Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Mostafiz Uddin
Nov 13 2020 (IPS-Partners)

During the past few months, I had worked on a documentary for the BBC which looks at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the apparel industry of Bangladesh. That documentary caught me at an exceptionally low ebb. I was struggling amid the cancellation of orders and some brands being unwilling to pay for orders which had already been shipped.

Since that time, things briefly did pick up again for our industry as retail outlets began to reopen in the West, following huge self-imposed lockdowns. Since mid-summer, most European markets and the US, the main destinations for Bangladesh apparel exports, have been open for business. I was hopeful that we might be over the worst of the coronavirus in terms of economic impacts, although I was always aware it was going to be a bumpy road ahead.

In recent weeks, however, the mood has changed once again. Brands are putting major orders on hold. I have witnessed this first-hand, as well as hearing anecdotal evidence of this across the industry. The reason for this is clear: as we head into winter, and schools and other educational establishments return from summer holidays, coronavirus cases are once again on the rise. In the wake of over-flowing hospital beds, governments feel they have no choice but to impose lockdowns again in an attempt to control the virus.

This is not to complain about the brands. Since the pandemic started, there have been good brands and bad brands in terms of payments—some have been more supportive of their suppliers than others, and that will always be the way.

Instead, I want to raise the alarm bells for what a second lockdown might mean for Bangladesh’s apparel industry and, more importantly, its workers. In the BBC documentary alluded to above, it was made very clear that many garment workers suffered a lot in the wake of the pandemic in March. Some spoke on film of their fears not being about the coronavirus killing them but about poverty if the factories where they are employed could not continue their operation.

I read that for most people, coronavirus is not a serious illness. Its mortality rate among 20 to 30-year olds—the core demographic of garment workers in Bangladesh—is tiny. Coronavirus kills mainly people who are over 65 and the obese and/or people with serious underlying health conditions. I am not trying to downplay this virus which, after all, has killed a great many people around the world. Rather, I wish to bring into focus the problems facing Bangladesh in the here and now.

Bangladesh has a fairly young population and obesity is certainly not a problem in our country compared to western nations. Bangladesh has had just over 6,000 deaths from Covid-19. By way of comparison, the UK, a country with a far smaller population, has had almost 50,000 deaths. The US has had more than 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

This, then, is the cruel irony: while our customer countries, with their ageing populations and serious obesity issues, face the Grim Reaper of coronavirus hanging over their heads, in Bangladesh our fear is about something entirely different—poverty and associated starvation. The coronavirus might not kill us directly, but its impacts on global apparel supply chains threaten the very fabric of our industry and its people.

Our apparel industry was teetering on the brink in autumn. We thought we were through the worst but further lockdowns in our key markets this winter could take us right over the edge and into the abyss. The impacts on workers and their families do not bear thinking about. I fear a future in which many will face destitution if this crisis goes on for many more months.

Is there a solution? As well as support from the Bangladesh government, we need support from the global community to provide a safety net for garment workers. We as an industry have talked for years about inclusiveness and fairness, and now is the time for all of us to stand up and be counted on these issues.

Are we, as an industry, serious about the Sustainable Development Goals? SDG number 8 is about promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

At full employment, the apparel industry in Bangladesh employs more than four million people, many of them young women. Without support, our industry faces a financial Armageddon, with the potential loss of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of factories and millions of jobs.

With no safety net for those right at the bottom of our industry pyramid, the ramifications are poverty, malnutrition and even death. An industry that prides itself on sustainability, and whose main actors have repeatedly cited the SDGs in recent years, cannot afford to stand by and allow to happen the slow-motion car-crash we are seeing in supply chains.

Mostafiz Uddin is the Managing Director of Denim Expert Limited. He is also the Founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE).
Email: mostafiz@denimexpert.com

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post What does the second wave of Covid-19 mean for the apparel industry? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Indigenous men and women of Nuñoa in Puno, Peru, spin and weave garments based on the fiber of the alpacas. Credit: SGP-GEF-UNDP Peru/Enrique Castro-Mendívil

By Siddharth Akali
MANILA, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

This week, 450 public development banks from around the world met for the Finance in Common Summit at the Paris Peace Forum. They gathered to discuss how they can direct their combined investments of over USD 2 trillion – 10% of total investments in the world – “to support the transformation or the global economy” and “build new forms of prosperity that take care of people and the planet.”

However, the summit has done little to fundamentally transform development so it is bottom up, focussing again on government officials, bankers, think tanks, and academics over the real experts at the frontlines, who are living, breathing, and drinking the impacts of these banks policies and practices that have their stolen lands and polluted their ecosystems.

Grassroots communities and human rights defenders directly affected by these banks’ activities did not have a seat at the summit table, or the chance to speak and be heard in the webinar room.

And after ongoing advocacy by hundreds of civil society groups from around the world, and several United Nations special procedures, the final declaration of the summit contains only reference to community-led development and human rights. There are no concrete actionable commitments beyond business as usual dressed in the language of motherhood and apple pie.

The Finance in Common Summit was the first global meeting of the vast family of institutions that intersect between finance and public policy, and was one of the largest international governance and finance gatherings in 2020 since the spread of the pandemic.

The organizers of the summit are heralding public development banks as a “visible hand” that can help mobilize and direct the finance we need for the future we want. Unfortunately, these institutions do not have a great track record, with significant documentation of their projects excluding directly affected communities and doing more harm.

Development banks have repeatedly supported fossil fuel projects that have contributed to climate change, polluted ecosystems causing lung diseases and made people more vulnerable to the worst effects of Covid-19.

They have also engaged in greenwashing, supporting fossil free projects that take traditionally held lands without the consent of local communities and Indigenous Peoples, destroying the biodiverse ecosystems they have protected for generations.

These institutions have also repeatedly looked the other way and been complicit in the human rights violations of corporations and governments they work with. They support activities where armed forces push forward large infrastructure and extractives projects on traditional lands without the participation and consent of Indigenous Peoples.

They indiscriminately fund states where there is corporate capture of institutions, and police and courts violently punish those who speak truth to power rather than those who murder social justice leaders.

For instance, despite warning from local communities in Colombia several development financiers provided support for the construction of the Hidroituango dam, which has had a catastrophic impact for the people and the environment, including forced displacement of hundreds of families, loss of livelihoods, floods, landslides, and mass fish kill.

In the past 11 years, six members of the grassroots organization Movimiento Ríos Vivos and more than 30 other community members have been killed for raising their concerns about the project.

Development banks have also supported privatization of essential services, prioritizing growth and corporate profits over protections for workers and communities. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, many people are left without access to healthcare, shelter, livelihoods, food, sanitary products and medicines, even as stock markets rise.

However, in the name of crowding in private investments, development banks are continuing to pump out billions of dollars to bail out corporations during the pandemic, with few safeguards to ensure the money reaches the people who need it the most.

Indeed, public development banks have contributed to a world where the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa. They have done little to challenge systems through which caregiving falls disproportionately on women, focusing instead on farcical women’s empowerment efforts.

They have also failed to confront their role in advancing racism and colonialism, or contributing to increased surveillance and securitization, and inhibiting world peace.

A better world is possible, even as we reel under the shocks of intersecting crises of the pandemic, climate change and rising inequality, violence and militarization. And a better world can benefit from the right kind of public development finance.

But public banks, governments, and businesses need to make changes if we want to move away from a world of self-inflicted existential threats. The response to the current crises of our times cannot be to simply push out more money without consideration for the long-term environmental and social impacts of these funds on local communities and workers.

And who better to assess the long term impacts of these investments than communities and workers themselves?

The very idea of international development finance has to be reshaped under the leadership of communities who have repeatedly called for the lens of collective responsibility and reparations. The existing models of debt and financial aid, focused on states and corporations, only serve to replicate colonial power imbalances, and support the prevailing top-down paradigm.

Instead, people who are the purported beneficiaries of development finance have to be the key decision-makers.

To make future iterations of the Finance in Common summit impactful, the first thing the organizers have to do is to recognize communities are the experts of their own development.

Community-led development and human rights must be front and center on the summit agenda. Indigenous Peoples, grassroots communities and social movements must be invited to share their vision of development.

If governments and their public banks are serious about transformation, and leaving behind old patterns of crises, human rights in common have to come before finance in common.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Development banks have repeatedly looked the other way and been complicit in the human rights violations of corporations and governments they work with. They support activities where armed forces push forward large infrastructure and extractives projects on traditional lands without the participation and consent of Indigenous Peoples.

 
Siddharth Akali is an international lawyer who has been trained by local communities, Indigenous governments and peoples in Canada, India and Nepal. He works as director of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, a global coalition of social movements, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups working together to ensure that development is community-led and that it respects, protects, and fulfills human rights.

The post Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Masooma Ranalvi
NOIDA, India, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

“My daughter is eight years old. In May 2017, I had her ‘Khatna,’ her circumcision, done. I had taken her to a traditional cutter. Once back home I made her sleep on the bed. After some time, around 4:00 p.m. I took her to the bathroom, she was bleeding as if she had started her menses. It seemed like she was urinating blood. By 6:00 p.m. my daughter had been bleeding so heavily, the blood had soaked three bed sheets and I was very worried.  And my daughter was quiet and she also kept asking me if she will be fine.” Excerpt from:  How I got her from the hands of death: WeSpeakOut study 2018

The child belongs to the Bohra community, where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) persists.  A study by my organisation, WeSpeakOut, in 2018 indicates that over 75% of the girls in the community are cut. Their clitoral hoods are removed.  They are not all “fine.”  Some suffer life-threatening infections.  And the procedure leaves girls physically and emotionally scarred and robbed of sexual pleasure for a lifetime.

If FGM in India and elsewhere in Asia remains hidden and unmeasured, if governments collect no data, UN agencies should sponsor the large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies needed, and support groups trying to do this research on the ground

The Bohra community is not in Africa, long the focus of global efforts to stop FGM.  It is in India.  The fact that it happens here came to light when women, including me, spoke about our childhood traumas, researched the prevalence of FGM, and exposed it to the world.  But we are part of a global blind spot on the FGM map.  To many in the Indian government and the international community, we remain invisible.  India has no government database on FGM, a secret and silent practice for centuries

My survivor-led organization, WeSpeakOut, has spent the last five years meeting with top officials from government commissions and ministries, providing evidence and testimony, and circulating petitions, including one that garnered over 200,000 signatures.

We have been imploring the government to pass a law banning FGM.  We and members of Parliament who have asked questions about this have been rebuffed.  .

The Indian government’s official response is that since there is no official data on  the prevalence of FGM in India, FGM in India does not even exist.  They claim this, even though WeSpeakOut provided them surveys as part of the consultations held around the country to track progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Eliminating FGM is a clear target under the SDGs, agreed to by 193 United Nations member countries around the world, including India.  But the government’s obfuscation undermines this goal.  It leaves the United Nations — the global organization that is supposed to be able to shed light, offer guidance, and apply pressure so that nations do the right thing—powerless.

India is not alone.  It is one of at least 60 countries that do not collect or provide national-level data on the prevalence of FGM.  The sustainable development goal 5.3 is to end female genital mutilation or cutting by 2030, and with less than ten years to go we are still not even sure of the extent of this practice globally.

Masooma Ranalvi. Credit: Natasha Sweeney Photography

If our governments continue to pretend the problem does not exist, international organizations should step in.

They could start by including India in official United Nations documents on FGM. At international forums where our government representatives have signed treaties denouncing FGM, Indian officials should be asked about FGM in India. India should not be allowed to hide behind its supposed support for international treaties and conventions promising to end FGM globally, while ignoring and covering up the practice within its own borders.

Countries like India that committed to fast-track progress for achieving the SDGs pledged to Leave No One Behind.  What is the value of this pledge if nations that break this promise cannot be held accountable?  There must be any international mechanism to pull up truant nations.

If FGM in India and elsewhere in Asia remains hidden and unmeasured, if governments collect no data, UN agencies should sponsor the large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies needed, and support groups trying to do this research on the ground.   International funding does not typically reach organizations like mine, and we survive with hardly any local contributions. We can all be part of the larger global effort to end FGM by 2030. We can collaborate to put together the funding, research, legal and technical expertise needed to achieve this collective goal.

All SDGs are interconnected; poverty, development, gender justice, peace and prosperity cannot be viewed in isolation. The SDGs are universal and transcend borders, and neglecting one goal hinders progress on others.  For this to work, governments cannot be evasive or complacent.  They need to mean what they say, and to demand the truth from others.

They failed to do this at the concluded United Nations High Level Political Forum 2020.  But there will be other high-profile international meetings  – more opportunities to ask tough questions and demand honest answers.

 

Masooma Ranalvi is the Founder of WeSpeakOut, India’s largest FGM survivor-led organization. She is a 2020 Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @RanalviMasooma

The post In India, Ending FGM Demands Truth and Transparency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Berlaymont building in Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). Credit EU.

By Joaquín Roy
Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

An anecdote tells, never sufficiently confirmed, that in the hardest moments of the Second World War when Stalin was dictating his orders of battle to his subordinates, he was told that perhaps it would be advisable to consult with the Pope. The Soviet dictator replied: “And how many armored divisions does the Pope have?”

The rationale of the question has been used in international relations theory and practice consistently to illustrate a vision of the realist school, in the company of classical interpretations such as those of Thucydides and von Clausewitz.

Stalin’s reflection has often been adduced to interpret the real level of influence of the European Union on the international scene since the middle of the last century.

It has never been easy to explain the birth and survival of Monnet and Schuman’s invention by means of a variant of realism.

One of the clichés about the soul of the EU is as an example of possessing a “soft power”, according to the founding arguments of Joseph Nye.

Joaquín Roy

It agrees with the birth of an entity whose initial leaders were mostly Christian Democrats, who based their logic on reconciliation and who promoted a new entity based on an unusual “declaration of interdependence.” While the bulk of the history of international relations exuded the phenomenon of war, the EU stubbornly justified its existence on the strategy of peace.

Citizens outside Europe tried to answer the question about the reason for the founding of the EU with strange answers such as competition with the United States, the improvement of the European economy, and the reinforcement of capitalism. The goal of making war “unthinkable, and materially impossible” was rarely alluded to.

Since then it has not been easy to understand the EU, because to do so, “one must be French or very intelligent” as Madeleine Albright once said. She rightly described the EU as extremely complex, especially if you insist on viewing it through the lens of “hard power.”

The funny thing is that its survival has been an enigma for more than 70 years, in an already long existence sown along with experiences as shocking as the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and now the questioning of the fundamentals of the United States.

Despite such impressive achievements as the adoption of the euro, the marked improvement in the standard of living of Europeans, their comparatively superior longevity, the pleasant feeling of being able to travel and reside throughout the EU, there is a certain discomfort and inner feeling, their survival is in doubt.

The explosion produced by Brexit, barely softening the effects of the 2008 economic crisis, while some of the evils of the past are reborn (nationalism, authoritarianism, racism), and the community territory is beset by uncontrolled immigration, has not helped to soften fears.

Inside and outside, the predictions of its disappearance are insistent. And specialists wonder why, while many voices disagree with these pessimistic predictions.

 

Anu Bradford, author of “The Brussels Effect” (Oxford University, 2020)

 

Anu Bradford, a law professor at Columbia University in New York, belongs to this sector. She is the author of a book that has been considered as the most influential of the decade in the field of international relations and the EU in particular.  Its title is The Brussels Effect (Oxford University, 2020), repeatedly reproduced as a term that is destined to be enthroned in the permanent vocabulary of the EU. The central thesis is that the EU, despite its lack of “hard power”, has achieved not only its survival, but a position of preeminence in the world theater.

But this nature of a global agent does not come from the traditional methods of imposing its interests, but simply through the use of a weapon of something as simple as law, developed in the design of a network of norms in the internal scene of the industry, business, the environment, agriculture, and protection against climate change.

But these norms are not imposed on the external territories, in a traditional imperialist way, but, exceptionally, they are self-adopted by the external businesses themselves, voluntarily.

How is this achieved, without the imposition of the hard power of the EU? Bradford’s answer is very simple: external actors, in the United States, Latin America, Asia, weigh between the cost of adding the standards of EU regulations or losing such a substantial market. They hesitate before being forced to adopt community standards or even be their goods rejected, once the process of entering the gigantic EU single market has begun.

They wisely choose to make the necessary investment and place the blue sticker with the twelve golden stars of the EU as a guarantee, a courtesy gift from the “pope” Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The EU does not oblige anyone: it is the choice of external economic interests.

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

 

The post The Armored Divisions of the European Union appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A farmer in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Kyle Springer
PERTH, Australia, Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

This was the year that Vietnam was poised to make progress on its rise as a regional leader. Under the auspices of Vietnam’s ASEAN chairmanship, a breakthrough in global trade has been achieved despite rising protectionism and a global pandemic.

Assuming the chair of ASEAN in January, Vietnam’s diplomacy has proven adaptable amid the constraints of COVID-19. The successful completion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement under Vietnam’s watch this year will cement its claim to middle power leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.

The 2020 ASEAN Summit would have been easy to write off, but we have learned to expect a lot from a Vietnam-chaired year. Consider what Vietnam’s leadership has delivered in the past. When Vietnam chaired ASEAN in 2010, it inaugurated the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) Plus, a defence dialogue of all ten ASEAN members and its eight dialogue partners, which includes the US and China.

When Vietnam convened the East Asia Summit (EAS) that same year, the US and Russia attended as Vietnam’s guests, paving the way for their official membership in the summit the following year. The ADMM Plus and the EAS are now key institutions in the political architecture of the Indo-Pacific.

And in the crisis year of 2020, Vietnam’s skillful diplomacy once again comes to the rescue. When Vietnam delivers RCEP during this November’s adjusted Summit process, it will be the most significant development in the global trade system since the establishment of the WTO in 1994.

Eight years in the making and spanning over thirty rounds of negotiations, RCEP promises to buttress the post-COVID-19 economic recovery of its fifteen members. Covering 29 percent of global GDP, its provisions spur the further development of regional value chains and greatly lower regulatory barriers to investment.

Vietnam’s leadership of RCEP marks its transformation to become one of the region’s fastest-growing and most internationally-engaged economies. Thirty years ago, Vietnam emerged from a period of war during which it had fought every permanent member of the UN Security Council except the then-Soviet Union. Vietnam had isolated itself from its Southeast Asian neighbours when it invaded Cambodia in 1978, and it suffered a bloody clash with China at its northern border in 1979.

On the economic front, matters were equally dim. Post-war reconstruction did nothing to boost Vietnam’s inflation-stricken economy. Five-year economic plans failed to stimulate growth and production in its agriculture-based economy. Trade and aid sanctions were placed against it by the US, Australia, and many of its other neighbours. With this context, no one could have foreseen the transformation that would later take place.

RCEP perhaps represents the apex of Vietnam’s efforts to integrate into the global economy starting in the mid-1990s. Coming on the back of its domestically-focused Doi Moi (renovation) economic reforms that began in 1986, Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995 and acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2007. It eschewed protectionism and began pursuing a number of free trade agreements starting in 2005.

Today, it has signed a number of deals with advanced economies. Vietnam has emerged not only as a participant in multilateral trade efforts, but as a leading proponent of regional trade integration. It is a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The CPTPP’s predecessor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), earned fame with US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US from the deal after long being promoted as a cornerstone of former President Barack Obama’s “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific region.

A few months after the US left the agreement, the remaining TPP members met on the sidelines of the 2017 APEC trade ministers’ meeting, hosted by Vietnam. There the ministers reaffirmed the value of the TPP and discussed how to finalise it with the eleven of the original signatories.

Here Vietnam made the decision to stay in the agreement, despite losing market access to its most important trade partner – the US. Vietnam’s participation in the CPTPP makes Vietnam’s stance clear: it is committed to trade liberalisation even though the spirit of the time is decidedly protectionist.

RCEP continues Vietnam’s efforts, and Vietnam once again delivers an important new institution while it presides in its moment as ASEAN chair. RCEP is timely as well. It will put Vietnam and its Indo-Pacific partners in a good place to solve the economic problems pressuring the region, not the least the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit Southeast Asia particularly hard.

Here again, Vietnam looks like it will come out on top. With its domestic outbreak under control, Vietnam’s standing in the forecasts for economic growth are promising. Even under the most pessimistic modelling, Vietnam’s economy should maintain positive growth in 2020.

By the time Vietnam next takes the reins as ASEAN chair, presumably in 2030, its economy will be well on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest. RCEP will get a lot of credit for that progress.

Along with catalysing post-COVID-19 economic growth in the broader Indo-Pacific region, RCEP will further enhance Vietnam’s ability to attract the investment it needs to propel its economy in this promising direction.

The challenge for Vietnam’s leadership will be matching its regional ambitions with continued domestic economic reforms.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post Vietnam Takes the Lead on Indo-Pacific Economic Integration appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kyle Springer is the Senior Analyst at the Perth US Asia Centre.

The post Vietnam Takes the Lead on Indo-Pacific Economic Integration appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The actual number of children at risk is not known due to a dearth of research on child deprivation and government responses in Zimbabwe. This 16-year-old boy sells sweets and popcorn to earn a living in downtown Harare. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

By External Source
Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

The ability of Zimbabwean families to take care of children has been compromised by a collapsing economy, compounded by COVID-19. About 4.3 million people in rural communities, including children, are food insecure this year. The World Food Programme indicates that at least 60% of the population of Zimbabwe need food aid.

The Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation in Zimbabwe has estimated that over 20,000 children have turned to vending as a means of survival since the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to reports, child vendors in the city of Bulawayo are mostly selling fruit and vegetables. And in the capital, Harare, they sell a variety of goods from vegetables to used clothes and shoes.

The phenomenon of child vendors in Zimbabwe has been topical for some time. But the situation appears to be worsening.

When children spend hours of their day in the streets or at the market, they lose a portion of their childhood that will never be regained. They miss out on education, play opportunities and other childhood activities. This has far-reaching effects on their development

There are no statistics about how much income vendors make, due to the informal nature of this business and a lack of centralised coordination of their activities. Nevertheless, it’s clear that poverty is the reason children are on the streets. But in their efforts to help their families, they are exposed to risks such as exploitation, abuse and missing school.

The situation calls for a critical conversation about the capacity of families to protect and care for their children and the role of social protection policies in the country.

 

Policy to protect vulnerable children

A National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children has been in place since 2004. The policy guides the provision of care for these children. My prior experience and observations as a social researcher suggest that the plan isn’t working in practice.

There are number of gaps.

The first is that there’s no clear definition of what the term “orphans and vulnerable children” means, especially in the current economic climate and increasing vulnerability of children in the country. There’s a danger that children will fall through the cracks and go unnoticed without any government support.

Secondly, there is a lack of good data. The actual number of children at risk is not known due to a dearth of research on child deprivation and government responses in Zimbabwe.

Thirdly, government interventions aren’t reaching those in need. The government’s National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children is meant to be overseen by a multi-sectoral committee to mobilise resources. Under it poor households were to receive grants varying from US$10 (one person household) to US$25 (four person household) per month (paid bimonthly) through a cash transfer. The funds for this come from the Child Protection Fund.

The first phase of the plan was between 2005-2010 and the second phase between 2011-2015. The evaluations of these two phases showed several gaps in service provision and targeting of orphans and vulnerable children in the country.

Even by 2017 only 23,000 beneficiaries in eight districts had received the cash transfers. However, the number of families in need way surpasses the number that received it. According to social policy experts, the unconditional social cash transfer programmes don’t target all poor households. They only target those that in addition to being extremely poor, also suffer from severe social and economic vulnerability. This, however, is open to interpretation.

The current third phase of the plan was supposed to cover household economic security, basic social services and child protection. The fact that there appears to be a growing child vendor problem in the country in 2020 shows the plan is not reaching everyone in need.

 

Child vendors exposed to risks

The legal working age in Zimbabwe is 16, but children as young as 10 and 12 years old are selling goods on the streets.

Children aren’t being adequately protected from child labour and the risks they face, including exploitation and abuse.

When children spend hours of their day in the streets or at the market, they lose a portion of their childhood that will never be regained. They miss out on education, play opportunities and other childhood activities. This has far-reaching effects on their development.

According to the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, the third phase of the National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children seeks the involvement of families and the community in child protection.

But the governnment’s ability to drive the plan is severely compromised because it doesn’t have the capacity in the Ministry of Social Services. This is due to a massive exodus of Zimbabweans from the country as a result of the economic crisis. As a result, the plan is heavily reliant on external assistance and development partners.

 

Going forward

So far, the government’s response has been to reunite children found in the streets with their families. The reality is that without alternatives for these families to earn an income and to feed their families, children will go back on the streets.

In addition, it’s proving difficult to change the mindsets of Zimbabweans on the role of children in the society. Culturally, the involvement of children in the family economy is generally regarded as acceptable. Parents feel that it’s a way of training the children to become more responsible adults.

The government can prevent child vending through identifying families that are at risk of losing their livelihood. Social policy programmes need to be expanded to cover more people. This implies increasing the social protection budget to cater for growing numbers of families with children in need.

Policy makers and social service practitioners must consider adopting a bottom-up approach and work collaboratively with the affected and at-risk families. This can be done through participatory approaches such as workshops to hear from the community how best the issue of child labour can be tackled in this economy.

Dr Getrude Dadirai Gwenzi, Early Career Researcher in the Sociology of Child Welfare in Africa, Lingnan University

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

The post More Children in Zimbabwe Are Working to Survive: What’s Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Children study in a Community Based Education class in Miirwais Meena, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Credit: Fazel/UNICEF

By Guy Dinmore
LONDON, Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

As if four decades of war were not enough, then came the pandemic.

For each of the past five years, Afghanistan has been identified by the United Nations as the world’s deadliest country for children and, despite progress made in peace talks between the government and the Taliban, child and youth casualties from the ongoing conflict continue to mount in 2020.

Education itself has come under fire, with hundreds of attacks on schools and teachers. A 2018 joint report by the Afghanistan Ministry of Education and UNICEF, estimated that as many as 3.7 million children in Afghanistan were out of school, 60 per cent of them girls.

Against this backdrop, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the global fund launched at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit to deliver quality education for vulnerable children and youth in countries affected by armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and protracted crises – selected Afghanistan as one of the first countries to roll out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP). The in-country Steering Committee formed to oversee implementation of the programme appointed management of the MYRP to UNICEF as a grantee.

Sarthak Pal, ECW project coordinator for UNICEF in Kabul, says Afghanistan’s MYRP was designed to focus on ‘out of school children’, by setting up community-based education (CBE) classes close to where they live. Classes are arranged mostly in private homes and sometimes in mosques for those who cannot make the long journey to the nearest school.

“Most of these out of school children live in remote, rural and hard to reach places,” Pal told IPS from Kabul. Pal explained that focusing on out of school children was a context-specific choice for Afghanistan, and may differ from MYRPs in other countries with their own unique contexts.

Children attend a Community Based Education class in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Credit: Frank Dejongh/UNICEF

The first year of the MYRP – with teaching starting in May 2019 – saw some 3,600 classes established in nine of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. This required newly recruited teachers, 46 per cent of whom are women, to teach 122,000 children. Nearly 60 per cent of the enrolled children are girls.

“When Education Cannot Wait came to Afghanistan in 2018 there were 3.7 million out of school children. These were the children and youth left furthest behind. Today, results from our multi-year resilience investment in Afghanistan are among the most promising in our global investment portfolio, especially for girls’ access to education now reaching the target of 60 percent of our investment. This shows how we can achieve education outcomes for the most marginalized children and youth in complex crisis settings by bringing together humanitarian and development actors under the leadership of the Ministry of Education. The children and youth of Afghanistan, the Afghan girls, deserve no less,” said the ECW Director, Yasmine Sherif.

One new pupil in the classes is Khalid*, an eight-year-old boy with a permanent foot disability, who was displaced by conflict from Afghanistan’s Kunar province to Nangarhar province. Previously deprived of education by war and poverty, Khalid now attends a CBE class with access to free education and books. His teacher praises his enthusiasm and creativity and says Khalid has gone from being illiterate to learning how to read, write and draw.

The closest school is 4 kilometres away from where Khalid lives, too far for him to go, but now he has a classroom just 300 metres from his home. Both Khalid’s life, and the life of his family, have been transformed.

Khalid’s nine-year-old sister Hosna is able to attend an all-girls government school close-by. “In the evening, Khalid and I study together at home and help each other in our lessons,” she says, expressing how astonished she was by Khalid’s rapid improvement and capabilities. “Khalid is so intellectually improved and motivated.”

Bringing education closer to home helps secure the backing of both the community and the shuras (school councils), and is particularly effective in addressing barriers to girls’ education, such as long distances, a lack of female teachers and safety concerns. The role of School Management Shuras, or councils, has been important in building a sense of community ownership, although there are barriers to girls’ participation remains in some provinces.

UNICEF-Afghanistan staff visit the supported Zanogra Community Based Education cluster to distribute new school bags and notebooks as the school year begins in Surkhrod district, Nangarhar province. Credit: Marko Kokic/UNICEF

ECW classes also reach children in camps set up for those displaced by conflict. Feizia Salahuddin quietly recounts in an IPS video how three of her siblings were killed. The 12-year-old girl also lost her mother. “We face so many hardships here,” she says. But then a smile appears when she describes going to ECW-supported CBE classes in Herat. “I love to study. It makes me happy,” she says.

An additional hammer blow to education this year came not from bombs or landmines but COVID-19. The government ordered all schools closed in March 2020, and CBE classes could only start reopening recently. Children affected by the impact of COVID-19 school closures now also faced increased vulnerability to recruitment by parties to the conflict, particularly boys. The crisis also exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of girls to child marriage and teenage pregnancy.

Dave Mariano, Head of Communications for Afghanistan for Save the Children International, an implementing partner for ECW, said the government had initially decided CBE classes could continue, but subsequently said teaching would have to continue via radio, television and internet, to which millions of children do not have access. Fortunately, classes eventually started to reopen with appropriate COVID-19 safety measures.

“The reopening of CBEs required a lot of coordination to ensure that necessary provisions were in place to safely reopen, such as the availability of PPE, sanitisers, and even general public awareness on how to mitigate COVID risks through basic hygiene and other practices,” Mariano told IPS.

Despite the challenges, UNICEF is already looking ahead to extend the MYRP, supported in this goal by the Ministry of Education and donors. Sweden is the largest in-country donor in Afghanistan, closely followed by Switzerland. However, UNICEF says the MYRP remains “grossly under-funded” with a 70 per cent funding gap across three years.

“We are advocating that three years of MYRP is not enough. The primary school cycle in Afghanistan is six years. We can’t leave the children half-way through. That is our main advocacy agenda now,” said Pal.

ECW has given priority in Afghanistan to improving education for girls with a focus on female teacher recruitment. This is being achieved in Herat, where 97 per cent of teachers are women and 83 per cent of students in accelerated learning classes are girls.

For girls like Feizia Salahuddin, this means a chance to start rebuilding lives shattered by conflict and displacement, giving a sense that through a classroom and her textbooks, she is once more part of a community.

“I get nervous when I get called to the blackboard, but my teachers and classmates support me,” Feizia says. “That is why I like them. They cooperate with me and teach me.”

*Names have been changed in accordance with child safeguarding and communications policies.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Education Cannot Wait Interviews LEGO Foundation CEO John Goodwin
• Television Education in Mozambique
• Scaling Up SDG4 in Crises
• Teachers Shoulder the Burden: Improving Support in Crisis Contexts
• Helping Make Education a Reality for the 75 million Children in Conflict Zones

The post Despite Conflict and COVID-19, Children Still Dream to Continue Their Education in Afghanistan appeared first on Inter Press Service.

President Donald Trump at the UN Security Council (UNSC) when the US held the rotating Presidency of the Council. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 11 2020 (IPS)

Now it is clear that Joe Biden is the new president of the United States. It is unlikely that Donald Trump’s legal manoeuvring will change the election results, as when a conservative Supreme Court in 2000 decided in favour of George Bush over Al Gore, who lost by 535 votes.

Even this Supreme Court, where Trump has six sympathetic members (three appointed by him, quite a record), and only three unsympathetic, will dare to change a result coming from too many states.

Trump is gone, but it is sad to say, Trumpism is here to stay. But is that a specific situation of the United States, or is it a more general phenomenon? We think that, in an era of globalisation, we should attempt a global analysis.

This will leave out a zillion of facts, events and analysis, but this is now the destiny of journalism. Anyone can add what they think is relevant and decide what has been left out. This will be a big improvement over this abridged analysis.

But let us start with the United States first. Biden’s victory comes from the unusually high participation in the election, where it attracted 67% of the voters. In American elections, participation rarely exceeds 50%, although the largest participation was in 1900, when 73% of the population votes.

Remember that in the US, voting is defined as a privilege, not a duty. To vote, you have to register, and many states make that a demanding task, automatically excluding the more fragile part of the population.

Biden won the largest popular vote in US history: 71.4 million compared with the 69.4 million obtained by Barack Obama. Nevertheless Trump gathered 68.3 million votes, nearly four million more than in 2016, in spite of a pandemic which, until now, has left more than 230.000 dead, with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and after four years of confrontations, some massive, like Black Lives matter.

Trump has now lost his Teflon, and he is a loser. But he has 68 million followers on Twitter, and he is probably going to open his own TV channel. He is going to be a serious problem for the Republican Party. He is going to cultivate the myth of stolen elections and keep his followers in a state of confrontation. Trump is gone, but Trumpism remains

He doubled the votes of the LGBT community, he obtained 18% of Afro-American votes, white woman increased their vote for him by 6%, and he won Florida thanks to the Latino votes (Cubans, Venezuelans and to a lesser extent Puerto Ricans).

The United States is going through a demographic transformation, which will further exacerbate the polarisation. The Census Bureau estimates that this year the majority of the country’s 74 million children will not be white. And in the decade of the 2040s, the white population will be under 49% with the other 51% made up of Latinos, blacks, Asians and other minorities.

The genesis of the United States differs from that of Europe. It was created by an immigration of English religious radicals, who wanted to create a new world, a “town shining on a hill”, where the secularism and moral corruption of their country would be left behind. Following their arrival, they had to fight against indigenous people who were considered barbarians, without a true religion (very much like the Spanish conquest did in Latin America).

The war of independence from England reinforced the moral value of their action: freedom from tyranny, And, with the Industrial Revolution, wave after wave of immigrants arrived, all escaping Europe because of poverty or oppression They were also uneducated and obliged to integrate into an already existing strong society, which defined itself a ‘WASP’ (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) society.

To do this, the US invented mass media as an instrument for the melting pot (until then in Europe newspapers had small circulations for the elites), and two myths: American Exceptionalism and the American Dream.

The conquest of the west was a national saga, with the cinema as the other instrument for the melting pot. Children of different immigrants reacted with joy to the sound of the trumpet announcing the cavalry charge which would wipe out hordes of attacking Indians.

And beside media and cinema, a strong advertising industry shaped tastes and consumption patterns. An abundance of natural resources, and a permanent arrival of immigrants, fuelled continuous growth. Here the two myths become uncontested truth. America exceptionalism, the fact that US has a different destiny form all other countries, became a staple of public discourse.

In 1850, President James Monroe emitted a declaration, by which no European country was any longer allowed to intervene in Latin America. And still today, a large part of the population thinks that US has the right to intervene in the world, because US is the keeper of order and law in a chaotic world.

To become an American citizen, you have to swear that you forget your origins, because you are born a new man. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty, which was what millions of immigrants saw first after a long journey, bears an inscription which symbolises the myth well:

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries the Statue with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-lost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The second myth, the American Dream, was another powerful tool for patience and hard work. It was part of the Protestant founding legacy. Anybody who works hard will become affluent or rich. If you do not become rich, it is because you did not try hard enough.

This is the myth that evangelical church has adopted: God rewards the hardworking faithful, and not the lazy. As a result, poverty is not contemplated by God. And the evangelical church has achieved a remarkable result (not only in the US, but everywhere, from Brazil to Guatemala): having the poor voting to the right.

US exceptionalism is evident when you look at other English colonies. Australia, for example, was the destination of prostitutes, thieves and bankrupt British citizens. It would never be thinkable that the prime minister of Australia speak on behalf of Australia and Humankind, as the US president routinely does. Nor does the PM of Canada ever speak in the name of God or say that God loves Canada. The US is the only country in the world that does not accept its military personnel being judged by a foreign court.

Roberto Savio

And the US saw confirmation of its exceptionalism, and its role as defender of the humankind, with the Second World War. Despite the enormous loss of Russian troops and civilians (27 million, compared with 419,000 Americans), the clear victor against the evils of Nazism and Fascism was the United States of America. It was able to win the war because of its astonishing military production (one ship in three days), and the construction of the atomic bomb. So, the US entered our contemporary era with all its myths reinforced.

And the Marshall Plan, which resurrected Europe from its ruins, was a measure of containment against the new evil, Communism, but it also become final proof of its superiority and solidarity.

The US also created the United Nations as an institution which would avoid the repetition of the horrors of the war. It was intended to bring all counties together under the same roof, and take decisions trough debates and agreements, not war.

But the world did not freeze, because the American vision of the world became a straitjacket for the US. It preached freedom of trade and investments. Of course, it was by far the strongest country, and so the winner of an American World Order, with the Soviet threat under containment, the strategy formulated by American diplomat George F. Kennan in 1947.

But once the UN expands from the original 50 countries to 187, and you insist on free competition and trade, you become a victim of your rhetoric. Those countries, in a democratic institution, all have a vote. In 1973, the General Assembly unanimously voted for a New World Economic Order, based on international solidarity and the transfer of wealth from the rich countries to the poor for world development.

The United States voted with the General Assembly. But then came Ronald Reagan, an admirer of John Wayne and in many ways a precursor of Trump. Shortly after his election, Reagan went to the North-South Summit of Head of States in Cancun, Mexico, in 1981, to announce that US no longer accepted being a country like all others, and that it would pursue foreign policy that was more convenient to its interests.

Reagan had also a vision of a radical change at home. He believed strongly that the values of social justice, solidarity and fiscal equity, had become a brake on the economy and society. He was the first to introduce the idea that the state (the “beast”) was bloated, costly and inefficient, and the enemy of business and corporations, which should be left untouched to allow all their creativity to be freed.

Among others, he wanted to shut down the Ministry of Education, because he believed that education could be done better by the private system. He was a very good communicator, and a specialist in finding easy answers to very complicated issues, banalising the real issue – an example on environment: industries do not pollute, trees pollute. By his time, the US had reached an impressive level of research and teaching (for a few), as shown by the large numbers of Nobel Prizes.

Reagan was also the first to openly challenge the elites, speaking on behalf of ordinary citizens: the people. And it is here that US story lose its individual identity and starts to merge with the world. Reagan had a counterpart in Europe, Margaret Thatcher, who shared the same vision, and went to fight trade unions, cut state spending, privatised railways, airports and whatever else possible. She famously declared that ”society does not exist, only individuals”. Together they launched what was called neoliberal globalisation and they withdrew from UNESCO. The main basis was that the market and no longer man, was the basis of the economy and society. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that globalisation was the new name for American Domination.

All this was reinforced by three historical events:

1. The fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 which eliminated the threat of communism and gave capitalism total freedom for manoeuvring.
2. The Washington Consensus, established by the US Treasury, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Consensus ordered worldwide that social costs were unproductive, that any national barrier should be abolished for allowing investments and free trade to prosper and privatise as much as possible.
3. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ theory according to which, because it was impossible to halt globalisation, it would be best for the Left to ride it and become its human face. So, for two decades, under American influence, neoliberal globalisation became the norm of governance, both at national and international level. According to its apologists, it would lift all boats.

But then in 2008, an earthquake shook Wall Street. In 1999, under Bill Clinton, the Steagall-Glass regulation, adopted after the crash of 1929, was abolished. That regulation kept investment banks separate from traditional commercial banks. A giant tsunami hit investments, i.e. speculation.

Free of any control and international control (the banking sector is the only one in the world without any regulator or comptroller), the banking system took on a life of its own, leaving the real economy. And it went into more and more speculative operations until, in 2008, the American banks went practically bankrupt.

That crisis expanded worldwide, and in Europe in 2009 banks also went into bankruptcy. According to OECD estimates, to rescue the banking system, the world had to invest two trillion dollars. That comes to 267 dollar per person in a world in which nearly 2 billion people then lived on less than two dollars a day.

The crisis of 2008-9, and the consequent uncertainty and fear, obliged a critical examination of neoliberal theory, For nearly three decades, citizens, media, civil society, economists, sociologists and statisticians had been denouncing that globalisation in fact exacerbated social injustice, dispossessed many people of their income through delocalisation of companies to cheaper places, created unequal growth between towns and rural area and heavy damage to the planet, and that it was urgent to counter those abuses.

After 8 years of George W. Bush, wars and lack of attention to the social problems of the country, in 2009 America elected a man with a message of hope, integration and peace: Barack Obama. But if Obama really wanted to unravel a system that had been established for 20 years, it was beyond his reach. In 2015, the US Senate passed into the hands of Republicans, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked every possible move by the Obama administration.

In 2017, he refused to even consider Obama’s proposal for the Supreme Court, because there would be elections in ten months (the same Mitch McConnell who, in just three weeks, obtained the appointment of Catholic integralist and traditionalist Amy Coney Barrett on the eve of the just-held elections).

While the dreams evoked by Obama started to fade, the crisis of 2009 brought some unprecedented political developments. Uncertainty and fear were also exasperated by the flow of immigrants from countries destabilised by the interventions of the US and Europe in countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and those escaping dictatorial regimes and hunger.

All over the world, that led to a flourishing of nationalism and xenophobia, with so-called ‘sovranist’ parties being established in every country of Europe, and progressively all over the world. They all based themselves on xenophobia against migrants, denunciation of world and regional institutions as illegitimate and enemies of national interests, and speaking on behalf of the people who were victims of globalisation: workers of factories that had closed due to delocalisation, calls to a glorious past (Brexit, 2016), people from rural areas left behind by the faster development of towns (the Yellow Jackets in France in 2018), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s brutal annexing of Kashmir to India in 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s astonishing elimination of protection of the Amazon in 2019, Xi annexing of Hong Kong 2020.

So, it would be a mistake to single out Trump, when we are facing a much more serious problem. Trump, of course, now leaves the others naked. Maybe this is the beginning of a new political cycle … but the system is now broken, and it is nearly impossible to fix it.

The coronavirus pandemic has put another nail in the coffin. The negationist wave is another symptom of how the crisis of trust has eroded our society. And, by the way, we have now two proponents of the Qanon theory of conspiracy elected in the House of Representatives. The Qanon theory is that Hillary Clinton and several other important figures, from Bill Gates to George Soros, gather to drink the blood of young boys in the cellar of a pizzeria in New York. Trump is supposed to be the saviour. The fact that the pizzeria in question has no cellar is irrelevant.

To return to the United States, the myths of exceptionalism and the American Dream have now evaporated in the United States. Trump did surprisingly well if you look at the situation with the eyes of a cultivated guy. He is the first president of the United States who never spoke on behalf of the people: on the contrary, he portrayed those who did not vote for him as un-American.

In his government, he had very few Cabinet meetings and he governed through tweets, rarely consulting his staff. He mobilised the fears of the white population against immigrants and other minorities; he proclaimed law and order against any mobilisation, demonising the participants.

He is the quintessence of narcissism, he loves only himself, he does not care about anybody else, and he does not trust anyone. He is an example of misogynism, he paid his taxes in China, but not in the US. He has inaugurated the post-truth era, by making several false affirmations every day.

He has used the public administration as his personal staff, changing public servants continuously and putting people who share his views in their jobs. The Minister of Education does not believe in the public school. The Minister of Justice believes that the president has power over the judiciary. The person responsible for the environment is against clean energy. It looks as if vampires are in charge of blood banks!

It is useless to list all Trump’s disasters in international affairs as they are well known. He has withdrawn from the idea of international cooperation, from the Paris agreement on climate, from the World Health Organization, he has jeopardised the World Trade Organization (a US creation), shown preferences for dictators like Putin and Kim Il Jong, and banalised the NATO alliance (another US creation), and we could go on and on.

He represents classical American isolationism: let is withdraw from a world in chaos, which does not appreciate us, but just wants to exploit us. But we are now living in a multipolar world and globalisation is being played by many hands. By 2035, China will have surpassed the US as the world’s strongest power.

Yet, Trump has drawn votes form all the sick strata of American society. The whites that feel threatened; the rural people who feel left behind; the workers from factories that closed because of delocalisation; the affluent middle class of the suburbs who felt threatened by the poor people encroaching on their properties; the blacks who become middle class and looked with horror to the miseries of the majority of Afro-Americans; the evangelicals who were happy with a Supreme Court becoming right wing and having a vice-president, Mike Pence, and a Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who are evangelicals; those who keep the myth of the Far West, its individualism, its macho value and its weapons; all those who look at the state, the public, as an enemy of freedom; the policemen who found their impunity under judgement; those who decided that women, gays, abortion and human rights were tilting America into the opposite of its founding values.

All those people exist, they were united by Trump, but they survive him. And in a country where there is now hate and opponents have become enemies, in a country plagued by the opioids epidemy, where one American under six has psychological problems, where more people die each year because of weapons than in the Vietnam War, creating unity is a very, very difficult task.

Democrats thought that to put up an elderly and civilised candidate, Joe Biden, would bring back empathy and dialogue as a rallying factor. In fact, it looks more like Trump has lost the elections than that Biden has won them.

Progressives look at him as an epitome of the establishment and will keep pressing him to become freer from the system. We will only know on January 6th if the Republican Party holds on to the Senate, as is likely, and if the Senate returns under the control of Mitch McConnell the blockage it placed in front of Obama will look like gentle times.

Biden will be able to undo many of Trump’s executive orders but, for example, he will be unable to change the composition of the Supreme Court, which will last for at least a couple of decades. He will not be able to increase health coverage.

The chance of increasing the minimum wage and increasing taxation on the very rich will be near to zero. Republicans will now again become the guardians of fiscal austerity, after having left Trump increase the national deficit to an unprecedented level. And the increasingly powerful left-wing of the Democratic Party will try to condition and push Biden, who they elected just to get rid of Trump.

Trump has now lost his Teflon, and he is a loser. But he has 68 million followers on Twitter, and he is probably going to open his own TV channel. He is going to be a serious problem for the Republican Party. He is going to cultivate the myth of stolen elections and keep his followers in a state of confrontation. Trump is gone, but Trumpism remains.

And this is true for the world. Until we eliminate neoliberal globalisation, the Trumps, the Bolsonaros, the Viktor Orbans and so on of this world will be just be the visible part of the iceberg. But what is going to do that? We have a ray of hope from civil society. Climate drama has brought young people back to acting. And then there are the other two world mobilisations, Me Too for the dignity of women dignity and Black Lives Matter for combatting racism (which is not just an American phenomena), which have brought together millions of people worldwide.

We are in a period of transition. It is not clear to what, but we can only hope that it will be without blood. In the end, it will depend on men and women all over the world, on the ability to find common values in our diversities for establishing relations of peace and creating social justice, solidarity and participation as global bridges. Controlling climate change and saving our planet is an immediate and urgent task. This will depend on each one of us, and we must make this the first bridge to walk, with all humankind.

 

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

The post Trump Is Gone, But Trumpism Remains appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Natalie Seeto
CANBERRA, Australia, Nov 11 2020 (IPS)

UN peacekeeping dangerously overlooks the reality that peace operations have both unintended and negative consequences. Any intervention into the politics and culture of a community is bound to create tensions between local practices and foreign peacebuilding practices.

Since its inception in 1948, peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations have been hailed by the international community as an effective, vital tool to stabilise conflict-ravaged countries and promote global peace. For everyday citizens unaffected by such conflicts, peacekeeping is generally perceived as a well-intended, necessary intervention to protect innocent civilians, prevent further conflict and assist with peacebuilding efforts.

Peacekeeping involves the deployment of UN troops to support the implementation of a ceasefire or peace agreement during a conflict, though they often oversee overall peacemaking processes.

Peacebuilding aims to reduce the risk of conflict reoccurrence by strengthening a state’s conflict management capabilities and facilitating reconciliation. However, these efforts do not guarantee success or local acceptance. In fact, peacekeeping and peacebuilding may do more harm than good.

Implicit ethical messages behind peacekeeping

The role that UN peacekeeping missions play in conflict-ravaged countries cannot be meaningfully examined without considering the implicit ethical messages that international officers, whether they be peacekeeping troops or administrative staff, carry through their attitudes and actions.

While implicit ethical messages ideally promote mutual respect and inter-group collaboration with the local stakeholders of a given conflict, they often enforce notions of privilege and power held by foreigners. Attitudes of entitlement vis-à-vis local citizens can manifest through the presence of armed guards, excessive leisure activities and even modes of transportation.

For example, in Cambodia, the 1991-1993 United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) forged a disparate economic divide between expatriates and non-UN employed locals. Outside of their mission, many UNTAC international officials spent their leisure time at hotels, shopping centres, restaurants, brothels, and bars, none of which the locals could afford.

Although these lifestyle patterns did not directly affect the substantive work or agenda of the peacekeeping mission, they nevertheless acted as a lens through which local citizens, leaders, and stakeholder groups perceived the legitimacy of the mission itself.

Indeed, this was particularly salient when UNTAC international officials became increasingly associated with prostitution. The rampant rise of HIV-AIDS saw the acronym UNTAC become ridiculed as the “UN Transmission of Aids to Cambodia.”

Further examples of the negative implicit ethical messages that can seep through peacekeeping missions are the 1999-2002 United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the subsequent United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) from 2002 to 2005.

While the overriding agendas of these UN operations were peacebuilding and state-building respectively, the practices adopted by the programs’ international administrators and officers signaled attitudes of privilege.

By accommodating UN officials in “floating hotels” and using the same headquarters as the previous Indonesian administration, an “us vs them” mentality was cemented between the foreigners’ luxurious, flagrant lifestyles and the widespread poverty experienced by locals.

Rather than integrating locals into a new post-conflict world, they were continually economically and culturally marginalised. Not only were locals restricted to menial jobs, but they were also confronted with the upheaval of Timor-Leste’s conservative, Catholic traditions as foreigners raised the demand for prostitution, pornography, and less conservative clothing.

The implicit message that arose from these socio-cultural clashes between the local and international spheres was that UN administrators were privileged and prioritised their own comfort over bottom-up state-building and peace efforts.

This resulted in local resentment, criticism, and frustration towards the foreign administration, some of which was expressed by damaging UNTAET vehicles.

The displacement of the “local” in peacebuilding

Current peacebuilding efforts tend to take a top-down approach to conflict resolution through state-building. State-building focuses on improving the administrative capabilities of the state to exercise authority and stability over its society.

It carries the implicit view that conflict-ravaged countries are “failed states” that need assistance and support from external countries to prevent further escalations of violence. This mentality is flawed as it fails to fully involve and appreciate the totality of local populations.

Without an awareness of the inherent cultural differences between local and expatriate communities, any peacekeeping operation is bound to result in local clashes and resentment. However, cultural awareness alone is insufficient for implementing successful peacebuilding operations. The substantive content and strategies of peacebuilding must also be localised, rather than externally imposed.

Without meaningfully engaging with the insights and aggravations of local populations, the root causes of a conflict cannot be addressed to achieve long-term peace. It is especially important to allow for voices from various societal groups to be heard, rather than allowing elites, or a single religious or ethnic group, to dominate peacebuilding discussions.

By creating platforms for open dialogue between domestic actors, at minimum there is an opportunity for grievances to be constructively shared and negotiated. Without this dialogue, grievances are more likely to be exacerbated through state-building efforts that entrench certain political groups or fail to truly understand the conflict in the first place.

For example, in 1991 the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), which was established to oversee the post-civil war agreements between the government of El Salvador and Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, sought to reform the country’s armed forces, police, and judicial systems, but the imposition of liberal economic governance frameworks also entrenched existing elite structures.

Where to now?

Instead of displacing the “local” by carrying implicit presumptions that more international intervention and top-down state-building are the only means of instigating sustainable peace processes, the international community should find ways to empower – not silence – local voices.

This is not to say, however, that we should idealise local actors, nor that they will face fewer difficulties or criticisms in the methods they choose to resolve conflicts. But where local actors express a willingness to resolve conflict, international resources must be purposefully mobilised to support local peacebuilding efforts and leadership.

Even where local actors are resistant to conflict resolution efforts and continue to be belligerent, the international community should nevertheless take a bottom-up approach in understanding the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions underpinning the conflict.

For the United Nations to maintain its legitimacy and status as a leader of global peace, it must reassess its conventional approaches to peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.

Source: Australian Institute of International Affairs

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post Peacekeeping is a Double-Edged Sword appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Natalie Seeto is studying a Bachelor of Arts (International Relations)/Bachelor of Laws at the Australian National University. She focuses on Southeast Asian affairs, peace and conflict studies, and post-colonial legacies. She is currently an intern at the AIIA National Office.

The post Peacekeeping is a Double-Edged Sword appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, addresses the high-level segment of the General Assembly in September 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 11 2020 (IPS)

The ouster of Donald Trump from the US presidency last week may well be the dawn of a new era for multilateralism – and perhaps for a besieged United Nations— after nearly four years of misguided political rhetoric emerging from the White House.

As a hard-core unilateralist, Trump was openly antagonistic towards multilateral institutions and contemptuous of the world body.

In a front-page story November 10, the New York Times said President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. “makes no secret of the speed with which he plans to bury ‘America First’ as a guiding principle of the nation’s foreign policy.”

The proposed reversal of Trump’s edicts—largely against all norms of international diplomacy– is being described as “The Great Undoing.”

Phyllis Bennis, who directs the New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), focusing on the Middle East, U.S. wars and UN issues, told IPS there is no doubt that Biden will return to active engagement with the United Nations.

She said Biden has committed to re-joining the World Health Organization (WHO) on his first day in office, though whether he will commit the U.S. to the WHO-backed COVAX vaccine coalition, that aims to ensure access to any future globally-equitable Covid vaccines, remains a big question.

Activists are already organizing campaigns to challenge potential Biden cabinet and other picks that reflect the longstanding “revolving door” between major corporations and the federal agencies tasked with overseeing them, said Bennis, author of ‘Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN’.

Since he took office back in January 2017, Trump either de-funded, withdrew from, or denigrated several UN agencies and affiliated institutions, including the WHO, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), among others.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS: “I suspect the first thing Joe Biden will do as soon as he sits down at his Presidential desk in the oval office next January is rejoin the Paris Agreement (on Climate Change)”

Biden understands that climate change is a conflict multiplier and poses an existential threat to humanity. “As for the JCPOA (the Iranian nuclear deal), he might wait a week or two for that one, but I suspect that will happen too”.

The election of Biden is good news for the ICC, Dr Adams said.

“President Trump has tried to destroy the ICC and took the unprecedented step of imposing sanctions on Court officials simply for doing their jobs and investigating war crimes and torture allegedly perpetrated by American forces in Afghanistan”.

But the United States, he predicted, is still unlikely to become a State Party to the Rome Statute, “but I hope Biden will get the US government back to constructively cooperating with the Court.”

That’s bad news for any war criminals and other atrocity perpetrators – wherever they may be in the world – who were sleeping a little more soundly with Donald Trump in the White House. declared Dr Adams, a former member of the international anti-apartheid movement and of the African National Congress in South Africa.

Despite the mostly empty threats of legal challenges against the President-elect, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated the American people for “a vibrant exercise of democracy in their country’s elections last week”.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, said the Secretary-General specifically congratulated the President-elect and Vice President-elect and reaffirmed that the partnership between the United States and the United Nations is an essential pillar of the international cooperation needed to address the dramatic challenges facing the world today.

On Twitter, the President of the General Assembly Volkan Bozkir sent his warmest congratulations to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, who he said “has a long history of supporting the United Nations, and to Kamala Harris, whose historic election as the United States’ first woman Vice-President is a milestone for gender equality”.

He said he looks forward to deepening UN-US ties and working together towards a safer and more prosperous world.

Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said making sure the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the new head, for instance, does not come out of, and view themselves, as accountable to Big Pharma, will be a crucial but difficult struggle for social movements.

It might be possible to persuade the Biden administration to restore its funding to UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, given the staggering level of uncritical pro-Israel largesse Trump provided to Tel Aviv, and the exclusion of Palestinian rights from any Trumpian “diplomacy” in the Middle East, she noted.

But it is unlikely, Bennis pointed out, that there will be any serious shifts in substantive support for Palestinian rights at the UN (or elsewhere) – unless Biden’s team agrees to model themselves after the last months of Obama’s second term, in which the U.S. abstained on a Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements, allowing it to pass.

“As to UNESCO, while the Biden administration might decide to return to the UN’s cultural organization, it is unlikely to agree to repay the almost $600 million in unpaid dues Washington has accrued since it stopped paying dues in 2011,” she said.

Meanwhile, under Biden, Dr Adams predicted, the US will systematically re-engage with the multilateral system, rather than seeking to undermine, withdraw or destroy it.

“I, for one, would like to see the US quickly rejoin the Human Rights Council and stop denigrating organizations like UNESCO who are the guardians of humanity’s shared cultural heritage”.

“I think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are acutely conscious of past injustices in US history and the human rights challenges their country has faced over the last four years,” he added.

“I hope they will carry that awareness onto the global stage and become consistent champions for human rights and international justice everywhere. We need them to strengthen the international norms and laws that Trump tried so hard to ignore or undermine during his Presidency,” Dr Adams declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

  

The post Trump’s “America First” Foreign Policy Faces an Unceremonious Burial appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Thailand’s COVID-19 response an example of resilience and solidarity: a UN Resident Coordinator’s Blog

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Nov 10 2020 (IPS)

SARS-CoV-2, the corona virus that causes COVID-19, has been spreading exponentially across the world over the last ten or so months. As of November 6th, according to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, there have been 49,195,581 cases of COVID-19, including 1,241,031 deaths.

More than a third of the global population has been placed on lockdown. The global economy is experiencing the deepest global recession since World War 2 and massive numbers of people are losing livelihoods and suffering serious effects on their physical and mental health.

The pandemic has allowed states and corporations to tighten technological surveillance and authoritarianism, curtailing privacy and democratic protest. As virulent second and even third waves of the pandemic speed across countries, people are gripped with fear and despair over their own survival and what the future holds for humanity.

The origin and prevention of the virus are mired in controversy and conflict between conventional and ‘conspiracy’ theories.

This unprecedented, multi-faceted global crisis, however, calls for deeper exploration and broader discourse on its causes and long-term solutions. Biomedical science, social science and ecological and ethical perspectives need to be integrated to overcome this pandemic as well as other pandemics predicted in the years ahead.

Controversy over Origin and Prevention

Given the lack of media coverage, there is scarce public awareness of the likely laboratory origins of previous pandemics like the H1N1 outbreak of 1977-78. The global scientific and media establishments attribute the origin of COVID-19 to an animal-to-human (i.e. zoonotic) transmission at a seafood market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

While US intelligence sources also originally asserted this, they conceded in March 2020 that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The Wuhan Institute is linked to the US army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which does research and testing involving bats and coronaviruses and gene editing ‘bioweapons’.

The Wuhan Institute also has a close, decades-old partnership with the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland, the leading US military laboratory for ‘biological defense’ research. USAMRID is known for periodic shutdowns due to its problematic record on safety procedure.

Gain-of-Function Research (GOF) involves “manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans.” This type of research is criticized by many scientists on ethical grounds because of the risks GOF viruses pose for human health from accidental release. Due to public health concerns, in October 2014, the US government banned all federal funding for efforts to ‘weaponize three viruses’: influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

In the face of this ban in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), reportedly “outsourced in 2015 the GOF research on bat coronaviruses to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.”

In early 2018, US embassy officials in China raised concerns about “inadequate safety” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. US science diplomats warned that, due in part to a lack of adequate safety personnel, the research that the lab was conducting in relation to bats “represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.”

Yet, action was not taken and despite the controversies, Dr. Fauci was appointed as the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force and continues to function in that position.

Hollywood films, such as 2011’s Contagion presented eerie premonitions of the COVID-19. In 2015, billionaire and global population control proponent, Bill Gates warned of a huge threat of a global pandemic.

A pandemic simulation called Event 201 was conducted in October 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum projected up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus.

However, the global biomedical, political and business leaders who were well aware of the impending Covid pandemic did not take the precautionary action needed to safeguard people. The United States, Europe and other countries found themselves without adequate testing kits, respirators, hospital beds and medical personnel when the virus started to spread.

A failure of leadership lies behind the massive destruction of human life, livelihoods and social life that we are experiencing today.

Controversy over Mitigation

While lockdowns, curfews and the isolation of entire communities and regions seem to be the norm, the effectiveness of this approach and its enormous negative consequences on the economy, society and mental health are coming into question.

The success of the mainstream approach depends on a host of local socio-economic factors, such as the age of the population, health infrastructure, leadership, mobilization of people as well as just, uniform and compassionate enforcement of preventative measures.

Double standards in enforcing Covid health protocols can contribute to resentment and weaken overall conformity jeopardizing the health and safety of entire populations. Apparently, under strict Covid guidelines in Australia, some individuals have been prevented from visiting with dying family members while at the same time, VIPS and celebrities have been exempt from strict quarantine measures.

Likewise, in Sri Lanka, high powered delegations from China and the United States (led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) arrived in the midst of the worsening second wave in October 2020, seemingly foregoing national Covid guidelines.

Many countries in the global south, such as, Vietnam, Cambodia, Senegal and Rwanda have contained the pandemic more successfully than the United States and the rich European countries.

As of November 1, Rwanda and Senegal, reported 0.28 and 2.04 Covid deaths per 100,000 people respectively, whereas the corresponding number for the US is a staggering 70.4.

The vast majority of those infected recover easily and only the elderly and those with other pre-existing illnesses are the most vulnerable. Thus far, on November 6th, of the total confirmed 49,195,581 cases, 32,368,883 have recovered.

Given this reality, many epidemiologists are suggesting ‘focused protection’ of the most vulnerable groups, allowing the rest of the population to develop ‘herd immunity;’ the point at which the majority of a population becomes immune and limits the spread to those that are not immune.

Sweden is the leading example of a country that went against the global norm of mandatory lockdowns, social distancing and use of face masks. Sweden experienced much higher numbers of cases and deaths than its Scandinavian neighbors during the first wave of the pandemic.

However, Sweden has had relatively fewer deaths during the current second wave while other Scandinavian and European countries which imposed strict lockdowns early in the pandemic are facing massive spikes in infections and deaths.

Given the relative failures of the mainstream lockdown approach and its negative socio-economic and psychological impacts, alternative long-term approaches like that of Sweden warrant consideration.

A May 2020 report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in the US suggested that the COVID-19 outbreak will not end until 60% to 70% of the human population becomes immune to the virus, which could take anywhere from 18 to 24 months.

Meanwhile, many virologists and global leaders argue that the only way to eradicate the virus would be with a vaccine ‘delivered to every human being’ as quickly as possible. Pharmaceutical companies are now racing to provide a vaccine, the magic bullet to end the pandemic, and a highly profitable one at that.

However, there is no certainty that a vaccine against COVID-19 would act as effectively as previous vaccines against viruses such as smallpox.

The Gates Foundation, which has funded the UK’s Pirbright Institute that is currently working on a vaccine against COVID-19, stands to benefit from vaccine marketing. Bill Gates is calling for a ‘digital certificate’ to identify individuals receiving the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine.

Backed by a massive organization called ID2020, these certificates are expected to grant access to other social and economic rights and services. Mass vaccination to eradicate COVID-19 is seen as the opportunity to introduce a worldwide digital ID, and ID2020 is already testing one in Bangladesh that is ‘biometrically-linked’ to fingerprints.

Reportedly, a ‘covert way to embed the record of a vaccination directly in a patient’s skin’ – called a ‘quantum dot tattoo’ – is also being researched at MIT with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

What would happen to those who refuse to get vaccinated for COVID-19, or other mandatory, possibly gene-altering, vaccines in the future? Will they be denied access to essential services and cast off from society?

Do the kind of research and practices introduced in the name of disease prevention, such as Gain-of-Function Research and bioweapons development, pose greater threats than they provide protection of human and planetary life?

And how do the unprecedented shifts in human behavior seen this year, with increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, undermine age-old patterns of human connectedness to nature and to each other?

Moving Forward

Notwithstanding political and cultural differences, the rising economic power of China is pursuing the same growth driven developmental model as the declining Euro-American alliance. The pandemic has brought to light the dangers inherent in this technology- and market-driven system.

While conventions against biological weapons and bans of Gain-of-Function Research and the like are necessary, the multifaceted Covid crisis calls for a fundamental change of the global military-industrial system.

It is said that a crisis is a turning point, an opportunity to change. To understand where and how to turn, it is necessary for more and more people to question the values of the dominant globalization paradigm, including the management of the Covid crisis.

How has prioritizing unbridled economic growth over environmental sustainability and human wellbeing contributed to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic? How have deforestation, climate change and human expansion into the habitats of other animals contributed to easier transmission of viruses between species?

How has the pollution of the earth’s water, air and soil by industrialized agriculture and militarism, led to the depletion of human immunity and increase susceptibility to new viruses and diseases?

How has the reliance on the globalized import and export economy resulted in massive losses of employment and shortages of essential food and medicine during the Covid crisis?

It is time to fashion a more balanced, ecological way of living that respects the environment, upholds bioregionalism and local communities. More and more people are questioning the prevailing notions of success and development and shifting to agroecology, community-based and healthier ways of living.

These developments need to be complemented with demands for greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses.

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is making people more sensitive to the fragility and insecurity of life and our physical and emotional interconnectedness to each other and the rest of nature.

The crisis can teach us to overcome fear, excessive greed and individualism and develop compassion for the suffering of humanity and other species of life. It offers an opportunity to overcome despair and powerlessness and to collectively challenge oppressive political and economic structures and turn the world in a more equitable, ecological and healthier direction.

* Asoka Bandarage’s new book ‘Colonialism in Sri Lanka” examines the political economy of 19th century British Ceylon and includes a discussion of the neocolonialism that has followed and continues. It is available as an ebook or paperback here from September 14th

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post The Covid Pandemic: Broadening the Discourse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post The Covid Pandemic: Broadening the Discourse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 10 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank has finally given up defending its controversial, but influential Doing Business Report (DBR). In August, the Bank “paused” publication of the DBR due to a “number of irregularities” after its much criticized ranking system was exposed as fraudulent.

Anis Chowdhury

Apparently, data from four countries – China, Azerbaijan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia – was “inappropriately altered”, according to the Wall Street Journal. Exposure of these irregularities was the final straw: now, it is uncertain whether the DBR will return after its suspension.

Exposing the lie
After Chief Economist Paul Romer told the Wall Street Journal two years ago that he had lost faith in the “integrity” of the DBR, and apologized to Chile for possibly politically motivated data manipulation, he was forced to resign. The Economist commented then, “His resignation may not end the controversy”.

Romer later received the so-called Economics Nobel Prize following his resignation. Almost two decades ago, Joseph Stiglitz also received the Prize after being forced to resign following differences with US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

When Justin Sandefur and Divyanshi Wadhwa of the Center for Global Development (CGD) exposed how ostensibly methodological tweaking changed Chile’s and India’s DBR rankings to bolster “market-friendly” Piñera and Modi vis-à-vis their more centrist opponents. Simeon Djankov, founder of the Bank’s Doing Business index, dismissed the CGD and the two authors as “reformed Marxist”.

Doing Business vs SDGs
Djankov insisted that the DBR is about the costs of doing business, not “the benefits of running a society”. He contemptuously told those who criticised the DBR for failing to consider social or environmental impacts, to create their own “index that says the benefits of …regulation”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

For the DBR, it did not matter if reducing regulations harmed the environment or employment conditions, or if lowering taxes constrained governmental capacity to fund public investment and provide decent public health or social protection as long as such “reforms” lowered the costs of doing business.

Singlehandedly, Djankov exposed the shallowness of the Bank’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By undermining social and environmental dimensions, Djankov exposed the Bank’s actual attitude to sustainable development.

Hence, the Bank had little choice but to ditch the DBR, which has already done enormous damage to development by encouraging harmful tax competition and ‘races to the bottom’ with regard to the protection of the environment and labour rights.

Racing to the bottom for nothing
Governments seek improvements in their country’s DBR ranking believing that it will increase growth via increased investment, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the evidence has been disappointing.

For example, a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper found that, “on average, countries that undertake large-scale reforms relative to other countries do not necessarily attract greater [foreign direct investment] inflows”. For developing countries, it found an insignificant statistical relationship. Another study concluded, “the various studies do not provide guidance on which of the wide range of possible [investment climate (IC)] reforms are most strongly correlated with increased growth”.

Such ranking competition has encouraged debilitating investor-friendly government behaviour. The index has become a tool for governments to formulate, evaluate and legitimize their economic policies. Some now game the system to notch up their countries’ ranking with essentially cosmetic reforms.

Indonesia’s recent “Omnibus Bill” ostensibly for job creation includes many market-friendly reforms that would most certainly boost Indonesia’s DBR ranking. The bill, from a government increasingly influenced by the Bank, is now widely criticised for heavily favouring powerful business interests at the expense of workers, human rights and the environment.

Agrarian counter-revolution
Ditching the DBR may be a good start, but is far from enough. The Bank must also end other similar ‘ideologically driven’ exercises, such as its Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) and Investing Across Borders (IAB) indicators, which prioritise FDI, typically at the expense of some SDGs.

The Bank’s EBA indicators project is an extension of its Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) programme, first launched in 2013. BBA, partly based on the DBI methodology, was created after the G8 asked the Bank in 2012 to develop such an index for the G8’s controversial New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition programme.

The Bank claimed, “The indicators provide a tangible measure of progress and identify regulatory obstacles to market integration and entrepreneurship in agriculture”, leading to a more modern commercial agriculture sector. Private agribusiness investors will be the main beneficiaries of its proposed land policies and environmental protection deregulation.

But the Bank does not bother to explain how farmers, especially smallholder or peasant farmers, will benefit from the proposed reforms or from large-scale commercial agriculture. Our Land; Our Business highlighted that the EBA will encourage corporate land grabs and undermine smallholder farmers who produce 80% of food consumed in the developing world.

In January 2017, over 158 organizations and academics from around the world denounced the EBA to the WB President and its five Western donors (USAID, DFID, DANIDA, the Netherlands, and the Gates Foundation), demanding its immediate end.

In response, the Bank made some cosmetic changes and dropped its controversial land indicator. However, its latest (2019) EBA still reflects its strong bias for commercial agricultural inputs and mono-cropping, undermining food security, sustainability as well as customary land holdings.

Favouring Foreign Direct Investment
The Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) introduced its Investing Across Borders (IAB) indicators in 2010. Heavily influenced by Hernando de Soto, the IAB indicators were designed to complement the Bank’s DB indicators.

The IAB indicators claim to help accelerate economic growth by giving primacy to FDI as a driver for job creation, technology transfer, upgrading skills, fostering competition and fiscal consolidation. In fact, IAB indicators encourage frameworks that limit benefits for host countries besides enhancing the harmful effects of cross-border investment deals.

The indicators also violate the letter and spirit of the IFC’s Performance Standards for Environmental and Social Sustainability; Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment respecting rights, livelihoods and resources; Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests; and various other international instruments.

One size never fits all
The rise and fall of the DBR expose the dangers of using and exaggerating the significance of standardised rankings for very different countries and business environments. An IC is typically complex and difficult to reduce to a few key indicators, let alone a meaningful composite index.

Reforming only certain aspects of business regulation because of the influence of Doing Business cannot possibly be optimal, especially when government capacity is constrained. Academic literature reviews conclude, “while there is empirical evidence that institutional reform can promote growth, it is less clear which reforms matter most, how to prioritise possible IC reforms, and what kinds of institutional frameworks and functions are needed”.

Growth drivers and constraints are very context specific, so reform priorities should also be context specific. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to measuring and understanding complex investment environment issues is very problematic, especially one based on the interests and priorities of particular institutions and powers.

The Bank should stop doing harm by concentrating on its original mandate of intermediating finance at the lowest possible cost for sustainable development, relief and recovery in our extraordinary times. It should stop misleading the world, especially developing countries, with its highly biased supposed knowledge products.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• World Bank Must Stop Encouraging Harmful Tax Competition
• Stop worrying about ‘Doing Business’ ranking
• More of the Same: World Bank Doing Business Report Continues to Mislead
• World Bank Dispossessing Rural Poor

The post Is Development for the World Bank Mainly Doing Business? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed shrugged off concerns that Ethiopia could descend into civil war, even as reports of clashes between federal soldiers and those loyal to the Tigray region’s governing party continued. Courtesy: GCIS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10 2020 (IPS)

Already reeling from conflict, extreme weather events and growing displacement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating tensions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have placed the country on the brink of civil war and many are looking to Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to avert a potential humanitarian disaster.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has called the Prime Minister an ‘illegitimate leader,’ after Abiy announced that he would postpone elections due to the pandemic. The country’s parliament has in turn declared the Tigray administration illegitimate and last week voted for its dissolution. Prime Minister Abiy confirmed that air strikes had been carried out in the region and warned of further action against military targets.

In a social media post on Nov. 9, the Prime Minister however shrugged off concerns that Ethiopia could descend into civil war, even as reports of clashes between federal soldiers and those loyal to the Tigray region’s governing party continued.

Abiy’s statement came less than a week after United Nations Secretary General António Guterres expressed ‘grave concern’ over the reports of violence and attacks on civilians, while calling for ‘inclusive dialogue’ to diffuse tensions.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has joined the growing number of agencies calling for dialogue to end the conflict. The NRC operates in seven regions in Ethiopia, including the northern Tigray region. The Council’s Regional Director for East Africa and Yemen, Nigel Tricks, spoke to IPS about the current refugee situation in Ethiopia and why the country can ill afford further escalation in violence.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): In your statement you noted that the escalating tensions in Ethiopia are adding to an already tenuous situation that includes mass displacement. What are some of the current humanitarian needs in Ethiopia?

Nigel Tricks (NT): Ethiopia has been a centre for humanitarian response for some time; a situation driven by conflict and erratic weather that have caused cyclical droughts and floods. In 2020 alone, over 19 million people across the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, a situation that has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of recurring food crises, the U.N. estimates 687,000 children will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition. On top of that, Ethiopia is home to 792,000 refugees mainly from Somalia and South Sudan as well as close to two million internally displaced people. The country has also been affected by the recent desert locust infestation, which risks further aggravating the food situation for millions of people. 

More specifically to Tigray and according to the U.N., more than two million people in the region need some form of humanitarian assistance, including 400,000 people who are food insecure, or unable to meet their food needs. The region is also home to 96,000 refugees, approximately 12 percent of the total number of refugees in Ethiopia.

IPS: What would heightened tensions mean for the people of the Tigray region?

NT: Escalating tensions that could result in conflict threaten the safety of thousands of people. Both local communities and displaced people and refugees hosted in the area, are at the risk of being caught up in violence. Conflict would also make it more difficult for vulnerable families, who already rely on aid, to safely exercise their right to access humanitarian assistance like food, health and education especially in the context of a global pandemic. As a result, more people will be forced to migrate, putting them at different risks and making them dependent on humanitarian aid.

IPS: You called for an end to military action. What do you think it would take now to diffuse this situation?

NT: Concerted efforts between the national government as well as leaders in the Tigray region will be paramount in de-escalating tensions. Given the country’s influence across the region, actors such as the African Union can also play a role in helping Ethiopia find a lasting solution to the crisis and enhance greater regional stability.  We would also like to see Ethiopia’s many friends in the wider international community offer their help in finding satisfactory outcomes for all parties.

IPS: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Do you think that this situation presents an opportunity for him to live up to the ideals of this award and prove that a peaceful resolution is possible?

NT: Ethiopia, in general, has been perceived as a beacon of reconciliation since Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed initiated reforms in the country in 2018. Regionally, the country has also been an important regional influence for good, for example in South Sudan’s peace processes. Ethiopian leaders, including regional and national authorities, have the opportunity now to focus efforts towards a peaceful resolution to the crisis and avoid more violence.

IPS: The eyes of the world are on the United States’ elections, but is it time for world leaders to address the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia?

 NT: World leaders, including international governments, have played their part in supporting Ethiopia both in responding to the current humanitarian situation as well as in their nation-wide development efforts. However, the international community including African regional leaders should step up the involvement in helping Ethiopia find peaceful solutions before there is widespread conflict. The U.S. can make a difference.  How it communicates on the conflict in the coming days could contribute to or reduce tension. 

IPS: The NRC has spoken out on the Ethiopian humanitarian situation. Going forward, how do you proceed? Is it a case of monitoring the situation and continuing to provide shelter and assistance on the ground or does it also mean preparing for a possible influx of refugees?

NT: NRC will continue to monitor the situation while delivering its humanitarian mandate across the country including in the Tigray region where we have been working for several years. We will also work closely with government authorities as well as local and community organisations to ensure that aid reaches those that need it the most in an efficient manner and ensure that, should the situation call for it, we are sufficiently prepared to increase our response.

The post Q & A: Escalating Tensions in Ethiopia adds to Tenuous Refugee Setting appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Chile’s Energy Revolution Has an Achilles’ Heel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In this Reuters file photo taken on September 11, 2017, smoke is seen on the Myanmar border as Rohingya refugees walk on the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal, in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh.

By UNB, Dhaka
Nov 9 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The United Kingdom wants the new government in Myanmar to take steps towards safe, voluntary and dignified return of the Rohingyas to their place of origin in Rakhine State.

“The new government must work to address the valid concerns of people across Rakhine,” Lord Tariq Ahmad, Minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), told UNB while exclusively responding to a few questions.

Millions voted in Myanmar’s general polls on November 8 — with election cancelled in Rakhine and the Rohingya disenfranchised — just the second since military rule ended in 2011.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains hugely popular in Myanmar and is expected to win.

The UK minister reminded that the solution lies in Myanmar, and the UK is working tirelessly for accountability and justice. “We’ll also provide the political support needed to resolve this crisis in the long-term.”

He said they also want the Rakhine Advisory Commission recommendations to be implemented, including recognising the Rohingyas as citizens of Myanmar and allowing them freedom of movement, as well as making sure they can access essential services, like schooling and jobs.

The government of Bangladesh has planned to relocate 100,000 Rohingyas to Bhasan Char, to ease the burden on Cox’s Bazar camps and avoid the risk of deaths due to landslides during the rainy season.

Several Bangladeshi media outlets have recently visited Bhasan Char and found the facilities there far better than that of Cox’s Bazar camps.

Asked about the relocation plan, Minister Ahmad said the UK is absolutely clear that the relocation of Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char must be “safe, voluntary and dignified”.

“We’re extremely concerned to hear of reports of alleged abuse, including sexual abuse, taking place on the island,” he said.

Bangladesh, however, ruled out such allegations terming those reports completely false.

“We support calls by the UN for a protection mission to the island to assess whether it’s safe for people to live there. Full and detailed assessments are needed to determine this,” said the UK minister.

CONCERNED OVER CLASHES IN CAMPS

There are incidents of clashes and killings at Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camps and Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen recently said the regional and international security will certainly be jeopardised if the Rohingya issue remains unresolved.

Asked how Bangladesh can avert such security threats, the UK minister said they are “extremely concerned” by the recent escalation of violence in Cox’s Bazar and they are relieved to see the situation has calmed for now.

“We’re grateful to our humanitarian partners for their work to help those facing this in the camps,” said Minister Ahmad.

Unfortunately, he said, the trauma and violence the Rohingya people have suffered, and the prolonged crisis, have led to fears of a lost generation within the camps.

“This sense of hopelessness is likely contributing to worsening tensions and increased crime. That’s why our UK aid programmes support access to education, jobs and skills development opportunities for Rohingya people and host communities, to help people see a meaningful future for themselves,” said the UK minister.

He said their programmes also promote the rule of law and access to justice, to help keep people safe.

REPATRIATION OR LONG-TERM SUPPORT

Bangladesh wants to repatriate Rohingyas to Myanmar without further delay while a conference on sustaining support for the Rohingya Refugee Response was held on October 22.

When asked if this conference was conflicting with Bangladesh’s repatriation plan, the UK minister said they welcome the government of Bangladesh’s longstanding commitment to voluntary, safe and dignified returns and share this aim.

He said they are pressing Myanmar to address the root causes of the crisis so that this can become possible.

However, Minister Ahmad said, the continued violence and threat to Rohingya people’s lives in Rakhine State mean this is not possible right now.

“Until that can happen, we’ll help refugees and Bangladeshi families, and take steps that will give the Rohingyas the confidence to return home,” said the UK minister.

“The UK is raising these issues with Myanmar and at the UN, and we’ve convened the UN Security Council three times this year with a focus on the situation in Rakhine and Chin States,” said minister Ahmad.

He said they have sanctioned two generals in the Myanmar military, as recommended by a UN independent investigation, which found them responsible for atrocities, amounting to ethnic cleansing.

UK’S SUPPORT

Minister Ahmad said the UK is extremely grateful to Bangladesh for hosting the Rohingya in their time of need and will continue to help the country until the crisis is resolved.

“Last month we announced £10 million to support Bangladesh’s coronavirus response and preparations for natural disasters such as cyclones and monsoon flooding,” he said.

The UK also announced a further £37.5 million of new support to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi people in Cox’s Bazar, said minister Ahmad.

He said this UK aid will provide food, water and sanitation, as well as care and counselling for those traumatised by the horrific violence they have experienced.

“It’ll also improve access to education for 50,000 young people, as well as support isolation and treatment centres for people suffering with coronavirus,” he said.

Minister Ahmad said they remain committed to supporting host communities in Cox’s Bazar.

“Our new funding will support more than 10,000 people from local Bangladeshi communities to cope with the economic impact of the pandemic, including through providing training and supporting business start-up funds,” he said.

The UK minister said they are also currently providing 50,000 people with food assistance to help the Bangladeshi communities living around the camps.

To date, minister Ahmad said, the UK aid has helped get more than 20,000 Bangladeshi women into better-paid jobs, more than 120,000 children and teenagers into quality education and helped over 110,000 people to access clean water.

NOT FORGOTTEN

The UK minister said last month’s conference demonstrates that the world has not forgotten the plight of the Rohingya people and the burden that Bangladesh in particular is shouldering in providing refuge and protection.

As a force for good in the world, he said, the UK is proud to have co-hosted the conference and will continue to work with Bangladesh.

“It’s been more than three years since the latest crisis in August 2017 but the Rohingyas’ suffering continues, and we must not abandon them,” said Minister Ahmad.

Along with their co-hosts, the United States, the European Union and the UN Refugee Agency, the UK urged countries to pledge new support for Rohingya refugees, host communities such as those in Cox’s Bazar, and internally displaced Rohingyas in Myanmar.

Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post New Myanmar govt must ensure Rohingya repatriation: UK appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nuno21/Shutterstock / The Conversation

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Nov 9 2020 (IPS)

To believe that Biden’s triumph is the end of the drama that has unfolded since January 2016 is an example of a mirage with fatal consequences. Pretending that those more than 70 million voters who have followed Trump to the end will disappear from the map on January 20 with the inauguration of Biden and Harris reveals a blindness to how much America has changed in recent generations.

But what is even more worrisome is not the survival of the ideology of those who elevated Trump. The enigma is how did that long third of the electorate occupy a vital territory?

Numerous observers of the evolution of the American political soul raised voices of alarm in recent months. They wondered about the dangerous conversion of the United States political system into an unusual imitation of the fabric existing in other countries that had fallen into the nets of authoritarianism.

Worse still is they had been swallowed up by the extreme ideologies that appeared in Europe in the 1930s. These drove countries with a long cultural tradition to turn into totalitarian dictatorships. These voices advanced the comparison of what was happening by applying Trump’s whims, turned into policies that resembled the practical programs of the Hitler regime since 1933.

In the society of the United States at the beginning of the new century, the existence of broad sectors that felt cornered, disappointed, and isolated began to be detected. They were not the traditional enclaves of racial minorities or remnants of European immigrants who had not fully fitted into the social and economic fabric.

Joaquín Roy

They were, so to speak, “full-blooded Americans.” They saw that the American dream was beginning to turn into a hurtful nightmare, from which they could not wake up despite having faithfully complied with the report card that the system had given to their parents or grandparents.

Wages were not keeping up with the rising cost of living. Mortgages ate much of the income. If they were inhabitants of rural areas, they felt trapped by invisible borders. If they grew up with a basic education, access to college was limited by their income or the stratospheric cost of private institutions. An explanation had to be found for this apparent scam.

That was not the America, in short, that they had been promised. It was urgent to find the culprits for this fraud. In addition, it was necessary to detect the existence of new leaders who would not be that hateful and corrupt establishment in Washington.

Suddenly, they were orphans from another direction, whose space was occupied by an “outsider”, Donald Trump. He arrived pristine, without the blemish of traditional politics. It guaranteed the decontamination of the Washington swamp.

In a reasonably educated nation, it would truly be a feat to have followed the tunes of a flute player, who had revealed the causes of their misfortune. As Hitler enthralled a cultured people like the troubled interwar Germans, Trump fascinated the Americans with his simplistic solutions.

In Germany of 1930s, urban decay was attributed to the alleged capture of certain businesses by Jews. The solution began with the breaking up of the shop windows, the prohibition of certain professions, and finally imprisonment. The German people, educated and disciplined, swallowed the lie without question.

The regime accurately sold the supposed need to expand the territory by the call of the Lebensraum. The simple solution was the Anschluss of Austria, and then the bite into the ethnically German territories in Czechoslovakia. The people applauded, but did not seem satisfied: Poland had to be invaded and then respond to the Anglo-French protest with the forceful Blitzkrieg. The German people cheered, as Hitler paraded triumphantly around the Arc de Triomphe.

As Trump ascended the throne, many Americans who had been drawn to urban areas found that the neat neighborhoods of the suburbs ended up being contaminated by the invasion of racial minorities, previously hardly detected. They felt uncomfortable sharing the space with blacks and, what was more hurtful, with Hispanics, who also spoke an incomprehensible language. And most of them were accused of being drug traffickers.

The remedy from the White House was to close the border to the invaders with a wall. Trump also promised that the Mexicans themselves would pay for it. He continued by dividing the families of those who had already entered, making it difficult for them to attend university, and delaying their citizenship to the maximum.

The “lifelong Americans” were enthralled. And the Republican Party was satisfied with the renewal of its positions in the Senate. Arbitrary measures bordered on unconstitutionality. But the goal of “making America great again” became the central watchword.

In the Germany of Hitler’s rise, everything was subordinated to the very end of reestablishing or inventing the glories of the past, to the chords of a Wagner opera. The absence of questioning the sovereignty of the Fuhrer guaranteed the fulfillment of the script.

Believing itself to be the best nation in Europe justified the madness of the invasion of the Soviet Union, without realizing that such an operation caused the downfall of Napoleon. The National Socialist Party guaranteed order and the SS inherited the role of the Brown Shirts to tame the Wehrmacht that swallowed up the professional military, who had not digested the defeat of 1918 well.

The disaster that began in Stalingrad and culminated with Russian troops raising the flag at the top of the Reichstag, was riveted by Allied bombardments that left Dresden and Hamburg in ruins, populated by millions of wandering soldiers, while the furnaces were still smoking in the death camps and a million German women of all ages were raped. The sentence was so forceful that only in this way did the Germans learn their lesson and became a model of cooperation in Europe and the world.

But it is unknown how the application of the same strategy could have ended if Trump’s misrule plan had followed the same path. Now only the seventy million who have voted him to “make America great again” have remained silent. But the SS in the Republican Senate and the recent infiltrators in the Supreme Court also remain unscathed. It’s a gigantic denazification task for Biden, without Nuremberg-style trials.

The post How Did Trump Get this Far? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A dust story in El Fasher, North Darfur. This is a natural weather phenomenon in Darfur which occurs regularly between March and July every year. It affects all aspects of daily life in the region, including airline flights. Scientists say these storms have a range of affects that are not clearly understood. Courtesy: CC By 2.0/ Mohamad Almahady, UNAMID.

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 2020 (IPS)

When sand and dust storms (SDS) rage in the Sahara Desert, more than 10,000 km away in the Caribbean Sea the very same storms have a range of effects on the 1,360 species of shorefish that populate the waters there.

According to a report released last week by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), each year about half a billion tonnes of nutrients, minerals, and organic inorganic matter is transferred to the oceans through SDS.

But as Dr. Nick Middleton, a fellow in physical geography at St Anne’s College at the University of Oxford and author of the UNEP report titled “Impacts of Sand and Dust Storms on Oceans”, told IPS, “our understanding of how dust affects marine waters is far from complete”. 

Though he added that the upcoming U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development will be an exciting opportunity to help scientists gain a better understanding of issues such as how much dust from SDS reaches the oceans. In his interview, Middleton said that this decade is an important time to consider the ways in which SDS affect issues such as biodiversity, the climate, and food systems.

“The U.N. Decade offers exciting opportunities to improve our understanding of some of these basic issues. Nobody lives permanently in the open oceans, so historically we have had to rely on scientists on ships to take measurements when and where they are able.

“Hence, the data we have on dust in the atmosphere and deposited over the oceans is patchy and sporadic at best. The use of geostationary satellites is improving our capacity to monitor dust, but there is no substitute for taking real samples at sea,” Middleton told IPS.

And as Jian Lu, Director of the Science Division at UNEP, said in the report: “Desert dust is a principal driver of oceanic primary productivity, which forms the base of the marine food web and fuels the global carbon cycle.” 

“One of the clear messages from this report is the simple fact that many aspects of the impacts of SDS on the oceans are only partially understood,” Lu said. “Despite the limited knowledge, the impacts of SDS on oceans—their ecosystem functions, goods and services—are potentially numerous and wide-ranging, thus warranting continued careful monitoring and research.”

“Many scientists predict that as our climate warms dust storms will become more frequent in certain parts of the world where the climate becomes drier and soils will be protected by less vegetation,” Middleton added. “More dust in these places will inevitably have complex feedback effects on climate and what happens in the oceans.”

Excerpts of the interview below.

Inter Press Service (IPS): Jian Liu said in the report the impacts of sand and dust storms on the oceans are only partially understood. What are some under-reported issues about the impact of sand and dust storms on oceans?

Dr Nick Middleton (NM): One aspect that needs more accurate assessment is the amount of desert dust transported to the world’s oceans each year. When they occur, we can see great plumes of dust above the oceans on satellite imagery, but we only have a rough idea of how much dust is involved. We estimate that anything between one billion and five billion tonnes of desert dust are emitted into the atmosphere by SDS every year on average. Two billion tonnes is the current best estimate, and 25 percent of that reaches the oceans, with all sorts of effects on marine ecosystems. However, most of these estimates come from computer models which are imperfect at simulating all the numerous processes involved in lifting, transporting and depositing dust to the sea.

We know that desert dust delivers some vital nutrients to the oceans, but our understanding of how dust affects marine waters is far from complete. For instance, dust probably has an impact on the energy balance in several oceans, affecting the circulation of heat and salt. These circulation regimes have implications for marine life, but our understanding of the details is hazy at best.

IPS: The U.N.  Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) is scheduled to start in 2021. What are some issues that you believe should be addressed during this time?

NM: The U.N. Decade could initiate a great leap forward in our understanding if it presided over the establishment of a network of study sites across different oceans to take long-term measurements of dust in the atmosphere and as it is deposited on the ocean surface. Buoys can be used as platforms for autonomous sampling of dust and other weather variables, and their data transmitted to researchers.

Long-term datasets are vitally important, but they cannot replace experiments conducted from ships at sea. The U.N. Decade can also promote coordinated experiments involving both atmospheric and marine measurements to address some of the processes in which desert dust is important. One such role is how iron and phosphorus carried with desert dust helps to fertilise large areas of ocean surface, and may also impact local climate.

IPS: The report establishes a link between desert dust and coral reef systems; it also suggests a potential link between disease arising from microorganisms and a decline in coral reefs worldwide. What kind of impact do sand and dust storms have on biological diversity overall, and on human life?

NM: Dust raised in SDS and transported to the oceans helps to sustain the biodiversity of large marine areas. One of the most direct effects is the incorporation of tiny dust particles into coral skeletons as they grow. Nutrients carried on desert dust particles also fuel the growth of marine microorganisms such as phytoplankton, which form the base of the marine food web.

Human society relies on fish and other products from the sea, but the fertilising effect of desert dust is also thought to have an impact on algal blooms, some of which are detrimental to economic activity and human health. Certain harmful algal blooms contain species that produce strong toxins which become concentrated up the food chain, becoming harmful to people who eat contaminated seafood.

IPS: Dust has significant impacts on weather and climate in several ways. In what ways are sand and dust storms linked to issues such as climate change? 

NM: Dust in the atmosphere affects the energy balance of the Earth system because these fine particles scatter, absorb and re-emit radiation in the atmosphere. Dust particles also serve as nuclei on which water vapour condenses, helping to form clouds, and the chemical composition of dust affects the acidity of rainfall. Dust from the Sahara is regularly transported through the atmosphere over the tropical North Atlantic Ocean where it can have a cooling effect on sea surface temperatures. In turn, the cooler sea surface changes wind fields and the development of hurricanes. A year with more Saharan dust usually translates into fewer hurricanes over the North Atlantic.

Future trends in desert dust emissions are uncertain. They will depend on changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation – how much falls, when and where.

IPS: Are there ways in which sand and dust storms have an impact (direct or indirect) on the coronavirus pandemic? 

NM: Links between sand and dust storms and the coronavirus pandemic are quite possible, but inevitably work on such potential links at an early stage. We know that SDS are a risk factor for a range of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, so someone exposed to both COVID-19 and air pollution from dust storms may experience particularly harmful effects. For instance, one recent study in Northern Italy established an association between higher mortality rates due to COVID-19 and peaks of atmospheric concentrations of small particulate matter. Saharan dust frequently contributes to poor air quality in Italy, but a direct causal link between desert dust and suffering from COVID-19 has not been established to date. There are numerous other factors to take into account.

We also know that many SDS source areas contribute many types of microorganisms (such as fungi, bacteria and viruses) to desert dust, and that these microorganisms are very resilient. SDS can also transport viruses over great distances (greater than 1,000 km), sometimes between continents. Long-range transport of desert dust has been linked to some historical dispersal/outbreak events of several diseases, including Avian influenza outbreaks in areas downwind of Asian dust storms.

The post Q&A: How Desert Dust Storms Supply Vital Nutrients to the Oceans appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Jose Luis Coral, a farmer practicing family agriculture in Colombia. Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini, Both Nomads, a multimedia studio based in Brussels

By Bibbi Abruzzini
BRUSSELS, Nov 9 2020 (IPS)

I am speaking with Gladys and Raúl about civic space in Paraguay, when Raúl suddenly tells me about the fires. Thick smoke has reached the capital Asunción where he is based. In October, Paraguay became Dante’s Inferno.

Wildfires broke out across the country, with drought and record high temperatures drying its rivers and lands. Most of the fires concentrated in the vulnerable Chaco region in the west of the country. Though the Amazon gets most of the attention, other irreplaceable forests in Latin America are also under great threat.

According to Earthside, the dry forests of the Gran Chaco are disappearing faster than any other forests on Earth. By 2016, Paraguay had lost an area of forest larger than Switzerland. This trend accelerated again in 2019. That year, every two minutes, a patch of forest the size of a football pitch was bulldozed.

Raúl sends me a video on WhatsApp of a man burning land to clear it for cattle ranching. Studies have shown that no commodities in the world are more responsible for deforestation than Paraguayan beef and leather. And what is the main destination for leather? Some of Europe’s largest tanneries in Italy.

During undercover visits, Paraguayan tanneries bragged of supplying leather to several famous car manufacturers, including BMW models and the Range Rover Evoque.

“Everything in Paraguay has to do with the climate crisis. At the moment, the middle-class doesn’t seem to suffer as much from it, but the reality is that whether you live in the big residential area or in the countryside, just like covid, the climate crisis doesn’t discriminate, it’s going to affect us all”

“We are seeing it now in Paraguay with the fires and the extreme droughts. Some of these phenomena were cyclical and normal but now they are increasingly anomalous and profound,” says Gladys. She works at POJOAJU, the platform for NGOs in Paraguay, along with Raul.

“GDP growth doesn’t equal with sustainable development. POJOAJU the name of our organization means manos juntas (hands together). We want a horizontal cooperation, a responsible cooperation, with sustainable development at its core. We don’t need to reactivate the economy, we need to deconstruct it.”

Land-grabbing and “development done wrong”, are increasing inequalities, having disastrous effects on biodiversity, and impacting negatively on Paraguay’s indigenous peoples, the Ayoreo Totobiegosode, whose numbers include the last ‘uncontacted’ peoples in Latin America outside the Amazon.

“Indigenous people are basically being wiped out; their lands usurped. We are going backwards in terms of the environment, our mountains are burning, we are aggressing nature,” Raúl explains.

But this triggers even bigger questions: who is benefiting from the current economic and development model? If it’s difficult to influence businesses operating in Paraguay, there are some critical institutions that need to hear our voices: public development banks.

From Europe to the Americas, from Asia and Africa, these financial institutions play a crucial role. Nearly 450 public development banks controlling approximately $2 trillion in public money will convene at the Finance in Common Summit, held in Paris from November 10-12.

Activists, civil society and environmental campaigners are calling for a radical transformation, and a much less “Westernised” approach to financing for development. Public development banks must not repeat the errors of the past, they can be part of the solution.

Development at All Costs

But let’ start from the very beginning. Here’s the definition from the Cambridge Dictionary. Development: defined as the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced. Yet, how many of us seriously question the terms and practices linked to “development”?

Growing up in Brussels, it was a buzzword that I would often hear, moving smoothly from mouths to ears, finding a righteous place in the meeting rooms of the European bubble. “Development projects”, “development finance”, “development agency”.

Always associated with the idea of progress, of things moving inevitably forward. It echoes evolution, and the natural progression of humans towards higher goals, higher dimensions. It’s linked to expansion, to exploration, to wanting more. The term itself promises something good, something superior. Development at all costs.

Talking to communities around the world we see a dichotomy between the Development Dream, its definition, and its impact. Imagine if your house had to be destroyed for a new road to be built. Wouldn’t you and your community want to have a say before it’s too late?

This issue is linked to power, democracy and transparency and it’s a matter that touches every single one of us as citizens – whether we want to admit it or not. We don’t have to look too far. Think of the thousands of people in Italy fiercely opposing a high-speed train project to the French city of Lyon, as they see it as a waste of public funds. You probably have a development project that is affecting – maybe positively, maybe negatively – your community as you read these words.

Questions need to be asked: Where does public money go? Who decides what development looks like and why? And finally, what are the alternatives to our current development models?

“The most important thing is to get close to the reality of the people, of communities. It’s not about technological innovation or about progress, it’s about knowledge,” says Pina Huaman, from ANC, the national platform of NGOs in Peru.

“I remember being in Lima at the International Monetary Fund meeting and the presenter from Mexico was telling all participants about the Peruvian miracle of economic growth. And the first reflex we had as civil society working in the field was to ask, “what miracle are you talking about?”

In the words of Teresa, from Fundación Otras Voces in Argentina, “we need to shift from ego to eco, from power over people, to power with the people”. We cannot talk about financing for development if it’s not responsive to the needs and demands of climate, gender equality, human rights, indigenous communities and biodiversity.

Being part of the development history of a country, whether in Paraguay, Peru or Italy, comes with great responsibility. We need dialogue with communities, not impositions. Few injustices have so far-stretched repercussions as development gone wrong.

The Other Side of Development

CODE-NGO, a network of NGOs in the Philippines, has a message for public development banks meeting in Paris in a couple of days: to put “social development” first.

“Financing economic development projects is not enough; it is only one side of the coin. Financing infrastructure projects may result in economic growth, but at what cost to the only planet we live on, or to people who can be adversely affected by such projects? We can look at practices that both drive economic growth and help our planet and people live at the same time.

We can build roads that do not damage ecosystems, and we can harness sources of energy such as wind and solar power instead of burning fossil fuels that are near depletion,” says Deanie Lyn Ocampo, Deputy Executive Director at CODE-NGO.

In the Philippines, asking for different models of development is risky, many human rights defenders, journalists, civil society organisations and even local residents are stigmatized and attacked for speaking up. At least 272 environmental defenders were killed between 2001 and 2019, according to the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, a network of Philippine environmental organizations.

At global level, a recent Forus study conducted in 18 different countries, shows the disturbing reality of civil society facing increasingly serious restrictions on its freedom to engage, express itself and be heard.

To highlight often objectionable development approaches and insist on positive alternatives, civil society organisations published a joint statement calling on public development banks to incorporate human rights, disinvestment from fossil fuels and community-led development in the agenda and outcomes of the Finance in Common summit. Let’s start meaningfully engaging with those most affected by development activities.

If you could ask something of public development banks, what would that be? How can we promote new approaches to economic development that prioritise human rights and planetary well-being over financial interests and economic growth? How can public-private partnerships trigger the multiplying effects needed in communities? How can we create a more robust, just, ethical and equitable social-ecological economies?

We might not have all the answers, but we should at least ask these important questions.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post From Paraguay to Italy: Development at All Costs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Bibbi Abruzzini is communication officer at Forus International, Brussels

The post From Paraguay to Italy: Development at All Costs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Raghbendra Jha
CANBERRA, Australia, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

Remittances are an essential part of economic activity in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), including those in South Asia. Because of the pandemic remittances to LMIC are expected to drop from $548 billion on 2019 to $508 billion in 2020 and $470 billion in 2021. The implied growth rates for 2020 and 2021 are -7.2% and -7.5%. For South Asia the drop will be from $140 billion in 2019 to $135 billion in 2020 and $ 120 billion in 2021 with implied growth rates of -3.6% and -10.9%.
https://www.knomad.org/publication/migration-and-development-brief-33

Raghbendra Jha

For smaller South Asian countries, remittances are an even more significant part of their economic activity. For instance, remittances account for nearly 28% of Nepal’s GDP and 8 % of Pakistan’s.
https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/a-remittances-crisis-facing-south-asia-11596799996817.html

Even for India, remittances have accounted for nearly 3% of GDP in recent times. Remittances thus serve the triple purpose of augmenting resources available to households to which these transfers are made, increasing funds for investment to the extent that remittances finance investment and support the current account balances of these countries. There are large deficits in the balance of trade of most South Asian countries.

In the absence of remittances and other invisible flows, the deficits would continue to be very large, thus threatening a perpetuation of macroeconomic imbalances in these countries. The drop in remittances would thus disadvantage these economies in all these areas. At the same time, FDI flows to South Asia have dropped significantly during the first half of 2020. Short-term economic prospects do not appear sanguine for the region.

The reasons for the drop in remittances are rather straightforward. For one, economic growth has been negative for most economies (both developed and developing). The earlier optimism about a V-shaped economic recovery has all but dissipated. This has sharply increased unemployment (with no end in sight) in most of the countries that have traditionally hosted migrants. Secondly, the drop in oil prices has led to a sharp reduction in economic activity in the Gulf and other Middle-east countries where many workers from South Asia traditionally work. Accompanying this is a pandemic induced shift in labour demand in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries towards domestic workers since employment opportunities have sharply fallen. Even in OECD countries (e.g. Australia) net migration has become negative. Third, some exchange rate movements (e.g. the depreciation of the rouble against the US dollar) have led to a drop in the dollar value of remittances from Russia. These factors will be ameliorated only gradually and, even when economic activity picks up, jobs will continue to be offered first and foremost to domestic workers in most of the host countries.

The pandemic induced downturn has led to a large return of migrants to their own countries. This has caused severe disruption in the lives of these people as well as those of the families they had held behind. The World Economic Forum and other agencies have warned that this revers migration and spinoff effects have the potential of increasing poverty, under-nutrition and deprivation in most of these countries.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/4-critical-steps-for-fighting-a-historic-remittance-decline-in-south-asia/

Thus, human development indicators will be badly affected in these countries.

The corona pandemic presents a complex challenge wherein the economic and public health effects of the crisis interact with each other to worsen both economic and public health outcomes. The public health crisis worsens economic outcomes, which, in turn, reduce the resources to combat the public health challenge. Addressing the challenges thrown up with respect to remittances must, therefore, wait until the incidence of the economic and public health challenges has been restrained. Once this has happened policy can intervene to improve the return flow of workers to former host countries. This can happen if migration policy and remittance policy are integrated to some extent. First, all migrants must have dual registration in the domicile and host countries. For policy purposes, a continuous record of in-migration and outward remittances should be maintained. An insurance policy to protect such workers from unscrupulous migration agents and dodgy avenues for transferring remittances should be enacted. Following from these costs of sending money through remittances should be lowered.

Although the Sustainable Development Goal (Indicator 10.c.1) is that average cost of sending $200 through remittances should be 3.8% the average cost in Q3 2020 was 6.8%. Costs are low in high traffic areas such as Middle-east to India but very high in low traffic areas such as Pakistan to Afghanistan. Furthermore, costs of sending remittances vary considerably across regions and the means used to make these transfers with bank transfers being the most expensive. Steps should be taken to harmonise these methods of transfers and to reduce the costs, if necessary by making compensating transfers to the bank accounts of intended recipients.

Raghbendra Jha, Professor of Economics and Executive Director, Australia South Asia Research Centre, Australian National University

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The post Pandemic Induced Drop in Remittance Flows to South Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Greenpeace

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

The election tie, whatever the end result, that has been revealed is not a temporary phenomenon. The protagonist of Trump’s resistance is not the tenant of the White House of the last four years. The real agent, although the constitutional winner is Biden, is that sector that for decades was considered an abnormality.

The harsh reality is that the general perception outside of the United States did not understand the message of 2016. And perhaps it still does not understand it now. And, worse, it will never understand it, if one does not pay attention to the peculiarities of this society, dramatized by Trump.

As soon as the glory of winning World War II faded, America’s apparent national cohesion disappeared. Some continued to believe that they had monopolized the soul of the country, founded on exceptionalism, “the light of the beacon on the hill.” But some alarm signals began to sound with the repression of the so-called Hollywood Communists.

Dissidents silenced themselves as early as the 1960s, Kennedy’s assassination was not seen as a danger to the national consensus. But an underground feeling demanded to come out of the closet. Nixon called it the silent majority. It was speechless during the Vietnam tragedy. It conveniently drugged itself with the satisfaction of the end of the Cold War… and of history.

Just then a handful of novelists had wondered as Zavalita, the secondary character in the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa “Conversation in‘ La Catedral ’”: “at what point did Peru get screwed”. Some daring commentators would try too late to allude to the reaction to the sinking of the Maine in Havana, which prompted the United States to invade further Latin America, irritating Cuban patriots. The consequence half a century later this produced the Castro Revolution.

Joaquín Roy

The Washington establishment barely flinched and believed it would recover with the end of the Cold War and also “of history”, according to the myth of Fukuyama. But that ephemeral glory failed to hide the internal problems that successive US presidents was impotent to correct. Imbalances, discrimination, marginalization, discomfort, and basic grief over the appearance of defects in the American dream were detected.

The problem was that the victims were no longer exclusively the traditional losers (black, Hispanic, native), but also components of the formerly middle layers of society. In addition, the components of the economic elite had been added.

They seemed not to be content with the tax advantages they had enjoyed. They also tried to control the political evolution without getting involved in the electoral contests, an ordinary function that they left in the hands of professionals.

The result of recent presidential elections is a clear portrait of three Americas, each in its own way believing that it has the right to be “great again,” according to Trump’s slogan. It was already noticed with Obama’s double election: the potential electorate had been sharply divided into three.

A third has stayed home, always. Another third has voted for the various Democratic Party options. The final rest has historically taken refuge in the Republicans, sheltered by that sector that does not seem to respond to specific party lines. Now it has equipped himself with all the paraphernalia that has captured half the vote in the recent elections.

But the novelty of the last decade, after the defenestration of the traditionalism of the Bushes, is not the appearance of Trump. The news is the consolidation of the leadership of the third sector that Trump has awakened. It is not a temporary phenomenon. In reality, it existed since the founding myth of the United States was questioned by that third that has remained latent, timid of prominence.

Like a sleeping princess, she lacked only the kiss of a daring prince, who was not tied to partisan conventions. It does not matter that the princess behaved like a witch to the other two-thirds of the electorate. That quirk hasn’t mattered to Trump, who has captured the role of the prince.

Whatever the official result of the elections, the truth is that the previously hidden America will continue to lurk (with more determination if Trump wins). It will press for the abandonment of the traditional alliances of the United States, it will reject any regional integration scheme (barely reduced to a functional NAFTA), it will continue to reject re-entry into UNESCO, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (OMS), and it will not even pragmatically take advantage of its privileged place at the UN.

In the defense field, it will not know how to use wisely the “soft” power of military superiority, it will play dangerously with the abandonment of NATO, it could get involved in dangerous operations in the Middle East, fatally mistaking his useful allies. Continuing the bet of unconditional support for the current Israeli government would be a zero-pay bet.

Any miscalculation with China and Russia could render a high cost, especially in the face of an American society that is fed up with warlike excuses that do not reverse social returns and only fill the graves available in Arlington.

But, in the event of an effective final victory for Biden, the agenda that the new president will have to face would precisely include the latent and permanent presence of an America hitherto silent by the grace of Trump.

In this scenario, the new president will not be able to avoid the spectacle of social destruction, the division into irreconcilable factions, the urgent installation (with a residence permit tending to sublimate oneself in citizenship) of the huge groups of recent immigrants.

And in general, abroad it should be coldly understood that the new US government will not going to be radically different from what is considered essential to the practically immovable US interests. Biden will have to respond to the demands not only of his voters, but also of the reasonable interests of the country and the consequent pressures of his society.

Europe, for example, must understand that the demand for the involvement of its governments in continental defense does not respond simply to a whim of the current leader, but not to a reconstitution of the military fabric. The American society will continue to pressure its government to obtain legitimate benefits in terms of the results of the trade agreements. Therefore, it will be necessary to achieve a beneficial harmony for both parties.

Finally, Latin America must strive to present a minimum common front if it wants to obtain new advantages, not based on arbitrary decisions of temporary origin. When dealing with the United States, whether with Biden or Trump, the division will always be detrimental, especially for the interests of Latin American citizens.

 

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

The post The Problem Is Not Trump appeared first on Inter Press Service.