votes), a national non-governmental organization headquartered in Arizona. If those votes hewed to the roughly two-to-one Democratic ratio of the statewide Hispanic vote, they would have provided an advantage of around 10 thousand votes, roughly the margin of Biden’s Arizona victory.

Over the course of the campaign, coalitions of community groups said, they rang 1.15 million doorbells and made 8 million phone calls to mobilize voters of color across Arizona. Turnout for Latinx, Black and Native American voters all increased substantially this year over 2016, a coalition spokesman told Rafael Carranza of the Arizona Republic.

Alejandra Gomez of Living United for Change in Arizona, a coalition member, summed it up: “All of this was, I think, the perfect storm for our communities coming together and beginning to center all of our communities that had been really left out of the process, especially in Arizona.”

 

Promise Arizona’s get-out-the-vote truck, Phoenix. Credit: Peter Costantini.

Riders of the purple wave

Driving these political shifts from deep red to a bluish shade of purple are broader demographic transformations. Hispanic people have become the second largest racial or ethnic group in the U.S. after non-Hispanic whites, with 18.5 percent of the national population in 2019. With numbers up by nearly one-fifth since 2010, they are the second fastest growing race or ethnicity, after Asian Americans.

Out of Arizona’s population of 7.38 million people, 31.7 percent – nearly one-third – were Hispanic in 2019. Roughly 84 percent of Hispanic people in the state were of Mexican national origin. Hispanic voters now represent around 24 percent of the state’s eligible voters, up from 15 percent in 2000. The important role they played in this year’s electoral changes was reflected in exit polls: Arizona’s Hispanic voters cast 19 percent of the vote, giving Biden a 61 to 37 percent advantage over Trump, and Kelly a margin of 65 to 35 percent over McSally.

“The community of Mexican origin gave Joe Biden the victory in Arizona. And now the bill is coming due,” asserted commentator Jorge Santibáñez in the Los Angeles Times. Many needs of the community have been neglected for years, he wrote. “Joe Biden must not repeat the error of Obama, who promised immigration reform in his campaign, but never even proposed it. Biden won Arizona because of this community, and he needs to remember that.”

Ironically, some of the growth of the Hispanic electorate over recent decades came as a result of growing restrictions on migration. When Oaxaca’s parents emigrated from Mexico, he says, they never expected to stay here. “Their main goal was get here, make money, buy some land back in México, go back, build a house, live their lives.” Going back and forth was the norm then for Mexican migrants.

But that changed, he said, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the ensuing border enforcement clampdown. “9/11 placed a wall on the rotating door that was the border. It created a barrier to leap, so it became far more dangerous to travel here, to go in and out. So people stayed. And they wanted to keep building, to provide for their families that were still back there. That was a key factor for my family too.”

Some of those immigrants were able to become naturalized citizens and voters. Many of their children have now turned 18 and registered to vote. Quite a few have become organizers and leaders as well, as did Oaxaca. After going to college in California, he returned to Arizona to do movement work. “I grew up with a lot of these folks,” he said. “Politics is local: it starts with families. If you can’t change your home, why go elsewhere?”

“Ultimately,” Oaxaca said, “the goal here was eliminating the hateful policies from 10 years ago. It was a ten-year plan and we’re at 10 years. I’m excited to start proposing policy rather than preventing policy.” The point, for him, is to try to make direct changes in people’s lives to make them safer, “so folks don’t have to worry about whether or not they’re going to be able to pick up their kid from school. It’s a very big fear that people talk about, but it’s often a very simple thing.”

These days, One Arizona is looking beyond its Latinx base. “In the last 4 years,” Oaxaca explained, “we’ve been doing a very concerted effort on expanding our coalition. We’ve brought in Native American groups, Asian-Pacific Islander groups,” and organizations in the Black community.

Native Americans make up over 5 percent of Arizona’s population, one of the highest proportions of any state. “The tribal areas, especially the Navaho Nation, turned out at much higher rates, and we can clearly see that there was more enthusiasm and energy there. Being able to learn from them is really exciting, on how we do this work better, how we involve the community.”

“One of the things that makes us here in Arizona stand out is the makeup of the people doing the work and the leadership of it,” Oaxaca told me. “A lot of our staff are of color, and there’s a lot of younger executive directors.

There’s a wide mix that embodies a lot of what our communities look like. They continue to guide this ship, and continue to bring others into the fold. I started off as a 17 year old, now I’m a 25 year old who’s also in those rooms. It’s getting people engaged earlier, and those folks are going to be the next round of leaders who push new policies that they care about.”

These population tectonics are thrusting up a brave new political landscape: a majority-minority population in Arizona – with people of color outnumbering White people – by 2027, according to one estimate. For the whole U.S., the change is visible on the event horizon perhaps two or three decades out. This milestone is reportedly a bugbear of Trump’s immigration consiglieri, and it lights the tiki-torches of the ignorant armies of white supremacists.

Other changes in Arizona have put wind in the Democrats’ sails, including a fast-growing and increasingly progressive youth vote, much of it Hispanic, and increased support among suburban women. Another oft-cited local factor is the arrival of ex-Californians fleeing unaffordable rents and mortgage payments in the Golden State. Newcomers from other states also continue to arrive, often seeking year-round sun. Some conservative talk-show hosts fear that the newcomers carry viral loads of West Coast rad-lib tendencies.

Nevertheless, the old Arizona is not disappearing any time soon. Republicans held on to slim margins in both houses of the state legislature, and the governorship, held by a Republican, was not on the ballot this year. The Democratic shift in statewide races did not occur in many local contests.

How much of the presidential vote was against Trump, more than for Biden, remains an open question. Preliminary figures showed that Trump may even have gained a few percentage points among Hispanic men. Biden was boosted by an endorsement from Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain – former Republican Senator from Arizona and presidential candidate – who often clashed with Trump. And the new Democratic U.S. Senator, Mark Kelly, ran as a moderate and was already personally popular as a former astronaut and the husband of another widely-respected politician.

“Yes, I think [the Latinx] population will continue to grow,” Oaxaca told me. “But the demographic shift doesn’t define the destiny of the political sphere. The Latinx community is not a monolith. There’s a difference between me as first-generation compared to a third-generation Arizonan who’s been here for a long time.

On the political side, there’s a level of maturity that’s happened in the community, but also in the way they’re being looked at, given their growing potential and political power.” Maturity, he said, means continuing to push their agenda no matter who’s in the White House: “Don’t let them take us for granted, hold them accountable.” Political machines are starting to take note, he said, and this time “the Republicans have been trying to do a lot more to make inroads, because of an understanding that it’s not ‘one size fits all’.”

Volunteer at polling place handing out water to voters, Phoenix. Credit: Peter Costantini.

 

Showdown at the AZ corral

The old political Arizona lives on as well in small groups of “Latinos for Trump” at city polling places. And outside the state elections office in downtown Phoenix, where votes were being counted, hundreds of Trump supporters demonstrated for days. A week after Election Day they were still occupying a parking lot there.

Big banners portraying Trump as Rambo carrying a grenade launcher were unfurled next to clusters of American flags, and a variety of Make American Great Again and other Trump-themed merch was on sale. Alex Jones, the prominent conspiracy theorist, had made an appearance, and his truck was parked nearby. Sheriff’s deputies kept the proceedings out of the streets.

Mingling with the crowd were small clusters of solid types in tactical gear, open-carrying hefty, military-looking guns. I asked a stocky man with a Van Dyke beard wearing camouflage what he was afraid of if Biden became president. He covered his head and howled “The world is gonna end”, then smiled and said he was just joking.

Taxes would increase, he believed: “I don’t want to pay more taxes. I don’t want it to be mandated that if I don’t have medical insurance that I have to pay a fine. And I’m not giving up my guns, I don’t care what they say. I’m not an illegal person, I don’t break the law.”

Gesturing at his long gun, he said “Americans, this is us.” If Trump won, he said, “I would like to see some changes in the immigration department. I would like to see heavy funding for the police departments, and massive amounts of training. That might lead us to a better selection of police.

Like a Navy Seal – they don’t just walk out and be a Navy Seal after 286 hours of training. That’s years. There’s a lot of freedoms that’s been removed for us the American people over time by politicians. And it needs to back up. Big government is not good for no country.”

Most of his concerns seemed squarely in the Republican mainstream of the past half-century, begging the question of why someone would feel the need to carry guns to express them. I asked him what he was packing. He smiled: “By definition of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division, this is an AR-15 pistol.” The AR-15, though, is often categorized as a semi-automatic rifle. It has reportedly been used in several mass murders, and is a hot button in gun-control debates.

The pro-Trump demonstration was predominantly White, but two of the speakers were a young woman and a pre-teen-looking boy, both of whom could have been Hispanic or Native American. The young woman said she had worked in urban ministries in Phoenix, was very concerned about school choice, and had been a victim of human trafficking. The boy pumped his fist and yelled, “This is for the future generations! This is for the USA! We get to choose our future! And we vote Trump!” to loud applause.

On a corner across the street, a few dozen Biden and immigration-rights supporters, many of whom appeared to be Latinx, held a counter-demonstration with a Biden-Harris sign and a Mexican flag. Small groups of pro-Trump people crossed the street at one point to engage them, and a few camo-clad open-carriers shadowed them.

One MAGA supporter wearing a black motorcycle helmet brought over a bullhorn and harangued the opposing demonstrators point blank at full volume. Some other Trump supporters also seemed to be trying to intimidate the pro-Biden demonstrators. But most debated civilly, if heatedly, with people on the other side. The sheriff’s deputies watched but didn’t intervene.

At other times, however, Trump followers’ actions have reportedly been more menacing. At a previous demonstration there, a TV journalist said that she and her photographer had been threatened by Trump supporters and were filing a police report. A month after Election Day, the Arizona Republican Party reportedly asked on Twitter if its members were willing to die to overturn the outcome. And Katie Howe, the Arizona Secretary of State who ran the elections, announced she had received “escalating threats of violence” from Trumpists who believed the President’s spurious claims of electoral fraud. They picketed her home, chanting “We are watching you!” Howe, a Democrat, was widely praised for running impeccable elections despite the pandemic.

 

Faith in South Phoenix

Just a few miles from the political circus at the elections office, the new Arizona is flourishing in the predominantly Hispanic area of South Phoenix. To get there, we cruise down South Central Avenue, a main north-south drag currently hosting construction crews and orange barriers along parts of its median. A light-rail line from downtown will be transecting the heart of a very car-oriented community. Along with it could come a proposed big-box store, which is raising concerns among the neighborhood’s small businesses.

Along the avenue, a billboard hawks payday loans from “Tio Rico Te Ayuda” (“Rich Uncle Helps You”). Dollar stores rub elbows with Mexican restaurants and churches. Between Llantera Hispana, a tire outlet, and Annette Mayorga American Family Insurance, the storefront office of Promise Arizona greeted its community in October with a big sign in English and Spanish urging people to register to vote. It’s acronym, PAZ, means “peace” in Spanish.

Promise Arizona’s web site describes it’s philosophy: “We believe that building immigrant and Latino political power is key to bringing hope, dignity, and progress to our communities.” In pursuit of that goal, it has evolved into hybrid organization: community development group, cultural center, immigrant justice advocate, Latinx issues lobby, and voter mobilizer. Much of the group’s political effectiveness seems to derive from being embedded in the community and its culture with deep, multi-generational ties. Instead of an outsider from a political party knocking on your door, it could be the son or daughter of a friend, and the group may have helped a relative get a green card. Fundamentally, it’s community members working with community members to take care of their common needs.

Walking into its main meeting room on a given day, you might encounter an English class, a workshop on filling out citizenship forms, students learning how to navigate technology, a prayer vigil, or a voter-registration phonebank. Many of its meetings are conducted in Spanish. You might be welcomed warmly by Petra Falcon, the founder, executive director, and wise woman in residence. Earlier in life she was an organizer for the United Farm Workers Union. Now, besides serving as matriarch for five children and six grandchildren of her own, she has nurtured and mentored a new generation of up-and-coming leadership.

PAZ and other parts of the Arizona movement for immigrant justice were born out of a 103-day sit-in at Arizona’s state capitol opposing the repressive Senate Bill 1070. The group was also active in the coalition that successfully recalled the legislator who sponsored the bill, and the series of efforts that threw out racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Many of Falcon’s alumni have gone on to organizing and political careers.

A young man with a gentle voice wearing an ASU cap showed me around the PAZ office. Twenty-year-old Alexis Rodriguez is PAZ’s field director, as well as a junior at Arizona State University. He was recruited to activism by a young state senator, Tony Navarrete, who had been deputy director of PAZ. The lawmaker came into Rodriguez’s mainly White high school with his team – “it was a lot of Brown people, people like me, Latinos.”

They exchanged ideas with the students about potential solutions for decreasing gun violence, which piqued Rodriguez’s curiosity. He ended up doing an internship with Navarrete’s campaign, registering people to vote and collecting petition signatures. The student learned from the legislator about working for his community, “building up the economy in our district, creating more opportunities for our families. And now with COVID, he was able to bring in so many drive-through testing locations.”

While still in high school, the young organizer was inspired by a 2018 teachers’ walkout and strike. Thousands of teachers from around the state marched on the capitol in a sea of red T-shirts. Their movement was dubbed “Red for Ed”. Rodriguez agreed with the teachers that the public education for which he was grateful was woefully underfunded.

He organized some friends and classmates to drive down to the capitol to show support. “I ended up packing my truck with about 7 seats, another friend took her car with 5, a different car with another 4. When we found them, our teachers started clapping and cheering. And I’m like, ‘What’s this? We should be clapping and cheering for you guys.’ They’re taking this huge risk to make positive change.”

The teachers’ demand for better school funding finally met with success this year when voters passed an initiative to raise the state income tax on high incomes and dedicate the proceeds to education.

Navarrete introduced Rodriguez to Falcon, who took him on as an intern. PAZ was doing transit-oriented development work, canvassing the community about the impacts of the coming light-rail line, and Rodriguez began by collecting assessments from community members in the transit corridor.

In one corner of the meeting room, Rodriguez showed me a traditional Mexican altar for Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), which fell just before Election Day. “We created an ofrenda, inviting our relatives who have passed away to celebrate their lives with us.

And we provided them with tequila, with what they liked to eat, with pan de muertos (bread of the dead). We have pictures of family members, and marigolds (a traditional flower for ofrendas).” PAZ people lit candles and said rosarios for their dead.

Next to the ofrenda was a mosaic of la Virgen de Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint. PAZ members often pray to it, Rodriguez said. Across the room was another Virgin, a small statue. PAZ delegations have taken her with them on trips to Washington, DC, and Texas. “All across the nation,” he recalled, “she’s been through so much with us, and has seen all of the struggles of our family, and all of our wins and losses.”

PAZ, said Rodriguez, is “a faith-based organization. We focus a lot on prayer, and going into the culture of things.” It is not officially connected with any particular church, but “a lot of our community of Spanish speakers are Catholic.” The group has affiliations with different churches around Phoenix, providing information and doing immigration clinics for them.

A cloth wall hanging in the meeting hall reads: “PAZ – Promise Arizona. Faith. Hope. Vote.” PAZ has been deeply involved in electoral and political work since SB 1070. “For the past 10 years, every election has been important: we get involved in all of them,” Rodriguez said. PAZ registers, organizes and mobilizes the community on social issues and specific electoral campaigns. And this organizing has had an impact on his own family as well.

“My mom, she’s now a resident, but she emigrated from Guanajuato, México,” Rodriguez told me. “She’s the reason why I’m here, and why I have so much opportunity, and why I have the right to vote.” For 35 years, he said, she’s worked hard, now as a housekeeper for Hilton and a janitor at Walmart.

“Now, every time she sees me on the news, she gloats to her friends at church. She’s so happy that I’m fighting for her and our immigrant community as well. She’s very, very proud.” Of her 6 kids, he’s the first going to college. “She never had the space to talk about politics before, my dad too. Now it’s how we bond: we talk about politics and laws. It’s a whole new conversation.”

The dynamism of astute young organizers is at the heart of the new Arizona. They’re crunching data, organizing text banks, riding herd on social media, and training their field people to use online canvassing apps.

But their movement is also grounded in old-fashioned political tactics of feet on the street, even though the pandemic has slowed this work down. PAZ has a campaign pickup truck, a white half-ton festooned with flags and signs exhorting people to vote. It accompanies canvassers into neighborhoods and shopping malls, broadcasting music and messages. Manuel Gutierrez, a volunteer, proudly lent his camioneta to la causa and decorated it as a get-out-the-vote-mobile.

Voters entering polling place in South Phoenix. Credit: Peter Costantini.

 

Hope in Maricopa

PAZ’s electoral efforts focus on the South Phoenix area. It’s one of the main concentrations of Hispanic people, who make up 43 percent of the city’s population – although their percentage of the electorate lags. With 1.70 million inhabitants, Phoenix is the nation’s fifth largest city. It’s also the capital of the state and the county, and is home to more than a third of the county’s population.

Maricopa County, with 4.57 million inhabitants, contains 62 percent of the state’s population. Encompassing most of the urban and suburban areas in the Valley of the Sun, it dominates the politics and economy of Arizona. The state, county and city populations and economies are all growing at healthy rates. Hispanics make up 31.4 percent of the population, slightly lower than the statewide figure. But in the county, according to the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, “more than two thousand Latinos turn 18 every month and become eligible to vote.”

In 2020, Maricopa flipped from Republican to Democratic in the presidential vote. Since 1952, it had voted Republican each year, except for Bill Clinton in 1996. Biden carried the county by 2.2 percentage points, a swing of 5 points from Trump’s 2.8 point margin in 2016. The victory was powered by an increase of 300 thousand Democratic voters. County turnout was a record 80 percent, a level unmatched in the past century. (National turnout in U.S. presidential elections usually runs 50 to 60 percent; this year it was 66.7 percent, and Arizona’s was 65.9 percent).

Some of the increased turnout may have been suburban and rural Republicans turning out for Trump. And several mainly middle-class White areas of the city and suburbs flipped from Republican to Democratic. But a decisive part of the Democratic turnout growth seems to have been newly motivated Hispanic and young voters in the city, notably those fired up by the efforts of community groups.

An under-reported geographical trend, Fred Oaxaca observed, was the strong Democratic advance in Pima County, the state’s second largest, and its seat, Tucson, the second largest and most Democratic city. Tucson’s population, like Phoenix’s, is about 43 percent Hispanic, and many of the Hispanic community groups have branches there. “Pima saw a considerable consolidation of the vote,” he said. Biden won Pima by 18.7 percentage points, a margin of 97 thousand votes compared to Hillary Clinton’s 57 thousand vote margin in 2016.

 

Saddling up for the future

As it catches its breath after the electoral sprint, PAZ is beginning to think about the next ten years.

At the national level, Rodriguez said, the top priority is immigration reform. “Hopefully, Biden invites us to the table and is like, how can we provide immigration reform? And how can we provide a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients and their parents, our immigrant community.”

In South Phoenix, he said, “we’re really invested in developing affordable housing” with local partners. “We’ve done assessments here in the South Central Corridor, so we know people’s annual incomes and how much they pay for rent.” PAZ is particularly focused on providing housing for mixed-immigration status families, “where they can pay the rent, but maybe also provide some savings, so all the paycheck doesn’t just go for rent and utilities.” For PAZ, affordable housing is key to preventing gentrification due to development around the light-rail line and the proposed big box store.

During the pandemic, PAZ has helped people deal with unemployment, access emergency funds, and avoid utility shutoffs. The organizing around these issues that have been so critical in mobilizing the community, he said, will not slow down.

Away from the political hurly-burly and the sprawl, the original Arizona persists in the dry wash of the Salt River just south of downtown Phoenix. There, creosote and mesquite, ponds full of turtles, monarch butterflies and birdsong go on weaving tenacious webs of life. On Piestewa Peak, within the city limits, palos verdes still thrust taproots deep into the fractured ferruginous quartzite.

If we could do time-lapse imaging of the coming decade, odds are it would show, in the strip malls and the cul-de-sacs, rich social ferment continuing to fertilize new Arizonas on the Sonoran hardpan of the Valley of the Sun.

The post Flipping Arizona: Hispanic Movements Flex Political Muscles appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: White House.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

When the “year in which we lived dangerously” has ended, let’s ask about a “new era”, once the defeat of Donald Trump has been confirmed.

The new scene is presided by uncertainty. This sentiment is caused by damage caused by the Trump presidency. The only doubt is about the permanence of the disaster caused by the four-year period that is now ending.

Inserted in the context of satisfaction with the cessation of the nightmare, a prediction of a certain nostalgia is detected.

It is based on a strategy of confrontation in the face of what was labeled as the formation of a dictatorship within the oldest democracy in documented history. We wondered what we would do when we woke up. We were obsessed by a schedule filled by a single issue.

Some of us feared that in the supreme moment of expectation of the success of a confrontational strategy we would be reminded that in the panorama of importance and loneliness of questioning the irrational policy of the president we would be unfairly accused. Unusually, we had had an unwanted accomplice in the urgent eviction of the uncomfortable tenant from the White House.

We did not know how we could be grateful, so to speak, for the assistance of the pandemic that still grips the planet. The irrational behavior of the president in the successive stages of the Cobid19, its development, expansion and implantation throughout the planet, had become Trump’s worst enemy and the best ally of the opposition’s behavior.

Joaquín Roy

At the same time there was an awful sentiment consisting of the implantation of the virus and the consequent denial of Trump joining the efforts of the political opposition to achieve the defenestration, even if it was at the limit of his administration.

Every infected human being in the United States, plus every certified death, followed up by Trump’s erratic health policy, were recorded as “votes” in the tally of the November 3 election. The hope that Covid-19 would magically vanish overnight, as Trump himself surrealistically predicted in the early spring of 2020, would spell the demise of the towering enemy that had loomed over the White House.

Meanwhile, the opposition to the president in the apparent majority of the United States and in a universal proportion abroad were dedicating their efforts on an agenda exclusively full of reaction to each one of the president’s outrages. But there was an absence of a strategy with an agenda for “the day after”.

In the Democratic field there was no plan for the future. The discussion about the best candidates dragged on. That detail was not clarified until the decision in favor of Biden and Harris was done. In an environment reluctant to the formation of “kitchen cabinets” there was no government program to be implemented after 3 November.

In view of the poorly concealed feeling of insecurity, it was feared that one day it would be possible to exclaim with poorly concealed nostalgia: “against Trump we lived better.”

This expression has its origin in the thought that the Spanish Communist Party expressed at the time of the re-installation of democracy in Spain after the disappearance of the Franco regime.

Its precedent was the claim that the remnants of the regime put forward: “with Franco we lived better.” The communists, their reserved space was occupied by the neo-democrats, confessed that when they were in the opposition they had more effective power than in parliamentary democracy.

The oposition to Trump may be forced to express itself in the same way once the system is fully opened at the end of January. This feeling will have based all his conduct on criticism of each and every one of the government’s “policies”.

In reality, they were merely whims expressed in the wee hours of the morning by clicking noises on the mobile. The monumental void left by Trump’s mismanagement will still be occupied by an appropriate vaccine and the verification of its excellence, a task that would be extended throughout the rest of 2021.

It will depend on the effectiveness of the implementation of the urgent measures of the new government that the electorate will not be tempted to listen again to the siren songs of 2016.

The reconstruction of the economy, the reduction of the damage caused to the neediest sectors, the better integration of immigration, and the determined fight to eliminate racism are some of the most urgent tasks of the new government.

Only with its reasonable resolution will it be avoided that part of the 70 million who voted for the outgoing president would be tempted to exclaim: “with Trump we lived better.”

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

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Small island nations are taking on water in the form of a vicious debt trap which damages their productivity and ability to recover from disasters and other structural constraints. UNCTAD warns the situation is unsustainable and requires urgent global attention.

By External Source
GENEVA, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

In December 2020, Fiji was pounded by Pacific Cyclone Yasa, the years’ second category 5 storm which destroyed hundreds of buildings and caused about $1.4 billion in damage to health facilities, homes, schools, agriculture and infrastructure.

Yasa was yet another major tropical storm to devastate an island nation in 2020. Similarly, the Atlantic Ocean region saw its most active hurricane season on record.

Small island developing states (SIDS) experience the world’s highest frequency of natural disasters, among them hurricanes, cyclones and other violent storms which lead to severe flooding, and in the worst cases loss of life, homes and infrastructure.

In terms of economic impact, the most severe storm ever, calculated on a per capita basis, hit Dominica in 2017, causing damage equivalent to 280% of the island’s GDP, according to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT).

For small countries, the costs of post-disaster reconstruction can be exorbitant. On average, natural disasters cause damage equivalent to 2.1% of GDP every year in SIDS.

But they also face many other issues, like their small geographic size, remoteness from trade partners and international markets, and a lack of creditor trust, and economic diversification which compounds their ability to bounce back from disasters.

“The international community needs to work hard to help small island nations build resilience as the threat of destruction expands and the cost of seasonal storms becomes increasingly devastating for SIDS,” said Paul Akiwumi, UNCTAD’s director for Africa and least developed countries. “Future disasters could worsen humanitarian crises and impair economic recovery.”

UNCTAD’s special adviser for the blue economy, Dona Bertarelli, said connection to the ocean is both an asset and a risk for SIDS on the frontlines of climate change.

“Global development partners need to work closely with national governments and the private sector to help small island nations build multi-dimensional resilience in the face of both environmental and economic challenges,” she said.

Building resilience for long-term recovery

Greater access to financial support and better disaster debt management is a critical part of a toolbox for resilience.

A recent UNCTAD study on debt vulnerability finds that SIDS have chronic debt not only because of their vulnerability to disasters, but also due to many other structural issues. Disasters are not the only reason for their chronic debt.

“While disasters add to their burden, there are many pre-existing conditions that affect the debt situation in SIDS,” said Akiwumi, highlighting that the study confirms weak statistical links between debt sustainability and disasters alone.

“Prior to COVID-19, SIDS already faced significant constraints in mobilizing sufficient resources to build the necessary productive resources and infrastructure they need for sustainability, on top of financing the costs of disaster recovery,” Akiwumi added.

“If sufficient resources are not available, countries may end up in a trap where low economic activity and poor competitiveness will cause difficulties in paying external debt, endangering a country’s eligibility for future loans.”

UNCTAD also found that the main drivers of debt sustainability in small islands are per capita GDP, terms of trade, and export diversification.

Stronger economic growth and diversified exports improve SIDS’ capability to manage and repay debts during normal times but become critical in the aftermath of shocks.

There is also a looming debt crisis in SIDS in the aftermath of COVID-19 as their tourism-dependent fragile economies are pummelled by travel restrictions. The International Monetary Fund projects a 9% fall in real GDP for SIDS in 2020.

The severe shortfalls in tourist expenditure have led the IMF to anticipate a steep increase in the current account deficit of SIDS to 12.1% of GDP in 2020.

The recovery will also be slow. Despite an expected, gradual return of tourism activities, a current account deficit of -12.3% of GDP is forecasted for 2021, further straining the capacity of SIDS to service their external debt.

In 2018, the external debt to GDP ratio among SIDS ranged from 6% in Timor-Leste to 104% in Jamaica. The annual debt service to exports ratio was also greatly unequal, ranging from less than 1% in Timor-Leste to 26% in Papua New Guinea.

Despite restructuring Granada’s debt and concerted efforts to improve Sao Tome’s fiscal fundamentals, both nations were rated as being in external debt distress in August 2020.

Though not all SIDS are heavily indebted, 17 of them are considered by the IMF as being at “high risk” of debt distress, meaning they would be unable to meet their loan payments.

Although some of the IMF emergency financing tools such as the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) can provide important debt relief, they require sufficient administrative capacity to measure and report the impact of disasters to prove the eligibility criteria has been met.

This is not an easy job in some SIDS, where quantifying long-term or more complex disasters, like drought, is undermined by weak administrative capacity.

The UNCTAD study identifies a range of policy options that could help SIDS overcome the challenges they face. These include leveraging available international and multi-lateral emergency financing tools, as well as implementing innovative programmes to attract needed revenue, while protecting the countries’ valuable resources.

Some innovative instruments, such as hurricane clauses already included in debt restructuring agreements in Grenada and Barbados, should be extended to other types of disasters going beyond severe storms, the study says.

Multilateral cooperation to increase private insurance coverage against climate change can also support real resilience. For example, the InsuResilience Global Partnership created in 2017 aims to build local capacity and resilience through climate and disaster risk finance and innovative insurance solutions.

The study advises that access to the Green Climate Fund and other programs must be facilitated through a stronger collaboration between traditional and emerging donors to reduce transaction costs.

Technical assistance to national statistical offices is also required to improve the measurement of natural disasters’ impact on economic, social and environmental development.

“Previous approaches have mainly focused on ex-post recovery and emergency-based financing, but ex-ante financing should also be a priority for resilience-building efforts” Akiwumi added.

In addition, agreements between debtor and creditors to reduce a developing country’s debt stock or debt servicing in exchange for a commitment to protect nature, so-called “debt-for-nature swaps”, could be extended by including resilience building to multiple disasters.

“For SIDS, urgent action is needed to protect lives and livelihoods,” Akiwumi said, warning that the world may see more climate refugees as a result. “It is in everyone’s interests to support SIDS now.”

 

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Climate change and a lack of care for the environment could have devastating consequences for Saint Lucia’s healthy ecosystems and rich biodiversity. On Jan 10, France, the United Nations and the World Bank hosted a virtual biodiversity summit where world leaders pledged action and funding to protect the planet. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

French President Emmanuel Macron convened the 4th edition of the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity with a concession – that after a decade, the world has failed to take the action needed to stem global biodiversity loss. The Jan. 10 event, hosted virtually by France, the United Nations and the World Bank, focused on four areas for urgent action; protecting land and maritime species, promoting agroecology, mobilising finance for biodiversity and protecting tropical forests, species and human health.

“A decade has gone past and the facts are undeniable. Not a single one of the targets have been implemented, such as putting an end to species extinction or cutting pollution. We have to face up to this failure and learn its lessons,” Macron said.

The French leader said the world is seeing the impacts of overexploitation of natural resources including rising poverty, inequality, public health crises and security concerns. He urged leaders to act decisively, stating that they have the means to tackle the crisis in the natural world.

“Opportunities are emerging in nature to create 191 million jobs by 2030. If forests, oceans and ecosystems remain intact, they can become effective carbon sinks to help us meet climate targets. Nature offers solutions for sustainable agriculture and economic services, helping us to preserve our heritage and cultures,” he said.

The 2019 Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the first of its kind in a decade, stated that the rate of global change in nature in the last half century was unprecedented in history. It warned that the ruthless demand for earth’s resources had resulted in one million plant and animal species facing extinction within decades, with implications for public health.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the summit that 2021 must be the year to “reconcile humanity with nature”, and that the world cannot afford to “revert to the old normal”.

“Until now we have been destroying our planet. We have been abusing it like we have a spare one. Our current resource use requires almost two planets, but we only have one. If we can compare earth’s history to a calendar year, we have used one third of its natural resources in the last 0.2. seconds.”

With over 1.8 million lives lost and economies brought to their knees by COVID-19, the UN chief said pandemic recovery is the world’s opportunity to change course.

“With smart policies and the right investments, we can chart the right course, revive economies, build resilience and rescue biodiversity. Innovations in energy and transport can steer sustainable recovery, economic and social transformation,” Guterres said.

The Secretary-General cited the African Great Green Wall as a nature-based solution to biodiversity loss that is particularly promising. The ambitious project seeks to plant a 5,000-mile “wall” of trees to combat land degradation and protect livelihoods in the Sahel, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa regions. The summit raised $14.3 billion towards the project – surpassing its target by just over $4 billion. The World Bank Group pledged $5 billion to the initiative.

“Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are defining issues of our time,” World Bank President David Malpass told the summit, adding that with COVID-19 stressing the link between human and earth health, the institution will work with the German government on new research towards a “one health” approach to preventing emerging infectious diseases.

“It’s very clear: we cannot succeed in helping countries reduce poverty and inequality without rising to the challenges of climate change and the loss of biodiversity.” 

Heir to the British throne, the Prince of Wales, called for stepped up action on biodiversity preservation, stating that consensus, intentions and targets are good “first steps”, but practical effort is overdue. The royal unveiled his “Terra Carta”, an earth charter with 100 recommendations for the recovery of nature, people and the planet. It hopes to raise $10 billion for environmental projects and challenges big corporations to commit to an “ambitious and sustainable future”.

“I am making an urgent appeal to leaders, from all sectors and from around the world, to join us in this endeavour and to give their support to this ‘Terra Carta’ – to bring prosperity into harmony with nature, people, and planet over the coming decade,” he said.

The meeting also set the stage for a new “High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People”, a group of 50 countries committed to preserving 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. The coalition, chaired by France, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom, hopes to curb species loss and protect ecosystems.

The theme for this year’s summit was “Let’s act together for nature”, and it kickstarts an important year of action on the nature crisis. The UN Biodiversity Summit is planned for Kunming, China in May and expected to produce a post-2020 global framework on biodiversity.

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) is scheduled for Glasgow, Scotland in November.

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The post Facing their Failure to meet 2020 Biodiversity Targets, World Leaders Pledge Action & Funds appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Amid calls from the UN Chief to stop treating the earth ‘as if we have a spare one,’ French President Emmanuel Macron led world leaders in commitments to protect ecosystems at the One Planet Summit

The post Facing their Failure to meet 2020 Biodiversity Targets, World Leaders Pledge Action & Funds appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he is “available” for a second five-year term as UN chief. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has been one of the most vociferous advocates of gender empowerment and a persistent critic of gender discrimination worldwide.

But still, it has continued to fall far short of its own lofty ideals.

The UN has never had a female secretary-general (SG) in its 75-year history while only four women have been elected– amid 71 men– as Presidents of the General Assembly, the organization’s highest policy making body.

On January 11, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, announced he will be “available” for a second term– perhaps upending the longstanding campaign for a female UN chief.

But that final decision, however, will depend not only on the 193 member states, but also, most importantly, on the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) who will have the last word on who should, or who shouldn’t, be the next secretary-general, come January 2022.

Historically, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt (1992-1996) was denied a second term by a single veto by the US even though he garnered the votes of the remaining 14 members of the Security Council.

In 1981, Kurt Waldheim of Austria was denied an unprecedented third term when he was vetoed 16 times, apparently by China, paving the way for the election of Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru as Secretary-General. (1982-1991).

Guterres has taken a key role in enhancing gender empowerment in the UN system with scores of women appointed to high-ranking positions.

He told delegates last year “we achieved gender parity – 90 women and 90 men – in the ranks of our full-time senior leadership, two years ahead of the target that I set at the start of my tenure, and we have a roadmap for parity at all levels in the coming years”.

The cynics, however, argue the unusually high gender representation may also be a subtle attempt– or a hidden agenda– to stall any campaign for a female Secretary-General since he has an outstanding track record in the field.

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) told IPS the call for a woman SG at the UN has been made repeatedly but in the 75-year history of the UN, this call has not met with success.

In the 1975 International Women’s Year, there were special efforts made by feminist groups to get women to be nominated for this position.

Since then, she pointed out, the call has only grown, with multiple groups including groups of Member States banding together to advocate for a woman to lead the prestigious organization.

At the end of his tenure, former Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon of South Korea, was quoted as saying it was “high time” for a woman leader of the UN.

But it was only in 2016, for the first time, there seemed to be some signs of change on the horizon. At one stage, 50% of the proposed candidates were women, she noted.

However, member states eventually endorsed Mr. Antonio Guterres unanimously, said Mane, a former President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International, a global leader in sexual and reproductive health.

Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG), told IPS last year that in the past, despite the existence of competent women in the UN, it has largely been the reality that when women do achieve career progression, it tends to be mostly women belonging to certain geographical groups or regions.

“There are concerns that implementation of the UN’s Gender Parity Strategy may follow a similar pattern. It is crucial that this important initiative ensures a diverse gender parity that includes women from the global South, women of colour, and women from developing and underrepresented countries,” she noted.

Outlining some of the steps he plans to take in the future, Guterres said last year: “I have reminded the entire senior leadership team about the special measures we have in place to advance parity throughout the system”.

If a male candidate is hired in an office or department that has not yet achieved gender parity, and where an equally competent female candidate had been identified, an explanation must be sent to my office detailing the reasoning for the decision prior to final selection being made, he declared.

Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead on Legal Equality & Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS since the United Nations was founded in 1945, there have been nine male Secretaries-General but not one woman.

“This is unacceptable and needs to change. “Unfortunately, the campaign to select a woman as the next leader of the United Nations ended in disappointment in 2016, despite there being numerous highly qualified and eminent women candidates with impressive resumes in the running”.

She said this was abundantly clear for all to see thanks to an unprecedentedly more transparent new selection process that was actively supported by 1 for 7 Billion and others.

“It is high time that a woman Secretary-General is finally selected to lead the United Nations and we hope that 2022 heralds the election of a woman, one who adopts and implements a feminist agenda to advance women and girls rights globally.

Kul Gautam, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN children’s agency UNICEF told IPS: “I believe Antonio Guterres deserves a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations”

He was unduly hampered from doing much during his first term, which sadly coincided with that of Donald Trump as President of the US. As the whole world knows now, Trump did not care much for international organizations and was an anti-UN unilateralist.

“In the absence of a more supportive US president, Guterres needed to be able to count on the strong support of at least 2 or 3 other Permanent Members of the Security Council and some of the more influential emerging powers and the G-77”.

Sadly, with leaders like Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Tayyip Erdogan and Mohammed bin Salman, Guterres was really hamstrung. And the COVID-19 crisis further diminished his scope of action.

Nevertheless, said Gautam, Guterres has been generally highly principled, consistent, eloquent and passionate in advocating for a bold agenda on climate change, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and gender equality. He has been highly successful in bringing more women in senior positions at the UN.

But still, said Gautam, “Guterres has been a bit too soft-spoken on human rights, and in more forcefully confronting the likes of Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Philippines, Egypt and China on human rights issues.”

But on balance, he has proven to be thoughtful, measured, wise, mature and diplomatically very deft. It will be hard to find another person who combines his qualities and commands the unanimous support of the P-5 in 2021, he added.

“The chances of getting someone worse are far higher than getting someone better, unless the whole election/selection system for the UN’s top leadership positions is completely overhauled, which is highly unlikely at present.”

After Guterres’ second term, in 2026, he said, “let’s hope we will have a revamped election/selection system and several shining female candidates”.

“Already, we should seek a commitment from the UNSC, as well as the UNGA, that they will make every effort to proactively search for a highly qualified female leader as the next UNSG”.

“The world has waited long enough and it is overdue for the UN to exemplify what it preaches about gender equality and women’s empowerment by appointing an outstanding female leader as the world’s top diplomat in 2026,” said Gautam.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information, told IPS, in terms of geographical rotation, it will be the turn of Eastern Europe to field a candidate for Secretary-General.

He singled out Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, the former Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also from Bulgaria, as potential women candidates.

“A prominent female candidate with a proven record would present a credible challenge” to Guterres, he added.

Mane admitted that Guterres has made notable efforts to ensure that gender equality is a feature of the UN at all levels and has laid out an ambitious agenda to make this a reality. However, EQUALITY NOW, an action campaign focusing on the UN’s efforts in this area, still ranks his efforts at gender equality in the UN, relatively low in terms of success.

She said much work remains to be done at all levels of the UN on gender equality but starting at the top, would send out a strong signal to the world that the UN is taking its mission for gender equality seriously and that the glass ceiling (or the steel ceiling as it was referred to by some) will truly be shattered in the UN with the appointment of a woman SG.

“The chances of a woman being elected to lead the UN in 2022 are slim,” she predicted. “And the possibility that a first term SG would not be elected for his second term is remote”.

All SGs in the last fifty years of the UN have been successful in being elected to serve two terms, other than Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was an exception.

It is unlikely that the UN would want to change its tradition in the coming election. However, these are unusual times which have altered geo-political priorities and understanding, and could cause a disruption in set patterns.

She said Guterres has encountered major challenges leading the UN through multiple crises these last five years, including as a result of Covid19 and dealing with a major contributor and Member State, the USA, distancing itself from multilateralism.

It is hard to imagine that UN Member States would want a change in leadership at this juncture, even if these specific challenges are expected to reduce markedly over a second term, should he get one, now that he has indicated his availability for it.

However, Mane argued, his success will depend considerably on the woman candidates who put their hat in the ring now, especially if the list includes some of the women heads of State who have manoeuvred their countries efficiently through the pandemic while coping with other challenges.

The call for women being at the helm of affairs in responding to crises have grown stronger since Covid19.

“Whichever way it goes, one can certainly envision that the current SG’s legacy would be a significantly more gender-equal environment in the UN, including a woman to lead the UN,” she declared.

  

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

The incoming Biden administration is under tremendous pressure to demonstrate better US economic management. Trade negotiations normally take years to conclude, if at all. Unsurprisingly, lobbyists are already urging the next US administration to quickly embrace and deliver a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Trump legacy
Repackaging and reselling a TPP avatar will not be easy. Well before Trump’s election, even the official mid-2016 International Trade Commission’s assessment doubted Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) claims of significant benefits from the TPP for all.

Unsurprisingly, most major US presidential candidates in the 2016 election – even Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, credited with his ‘pivot to Asia’ to isolate China – opposed the TPP.

Trump’s campaigns and presidency have since changed US public sentiment. All too many Americans now blame globalisation and foreign threats – especially immigrants and China – for many major problems the US faces.

Most believe that better jobs have been lost to cheaper production abroad, due to globalisation. Downward social mobility for most Americans in recent decades has actually been due to technological changes, including mechanisation and automation.

Frankenstein-like TPP avatar
Uncomfortable with Trump’s unilateralism despite other affinities, those keenest on checking China – namely the Japanese, Australian and Singapore governments – have kept the TPP flame alive.

They succeeded in getting the ‘TPP11’ – minus the USA – to endorse a Comprehensive and Progressive TPP (CPTPP). But even the modest trade growth claims of all pro-TPP reports were premised on US market access.

With the US out, the CPTPP would mainly have bolstered Japanese and other transnational corporations (TNCs) and Singapore as a financial centre. But other governments have stayed on for their own reasons, rather than due to realistic expectations of significant economic gains.

With the TPP favouring foreign investments, investors may even go abroad as there is less advantage in being domestic. Thus, foreign direct investment (FDI) and even portfolio inflows could decline under the TPP avatar, while its onerous provisions undermine the national and public interest.

TNCs rule
The CPTPP did not even drop or revise the worse TPP chapters. It only suspended some obviously onerous intellectual property (IP) and other provisions, mainly of interest to US TNCs. These can easily be reincluded as successes by the new administration.

IP and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions are supposed to attract much FDI. ISDS has mainly been of interest to US TNCs, but was opposed by the jingoist Trump team for exposing the US to foreign TNC legal claims.

Under ISDS, TNCs can sue governments, e.g., for supposed loss of profits, including future projections, even if due to policy changes in the national or public interest, e.g., for contagion containment.

ISDS claims are typically referred to arbitration tribunals. This extrajudicial system supersedes national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to appeal. Regardless of who wins, these proceedings are very costly for governments, especially those with modest means.

Law firms have recently been urging foreign investors to use ISDS to sue governments for resorting to extraordinary COVID-19 measures. Meanwhile, COVID-19 vaccine companies have included indemnity clauses protecting them from lawsuits by governments and others.

If Trump had been re-elected instead, the ISDS chapter could have been removed to secure US acceptance during his second term. As with the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), citing other cosmetic changes, they would have been presented as major gains by him.

More IP ‘rent-gouging’
Strengthening IP monopolies would increase the value of trade by charging and paying higher prices for medicines, treatments, tests, vaccines as well as other patented and copyrighted products. COVID-19 has highlighted how IP rents impose avoidable costs and stymie progress by discouraging cooperation.

As ‘price-gouging’ is not unlawful in the US, its laws cannot be relied on to protect consumers elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, before the pandemic, Médecins Sans Frontieres warned that the TPP will go down in history as the worst “cause of needless suffering and death” in developing countries.

Having received massive government and other subsidies, pharmaceutical TNCs will profit immensely from the new vaccines, thus limiting access by poor countries and people. By contrast, free vaccinations have ensured effective campaigns against smallpox, polio, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.

Enhanced IPRs thus undermine public health. Meanwhile, the popular justification – that stronger IP enhances innovation, research and development – is no longer deemed acceptable to most stakeholders, inter alia, due to lack of convincing supportive evidence.

FTAs strengthen TNC bullies
TPP trade gains have been greatly inflated by lobbyists. After all, the US already has free trade agreements (FTAs) with most other TPP countries. Trade barriers with the others were low in most cases, so real gains from further trade liberalisation were meagre, except for Vietnam, due to its US war legacy.

All twelve also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which concluded the ‘single largest trade agreement ever’. As trade liberalisation guru Jagdish Bhagwati has noted, bilateral and plurilateral, including regional FTAs actually undermine gains from multilateral trade liberalisation.

Even the PIIE, the pre-eminent TPP and CPTPP advocate, mainly claimed gains from ‘non-trade issues’, especially additional FDI, attracted by more investor rights. Such incentives imply more concessions by host governments, and hence, less net gains for the countries.

Thus, the TPP mainly promoted more TNC-friendly rules, rather than trade. This is hardly surprising as the 6350-page document was drafted by various working groups, including hundreds of representatives of major US TNCs and other lobbyists.

Dubious gains, greater losses
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains, especially across national borders. Such transborder disruptions were often due to contagion containment measures, but some were deliberate. For example, the US and Japan governments have urged TNCs to end investments in and outsourcing from China.

These policy actions have also hit suppliers, many from Southeast Asia. While some TNCs relocated to other developing countries, the CPTPP has not helped those hurt by such recent economic rivalry and conflict.

Having served as Obama’s loyal Vice-President, Biden is being told that the new administration can easily secure a quick win with a few revisions to the TPP agreement to address earlier criticisms, objections and concerns in the US. Thus, the CPTPP is being presented in Washington as a low-hanging fruit, almost ripe for plucking.

The new US administration must realise that corporate neoliberalism’s consequences has been responsible for the rise of finance and the erosion of social protections resulting in the social pathologies which have enabled Trump’s rise.

Corporate globalisation and COVID-19 should also have taught developing countries that they must reject FTAs strengthening IPRs, ISDS and TNCs in order to secure policy space to ‘build back better’.

 

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Credit: Heike Kuhn

By Heike Kuhn
BONN, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Once a year, on 9 August, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, celebrating their unique culture and knowledge. This is done mostly from a distance, from our homes in (nominally) developed countries. But are we as developed as we pretend to be? On this question, I reflected for a while, still remembering a special and personal experience of having spent several days with an indigenous Berber family in Morocco.

What was the reason for this special visit to Morocco ? I had the fortune and incredible opportunity to participate in a developmental training course, known as an exposure programme. At the heart of this program was a three day stay with a family belonging to a Berber tribe in Morocco, 40 km from Essaouira, the famous city located on the Atlantic Ocean.

What did I know about this tribe beforehand ? The Berber are famous for their carpets and argan oil, used in cosmetics and for cooking. I have to admit that I had little knowledge of their traditions and culture before visiting them, other than knowing that they live in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and although I had seen their products in shops in Germany, I was an ignorant of their cultural life.

But all this changed last year. In this exposure programme, a female colleague and I had the rare and incredible experience of participating in the daily life of a Berber family of ten persons – an elderly couple, their two sons, both with young wives and small children. With the elderly couple was a little nine year old girl who stayed during the week in the traditional house of the grandparents in order to attend the nearby school. Though her home was located some 6 km away, bad roads and a lack of transport made this journey near impossible.

During the day in this small Berber village near Essaouira, we were accompanied by Mohamed, a cousin of the sons, who worked as a teacher at a nearby school and spoke Arabic, French and Tamazight, the local language. Mohamed translated our conversations into French, facilitating better understanding by our hosts and for us to be understood. Earlier, we had an induction course over two days before we stayed with the family. This was so that we could get acquainted with the culture and the background of the family that had accepted to participate in the program, participation being allowed only once.

We arrived by car on a street for which you would really need a SUV. Shaken by the potholes on the road, a little bit nervous but excitedly nevertheless. What can we expect over the next three days and nights that we were to share the life of this unknown family? Our nervousness subsided when the family welcomed us warmly with open arms.

My first impression of the house was that it looked like a fortress – with thick walls, which you enter through a corridor and into an open atrium with all the rooms situated around it. In front of the entrance door were the family’s two dogs, who protected them and lived off leftovers. First, we had tea with honey, kneeling on the carpets, the children watching us curiously. Then some traditional sweets were served and the ice was immediately broken among us when we began talking to each other, although this took a little time due to the consecutive translation from Tamazight to French and French to Tamazight, all managed by Mohamed. Soon it was noon and we had a delicious lunch with the whole family, again in the living room on carpets, sitting or kneeling on the floor.

Over the next three days we got familiar with our host family. We were supposed to participate in their daily life and not be treated as guests coming around for a short visit. We were supposed to join this family, eating, working and sleeping in their home, and most importantly, talking with all of them. In a way, we were accepted as members of the family and took over tasks as any of their family members would.

What did we do during these days? First, we got to know all family members and the animals – cows, sheep, goats, chicken and ducks and a donkey. We also saw the beehive, visited some neighbors who later also came around to see us in our new short term home. Of course, we went to the nearby school and mosque. As only men were allowed inside the mosque, we did not have an opportunity to go in.

The cycle of the day was divided into three parts, morning, evening and night. Morning: We got up early, washing ourselves with some water in a bucket as there was no running water or bathroom; there was no mirror as we were used to; and a squat toilet with an electric light (working most of the time, but not always). The ritual then was to have a cup of local porridge and accompany the grandmother to the nearby stable where she milked the cow. During the day we worked in the fields, ploughing the land and sowing corn with the help of the donkey and a donkey of the neighbours, as both animals were needed. As the ground was very rocky, the largest stones had to be picked up and thrown to the side of the field. Some of those stones were very heavy.

The donkeys waited for clear commands. Our host used a whistle and a command word which we tried to imitate – the donkeys seemed to be quite amused. We visited the barn of the family next to the house, went to their fields, sitting on small benches on the rear of a motor-cycle pick up. We learned who owned the land, picking weeds but not throwing them away as they were useful for feeding the cow and its two calves.

Our driver, the eldest son of the family, explained to us that rain was scarce in the area due to climate change. His fields had no irrigation systems as there weren’t any in the region. He explained that they just pray for rain and that only the Prophet knows when it will come. We were accompanied by the four year old boy who copied everything his father did, being quite able to herd the sheep and to do many other things. He never asked for a toy, but enjoyed real life. When passing the house of their younger sister, we found that she felt quite ill and could barely look after her little baby, her husband being away in Casablanca for work. She immediately accepted to join us in going to her parents’ home, where her older daughter was really happy to see her.

Evening: At sunset, we returned to the house, trying to help the grandmother with the laundry or both young women in the kitchen, where they prepared dinner. There was no stool around and all work was done standing. The kitchen smelled of fresh mint and herbs. The young women were very skilled, one baking bread in the outdoor oven, another one was cutting meat or fish, dicing vegetables. Their combined efforts produced fresh and delicious dishes such as the famous Tajines or mint sardines which I still remember.

After dinner there was still work, especially for the women. Once the washing up for 12 people was finished, we were taught by the grandmother how to produce Argan oil. This is a long and intensive process as these little fruits, similar to almonds, are hard as stones. First you have to crack the shell, take out the nut, cook it and only then the oil can be extracted by the arduous task of pressing.

Women’s work also includes making carpets – which we did not do in our three days with the family. The evenings were very nice, however, as the whole family gathered and talked about what had happened during the day. One son shared stories from the nearby market where he sold home-made honey and Argan oil, met friends and customers.

All laughing and relaxing after a days’ work, the women were interested in education and told us that they hoped for more education for their children, as they had spent only a few years at school. The grandmother and grandfather were illiterate. Mohamed translated from Tamazight to French and back, but not always. Sometimes we just looked at each other and understood the essence of conversations, not needing any words at all. The four years old boy and the toddler fell asleep on the carpet when exhausted.

Night: The nights were cold outside, as it was in February . My colleague and I shared the same sleeping area in a small room with mattresses on the floor, covered by many blankets, just as the family did. After the day’s work, mostly in the fields, I was really tired and slept deeply. But if I woke up at night needing to go to the toilet, I crossed the atrium and could see the stars – cold, but quite romantic!

Coming to an end, these three days passed so quickly and the people impressed me very much. What I learned from this indigenous family near Essaouira was:
1. Being human has nothing to do with higher education. Deeds can be done by everyone, every day.
2. Respecting each other and relying on your respective tasks helps everyone to survive.
3. Do not use the word “Berber” for Tamazight people as they feel offended by it – and they are right to be if you check out the etymology.
4. If you need something, just ask your neighbor’s; they may have a donkey or whatever else you may need.
5. If your host asks you if you would like to eat chicken, a rooster or a hen has to be killed and you could be invited to look into the eyes of the animal before eating it !
6. Preparing fresh and healthy meals takes at least two hours a day.
7. Integrating children in the daily work of adults, when possible, can make them proud of their abilities and give them self-esteem. Being a role model for them
is of utmost importance.
8. If you have a family, support and health-care is always close.
9. Caring for the elderly can be a pleasure, if your cultural attitude helps you to
understand at an early age that you are part of this cycle of life.
10.Enjoy each other, with excellent food, drinks and music.

The author is Head of Division 412 – Human rights; gender equality; inclusion of persons with disabilities, BMZ, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Federal Republic of Germany

 

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By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Throughout its history, San Salvador has faced the danger of landslides – mud and rocks that slide down the slopes of the volcano at whose feet the city was founded in 1525.

The soil on these extremely steep slopes fails to absorb all the rainwater and, as in a snowball effect, the water gradually loosens up sections of land until producing mudslides that wreak death and destruction in the capital of El Salvador and nearby cities and suburbs.

In September 1982, a landslide claimed 500 lives in the Montebello residential development, northwest of the capital.

The most recent incident occurred on Oct. 29, when a landslide from the top of the volcano buried a number of homes in poor communities near Nejapa, north of San Salvador, killing nine people.

Due to the ever-present danger, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), together with local organisations, is implementing the City Adapt project on the slopes of this 1,893-metre tall mountain.

 

 

The project seeks to reduce vulnerability in the area, which has increased as a result of climate change, with more intense and frequent rainfall.

So far 29 farms form part of the project, and have adopted measures to improve infiltration and prevent erosion, creating live and dead barriers, infiltration ditches between the coffee plants and catchment tanks that collect excess rainwater.

The excess water not only gives rise to landslides but also to flooding on the south side of San Salvador, whose metropolitan area is home to 1.8 million people – 27 percent of the 6.7 million inhabitants of this small Central American country.

The 29 farms represent a total of 423 hectares of land where measures have been carried out, and the restoration of 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations is also planned, to turn San Salvador into a sponge city, according to UNEP.

The City Adapt project has reduced the risk of flooding for some 16,000 people and is expected to reach an estimated 115,000 by 2022.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, initiatives to turn vulnerable urban areas into sponge cities are also being implemented in Xalapa, Mexico and Kingston, Jamaica.

For more information, read this IPSNEWS article.

The post San Salvador Becomes a Sponge to Reduce Damage from Landslides appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Respondents being questioned for the United Nations global conversation on the world they want. Many called for universal healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtesy: United Nations

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

The peoples of the world are unanimous – access to basic services such as universal healthcare must become a priority going forward. So too should global solidarity, helping those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing the climate change emergency.

The collective thoughts of the world’s future by some 1.5 million people, including those from various organisations and networks, from all countries across the globe has been been highlighted in a global initiative by the United Nations, which it called the world’s largest conversation on the future people want.

Last year, to mark the 75th anniversary of the UN, it conducted various townhall discussions, dialogues and an online survey from January until November, 2020.

The resultant report, Shaping Our Future Together, showed that people across the world were unified in their concerns, with the current coronavirus pandemic being the foremost in their minds.

“When you ask people about their fears and hopes for the future, when you ask people about their expectations of international cooperation about their priorities in the immediate, post-COVID, there is remarkable unity across generations, regions, income groups, education groups, and from people from different political direction,” Fabrizio Hochschild, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the commemoration of UN’s 75th anniversary, said during a virtual press conference on the findings on Friday, Jan. 8.

Indeed respondents of the UN conversation from all but two regions – sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia – had listed access to universal healthcare as an immediate short-term priority, according to the report.

In the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia the call for increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic and greater global solidarity ranked top. Next was the need for universal healthcare.

“This reflects the grim reality reported by UNDP – that daily COVID-19 related deaths have exceeded other common causes of death throughout much of 2020. Emergency services, health systems and health workers are under enormous strain around the world, with indirect health impacts also expected to rise,” the report noted.

Yesterday, Jan. 10, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres marked the 75th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly held in London by giving a keynote address. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “has had a disproportionate and terrible impact on the poor and dispossessed, older people and children, those with disabilities and minorities of all kinds”.

“It has pushed an estimated 88 million people into poverty and put more than 270 million at risk at acute food insecurity,” Guterres said.

The second short-term priority was a call for greater global solidarity and increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic. 

Indeed, Guterres said in his speech that the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted serious gaps in global cooperation and solidarity.

“We have seen this most recently in vaccine nationalism, some rich countries compete to buy vaccines for their own people, with no consideration for the world’s poor,” he said.

But he went on to thank the government and people of the UK for supporting the COVAX facility, established by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which aims to guarantee that vaccines will become available to all.

COVAX is the global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, regardless of income level. In December, COVAX announced that it had arrangements in place to access two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates on behalf of 190 participating nations. At the time, WHO said in a statement that this would ensure deliveries of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021 to participating countries.  

Guterres said the pandemic has highlighted the “deep fragilities in our world” and in order to tackle them we need to reduce inequality and injustice and to strengthen the bonds of mutual support and trust.

He also said that the world needed “a networked multilateralism, so that global and regional organisations communicate and work together towards common goals”.

“And we need an inclusive multilateralism, based on the equal representation of women, and taking in young people, civil society, business and technology, cities and regions, science and academia,” he said.

People around the world also called for safe water and sanitation, and education.

Rethinking the global economy and making it more inclusive to tackle inequalities was another concern.

Meanwhile addressing climate change and destruction to the environment also remained top long-concerns for respondents.

“Respondents in all regions identified climate change and environmental issues as the number one long-term global challenge,” the report noted.

Guterres was pragmatic, admitting that while the UN was proud of its achievements over the last 75 years, including helping to boost global health, literacy, living standards and promoting human rights and gender equality, it was also aware of its failures. The biggest one being the inability to adequately address climate change.

“The climate emergency is already upon us and the global response has been utterly inadequate,” he stated.

“The past decade was the hottest in human history, carbon dioxide levels are at record highs, apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are becoming the new normal,” he stated.

“If we don’t change course,” Guterres warned, “we might be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise or more than 3 degrees this century.”

“Biodiversity is collapsing, one million species are at risk of extinction, and whole ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes.

“This is a war on nature and a war with no winners,” Guterres said.

He said that while the pandemic was a human tragedy – it can also be an opportunity.

“The past months have shown the huge transformations that are possible, when there is political will and consensus on the way forward,” Guterres said.

He said the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development already provide the blueprint for this.

“We now need increased ambition and action to deliver – beginning with the climate emergency. The central objective of the UN this year is to build a global coalition for carbon neutrality by the middle of the century,” he said, adding that meaningful cuts — reduction in global emissions by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels – were needed.

“Every country, city, organisation, financial institution and company needs to adopt plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — and start executing them now, with clear short-term targets.”

Akosua Agyepong, a youth activist from Ghana, asked Guterres after his speech how the lessons learned from the current pandemic could be used in addressing climate change “so that we can achieve the [goals of the] Paris Agreement and the SDGs”.

Guterres replied saying that currently trillions of dollars were spent on supporting economics facing the impacts of COVID-19. “When spending those trillions, we are borrowing in relation to the future. We need to make sure those trillions are spent to address the recovery from COVID but also the challenge of climate change.”

“We can use the same money to build coal power plants or build renewable energy. We can use the same money to support industries that pollute or use the same money to create new jobs in the green economy. We can tax people and income or we can tax carbon and pollution. There are many ways in which we can organise our recovery to make it sustainable and inclusive, reducing at the same time inequalities and making peace with nature and our planet in order to make sure we are able to tame climate change, and in order to make sure we do not allow temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees C at the end of the century and that we can get a net zero coalition in the middle of the century to make sure that we rescue our planet,” he said.

In his speech Guterres also highlighted the role of gender equality in development, saying that justice and equality, including gender equality, were prerequisites to transforming the challenges ahead.

“Women’s leadership and equal participation are key ways to address the global challenges we face.

“The past year has highlighted the effectiveness of women’s leadership, adding to evidence that gender-balanced decision-making leads to stronger climate agreements, greater investment in social protection, longer-lasting peace, and more innovation,” Guterres said, adding that achieving women’s equal representation required bold action.

Despite the challenges in the years ahead, the world’s people were optimistic about the future with many believing they will be better off in 2045, with respondents in sub-Saharan Africa — where the median age is just 18 — being the most optimistic about the future. 

Guterres was also optimistic, in turn praising the youth of the world.

“Today, it is often young people who are showing courage, and demanding courage from the rest of us. Let me be clear: I stand with you. You give me hope. Young people can and do change the world,” he said.

He said he was confident that working together the world can emerge from the pandemic “and lay the foundations for a cleaner, safer, fairer world for all, and for generations to come”.

 

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Shireen Huq

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

In October 2020, Bangladeshi citizens took to the streets, outraged by the reports of gruesome gang rapes and sexual violence that were taking place in the country. According to Ain O Salish Kendra, a Bangladeshi human rights organization, 975 women were raped in the first nine months of 2020, 43 women were killed after being raped and 204 women were attempted to be raped by men in Bangladesh.

“There is a culture of impunity in the country and when it comes to accessing justice, corruption continues to be a major obstacle,” says Shireen Huq, women’s rights activist and founder Naripokkho, a non-profit organization that has been working on women’s rights and the impact of sexual violence in Bangladesh since 1983 to IPS News.

“Violence, male dominance and male aggression have existed for years, the tendency to glorify that these things didn’t happen in the past, and that it’s only happening now in our lifetime, is not true. Misogyny has been part of our culture, politics and society for centuries, especially across South Asia,” says Shireen.

In 2011, on the 40th year of Bangladesh’s independence, Naripokkho took up the cause of women who were subjected to grave sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh war. “The Forgotten Women of ‘71” is an initiative to both support Birangonas not yet recognized as eligible for state support and to launch a campaign for reparation and the restoration of their honour.

“Countless women were subjected to sexual violence by members of the Pakistani army and their collaborators and little had been done to stand by these women. Although the then newly formed independent Bangladeshi government within 6 days of victory conferred on them the title “birangona”, meaning warrior woman, in order to ensure that they were not subjected to the usual degradation and abuse that victims of sexual violence were subjected to in our culture. But unfortunately, this title became their bane and source of misery as it quickly turned into an abusive term.

Many families refused to take back their daughters when they were rescued from Pakistan army bunkers. Villagers pointed fingers and children threw stones at them. One of our Birangona sisters said, “because of what was done to me by Pakistani soldiers in 1971 you have robbed me of my life for the next 40 years,” says Shireen.

Survivors of gang rape and sexual assault regularly face social and cultural stigma, there is already lack of adequate access to psychological services and most importantly, there is a fear of losing their “honour” and bringing shame to their families when they are raped, and that makes it more difficult for women to testify or report crimes of sexual violence and assault.

“To call someone a “birangona” is to actually dishonour that person, and this narrative needed to be countered, that honour does not lie in a woman’s genitalia, what is a war crime should not be referred to as an honour crime.

“At the root of sexual violence there is a culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity that drives it. Looking at the gang rapes that happened in 2020 which sparked off a huge movement in Bangladesh in October, they were all committed by the student wing or the youth wing of the ruling party.

“Sexual violence has to do with the sense of male entitlement that it’s alright to invade a woman’s body. This is increasing because there is no rule of law right now, people know that they can get away with it,” says Shireen.

In order to protect vulnerable witnesses and victims of crimes, in 2006, a Witness Protection Act was drafted by the Bangladesh Law Commission, which is yet to be passed by the government. Without this law, gender-based violence remains one of the most pressing issues for human rights defenders in the country.

Earlier in 2017, Naripokkho started the ‘Standing with Rohingya Women’ initiative, following the reports of grave sexual violence preceding the influx of over 700,000 Rohingya refugees who crossed the border amid the escalating crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

According to a UN report, brutal attacks and sexual violence against Rohingyas in northern Rakhine State were organised, coordinated and systematically implemented with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes, and this instigated Naripokkho members to take up their cause and “not fail this time”.

“Naripokkho carries the pain and regret of what their Birangona sisters were subjected to post-Independence and the abusive treatment that continues until today. For Bangladeshi women, it took 40 years to break their silence, but the Rohingya women were ready to tell the whole world what had happened to them, how it happened and who did it. We felt Narripokkho’s role was to amplify their voices and to make sure we stood by these women now,” says Shireen.

In December 2020, authorities in Bangladesh began relocating thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote flood prone island called Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal. About 1,600 refugees were transported by a ship, raising questions about their safety and consent.

“I doubt it is entirely voluntary, but I won’t be surprised if there are those willing to move to escape these sub-human, overcrowded makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazaar, it undoubtedly could be a better option, but the question is, is the Bhasan Char Island secure? Is it safe? Should people be living on that island? Why did the government choose that Island when everyone is saying it is precarious?” says Shireen.

International NGOs and UN agencies have been concerned about this shift and have opposed it all along. Sections of the media have also been critical of the Bangladesh government on the Bhashan Char issue.

“I wish the international community would also invest more energy and resources to make Myanmar accountable for the crimes against humanity it has committed in unleashing organised violence, arson, rape and forced deportation of the Rohingyas. Myanmar must be made to stop the genocide of Rohingyas and to immediately take steps for a safe return of the Rohingya population to their homeland, recognising them as citizens,” says Shireen.

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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The post Culture of Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity Driving Sexual Violence in Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

For 2021, Italy has been given chairmanship of the Group of 20, which brings together the world’s 20 most important countries. On paper, they represent 60% of the world’s population and 80% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the shaky Italian government will somehow perform this task (in the general indifference of the political system), the fact remains that this apparently prestigious position is in fact very deceiving: the G20 is now a very weak institution that brings no kudos to the rotating chairman. Besides, it is actually the institution which bears the greatest part of responsibility for the decline of the UN as the body responsible for global governance, a task that the G20 has very seldom been able to face up to.

Roberto Savio

Let us reconstruct how we arrive at the creation of the G20. It is a long story, that begins in 1975, when France invited the representatives of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, leading to the name Group of Six, or G6. The idea was to create a space where to discuss the international situation, not for decision making. Then it became the Group of Seven, with the addition of Canada in 1997. Russia was added in 1998, so the summit became known as the G8. And then, in 1980, the European Union was invited as a “nonenumerated participant”. In 2005 the UK government initiated the practice of inviting five leading emergency markets – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Finally, in Washington, in 2005, the world leaders from the group recognized the growth of more emerging countries, and they decided that a meeting of the 20 most important countries of the world would replace the G8 and become the G20.

At the meetings the United Nations, the European Union, and the major international monetary and financial institutions are also invited. Spain is a permanent invitee, together with leaders of the Asian, African Union, of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the Financial Stability Board, the International Labor Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank Group, and the World Trade Organization.

Plus. The host country can invite some countries that it feels particularly associated with its foreign policy, at its year of presidency. Until now, 38 countries have been invited, from Azerbaijan to Chad, from Denmark to Laos, from Sweden to Zimbabwe. To complete, it is important to mention that Russia was suspended by the G8 in 2014, because of its annexation of Crimea. And was never readmitted. Trump, in his inexplicable deference to Putin, asked for its readmission to the G8, and this was refused by the other countries. The G7 has kept meeting, as “a steering group of the West”. At the same time, the G20 meets regularly, with Russia as part of his members.

So, Italy has the task to invite all those different actors, establish the agenda and planning and hosting a series of ministerial-level meetings, leading up to summit of head of governments. Italy has decided as agenda “The three P”: People, Planet and Prosperity. This imaginative and original agenda will be structured in 10 specialized meetings, like Finance (Venice July 9-10th); Innovation and Research (Trieste Aug. 5-8th); Environment, Climate, Energy (Naples, July 22nd), just to give a few examples. Beside these 10 specialized meetings, there will be 8 “engagement’s groups”, which will go from business to civil society, youth, etc.

The G20 is formed by countries that are involved in different and often contradictory groups. For instance, after Trump killed the TTP, (the Transatlantic Pacific Partnership), that Obama was able to put together excluding China, with a vast range of counters going from Australia to Mexico, from Canada to Malaysia, China was able to reciprocate, and crate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which puts together the same countries plus some others and leave outside completely the United States. This commercial bloc is the largest ever created and has 30% of the world’s population, and 30% of the world GDP. But the European Union, (to which Italy belongs) has explicitly taken a path of European nationalism, to make the EU able to survive in the coming competition between China and the United States. European Union (and therefore Italy) are also members of NATO, where the United States is the indispensable and fundamental partner. And in the G20 China seats with India, which is the only country that has refused to join RCEP, and who is clearly taking an alternative path to China’s expansion in Asia. But this is also Japan’s policy, who is very active in G7, in the G20, and has entered RCEP, and considers, like South Korea, a priority to limit the Chinese expansionism.

Of course, there are a number of other pacts, agreements, treaties and alliances, that would be now boring and useless to enumerate. One country, like Italy, would therefore wear several hats at the same time. The point to make is, that since the arrival of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1981, the multilateral system started to be under attack. Reagan, in Cancun’s Summit for the North-South dialogue, a few months after his election, questioned the idea of democracy and participation as the basis for international relations. Until then, the General Assembly resolutions were considered the basis for global governance. In 1973, the GA passed unanimously a resolution, calling for the reduction of the economic gap between the North and the South of the world, calling rich countries to their duties to establish a New International Economic Order, more just and based on the faster development of the poorer countries. Reagan denounced this as an anti-American maneuver. The US is not the same as Montecarlo, as he famously said (probably he intended Monaco, as Montecarlo is no state), and yet they have a vote each. So, this democracy coming from the UN, was in fact a straitjacket, and the US would proceed on the basis of bilateral relations, and not to be strained by multilateral mechanisms. Reagan was the first to talk of America first, He, together with Margaret Thatcher in Europe, dismantled all the social progress made in the world after the end of the Second World War. The market, with his invisible hand, would be the sole engine of society (that Thatcher said does not exist, only individuals). The State, that he called “the beast”, was the first enemy of the citizen. He declared: the most terrifying words in English are: I am from the Government, and I am here to help”. Any public or social cost was just a brake to the market. Reagan wanted to privatize even the ministry of Education: he and Thatcher left UNESCO, as a symbol of disengagement from the UN. Both he and Thatcher curtailed trade unions, privatized whatever possible, and started the era of neoliberal globalization, whose effect is now widely evident, and that Trump, Bolsonaro and Co. bless every day, because it has created a very large swath of disaffected citizens, who believe they will readdress their destiny.

Is important to note that Reagan did not have any real opposition, from the other rich countries. So, all this fragmentation of the world, with the creation of G7, G8, G20, and other exclusive clubs, was not an exclusive responsibility of Reagan and Thatcher. For forty years, the process of divesting the UN from its responsibility for the world’s peace, development, and democracy went on. Neoliberal globalization was based on finance and trade. Even before the end of the war, finance was delegated to the System of Bretton Wood, by the name of the site where it was founded. Let us just constate a fact: the Financial System was established in a such way, that Finance is the only sector of human activity that has no regulatory body. Today it has clearly separated by the general economy when its original function was to be at its service. And political institutions are not able to control its global structure.

The other engine of globalization was trading. United Nations had the UN Commission on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, which looked to trade as an instrument of development. The creation in 1995 of the World Trade Organization, as an independent organization, envisaging trade as an economic engine, divested the UN from trade too. And more the UN weakens, the easier is to decry its shortcomings.

The stroke of grace to multilateralism has been the arrival of Trump, the heir and an updated version of Ronald Reagan. But with a totally different agenda and vision. His basic idea is not “America First”, but “America Alone”. He pushes Regan’s idea of bilateralism versus multilateralism to the extreme of ignoring the concept of alliances. So, he declared, Europe is even worse than China. But there is a fundamental difference between them: Trump never pretended to be the President of all Americans. On the contrary, he tried immediately to divide and polarize the United States, and he leaves as a legacy the US that will take a very long time to become again a united and pacified country. And his strategy has been taken by several other leaders, from Bolsonaro to Orban, from Erdogan to Salvini.

It will be, therefore, difficult, for the UN to recover its function of the meeting place, to express plans of global governance, based on democracy and participation. It was a vision based on the lessons learned in the Second World War: let us avoid millions of deaths, terrible destruction, and to do so we need to work together. That lesson has been now forgotten. Just compare the kind of political leaders from that time, and the present one, to see the enormous change. Therefore, the expression of national egoisms will continue, with the richest countries in exclusives clubs, like OECD or the G20.

But there is a problem: those clubs are not efficient, because they gather together countries with very different agendas and priorities. Let us take a good example from the last G20, held last November under the very discredited chairmanship of Saudi Arabia. One of the points was the cancellation of the debt from poor countries, evidently urgent, because of the additional burden of the pandemic that is going to bring disproportionate damage. The Pope, the Secretary-General of the UN, Gutierres, pressed for that decision. All that the G20 was able to do, was to freeze the payment of the interest of the debt, for six months. And here, let us divagate for a useful learning exercise of the Third World Debt, and on the nobility of the rich countries.

If you take a loan that you repay over 20 years at 5%, or a mortgage, of 100, at the end you will have repaid 200. And during the first ten years, all you pay are the interest, and only in the second decade, you start to pay back, progressively, the capital. The result is that the poor countries several times renegotiated their debt and every time what they paid where the interest, to start again. And those interests were cumulative. During that process, they paid several times the amount of the capital that they received. But all that they paid went to the interests… At the university, you learn one good example of the perversity of cumulative interests. The old story is that a Dutch settler, Peter Minuit, bought the island of Manhattan from the Algonquin tribe. The price paid was $24 worth of beads, trinkets, a jar of Mayonnaise, two pairs of wooden clogs, a loaf of wonder bread and a carton of Quaker oats. If that amount was put in a loan at 5%with composite interest, it would be by now more than the estimated value of all of Manhattan, which exceeds three trillion dollars. So, the decision of the G20 to freeze interests for six months, amount to nothing. It is interesting to listen to insiders’ voices. The loans of the rich countries are computed in the DAC, Development Assistance Committee, established by OECD (the organizations that gathers all rich countries). The OECD engaged itself, in the old good day of multilateralism, to dedicated 1% of the members’ GDP to the development of the underdeveloped countries. This engagement was never kept, except for the Nordic Countries and Nederland. The US never went over 0,3%. Anyhow, any debt condonation goes into the official statistics of the DAC committee. But new loans are made, by countries that are not in the DAC committee, like China, which has made a very extensive number of loans, especially in Asia and Africa in not public conditions. For the OECD countries (basically the West), to cancel their loans could mean to unleash resources that could go to pay China loans, becoming so China funders. This is a good example of how competing interests, block the G20 from concerted actions.

Decisions on this issue are now expected from the next G20 Summit in Rome, in November. But before, the Global Health Summit, called from the G20 together with the EU in May, will be the occasion to verify what will happen. with vaccinations. But in the same month, Portugal has called for the very important Social Summit of the European Union. Portugal has taken the much more substantial chairmanship of the EU, and this is a very positive contribution to a positive 2021. Portugal is today probably the most civilized country of Europe, a place of tolerance, harmony and civic engagement, much like Sweden in the 80s. And is the only credible country on the issue of immigration. In the Social Summit Lisbon will push to strengthen social Europe, after so many decades of a solely economic Europe. The outgoing German chairmanship was fundamental in abandoning the austerity dogma and move to an unprecedented plan of solidarity and institutional strengthening, made also possible by the blessed departure of England, and its anti-European historical bias. The fact that vaccination is a European plan, and not a hotchpotch of national attempts, is great progress in term of vaccination. And if it will continue on the same path, on the issue of climate control, and technological development, it will recover much trust from the citizens, who felt Brussels an unaccountable institution, far from their priorities. Now the EU deals with unemployment, with the economic and social disaster brought by the virus. It is a tribute to the virtues of multilateralism, solidarity and development. And Portugal will try to complete what the German Presidency was unable to conclude.

But if we look to the obvious need for a world’s vaccination, the reality is much dimmer. Until now the rich countries have bought as many as possible vaccines. f. Europe, with 13% of the world population, has bought 51% of the total production. Israel is a case study. With a population of 9 million people, highly registered and organized in the health system, Netanyahu (who will do everything to stay in power), has bought the vaccines at an extra cost but is fast reaching all the population. Certainly, this cannot be the case of India, with nearly 1.4 billion people, and a very primitive system of health… Even the Pope has launched an appeal for distributing a free vaccine in the poor countries, and India and South Africa (which are a member of the G20), have asked the General Assembly of the World Health Organization for free distribution in poor countries. There has been strong opposition from the rich countries, that have financed at the tune of 10 billion dollars the development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which now they buy at market prices, several times higher than those of AstraZeneca… And then those two vaccines use a new technology, whose side effects are still unknown, unlike AstraZeneca, which uses a well-experimented technique.

But even if we take the cheaper vaccines, there is a very basic issue: under which ethical and human logic, patents and money can be made over public goods, as the Pope has repeatedly asked? The patent industry has been patenting seeds, rice, plants, which have been existing for hundreds of years, and those new peasants cannot use them without paying a royalty to the company who patented them. And then the pharmaceuticals tried to patent, parts of the human body… Citizens from several parts of the world have been setting up an association, Agorà for Humankind, that is conducting a campaign, for the elimination of patents and profits over public goods, as they belong to humankind. Also, an international alliance has been set up between the public and private sectors, the General Alliance for Vaccine Initiative, GAVI, which has the task to finance vaccination in 93 middle and poor countries. But funding is still far from coming. As things are now, at the end of 2021, only 30% of humankind will be vaccinated, basically from rich countries.

Yet, if there is something that should make all of us aware that we are in the same boat, is this pandemic. Until at least 70% of all humans will be vaccinated, the virus will continue to strike and kill. The British mutation, much more contagious, is a good example. The country with more cases is now Spain, which has no physical contact with the UK. But it went to Gibraltar, the British colony since 1713 in the South of Spain. And from there spread to the surrounding Spanish villages and towns. Did the realization that viruses does not know borders help to make the new treaty for relations between Gibraltar and Spain? The answer is not really: it is trade. Yet, it does not require a virologist to assume that trade spreads the virus…

So, after this long ride among different subjects, its thread should be clear. We have gone from an era when the lessons of the Second World War created a generation of politicians who made of peace and development the common ground for international relations, even during a very dangerous Cold War. Would Trump, Johnson and Putin be at Yalta, instead of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, the outcome would have been very different. Most probably, we would have had no United Nations, no international organizations. Just think that the US, to push for the creation of the UN, agreed in its founding engagement, to pay 25% of its costs.

Then, beginning with Reagan and Thatcher, a profound change came. The interests of my country are more important than international cooperation, and the stronger I am, the more so. Multilateralism, cooperation, went under attack, and so the role of the State, its function of guarantor of social progress, equity and participation. Other organizations started to sprout, and weaken the UN, and the instruments of a social pact, like trade unions. From the spirit of the fall if the Berlin’ Wall, in 1989, a number of clubs of rich countries, like the G7, the G8, the G20, started to substitute the UN, and private clubs, like the World Economic Forum of Davos, attracted more important personalities than the General Assembly of the United Nations.

We are now in a third phase, whose symbol abounds: nationalism, xenophobia, and the illusion that sovereignty is more important than cooperation. Brexit is a notable example. But Trump sets up an unprecedented level of legitimacy to what was once considered the betrayal of civism and democracy: exploit and exasperate the divides of a country, racial, cultural, gender, and run without any compliance to rules and traditions. He is accompanied by a variegated assortment of autocratic, populist, and narcists kind of new political generation: Bolsonaro, Orban, Kacynski, Putin, Modi, Sissi, Nehayanu, Duterte, just to cite the most known, while others, like Salvini, are poised to take the power. The virus, instead of uniting citizens, has further divided them. To wear the mask, is a left-wing declaration, like to worry about the climate, which is a survival’ concern. Military expenses are on a continuous increase. In 2019 they have reached an unprecedented amount of 1917 billion dollars. Enough to solve all problems of food, health and education worldwide. The UN is still the only organization able to provide the world with plans of global significance. Its Agenda 2030 gives a plan for the solution of our most significant problems. It costs a fraction of the military expenses. The G20 has paid some lip services, to Agenda 30, but never anything significant. The new generations of politicians are under general scrutiny, and it is not positive at all… I would say that is representative of our crisis, books still get published on a world of conspiracy, like that the virus is used by Bill Gates to inoculate nanoparticles that will make it possible to control all human bodies, Or myths like the one on Bilderberg Club, one of the private’s clubs meeting, as the place where decisions are taken by a small elite on how to run the world. This, when more than ever is clear that the system has lost its compass, and even the tragedy of climate and soon two million deaths are not able to bring back cooperation and multilateralism… but the explosions of conspiracies is a good sign of the decline of democracy…

So, Italy enters now the chairmanship of the G20. It is a position without any significant weight, with the task to realize a coming Summit, of the head of States, from which nobody expects much. If Trump’s defeat has any significant meaning, by November the political situation could have improved, but we will have a Germany without Merkel, probably more nationalist, and the miraculous social engagement of the European Union, could come to a halt. Italy has a very fragile government, and the dubious distinction of having a very young minister of Foreign Affairs, whose only working experience was to be a steward at Naples’ stadium. On the Health Summit, he does not look particularly commanding respect and authority. This will be Italy’s first test. In May, it will be clear that without vaccination in the world, rich countries will not be out of danger. It should be easy to rally the 20 most important countries of the world, which include India and South Africa, to such obvious actions. But in those times, where interests and selfishness are the reality, it is legitimate to nourish many doubts… Anyhow, if 2021 will not be a year of regeneration and creation, we will be on an irreversible slipping decline… time is running out…

But it looks now like the solution to the problems is beyond the reach of the system…

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

 

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By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

The new year has arrived, but the situation is worse than in the last months of 2020. The pandemic is still unleashed: the end of the year holidays, the official permissiveness, and the slowness of the distribution of vaccines seem to announce that the disease will continue to wreak havoc for several months in most of the world, particularly in America, Europe, and parts of Asia like India. It has therefore been required to redouble preventive measures: a new lockdown and the disruption of almost all economic and school activities. Therefore, the recovery looks still uncertain and distant.

Saul Escobar Toledo

On the health front, we can expect that infections will decrease thanks to the confinements and a greater number of vaccinated people, but the economic recovery will need more energetic action from governments. There is hardly any room for optimism, especially if you trust that things will be fixed by the inertia of the market forces.

On the one hand, it will be necessary to substantially expand the funds earmarked for programs already launched last year to support the neediest individuals and companies. In addition, it is urgent to design new measures that can ensure a faster recovery and prevent new crises.

Among the latter, various institutions and specialists (e.g., the Nobel Prize Joseph Stiglitz), have pointed out how enormously helpful would be the issuance of at least 500 billion dollars of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) by the IMF to launch an aid program for the poorest and developing countries. This program would not overwhelm the existing sovereign debts and would serve to finance the balance of payments and imports necessary for food, health, and improvement of the environment.

There can be no room for confusion. The recovery must be measured based on these indicators: reduction of sick people; increase in the number and quality of employment; and a greener production system.

Everything else, such as debt, parity of currencies, stock markets, the public deficits and even percentage points of GDP, should be understood as secondary issues or mere instruments to achieve the desired recovery.

Otherwise, there may be a simulated retorn to normality, apparently recovering what has been lost when in fact we will go backwards because there will be more poverty, inequality, pollution, and a decreased ability to prevent and face new catastrophes.

In the case of Mexico, the foregoing translates into the need to design a recovery program that does not exist today. The announced vaccination campaign is not enough if hospital capacity and first-rate health care are not improved. A new economy must lead us to the production of cleaner energy and other measures that reduce pollution and inject vitality into new economic branches. You cannot trust the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) and infrastructure works in progress as the only drivers to recover the jobs lost. A new legislation on unemployment insurance, outsourcing, digital platforms, and programs to support families, especially those who live in the informal economy, is necessary. A progressive salary policy, like the one that has been implemented, is not enough if regional, gender and age gaps are not reduced.

To elaborate on the issue of employment, fundamental for a true recovery, we have consulted the report that the ILO and ECLAC published at the end of last year. The paper recognizes that the pandemic will “lead to the worst GDP contraction in the region’s history (a projected downturn of 9.1% in 2020), which has already had and will continue to have profound labor and social consequences” (available at https://www.cepal.org).

According to this study, the existence of a large informal sector, without access to social security and therefore very vulnerable, has had and will have a strong regressive impact on the income and quality of life of millions of people. Formal jobs were also affected as many people were laid off; others kept their jobs, but suffered a significant decrease in their income, due to the reduction of hours worked or to the fact that they were sent home with unpaid vacations or leave with lower wages. The effect of these measures was more severe in our country due to the absence of unemployment insurance.

A remarkable phenomenon that this crisis produced was the enormous number of people who were left without work and stopped looking for it. Technically they ceased to be part of the EAP (Economically Active Population) and joined the Economically Inactive Population (PEI). Women were particularly harmed due to their stronger presence in the sectors most heavily affected by the health crisis (domestic service, restaurants and hotels, commercial activities) but, also, to the prevalence of a macho culture that confined them to take care of the sick, children without school, the elderly and household chores.

The crises caused also that wage employment contracted less than own-account work. The reason is that the latter involve, for many of the activities, face-to-face contact, especially in the informal sector. In Mexico salaried workers fell by almost 14% in the second quarter of 2020 but self – employed accounted for a 30.9% drop. This decline has been reversed, but at the cost of a greater exposure of the informal workers to contagion, which would partly explain the growth in the number of sick and dead persons.

On the other hand, the study emphasizes the devastating consequences among young people: job losses affected them more than other workers. This situation, says the report, has been a factor that has accentuated “fatigue and loneliness… So, “feelings of sadness, fear and distress are also more common among young men and women.” The paper warns that: “the more time spent out of school and out of work, the greater the risks of precarious work and exclusion from the labor market throughout one’s working life”

To avoid these tragedies, programs aimed at improving their training are required; and maintain and improve income transfer policies for young people who study, the workers adults, and households. Otherwise, it is highly likely that young people will be pressured to look for an income mainly in the informal activities. It would also restrict the possibilities of investing in improving their labor capacities.

The latest data, offered by the Mexican government, show the slowness of the recovery: in November 2020, the employed population was 52.93% (in relation to the total of working age population), a little lower than in October and, of course in March (55.76%). Furthermore, most of the people who returned to work did so in informal activities. With respect to formal jobs, the loss in eleven months, from January to November, was 369, 890 posts. Nearly 278 thousand more were missed in December, as the president of the republic told in his morning press conference.

With this scenario, the recovery does not look so close or certain. The ECLAC-ILO study underlines that: “The health crisis has highlighted the importance of a solid and efficient public sector with the capacity to react quickly to shocks with strong economic and social impacts.” The situation that we are observing at the beginning of the year requires that the institutions of the Mexican state redouble their efforts, do it as soon as possible and with a comprehensive project.

Saul Escobar Toledo, Economist, Professor at Department of Contemporary Studies in INAH (National Institute oh Anthropology and History, México) and President of the Board of the Institute of Workers Studies “Rafael Galvan”, a non-profit organization. His recent work : “Subcontracting: a study of change in labor relations” will be published soon by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Mexico City.
saulescobar.blogspot.com

 

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Credit: US government

By Bishop Bill Swing and Jonathan Granoff
NEW YORK, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

Between now and January 20,2021, the President of the United States has almost run out of arenas in which to impose his will. His reelection has soured in infamy. His concern for the COVID-19 pandemic faded long ago. There is only one last pursuit available to him to demonstrate that he is the most powerful man on earth, i.e. using the nuclear weapons at his disposal.

What if? This man who once suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on the eye of a hurricane, what if he decided to drop a nuclear warhead on Iran? What if Iran retaliated and sent rockets into Israel? What if Israel nuked Iran? What if the Middle East exploded and other nuclear nations chose sides and piled on expanded targets with their nukes?

Right now, the citizens of the United States and the people of the world need to be protected from the “what if” of an unhinged President armed with nuclear weapons.

Two questions quickly arise: 1) is this President, with nuclear weapons at his fingertips, sound of mind with a healthy moral compass? 2) Why should any President be given “sole authority” to order the launch of a nuclear arsenal? To launch in five minutes without the counsel of anyone else?

The entire enterprise of having weapons capable of destroying most all life on this planet – in five minutes – is morally absurd. Like dropping a nuke capriciously on a hurricane or giving a dangerously flawed President 5,800 nuclear weapons to play with in his last delusional days in office?

The President has “sole authority” to destroy without having “soul authority” to understand the moral gravity of this decisions. He has to be denuded of his nukes for all of our sakes.

And the nine countries with nuclear weapons merely mirror, over time, Donald Trump in his last days of reign. Trump is our nuclear problem immediately. But in the longer run, every one of these nations is deranged in thinking that nuclear weapons make us secure and solve problems.

With the weapons hanging over us, we are anything but secure. As for solving problems, nuclear weapons did nothing to stop the damage of COVID-19 or lessen the effects of climate change. What most ails the world is not addressed by a nuclear arsenal.

The United States of America has to sweat out these last days of President Trump, but the world has to sweat out the years ahead until we blow ourselves up or whittle our stockpiles of nuclear weapons down, eventually, to zero. We are all unhinged with nuclear weapons at our fingertips.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-danger-of-nukes-with-an-unhinged-Trump-15856851.php

 

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Excerpt:

Bishop Bill Swing, Founder and President United Religions Initiative in collaboration with Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute

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By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan 8 2021 (IPS)

Mohammad Rakibul Hasan is a Bangladeshi documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker and visual artist who has been visiting the camps in Cox’s Bazaar to document the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Rakibul Hasan is a recipient of the Lucie Awards Discovery of the Year 2018. He also received the 23rd Human Rights Press Awards from The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Journalists Association, for his series “The Looted Honor” which documents Rohingya refugee rape survivors.

Rakibul Hasan has shared with IPS a selection of images document life in the Rohingya refugee camps.

At a COVID-19 sample collection centre in a Rohingya refugee camp, a healthcare professional takes a swab from a Rohingya refugee child. During the pandemic, refugees are receiving information about COVID-19 protection but at the same time many COVID-19 myths have spread across the camp. Although the number of positive cases and the fatality rate is low, many people are asymptomatic as noted by healthcare providers. In addition, many refugees experiencing flu-like symptoms are said to be hiding in their make-shift homes and hoping to recover without medical intervention.

In the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, many aren’t wearing masks. This is despite the fact that many non-profit organisations as well as the Bangladesh government are providing basic protective kits and conducting awareness programmes educating those living here on how to protect themselves from COVID-19. Though the number of COVID-19 cases are low as per the data from healthcare centres in the camps, many refugees are flocking to medical centres and local pharmacies to collect medicine for fevers and coughs.

A healthcare professional checks a COVID-19 sample in a lab in Cox’s Bazar. A number of COVID-19 samples have been collected in the Rohingya refugee camps and all samples are sent to a designated testing lab operated by the Bangladesh government.

Drug trafficking and robbery by Rohingya refugees and local Bangladeshi smugglers around Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, has become a difficult problem to solve.

More than one million Muslim minority Rohingya’s fled Myanmar in 2017 due to ethnic cleansing, which has been condemned internationally as genocide. They now live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Many are uneducated as the Myanmar government never allowed them to study in their country and currently many in the refugee camps still do not have access to education. It is a life of uncertainty. And the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed them to the edge.

A Rohingya refugee boy holding an umbrella as the cyclonic storm Amphan hit the coastal region of Bangladesh, causing excessive rainfall in the Rohingya refugee camps.

 

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US President Donald Trump at a meeting of the Security Council. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 8 2021 (IPS)

The storming of Capitol Hill in Washington DC by an unruly mob is reminiscent of an insurrection in a “banana republic” –as hilariously portrayed in the 1971 Woody Allen comedy “Bananas” spoofing a revolt in a fictional Latin American country.

But judged by the disastrous four-year administration of President Trump such a description is an insult to all banana republics.

Trump’s presidency has been characterized by misgovernment, corruption, lies, xenophobia, nepotism, arrogance, and ultimately, contempt for the country’s democratic electoral process.

For long, America has been the world’s self-appointed cop ousting dictatorships and overthrowing authoritarian regimes (read: Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan), upholding human rights and preaching peace – even while selling millions of dollars in weapons to conflict-ridden countries.

As the New York Times pointed out what unfolded in Washington DC, however, was “one of the most severe intrusions of the Capitol” since the British invasion during the war of 1812 when it was burnt down.

Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who was a longtime critic of Trump inside the bowels of his own political party, expressed his denunciation in a single sentence: “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.”

As Cable News Network (CNN) pointed out, a growing number of Republican leaders and Cabinet officials believe Trump should be removed from office before President-elect Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration, even if it means invoking the 25th Amendment or disqualifying Trump from ever holding office again.

The 25th Amendment to the US constitution provides procedures for replacing a president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the shocking spectacle from the mob attack on the seat of American government with the apparent encouragement of the president, along with efforts by some Republican members of Congress to block the certification of the Electoral College, demonstrates that a significant faction of the conservative movement in the United States has become explicitly anti-democratic.

“While Wednesday’s events will likely backfire politically, it serves a warning that there are real authoritarian tendencies in this country led by people who are willing to use violence to seize power.”

Despite clear signs that there would be a serious attempt to storm the Capitol, security was minimal and the Capitol Police were quickly overrun, he added.

This contrasts with the massive and intimidating troop presence around the Capitol and other government buildings during the largely nonviolent protests for racial justice this past spring despite the absence of any such realistic threats.

This raises serious issues regarding racism and ideological biases in policy and related security measures in Washington, said Zunes.

He pointed out that the shock and dismay around Trump’s support for a de facto coup and his overall authoritarian tendencies are well-founded.

“At the same time, it must be acknowledged that presidential administrations and Congressional leaders of both parties have long supported autocratic regimes and occupation armies elsewhere through arms transfers and other security assistance. Indeed, the United States is the world’s number one backer of such anti-democratic governments”.

Support for democracy, he argued, must not stop at the water’s edge. “If Americans are serious about defending democratic institutions, we must apply such principles to our foreign policy as well.”

The demonstrators on Capitol Hill have been described mostly as right-wing extremists and white supremacists who are ardent supporters of Trump. At least four died in the melee.

Meanwhile, some of the US allies in Europe, including France, Germany and UK have expressed shock and revulsion at the insurrection in one of the world’s “model democracies”.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS that Wednesday, January 6, is a day that will live on in infamy; a day in which the president of the United States incited a mob to storm the nation’s capital, in which Trump perpetuated lies and falsehoods about the election to justify his betrayal of the country, the Constitution, his office, and the very foundations of this democratic republic.

He said the world watched in horror as the far-right mob managed to breach security and enter the Capitol building successfully. Clearly, the violent protestors were not repelled with adequate force or they would never had made their way in.

“Had the mob consisted of left-wing agitators instead, of black and brown bodies rather than white bodies, the news would be quite different — indeed, it is more than likely that had that been the case, the protesters would never had made it inside at all, let alone allowed to remain there for over four hours”.

What is perhaps most disgraceful, over and above Trump’s cynical and self-serving incitement, is his silence while the mob roamed through the Capitol, while senators and representatives hid themselves away until it was safe to return to complete the business of the day, said Ben-Meir.

“When he finally did make a statement, it was anything but a full-throated condemnation of the chaos and violence that had consumed the nation’s temple of democracy. Rather he told the rioters to return home, and added “We love you” – after reiterating his false claim that the election was stolen”.

In a word, said Ben-Meir, Trump sought to justify the insurrectionists, and the reason for that is plain: he wants to sow as much violence and discord as he possibly can between now and the inauguration.

That way he can point to the civil unrest and say “see, that is what happens when you steal an election.” Never mind that it has only been Trump and his fringe followers who have sought to steal an election, and to the credit of this still great nation, failed completely and utterly, he declared.

UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Secretary-General “is saddened by the events at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.”

In such circumstances, he said, “it is important that political leaders impress on their followers the need to refrain from violence, as well as to respect democratic processes and the rule of law. “

In a statement from Geneva, UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said: “We are deeply troubled by Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol, which demonstrated clearly the destructive impact of sustained, deliberate distortion of facts, and incitement to violence and hatred by political leaders”.

She said allegations of electoral fraud have been invoked to try to undermine the right to political participation. We are encouraged to see that the process has continued in spite of serious attempts to disrupt it.

“We call on leaders from across the political spectrum, including the President of the United States, to disavow false and dangerous narratives, and encourage their supporters to do so as well,” she added.

“We note with dismay the serious threats and destruction of property faced by media professionals yesterday. We support calls from many quarters for a thorough investigation into Wednesday’s events,” declared Bachelet

In a summing up, Ben-Meir said Trump used the power of his office to dismantle everything that President Obama has achieved, and he stopped short of nothing to delegitimize President-elect Biden’s victory.

“All I can say is eat your heart out, Mr. Trump. Obama left the presidency after serving two terms with honor and dignity and with the Nobel Peace Prize under his belt. And Trump will leave his office as an impeached one-term president who will live in infamy.”

The Democratic leadership, with the few Republicans who stood for the rule of law and did not submit to Trump’s whims, should immediately push for either impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from his office and bar him from ever holding a formal position again, he declared.

  

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