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Education: Act Now, Don’t Wait for the Bill

Tue, 10/20/2020 - 10:25

By Stefania Giannini
PARIS, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

School reopening doesn’t mean that education is back on course. For a start, schools remain closed in over 50 countries, affecting more than 800 million students. The poorest ones may never make it back to school, driven by poverty into child labour or early marriage. Distance learning has been out of reach for one third of the 1.6 billion students affected worldwide by school closures. They may disengage altogether if school closures continue.

Stefania Giannini

The health crisis is at risk of eroding decades of progress. For the first time since its conception, the Human Development Index is slated to decline, with education accounting for one third of its measure. At least 24 million students from early childhood through secondary school and university are at risk of dropping out because of COVID’s economic impact alone. Young children have missed out on vital health, nutrition and early learning in critical pre-school years. Youth have seen skills’ training centres shut down without any alternative. Learners with disabilities were left without support. Girls have faced heightened exposure to violence and early marriage. Adults’ literacy programmes were interrupted. University students couldn’t afford to continue their studies. The world was already facing a learning crisis before the pandemic. Now it could turn into a generational catastrophe if governments and the international community fail to prioritize education as a springboard of the recovery.

But as it stands now, education is not being prioritized. Education and training is receiving a nearly invisible share of stimulus packages set up by countries to support recovery from the COVID-19 crisis – 0.78 percent or USD 91.2 billion according to UNESCO’s preliminary research. Europe and North America allocated the largest amount to education (USD 56.9 billion) followed by Asia and the Pacific (USD 30.5 billion), while other regions may have spent around USD 3.8 billion altogether. The IMF policy tracker finds that only 37 out of 196 countries and territories cover education or training in their fiscal measures, especially stimulus packages. Leaders hardly referred to education when they met virtually at the UN last month to set priorities on financing for development post-COVID-19.

This does not stand up to economic logic. The recovery cannot be a competition for funds but one that builds on the connections between education, health, jobs and fighting poverty and inequalities. Access to education has lifetime repercussions on well-being, earnings and gender equality. Fiscal space is shrinking everywhere, but at minima, education budgets must be protected, if not increased to maintain the same level of spending. It is morally unacceptable to make governments choose between funding essential public goods and servicing debt.

There is a cost to every lost school day. Education will take time to recover from a universal disruption. The pandemic will notch up the funding gap for education by one third to as much as USD 200 billion annually in low and middle-income countries. The recovery requires investing now in campaigns to re-enrol the most marginalized students, in catch-up and second chance programmes and in health and hygiene facilities to ensure children and teachers are safe in school. As the pandemic curve is far from flattening, investments will be needed in remote and online learning options as they become an inevitable part of the “new normal”.

But by making the right investment choices now, rather than waiting, the additional funding gap incurred by the pandemic could be reduced by three-quarters. Aid to education, that was already losing steam as a priority among many donors, accounting for less than 11% of total official development assistance, could decline by 12% as a result of COVID-19. It must be stepped up. Children and youth are paying a high price for the health crisis. The pandemic cannot sound the death knell of their education – and their future. We can’t let our education systems break down in the name of a recession or a pandemic.

As an international community, we are calling on world leaders to make pledges to protect their education budgets and act in solidarity to support those farthest behind. We are convening a global meeting hosted by the Ghana, Norway and the United Kingdom this 22 October where we need to rally around the call to #PowerEducation and protect learning. Governments and the international community have it their power to prevent an educational fallout that will deepen inequalities and set back human development everywhere, threatening the already fragile social fabric of our societies. The COVID-19 generation deserves a better deal for the future, and this starts with the promise of a decent quality education.

Stefania Giannini is Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO

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Categories: Africa

Limited Liability: Profit Without Responsibility

Tue, 10/20/2020 - 10:03

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

Limited liability protection for shareholders in joint stock companies was introduced to encourage investments in them. However, it has encouraged irresponsibility, causing much harm while generating profits without responsibility.

Limited liability limits responsibility
Columbia Law School’s Professor Katarina Pistor has extended her critique of the legal system to emphasize the implications of such limited liability. Limited liability encourages shareholders not to pay attention to the harm corporations they invest in may do.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Instead, as emphasized by Milton Friedman, shareholders should focus on returns to investment, and not be distracted by other considerations, especially the notions of corporate social responsibility and stakeholderism.

Chicago University’s Professor Luigi Zingales has emphasized that companies are not just value-neutral institutional or contractual arrangements. Instead, they have obligations to serve the public good or otherwise benefit society, to reciprocate for privileges provided by the state.

“Historically we know that corporations were born as public institutions with a special privilege granted by the state… Even today, … the privilege of limited liability, especially with respect to tort claims, is an extraordinary privilege granted by the state.”

The limited liability of these companies has allowed them to pursue profits with impunity, and to blatantly violate ethics and moral restraint, with little accountability to other ‘stakeholders’, i.e., with interests in the company’s activities and operations, including their consequences.

Limited liability effectively provides a legal guarantee to prospective shareholders intended to encourage investments in joint stock companies. Legal protection thus exempts shareowners from responsibility for the harm their corporations cause.

Limited liability companies
This amounts to a privileged legal exception granted by the state, effectively tantamount to an economic subsidy. Indeed, limited liability has long lay at the heart of the joint stock company. The corporation itself may face liability, but not shareholders who get to keep the profits they get.

Shareholders can, of course, lose money on their shareholdings, but they also profit without liability even if their companies harm others, cause ecological damage — e.g., water or air pollution, or greenhouse gas emission — and deliberately conceal and deny the dangers and costs of corporate practices which may involve corruption or other abuses, whether legal or otherwise.

In effect, shareholders bear virtually ‘no liability’ legally, and have no legal responsibility to other ‘stakeholders’. Unintended beneficial ‘side effects’ or ‘externalities’ for others were acceptable, but corporate governance should not be distracted and undermined by such considerations.

Shareholders are shielded from the consequences of the harm — or ‘negative externalities’ — that corporations inflict on others and on nature with the protection of ‘limited liability’. Under this legal dispensation, company shareholders are absolved of liability, regardless of the human and environmental costs caused by their activities, products or services sold.

Hence, limited liability has long been at the very core of their business models. Those running such limited liability companies have been quite aware of at least some of their ‘negative externalities’, or harm they cause, as such externalities are actually at the core of their profit maximizing strategies.

Thus, cost-saving or efficiency considerations typically involve skirting legal regulations, ‘passing on’ or ‘socializing’ costs, minimizing tax exposure, extracting non-renewable valuable resources, otherwise harming the environment, and other ‘socially irresponsible’ conduct.

Off the hook
In case after case of corporate crime, shareholders have been let off the hook: from the 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, which killed hundreds of thousands, to the health consequences of the use of tobacco, asbestos and other toxic and carcinogenic substances.

More recently, shareholders of Boeing, responsible for two airplane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people, made US$43 billion from share repurchases during 2013-2019 when the firm ignored safety standards in order to cut costs. Meanwhile, the families of those who died will be compensated from a US$50 million disaster fund, i.e., about under US$150,000 per victim, much less than 0.2 per cent of the share repurchase gains.

A lawsuit against the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, the company believed to have profited most from the US opioid epidemic, is trying to hold beneficiaries of corporate misconduct accountable. Apparently, Purdue hired McKinsey as consultants to “turbocharge” opioid sales, willfully encouraging addiction, knowing it would lead to many deaths.

Nevertheless, fearing liability, some family members have reportedly moved much of their money to Switzerland. However, they need not fear as US courts have long protected influential shareholders from the victims of such corporate abuses, a norm unlikely to be reversed by senior judicial appointments in recent years.

Internalising externalities
Limited liability has often been criticised for preventing markets from properly pricing risks posed by corporate activities known to or suspected of causing substantial harm. But this, of course, presumes that assessing and pricing risk and harm by markets is straightforward, unproblematic and uncontroversial.

Property rights, it is claimed, increase efficiency by ensuring that owners bear the costs of the profit-seeking activities their assets are engaged in. Yet, limited liability protects investors from having to bear the full costs of their consequences while retaining profits so generated. Unsurprisingly, shareholders will defend such privileges and resist efforts requiring them to bear such costs.

‘Command and control’ or top-down regulation is dismissed as ineffective, costly and inefficient by the ideology of shareholder market capitalism. Meanwhile, market deterrents, e.g., via taxation, are opposed as governments are dismissed as incapable of setting optimal tax rates.

Shareholders also try to avoid liability by locating assets in safe havens, and by persuading governments to protect them, even threatening sanctions against those seeking to undermine such protection. But laws that allow investors to do harm with impunity also undermine the very legitimacy of the economic and legal system besides the very conditions for humanity’s survival.

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Categories: Africa

Low-cost Technology can Have Life-changing Impacts for Rural Women

Mon, 10/19/2020 - 18:48

Members of a women-farmers’ collective demonstrate use of a devices that sends daily bulletins on weather patterns, crops and other matters of importance to farming communities in rural India. Inexpensive technology can have a life-changing impact on rural women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 19 2020 (IPS)

Access to technology which is relatively inexpensive to deploy can have a life-changing impact for rural women, social scientist Valentina Rotondi told IPS.

Rotondi shared her insight during a presentation of her research titled “Digital rural gender divide in Latin America and the Caribbean” to mark International Day of Rural Women on Thursday, Oct. 15.

At the presentation, Rotondi said her team studied the impact of the digital gender gap and access to technology on women’s health. Their research focused specifically on access to reproductive and sexual health for women in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Access to mobile phones can be a vehicle for improving health and reproductive health for women living in those remote areas,” Rotondi told IPS. “Women living in remote areas can get access to information regarding their pregnancy or their health. As a result, getting access to this information and reducing their travel time to hospital, improves the health status of their babies.”

The research was carried out by the University of Oxford, and the webinar was co-organised by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Manuel Otero, Director General of IICA, said in his opening remarks that the observation of International Day of Rural Women was to celebrate the far-reaching “direct implications” and “deep roots” that rural women hold in the lives of those around them.

“Women in rural territories deserve and need to be applauded, because they are the ones that guarantee rootedness, and are also at the core of family and productive life,” he said.

Otero added that rural women played a key role in ensuring food security and, ultimately, the whole purpose of agricultural development and rural wellbeing.

And yet, often they remain invisible in larger society.

Calling them the “guardians of our rural territories”, Otero said that last week’s celebrations were a part of the framework to gain recognition for such a vital section of society.

“We want to encourage public discussion which is necessary in order to push for development and implementation of high quality policies that would, once and for all, improve the situation for the women who live out in the countryside,” he said.

At the talk, Rotondi added that while it is very low-cost to implement the kind of technological access that provides women with information about reproductive health, their impacts can be life-changing.

“The impact of those kinds of technology, which are really cheap and [help] connect [the women] to others, are big enough and could really be a vehicle for sustainable development,” she said.

According to their research, narrowing gender gaps in mobile phone adoption can further narrow gender gaps in internet access, which might be “pivotal” in terms of health of improvement.

Rotondi further cited research that found access to mobile phones can improve women’s financial resilience , which in turn improves their outcomes.

She shared the findings of their study that support this analysis:

Women living in rural areas are the least “connected” group.
The digital gender divide, which hampers women’s ability to access information and communication technologies, was narrowing in Latin America and the Caribbean until a few years ago
In 17 of the 23 countries analysed, women are less likely than men to report owning a mobile phone
Countries that report a narrow digital gender gap also have lower gender gaps in vulnerable employment, youth unemployment and labor-force participation

The digital divide between men and women has been further impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“In this pandemic situation, whereby schools are closed, people who have access to mobile phones and the Internet might be able to continue education, but those without this technology cannot,” Rotondi added.

Otero of IICA added that the current pandemic has made it more challenging for the rural women who are even less connected, highlighting the invisibility of rural women and their work.

“It’s not enough to talk about access to land ownership, productive resources, finances, education, training, health, and justice” he said. “In particular, we [must] focus on the issue of connectivity. The pandemic has shown us that [having a] cell phone opens up almost every type of possibility, the ability to study, to sell or to buy – and therefore to work.”

The post Low-cost Technology can Have Life-changing Impacts for Rural Women appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Climate Change: New Threat to Nepal’s Rhinos

Mon, 10/19/2020 - 15:05

Loss of their favourite grass due to the spread of invasive vines have forced rhinos to venture outside Chitwan National Park, like this one in Sauraha last year. Credit: SAGAR GIRI/ Nepali Times.

By Mukesh Pokhrel
CHITWAN, Nepal, Oct 19 2020 (IPS)

Nepal’s population of one-horned rhinoceros that survived hunting, a shrinking habitat and wildlife trafficking are now faced with a new threat: changes in their living environment due to a rapidly-warming atmosphere.

Eight rhinos have been found dead inside Chitwan National Park since 11 July – half of them due to unprecedented floods on the Narayani River that submerged their grassland habitat.

The latest rhino to be washed up on the river bank on 7 October, followed two days later by a rhino that fell into the Balmiki-Gandaki irrigation canal and drowned.

The rhinos have overcome many threats, but climate change has brought about a new challenge - erratic weather, including heavy rains and floods during the monsoon and prolonged drought in the dry season have altered the rhino’s riverine habitat

One of the rhinos is believed to have been shot on 10 September by poachers taking advantage of the lockdown, the first such instance after four years of zero rhino poaching in Nepal. Rhinos have been rescued from the brink of extinction in Nepal’s Tarai plains, and now number 605 in Chitwan alone, with a dozen more in Bardia National Park.

“The rhinos have overcome many threats, but climate change has brought about a new challenge,” explains Shantaraj Gyawali, who did his PhD on rhino conservation. He says erratic weather, including heavy rains and floods during the monsoon and prolonged drought in the dry season have altered the rhino’s riverine habitat.

Rhinos, tigers and other species that need watering holes in the dry season are suffering because many of them have gone dry. Part of the reason is increasingly erratic weather with too much rain the monsoon, and too little in spring. The water table has also gone down due to over-extraction of groundwater by farmers outside the park.

The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation has dug 500 ponds in the Tarai parks, with another 200 being readied for coming dry season. It has also tried to restore native grass in the floodplain grazing area of rhinos, and other ungulates that are prey for tigers and other carnivores.

The drowning deaths of rhinos this monsoon season has worried Chitwan National Park authorities, who blame unprecedented heavy rainfall probably due to climate change.

Eight rainfall measurement stations across Nepal this year registered record-breaking precipitation. Of these, seven were in the upper reaches of the Narayani River watershed in Kaski, Baglung, Syangja, and Parbat.

Kaski district registered a record-breaking 4,519mm of rain in July-September, 33% higher than normal. Lamjung and Kusma district also saw highest-ever rainfall ever recorded. Chitwan itself had 3,130mm of rain this year, much higher than the annual average of 2,450mm.

All this rain was funnelled down to the Narayani through tributaries, to inundate the grasslands and forests of Chitwan National Park, catching many wild animals unawares.

“When rhinos die of natural causes, we are not overly worried,” says Ashok Ram of Chitwan National Park. “But when rhinos drown, or are washed down to India by floods then it raises alarm bells.”

The rhino’s favourite grasses are being over-run by invasive mikania vines. Credit: KUNDA DIXIT/Nepali Times

Indeed, in 2017 a sudden flood on the Rapti and Narayani rivers swept away wildlife, including rhinos, across the border to the Balmiki Tiger Reserve in India. Nine of the rhinos were repatriated to Chitwan a few months later. Another rhino that had been missing was finally traced, tranquilised and returned to Nepal in August.

There is no indication if whether this year’s floods also washed rhinos to India, but the increasing frequency and intensity of floods is worrying Nepal’s conservationists, who blame climate change

In addition, new invasive plant species have replaced the favourite grass fodder for rhinos, wallows have gone dry, driving rhinos out of the park into Chitwan’s tourist towns like Sauraha and Meghauli.

In fact, the sight of rhinos roaming through streets have become a tourist attraction. With it, there have also been instances of rhinos being electrocuted or poisoned by buffer zone farmers fearing loss of crops.

Ashok Ram of Chitwan National Park says he has noticed rhinos now moving from the east to the western edges of the park: “We do not know why this is happening, but they could be searching for better grazing or watering holes.”

The tall grass along the floodplains and oxbow lakes along the Rapti and Narayani Rivers are being replaced by invasive species like mikania vines, banmara, and new plant varieties that are favoured by rising global average temperatures..

Adds Ram: “Climate change threatens to undo Nepal’s success story in rhino and nature conservation.”

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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Categories: Africa

Why Food System Transformation Needs Water

Mon, 10/19/2020 - 11:25

A farmer with his young turmeric crops in Tamil Nadu, India. Credit: Hamish John Appleby / IWMI

By Dr. Mark Smith
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct 19 2020 (IPS)

The impact of Covid-19 on supply chains and food security has dealt a blow to the already faltering global development ambition of ending hunger.

More than ever, as the global population continues growing, we need to find a way to produce sufficient nutritious food for all. But with the world suffering from degraded ecosystems and facing climate change, the question is how?

Water is a critical component of food systems, from production through to consumption. And, with food security and the health of both people and ecosystems each dependent on water, our future food systems must be underpinned by a ‘systems-based’ approach to water management too.

What would a future food system that safeguards the world’s water systems and services look like? During production, farmers would withdraw less water from nature than at present but successfully produce more food with it.

They would focus their efforts in locations that have sufficient water resources to bear the burden. And the water that drains from their fields would be less polluted, because they would use fewer fertilizers and pesticides, and apply those they do need safely.

On the consumption side, everyone would have access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services, helping them to live healthier lives and suffer less from water-borne diseases, to benefit from the nutritious food they eat, and to prosper.

Thus, the human right to water supply and sanitation is integral to successful food systems too.

How do we arrive at this future scenario? What will it take to transform food and water systems in this way? Enhancing production from the water used in agriculture – even by a small amount – could significantly alleviate water stress if water savings are available for use in other sectors or returned to nature.

Reliable data is critical: it can show how much water is available, where that water is being used, and if water productivity is low or high. And many innovative approaches and technologies are being developed that can assist farmers to grow more food with less water and fewer chemicals.

Delivering water for hygiene and sanitation (WASH), while meeting the needs of agriculture and other uses, demands careful management and collaboration between WASH providers, and other water and environmental agencies.

The ‘Multiple Use Water Services’ approach, rolled out by IWMI in more than 30 countries, exemplifies the kind of joined-up effort that is required. MUS systems are designed from the outset to provide water for diverse uses from fishing to cooking and can help communities to allocate water resources more effectively and equitably.

Taking a water-systems approach will also help us to manage risks from water-related disasters, such as floods and droughts, and build resilience to climate change.

This might involve extending irrigation to rainfed farmers to help them overcome dry spells, providing smallholders with drought- or moisture-tolerant seeds so they can maintain a good yield even when a season delivers unseasonably dry- or wet conditions, or using insurance to transfer risk in the case of an extreme weather event.

Our work in India and Bangladesh shows that taking such measures can help farmers overcome climate shocks and quickly return to producing food.

Around the world, farms of less than two hectares account for 28–31% of global crop production. We have to ensure that the poorest in society are not left behind, and that women farmers or tenant smallholders without land and water rights of their own benefit too. Women alone make up 43 per cent of the agricultural labor force globally and in developing countries.

Transforming food systems calls for collaboration between a wide range of actors, working at scales from farmer’s fields to global initiatives. We must not forget, for example, the energy sector that is involved in powering irrigation or the finance providers needed to help farmers buy seed or insure their crops against floods.

And with food production connecting people, nature and economy in complex ways, we must be mindful of trade-offs when adopting particular strategies.

Ultimately, we need to address weak and fragmented governance within water management. This is because institutions that can accelerate water productivity gains in agriculture, deliver safe water to people, reduce risks from floods and droughts, and sustainably manage water-rich ecosystems, are fundamental to successfully changing food systems for the better.

Ensuring our future global population is well-nourished calls for action on food production, climate change, health and biodiversity loss – and water flows through them all.

The post Why Food System Transformation Needs Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Mark Smith is Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

The post Why Food System Transformation Needs Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

NESFAS Partner Communities Celebrate World Food Day

Mon, 10/19/2020 - 10:35

World Food Day celebration at Pyngkya, East Khasi Hills

By Damica M Mawlong
Oct 19 2020 (IPS-Partners)

World Food Day, a day dedicated to tackle world hunger, is annually celebrated on October 16, 2020 globally. To commemorate this day, the North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS) along with its partner organisations — Society for Urban and Rural Empowerment (SURE) and North East Network (NEN), Nagaland — hosted several programmes across 27 communities in Meghalaya and Nagaland. It may be mentioned here that all government SOPs and measures were followed during the events.

In his message from Rome, NESFAS chairman and coordinator of The Indigenous Partnership, Phrang Roy said, “As we celebrate the World Food Day with our 130 indigenous partner communities of North East India and as we work to ‘grow, nourish and sustain, together’, let us remind ourselves that in areas where our traditional culture, our oral traditions, our living in balance with nature and with each other have been upheld, we have prospered.” He added, “ This World Food Day is therefore an opportunity for us, as indigenous peoples, to show and tell to our national and international leaders that our traditional indigenous food systems and our biological and cultural diversity are crucial instruments for a more caring and sustainable world.”

Keeping in mind the theme for this year’s celebration — Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together — at Pyngkya (East Khasi Hills), community members hosted a Food Group treasure hunt for the children wherein the participants were divided into three groups. The children were then sent to the nearby forest and cultivation fields, along with adults, to forage the 10 food groups under one hour.

In Khweng and Madanrtiang (Ri-Bhoi), Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) and Agroecology Learning Circle (ALC) members organised a drawing competition for children at their respective communities. An Agrobiodiversity (ABD) competition was also held where community members were asked to identify the different food plants at their communities. In the evening, a few Anganwadi workers along with some of the ALC members held an awareness programme and spoke about the importance to conserve agrobiodiversity and local foods.

Agrobiodiversity Hunt in Madanrtiang, Ri-Bhoi

To instill the importance of local foods in children, community members of Laitthemlangsah, Nongwah, Dewlieh, (all under East Khasi Hills), Umwang Nongbah, Khliehumstem (Ri-Bhoi) and Mawlum Mawjahksew (West Khasi Hills), held drawing competitions under various food-related themes. However, Mawhiang, Lad Mawphlang, Laitsohpliah and Laitumiong community members hosted indigenous cooking competitions throughout the day.

Indigenous Food Cooking Competition at Mukhap, West Jaintia Hills

The NESFAS team in Garo Hills, marked the occasion in Samingre, West Garo Hills along with other partner communities — Darichikgre, Daribokgre and Durakantragre — where in the community facilitators took part in a seed-exchange programme. The programme also included sharing of knowledge on the importance of the Indigenous Food Systems by the CFs from Darichikgre, Daribokgre and Durakantragre. Chenxiang R Marak, Associate of NESFAS (Garo Hills) said, “The CFs also spoke about the importance of seeds and right after that, there was an exchange of seeds between these four communities. These are all traditional and local seeds that were exchanged to ensure seed sovereignty.” The Samingre Self Help Groups also sold fresh local vegetables and value added products at the venue.

Indigenous Food Cooking compeition at Sasatgre

NEN, on the other hand, organised a cooking competition for rural youth at the NEN Resource Centre at Chizami, Phek District, Nagaland under this year’s theme. The event brought together 65 participants, mostly youth members from Chizami and neighbouring villages. The focus of the programme was to bridge the growing gap between young people and local food systems. It is an attempt to help the youth understand the significance of local food, rediscover and appreciate traditional recipes, explore and exchange innovative recipes using local ingredients.

World food day celebrations at Cham Cham, East Jaintia Hills

Three partner communities of SURE on the other hand celebrated the day hosting an essay competition and a recitation competition in Cham Cham (Jaintia Hills), an ABD walk in Thangbuli and a indigenous food cooking competition in Mukhap. Participants were only allowed to cook indigenous meals using traditional and local ingredients only.

The post NESFAS Partner Communities Celebrate World Food Day appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Why a Zimbabwean Farming Project Failed: Lessons for Rural Innovation

Mon, 10/19/2020 - 10:22

Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By External Source
PRETORIA, South Africa, Oct 19 2020 (IPS)

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa commit resources to promote agricultural innovations. This is based on the assumption that rural livelihoods are mainly agricultural and that the innovations will increase agricultural production and household income.

As resources come under pressure from growing populations and natural resource degradation, governments and donors want to see that agricultural research and innovation has an impact. They want to see “success” and “value for money”.

But success is understood in different ways. It depends on how it’s framed and by whom.

Rural communities are dynamic and complex. Imposing innovations that don’t speak to the needs of these communities won’t achieve rural development. Our study showed the importance of developing innovations with communities as opposed to innovations for communities

Studying conflict in agricultural innovations can lead to a better understanding of the appropriateness of certain technologies in terms of how they’re designed, promoted and how they’re linked to rural livelihoods.

Conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe provides a good example of an innovation like this. This approach to farming has been widely promoted by non-governmental organisations, research institutes and the state. It’s also promoted in other countries of eastern and southern Africa.

The method is based on minimal soil disturbance, mulching soil with crop residues, and crop rotation. These are meant to conserve moisture, reduce soil erosion and build up soil organic matter to improve crop yields and rural livelihoods.

We wanted to know how this innovation was promoted and implemented in Zimbabwe and how its “success” was framed and assessed. Our study found that there were differences in how farmers and promoters of conservation agriculture defined its success.

These differences matter when investments are made in promoting agricultural innovations. It’s particularly important to understand the diversity of rural livelihoods.

The research

Our study was conducted in Gwanda and Insiza districts in south western Zimbabwe. Droughts are a common feature in the area, occurring on average every two or three years. We collected data via a household questionnaire survey, interviews and focus group discussions. Participants included farmers, NGO and government extension officers.

We found that innovation was understood by the majority of respondents as having three main attributes, namely, “novelty”, “adaptability” and “utility”. Despite novelty being mentioned more often than other understandings of innovation, some felt that it existed in theory and not practically.

For example, a farmer said interventions promoted in their communities weren’t new but rather repackaged existing technologies with different names. Some weren’t suitable for the area.

Conservation agriculture was identified as the innovation most often promoted by non-governmental organisations and government extension officers in the area. Huge investments were committed to promoting it – the Department for International Development set aside about US$23 million to promote it in Zimbabwe. Yet after the project’s three year lifespan, farmers mostly abandoned the practice.

The locals gave it the name “diga ufe”, which means “dig and die”, because it required so much physical labour. The manual digging of conservation basins during land preparation and the multiple weeding was labour intensive.

Farmers did find, though, that using the conservation agriculture techniques in their vegetable gardens yielded better results compared to bigger plots. Under crop production, farmers prioritised irrigated agriculture compared to rain-fed agriculture. Gardening was therefore identified as the second ranked important livelihood source after livestock production.

Respondents agreed that innovation was vital for sustaining food security and nutrition in the context of climate change. One farmer said innovation was about experimenting with resources at one’s disposal to come up with something new and suitable for the area. He also emphasised that innovation was a collective action that includes farmers, researchers, extension agents and the private sector. He said it was not only confined to new technology (hardware), but processes such as governance, that would yield positive results.

Climate smart crops such as sorghum, millet and cowpeas and climate smart livestock (goats and indigenous poultry) were identified by locals as potentially suitable in addressing dry spells in the area. But poor informal markets, limited bargaining power, shortage of grazing land, pests and diseases constrained productivity.

Diversifying out of agriculture was identified as an alternative response to climate change. It could boost the income of the household and help sustain food and nutrition security.

Government extension officers felt that innovations in the area should be targeted towards livestock production. The area’s semi-arid climate means it’s not conducive for rain-fed agriculture.

So, despite the efforts to promote conservation agriculture, dry land cropping was ranked as the lowest source of livelihood for rural people. People in the area prioritised livestock production. Promoting more livestock production related innovations would have been ideal for the area.

What does this mean for policy and innovations?

Innovation can thrive in rural areas. But this depends on understanding the communities’ perceptions and livelihood context to appreciate their priorities.

People in rural areas don’t lack capacity. They need support to utilise available resources and innovate in a flexible manner that’s context specific. They should be key players in coming up with solutions, since they have a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities within their communities.

Eness Paidamoyo Mutsvangwa-Sammie, Agriculture Economist, University of Pretoria

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

The post Why a Zimbabwean Farming Project Failed: Lessons for Rural Innovation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Q&A: Food Systems need to Mimic Nature

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 13:58

Current food systems have been focusing more on just a few major staples that are providing calories eg. major cereals, rice, wheat, and maze. Emile Frison,an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), says agricultural biodiversity is absolutely key not only to providing nutrition because it provides for a diversity of micro-elements, mineral vitamins etc that are absent and very poor in the major staples. Irrigated field in Kakamas, South Africa. Credit:Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

Despite the World Food Programme (WFP) being awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in addressing global hunger, sustainable food systems expert Emile Frison believes a lot more needs to be done. This includes the rethinking of approaches to agricultural production, establishing deeper relationships between consumers and producers, and taking a wholistic approach towards socio-economic factors.

Emile Frison is an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

Frison, an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), spoke with IPS a week after the Nobel committee acknowledged WFP for its rigorous approach to addressing the issue of hunger and, especially in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, “[demonstrating] an impressive ability to intensify its efforts”.

“Unfortunately, this is not only looking at short term solutions,” he told IPS. “The WFP has been addressing the [coronavirus] crisis situation which of course is important but as is often the case, not enough attention is going into providing longer term solutions of developing sustainable resilient food systems and production systems. There’s always an emergency that keeps people away from thinking longer term.”

IPS publishes our interview with Frison on World Food Day. Excerpts follow.

Inter Press Service (IPS): In what ways could world leaders and local governments have been better prepared to address hunger issues before the coronavirus pandemic?

Emile Frison (EF): We know that on a global level, we produce enough food to feed everybody and even many more people than we are on the planet right now. The major problem of hunger is not of availability, but of access to food, the issue of quality and inequity in our society. That’s the important thing that has to be addressed if we want to really find long term solutions to the issue of hunger at the same time as poverty problems.

IPS: You specifically work in the field of sustainable food systems and the deployment of agricultural biodiversity to improve nutrition and the resilience and sustainability of agricultural systems. What role does deployment of agricultural biodiversity have in improving nutrition?

EF: Our current food system has been, over the last 50 years, focusing more on just a few major staples that are providing calories: the major cereals, rice, wheat, maze, that have received the majority of the attention by research. This is leading certainly to providing calories but we know that calories are not providing health and nutrition. Agricultural biodiversity is absolutely key not only to providing nutrition because it provides for a diversity of micro-elements, mineral vitamins etc that are absent and very poor in the major staples, but it also provides for more sustainable systems from an environmental point of view. It allows us to address the climate crisis by being lower in emissions and fixing carbon in the soil and in the vegetation, in a more diverse vegetation including trees.

Agricultural biodiversity is really a key element of reversing the past trend of the last 50 or so years of ultra specialisation and focusing on just the production of these major staples at the expense of the rich diversity that used to be cultivated. It’s been more and more abandoned in development plans in efforts to so-called fight hunger.

IPS: Why has it been more abandoned in development plans?

EF: The whole education system has been focusing on trying to create an artificial environment that is ideal for production instead of understanding how nature is working. The so-called modern agriculture has been trying to create an environment where you see the plants, no longer the soil that feeds the plants. You put these synthetic fertilisers that are directly observed by plants and are actually killing the soil. So the soil becomes an inert substrate that is incapable of feeding plants. So you have to always put more and more fertilisers and because of the uniformity of the crops, the monocultures are becoming the norm. You have more and more pest diseases that are occurring, that are requiring more and more pesticides. And this is a situation not sustainable in the longer term.

We’re seeing decreases in productivity, in those areas that are using a large amount of pesticides and fertilisers. This is not an option and that’s why we have to rethink totally the agricultural paradigm from the one that creates this artificial environment where the fertilisers are feeding directly the plants, pesticides are protecting the plants rather than having an environment in which the diversity is responsible for the resilience. Because one crop will attract some pests and the neighbouring crop will attract others. So you never have the high density of pests in diverse systems that you have in large scale monocultures.

The whole production system has to be rethought in terms of using diversity as a major approach but also to think about rebuilding, and creating an environment where we don’t fight nature anymore, but we mimic nature. In natural forests, you don’t have to have fertilisers to have a very rich functioning natural system. What we have to do is learn the lessons from that through ecology. The approach, called agroecology, is applying these principles to make nature function through agriculture. This is a real rethinking of the production system as a whole using a certain number of principal that goes beyond cultural practices but also is also looking at social dimension of providing greater equity, empowering farmers in policies instead of having technology developed in laboratories that are often not answering the real problems of farmers, to have participatory research and co-innovation with farmers.

IPS: In what ways has this issue been affected by the coronavirus pandemic?

EF: There have been many lessons: long value chains that have been developing over the last several decades, where ultra specialisation in commodities that are then being traded globally are the basis of the global food system. That has shown us vulnerability, especially in countries that were largely dependent on food imports. What has also been shown is that in areas where there are diversified production systems closer to the consumers and where there are direct links between producers and consumers, the food systems have been much more resilient. All over the world we’ve seen new connections with farmers being put in contact directly with consumers such as online purchase systems.

The COVID-19 situation has shown us what kind of options are there through shorter value chains and diversification of production, to make the whole system more resilient.

IPS: In light of the WFP being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, what role would you say sustainable food systems play in efforts towards world peace?

EF: What is sure is that in areas where there is hunger, it has been leading to a lot of the conflicts that we are seeing in the last decade – especially ones causing large amounts of migration. What is also clear is that the industrial model of agriculture, with its specialisation and the power of a few major companies that control the input supply and the purchase and transformation of most of the food at the expense of a decent income for producers, is no longer a viable long term solution.

We must adopt a real, different model of agriculture including, bringing back diversity in the system, and applying the lessons we learn from nature and ecological science that teach us how soil is functioning and how the living microsms in soil play an extremely important role in having a productive system. We have demonstrated that agroecological systems are able not only to feed the world in quantity terms, but also doing it in much better quality terms. That is really the way forward and better recognised.

There’s obviously some vested interests that want to continue to sell their products and maintain the current system in place that are trying to fight the mainstreaming of agroecology and more sustainable production systems. But that has to be addressed and that’s a major responsibility for every citizen of the world but especially also civil society organisations that are really looking into these issues and putting these on the table of decision makers.

The post Q&A: Food Systems need to Mimic Nature appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

On World Food Day IPS speaks to Emile Frison, an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

The post Q&A: Food Systems need to Mimic Nature appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Food Citizenship: Innovative Partnerships for Healthy Food Systems

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 13:55

Credit: HIVOS

By Frank Mechielsen
RIJSWIJK, the Netherlands, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

Food is high on the political agenda. The need to make food systems more resilient to external shocks like climate change and Covid-19 is now well acknowledged among states and other actors. Green, healthy, and inclusive food systems should become the new normal. But to make this happen we need to reshape the entire food system, with citizens driving bottom-up innovations.

This World Food Day, we’re looking at how a holistic food system approach involving all stakeholders is key to solving the urgent and interconnected challenges that our world is currently facing.

Lessons from local food systems transformation

The Hivos and IIED Sustainable Diets for All program has championed multi-actor initiatives as a tool for helping drive the change needed. In particular, initiatives that consciously and continually engage stakeholders and that are agile enough to adjust to ongoing learning.

No innovation is effective without the participation of its users, which means that citizens and civil society, producers and consumers, should be involved in any decisions about food from the very start. This World Food Day, we’re looking at how a holistic food system approach involving all stakeholders is key to solving the urgent and interconnected challenges that our world is currently facing

Our Food Change Labs are multi-actor social innovation processes that use a systems approach to address pressing issues in a local food system. They have been a central component of local food system transformation within the program. These Labs bring relevant stakeholders like farmers, entrepreneurs, government officials and food vendors together to collaborate on developing sustainable solutions.

A new retrospective study shows the degree to which the program’s Food Change Labs in Zambia and Uganda used systems thinking to successfully kick-start the transformation of local food systems in these countries.

Moving beyond frameworks and concepts, we implemented and monitored food systems changes involving practical interventions in the field. This helped us develop a set of eight principles to guide other similar programs through their program development and all stages of implementation. These principles form the basis of the assessment in this study and have given us important insights into what further action is needed for realizing even greater change.

Crop diversification

In Zambia, we supported civil society and successfully worked with the government to develop and implement its national crop diversification strategy away from maize mono-cropping. The Beyond Maize study and the short film ‘Life Beyond Maize’ have had a particularly profound effect on policy discussions. Partners also worked to ensure that local-level interpretation of national policy was in line with the spirit of sustainable diets and to foster a greater say for local citizens in issues that directly affect them.

Indigenous crops

In Uganda, promoting the production and consumption of indigenous crops was an innovative approach to addressing malnutrition. The revival of Orugali meals engaged a wide range of stakeholders – from rural households to local politicians – and was crucial in gleaning information about citizens’ needs and priorities. Furthermore, through the Food Lab, Fort Portal became the first municipality to overcome the constraints of Uganda’s 1935 Public Health Act by using local powers to provide an enabling environment for informal street vendors.

Key principles for people-centered transformation

Using what we learned from our experiences in Zambia and Uganda, we recommend the following key principles for setting up a regularly revised monitoring system with stakeholders.

(1) Whole system approach: Consider the food system as a whole, with its economic, societal and natural context. Develop a food system scan at the start of the program, including actor mapping and their relations. Ensure all stakeholders agree on the concept of food systems.

(2) Integrated sustainability dimensions: Draw up outcomes and interventions that integrate health and well-being, the economy, and the environment.

(3) Multi-level approach: Be aware of how policies and actions are framed and constrained by higher levels (i.e. local to regional to national, to international). Identify where systemic change requires higher-level intervention. Select a network of partners with capacity to work at different levels (local, regional, national, global).

(4) Multi-stakeholder participation: Promote multi-stakeholder collaboration through inclusive governance structures, with wide representation of food system actors – both informal and formal – and citizens, especially marginalized groups. We learned it is important to make information available in native languages, and to use facilitation methods that encourage ownership and participation of women and youth.

In addition, we identified four important supporting principles: (5) Evidence-based interventions; (6) Innovation and flexibility; (7) Long-term focus; (8), Monitoring and evaluation.

Harnessing our collective impact

We need to bring people closer to food chains and empower them to influence how food is produced and how it arrives on our plates. We believe that using these principles and connecting the various actors of the food system can be a catalyst for food system transformation all over the world.

We’ve seen first-hand that inviting everyone to participate in these initiatives encourages a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives, interests, and lived experiences. This is instrumental in transforming any system.

In the Netherlands, the Netherlands Food Partnership is celebrating World Food Day this week by urging the Dutch agri-food sector and its international partners to throw their collective weight behind accessible and affordable healthy diets for all.

Including all these voices in the preparation for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit will provide momentum for a food system change based on the needs and perspectives of the majority of people, not a minority of vested interests. Redesigning our food system is a huge task but it’s one we can accomplish together.

This opinion piece was originally published here

The post Food Citizenship: Innovative Partnerships for Healthy Food Systems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Frank Mechielsen is Sustainable Food program manager at Hivos

The post Food Citizenship: Innovative Partnerships for Healthy Food Systems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Amid COVID-19, What is the Health of Civic Freedoms?

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 13:16

Black Lives Matter Protests, Washington DC, June 2020. Credit: Ted Eytan

By Marianna Belalba Barreto and Aarti Narsee
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

More than half a year after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, governments are continuing to waste precious time and energy restricting human rights rather than focusing on fighting the virus.

Civic freedoms, including the freedom to associate, express views and peacefully assemble, are under threat, with states using broad and restrictive legislation to snuff out dissent.

But people are organising and mobilising to demand rights. In the face of restrictions, civil society continues to fight back, often taking to the streets to do so.

Even before the pandemic freedom of expression was under threat. In 2019, the CIVICUS Monitor reported that censorship was the most common violation during that year, occurring across 178 countries.

Now, under the guise of stopping the spread of what they characterise as ‘fake news’, many governments continue to target the media.

Free-flowing information and unrestricted speech are vital during a pandemic. People need to receive accurate and up-to-date information on the emergency, not least so they can protect themselves and their families.

As frontline workers, journalists have a crucial role to play in disseminating important information, often putting their own lives at risk. But during the pandemic they have faced harassment, arbitrary detention and censorship from governments determined to silence critical reporting about their response to COVID-19.

Often such attempts have been carried out under the guise of tackling so-called ‘fake news’ on the virus.

Even before the pandemic, Turkey was the number one jailer of journalists in the world, with about 165 journalists currently behind bars. The government’s crackdown on the media has continued, with journalists being jailed on charges of ‘causing people to panic and publishing reports on coronavirus outside the knowledge of authorities’.

Thousands of social media accounts have also been placed under surveillance for comments about COVID-19, with citizens being detained for ‘unfounded and provocative’ posts that cause worry among the public, incite them to fear, panic and target persons and institutions’.

People expect to be able to question their government’s handling of the crisis and hold it to account over the decisions made. But governments are resisting this. In Zimbabwe, investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was detained and charged for his critical reporting on the government’s COVID-19 procurement.

The need for this was clear when Zimbabwe’s health minister was dismissed and arrested for alleged corruption in medical procurement. But while Chin’ono has been released on bail, the persecution against him continues, despite calls from local and international media watchdog bodies for all charges to be dropped.

Despite these restrictions, people have continued to mobilise and fight for their rights. The pandemic pushed activists to come up with new and innovative forms of protests. Health workers across the world staged socially distanced protests to highlight the challenges within the medical system which have been further exposed by the pandemic; around the world, people found innovative ways to get their voices across.

In Palestine, feminist organisations organised balcony protests against the surge of gender-based violence during the pandemic. Videos show people standing on their balconies, banging pots and pans and hanging banners to show solidarity.

In Singapore in April, young climate activists from the Fridays for Future global school strike movement held solo protests in order to sidestep the country’s restrictive laws on peaceful assembly.

In June in Brazil, human rights groups organised peaceful interventions to denounce the scale of the COVID-19 crisis; protesters in the capital Brasilia put up 1,000 crosses to pay tribute to COVID-19 victims on the lawn in front of key government buildings, calling out President Jair Bolsonaro for his denials of the pandemic’s gravity.

Protests against racial injustice have been staged in all corners of the globe, following the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked massive protests against police brutality in the USA, under the banner of Black Lives Matter.

As the movement expanded, people from different continents, in countries as diverse as Senegal, Sri Lanka and Sweden, chanted “No Justice, No Peace”, and held placards reading “racism is a virus” to show they had no choice but to protest amid a global pandemic.

But in some countries these protests were dispersed by police using excessive force, with the reasoning that protests would lead to a further spread of COVID-19.

CIVICUS continues to document civic space restrictions, and while many governments are taking advantage of the crisis to suppress criticism, civil society continues to resist, to fight back, and to make their voices heard.

As part of this, journalists are playing a vital role in fighting censorship and sharing information about the pandemic.

What is very clear is that civil society has and will continue to play a vital role in addressing the urgent needs of the people during this crisis. Without a healthy civic space and an enabling environment for activists, civil society and journalists, we will not be able to effectively tackle the spread of the virus and the prospect for rebuilding a more equal and just society will be limited.

This is why people will continue to organise, mobilise and protest.

The post Amid COVID-19, What is the Health of Civic Freedoms? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marianna Belalba Barreto is the Civic Space Research Lead at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation & Aarti Narsee is a Civic Space Research Officer at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

The post Amid COVID-19, What is the Health of Civic Freedoms? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

What Developing Countries Can Teach Us About How To Respond To a Pandemic

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 12:55

It’s not a lack of recognition that there’s knowledge and expertise outside the developed world; it’s just that such knowledge is not seen as relevant given the structural differences between developed and developing countries. Credit: UNFPA.

By External Source
Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

Nine months into the pandemic, Europe remains one of the regions worst affected by COVID-19. Ten of the 20 countries with the highest death count per million people are European. The other ten are in the Americas. This includes the US, which has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world.

Most of Africa and Asia, on the contrary, still seems spared. Of the countries with reported COVID-related deaths, the ten with the lowest death count per million are in these parts of the world. But while mistakes and misjudgements have fuelled sustained criticism of the UK’s handling of the pandemic, the success of much of the developing world remains unsung.

Of course, a number of factors may explain lower levels of disease in the developing world: different approaches to recording deaths, Africa’s young demographic profile, greater use of outdoor spaces, or possibly even high levels of potentially protective antibodies gained from other infections.

As industrialised countries have struggled, much of the developing world has quietly shown remarkable levels of preparedness and creativity during the pandemic. Yet the developed world is paying little attention

But statistical uncertainty and favourable biology are not the full story. Some developing countries have clearly fared better by responding earlier and more forcefully against COVID-19. Many have the legacy of Sars, Mers and Ebola in their institutional memory. As industrialised countries have struggled, much of the developing world has quietly shown remarkable levels of preparedness and creativity during the pandemic. Yet the developed world is paying little attention.

When looking at successful strategies, it’s the experiences of other developed nations – like Germany and New Zealand – that are predominantly cited by journalists and politicians. There is an apparent unwillingness to learn from developing countries – a blind spot that fails to recognise that “their” local knowledge can be just as relevant to “our” developed world problems.

With infectious outbreaks likely to become more common around the world, this needs to change. There is much to learn from developing countries in terms of leadership, preparedness and innovation. The question is: what’s stopping industrialised nations from heeding the developing world’s lessons?

Good leadership goes a long way

When it comes to managing infectious diseases, African countries show that experience is the best teacher. The World Health Organization’s weekly bulletin on outbreaks and other emergencies showed that at the end of September, countries in sub-Saharan Africa were dealing with 116 ongoing infectious disease events, 104 outbreaks and 12 humanitarian emergencies.

For African nations, COVID-19 is not a singular problem. It’s being managed alongside Lassa fever, yellow fever, cholera, measles and many others. This expertise makes these countries more alert and willing to deploy scarce resources to stop outbreaks before they become widespread. Their mantra might best be summarised as: act decisively, act together and act now. When resources are limited, containment and prevention are the best strategies.

This is evident in how African countries have responded to COVID-19, from quickly closing borders to showing strong political will to combat the virus. While Britain dithered and allowed itself to sleepwalk into the pandemic, Mauritius (the tenth most densely populated nation in the world) began screening airport arrivals and quarantining visitors from high-risk countries. This was two months before its first case was even detected.

And within ten days of Nigeria’s first case being announced on February 28, President Muhammadu Buhari had set up a taskforce to lead the country’s containment response and keep both him and the country up to date on the disease. Compare this with the UK, whose first case was on January 31. Its COVID-19 action plan wasn’t unveiled until early March. In the intervening period, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, is said to have missed five emergency meetings about the virus.

African leaders have also shown a strong desire to work together on fighting the virus – a legacy of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak. This epidemic underlined that infectious diseases don’t respect borders, and led to the African Union setting up the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In April, the Africa CDC launched its Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT), which is working to increase testing capacity and train and deploy health workers across the continent. It’s already provided laboratory equipment and testing reagents to Nigeria, and has deployed public health workers from the African Health Volunteers Corps across the continent to fight the pandemic, applying knowledge picked up when fighting Ebola.

The Africa Union has also established a continent-wide platform for procuring laboratory and medical supplies: the Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP). It lets member states buy certified medical equipment – such as diagnostic kits and personal protective equipment – with increased cost effectiveness, through bulk purchasing and improved logistics. This also increases transparency and equity between members, lowering competition for crucial supplies. Compare this with the underhand tactics used by some developed nations when competing for shipments of medical equipment.

The AMSP isn’t unique. The European Union has a similar platform – the Joint Procurement Agreement. However, a bumpy start together with slow and overly bureaucratic processes led some countries to set up parallel alliances in an attempt to secure access to future vaccines. The AMSP avoided sharing this fate thanks to the African Union handing over its development to the private sector under the leadership of the Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa. He pulled together the expertise needed to quickly develop a well-functioning platform, drawing on his contacts and businesses across the digital and telecoms sectors.

This contributed to the AMSP’s popularity with vendors and created high demand from member states. There are now plans to expand access to hospitals and local authorities approved by member states, and for additional support to be included from donors (such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MasterCard Foundation). Again, a decisive decision, focusing on installing strong leadership, has paid dividends.

Strong leadership on COVID-19 hasn’t been limited to African countries. The Vietnamese government has been widely praised for its clear and engaging public health campaign. This has been credited with bringing the country together and getting a wide amount of buy-in on efforts to control the virus.

Vietnam has also shown that good leadership involves acting on the lessons from the past. The 2003 Sars outbreak led to strong investment in health infrastructure, with an average annual increase of 9% in public health expenditure between 2000 and 2016. This gave Vietnam a head start during the early phases of the pandemic.

Vietnam’s experience with Sars also contributed to the design of effective containment strategies, which included quarantine measures based on exposure risk rather than symptoms. Badly affected countries such as the UK, which received warnings that its pandemic preparedness wasn’t up to scratch years ago, should sit up and take note. Vietnam has one of the lowest COVID-19 death tolls.

Finally, let’s look at Uruguay. The country has the highest percentage of over-65s in South America, a largely urban population (only 5% of Uruguayans do not live in cities) and a hard-to-police land border with Brazil, so it should be a likely infection hotspot. Yet it has managed to curb the outbreak without enforcing lockdown.

Early aggressive testing strategies and having the humility to ask the WHO for information on best practices were among the ingredients of its successful response. Along with Costa Rica, Uruguay also introduced a temporary reduction in salaries for its highest paid government officials to help fund the pandemic response. The measure was passed unanimously in parliament and contributed to high levels of social cohesion.

Of course, strong leadership isn’t limited to the Global South (Germany and New Zealand get top marks), nor do all southern countries have effective leadership (think of Brazil). But the examples above show that good leadership – acting now, acting decisively and acting together – can go a long way to compensating for countries’ relative lack of resources.

Face masks hanging on window bars in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Doing more with less

Necessity is said to be the mother of all invention – where money is in short supply, ingenuity abounds. This has been just as true during COVID-19 as at any other time, and is another lesson the developed world would do well to consider.

Early on in the pandemic, Senegal started developing a ten-minute COVID-19 test that costs less US$1 to administer and doesn’t need sophisticated laboratory equipment. Likewise, scientists in Rwanda developed a clever algorithm that allowed them to test lots of samples simultaneously by pooling them together. This reduced costs and turnaround times, ultimately leading to more people being tested and building a better picture of the disease in the country.

In Latin America, governments have embraced technology to monitor COVID-19 cases and send public health information. Colombia has developed the CoronApp, which allows citizens to receive daily government messages and see how the virus is spreading in the country without using up data. Chile has created a low-cost, unpatented coronavirus test, allowing other low-resource countries to benefit from the technology.

Examples of entrepreneurship and innovation in the Global South aren’t restricted to the biomedical field. In Ghana, a former pilot whose company specialises in spraying crops repurposed his drones and had them disinfect open-air markets and other public spaces. This quickly and cheaply got a job done that would normally have taken several hours and half a dozen people to do. And in Zimbabwe, online grocery start-ups are offering new opportunities for food sellers to retain customers wary of shopping in person.

While these are handpicked examples, they illustrate the importance of the capacity to innovate in conditions of scarcity – what is known as “frugal innovation”. They prove that simple, inexpensive or improvised solutions can solve complicated problems, and that frugal solutions don’t have to involve “chewing gum and baling wire” types of fixes.

The ability to deal with complex problems under resource constraints is a strength that can be useful for all, particularly given the pandemic’s eye-watering impact on high-income economies. Solutions coming out of developing countries may offer far better value for money than the elaborate and expensive “moonshot” solutions being mooted in countries like the UK.

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

Why not follow these examples?

This pandemic is another wake-up call. Since Ebola and Zika, governments around the world have known that they need to up the “global preparedness” agenda. It’s often said that when it comes to pandemics, the world is as weak as its weakest point.

Global action, however, requires moving beyond national interests to identify with the needs of others. We call this “global solidarity”. Unlike relationships of solidarity within nation states – which are based on a shared language, history, ethnicity and so on – global relationships need to recognise the interdependence of diverse actors. Global solidarity is so difficult to achieve because it must accommodate difference rather than rely on commonality.

The pandemic has shown why we need global solidarity. Globalisation has made countries interdependent, not just economically but also biologically. And yet in recent months, isolationist stances have prevailed. From the USA pulling funding from the WHO to the UK’s refusal to participate in the EU’s Joint Procurement Agreement, countries are instead pursuing do-it-alone strategies. Within this inward-looking context, it’s little wonder that industrialised nations are failing to capitalise on lessons from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Between the start of April and the end of June, the Rural Development Foundation based in Sindh province in Pakistan on its own decreased the spread of infection in the region by more than 80%. It did this by engaging communities through information campaigns and sanitation measures. Community-level approaches have also been successfully deployed in the DRC and Sierra Leone. During these countries’ Ebola outbreaks, rather than relying on tech and apps, authorities trained local people to do in-person contact tracing instead.

These community-level strategies were advocated by developed world experts, including from the UK. And yet, despite the clear current need, tried-and-tested low-cost approaches like this remain underused in high-income countries. They’ve been disregarded in favour of high-tech solutions, which so far haven’t proved to be any more effective.

The problem, as this example illustrates, is the persistence of a pervasive narrative in global health that portrays industrialised countries as “advanced” in comparison with the “backward” or “poor” developing world, as described by Edward Said in his foundational book Orientalism. Europe’s failure to learn from developing countries is the inevitable consequence of historically ingrained narratives of development and underdevelopment that maintain the idea that the so-called developed world has everything to teach and nothing to learn.

But if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that these times demand that we recalibrate our perceptions of knowledge and expertise. A “second wave” is already on Europe’s doorstep. Many countries in the southern hemisphere are still in the middle of the first. The much talked-up global preparedness agenda will require responses to be handled very differently from what we’ve seen so far, with global solidarity and cooperation front and centre. A healthy start would be for developed countries to get rid of their “world-beating” mindset, cultivate the humility to engage with countries they don’t normally look towards, and learn from them.

Maru Mormina, Senior Researcher and Global Development Ethics Advisor, University of Oxford and Ifeanyi M Nsofor, Senior Atlantic Fellow in Health Equity, George Washington University

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

The post What Developing Countries Can Teach Us About How To Respond To a Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UN Survives a World Turned Upside Down

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 07:20

UN75: The Future We Want, The UN We Need. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

As the United Nations plans to commemorate its annual UN Day, come October 24, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is presiding over a world body which has remained locked down since last March because of the spreading coronavirus pandemic.

“In a world turned upside down, this General Assembly Hall is among the strangest sights of all,” said Guterres last month, describing the venue of the UN’s highest policy-making body.

At its 75th anniversary last month, the UN resembled a ghost town, with not a single world leader in sight. But an overwhelming majority did address the UN—remotely via video conferencing, for the first time in the history of the 193-member Organization.

Still, the United States was notoriously missing in action (MIA).

“It was like staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark,” remarked one delegate, using a Shakespearean metaphor.

The US, which is traditionally given pride of place as host country to the UN, was not represented either by the President, the Secretary of State or the Permanent Representative to the UN (in that pecking order).

The designated speaker for the commemorative meeting was a deputy US Permanent Representative—way done the political hierarchy.

Vijay Prashad, Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, told IPS the United States stands almost alone in its disdain for the UN and for the goals of the UN Charter of 1945.

Disrespect to the UN at the 75th anniversary meeting comes alongside US withdrawal or pledges to withdraw from UNESCO, UNICEF, UNRWA, and the WHO.

Keep in mind, he said, that the US government has sanctioned senior members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), while US unilateral sanctions against countries such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela are a violation of international law.

There is no surprise that no senior official came for the anniversary meeting; in fact, it is to be expected, he added.

The United Nations remains one of the most important institutions committed to international peace and development, declared Prashad, author of thirty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.

Meanwhile, as the lock down continued, the overwhelming majority of over 3,000 staffers at the UN, and its affiliated agencies in New York, are working from home.

Speaking of the 75th anniversary meeting, Barbara Adams, chair of the board of Global Policy Forum and former Chief of Strategic Partnerships and Communications for the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told IPS: “Yet again people around the world were witnesses to the enormous gap between the well- articulated diagnosis of where we are and what needs to be done not only in the face of COVID-19 but also of pre-existing inequalities, vulnerabilities and multi-dimensional violence.

Could it be, she asked, that the UN has been “captured” as the President of Equatorial Guinea lamented: “We cannot accept [either] that after so many years, the Charter of the UN continues to preserve the primacy of the major powers who trample on the legitimate aspirations of the weak so that they can enjoy the advantages of the UN system.””

Joseph Chamie, a former director of the UN Population Division, and currently an independent consulting demographer, told IPS: “In my opinion I did not hear any significant or noteworthy contributions from world leaders who addressed the meeting.

Their statements were not informative, insightful or inspiring. In brief, their remarks were disappointing and unmemorable, he pointed out.

Chamie said the lofty goals, ideals and accomplishments of the United Nations should have been highlighted and stressed.

During the past 75 years, he argued, the United Nations has accomplished much and contributed greatly to many critical areas, including peace, security, human rights, health, education, women’s equality and development.

“In the next 75 years, the United Nations must promote and expand its essential work for a world population now approaching nearly 8 billion, four times its size when the United Nations was established”.

While many challenges remain, including the current pandemic, this is an opportune time for world leaders to support and strengthen the United Nations and work together on effectively addressing the critical issues of today and tomorrow, said Chamie.

“The spirit, leadership and vision of 1945 can be rekindled and the United Nations revitalized for its indispensable role in the 21st century”, he declared.

The final declaration, which was adopted by the 193 member nations, singled out the UN as the only global organization with the power to bring countries together and give “hope to so many people for a better world and … deliver the future we want.”

https://www.un.org/en/un75

“No other global organization gives hope to so many people for a better world and can deliver the future we want. The urgency for all countries to come together, to fulfil the promise of the nations united, has rarely been greater,” the declaration said.

Credit: United Nations, Afghanistan

Mandeep S.Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, told IPS statements by world leaders at the meeting to commemorate the 75th anniversary were mostly along expected lines reflecting their governments’ political priorities, and in some cases, their personal predilections.

Notably, there was significant support for international cooperation through multilateralism. The continuing relevance of the key principles of the UN Charter was affirmed even as their realization remains a work in progress, he said.

In a sign of the times, Tiwana pointed out, the United States despite being the host country and as the country whose leaders and visionaries played a key role in establishment of the UN chose to downgrade its representation at the high-level meeting.

The country’s statement was delivered by its deputy permanent representative to the UN whereas other countries were represented by their presidents, prime ministers or foreign ministers.

Tiwana said “one thing we’d like to see as an outcome from 75-year celebrations is the creation of an office of a Civil Society Envoy to champion peoples and civil society’s organisations’ participation in the affairs of the UN”.

Such an office could help in enabling (i) more consistent civil society participation across UN forums, agencies and departments, (ii) more inclusive convenings by the UN of various kinds of civil society actors, and (iii) better outreach by the UN to civil society across the globe.

“You’ll probably agree that the call has enhanced significance in light of the 75-year celebrations of the UN Charter and its commitment to ‘We the Peoples’. Coalitions such as UN 2020 and Together First with whom we’re closely associated are pushing for such an office.’

The links follow:
https://together1st.org/blog/together_first_launches_new_report_stepping_stones_for_a_better_future
https://together1st.org/storage/novapages/SteppingStones_Final.pdf

As Adams, of the Global Policy Forum, pointed out the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Amor Mottley, expounded in detail the failure 75 years later to move forward to close the gap between disaster and recovery:

“Surely reconstruction of the COVID shattered economies of our countries is a priority now. Unless we forget financing was found in the form of a Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe and financial space was given to war-indebted Britain for over 50 years through bilateral loans and lines of credit at exceedingly low interest rates”.

“It is not beyond the international community’s capacity to develop mechanisms to ring-fence and differentiate COVID related debt and to treat to it with the far-sighted realism that was shown then to the British debt.

“In the absence of such an approach, my friends, it is clear that the debt to GDP ratio of our region and many small island states will be unsustainable and there will be no fiscal room to build the resilience that we need as we stand on the front line of the climate crisis.”

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Categories: Africa

Is the IMF Encouraging World Financial Leaders to Walk Blindly Towards More Austerity?

Fri, 10/16/2020 - 06:58

By Isabel Ortiz and Sir Richard Jolly
NEW YORK and SUSSEX, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

This week the world’s Ministers of Finance and Central Bank Governors meet virtually at the 2020 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and decide on the fate of the world.

This year’s gathering is particularly important, given that the world is confronting an unprecedented crisis. Governments are struggling to finance emergency care and urgent socioeconomic support to cope with the COVID19 pandemic.

Isabel Ortiz

While these short-term expenditures are necessary, countries need more than intensive care units, respirators, tests and emergency support. Governments must continue to invest in long-term public health, universal social protection floors, employment-generating activities and other sustainable development goals.

The funding gap remains vast. However, the budgetary capacity or fiscal space is more limited than before COVID19, as pandemic emergency spending has left governments with higher levels of debt and fiscal deficits.

Many countries received support from the IMF’s Rapid Financing Instruments and other arrangements, or obtained additional loans to cope with the COVID19 emergency, leaving them more indebted.

But now the IMF and world financial leaders are talking about “necessary” fiscal consolidation or austerity cuts after the pandemic.

Austerity cutbacks reduce economic activity and worsen living conditions. The pandemic has revealed the weak state of public health systems – generally overburdened, underfunded and understaffed because of earlier austerity policies and privatizations.

Over the last decade, a majority of countries have implemented austerity policies, resulting in negative social impacts. People have suffered inadequate social security reforms that reduced hard-earned benefits; pay cuts and redundancies for teachers, health staff and other civil servants; reductions to subsidies; labor flexibilization reforms that worsened working conditions; privatization of public services; and the targeting and scaling down of social protection benefits, when the world should be scaling up social protection floors.

Sir Richard Jolly

More than 500 organizations and academics from all over the world have signed a statement requesting the IMF to end austerity.

“The IMF has already started locking countries into new long-term austerity-conditioned loan programs in the past few months” says the statement “… and a significant number of the IMF’s COVID-19 emergency financing packages contain language promoting fiscal consolidation in the recovery phase… Instead of austerity cuts, it is critical to create fiscal space and give governments the time, flexibility and support to achieve a sustainable, inclusive and just recovery.”

People are suffering unnecessarily. They were left behind prior to COVID19; they have been severely affected during the pandemic; and, if ministers of finance agree on austerity cuts, they will suffer from the sharp reductions in government expenditure. In the 1980s and 1990s, structural adjustment and austerity became conditions for Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The result? Between 1980 and 2000, Latin America had suffered two decades of economic stagnation. In Sub-Saharan Africa, per capita income fell 15 percent.

Poverty and inequality have both increased during the pandemic. Countries now must avoid austerity cuts at all costs, and instead boost social spending. A return to “normal” (pre-COVID19) is not the solution, many were denied a decent living. It is necessary to increase public expenditures and create jobs.

This is feasible. There are alternatives. There are at least eight options for that governments can consider to increase public budgets, instead of austerity.

First, increase tax revenues, in particular -given the growing levels of inequality- increasing progressive income and wealth taxation, corporate taxation including taxes to the financial sector that remains largely untaxed.

Second, increase social security coverage and revenue by bringing workers from the informal economy to the formal sector, thus paying social security contributions – and above all, not cutting employers contributions to social security as sometimes is suggested as this would make social security unsustainable.

Third, fight and claw back illicit financial flows. Substantial public funds are lost to illegal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion. Abating these flows will result in a significant increase in available public funds.

Fourth, if governments need to look at re-allocating public expenditures, austerity cuts to the social sector should be avoided at all costs. Instead, focus must be upon replacing high-cost low-social-impact expenditures such as defense. For example, Thailand have successfully cut military spending to invest in public health.

Fifth, adopt more accommodative macroeconomic frameworks, with some tolerance to inflation and fiscal deficits.

These could be supported by international measures:

Sixth, the IMF should explore reductions in sovereign debt. Given the current high debt levels, it is important to promote debt forgiveness/relief, or at least debt moratoria with restructuring.

Seventh, increases in development aid and transfers, such as the Global Fund for Social Protection Floors.

Eighth, issuing Special Drawing Rights at the international financial institutions, or alternatively issuing fiat money to developing countries via a multilateral consortium under the United Nations to provide liquidity to prevent a global depression.

These policy options are too important to people’s lives to be decided behind closed doors: they must be discussed openly in national dialogue, with all relevant stakeholders, including unions, employers, governments and civil organization.

Austerity can and must be prevented, it is feasible to increase social expenditures and generate jobs. Governments must not accept damaging austerity cuts. Instead of cuts to budgets that have already been pared to the bone, countries can prevent austerity and have significantly larger budgets to fund employment generating economic activities, and bring health and prosperity to all citizens.

Isabel Ortiz, Director of the Global Social Justice Program at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, USA, was Director of the International Labor Organization and UNICEF, and a senior official at the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank.

Sir Richard Jolly KCMG is a leading development economist who was named one of the fifty key thinkers globally in this field of economics, Honorary Professor and Research Associate of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK, and a former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN.

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Categories: Africa

High Tech, Low Labour?

Thu, 10/15/2020 - 20:48

KJ Ong is an independent researcher on technology and the co-founder of Data Democrasea, an initiative that advocates for knowledge, justice, and equality at the frontier of tech in the developing world.

By KJ Ong
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

In the glitzy Dolby Theater in Hollywood Heights, with stars dressed in hundred thousand-dollar garbs, Parasite—a film about inequality, class tension and the fault lines of capitalism—won big. I couldn’t help but recall South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s earlier 2013 film, Snowpiercer.

KJ Ong

Starring a rugged Chris Evans, the positively demonic Tilda Swinton and Bong’s erstwhile collaborator Song Kang-Ho, the film tells the story of a post-apocalyptic future where the world is frozen in a forever winter, where the last remnants of humanity survive in a perpetually moving train called the Snowpiercer.

All is not well in the train—the haves, living at the front of the train, eat sushi and attend fancy dress parties while the have-nots, in the slum-like conditions at the back of the train, eat insect protein and toil in grease, sweat, and blood. A rebellion breaks out, and the have-nots, carve a bloody path to the head of the train.

There, the movie twists. The leader of the have-not rebels uncovers the source of the train’s power: its Eternal Engine has been breaking down for years. Children, small enough to fit through a tiny engine compartment, are kidnapped to manually keep its parts in perpetual motion.

Behind the sparkling clean fluorescent walls, what we believed all along was automated was powered by exploitative labour all along.

In many ways, the tech world today isn’t so different.

At Foxconn Shenzhen, where as much as 40% of the world’s consumer electronics are made – including iPhones, Playstations, Nintendo XYZs, and Microsoft products – Chinese workers similarly live in overcrowded dormitories and are forced to endure horrid working conditions.

Many workers have reported that they were promised free housing but made to pay exorbitant utility bills. Investigations have revealed that suicides are common, with many driven to despair by no overtime pay, deceit by employers on living conditions, 7-day work weeks with 12-hour shifts. In 2012, 150 workers threatened to jump to their death if conditions were not improved. In 2016, a smaller group repeated the threat.

It seems like not much has changed since 2016. In September 2019, Foxconn was once again the media spotlight for employing 50% of its workforce as temporary workers, blatantly flaunting Chinese laws that limit this number to 10%.

Temporary workers don’t receive the benefits and rights full-time employees receive,such as paid sick leave or social insurance, placing them in precarious positionswhere an illness or unforeseen accident that puts them out of commission can wreck entire lives. Foxconn has frequently defended itself by claiming simply to be a service provider to tech companies, an arrangement that requires flexibility to cater to the demand cycles of the industry.

Such arguments from a manufacturing giant echo that of hegemonic tech companies and their “platform defence.” A familiar argument goes: “We are just a platform. We are not really an employer. We provide a service to cater to the on-demand nature of customers.”

Following such a logic then, these “platforms” have no obligation to provide insurance, social protections, or many rights afforded to full time employees for their “gig workers”. At times, in the case of Foxconn, it can cost lives.

In Brazil, Uber-related crimes increased tenfold after the company introduced cash payments in July 2016, in what is now referred to as an instance of “Uber roulette”. Initially, the app didn’t require any identity verification for passengers: anyone could create a fake account, hail a car, and “try their luck” in the hopes of nabbing a driver carrying lots of cash. Vehicles were stolen, drivers were robbed, and in many cases injured. At least 16 drivers have been murdered.

In response, Uber denied any problems with its cash system or lack of security, up until international media and protests by NGOs and informal driver unions began highlighting the issue. It finally introduced ID verification in February 2017.

This “platform defense” often obscures the fact that many of the “advanced” features that we use are, in truth, powered by gruelling manual labour. Take for instance Youtube and Facebook’s content moderation: what many believe to be censored by machine learning is in fact enforced by tens of thousands of contract workers across the world, with the vast majority in the Philippines.

Picture by picture, video by video, these moderators must decide if the content violates community standards. Exposed to violent and disturbing material everyday for hours, many of these moderators develop PTSD-like symptoms: the mental trauma can follow them for years—insomnia, panic attacks, with many driven to drug abuse and suicide.

Whether it’s the gig economy, platform-based businesses, or temporary work, across the world we are seeing an increasing reliance of “high tech on low labour” practices. Undoubtedly, there have been benefits to consumers such as increased flexibility and convenience, but it has also come at a cost to millions of workers who find themselves in precarious and exploitative situations.

This is not to deny the quality-of-life improvements such technological advancements have brought. However, as citizens and consumers, we must begin to ask: at what cost? More importantly, how can we mitigate the human costs of such “progress”?

This is where employee and consumer advocacy has been critical in pressuring governments and corporations to devote resources to addressing these issues. In the case of Brazil, successive strikes have pushed Uber to consistently increase its security measures and social benefits.

In Malaysia, last year’s Foodpanda protests highlighted the anxiety of drivers over how easily their livelihoods could be affected by changes in their payment scheme. As more and more workers enter the “digital economy”, accelerated by the global pandemic, governments must craft policies that are cognizant of the social consequences of such digitization and not simply act as cheerleaders for the tech industry.

A poem written by a Foxconn worker comes to mind:

A screw fell to the ground
In this night of overtime
Falling straight down, lightly clinking
Not attracting anyone’s attention
Just like last time
On a night like this
When someone fell to the ground

-Xu Lizhi, 9 January 2014 (Translated by the author of this op-ed)

Xu Lizhi took his own life eight months after he wrote this poem. He was 24 years old.
When will we pay attention when the screws fall to the ground?

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Excerpt:

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Categories: Africa

Why We Need Trees to End to Poverty – Landmark Report

Thu, 10/15/2020 - 09:47

Forest cover on the east of Saint Lucia. Forests and trees play a significant role in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, United States, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

With extreme poverty (living on $1.90 a day) projected to rise for the first time in over 20 years, a new study has concluded that global poverty eradication efforts could be futile in the absence of forests and trees.

Twenty-one scientists and over 40 contributing authors spent the last two years studying the role of forests and trees in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication. The Global Forest Expert Panel issued its findings on Oct. 15, in a report titled, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations”.

The report comes amid two global challenges that are disproportionately impacting the poor and vulnerable – the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. According to the United Nations, 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020, a major threat to Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere.

Lead researcher and chair of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations Professor Daniel C. Miller told IPS that while forests and trees can help the severe losses at the intersection of climate change, zoonotic disease outbreaks and poverty alleviation, they continue to be overlooked in mainstream policy discourse.

“A quarter of the world’s population lives in or near a forest and trees actively contribute to human well-being, particularly the most vulnerable among us. This research hopes to bring to light the available scientific evidence on how forests have contributed to poverty alleviation and translate it in a way that is accessible to policy makers,” he said.

Globally forests are a vital source of food, fuel and ecotourism services. They also help to conserve water and soil resources and boast climate change mitigating properties such as carbon sequestration, the process of absorbing and storing carbon.

The report states that the rural poor need forests for subsistence and income generation, but in one of its chief findings, reported that inequality in the distribution of forest benefits continues to hurt the vulnerable.

“To illustrate, in large scale logging on indigenous lands or where marginalised people live, timber is the most valuable forest product, yet that value is often not accrued to the people who have to deal with the aftermath of not having forests anymore,” said Miller.

The researchers are hoping that the report can help to inform policy on issues such as equitable and sustainable forest use and conservation. Along with their findings, they have prepared a policy brief for lawmakers. That document takes a multi-dimensional look at poverty, assessing both the monetary value of forests and tree resources and their impact on human well-being, health and safety.

For two small islands in the Eastern Caribbean, the report’s findings complement ongoing sustainable forestry for poverty alleviation programs. In 2o16, Saint Lucia, which boasts 25,000 acres of forest or 38 percent of its land area, launched a 10-year forest protection plan. The country’s most senior forester Alwin Dornelly told IPS that this document was ahead of its time, as Saint Lucia’s is well in keeping with some of the report’s major recommendations.

“We simply cannot do without our forests. 85 percent of our country’s water sources are in the forests. Our fresh water supply depends on the trees. The plan underscores forest protection for lives and livelihoods; from charcoal for fire and timber for furniture to agricultural produce for household use and for sale by residents of rural communities. Sustainable use of forest resources is a hallmark of this plan,” he said.

The forestry department monitors the country’ eco-trails, popular with nature tourists who take part in camping, hiking and bird watching, activities that create employment for nearby residents and based on the sustainable forest livelihoods component of the 10-year plan. According to the global report ecotourism activities are among the practices that may lead to greater equity in forest benefits.

The report is also a morale booster for forestry officials on the island of Dominica, who are celebrating reforestation gains. Known for its lush, green vegetation, forests carpet 60 percent of the island and its Morne Trois Piton National Park is a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site. It has taken just over three years, but the country has recovered the almost one-third of forest coverage destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“Dominicans have the right to reap the benefits of sustainable forest resources. We suffered 90 percent defoliage after the 2017 hurricane and 33 percent forest destruction. We are thankful for both natural regeneration and our national tree planting initiative. We have eight community plant nurseries and propagation centres for sustained reforestation – nurseries we hope turn handover for community ownership. We understand that forest loss is livelihood loss, especially for those in rural areas,” the country’s forestry chief Michinton Burton told IPS.

The English-speaking Caribbean is not wildly cited in the study, something Miller says falls under its ‘limitations’ segment, adding that more research is needed on smaller islands. The forest experts who spoke to IPS, however, say the report’s warnings, calls to action and findings are instructive for policy makers globally.

The researchers have made it clear that forests and trees are not a cure-all for poverty but are essential to the overall solution. With health experts predicting future pandemics due to ecological degradation and climate scientists warning that the Caribbean will experience more intense hurricanes like Maria, the report states that these challenging times call for a rethink of current poverty eradication measures. It adds that the ability of forests and trees to positively impact lives, health and livelihoods must be a central part of discussions to lift people out of poverty, particularly in rural settings.

The report was launched ahead of this year’s observance of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Food Day and the International Day of Rural Women – three important days on the U.N. calendar that promote sustainable livelihoods, food security and poverty eradication.

The post Why We Need Trees to End to Poverty – Landmark Report appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a projected rise in extreme poverty, a team of scientists says the world can no longer afford to overlook the role of forests and trees in poverty eradication.

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Categories: Africa

Disregarding Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Thu, 10/15/2020 - 08:59

The focus of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which falls on 3 December, is the link between the empowerment of people living with disability, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN’s blueprint for a better future for people and the planet. Credit: UN News

By Shudarson Subedi and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

The lack of consistency and a patchy approach undermines the Government of Nepal’s credibility in fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. One step forward and several steps back.

If we want to describe the current progress being made by the Government of Nepal to promote the rights of persons with disabilities, it is a story of high hope that slowly turns gloomier and gloomier, giving room to frustration and despair.

The optimism stems from the Disability Rights Act that was enacted in 2017 after intense lobbying from thousands of disability rights activists.

It was an important turning point for the country as the new piece legislation replaced the previous Disabled Persons Welfare Act of 1982, shifting from a welfare approach to disabilities to a right based one.

The old legislation was a marked stain in the complex process of national reconciliation and social inclusion undertaken by the country in the aftermath of the civil war.

A new constitution passed in 2015 had turned the country in a federal and nominally pluralistic nation founded on the concept of nondiscrimination, social inclusion and equal opportunities for all.

The premises were all rosy.

The Disability Rights Act had finally aligned the country’s aspirations for a better future for all closer to the principles enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

With a more comprehensive recognition of all types of disabilities, including autism, hemophilia, and an important acknowledgement of mental health, the new act finally met the needs of millions of citizens living with disabilities in Nepal.

Instead, what seemed to be the herald of a new social inclusion era for persons with disabilities, proved to be the beginning of a backsliding of their rights, furthering detaching them from the rest of the society.

Certainly, the new legislation is not perfect itself especially as its wordings still reflect a misplaced medical perspective that was mainstream just few decades ago.

It is a wrong understanding of disabilities, one too much focused on rehabilitation rather than the full integration of persons with disabilities in society.

This approach is in breach of Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006 that claims the right for persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the communities.

The issue is not just merely conceptual.

At stake is the imperative of ensuring that all barriers existing in the society, physical and also those more imperceptible, fueled by entrenched biases within the society, are removed.

The Convention is founded on certain cornerstones, including ensuring the respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons, non-discrimination and full and effective participation and inclusion in society.

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the toothless international mechanism in charge of monitoring the respect and implementation of the Convention, had questioned many of the provisions of the new legislation.

In its Concluding Observations issued in March 2018, the Committee had taken several exceptions, in particular recommending that “Nepal adopts a human rights model of disability that stresses human dignity of persons with disabilities and conditions arising from interactions with various barriers that may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”.

Nevertheless, despite pitfalls, the act sanctioned important inalienable rights persons with disabilities would enjoy: free quality education, free health care and clear provisions to their right to free movement unconstrained from any physical barriers.

Moreover, the act included clear dispositions to ensure their rights to livelihoods, so fundamental if we want to get rid of the existing status quo where the majority of persons with disabilities remain unemployed.

Millions of citizens in the country were hopeful for a real change.

Unfortunately, the Government showed much less progressive attitudes in drafting the law’s regulations.

Instead of bringing more clarity and helping create an environment supportive of the rights of persons with disabilities, the regulations show a regression.

Approved on 17 August 2020, their focus is almost exclusively on the most severe cases of disabilities where citizens require continuous assistance, depriving, in such way, others citizens with less severe forms of disabilities, from any support.

This is a complete disregard of the rights of millions of remaining citizens living with disabilities struggling every single day to make their ends meet.

Similarly, the same attitudes are visible in relation to the rules regulating monthly allowances for them.

The Social Security Act enacted in 2018 supposedly aiming at translating the inclusive principles of the constitution in concrete actions, mirrored the same approach, contravening the principles of the Disabilities Rights Act.

Also, in this case, only the most severe citizens living with disabilities were allowed to receive a small, almost insignificant monthly financial support.

Only in the first week of October 2020, the regulations of the Social Security Act, after intense lobbying involving thousands of widowers also discriminated by the law, were changed to include better, though still too narrow, provisions.

Again, this forced turnaround is the wrong solution to the problem as it is the Social Security Act that instead should be properly amended.

In general provisions, like the right to free education and free health care together with other essential rights in matter of livelihoods, must be addressed holistically and with determination if we want to uplift the living conditions of persons with disabilities.

Such equity-based measures are indispensable not to create dependency but rather to help leveling the playing field for all, a goal far from being achieved.

The political leaders must be determined to put an end to an approach to disabilities that has become a mockery of the Government of Nepal’s international obligations.

The state must mobilize all its strengths to ensure that citizens with disabilities are not citizens of a lesser nature but are instead recognized for the contributions they can provide to the society if their inalienable rights are protected.

The post Disregarding Rights of Persons with Disabilities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Shudarson Subedi is past president of the National Federation of the Disabled, Nepal, an Australian Award Global Alumni member and Ashoka Fellow; and Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, , Inclusive Change Through Volunteering

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Categories: Africa

Global Poverty Soars– As Incomes of World’s Billionaires Hit New Highs

Thu, 10/15/2020 - 08:30

Twelve-year-old boy in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, sorts through hazardous plastic waste without any protection, working to support his family amidst the coronavirus lockdown. Credit: UNICEF/Parvez Ahmad

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

The phenomenal rise in extreme poverty -– for the first time in 20 years — has been accompanied by an upsurge in the incomes of the world’s billionaires and the super-rich.

The paradox of poverty amidst plenty is being blamed largely on the coronavirus pandemic which has driven millions, mostly in the developing world, into a state of perpetual poverty.

As the United Nations commemorates International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer– which may also reflect the realities of widespread economic inequalities worldwide.

A World Bank report last week said extreme poverty is set to rise this year, for the first time in more than two decades, while the impact of the spreading virus is expected to push up to 115 million people into poverty.

The pandemic, which is also compounding the forces of conflict and climate change, has already been slowing poverty reduction, the World Bank said.

By 2021, as many as 150 million people could be living in extreme poverty.

In contrast, the wealth of the world’s billionaires reached a new record high in the middle of the pandemic, primarily as “a rebound in tech stocks boosting the fortunes of the global elite”, according to a report released last week by UBS Global Wealth Management and PwC Switzerland.

Providing a sheaf of statistics, the report said total wealth held by billionaires reached $10.2 trillion last July, described as “a new high”, compared with $8.9 trillion in 2017.

The number of billionaires worldwide has been estimated at 2,189, up from 2,158 in 2017.

The rising earnings were mostly from three sectors, including tech, health care and industry—a trend accelerated by the pandemic.

But the study also says the rise in billionaires has led to greater philanthropy, with some 209 billionaires pledging $7.2 billion in donations.

At the other end of the scale, billionaires have seen their fortunes hit record highs during the pandemic, with top executives from technology and industry earning the most.

The world’s richest saw their wealth climb 27.5% to $10.2tn (£7.9tn) from April to July this year, according to a report from Swiss bank UBS.

Pooja Rangaprasad, Director, Policy and Advocacy, Financing for Development (FfD) at the Rome-based Society for International Development (SID), told IPS “philanthropy or charity is not a substitute for systemic solutions”.

Many developing countries are already on the brink of debt crises which is further exacerbated by a broken international tax system that allows wealthy corporations and individuals to pay little to no taxes, she pointed out.

“Unless global economic solutions are prioritised to ensure developing countries have the fiscal space to respond to the crisis, the consequences will be devastating with millions being pushed back into extreme poverty,” she warned.

Governments need to urgently agree on systemic solutions such as debt cancellations, a binding and multilateral UN framework for debt crisis resolution that addresses unsustainable and illegitimate debt and a UN tax convention to fix loopholes in the international tax system, argued Rangaprasad.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director of UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), told IPS the pandemic is going to push millions of households into poverty, all around the developing world.

“The challenge for the international community is to channelise additional resources through Official Development Assistance (ODA) to low income countries, where global poverty is concentrated”.

“The UN can play an important role in mobilizing resources for financing the efforts of the member states to counter the effects of the pandemic on the poor and vulnerable in their own countries”, said Dr Sen, who is also a professor of development economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK.

The projected rise in poverty has also undermined one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which had targeted the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

According to the World Bank, “extreme poverty” is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. The projected increase in poverty would be the first since 1998, when the Asian financial crisis shook the global economy.

Before the pandemic struck, the extreme poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9% in 2020. But now it is likely to affect between 9.1% and 9.4% of the world’s population this year, according to the bank’s biennial ‘Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report’.

“The pandemic and global recession may cause over 1.4% of the world’s population to fall into extreme poverty,” said World Bank Group president David Malpass.

He said that to reverse this “serious setback”, countries would need to prepare for a different economy post-Covid, by allowing capital, labour, skills and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors.

Malpass said World Bank support would be available to developing countries “as they work toward a sustainable and inclusive recovery”, with grants and low-interest loans worth $160 billion to help more than 100 poorer countries tackle the crisis.

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’, told IPS the concentration of wealth amongst a handful of oligarchs, and the spread of impoverishment to hundreds of millions more people, are not the disconnected coincidences that the super-rich claim, but are two sides of the same bad penny.

He said COVID-19 has not created obscene inequality, but it has supercharged it. In this systemic crisis, the healing impact of philanthropy will be no greater than a novelty sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

As the Pope, the UN Secretary-General, the President of Ireland and the Prime Minister of New Zealand have all pointed out, there is only one non-disastrous way out of this, and that is a rebalancing of economies to serve ordinary people, he noted.

“That is absolutely doable – indeed, we’ve done it before – but markets cannot self-correct, and elites never bestow a fair economy from on high. Only pressure from ordinary people can win an economy that is humane and safe,” declared Phillips.

Dereje Alemayehu, Executive Coordinator, Global Alliance for Tax Justice, told IPS inequality is rising in every country; so also, is the income of billionaires. These are causally linked.

“Multinationals and the wealthy do not pay their share of taxes, thus depriving countries the public revenue needed to address inequality.”

Furthermore, he said, the prevailing international financial architecture denies developing countries their right to tax their share in global profit of multinationals. To adequately address inequality, national governments should introduce progress and redistributive tax systems.

But his would not be enough.

“Developing countries should also reclaim their taxing rights on global profit. For this, a UN led intergovernmental process, in which member states participate on an equal footing, should be established to pave the way for the reform international tax rules and standards,” said Alemayehu, who is also Senior Advisor – Economic Policy at Tax Justice Network Africa.

The post Global Poverty Soars– As Incomes of World’s Billionaires Hit New Highs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Addressing poverty eradication last week, just ahead of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17, UN chief António Guterres warned that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are falling “disproportionately on the most vulnerable: people living in poverty, the working poor, women and children, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups”.

The post Global Poverty Soars– As Incomes of World’s Billionaires Hit New Highs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Working Animals’ Role in SDGs and Addressing Climate Change, Pandemic Crises

Wed, 10/14/2020 - 15:30

Coconut farmers in Mafia Island, Tanzania, rely solely on donkeys as the mode of transporting their products from farms to markets. Credit: Alexander Makotta/IPS

By Mike Baker and Roly Owners
NEW YORK, Oct 14 2020 (IPS)

As we prepare to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), it is time to recognise the role of working animals in livelihood systems, addressing climate change and in human health, which has been overlooked for too long. The Working Animal Alliance seeks to change this.

As we seek cost-effective and innovative solutions to help achieve the SDG’s, we would do well to recognise that working horses, donkeys and mules have been instrumental in the development and maintenance of civilization for millennia.

While they may be considered ‘old technology’ by some, they remain a versatile green power source. Not many people know that more than 100 million working animals continue to sustain the livelihoods of more than 600 million people, many of them at most risk of being left behind.

Environmentally-conscious forestry already uses working animals in logging as their impact on sensitive woodland is much lighter than mechanised machinery. Working animals are able to take the most direct route to a destination so there is little need to build new roads

For communities where motorised transport is either unavailable, unaffordable or impractical, working animals can be the difference between life and death. They enable people to fulfil their basic needs, providing access to water, food, firewood and medical care. They can also alleviate poverty, as they enable people to generate an income.

For instance, from Cambodia to Romania, horses are used as draught power to plough fields. In Central America, they are integral to rural and urban economies, pulling carts full of goods to and from market or used in refuse collection to keep city spaces hygienic.

In Colombia, they carry coffee beans from plantations and across Africa, horses, donkeys and mules carry food for other livestock as well as serving as taxis, people carriers and moving vans. Working animals are used to transport medical tests in Lesotho, children to school in Honduras and water to villages in Mexico. They allow people to participate in community saving schemes in Ethiopia, and provide families with the income to pay for their children’s education.

In fact, these roles are undertaken by working animals across all continents, to some degree, yet their relevance to livelihoods has been largely invisible to policy makers and governments. Development organisations and institutions such as FAO acknowledge the importance of livestock such as cattle, goats and pigs to food security, but the working animals which help supply their feed and water – and support the lives of livestock owners – are still largely under the radar.

There are many reasons for this. One may be that working animals are ‘part of the furniture’ of civilisation – always present and therefore invisible. People living in communities where working animals are common admit to not even noticing them.

Conversely, in many industrialised nations, working animals may be considered old fashioned and niche, even though they still play roles in transportation, tourism and livestock raising. Another reason may be that the people who rely on working animals tend to be the poor and marginalised due to geography or socio-economics, so they do not have a strong voice.

Yet another reason may be that some nations do not want to acknowledge many of their citizens still rely on working animals in their economies, focusing instead on their progress towards mechanisation. Why support an apparently outdated way of doing things when the march is on to modernise?

There are three factors that should cause us to embrace the use of working animals. The first is the SDGs themselves, which working animals already help to achieve. Were there policies supporting them and ensuring they were healthy and productive, the benefits of using them would increase.

For instance, a working horse in Senegal costs around $400. If owners were supported with knowledge to provide better basic care to that horse or donkey, and if there were skilled affordable local service providers available to provide vital hoof and veterinary care, they could use their asset for more than ten or 15 years.

However, without this, that horse could quickly become lame or die, and so unproductive, leading to hardship for the family– so requiring the already struggling owner to invest another $400 to get back to square one.

The second factor that should awaken us to the relevance of working animals is climate change. Working animals as mentioned above are a tried and tested green power source. Not only can they survive happily on grasses and plants, but they emit less methane than livestock – and horse manure is an effective and widely used organic fertiliser.

Environmentally-conscious forestry already uses working animals in logging as their impact on sensitive woodland is much lighter than mechanised machinery. Working animals are able to take the most direct route to a destination so there is little need to build new roads. Working animals do not require parts made of scarce metals nor are they dependent upon the price of fossil fuels. And when a working animal dies, it can be absorbed back into the earth.

Thirdly, it has long been understood that human and animal health are closely intertwined, and we ignore this at our peril – as we have seen with COVID 19. The UNEP has recently pointed out that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases are from animals and they do not exclusively emanate from wildlife.

Domesticated animals and livestock can be carriers too, as seen in other previous epidemics such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012 and Avian Influenza Virus H7N9 epidemic in 2013, and now with the current pandemic. Safeguarding the health and welfare of vital working animals is therefore of utmost importance in protecting the health of people.

Some are awakening to the importance of working animals – for instance the OIE has worked with the International Coalition for Working Equids (ICWE) to develop basic guides to equine welfare and the World Bank is seeking to implement these in their programmes.

However, the fitness and health of working animals has relevance far wider than the realms of veterinary medicine and agriculture. This is why we have established the Working Animal Alliance – an informal network of NGOs, countries, development agencies and organisations to help raise awareness of the role of working equids in achieving the SDGs and the need to provide systems of support for owners to better care for their most important asset.

If you agree it is time to respect our working animals and appreciate the contribution they make right now, as well as in the future preservation of our sustainable planet, then please join us.

Mike Baker is CEO of The Donkey Sanctuary and Roly Owers is CEO of World Horse Welfare

The post Working Animals’ Role in SDGs and Addressing Climate Change, Pandemic Crises appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

WORLD FOOD DAY 2020

Wed, 10/14/2020 - 14:03

By External Source
Oct 14 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening the food security and nutrition of millions of people around the world.

More than 820 million people were classified as chronically food insecure before the virus hit.

Unless immediate action is taken, we are facing an unprecedented global food emergency.

The food security of 135 million people was already categorised as crisis level or worse.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, that number could rise to 265 million by the end of the year.

The number of children under the age of five years who are stunted now stands at 144 million. That is more than one in five children worldwide.

As of late May, 368 million school children missed out on daily school meals on which they depend.
47 million kids are now classified as wasting, and these numbers will grow rapidly.

The pandemic could push about 49 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2020.

But the economic repercussions of the virus are not the only factors giving rise to the global food crisis.

In many parts of the world, food security has been threatened by protracted conflict, recurrent droughts due to climate change, and rapid industrialization, as well as the worst locust infestation in decades.

On October 16, the annual celebration of World Food Day is calling for global solidarity to help recover from this crisis.

This year’s theme is: Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together.

It aims to make food systems more resilient to withstand global volatility and deliver affordable and sustainable diets for all.

It is more important than ever to ensure food makes its way to those in need even amidst the current COVID-19 crisis.

The post WORLD FOOD DAY 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Changing the Lives of Bangladesh’s Rural Girls by Giving them a Tertiary Education

Wed, 10/14/2020 - 13:19

Nila Kispotta (centre) poses for a photo with family members. Kispotta comes from a family of daily wage earners. Like many young, rural girls, pursuing a tertiary education would have been impossible without the financial support she receives from her school, the Moimuna Nursing Institute. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

By Farid Ahmed
THAKURGAON, Bangladesh , Oct 14 2020 (IPS)

Nila Kispotta, a 19-year-old rural girl from the Oraon ethnic community, has become a figure of exceptional achievement to the small, poverty-stricken village in Thakurgaon in northwest Bangladesh that she grew up in. Born into a family of daily wage earners, Kispotta dreamt of a different life. So when she enrolled in tertiary education to pursue a diploma in Nursing Science and Midwifery — she achieved something her family and community hadn’t even dreamed was possible.

“Girl children are mostly bearing the brunt of poverty in our society, but I continued my fight against all odds. Only a little help can change the life of many girls,” Kispotta told IPS.

It would have been impossible for Kispotta to pursue a tertiary education without financial support.

But after matriculating from a Christian missionary school, she went to a local college for two years before enrolling in the Moimuna Nursing Institute in Thakurgaon, 460 kilometres away from capital Dhaka. It is a non-profit approved by the Bangladesh Council of Nursing and Midwifery, and offers a three-year diploma in nursing for Taka 110,000 or $1,500, which includes tuition fees, accommodation, uniforms and books.

According to the institute’s chair of the board of directors, Dr. Saifullah Syed, it was designed to ensure that rural girls are given an opportunity to receive an education, despite their financial backgrounds.

“We offer needs-based scholarship and we are creating a scholarship fund so that poor girls can receive support,” Syed told IPS, adding that scholarships were funded by voluntary contributions and that the fund was managed by a board of trustees. He added that individual donors could even directly support specific students.

“It is the lowest cost institute in the country, and the fees cover only the running cost of the courses and it has become difficult to run the courses as many poor students are enrolled here because of the scholarship facilities,” Syed told IPS.

Kispotta, who is in her first year, is grateful for the waiver of fees.

“Now it’s easy for me to continue the diploma in nursing at a private institute as the tuition fees have been waived,” she said. Kispotta added that upon completion of the diploma, she plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in nursing.

“She is our pride,” the elderly Gabriel Kispotta, a distant relative of Kispotta who lives in Thakurgaon, told IPS. “None of us have even passed high school,” he said, adding that around 15 Oraon families lived in the area.

Thakurgaon and its adjoining districts has a population of just over 1.2 million — of which one million live in rural areas — and a literacy rate of just under 42 percent.

The institute, housed on its own campus, opened early this year with a first group of 20 underprivileged, students, mostly rural girls.

It houses modern labs, a library, a hostel and a large, lush green sports field overlooking the institute where students and faculty participate in athletics, football, handball and cricket. There is also a hospital onsite — the Moimuna Mata Shishu Hospital — that provides free healthcare services and free medicine to poverty-stricken villagers.

“It’s a specialised hospital for women and children, but we run like a general hospital as all kinds of patients come here as they get services almost free of cost,” Director of the Moimuna Mata Shishu Hospital, Dr. M.A. Momin, told IPS.

Momin, a retired civil surgeon from a government hospital who also teaches at the institute, said both the hospital and institute were staffed by capable medical staff who were able to effectively train the student nurses.

The institute’s curriculum offers a variety of courses that include; English, computer literacy, basic nursing, anatomy and physiology. The aim is to train students to a higher standard that would allow them to access further training in facilities in urban areas.

“There is a huge shortage of qualified nurses in the country and we’re trying our best to produce quality nurses making opportunities for poor eligible students, especially for rural girls,” said the institute’s principal Lucy Biswas.

Students attend anatomy class at the Moimuna Nursing Institute. The first group of students comprises 20 underprivileged, rural students, mostly rural girls. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

Most of Kispotta’s peers have a similar financial background.

Joya Rani, who enrolled at the institute from neighbouring Panchagar district, told IPS that she badly needed financial support as she had no way of funding her education.

“Getting a chance to study here without any cost is a watershed in my life… I’ve struggled all through my life and I don’t want to lose the fight,” she told IPS. “Certainly I’ll try to become a good nurse and find a job at a big hospital in the capital,” Rani said.

Another student, Sweety Akter, said before enrolling in the Moimuna Nursing Institute she had been able to earn a small amount of money working as a private tutor. The funds went to support her family. “Now it has stopped and sometimes it becomes difficult for me to manage the money for food at the hostel,” Akter told IPS.

Only a handful of students receive full financial support because of funding constraints, management says.

Biswas, who formerly headed a number of government nursing institutes before taking on the post at Moimuna Nursing Institute, told IPS: “Had there been no financial support, many of the students would have dropped out as they come from very poor families.”

Biswas said that even though tuition fees and hostel expenses were cheaper here than any other private nursing institutes in the country, it was still difficult for many of the rural girls to pay their education expenses as their families were locked in poverty and the struggle for daily survival.

“The students are so poor that they [could not afford] smart phones and internet charges at home for online classes during the coronavirus pandemic [lockdown],” Biswas explained. The country went into a nationwide lockdown at the end of March, partially easing some of these restrictions two months later, but continuing with a restriction on travel until early August.

“So they returned to the hostels to pursue their studies [while] maintaining social distancing.”

The post Changing the Lives of Bangladesh’s Rural Girls by Giving them a Tertiary Education appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

October 15th is Rural Women's Day. IPS travelled some 460 kms from Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, to the rural area of Thakurgaon District. Here we found a nursing school largely geared towards educating and training young, rural girls in a profession.

The post Changing the Lives of Bangladesh’s Rural Girls by Giving them a Tertiary Education appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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