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India: How Did Young People Access Care During the Lockdown?

Fri, 11/06/2020 - 14:27

As the pandemic evolves, it will be critical to ensure that young people have access to quality services for counselling and other tools for psychosocial support. | Picture courtesy: Sanlaap

By External Source
Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 has developed into an unprecedented public health crisis, the impact of which has been seen across global health systems and services. As the crisis continues to evolve in India, there is a need to examine the impact of the pandemic and ensuing nation-wide shutdown on young people’s lives, particularly, their experience of mental ill health.

The Dasra Adolescents Collaborative conducted a survey of 111 youth-serving organisations, working with more than 3,200,000 young people, to better understand their perspectives on the experiences of the people they serve.

One hundred and eleven youth-serving organisations shared their experiences with reported health-related concerns and challenges during the pandemic

The survey asked organisations about whether one or more of the boys and girls they work with had reported health-related concerns, challenges in obtaining services, and the variations in the incidences of these challenges, both before and after the onset of the pandemic. It also asked about actions taken, if any, to improve the situation.

This article draws on the findings from the survey, with a focus on programme implications relating to health and access to care during the lockdown.

Mental ill health

The United Nations has reported a rapid global rise in mental ill-health since the pandemic began. Additionally, research has indicated that prolonged quarantine periods can have a lasting negative impact on psychological well-being and, for adolescents and young people, an increased risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well as anxious and depressive symptoms. Our study concurs with these trends:

Panic and anxiety: Sixty-seven to seventy-four percent of surveyed organisations reported that adolescent boys and girls had approached them with feelings of panic and anxiety. Forty-six percent of organisations reported that they had been approached for the first time during the lockdown by young people experiencing these symptoms.
Sadness and depression: Seventy-four percent of organisations that worked with girls and 67 percent of those working with boys reported that young people had experienced sadness and depression for a prolonged period. Moreover, 43 percent of organisations working with girls and 36 percent of those working with boys reported that mental health concerns had only emerged among adolescents during the lockdown period.
Suicidal ideation: As many as five to six percent of organisations reported that an incident of suicidal thought or attempted suicide had come to their attention for the first time during the lockdown. In comparison, 2-3 percent reported having been approached by a young person contemplating or attempting suicide both before and during the lockdown period.

To respond to young people’s need for mental health counselling, surveyed organisations undertook a variety of actions:

Referral to a professional: Seventy-five percent ensured that field staff provided counselling and appropriate referrals to young people in need; 48 percent referred the young person to a mental health helpline operated by themselves or a partner; and 26 percent referred the young person to another facility. Only three percent of organisations reported that no action could be taken.
Prevention and stress management: Sixty-eight percent supported the peer educators/leaders from their community to provide relevant information to, and conduct activities with, groups of young people. Additionally, 51 percent sought to build the capacities of frontline workers to better recognise and address young people’s concerns. Other interventions included preparing and distributing written material (35 percent) or apps (25 percent) on stress management and other mental health matters for the young.
Other strategies: Seven percent of organisations adopted other strategies, such as establishing a mentoring programme, chatbot, or information centre, making referrals, and raising awareness with Panchayati Raj Institutions and community stakeholders. Responding organisations also elaborated on the usage of various COVID-19-specific toolkits for children and youth, such as this one, created by UNICEF and ChildLine India.

Access to health services

Large proportions of responding organisations indicated that young people experienced challenges accessing healthcare during the lockdown:

Illnesses unrelated to COVID-19: Sixty-one percent found that young people had experienced challenges in accessing healthcare for injuries and illnesses unrelated to COVID-19 (89 percent of these organisations were able to support those in need to access timely care or reach a facility or a frontline worker).
Menstrual health and Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) tablets: Seventy-four percent indicated that young people were unable to access, or experienced difficulties in accessing sanitary napkins. Additionally, between 35-54 percent indicated a shortage in supplies of weekly iron and folic acid supplements (WIFS). Several of these organisations observed that such shortages were experienced by young people for the first time during the lockdown.
Contraceptives and pregnancy-related healthcare: Twenty-six to thirty percent received reports that young people were not able to access contraceptives during the lockdown period, while 52 percent reported that pregnant youth had experienced difficulty in accessing antenatal, delivery and/or post-partum care. What is notable is that many organisations reported that difficulty obtaining these services had been experienced only in the post-lockdown period and not earlier. Access to safe abortions was particularly challenging, with 12 percent of organisations receiving reports of difficulty in obtaining pregnancy termination services during the lockdown.

Organisations undertook various actions to combat the above-mentioned challenges.

1. Of the 81 organisations that received reports of limited access to sanitary napkins or IFA tablets:

Forty-two percent were able to alert the authorities to provide the supplies, and 27 percent assisted functionaries in distributing the supplies.
Forty-three percent trained youth to hygienically use cloth for menstruation and 40 percent sought to procure and distribute these supplies themselves. One responding organisation also succeeded in obtaining a free supply of sanitary napkins from the manufacturer for distribution.
Fourteen percent of organisations however, were unable to take any action to support in obtaining sanitary napkins or IFA tablets.

2. Of those receiving reports of limited access to contraceptives or pregnancy-related services:

Forty-nine percent alerted the authorities, 30 percent assisted healthcare providers to distribute contraceptives at the community-level, and 15 percent procured contraceptives and distributed them to young people they served.
Ninety-five percent took action to expedite the provision of maternal and pregnancy-related care and 37 percent alerted frontline workers and other healthcare providers to take action.
Finally, every organisation that received reports of a girl having difficulty accessing a safe abortion was able to facilitate the provision of appropriate services.

What needs to be done going forward

As civil society organisations continue to grapple with this crisis, some key recommendations include:

Restore the provision of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) supplies and services: It is critical to expand service delivery mechanisms for young people, including identifying alternative routes to deliver health services. This includes allowing health services to piggyback on to private supply chains, and empowering peer educators to identify young people in need and coordinate access to supplies and services for them.
Strengthen existing platforms for healthcare provision: Existing platforms, such as Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram’s (RKSK) community-based activities and linkages with Adolescent Friendly Health Centres (AFHCs) need to be strengthened in order to ensure that frontline workers are able to continue providing SRH information, make referrals, and distribute supplies.
Create and implement emotional resilience programmes: As the pandemic evolves, it will be critical to ensure that young people have access to quality services for counselling and other tools for psychosocial support, as well as virtual peer group and social interactions. The RKSK’s AFHC network and trained counsellors are also a key resource in this respect.
Provide training and capacity building for professionals: There is an urgent need to train healthcare professionals, including counsellors and frontline workers, as well as school and college teachers, to use technology to provide services digitally, and identify early warning signs for at-risk youth.
Engage and train peer educators: Training peer educators already engaged under schemes such as Ayushman Bharat and the RKSK , as well as the organisations’ own networks of youth champions, can play a critical role in identifying early warning signs for physical and mental health issues among their peer groups, and can make referrals to relevant facilities or providers.
Invest resources into digital or telephonic interventions: Developing new tools and maintaining existing accessible resources, such as helplines, tele-medicine resources, ‘Find A Clinic’ services, and other similar tools will ensure that young people and their families are able to access services as required.
Build awareness of and sensitise parents: Training and sensitising parents about the needs of adolescents is essential, ensuring that they are able to communicate openly and non-judgementally, thereby supporting young people to fulfil their sexual and reproductive health and mental health needs.

Insights gathered from this study indicate that young people’s health has been severely affected by the pandemic and is in need of urgent attention from all stakeholders. There is a critical need to act upon these recommendations, ensuring that we work towards protecting and addressing the needs of the young, to ensure that adolescents and youth across the country meet and live up to their full potential.

Sucharita Iyer works at Dasra’s Knowledge Creation and Dissemination team.

Shireen Jejeebhoy is Director at Aksha Centre for Equity and Wellbeing.

Nitya Daryanani is part of Dasra’s Adolescents Collaborative team, where she drives efforts on thought leadership by bringing together a range of perspectives around adolescents in India.

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

The post India: How Did Young People Access Care During the Lockdown? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Punches & Insults: Why Zimbabwe’s Women Candidates Want to Change the Political Playing Field

Fri, 11/06/2020 - 13:34

Zimbabwe’s political parties are engaged in internal processes to choose representatives for positions that range from district coordinating committees to local councils and by-elections for vacant legislative seats. But the process has been marred by violence and verbal attacks by competing candidates. This dated photos show voters queuing to cast ballots. Credit: Taurai Maduna/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

“I have long given up on active politics,” Gertrude Sidambe, a 36-year-old member of one of Zimbabwe’s opposition parties, tells IPS.

When female members of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front complained last month about political violence as male members chose brawn over brains to solicit for positions, the party’s National Secretary for Women’s Affairs Mabel Chinomona advised that they enter the punch-and-insult battlefield and “fight” like everyone else.

The violence has pushed women further away from the bruising contests. Yet it has become another reminder of the country’s commitments – or lack thereof – toward gender inclusivity and parity and the conditions women face in their aspirations for political office.

“At one time I was confident my many years in the forefront would culminate in running for public office but that never happened, and that’s not because I did not try. Everyone appeared to think men could do a better job,” Sidambe says.

She made the comments at a time when Zimbabwe’s political parties are engaged choosing representatives for positions that range from district coordinating committees to local councils and by-elections for vacant legislative seats.

Sidambe’s disillusion with party politics is not unusual or isolated.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) has also not been spared.

The party has put in motion internal processes to elect representatives who will contest for vacant parliamentary and local council positions once the government lifts the moratorium on by-elections because of coronavirus fears.

Last month, government was taken to court by female aspiring candidates challenging the indefinite suspension of the by-elections.

The court action is being supported by the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE), a local NGO lobbying for the equal representation of women in public leadership positions.

According to WALPE, there are 35 vacant parliamentary seats, while 55 local council wards are yet to be filled and the suspension of the by-elections “violates people’s rights to be represented whoever they want”.

Meanwhile, MDC-A prospective female candidates have complained of being sidelined, amid developments that male candidates were running in positions that had previously been agreed to be reserved for a female candidate.

“It has been normalised that women are mobilisers for male candidates, but there comes a time when you become tired and just quit after you ask yourself ‘what’s in it for me?’” Sidambe says, highlighting a recurring motif each time the Zimbabwe’s political parties prepare for elections.

Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga, an opposition legislator in Zimbabwe, says there are no binding codes of conduct within political parties regarding gender parity and this has allowed the pushing of women to the periphery of political participation.

“There are simply no internal party rules that ensure political parties live up to their proclamations for women to be part of leadership,” Misihairambwi-Mushonga tells IPS.

“Political parties are operating without rules. It is a law of the jungle, there are no codes of conduct that are sanctionable. It’s just words and they are not accountable to anybody,” she says.

The internal processes of Zimbabwe’s main political parties reflect the skewed balance in national political leadership where in 2018 elections, out of 210 parliamentary seats, 26 were taken by women.

This is despite Zimbabwe’s commitment to the Southern African Development Community’s Declaration on Gender and Development which seeks 50-50 representation of men and women in parliament.

A 2018 report by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems titled Violence Against Women in Elections in Zimbabwe, found that women “fear both profound physical violence in their relation to their electoral participation”.

The report further notes that women who make it to parliament are not safe either.

“Even once elected to parliament, women cannot escape degrading commentary; ‘a woman still cannot question an MP without being told [her] thighs are too big.’ If she is unmarried, she is accused of entering politics to find a husband. ‘If she can’t run a household, how can she run a constituency?’” the report says, citing interviews from respondents.

Smart Mabweazara, a researcher and academic at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, believes perceptions about political participation of women need to change.

“Women are typically afraid of this male dominated playground where some perceive their participation as a waste time,” he tells IPS, echoing sentiments of young political hopefuls such as Sidambe.

However, Misihairambwi-Mushonga notes that this has been perpetuated by a lack of hard and fast rules that would impose punishment on political political parties.

“There is no recourse for women who have such complaints within those political parties.

“As it is, it not surprising that political parties are doing what they are doing because they know there are no hurtful sanctions for that kind behaviour,” Misihairambwi-Mushonga tells IPS.

One way to balance the scales and protect women in Zimbabwe from exclusion in political positions is to create stiffer penalties for political parties, Misihairambwi-Mushonga says.

“Parties already in parliament can be punished through political party financing by giving more to political parties that have more women candidates and punish the party with few women. There must be a reason for good behaviour and pay dearly for bad behaviour,” she says.

In February this year, the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women “called on Zimbabwe to improve implementation of laws and compliance with the U.N. conventions,” while pointing to the “huge gap between the excellent text (of the country’s Constitution) and its application”.

As part of efforts to highlight the dearth of women in public office, the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE) launched a web drama series titled “All Female Parliament” on Oct. 13.

The drama’s brief says among other things, it aims to encourage “women and girls to be bold and take up leadership positions. It brings out how against all odds women came together, resisted patriarchy and worked together for the betterment of the country”.

“Political parties are insincere about the inclusion and participation of women. They make is hard for women,” Batanai Gwangwawa, WALPE programme manager, tells IPS.

“The electoral environment is also very violent which makes women shy away from political participation. Where a woman defies the system, she will still have face other challenges men do not face. Women aspiring candidates are subjected to verbal abuse at the highest level, and more now misogyny,” she says.

Zimbabwe’s holds national general elections in 2023 but with political jostling coming early with the internal elections within political parties, there is little to show that the scales will be tipped in favour of women.

The post Punches & Insults: Why Zimbabwe’s Women Candidates Want to Change the Political Playing Field appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Growing Resilient Food Systems Post Covid Is Key for Africa

Fri, 11/06/2020 - 11:12

Africa has made some great strides in food production over the last decade even though it continues to be a huge net food importer. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS .

By Mavis Mavis Owureku-Asare
ACCRA, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

When it comes to food security, the challenge is not always about producing more – it’s also about quality: producing food that is wholesome and preserved safely.

About 690 million people go hungry each year. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to add between 83-132 million people to this number based on socio-economic factors. Even before the pandemic, about half of Africa’s citizens were food insecure. And much of Africa’s food is of low quality or lost before it even reaches the consumer.

Africa has made some great strides in food production over the last decade even though it continues to be a huge net food importer to the tune of $47 billion in 2018. But this pandemic has halted successes chalked in fighting poverty and disease and progress towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

COVID-19 is not the only challenge. In the past year, Africa has grappled with locust swarms, droughts, flooding and conflicts which have slashed livelihoods and brought hunger to many in the region.

Resilient systems need efficient storage and production processes. Post-COVID-19 Africa must invest in appropriate storage technology which is lacking in most developing nations and this causes unnecessary waste and considerable loss to their economies

Restrictions on movement during lockdown also impact on commodities like seeds, fertilizers and farming implements which has, in turn, led to decreased food production. Many crops were not readily accessible and farmers struggled to get their produce to markets. And then, adding to the crisis, the continent’s poor storage facilities were not up to scratch.

COVID-19 showed the fault lines in our food production systems and this has compromised the livelihoods of millions of farmers. Food systems on the continent – including production, storage and processing, distribution and transportation, retailing and promotion – are dominated by traditional methods which are vulnerable to unexpected crises.

The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), one of African Union’s continental frameworks under Agenda 2063, urges African governments to increase investment for agriculture by allocating at least 10% of national budgets to achieve agricultural growth rates of at least 6% per annum.

Also in the declaration on Food security and Nutrition during the Covid-19 pandemic, African ministers of agriculture committed to putting in place measures that will reduce food post-harvest losses and make more food available in the markets.

Now, as countries struggle to recover from the impact of the pandemic, there is the need for an action plan to consolidate efforts at these policies.

Past interventions for Africa have focused on food production through improvement on crop varieties and yield. But we are not living in normal times. We must do more than simply look at production.

Dr Mavis Owureku-Asare

For example, it is estimated that 60–70% of food grains produced in developing nations are stored in traditional structures either in threshed or unthreshed at the home. However, most traditional methods of grain storage practices are peculiar to certain cultures or societies.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 30% of food is lost in the supply chain every year and this figure can go as high as 50% for Africa. In Ghana the government is aiming at building silos in various farming communities and providing technologies such as irradiation that will be used to manage, process and store food for future use.

We can increase food security by ensuring that most of what we produce is well preserved and reaches the consumer instead of being spoiled or dumped.

The world’s population is estimated to grow to 9 billion by 2050, with Africa contributing more than half of that increase. Food availability must increase by up to 70% if we want to feed that population. However, instead of producing more, we could strengthen our supply chain to ensure that we preserve most of what we grow to meet the needs of our people.

The primary problem of sub-saharan Africa, for example, is not insufficient production levels. A 2011 World Bank report estimated Africa grain losses at USD$4 billion – a loss which could feed 1.6 billion people each year.

These losses are as a result of improper post harvest handling including drying where farmers rely on traditional sun drying. Using this method can facilitate the growth of the fungi which produces aflatoxin that compromises the quality of our foods. High aflatoxins are associated with cancer, especially liver cancer which has been widely reported in some African countries and Southeast Asia. Complimenting agronomic practices, rapid and proper drying, sorting, and grain processing reduces aflatoxin contamination to some extent.

This year’s World Food Day under the theme “Grow, nourish, sustain together” was a reminder that African governments should strive to build future food systems that provide affordable and healthy diets for all.

In order for Africa to position itself to handle another epidemic, we must begin to put in place robust and modernized storage systems, promote food processing and stockpiling food reserves to ensure stability in demand and supply.

As Africa strives for food security, we should not let food safety be bargained for food accessibility.

The post Growing Resilient Food Systems Post Covid Is Key for Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Mavis Owureku-Asare is a food scientist in Ghana and a 2020 Aspen New Voices fellow

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Categories: Africa

UN Takes Preventive Measures Following 5,660 Lab-Confirmed COVID-19 Cases System-Wide

Fri, 11/06/2020 - 10:58

Masked UN officials at the General Assembly podium. Credit: United Nations

By Antonio Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 2020 (IPS)

As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic response, I would like to assure you once again that the health and safety of personnel and delegates continues to be our number one priority.

Numerous measures have been taken to protect personnel and delegates in the workplace environment. These measures are comprehensive and strong and are regularly monitored.

However, efforts to prevent the spread of the virus and to mitigate the risks within the premises of the United Nations will require the cooperation of everyone.

In light of the COVID-19 cases reported last week at United Nations Headquarters in New York, I would like to outline the standard operating procedures that we followed and will continue to follow should we have positive cases among delegates or personnel who have been on the premises.

In circumstances where we receive information that United Nations personnel or delegates have tested positive for COVID-19 and might have accessed the United Nations premises on the day or days leading up to the diagnosis, the United Nations Medical Services will immediately initiate contact tracing to arrange testing and provide necessary support.

All personnel and delegates who may have found themselves in the vicinity of the infected individual(s) on the United Nations premises will be provided with medical advice and a viral PCR test under the United Nations Headquarters testing programme.

If required, a recommendation will be made for in-person meetings to be suspended until such time as the extent of the exposure becomes clear.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have recorded 5,660 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases among the United Nations system civilian and military personnel and their dependents across all duty stations and locations.

A number of medical and other support measures have been put in place to protect our personnel in the field as they continue our critical operations. To date, we have registered 132 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases among United Nations personnel and their dependents in New York.

None of the personnel had been in the building during the exposure period and therefore could not have infected other individuals at the workplace. We therefore have no reported cases of workplace transmission in New York.

As part of our reintegration plan, the United Nations Headquarters complex in New York has a range of cleaning protocols in place to ensure strict hygiene standards. These measures include the regular cleaning of all areas of the building, the cleaning and disinfection of frequently touched surfaces on a daily basis, the availability of hand sanitizers on every floor and in common areas, as well as the cleaning and sanitizing of conference rooms and interpretation booths, including earphones and other equipment before and after usage.

The ventilation system has been reconfigured to include the maximum amount of fresh air intake possible, and to increase air turnover. This includes extended periods of “flushing” the HVAC system twice a day and the installation of additional filtering capability.

Major entry/exit doors and hallway doors will be kept open, subject to fire and security restrictions. Where possible, larger areas and corridors have been marked for traffic flow.

We will continue to assess all in-person meeting requests and be guided by medical advice to minimize the potential risk to all participants. It is our individual and collective responsibility to respect and abide by the risk mitigation procedures.

For meetings taking place on site, and in order to minimize risks associated with indoor gatherings, all personnel and delegates are expected to wear face coverings at all times when in public spaces and common areas, as well as to maintain physical distancing in order to keep themselves and others as safe as possible.

Additionally, by swiping their valid United Nations identification cards upon entering the United Nations Headquarters premises, personnel and delegates will be confirming that they meet the following requirements:

As we enter the flu season, it is even more important to stay vigilant and to protect ourselves, our communities, and each other. Influenza and COVID-19 have similar symptoms, such as fever, chills, cough, fatigue, and muscle aches. Both pose a risk to our health.

Any individuals who have symptoms, feel unwell or have been in contact with individuals who have shown symptoms, are advised to stay at home and not come to the United Nations premises until a primary care physician has confirmed that it is safe to do so.

Any individuals who start feeling unwell with flu or COVID-19-like symptoms while at the United Nations premises, are advised to immediately return to their residence, self-isolate in accordance with local requirements, and seek medical care from a primary health-care provider.

Personnel and delegates are encouraged to contact the United Nations COVID-19 helpline (212 963 9999) for assistance.

Testing for COVID-19 can be arranged by contacting the United Nations Headquarters Clinic (212 963 7090 or unhqclinic@un.org) or the Division of Health-care Management and Occupational Safety and Health (DHMOSH) at osh@un.org.

All such approaches will be handled with full confidentiality and privacy. DHMOSH has access to its own mobile COVID-19 testing capacity, enabling samples to be taken in the home, usually with results within 48-72 hours.

This service is also available to delegates and personnel, as well as to their household members. Additionally, testing locations are available to the general public.

Thank you for your continued support and flexibility during these challenging times as we work together to keep each other safe and well.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in a message to UN staffers worldwide

The post UN Takes Preventive Measures Following 5,660 Lab-Confirmed COVID-19 Cases System-Wide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UN’s $5.1 Billion Shortfall Threatens Operations Worldwide

Thu, 11/05/2020 - 14:49

Work and reforms of the UN ‘at risk’, Antonio Guterres warned Member States, amidst ‘record-level’ cash crisis, October 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas. The UN Secretariat building in New York

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2020 (IPS)

When the United Nations was struggling to cope with a cash crisis back in April 1996, one of the many drastic measures it undertook was to cut down on its staff.

So, it took the path of corporate America, and ironically, for a cash-strapped institution, it offered a “golden handshake”—a severance pay of about $80,000 dollars each — to those who would voluntarily leave the near-bankrupt Organization.

And as immortalized in the title of Woody Allen’s 1969 Hollywood comedy hit: about 400 staffers decided to “take the money and run”.

Fast forward to October 2020.

In today’s context, says one Asian diplomat, the UN is not in a position to offer such hefty golden handshakes even to some of the highest-ranking officials –if they do volunteer to quit.

A “liquidity crisis” triggered by late or non-payment of assessed contributions by 61 member states—amounting to a staggering $5.1 billion shortfall — is now threatening to undermine both the mandate and world-wide operations of the Organization.

As of 2 November 2020, only 132 Member States (out of 193), have paid their regular budget assessments in full, according to the latest UN figures.
https://www.un.org/en/ga/contributions/honourroll.shtml

The warnings about the current cash crisis have come from three directions: from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; from the President of the General Assembly Volkan Bozkir; and from the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries in the world body.

When he introduced a proposed programme budget for 2021 in mid-October, Guterres warned that “the liquidity crisis has not abated and severely hampers the Organization’s ability to fulfil its obligations to the people we serve”.

“At this crucial time for our work, it bears repeating that the Organization can only deliver on its mandates if Member States meet their financial obligations in full and on time”, he declared.

The responsibility for day-to-day operations, currently under threat, falls squarely on the shoulders of an estimated global staff of about 32,417, according to the latest figures from the Chief Executives Board for Coordination, while the Secretariat staff in New York is estimated at over 3,000.

Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council at the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG), told IPS: “Indeed management informed us they won’t allow extensions of contracts for more than two years, whereas the current rules allow for an extension up to 5 years.”

They have clearly indicated they wanted to reduce the liability of the organization, she said, pointing out there is a current “recruitment freeze which means nobody can be recruited and nobody can be promoted because of the liquidity crisis.”

“What we know is that there is an acute liquidity crisis but nobody has spoken yet about a financial crisis but we feel it is coming,” she added.

All this is due to the fact that member states are facing economic turmoil, and it goes without saying that paying the UN won’t be their priority, she argued.

She also complained: “We regret that the budget cycle has moved from two years to one year making the organization negotiate the budget on a yearly basis. Before, we had two-year budget cycles, and this was more secure than the current situation, whereby the budget has to be negotiated every year”.

“While we understand the difficulties the Organization is facing, we don’t agree on the attempts to make UN staff become like corporate employees. This goes against the principles of how independent civil servants function”, declared Chaoui.

Guy Candusso, a former First Vice-President of the New York UN Staff Union, told IPS “with all the uncertainty in the world now, I am not optimistic in the near term.”

In the long term, he said, the financial crisis will most likely work itself out. “In the meantime, I believe all staff will suffer and bear the burden of the cuts when the money runs out,” he noted.

When he introduced the “buy-out” early retirement programme back in 1996, Joseph Connor, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, said “there are too many people in this Organization doing the same job for 20 years.”

Connors told reporters the United Nations had set aside about 15 million dollars for the buyout programme, under which the Secretariat had said goodbye to 400 employees. With more staffers expected to leave, he said, another 15 million dollars would be sought through savings in the budget to allow for “early separation.”

The severance pay, averaging about 80,000 dollars each, was based mostly on the number of years put in by staffers.

Asked whether he was concerned that some of the best staffers might be the ones accepting voluntary severance, Connor said that in such cases, then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali would use his discretion and reject requests, as he has done in the past.

Speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, Megayla Austin of Guyana told the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee (also known as the Fifth Committee) last month, the G-77 notes the efforts of Member States in fulfilling their financial obligations while overcoming the economic and financial difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, “the Group also notes that the total amount of outstanding contributions and peacekeeping assessments exceeds 5.1 billion US dollars, as of September 30, with the majority from one single Member State”.

That single member state has been identified as the United States, the biggest single contributor to the UN budget.

Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the General Assembly said October 28: “I could not address you today without touching on the important issue of the UN’s financial situation”.

The Secretary-General has, “on several occasions, expressed to me concern about the financial situation of the UN and its ability to meet its ongoing financial obligations. I share these concerns and urge all Member States to pay their dues in full and on time”.

During the high-level fortnight, he pointed out, the message from world leaders was clear: “International cooperation and effective multilateral action is essential to confront the pandemic. So, the United Nations needs a predictable financial basis to do that.”

Besides day-to-day operations, the UN may also lack funds for the implementation of its mandates.

When Guterres presented the proposed 2021 budget, he said: “to fully implement the mandates entrusted to us, the UN will require a total of $2.99 billion, which represents a net reduction of 2.8 per cent compared to last year, despite additional initiatives and mandated activities”. This includes a net decrease of 25 posts.

Richard Ponzio, Senior Fellow and Director of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 Program, told IPS Member States have a legal responsibility to pay their mutually agreed, assessed dues on time and in full each year.

“The world body’s severe financial crisis of recent years hampers its urgent, life-saving work, which has only intensified with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic”.

The United States and other countries that fail in their international treaty responsibilities are also failing to demonstrate leadership beyond their borders at a time of acute international need, he added.

Barbara Adams, chair of the board of Global Policy Forum, told IPS: “As you know this is not the first time the UN has been held hostage to over-dependence on one contributor.”

She said sustainable funding is essential if the other propositions and system-wide reform proposals are to have any success. However, the current patterns of funding are insufficient both in quantity and in quality.

“Sustainable funding is crucial for the ability of the UN to do what it was set up to do, but more pertinently, it is necessary to disconnect and break the current patterns that are dominated by a few large donors, and the way in which they are influencing decision-making, agenda setting and shaping priorities and skewing implementation across the system,” said Adams, a former Associate Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in New York (1981–1988).

Meanwhile, four member states have requested– and granted– exemptions under Article 19 of the Charter for the inability to pay their dues because of financial constraints.

The General Assembly agreed to the exempt Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe and Somalia from paying the full minimum amount necessary to avoid the application of Article 19 of the Charter because of “conditions beyond their control”.

As a result, all four countries will not be penalized, and permitted to vote in the General Assembly, until the end of its 75th session next year.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The post UN’s $5.1 Billion Shortfall Threatens Operations Worldwide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

South Africa Has Failed to Harness the Digital Revolution: How It Can Fix the Problem

Thu, 11/05/2020 - 12:55

By External Source
Nov 5 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a migration from physical work spaces in many sectors of the economy to online, digital services, supported by staff working from home. Parts of the economy such as mining, manufacturing and hospitality still require workers to be physically present. But other sectors have discovered that virtual platforms are effective substitutes for offices.

Online, however, requires digital infrastructure and services in information and communication technology (ICT). Digital infrastructure is essential to meet the new demand for virtual services as quickly and cheaply as possible. On top of this the potential of digital technologies to support economic growth is apparent. Many developing countries have comprehensive national strategies and initiatives to foster data mining, digital intelligence, e-government and e-commerce. These include India and China.

For South Africa, the focus must be on the development of a universally accessible data and digital public infrastructure. This should include high speed broadband (more than 100 Mbytes per second), and support for domestic digital firms and entrepreneurs. This should be done through public procurement processes aimed at improving government services

A number of countries have successfully harnessed the digital revolution to enable broader socio-economic development. But South Africa has fallen behind. It has slid down the International Telecommunications Union’s Information Society Index. The index measures countries’ evolution towards becoming information societies based on three measures: readiness, intensity and impact. For instance, readiness is measured through indicators of access and skills. The 2018 index places South Africa 104th out of 144 countries in terms of access to fixed broadband, down from 77th in 2002.

So what’s gone wrong?

The “managed” liberalisation of the incumbent telecommunications provider, Telkom, has been ill-fated. The idea was that this would accelerate the development of the sector and enable affordable access to communication services. But broadband speeds are 10% of those in countries such as South Korea and Singapore.

South Africa has a suitable policy framework and the skills necessary for a digital transformation. But instead of opening the fixed line market, the privatisation of Telkom resulted in a listed company with a protected monopoly. Together with a weak and ineffectual regulator, Telkom successfully prevented the licensing of a second network operator. It also blocked steps towards healthy competition. This included refusing to support local loop unbundling and the sharing of the fixed line infrastructure.

In a recent policy research paper we set out how the local digital industry can be stimulated. We address the question: does South Africa need new instruments, or can traditional policies suffice?

Failures and successes

The 2013 National Broadband Policy, known as “South Africa Connect”, is seen as a competent guide for South Africa’s digital development. For instance, the World Bank’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development remarked that

South Africa Connect provides an excellent example of a policy which focuses on both supply-side and demand-side considerations.

But a number of factors have got in the way of digital transformation.

One was lack of continuity in the political and administrative leadership of the national ICT portfolio. Between 2009 and 2018 South Africa had 11 different ministers responsible for telecommunications. In the same time, it had only four presidents.

Another was the ill-considered splitting of the ICT portfolio over two departments under the previous administration. This caused divergence between telecommunication, broadcasting and information technology and hindered the progress of South Africa Connect.

A third factor was a conflict of interest between the regulator and the state as the major shareholder of Telkom. The Department of Communication was the custodian of the state’s share in the privatised Telkom. But it was also responsible for the policy and regulatory environment in which the company operated.

And finally, it is reported that political appointments in key agencies such as ICASA (the regulator) and the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa have limited capacity.

Despite the governance issues, South Africa has achieved some notable successes.

For example, it has created a world class research and education network. The South African National Research Network provides gigabit per second networking to all South African institutions of higher learning as well as science councils and national research facilities.

The model is based on aggregating demand from similar users and buying long term high capacity leased line or dark fibre network capacity on a competitive basis from network operators. It combines this with a policy of always buying bandwidth levels based on future and unanticipated requirement levels.

This has been key to its success. The network has been central to the digitalisation of higher education. It now plays a vital role in the sector’s migration to online platforms. The graphs below show how the lockdown disrupted the network’s usual support for internet traffic, leading to a massive migration to commercial networks.

SANReN’s support for Internet Traffic

Screenshot

Screenshot.

What’s needed

The key is to have a policy that is a mixture of supply- and demand-side interventions. Supply-side measures reduce costs for firms. Demand-side refers to policies that stimulate demand.

On the supply side, the state needs to invest in a low-cost, high-speed and universally accessible data transmission infrastructure. This should be coupled with support for domestic digital firms and entrepreneurs through public procurement processes aimed at improving government services.

Estonia is a good example of how a combination of policies can enable an advanced digital economy. On the demand side, the government has ensured decentralisation, interconnectivity, integrity, open platform, once-only and transparency. The open platform principle ensures that any institution can use the infrastructure. Once-only ensures that users are never asked to enter the same information twice.

Estonia’s approach resulted in a different architecture from the US. There the emphasis has been on personalisation, anonymity, information privatisation, and competitive efficiency.

Aspects of the Estonian model rely on high levels of trust between private individuals and digital firms. It is also underpinned by an advanced capable state and a highly skilled workforce. These factors make it difficult for other countries to replicate.

Way forward

Developing countries need to be highly strategic in the development of their domestic digital industry. For example, developed countries like the US are capable of forcing an agenda on developing countries that permits the appropriation of local data, allows unrestricted repatriation of profits and prevents technology transfer.

Another important factor is that governments’ interventions in the digital space must be proportional to their technological capability. A capable state can be intimately involved and direct digital development. But where there is limited technological capability the focus should be on creating an enabling environment. This would include ensuring a level playing field, creating an open market, promoting healthy competition and providing the appropriate regulatory framework.

A number of other steps should be taken too. The first is to develop the skills for data mining and digital intelligence. The second is to put in place the regulatory framework to support systems for secure but low-cost e-transactions. The final step is to prevent the private appropriation of public data by global corporations.

David Richard Walwyn, Professor of Technology Management, University of Pretoria and Laurens Cloete, PhD candidate, University of Pretoria

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

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Categories: Africa

Women in War-Ravaged Afghanistan Fight Back for Their Rights

Thu, 11/05/2020 - 09:04

A family runs across a dusty street in Herat, Afghanistan. Credit: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya

By Zarqa Yaftali
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov 5 2020 (IPS)

Bullets, bombs, tyranny and torture. Children crying for food, civilians struggling to survive, women unable to walk out of their homes freely. When we are not under siege from bombs and landmines, ordinary Afghans suffer from hunger, natural hazards and poverty.

Every day is a war and every day people lose their lives. This is Afghanistan today – and a reality too many around the world can relate to.

The conflict in Afghanistan has taken a particular toll on women and girls. Over half the population lives below the poverty line and this has hit women the hardest. 70% of Afghan women are illiterate, 87% of Afghan women have already experienced at least one form of gender-based violence, 35% of girls are forced to marry before the age of 18, and women and girls are less likely to have access to quality health services and treatment, particularly in rural areas.

Women and children make up the majority of four million internally displaced people. All these issues have only worsened with the spread of COVID-19.

In addition, our civil society is threatened, harassed and attacked and no measures exist for their protection. In mid-September, the US Embassy in Kabul reported an increased risk for women, including human rights activists and women in government.

Despite these challenges, my people have also worked tirelessly to change this country for the better. Today, many of our girls can go to school without fear. We have heroes like Shamsia, the daughter of a coal miner, who came first in Afghanistan’s national university entrance exam.

We have a free media and a constitution that protects the rights of women and ethnic and religious minorities. Women are no longer publicly shot or stoned in Kabul stadiums, imprisoned in their homes or forced to wear burqas or shoes that make no noise, like they were 20 years ago.

Today, Afghan women are gaining respect and recognition as they begin to flourish in all walks of life, as doctors, taxi drivers and film-makers. Women in Afghanistan are also ministers, women who, under the Taliban regime, were deprived of the most basic rights to education, employment and freedom of movement. Today, they are in a position to influence policy and shape the future of our nation.

Much of this change is only due to the role women played in advocating for their rights over the past two decades. Women’s increasing participation in public and political life has changed harmful social norms and expectations around our role in Afghanistan. Afghan society today is ready to see women lead this country into the future.

Despite the great strides we have made, we know our hard-won gains can be snatched away without warning. The bitter memories of Taliban rule haunt us daily. These experiences are still a reality for many women and girls living in areas controlled by the Taliban, where few girls are allowed to attend school past puberty, access to information is limited and freedom of expression is severely curtailed.

After extensive delays to the Intra-Afghan talks, the official start in September is indeed a milestone. The presence of four women on the government’s negotiation team is a positive development, but it is not enough. Afghanistan’s track record for including women is dismal — between 2005 and 2020, women were excluded from almost 80% of peace process meetings and negotiations.

Given the deep-rooted resistance by the Taliban to women’s formal inclusion in past processes, and the recent attack targeting one of the women on the government’s negotiating team, we are deeply concerned that women’s rights will be used as a bargaining chip between the Taliban and the Government of Afghanistan. This would undermine our fundamental rights and ignore our important contributions to the future of this country.

Peace cannot come at the cost of women’s rights. All we have achieved hangs in the balance in the current negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

We are urging the international community, including global and regional institutions, UN Member States and donor countries, to exercise your responsibility to ensure that none of the parties involved, including the Taliban, restrict women’s human rights, civil liberties or citizenship in any way.

Political pressure from the international community can be effectively used to promote the protection of women’s rights and our formal and direct participation in the talks and the subsequent state-building processes. The widespread and meaningful participation of women in the peace process is essential both for peace and for the fate of Afghan women.

At the UN Security Council this week, I, on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security made specific demands – for leaders to use their influence in this key decision-making space to emphasize and complement the work women leaders are doing on the frontlines around the globe.

We asked them to demand an immediate ceasefire, insist on women’s rights and participation as part of inclusive peace talks, ensure the safety of women’s rights defenders – and more.

20 years of commitments and resolutions by the Security Council have not substantially changed the reality for women in Afghanistan – or in Yemen, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan — in fact, in every country on the Security Council’s agenda.

Even the modest gains over the last 20 years are under attack. We are watching as women’s rights, health, equality and inclusion are being dangerously undermined. We must hold the line – and our leaders accountable to do the same.

Just last week, civil society and defenders of women’s rights were able to avert an unnecessary and potentially dangerous Security Council resolution led by Russia. Women leaders and our allies watch closely how leaders act in these moments to see what support we can expect as we face challenges to equality and inclusion in our own countries.

We were once again forced to hope that those in positions of power will wield it for good and demonstrate they are in lock step with the women who have earned the power to lead and push for peace in their communities. Our rights shouldn’t still be up for debate, but we were relieved to see our community and the majority of Member States on the Security Council hold the line against the erosion of women’s rights, inclusion and equality.

Although women have long suffered from war, violence, and exclusion, we are not victims — we have fought back for decades for our rights, and we will not sit by and watch our achievements be thrown away. It is equally the responsibility of the international community to stand with the women of Afghanistan and around the world as we demand our seat at the table, and a future that is safe, equal, and just.

The post Women in War-Ravaged Afghanistan Fight Back for Their Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zarqa Yaftali is a women’s rights advocate from Afghanistan and Executive Director of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation. She represented the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security at the recent UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security.

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Categories: Africa

Forced Child Marriage & Conversion: Public Discussion & Legal Reforms Called for in Pakistan

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 13:04

Rita Raja, pictured here with her children, holds up photos of her 13-year-old who had allegedly been abducted and forced to covert her religion and marry her 44-year-old Muslim neighbour. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Nov 4 2020 (IPS)

October 13 began like any other day at the Lal house as Raja Lal and his wife Rita Raja left for work at 7:30 am.

“I made the usual breakfast of anda paratha (egg and flat bread) and told my eldest to lock the door from inside,” Raja, who works as an ayah in a school, told IPS. Their 13-year old daughter, the youngest of their four children, did not go to school that day as her school shoes no longer fit and her parents hadn’t bought her a new pair yet.

Little did they know that that day was the beginning of a nightmare for the Lal household. Their daughter would then allegedly be “abducted, forcefully converted and married in just one day”, Lal, a Christian, told IPS.

“My other two daughters saw [her] leave the house and thought she had taken the dog out at around 9:00 am,” narrated Raja. “But when she still hadn’t returned an hour later, they got anxious and called nearby relatives. They looked everywhere and then called us.”

Lal went to the police to report his daughter missing. According to Raja, “they did nothing” and two days later they handed Lal his daughter’s marriage certificate.

In a video shared over social media, the teenager claimed she converted to Islam of her free will and consented to marriage to her 44-year-old Muslim neighbour Azhar Ali.

Forced conversion of young girls has been going on for decades, Safina Javed, Vice President Pakistan Minority Rights Commission, Sindh chapter, told IPS. “Every year nearly a thousand young girls are forcefully coerced or lured to convert to Islam,” she said.

“The minorities feel very insecure because the religious extremists have made these conversions their business and see it as a path to heaven,” she said.

Javed wants a law that can control this practice.

An anti-conversion law was first tabled in the Sindh Assembly back in 2016 but was rejected. A second attempt of the same bill with amendments was brought forward in 2019 after a surge in conversion of Hindu girls was reported in various districts of Sindh. It was rejected again.

Maliha Lari, a lawyer and rights activist, told IPS the bill was “scrapped” as parliamentarians started to receive threats and religious parties launched protests, pressurising the government to repeal it. They contended that the bill was against the basic principles of Islam as there could not be an age limit on converting to Islam.

Raja Lal and his wife Rita Raja say their 13-year-old daughter was abducted, forcefully converted and married in just one day to her 44-year-old neighbour. The young girl has been moved to a women’s shelter in Karachi while her age is being determined through medical investigation as documents had been reportedly submitted to court that stated her legal age was 18. Courtesy: Safina Javed

Saroop Ijaz, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch Asia, told IPS societal attitudes and institutional responses and encouragement enables this practice to continue with impunity.

“It is an unhappy mix of socio-economic marginalisation, misogyny and religious intolerance. The victims are girls belonging to poor households and the conversion in most cases is followed by a forced marriage with a man who has greater socio-economic power,” he explained.

Lal took the matter to the courts where his daughter and Azhar Ali were summoned. The judge accepted the girl’s statement that she was 18 and had consented to the marriage. Documents were submitted to show her age to be 18. The judge allowed the 13-year-old to leave with her husband.

“She is just 13 and we have given proof,” said her mother, claiming the other side had produced fake documents in court. According to the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, marriage of any child under the age of eighteen is a criminal offence.

The case stirred a public outcry. Consequently, forced to review its decision, the court ordered the girl to be moved to a women’s shelter in Karachi while her age is being determined through medical investigation. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 5.

Ijaz was not surprised by the initial court order to allow the girl to remain with her husband. “The response of the criminal justice system at all three levels of investigation, prosecution and adjudication oscillates between indifference and complicity,” he said, adding that it was this impunity that was leading to more cases.

The Lal’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, hoped for a more “proactive approach” from the court. “I hope the evidence of the child’s age as given in her school records and more importantly with the government’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) should be enough to prove her age,” he told IPS. Determining that she is a minor will declare the marriage void.

For Lari, “it’s black and white” and there are three laws under which the complainants can get relief: abduction of children below the age of 14, child marriage and rape (if there has been intercourse).

“Those involved should be charged with either abduction if she was abducted or incitement for purposes of illicit intercourse,” she told IPS, adding: “The law says the age of marriage is 18 and she is 13; everyone involved should be punished.”

“The court should declare a minor cannot be considered to have changed her religion and protection for the girl and a long-term plan for where the child should be placed should be discussed and planned out and re-visited regularly,” Lari concluded.

However, Justice Majida Rizvi, former judge of the Sindh High Court who now heads the Sindh Human Rights Commission, told IPS that things are not so simple.

“[While] we have two parallel laws, the Shariah law and the secular law, one allows marriage at 16 for girls or when she attains puberty, the other at 18, there will always be a problem,” said Rizvi. On top of that, she added, the constitution says “all laws have to be in accordance with the Shariah”.

This is precisely why Ijaz hopes this case “results in an honest public conversation on the issue followed by a comprehensive reform of the system.”

For this, he said, the government and the state machinery have to inspire confidence for the victim to fight this battle. “In the past high profile examples, victims have had to back down because of the unequal power relations between the victims and perpetrators,” he said.

Local rights activist Tahira Abdullah told IPS that the reason for increased incidences of forced conversions of young girls from minority communities was because the police and judiciary were “neither sensitive enough nor courageous enough to withstand the visible and invisible pressure exerted by the religio-political groups/gangs who perpetuate these crimes:.

“Thus, there is an increasing impunity from prosecution for the following multiple crimes against minority girls: abduction, forced conversion to Islam, faked documents (eg. birth certificates), forced marriage of a legal minor usually to a much older Muslim man, and, most heinous, rape – under the false guise of ‘conjugal sexual relations,'” Abdullah said.

Meanwhile, many of the experts IPS spoke to feel this case may not come to a conclusion anytime soon. For now, her father finds solace in the fact that his daughter is away from her abductor.

“At least she is safe,” said Lal, speaking to IPS inside the residential premises of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the seat of the Church of Pakistan, where Pastor Ghazala Shafiq, the only woman ordained pastor in Karachi, has provided refuge to the Lals. “These people are powerful and we are poor but we have received much support from the church,” said Raja, looking around the new abode gratefully.

“Azhar’s side had come to us with as many as 15 to 20 women accompanied by their menfolk and asked for reconciliation,” said Raja. She added that they threatened the Lal family if they didn’t acquiesce.

“They are definitely not safe there!” concluded Shafiq, who spent a night in the Lal home. “They were continuously getting threats from the abductor’s side.”

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Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait Interviews LEGO Foundation CEO John Goodwin

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 10:30

By External Source
Nov 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

John Goodwin joined the LEGO Foundation as CEO in April 2017 to pursue a career where he could combine his business skills with his passion for philanthropy and driving positive social impact.

The LEGO Foundation is dedicated to influencing parents, teachers and policy makers to adopt learning through play as the most powerful means for children to acquire the broad suite of skills needed to thrive in today’s world – and to provide the evidence and advocacy to support it. The LEGO Foundation is Education Cannot Wait’s largest private sector donor. With a US$27.5 million contribution to date, it is paving the way for public-private partnerships “to promote quality learning, holistic skills, and protection of children who are the most marginalized and need support.”

Prior to being appointed CEO of the LEGO Foundation, Mr. Goodwin held a position as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the LEGO Group with responsibilities comprising finance, corporate IT, corporate social responsibility, external relations, corporate business services, legal affairs and procurement.

Before joining the LEGO Group, John served as a President in Procter & Gamble where he was responsible for leading a variety of global businesses covering pet nutrition, electrical appliances and food snacks. Earlier in his career, he conducted a wide range of finance leadership positions in the company, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, new business ventures, investor relations and strategic development.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation decided to invest in education for those left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crisis. ECW’s uncompromising commitment to speed, quality and results very much resembles the attitude of private sector mentality and approach. Why did you decide to support and invest in ECW’s global movement?

John Goodwin: The LEGO Foundation forged our partnership with Education Cannot Wait (ECW) to ensure that children in conflicts and crises get psychosocial and developmental support, by securing Learning Through Play in the classrooms of refugees and their host communities. Through this partnership, we aim to promote quality learning, holistic skills, and protection of children who are the most marginalised and need support.

Through the partnership with ECW, we are investing in capacity building on learning through play pedagogies of their staff and/or grantees, inspiring other donors who are interested in prioritising quality early childhood development and primary education for children, and supporting a research agenda and knowledge sharing around learning through play.

This partnership also enables us to raise the agenda in public platforms by talking about the importance of early learning – which is currently massively underfunded in the humanitarian sector – that includes Learning through Play for broader skills development, promoting it with other actors and host country governments.

The LEGO Foundation has been supporting early childhood development programmes of governments of countries such as Colombia.

Education Cannot Wait: What is your advice to private sector or philanthropic foundations who also want to help prioritize education for the 75 million children and youth in conflicts and forced displacement? What advice would you give to private sector partners or foundations who are still concerned about how their funding can make the greatest impact?

John Goodwin: The private sector has the resources and influence to positively impact lives of children in difficult situations. My advice is to work with partners to leverage the collective power of influence, reach and knowledge. At the LEGO Foundation we believe that we are stronger together and if we can leverage each other’s resources and expertise, we can deliver a higher impact for children around the world.

I would also advise to prioritise quality learning outcomes and developing breadth of skills in children. While the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some challenges with access to education opportunities, we should not take a step back from the current efforts to improve the quality of education that is provided to these children. We should avoid falling into the trap of pushing narrow traditional education outcomes for the sake of hitting targets, but instead to think about how we support these children’s well-being through a holistic approach that can help them deal with trauma stressors caused by crisis situations AND set them on a learning trajectory for the future.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation is a strong driver of early childhood education and learning through play. What do you think are the most important achievements so far in the LEGO Foundation’s relentless advocacy for early childhood education and learning through play in emergency and crisis settings?

John Goodwin: In the last few years, the LEGO Foundation has built its humanitarian portfolio, with our first humanitarian grant Play to Learn, to a consortium of partners led by Sesame Workshop. This was followed by the second grant, PlayMatters, to a consortium of partners led by International Rescue Committee (IRC). Play to Learn seeks to establish play-based, early childhood development (ECD) programming as an essential component of all humanitarian responses, and validating this through the specific contexts of the Rohingya and Syrian refugee crises in Bangladesh, and Jordan and Lebanon respectively. PlayMatters will improve education outcomes for approximately 800,000 children and reach approximately 10,000 pre-primary and primary school teachers and education personnel and 170,000 primary caregivers in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, who will receive training to engage in learning through play with children who have faced adversities. Over the course of both projects, we can see some concrete outcomes such as direct ECD interventions for parents and children in three different countries, and the initial learnings from the implementation.

The LEGO Foundation is working in close collaboration with key partners to advocate for more investments and actions towards early childhood development and education in emergencies. We have been engaging with Moving Minds Alliance, other philanthropic organisations, and governments to scale up coverage, quality and financing to support young children and families affected by crisis and displacement, where we bring the important elements of learning through play into the efforts of this alliance. We took a similar approach with our recent grant to INEE to scale up their activities. We also learn from the collaborative efforts from other programmes of the LEGO Foundation and other partners that are developing and researching quality ECD interventions in non-crisis settings.

We know that resilience building and socio-emotional learning are key for children in this world of uncertainty, and even more for those affected by conflicts and crises. We believe that learning through play is one of the answers to help them develop these skills. We are launching the Socio-Emotional Learning Massive Open Online Course with Future Learn to explore how adults can support children to cope with change, stress and anxiety. Even though its approach is broader, it is applicable to humanitarian contexts. These are some important achievements for the LEGO Foundation that certainly encourage us to deepen our efforts towards our humanitarian portfolio.

John Goodwin, CEO of the LEGO Foundation at a Play Lab in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, one of the many set-up through the Play to Learn partnership.

Education Cannot Wait: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact on all areas of virtually everyone’s life. How does the LEGO Foundation see the long-term effect on education by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for crisis-affected children and youth who were already impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters prior to the pandemic?

John Goodwin: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of donors and governments deprioritising investment in education. Underfunded areas like early learning could be even more affected. This has the potential of severely impacting all children, but children who have been impacted by conflicts and crises are even more vulnerable. Children in crisis settings not only need quality education opportunities but also ways to address their own stress and socio-emotional wellbeing. The LEGO Foundation strongly believes that learning through play-based pedagogy can help to address these challenges.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation recently announced memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with both USAID and the government of Denmark. Can you explain the role of these strategic partnership in realizing the vision of the LEGO Foundation?

John Goodwin: The LEGO Foundation firmly believes that the only way to achieve significant positive impact for children at scale is to engage in strategic partnerships with NGOs, civil society, academic institutions, and more importantly partnerships with governments. We work with, and support governments who are keen on improving the delivery of child-centred play-based quality education. Partners such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and USAID are working very closely with education systems around the world, and with our support they can reach even more children with the power of learning through play, and help strengthen local systems to deliver quality play-based education to children. Working together and leveraging each other’s networks and expertise can secure a higher impact for children around the world.

But this is not the first time the LEGO Foundation has entered into partnerships with governments, and not all our public-private partnerships are with high income/donor countries. Back in 2010, the LEGO Foundation started a collaboration with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education, with a focus on bringing learning through play to young children in kindergartens across Ukraine. By training teachers and donating play materials, practice towards early learning has shifted from a traditional chalk-and-talk approach to one where children benefit from play-based learning tapping into their innate ability to learn. At our 10th anniversary of collaboration in Ukraine, we can celebrate that learning through play is now part of everyday life for around 1 million children between 2-10 years old and 50,000 teachers in 16,000 public primary schools and 250 kindergartens.

We have similar partnerships with the Ministry of Basic Education of South Africa, Secretariat of Public Health and the Secretariat of Public Education of Education of Mexico, the Government of Colombia, and the Ministry of Education in Ghana.

Education Cannot Wait: Where do you see the LEGO Foundation’s commitment to education, especially pre-primary education, for children affected by conflicts and forced displacement in 10 years from now?

John Goodwin: In 10 years, we would like to see a better understanding by the key stakeholders of the complete “learning journey” of a child – from birth to adulthood. The investments currently being made by the LEGO Foundation are geared to make programmes scalable and sustainable. We believe that in 10 years these programmes and the learning from them, would help other governments and organisations to reach even more children who might find themselves in difficult situations with development interventions that will help the children get back on a positive learning journey. Although, we hope that in 10 years, there would be no child if a crisis situation and therefore there will not be a need for such programmes.

Education Cannot Wait: We’d love to learn a bit more about you on a personal level. Learning through play is crucial, and learning to read is also key to one’s continual growth throughout life. Could you tell us what are the three books that have influenced you the most (or that you’d recommend to others to read), and why?

John Goodwin: ‘Influence the most’ is tricky as it is somewhat time/life-stage dependent. I also read a lot. So let me go down the path of three books I would recommend in light of what I am currently doing at the LEGO Foundation

Education Cannot Wait: Any final words of advice as we work together and move forward to reach Sustainable Development Goal 4 – inclusive quality education – for those left furthest behind?

John Goodwin: There is an urgent need to rethink education, by adopting a more child-centered rather than a teacher-centered approach. And this change is possible by adopting a learning through play approach to education which addresses the individual needs of each learner, and keep our focus on life-long skills, and not just on access to education. We have to build education systems around the agency of the child and make sure we close the inequality gaps, which is unfortunately growing right now, and more so for the most difficult to reach children. I would stress again that partnerships are key to drive this change at scale.

Mr. Goodwin holds a 1St class degree in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Loughborough and is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He resides in York, England and is married to Elizabeth Goodwin, a former primary school teacher, with whom he has three grown children.

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Categories: Africa

UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 10:00

Credit: United Nations

By Mark Malloch-Brown
LONDON, Nov 4 2020 (IPS)

Kofi Annan’s Secretary-General-ship was a second honeymoon for the UN, coming six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall it was a moment of hope and alignment between the major powers of which he took ample advantage.

He saw a moment of opportunity that was largely denied to those who came before and after him to get the UN’s way on political, security and human rights matters.

Yet in the aftermath of a Security Council broken on the anvil of the US-UK invasion of Iraq a gale turned on him, too. So, for at most 10%, of the UN’s 75 years, has the wind blown strongly in the right direction. For the rest success has come despite- not because of- member state unanimity.

Bending the Sail

I want to suggest a manifesto for a re-purposed UN that is both true to its Charter; but recognises the direction the winds are blowing; does not cling to the mast of a failing western liberalism alone; but understands and responds to the dynamics that have left that liberalism, and it seems multilateralism, on the rocks.

This is a comeback strategy for the world as it is; in order to allow us later to make the world as we want it to be. It is no surprise that I don’t imagine the vehicle for it being our grandparents’ UN.

The world needs to believe the UN matters. That it is relevant. The UN still enjoys high levels of support in Pew and other surveys. Yet that support seems heavily aspirational – around what it ought to do; not what it does.

Support falls when pollsters ask about its specific performance. Churchill would see this, in a term he used in Fulton, as “Foundations built on sand”.

Without a more passionate public embrace it is hard to overcome the inter-state fault lines. Annan was possibly unique among Secretary-Generals in being able to appeal directly to people, citing the opening word of the Charter in justification: “We, the Peoples of the United Nations…..” Those before and since have been largely captives of Governments and their disagreements.

I often wish the UN’s supporters would accept a more pragmatic UN rather than the aspirational Save the World one that lights up the top line poll findings. It will always disappoint such hopes. It is of the World not above it.

Dag Hammarskjold’s words still capture it best: “The UN wasn’t created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.”

For its 75th, as you will hear shortly from Natalie, the UN undertook a survey of a million respondents supplemented by independent polling by Pew and Edelman Intelligence as well the latter’s analysis of social and traditional media coverage in 70 countries.

What comes through clearly is that across very different national economies and circumstances there is a demand for the better delivery of basic services, notably at the moment health; protection of the environment and containing climate change; honest accountable government that delivers and protects its citizens. This is already the UN’s agenda.

The UN is not going to replace government as an agent of service delivery. It does not command the resources or the authority. But the UN must deploy its convening, campaigning and normative roles to double down on its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda.

Covid has attacked that agenda as Bill and Melinda Gates have said setting back 25 years of progress in 25 weeks; driving 115 million people back into extreme poverty this year and raising fears for economic security in almost every family elsewhere.

The current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dedicated most of his early period in office in trying to pick off some early wins in conflict resolution – including Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Cyprus. His efforts were not blessed with any major breakthroughs.

He then embraced the SDGs and Climate. He was photographed for Time with his trousers rolled up standing in shallow water up on a beach in Fiji to illustrate a consequence of climate change – rising ocean levels. It illustrates his pivot from conflict to climate.

Probably his most noticed speech as Secretary-General was his powerful Mandela lecture delivered in July. He called for “A New Social Contract for a New Era” and spoke eloquently of how:

“The Pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world. It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis”. He went on “Inequality defines our time. More than 70% of the World’s people are living with rising…inequality”.

Secretaries-Generals have been elected to be the world’s chief diplomat; today, successful ones quickly learn they have to be the world’s chief campaigner. The UN has a unique platform to measure a country’s progress, league table it, and name and shame those whose social and economic indicators fall behind.

This began with the legendary Jim Grant at UNICEF; moved through the UNDP Human Development agenda to being picked up by Kofi Annan and those of us around him in how we established and campaigned for the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs.

Like any Campaign start by understanding your base constituency, “We, the Peoples”. The Bennett Institute at Cambridge University has just released a study of the state of global democracy that draws on more than 3,500 country surveys.

It finds support for democracy is at a low ebb; since the data series was established in 1995 a 10% swing across all countries in the set (developed and developing) has produced a clear majority who are dissatisfied with democracy.

The deficit was worst in almost all regions among 18-34 year-olds, the millennials. Dr Robert Foa, the study leader said: “This is the first generation in living memory to have a global majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works while in their twenties and thirties”.

But what the report is anxious to stress is there is little evidence that it is a rejection of the theory of democracy rather it demonstrates disappointment with its results. And indeed, where governments do deliver results, notably in some Asian countries, the researchers found that the disenchantment is much less.

This is not a protest against democracy so much as against poorly performing incumbents. That was democrats but now it will be populists with even fewer answers to the structural insecurity that is blowing up politics.

People don’t feel protected; particularly in the developed world (there is more optimism remaining in developing countries); too often don’t see a better future rather they see wave after wave of threatening change driven not just by pandemics but technology, trade, environmental degradation and consequent steepening inequality.

Youth protests in Nigeria have caught our attention in recent days. Perhaps one Nigerian statistic speaks volumes: 35% youth unemployment. Covid has reinforced economic exclusion.

The protests of a generation cannot be brushed under the Covid carpet much longer. The world is an unhappy place; and made more so by Covid- at the core is a growing crisis of youth structural unemployment and exclusion and the skewed inter-generational distribution of wealth and government benefits.

There is worse to come. To pluck just one random headline from the week’s news: McKinsey released a survey of more than 2000 SMEs in Europe. More than half don’t expect to be in business this time next year. SMEs have been estimated by ILO to account for up to 70% of global employment.

Here is the UN’s great cause. Throw caution to the winds and lay out Guterres’ new social contract for the world to see. Deploy campaigning and convening to build a new global bargain. And put governments on the spot by indexing and spotlighting performance to expose which are delivering and which aren’t.

For the MDGs, I set up UN project offices outside the normal UN intergovernmental constraints to measure and create league tables and score cards of national performance that allowed citizens to hold their government to account; then under Jeff Sachs to cost out what it would take to achieve the goals; and finally a team to liaise and communicate with civil society activists that was more jeans and tee shirts than the typical UN Brooks Brothers uniform.

Build on that precedent. Push bravely on the door. If I have a mild complaint about the SDGs it is that they have lost something of the edgy outsider status of the early MDGs. The UN is too much the incumbent and not enough the insurgent and it shows in the difficulty the current UN has in breaking through in communications terms.

On such a Campaign’s coattails remake the argument for multilateralism. Argue too many of these problems cannot be fixed at the country level alone. Local results on say climate require global collaboration and action. Once the UN is reconnected to grassroot concerns it is not a hard argument to make.

If a campaign that mobilises younger citizens around this global economic and personal security agenda is to have legs it must find allies where it can and not be constrained by the foot dragging back end of the General Assembly.

When the UN has touched the stars, the lift has come from civil society not government. Civil society was active in San Francisco in 1945 pushing the level of ambition of the official conference as it was later when Eleanor Roosevelt led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today around each SDG clusters a network of champions. In many, corporates show greater ambition than governments; in all, the most innovative thinking comes from the many corners of the civil society mosaic – local and international NGO’s, mayors and their cities, governors and CEOs; activists and academics that harness the energy. The UN Foundation which I co-chair interfaces with many of these groups. Their commitment is bracing.

Building variegated coalition of states and non-state actors willing to be first movers on different parts of this agenda is a not a new path to action in the UN. Now it needs to be turbo-charged. The world won’t wait for the most plodding and resistant nations to sign up to action.

This same variegated approach needs to be applied to the more difficult area of human rights. The official intergovernmental body, the Human Rights Council is not fit for purpose but as one of the authors of the reform that raised it from Commission to Council, I doubt there is an institutional fix.

The UN in the person of the High Commissioner for Human Rights needs to choose her ground and pick her fights – determine a mix of individual and collective Rights on which she wishes to particularly stand and marshal the UN’s allies, a variegated coalition if ever there was one of states and NGOs, to champion Rights for which it can build support.

And where the High Commissioner cannot- and the Council won’t- raise its voice her office must still let its reporting speak for itself. Abuses of Rights must be universally reported and documented and allies in civil society and government partners must raise their voices instead.

The UN needs to be part of a Rights ecosystem where different partners can each step up where their comparative advantage lies. The current High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet has the stature to thread this difficult needle.

UN Resident Co-ordinators that I have spoken to in recent months, and indeed the UN’s 75th research, suggests closing space around debating or criticising the performance of government service delivery, corruption and accountability. RC’s and the UN system must be critical protectors and promoters of local civil society voices.

This may seem a more unsung aspect of human rights work but it is a vital front in the UN’s wider comeback. Too many Governments see the current political climate as a license to step on their home critics. The UN needs to step in and protect its civil society partners. A Global Social Contract will be stillborn without them.

And the final step to restored effectiveness is of course in time to recover authority in the political and security space.

If there is a silver lining it is that the character of conflict continues to change opening grim new opportunity. Not only is peacekeeping less than ever the thin blue line between states it is not even in many cases policing full blown internal conflicts in a Democratic Republic of the Congo or Syria as in the past.

The more likely future of conflict, at least where the UN will have a role, is low level but persistent political violence around exclusion, suppression of minority rights and inter-generational conflict in a context of deteriorating state institutions such as policing, justice and social service delivery.

The way into these situations that may not be via the Security Council but rather via Humanitarian, Development and the Human Rights arms of the system. These will be Development and Rights breakdowns where the UN is already present.

The UN will not have to wait for the permission of the Security Council it is there already. The World Bank has estimated that by 2030, two thirds of the world extreme poor could be living in areas of conflict and violence.

What I have laid out today is not a manifesto to change the world overnight. Rather it is a call for the UN to seize the moment and take advantage of the opportunities it has at this moment of global crisis to recover relevance and to drive a new global consensus on tackling our collective weaknesses that Covid has so cruelly exposed.

There is a majority out there for a better governed and prepared, more caring and inclusive world but that same majority has grown terminally impatient with existing institutions. The UN can be part of that failed past or attach itself to an emerging future.

Let the Campaign begin.

*Mark Malloch-Brown was also Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia, and sat in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet. He has also served as Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He began his career as a journalist at The Economist and then worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and was later a Vice-President of the World Bank. He has served for many years on the Board of the Open Society Foundation. He formerly chaired the Business Commission on Sustainable Development and the Royal Africa Society. He is author of The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Limits of Nations and the Pursuit of a New Politics.

The article -Part 2 — is based on an address to the annual lecture at the Helsinki-based United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) last week.

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lord Mark Malloch‐Brown* holds international Board and Advisory positions in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. He currently Co-chairs The UN Foundation and the International Crisis Group and is on the advisory committees to the heads of the IMF and UNICEF. He served as Deputy Secretary‐General and earlier Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of UNDP, leading the UN's development efforts around the world.

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Solving the Challenge of Food Security Key to Peacebuilding in the Sahel

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:34

A herder is about to take his sheep to graze early in the morning in Mauritania, the West Sahel. Peacebuilding and stability in the region is dependent on solving the challenge of food and security, says the African Development Bank. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

In 2013, when Jamila Ben Baba started her company, the first privately owned slaughterhouse in Mali, she did so in the midst of a civil war as Tuareg rebels grouped together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad.

Ben Baba, who is originally from Timbuktu, in northern Mali — where much of the civil war conflict took place — based the business in the country’s western region of Kayes and grew it into what is considered the largest private slaughter house in the West African nation.

She started her business with a deep desire to develop one of the country’s first rural, raw resources — livestock. Her aim was to promote Malian meat and to “make it known both in the sub-region and internationally”.

She said that while her business created 100 jobs, the company was evolving in a very difficult political and social context.

“War and Jihadists are rampant in the centre and north of Mali, which penalises us greatly in our livestock supply. Livestock farmers are forced to move constantly for their safety and that of their animals,” she said on Monday Nov. 2.

Ben Baba was speaking at the annual meeting of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, during which various stakeholders met to call on member states to increase funding to the commission’s Peacebuilding Fund. The Peacebuilding Fund is used as an instrument of first resort to respond to and prevent conflict.

But the impact of an Aug. 18 coup and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have placed the country in an unprecedented economic crisis, she said.

“Closed borders have slowed down our exports. Several purchase orders in Ghana and Guinea have been cancelled.”

Hotels that were closed during the pandemic restrictions caused her company’s turnover to drop by more than half, she said.

Ben Baba’s business success, and the success of other businesses and industries in the country and on the continent, is directly linked to peace.

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has “definitely already derailed Africa’s positive growth projectory and hit the poorest and most vulnerable particularly hard, especially in fragile states,” according to Khaled Sherif, the Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery at the African Development Bank (AfDB), there remains “a direct link between poverty, and extreme poverty specifically, and terrorism, as is currently being witnessed in the Sahel”.

A report released by Amnesty International earlier this year noted that rife insecurity, food insecurity and more than 7.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance had left the region in crisis. In addition, the global coronavirus pandemic was expected to worsen the situation.

“The rise in violent extremism in the Sahel is linked to the conditions that the populations face in their daily lives. Many parts of the Sahel have never seen electricity, they have no access to potable water, education is at a premium, so these connects obviously lead to a deterioration of the security situation,” Sherif said during the same meeting.

He said that it was no surprising that in regions with chronic food insecurity, especially in Africa, “become unstable sooner or later”.

“We are all aware of the devastating consequences this means for peace, stability and social cohesion,” Sherif said.

But Ben Baba is convinced that her business could impact various factors of development within the country at different levels.

“From the bridges in our countryside, to the improvement of Mali’s balance of trade, with the creation of added value of course the creation of jobs in the Kayes region, which is usually the first region of emigration, especially for young people,” Ben Baba said.

A 2018 World Bank report showed that Mali needed to diversify its exports as “gold and cotton account for over 80 percent of total exports”. The report further suggested, “ an agriculture-based light manufacturing diversification strategy can deliver structural change by creating abundant and better paying jobs for low skilled Malians”.

Sherif called on the Peacebuilding Commission to address basic needs at a community level and to prioritise this accordingly.

“If generations of farmers are unable to get out of substance agriculture, there will always be a risk of conflict,” Sherif said. He said while there were many initiatives by development partners in this area, they all failed to reach the required scale.

“The Peacebuilding Commission should therefore focus on scaling up these interventions to avoid community pockets of fragility that lead to insecurity,” Sherif said.

He said that in Africa, where more than half the population of 1.3 billion live below the poverty line of less than $2 a day, “our priority has to be to create wealth and this takes us back to the reality of how we develop value chains,” Sherif said.

He added that the AfDB looked at the African Continental Free Trade Area as an opportunity to create a level of resilience.

But Sherif pointed out that on a continent of 54 countries, 26 countries had a GDP growth of 5 percent or more but in those same countries the GDP per capita was reducing, creating inequality.

“So how are African countries getting richer but the citizens of Africa are actually getting poorer? If we don’t address this issue, we are not addressing the basic reality of stability that is going to be a persistent problem, a perennial problem, that will affect Africa, especially fragile states, for many years to come,” Sherif said.

While there were many ways to address the issues, Sherif said he felt it was important “to start with the people and the communities that the live in, as this is where conflict ultimately manifests itself”.

He said that villages, towns, communities, local governments, municipalities could undertake certain measures to mobilise the needed investment to tackle the issues at the roots.

“Our experience shows that food security can be enhanced locally by groups of producers getting together pooling cash resources and utilising local technologies to help with basic food processes. These are investments that can be done locally to create jobs and profit-sharing opportunities that enhance income.”

Ben Baba, however, pointed to the obstacles that women faced when accessing investment in her country.

“As a woman it’s very difficult to be involved in this very masculine world where the cultural barrier is very pronounced with prejudices against the female gender.

“Obtaining financing in a high-risk country remains complex,” she said. And if financing was given, the rates were too high that it would affect the company’s results, she explained.

“Indeed women know that the cultural problem in raising funds because of a lack of confidence in the female gender,” Ben Baba said.

She said that in order to convince one bank she had to invest almost 80 percent of a project’s equity, and despite this “we were very poorly supported by the banking network”.

“Malian industries are not very developed and those invested in by women are non-existent,” she said. “Attracting and convincing investors is almost impossible,” Ben Baba added.

But Sherif stressed that it was important to “find a model that is specific to regional development, that is specific to community development, that is specific to wealth creation, so we can begin to create a level of consumption based on increasing disposable income so we can begin to break this chain of lack of availability of growth of incomes, desperation and then lack of security.”

In a recorded message U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he saw great value in enriching the U.N.’s partnership with international monetary funds.

“Sustained support for peacebuilding cannot be delivered by any single actor. It requires a multi-layered strategy with several layers of financing; bi-lateral, multi-lateral and international financial insinuations working in concert,” he said.

Guterres urged donors to reverse a worrying trend and commit to spend at least 20 percent of official development assistance on peacebuilding priorities in conflict settings.

“As the world seeks to recover from COVID-19, countries will require carefully designed and conflict-sensitive support to get back onto a sustainable micro-economic footing,” Guterres said.

But he said that the demands for the fund were far outpacing the resources.

“We’ve already had to scale back our target for 2020 by $30 billion,” Guterres said. Already some member states had responded to his call for unspent committed peacekeeping budget and he called on others to do so.

Guterres welcomed the work of the both the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

“It is important that these funds help tackle conflict drivers, reach marginalised areas and support key governance needs, especially those that create the conditions for private sector investment.”

Guterres said more could be done to advance innovate financing solutions for peacebuilding, including partnerships with the private sector.

But Sherif pointed out: “So long as we don’t solve the challenge of food and security, we haven’t solved the problem of fragility and we will continue to see one crisis after the other.”

The post Solving the Challenge of Food Security Key to Peacebuilding in the Sahel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:23

The 75th anniversary of the United Nations is marked by a ceremony in the UN General Assembly September 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Lord Mark Malloch-Brown
LONDON, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

Let me begin with an appeal to our venerable friend, the UN: get down on the ground with the grandchildren. Just having celebrated its 75th birthday, we can hear your knees creak! The UN, for as long as I have known it up close- since its thirties- has often seemed prematurely old.

Today a Youth Challenge is being mounted to the way we live, organise and govern ourselves that is much bigger than the UN alone. The social restrictions of Covid may disguise the scale of the gathering social protest but Covid has also accelerated it.

I would wager that my generation will have the keys seized from us. A digital revolution on the one hand and rising social and economic inequality on the other will unseat a ruling Establishment that has failed to navigate these tides. The UN has to be part of that future or pushed aside by it.

For the UN a second older vector blows with equal force. The UN has been in the grip of a transition from its founding Anglo-Saxon and Western DNA to a more globally distributed state influence almost from its beginnings.

From 48 founding members 1945 to 193 today the expansion reflects the big twentieth century shifts- decolonisation, the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the pursuit of self-determination by those overlooked by history’s cartographers.

And adaptation to new members and their aspirations has been vital to the UN’s legitimacy and universality. Most notably it has allowed it to build a staff that for the most part is a proud mirror of the world it serves.

There is a price, however, for this changing agenda: The UN Charter, imbued with the wisdom and sacrifice of the survivors of a World War, is one of the world’s most eloquent and uplifting constitutional documents.

It is also thoroughly Western, borrowing from America’s founding fathers and assuming a world order managed by the Allied victors of 1945. This is reflected in a western rights-based agenda that to this day has stressed Human Rights, in terms of individual civil and political rights, refugee protection, gender and reproductive health over collective economic rights.

There was an early opposition to western dominance notably in the General Assembly centred on the championing of the New International Economic order. Through the Non-Aligned movement and the G77, new member states sought to correct the historical and structural imbalances in the global political economy.

At the time, despite the passion brought to the debate by its champions, it seemed likely to remain a permanent backbench cause.

Now, however, it is not a simple division of East and West or North and South. Many of us have added collective social and economic rights to our own agendas – climate change, structural inequality and exclusion, injustices in the global economic system.

A western human rights NGO or a former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson is as likely to be heard championing Climate Justice as the cause of political prisoners.

Lord Mark Malloch-Brown

China with President Xi’s remarkable pledge at September’s General Assembly to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 has put himself in a leadership role on the latter. But this is the same regime that has employed mass incarceration and extensive discrimination to suppress the political rights of its 12 million Uighur minority.

The Economist editorialised earlier this month on the desperate plight of the Uighurs observing: “China’s ruling party has no truck with this concept of individual rights. It claims legitimacy from its record of providing stability and economic growth to the many”.

China has flexed its muscles in the UN, where it is now at 12% the second largest contributor to the assessed budget; strengthening its representation across the secretariat, agencies, funds and programs. It has become a more active voice in critical policy debates from regulation of the internet to peacekeeping.

And in the wider world, a more authoritarian model of government is the new majority. It embraces leaders who come to power by the ballot box and those who didn’t but who all share a preference for a nationalist foreign policy, weakening of domestic institutions and the rule of law including the political rights of its citizens, and a casual disregard for minority and in some cases majority rights.

That’s the world today. For now, at least they are the new majority in global share of population terms. Between them China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Hungary and the United States represent a demographic majority. And many others are borrowing from their playbook.

The widespread rejection of middle-class liberalism reflects very real shifts in global public opinion that are likely to dissolve any time soon. The uneven impact of economic change, now accelerated by Covid, has produced across much of the world’s politics similar divisions of city versus town and country; young versus old; university educated versus high school or less, those employed in new services sectors versus those in failing industrial sectors.

From Trump to Brexit or Bolsonaro to Modi we have seen the rise of economic security, cultural identity and anti-immigration as the flagship issues of a new populist politics that reaches those who feel they are being left behind by unsettling change.

Freedom House in its 2020 Democracy report notes that last year was the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Sixty-four countries experienced deterioration in their political rights from the pressure in India on Muslims to a steady less noticed restrictions of freedoms elsewhere.

Its lead author observed: “The unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes and the ethical decay of democratic powers are combining to make the world increasingly hostile to fresh demands for better governance”.

The closing space for open inclusive debate does not stop at the borders of these countries rather it seeps into the UN itself. This month’s elections for membership of the UN Human Rights council gave seats to China, Cuba and Russia although Saudi Arabia another candidate fell short.

Each has served before but it marks the steady capture of this institution by those opposed to that founding western individual rights based agenda.

Inevitably, perhaps as a consequence this is an age of UN caution. My colleague at the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, asked in a recent paper: “What is the purpose of the Security Council in an era of worsening great power tensions? Division among its five permanent members (or P5) have repeatedly undermined the United Nations in recent years”

In a way it was ever thus. I remember in my first UN year, 1976, an older generation – indeed in a few cases the original generation, the self-named last of the Mohicans founded by those who has joined the UN Secretariat before 15 August 1946, when the original secretariat camped out in temporary space on Lake Mohauk, complaining in not dissimilar terms. The place already seemed stiff, cautiously bureaucratic and a bit rundown.

Then as now, the UN has sought to make up for that black hole at the centre of its political authority then because of Cold War stand off by swarming the humanitarian and development space with compensating activity.

It was in the 1960s to 80s that its direct operational capacities to address the refugee flows of the Cold War and Post-Colonialization grew rapidly. For UNHCR it saw the transition from a small staff of lawyers to a large staff of logisticians; it was the years of early growth for this year’s Nobel Prize Winner WFP which was spun out of FAO in 1961. It was when the technical assistance activities of the specialised Agencies marshalled by UNDP were a critical prop to newly independent governments.

In 1980 the then UN Secretary-General visited a huge UNHCR supported refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border where I was the Field officer in charge. He turned to me in bewilderment as we toured the huge encampment with its heavy UN and NGO presence and asked how this huge UN operation could have been set up without him knowing almost anything about it.

I tell this story to illustrate a simple truth. The political and security UN in New York was gridlocked but there was ample space for activism and innovation as long as you stayed well away from that graveyard, the Security Council. Operations like mine were run in the Field and from Geneva, based on a mandate derived from international law not the permission of the Security Council.

A few remarkable hold outs such as Sir Brian Urquhart ingeniously shoehorned the UN into political and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East despite Big Power dead lock but this was the exception.

As I crisscrossed the world for UNHCR from refugee hotspots in South East Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Central America and the Horn of Africa, I saw that an extraordinarily committed and creative group of UNHCR leaders had managed to prise apart the Cold War gridlock and make sufficient space for an imaginative operational activism that saved countless lives and relieved huge suffering.

The politics of getting into these situations was never easy; the compromises often disappointing; and the motives of major interested powers and donors only rarely altruistic but the space was carved out and generally held.

When I arrived at UNDP as Administrator, I found a similar legacy of programs established by my independent-minded American predecessors against the prevailing political grain of the time – the first UN assistance program in “Red China”; PAPP a program begun in 1980 to support the Palestinians ; or an office in North Korea whose establishment was still being contested by the US State Department years later when I was Administrator.

And indeed, the UN of today has similarly found space – notably around the sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) which play to the UN’s convening and standard-setting roles; Climate change where three Secretary-Generals in turn have driven this as a priority; and a tragically expanded humanitarian function as grim conflicts in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere stubbornly run on.

A UN, having to find space where it won’t be bullied by its stronger members and ignored at key moments by many others, is not new. In fact, it’s been the condition to which it has been condemned for most of its 75 years on earth.

There was a brief glorious period of conception and birth from the San Francisco conference in 1945 to Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech delivered in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he warned of the coming conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.

The article is based on an address to the annual lecture at the Helsinki-based United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) last week.

(To be continued)

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mark Malloch‐Brown* holds international Board and Advisory positions in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. He currently Co-chairs The UN Foundation and the International Crisis Group and is on the advisory committees to the heads of the IMF and UNICEF. He served as Deputy Secretary‐General and earlier Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of UNDP, leading the UN's development efforts around the world.

“You cannot change the wind; but you can bend the sail”
- a favourite African proverb of Kofi Annan

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Africa Must not Assume a ‘Business as Usual’ Approach to COVID-19 Recovery

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:16

Jennifer Cynthia Nyakonga, a 24-year-old teacher in Palabek Refugee Settlement, Uganda in class. Following closure of schools due to COVID-19, many of the girls have gotten pregnant and some have repatriated back to South Sudan. Photo credits: Emmanuel Museruka/Oxfam.

By Peter Kamalingin B.L.
NAIROBI, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

The corona virus pandemic is impacting Africa’s population in quite differentiated ways and is significantly entrenching inequality. At the greatest risk are lives and livelihoods of the poor.

Millions are being pushed further into hunger and poverty. Children have been forced out of school with many of them, particularly girls, having a slim or no chance of accessing education again.

Without access to piped water and no food reserves, women have had to bear the biggest burden of the pandemic and risked exposure to the virus to keep families going. Reversal of the gains made during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) era, ais now more likely than ever.

Leaders must refuse to take the easier option of failed economic models that allow few rich people to build their wealth off the backs of the poor and thrive even in the middle of a pandemic. Political and business leaders must take bold steps towards building a human economy for all Africans

This crisis has clearly shown how critical publicly funded public services are to dealing with pandemics. Decades of underinvestment in public services and social protection systems have left the majority of governments woefully unprepared to tackle Covid-19, according to the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index, an analysis published recently by Oxfam and Development Finance International. The report ranks 158 countries on labour rights, taxation, and spending on health, education and social protection.

While Africa and its people have seen its fair share of crises in the past and exhibited appreciable levels of resilience and ‘bounce back’, Africa shouldn’t forget the Covid-19 crisis, like the many crises before, and adopt a “business as usual” approach to recovery.

An economy where the size of your bank account does not dictate how long you live or how many years your children spend in school. An economy that rewards and guarantees dignity for workers, especially with the coming into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). An economy where big corporations and the rich pay their fair share of taxes and public resources are not used for private benefit

A more just and human economy is achievable!

Excitingly, a few African governments are taking steps towards building an economy that works for all, not just a few super-rich and big corporations. They agree that inequality is not inevitable but a consequence of their choice of policies.

Sierra Leone has remained true to its commitment of making secondary education free for all. To improve its tax collection, it is cracking down on unnecessary tax incentives and clamping down on tax evasion by mining companies.

Ethiopia has consistently stood out globally for spending the second-highest proportion of budget on education – the greatest equaliser in society. It has increased spending on health and social protection with tangible impact on poverty and inequality reduction.

Namibia, a country with a poisonous legacy of high inequality and colonial expropriation has been able to introduce payments to support workers in the informal sector who have lost their jobs during the pandemic. A new World Bank study has found that Namibia’s taxation and spending policies are reducing inequality significantly. These governments can do more and there is much that other African leaders can learn from them.

What needs to happen?

Africa should defend its tax revenues to finance a people’s recovery. Across the continent, tax collection has been on a decline with public debt stocks on a sharp rise. This trend needs to be reversed. Governments should stop taking the easy road of debt and instead put a halt to the bleeding of legitimate revenues through tax dodging and ruinous tax competition.

West Africa, a region that has lost over 2,500 lives to corona virus, for example, loses an estimated $9.6bn annually from wasteful corporate tax incentives. This lost revenue is enough to build 100 modern and well-equipped hospitals each year. Indeed, the region could have been better prepared to deal with the pandemic.

While global solidarity and action is required to truly turn things around, political will is needed now, more than ever, to implement the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki led high level panel on illicit financial flows.

African countries can individually take action to review, renegotiate or cancel tax treaties that expose them to profit-shifting and treaty shopping, and collectively pursue a minimum effective tax rate for the profits of multinationals.

People’s lives must be put before the profits of creditors. High debt repayments are severely hurting social spending. Today, interest payments constitute the highest and rapidly growing public budget line. Before the pandemic, over thirty three African countries were already spending more on debt payments than healthcare.

At the beginning of the pandemic, African Finance ministers asked for a waiver of all interest payments for 2020, which were estimated at $44bn to allow governments more fiscal space. Sadly, the G20’s response has been underwhelming.

The much-needed resources to save lives and protect economies has continued to flow from poor African countries to foreign banks in rich countries. For example, in 2020, 69 per cent of all debt payments due in Zambia is owed to private creditors.

African governments should consolidate and raise their voice on the urgent need for global action on debt. Private lenders and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank should be compelled to join the Debt Servicing Suspension Initiative (DSSI).

Governments and their citizens must learn from the structural adjustment programme and push back on any austerity being imposed through new financing. Already, 84 per cent of the Covid-19 loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) encourage, and in some cases require, countries to adopt more tough austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis. Any cuts in social spending or increase in regressive taxes such as value added tax (VAT) on food items will be borne by the poor further widening inequality.

Developed nations should also pay their financial and moral debt. Aid is not only a means of channelling additional financing to developing countries but also a form of redistribution, especially in a global economy where inequality is alarmingly high and characterised by an extractive, colonial and racial history.

The year 2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary since rich nations committed to spend 0.7 per cent of their gross national income (GNI) on aid to low-income and middle-income countries, a majority of which are in Africa.

Fifty years later, this figure stands at a mere 0.3 per cent, on average. According to Oxfam’s calculations donor countries owe $5.7 trillion to the poorest people. With the pandemic, there must be a renewed political commitment to international aid and a move from a charity-based system to one based on justice.

To build a more human and just economy, Africa must shun economic policies that trap Africans in indignity. African political and business leaders can choose to build back a divided Africa – one where just three men have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. Or they can choose the right path of building back an Africa for all, by promoting efficient and progressive tax systems, investing in free, quality and gender-responsive public services and social safety nets that reduce the burden of care on women and girls, and protecting the rights of workers to dignified work and wages.

This is not the last pandemic. A more equal Africa will cope much better with the next pandemic.

The post Africa Must not Assume a ‘Business as Usual’ Approach to COVID-19 Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Peter Kamalingin B.L. is the Pan Africa Program Director for Oxfam International

The post Africa Must not Assume a ‘Business as Usual’ Approach to COVID-19 Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Television Education in Mozambique

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 17:52

Alzira Ngomane, 17, and her brother Amilcar Ngomane, 14, have been studying at home using the television program Telescola since their schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

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

“We missed our teachers, they were very friendly and helped us solve the complex exercises, but with the coronavirus, we need to adapt and learn to solve our exercises alone at home,” says Alzira Ngomane, 17 years old, and her brother Amilcar Ngomane, 14, from the Albazine district, in the city of Maputo, Mozambique.

Since their school was closed in March 2020 as a preventive measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alzira and Amilcar are now studying at home using the television programme Telescola da Televisão de Moçambique (TVM).

Every afternoon at 3 p.m., Alzira and Amilcar place their notebooks on the small wooden table in their living room and turn on the television to follow the classes broadcast by TVM. Both recognize that it is not the same as being in a classroom with their colleagues and teachers. But despite the short 30-minute lessons they can remember some subjects and do their exercises.

Alzira studies at Escola Secundária Eduardo Mondlane, in 12th grade, and dreams of being a civil engineer. Her school closed 6 months ago when the Government of Mozambique declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus.

“I try to maintain a routine while I’m at home: wake up and do my housework, then study and watch Telescola. Without Telescola, it would be difficult to understand the subjects and solve some exercises. The teachers who participate in Telescola clarify many of my doubts, and I can do the exercise sheets they give us at school and also can better understand the subject,” says Alzira.

“At school, it was easier to get answers to my questions because we had the teacher present. At home it is more difficult to study and concentrate. I dream of being an architect because I like to draw. I know I need to go to school to achive my dream, and, with the schools closed, Telescola is helping me to continue studying at home so that I can continue working to make my dream come true,” says Amilcar.

Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique

To support the continuity of children’s learning during school closings, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with funding from Education Cannot Wait (ECW), is supporting Telescola television education and radio education programmes, including translation into local languages and broadcast on community radio. For example, TVM broadcasts about 1.5 to 2.5 hours of Telescola per day to support the continuity of learning for children in primary and secondary education. During COVID-19, school closings and movement restrictions continued in Mozambique, making it difficult for millions of children to learn. Until September 2020, the government had not yet decided on the reopening of primary and secondary schools.

Constância Guiama, 56, is one of several teachers who accepted the challenge of teaching at Telescola.

“This experience has been an asset both for the teachers who participate and for those students who accompany them, too. I have been part of the Telescola programme since its inception in 2005, so when schools closed due to the coronavirus it only made sense to return to teaching and supporting students through Telescola,” says Constância.

Constância Guiama, 56, is a teacher at Francisco Manyanga Secondary School, in the city of Maputo, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she is now teaching on television during the Telescola program. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

Professor Constância also uses digital platforms to teach and support her students. Once a week she teaches using the Zoom application, so she can have face-to-face interaction with her students. Some of their students are unable to participate in online classes due to the financial situation that does not always allow them to access the Internet.

“I receive complaints from some of my students that they cannot access the Internet to participate in my Zoom calls or read my explanations on WhatsApp, so Telescola helps to solve this problem.”

Herika Manhiça, 17, and her sister Laurina Manhiça, 12, are also using Telescola to study and learn from home. They live in the neighborhood of Mahotas, in the city of Maputo. Herika studies at Laulane Secondary School in 12th grade, and her sister studies at Estrela do Oriente Primary School in 7th grade. Both share the same dream of becoming doctors.

With what Herika Manhiça, 17 years old, learned at Telescola, she decided to teach her younger sister Laurina Manhiça, 12 years old, and her friends: \”I use the gate of my house to teach them\”. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

“Our day is different now, we have to be quarantined at home, and we learned that we always have to wear a mask if we want to go outside and wash our hands with soap and water to protect ourselves from the coronavirus. As soon as the coronavirus started, our school closed, and they gave us exercise sheets so we could study at home. It was difficult to do some of the exercises without support because some subjects were new. But with Telescola, it became easier because, through our television, we can learn all the new subjects and the teachers also teach us how to solve some difficult exercises. We all thought that the coronavirus would pass quickly and that we were going to go back to school soon, but unfortunately, that is not the case now,” says Herika.

With what she learned at Telescola, Herika decided to teach her younger sister and her friends at home: “I use the gate of my house to teach them. If I know how to read, I have to teach others to read too,” says Herika.

The post Television Education in Mozambique appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Special Contribution by Claudio Fauvrelle, UNICEF Mozambique

The post Television Education in Mozambique appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Building Blocks for Nuclear Ban Treaty: NPT & Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:46

Sculpture depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The dragon is created from fragments of Soviet SS-20 and United States Pershing nuclear missiles. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

By Dr. John Burroughs
NEW YORK, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will become binding law for participating states on January 22, 2021. Entry into force was triggered on October 24, the date marking the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, when Honduras become the 50th state to ratify the TPNW, reaching the threshold set by the treaty.

This is a signal accomplishment on the part of the 122 states, none nuclear-armed, that negotiated and adopted the TPNW in 2017, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which provided expert advice, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a civil society initiative that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Together, the negotiating states, the ICRC, and ICAN took responsibility for creating a path toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons, essentially because the world’s most powerful states – all nuclear armed – are failing to do so.

In an October 24 statement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres commented that the entry into force of the TPNW “is the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons. It represents a meaningful commitment towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons, which remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.”

The core provisions of the TPNW prohibit development, testing, possession, and threat or use of nuclear weapons. Reflecting the rise of “humanitarian disarmament,” the treaty also provides for assistance to victims of testing and use of nuclear arms and for environmental remediation of areas impacted by testing and use.

Further, the preamble observes that the “catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation.”

The preamble notes as well “the waste of economic and human resources on programmes for the production, maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons.”

The TPNW & the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

In assessing the potential significance of the TPNW, it is important to understand how it reinforces and builds upon existing international law, notably the obligations set forth in the 1970 NPT and those analyzed in a 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.

The NPT has 191 states parties, making it one of the most widely subscribed to international agreements. Five states parties (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) are acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons pending their elimination pursuant to Article VI of the treaty.

All other NPT members are obligated, subject to safeguards monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Similarly, members of the TPNW are obligated not to acquire nuclear arms subject to IAEA safeguards, and the importance of the NPT to international peace and security is recognized in the preamble to the TPNW.

But the TPNW goes further than the NPT: Any member of the TPNW is barred from “inducing” a state to use or threaten nuclear weapons on its behalf. TPNW states parties are therefore barred from participating in alliance arrangements with nuclear-armed states in which nuclear weapons may be used on their behalf, or in any other way or any other circumstance requesting or cooperating in the use of nuclear weapons on their behalf.

In contrast, some 30 members of the NPT are in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or other alliances in which US nuclear weapons are explicitly part of defense postures. US nuclear weapons are even stationed on the territory of five NATO states, a practice specifically barred by the TPNW.

So far, no member of a nuclear alliance has signed or ratified the TPNW, nor have any of the nine nuclear-armed states (the five NPT nuclear weapon states plus India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan).

The TPNW & the International Court of Justice

In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons requested by the UN General Assembly.

Like the TPNW, the opinion resulted from a major collaborative effort between states – mostly from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a very large group of mostly Global South states – and civil society in the form of the World Court Project, a coalition of over 500 groups. Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy was a leader of the World Court Project.

The Court found that the threat or use of nuclear arms is “generally” contrary to international humanitarian law forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering in warfare.

The Court declined to assess the legality of use of low-yield nuclear weapons in remote areas and of use of nuclear arms in reprisal against a nuclear attack or when a state’s survival is endangered.

While the Court’s opinion thus was not definitive, it is also fair to say that the thrust of its reasoning was toward illegality in all circumstances.

The opinion stimulated subsequent in-depth examination of the question, as well as initiatives implying or finding use of nuclear weapons to be categorically illegal, including a 2011 resolution of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the 2011 civil society Vancouver Declaration.

The TPNW prohibits any threat or use of nuclear weapons by a state party. Further, its preamble recites rules and principles of international humanitarian law applicable, as it notes, to all states, and “considers” that “any” use of nuclear weapons violates that law.

The view taken in the TPNW thus goes beyond the ICJ’s finding of general illegality, ruling out use in all circumstances. At a minimum, then, the TPNW is an important contribution to the ongoing process of stigmatizing and delegitimizing nuclear weapons.

On its own initiative, the International Court of Justice also took on analysis of a question it was not asked, the nature of the nuclear disarmament obligation set forth in Article VI of the NPT and other international law.

In a unanimous conclusion cited in the TPNW preamble, the Court held that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion, negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

While the Court did not explicitly say so, its reasoning strongly implies that the obligation is universal, extending to those nuclear-armed states not party to the NPT.

In an annual resolution following up on the ICJ opinion first adopted in 1996 (51/45 M), the UN General Assembly called for all states to negotiate a comprehensive convention providing for elimination of nuclear weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention and a civil society draft would have been starting points for such an agreement.

The Western nuclear weapon states and Russia showed no interest. The TPNW, championed by non-nuclear weapons states, was a response to this stalemate. It provides a framework, but not detailed provisions, for an elimination process.

The Reaction of the NPT Nuclear Weapon States

Except for China, the NPT nuclear weapon states continue to express firm opposition to the TPNW and to claim implausibly that it does not affect the development of international law going beyond obligations of parties to the TPNW.

The far better position would be to welcome the TPNW as grounded in the NPT and other international law and as a powerful statement of the humanitarian and legal principles that should guide the abolition of nuclear arms.

Most importantly, all nuclear-armed states must invigorate their currently weak efforts to comply with the disarmament obligation and join in creation of a world free of nuclear weapons.

The post Building Blocks for Nuclear Ban Treaty: NPT & Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. John Burroughs is Senior Analyst, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

The post Building Blocks for Nuclear Ban Treaty: NPT & Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Driving Climate Change from the Top in the Dominican Republic

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:26

Street scene in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Ben Albano / Unsplash

By Jan Lundius
SANTO DOMINGO, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

When President Luis Abinader arrived at his inauguration in an electrically driven car as a symbolic gesture of his Government’s intentions to make sustainable development one of its main objectives – he signalled the start of addressing climate change commitments in the country.

Abinader furthermore said he would immediately initiate preparations to make the presidential palace dependent on solar energy for its electrical supply – a commitment towards moving the country from being dependent on non-renewable energy.

Since his August inauguration, his Government has moved towards revising and making good the commitments of the Paris Agreement where it agreed to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader

The Paris Agreement was in itself a success because since then, most of the signatories have submitted national climate mitigation goals. Five years have passed, and according to the agreement, the signatory countries must now revise their NDCs, an opportunity for aligning their climate and development agendas and revisit their efforts to mobilise interest and funding for achieving their previously set goals.

On October 1, 2020, the Dominican Republic launched its NDC update process. The event included representatives from the Government, the private sector, the civil society, development and implementing partners and the academia, and its purpose was to showcase and raise awareness on the NDC update process, its steps and implications for these different stakeholders.

As part of an endeavour to mainstream an eco-friendly approach to all policies, the Dominican Republic, with the support of The Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership, is working on a revised and enhanced NDC strategy. This strategy includes a medium-term implementation, finance and investment plan to effectively address water management, ecosystem preservation, food security, smart urban development and dependency on fossil fuels.

Simultaneously the plan will be supported by a strengthening capacity and awareness for safeguarding natural resources. An assessment of attained achievements will in 2025 constitute the groundwork for the development and implementation of a long-term strategy leading up to 2050.

Max Puig, Executive Vice President of the Dominican National Council for Climate Change and a Clean Development Mechanism

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Max Puig, Executive Vice President of the Dominican National Council for Climate Change and a Clean Development Mechanism said despite a change of regime and hardship caused by COVID-19, many of the commitments made five years ago are gradually becoming realised.

NDCs are country-specific, though Puig repeatedly reminded us that even if every country has its specific character and preconditions, the implementation of NDCs must go beyond national efforts. CAEP is a step in this direction since it provides international expertise, as well as technical and financial support to countries in need of such assistance.

Like most other island nations, the Dominican Republic is grappling with several unique challenges, which solution would benefit from foreign expertise.

A significant concern is that even if the Dominican Republic has one of the largest and most diverse economies in the Caribbean, it still relies on imported fossil fuels for nearly all of its energy needs. The NDCs have become one tool for amending this problem. While seeking solutions to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it is necessary to invest in alternative and more sustainable energy production.

A step in this direction is to determine the extent of the emissions and sources of greenhouse gas, something that has been realised through a CAEP supported cooperation between the Dominican Government and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). IRENA is an agency that assists Governments towards renewable energy and author of a report A Renewable Energy Roadmap providing essential energy statistics.

Findings and suggestions the IRENA document has been further developed in reports on impacts of renewable energy in Dominican power systems and a study of renewable energy prospects. The research highlighted a potential to increase the share of renewable power generation to as much as 44 percent by 2030, based mostly on solar photovoltaic, wind and bioenergy.

While talking to Puig, you are reminded that the Dominican Republic is part of an island and thus to a great extent dependent on its coast – both for its booming tourism industry and for maintaining its ecological health and distinctiveness.

The coastal ecology is another CAEP initiative, supporting the cooperation between the National Climate Change Council and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). This international NGO is currently updating collected data to identify highly vulnerable coastal areas and in 2019 published a study mapping and describing threatened ecosystems, like coral reefs and mangroves. TNC is currently working with the Government to develop the effective management of more than 3.2 million acres of terrestrial and marine habitats.

Puig mentioned that because the Dominican Republic is an island nation, it is considered to be one of the ten most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to the effects of climate change.

The Dominican Republic is situated right in the frequent path of devastating hurricanes, which, due to global warming, now may gain even more strength. There is a constant threat of flooding, and the arrival of a hurricane generally causes extensive landslides and loss of livelihoods.

The Dominican Republic’s Unit for Coordination of Water Resources is currently assessing these risks, supported by CAEP activities led by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB). The analysis will include the development of a viable approach for limiting the harmful effects of sudden flooding based on a multi-stakeholder approach involving relevant sectors of the Global Water Partnership (GWP).

While discussing the ecological peculiarities of the Dominican Republic, Puig accentuated the importance of considering the nation as part of a unique, insular ecosystem shared with the Republic of Haiti.

The island of Hispaniola is, with its 76,000 square kilometres, roughly the same size as the three Benelux countries together (Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg). Despite its limited size, the island has four distinctive eco-regions; moist forest areas, dry forests, moist grasslands and dry savannas.

This diversity is due to the highest mountain range in the Caribbean, which stretches diagonally across the island, placing nearly a third of the territory in a rain shadow. For historical reasons, far too complicated to address here, extreme contrasts are also evident in the political makeup of the island.

It is the only island in the world shared by two sovereign nations, and even if the ecosystem initially has been the same in the two parts of the island, natural resources are more depleted in Haiti than in the Dominican Republic.

Puig lamented that many of his Dominican fellow citizens assume that a wall along the border would solve any problems. Far better would be to consider the entire island as an ecological unity within which social and eco-friendly solutions are pursued in unison.

Hispaniola has the largest economy in the Greater Antilles. Most of this economic development is found in the Dominican economy, which is almost 800 percent larger than the one in Haiti.

As of 2018, the estimated annual per capita was USD 8,050 in the Dominican Republic and USD 868 in Haiti. This contrast in economic well-being makes the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, one of the sharpest divisions between need and relative prosperity in the world. A reason why the Dominican Republic has one of the highest migration influxes in the Americas.

According to Puig, a solution to this problem would be to emphasise the human aspect of sustainable development. Poverty, ignorance and inequality weaken the resilience of any nation and obstruct sustainable development. Cooperation – local, bilateral and international – is necessary, as well as compassion, respect for human dignity and social awareness. If we finally learn to realise that the conservation of our planet’s natural resources is a prerequisite for human survival, maybe every Government would come to understand the futility of short-term actions and unnecessary strife.

With CAEP, the Government is working on several fronts. These include strengthening its overall climate-related mechanisms through coordination of government institutions in charge of the National Climate Change Policy. At a practical level, there will be a framework for ecosystem-based adaptation projects, along with the provision of capacity building for implementing such projects. The Dominican Republic has committed to identify and prioritise a pipeline of investment-ready projects at all levels including energy, agriculture, industry, transport, water and sanitation services, buildings and infrastructure and livelihoods diversification.

Finally, IPS asked Puig why he was engaged in such a thorny venture as Dominican politics?

“In spite of all the difficulties and frustrations you encounter through political engagement, I assume that for many of us, politics equals a belief in a change for the better. A transition of power, like the one the Dominican Republic now experiences, promises improvement, nurtures imagination and action, and stimulates dreams and visions,” he replied.

https://youtu.be/zHyq6mmn52Q
https://youtu.be/RR-ClA3LJaU

(Additional reporting Cecilia Russell)

Nono the Carbon Footprint Bear—Part of Peru’s Ambitious Work on Climate Action

The post Driving Climate Change from the Top in the Dominican Republic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The Rape of India’s Dalit Women: It’s All about Gender & Class Subordination

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:03

Women listen to the news in a village comprising mainly of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. After a 19-year-old young woman was murdered and raped in the state last month it triggered nationwide protests. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India , Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

Shabnam*, a young woman from Northern India’s Haryana state, is two years away from becoming a law graduate. She sees parallels between her own rape and that of the 19-year-old Maha Dalit woman whose brutal rape and torture by a group of men from a “dominant” or “higher” caste in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh triggered nationwide protests.

“She was a Valmiki like us, from a landless and poor family like ours. They raped her, brutalised her and when she died, they burnt her body without the consent of her family. And even after all of that, they would not allow her family to talk about it and threaten them to keep quiet. This is exactly what I and my family have experienced and what we continue to go through. The only exception is that I am still alive,” Shabnam tells IPS in Hindi. The 19-year-old young woman eventually died of her injuries. But just like her, Shabnam also belongs to the Maha Dalit – India’s most marginalised and oppressed community formerly known as “untouchables”.

The death of the young woman focused a spotlight on the sexual violence faced by Dalit women in India, who number some 100 million according to a discussion document by Navsarjan Trust (India), FEDO (Nepal) and the International Dalit Solidarity Network.

“Violence, including rape and gang rape, have been systematically utilised as weapons by dominant castes to oppress Dalit women and girls and reinforce structural gender and caste hierarchies,” a soon-to-be-released report by Equality Now, a global non-profit which promotes human rights and equality, and the local charity Swabhiman Society, states.

“In the northern state of Haryana, where Dalit make up around one-fifth of the state’s population, a deeply-rooted caste-based and patriarchal society still flourishes. There are high rates of violence against women – data from the National Crime Records Bureau in 2018 indicates that nearly 4 women are raped every day in this state alone,” the report further states. Titled “Justice Denied: Sexual Violence and intersectional discrimination: Barriers to Accessing Justice for Dalit Women and Girls in Haryana, India”, the report draws from Swabhiman Society’s experience of working directly with Dalit survivors of sexual violence in Haryana over the past decade and highlights insights from this work.

Shabnam was a minor when she was gang raped in 2013. Over the past seven years, even as her case has gone to trial, there have been several attempts and threats on her life for which she was eventually granted court protection.

“People think rape is a single crime. But for Dalit rape victims, it’s just the beginning of a lifelong chain of crimes and struggles: mental abuse, fear, intimidation, threats, denial of basic rights, denial of education and a decent livelihood – the list is very long. In fact, once you are raped, you stay a victim all through your life,” Manisha Mashaal, founder of Swabhiman Society, tells IPS in Hindi. Mashaal, a Dalit women’s rights defender and lawyer, is helping Shabnam and many other young women in their fight for justice.

Violence against Dalit women – what are the true numbers?

According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a federal agency, cases of physical attacks on women have been increasing.

In 2019 alone, says NCRBs latest report, there were over 405,861 cases of assaults on women — 7 percent more than was reported in 2018. The crimes include beating, stripping, kidnapping and rape.

Of these, 13,273 assaults, which included 3,486 cases of rape, were against women from Dalit communities.

Jacqui Hunt, the Europe and Eurasia Director of Equality Now, says widespread under-reporting and problems registering sexual assaults with the police mean that the true figures are likely to be considerably higher.

“As a consequence of gender, caste and class inequalities, Dalit women and girls are subjected to multiple forms of subjugation, exploitation, and oppression. Sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, has been perpetrated against them by men from dominant castes as a mechanism that reinforces India’s deeply entrenched structural hierarchies. Women’s bodies are being used as a battleground to assert caste supremacy and to keep women ‘in their place,’” Hunt tells IPS.

Mashaal believes that almost 80 percent of Dalit women who are raped do not report the crime because of political and social pressure as the women and their families are usually threatened by the perpetrators. Besides, Mashaal says, a majority of the sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors are minor Dalit girls, while NCRB data for child rape survivors does not differentiate according to caste.

A safe space for Dalit women

To help break the cycle of silence on crimes against Dalit women and girls, in 2013 Mashaal founded Swabhiman Society – a charity that provides various services, including legal and psychological support to Dalit survivors of SGBV.

“We currently have 25 women who work with us off and on, but this is a safe place for hundreds of women who have been stigmatised, brutalised and yet have nobody else to turn to,” says Mashaal.

Mashaal started the society because she noticed few organisations were aiding Dalit survivors of SBGV and that there was a lack of knowledge and awareness among the community about their legal rights to justice or the procedure to follow.

In several cases, they would be dictated to settle out of the court by the Khap Panchayat – a powerful, traditional, community assembly run by the landowning Jat community, which decides on village affairs. The decisions of the Khap are often controversial and considered anti-Dalit, but few dare oppose them fearing reprisals.

Mamta*, another woman Mashaal represents, was a minor when she was gang raped by “dominant” caste men in 2012. When the Khap Panchayat ordered that she had to marry one of her rapists, her father – a farmhand and daily wage earner — was too scared to oppose the decision.

For months Mamta was locked in a small room and repeatedly raped by both her ‘husband’ and his friends and relatives.

“It was like a cage. I lived in a small room. My husband would lock the door from outside. He would not otherwise touch me as I was a Dalit but would forcibly have sex whenever he wanted. Every day, he would bring other men and they would also rape me.

“I was like a fly stuck in mud – I could not live and could not fly away either,” Mamta, who is now 26, tells IPS in Hindi.

Eventually Mamta managed to escape and discovered the Swabhiman Society. There she met many other women who had also experienced similar abuse and brutality. Together they have received counselling, awareness training about laws on rape and sexual attacks on women. But most important of all, they have gathered the courage to demand justice in a legal court.

Land ownership or lack thereof perpetuating vulnerabilities and violence

According to Hunt, Dalit women lack economic power and are often reliant on dominant castes for their livelihoods. When survivors of sexual assault or their families are dependent for jobs or other sources of income from someone who is from the same caste as an assailant, or the perpetrator is also their employer, accessing justice for sexual violence becomes even more problematic

“Culprits and their associates often wield their economic power to silence survivors and witnesses. This includes coercing survivors or victims’ family members into settling cases out of court, or hounding them from their home and village.

“Our forthcoming report gives an indication of how common this problem is. In almost 60 percent of the cases we studied, survivors were forced into a compromise, many times caused by threats of economic retaliation,” Hunt says.

According to the recent data published by the Census of India, 71 percent Dalits are landless labourers who work on land they do not own. According to the Agriculture Census, in rural areas, 58.4 percent Dalit households do not own land at all. This gets grimmer in Dalit-dominated states such as Haryana, Punjab and Bihar, where 85 percent do not own land.

“This is the reason why there is continuous gruesome sexual assaults on Dalit women because they are thrice-vulnerable. First, because of their caste, second, because of their gender and third, because of their landless status,” says Mashaal.

Independent studies have established this as well.

According to a 2018 study by Reena Kukreja, an assistant Professor at Queens University, Canada, the Dalit community in Haryana, “with over 80 percent of Dalits living in rural areas, they are dependent on the three landowning castes for agricultural wage labour as their primary source of livelihood.” The study explores the link between land rights and gender violence, especially in the context of Dalit women’s marriages in Haryana.

Preparing for a life-long fight

The women Mashaal represents don’t believe there is a silver bullet for the endemic SGBV against women in their community. It is why a number of them are pursuing a college degree, especially in law.

“Every time we go to court, we see the perpetrators hiring 10 to 15 lawyers to fight their cases. They hire big law firms. On the other hand, a Dalit woman victim can hardly afford a single lawyer. It is very frustrating. So, we encourage the girls who come here to go back to school and study law. We must build our own network of women lawyers who will fight and win every single case of Dalit rape,” Mashaal says.

Presently, at least 10 women from the Swabhiman Society are studying law, says Shabnam.

Pooja* is another young Dalit woman whom Mashaal is assisting. When Pooja was only 17 she was kidnapped by 12 men who took turns to rape her. Pooja – the youngest of the women — just passed her last school exams and plans to enrol in a law school. Though her enrolment has been delayed by COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I will apply to a private college if needed and take up a job to pay the fees, but will not give up on becoming a lawyer,” Pooja tells IPS as Mashaal and the other Dalit women in the room break into a cheering chorus of support pledging to “make sure that happens”.

Meanwhile, the Equality Now / Swabhiman Society joint report provides recommendations for improvement of the police, medico-legal and judicial processes in Haryana to improve access to justice for survivors of sexual violence, particularly Dalit women and girls.

*Not her real name. Names of some interviewees have been changed to protect their identity.

The post The Rape of India’s Dalit Women: It’s All about Gender & Class Subordination appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 12:39

Drop box outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Credit: Peter Costantini.

By Peter Costantini
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, US, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

It sits stolidly, bolted onto a concrete base outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Weighing in at around 600 pounds, it sports “anti-tampering features” and “heavy-duty, all-weather construction”. Security agents check it periodically and it appears to be watched by a camera. As I scrutinize it, a man in an SUV pulls up and deposits a ballot in its slot. He tells me he votes this way every election, then drives off.

Despite its impassive demeanor, this drop box and its fellows have flirted with media celebrity. If they could talk about how they came to be deployed – or not – this year, they could tell a tabloid-ready tale teeming with lurid details about the sad state of democracy in these United States of America.

But this one didn’t even offer a “no comment”, so let’s tease out its story from other sources.

Most states permit bypassing the U.S. Postal Service by dropping mail-in ballots off at a drop box or a polling place, while only four states ban drop boxes. Many states also allow early voting in-person for days or weeks before the election as a way to forestall crowds on Election Day. In several other states, though, permitted voting methods are unclear or pending litigation.

Voting procedures in the U.S. vary widely from state to state, in a matrix of Byzantine complexity. Several states conduct elections nearly completely by mail, and most others offer mail-in ballots as a routine option. A few, however, allow absentee ballots only on request and for restricted reasons. Most states permit bypassing the U.S. Postal Service by dropping mail-in ballots off at a drop box or a polling place

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic left many voters loathe to enter a polling place to vote out of fear of exposing themselves to the virus. Numerous volunteer poll workers, who are often elderly, also decided to sit this election out. In response, many states decided that numbers of polling places would have to be reduced.

Given the unusually high expected turnout, though, this would likely mean long lines of voters. Most states had long allowed “absentee ballots” to be mailed in by those away from home or with physical limitations. So this year, in many places, mail-in voting was expanded, often by sending a request form for a mail-in ballot to every registered voter.

States with all-mail voting (including my home state of Washington) have made voting more accessible to all voters for many years with hardly a whisper of misconduct or controversy. President Donald Trump himself has voted by absentee ballot.

But as the phenomenon gained momentum, he and a chorus of Republican politicians began to raise a hue and cry against mail-in voting, accusing it of fostering massive fraud, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Throughout most of the country a pattern emerged: Democrats were tending to vote in advance by mail or drop box, while Republicans, perhaps heeding presidential warnings, were more likely to plan to vote in person on Election Day.

Then in June, Louis DeJoy, a major Trump and Republican donor, took over as Postmaster. Without missing a beat, he began to dismember the United States Postal Service – a long-term goal of the Republican Party, which has sought to privatize it and break its labor unions. DeJoy reportedly has significant financial interests in firms that compete or do business with the USPS.

The new Postmaster removed essential equipment, fired experienced management, and eliminated employee overtime, resulting in substantially slower mail delivery in some areas. All this obstruction came at the beginning of an electoral season when a major surge of voters, particularly Democratic ones, were counting on reliable, speedy delivery of ballot requests and ballots.

With predictable chutzpah, Republicans in several states have sued to require that mail-in ballots be counted only if they are received by Election Day, rather than if they are postmarked by that day, which is the norm. This would put mailed votes at the mercy of politically motivated postal slowdowns.

I couldn’t find one of the junked mail-sorting machines that was willing to go on record.

Credit: Peter Costantini.

Public outcry and Congressional hearings made DeJoy back off on some off his restrictions, but the capacity of the post office to handle high volumes of ballots remained in question. Many voters who had received mail-in ballots became concerned that, if returned by mail, they might still face delays.

Yet entering polling places to drop them off added some risk of exposure. One good solution was to deposit the ballots into the secure drop boxes that roughly two-thirds of the states and many localities already provided outside polling places and in other locations.

Last June, the Trump campaign had sued the State of Pennsylvania for adding ballot drop boxes around Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city, with a combined Black and Hispanic population of 58 percent. Both of these groups vote heavily Democratic.

A Federal judge appointed by Trump found that the campaign “failed to produce any evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in Pennsylvania,” including fraud related to drop boxes. A research project by the Brennan Center for Justice calls voter fraud “a myth” and explains: “Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare. Yet repeated, false allegations of fraud can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections.”

Nevertheless, Trump later tweeted that ballot drop boxes are a “big fraud” and “make it possible for a person to vote multiple times”. Twitter reportedly put a notice on the tweet saying that it violated its “civic integrity policy.”

The response of some other Republican officials has been – you’ve probably guessed by now – to severely restrict the number of drop boxes. In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott imposed a limit of one drop box per county.

The populations of Texas’ 254 counties, however, vary from under one hundred to several million. Democrats fought this restriction in court, but lost. Now Harris County, where Houston is located, has one drop box for nearly 4.8 million residents. Not coincidentally, the county’s population is around 60 percent Black and Hispanic.

Similar limitations on drop boxes have been imposed by the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio, also provoking a legal rumble. My Phoenix drop box, though, seems to have job security. Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State has rolled out a well-distributed network of its siblings, some of them in drive-through locations. This year, over 80 percent of Arizona voters will send in an absentee ballot, either through the mail or via drop boxes, without perceptible controversy.

Still, the malevolent hybrid of Machiavellian yet transparent voter suppression, bred by the coordinated attacks on mail-in voting and drop boxes, is a lowlight in a campaign full of Republican assaults on democracy. Enumerating them all is a job for historians – and civil-rights attorneys. But another one stands out for sheer vindictiveness.

In most states, prisoners are not allowed to vote, but ex-felons who have done their time and finished probation have their civil rights, including voting, restored. In Florida and a few other states, however, released ex-felons were not allowed to vote again except by special dispensation.

In 2018, Florida voters approved, by a two-to-one margin, a constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to ex-felons. But not long after, the state’s Republican legislature intervened and added a provision that to have their rights restored, ex-felons had to pay all prison fines, fees and restitution charged against them during their incarceration.

Most people emerge from jail with little or no cash on hand, so this amounted to revoking their newly reinstated suffrage. A legal challenge initially struck down the legislature’s changes, but a federal appeals court reversed the lower court and upheld the pecuniary provisions, although confusion persists on how they should be carried out. Out of the 1.4 million ex-felons who initially had their rights restored, a disproportionate number of them people of color, it appears that fewer than one-quarter of them will be able to vote in this year’s elections.

If this sounds like something right out of Jim Crow, it’s not far off. Among the many ways that Black voters were disenfranchised after the end of Reconstruction was imposition of a poll tax, which had to be paid in order to vote.

Few African Americans could afford the cost, and those that could were often denied their rights by other chicanery or violence. The first judge’s ruling against the legislature said the financial requirements amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax.

This chaotic landscape of multi-faceted voter suppression has grown worse this year, but it has roots at least a century and a half old. Just a bit more than a decade after the Civil War, repressive measures like the poll tax combined with outright terrorism – lynching, arson and mass murder – to snatch away the rights and economic advances Black people had won since the end of slavery.

This continued up until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, with the Democratic Party playing the dominant role in denying democracy across the South. With the social changes spearheaded by the movement, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, the center of gravity of Southern racism moved into the Republican Party, which embraced it tightly with President Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy”.

A political rallying point of the segregationists was the concept of “states’ rights”, the idea that they could defend Jim Crow against Federal efforts to desegregate by invoking the primacy of each state to determine its own laws. Federal enforcement helped Black and liberal movements and politicians roll back some of the worst abuses.

Under the Voting Rights Act, most of the states of the South and a few others with a history of discrimination were forbidden to make changes in their electoral laws without Federal approval. But then in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the patterns of discrimination the Act guarded against were no longer occurring, and removed the requirement for federal supervision of voting laws.

Very quickly, many of those states re-enacted restrictions on voting, some more subtle than before, but aiming towards the same old goal: making it harder for people of color people to vote.

Ironically, along with the reactionary effects on voting rights in conservative-run states, the resurgence of states’ rights and loosening of federal control has provided more leeway for some blue states to enact liberal and progressive reforms despite the Trump administration’s opposition.

All but one of the states that have chosen all mail-in voting are run by Democrats. States and cities have enacted sanctuary and immigrant-justice laws in defiance of regressive federal immigration regulations and enforcement.

Underlying all the political and legal hurly-burly, three structural elements deeply entrenched in the U.S. Constitution and statutes help ensure that fundamental democratic principles such as neutral, fair electoral administration and “one person, one vote” remain problematic.

Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have a fourth, electoral branch of government, independent of the executive, legislative and judicial, that could standardize electoral law and practices nationally.

Some jurisdictions have independent, non-partisan electoral commissions, but they are often appointed by a partisan executive. Many electoral authority posts, though, are partisan, and as the 2000 Florida fiasco and Bush v. Gore made indelibly obvious, political pressure and voter exclusion in high-stakes contests can bulldoze even-handed election administration.

The U.S. has a bicameral legislature with a Senate comprising two senators from every state, large or small. This is perhaps the most blatant Constitutional violation of “one person, one vote”: a citizen of the most populous state, California, with a nearly 40 million residents, has only a tiny fraction of the representation of a citizen of the least populous one, Wyoming, with under 600 thousand. Both states have two senators.

The old justification that the collegial deliberations of the Senate would restrain the tendencies toward mob rule in the House of Representatives has been rendered ridiculous by the Republican Senate leadership’s comportment over recent years, but it always reeked of elitism. Senators from smaller states have often been excessively beholden to the biggest local industries: Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state, for example, was known as “the Senator from Boeing” for his fealty to the dominant aircraft manufacturer.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the House of Lords, the U.S. Senate’s counterpart, has been reduced to a mainly advisor body with little political power. Democrats have long contemplated trying to bring in the District of Columbia, and possibly Puerto Rico, as new states with two senators each, but this would be a heavy lift politically. It’s hard to see a feasible reform short of major changes in the Constitution.

The Electoral College is another negation of “one person, one vote”. Although numbers of electoral votes are very roughly proportional to state populations, they still give considerably more representation to smaller, more rural, whiter states. The winner-take-all nature of the electoral vote, with the exception of two states, means that it frequently does not reflect the popular vote.

The Electoral College is an 18th Century institution that gives far too much leeway to the whims of appointed electors, and can be too easily overridden by state legislatures. It has become enough of an embarrassment that some reforms are attracting public attention. The best known is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under it, states pledge to give all their electoral votes to the candidate winning the national popular vote, but this goes into effect only after states representing 270 electoral votes, the majority needed to elect a president, have signed onto the agreement.

Elections in 2016 and 2000, in which the winner of the Electoral College lost the popular vote, have inflamed bitter national divisions and installed governments that led the country into ongoing catastrophes. A previous contested election, in 1876, was resolved by both parties agreeing to end Reconstruction, snatching away the barely restored civil and human rights of Black people for most of the next hundred years.

The country’s rickety electoral infrastructure might not be able to weather another such blow.

For one more electoral cycle, at least, the salvation of democracy here may lie in the same decentralization that has caused such frustration. Beneath the brazen attempts to disfigure democracy, there remains a strong, grassroots culture of fairness.

There are millions of voters willing to stand in long lines, even if they’re caused by political manipulation, and puzzle out confusing regulations in order to cast their votes. And there are thousands of local officials and volunteers of all political persuasions who are willing to work long hours and brave stifling bureaucracy to make sure that all votes are counted.

I returned to check on the original drop box. It was clearly the strong, silent type: no complaints, no publicity seeking, it just did its job. I took a few more pictures. A security guard shook his head and told me that he had never seen a drop box attract the paparazzi like this one.

The post Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“If things could talk, then I’m sure you’d hear a lot of things to make you cry, my dear. Ain’t you glad, glad that things don’t talk.” – Ry Cooder

The post Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Economic Trends and What’s Important in Life

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 12:26

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

US third quarter GDP numbers released two weeks ago delighted stock markets and President Trump. Output had picked up by 7.4%, annualised as 33.1%, the largest quarterly economic growth on record, almost double the old record of 3.9% (annualised as 16.7%) in the first quarter of 1950, seven decades ago.

Anis Chowdhury

Spinning numbers
This news could not have come at a better time for Trump, who is struggling for re-election, as his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) declared that this affirmed Trump’s claim, “we’re coming back, and we’re coming back strong”. The CEA spun the White House press release headline accordingly, “The Great American Recovery: Third Quarter GDP Blows Past Expectations”.

The CEA attributed the record to “the strong foundation of the pre-pandemic economy and the efficacy of the Trump Administration”, portraying it as “a testament to the fortitude and resilience of America’s workers and families”.

Meanwhile, new US COVID-19 cases on the very same day reached a record high, surpassing 90,000 and still rising, with total cases nearing a million, with deaths four times the total American death toll during the two decade long Vietnam War, and fast approaching a quarter million.

Glass half full/empty
As COVID-19 rages unchecked, economic activity remained US$670 billion below its pre-pandemic peak. According to the ‘Back-to-Normal Index’ of Moody’s Analytics and CNN Business, the economy was only 82% of what it was in early March, with 10.7 million jobs lost since February!

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early October show that more than 12.6 million Americans were out of work while lasting job losses rose, with 36% of the jobless deemed permanently unemployed.

Those permanently laid-off ballooned from 1.5 million in March to 3.8 million in September, and the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 781,000 to 2.4 million. This number is still rising fast, threatening extreme hardship for many more households.

Prospects for those losing jobs may be bleak as US job recovery appears to be running out of steam. After adding 4.8 million jobs in June, job gains slowed to 1.8 million in July, 1.5 million in August and only 661,000 in September. As time passes and job growth continues to slow, it will take years to bring employment back to pre-pandemic levels.

Exaggerating trends
Annualising a quarterly or monthly rate tells us how much the economy would expand or shrink if the rate of change is maintained for a full year. But this can be misleading, by making mountains out of molehills. Undoubtedly, the second quarter’s massive collapse was followed by a large gain in the third.

But the third quarter recovery of 33% after the second quarter contraction of 33% does not mean the economy is back to where it was. If 100 drops 33% to 67, and then regains 33%, it gets to 89 (from 67) — still 11 short of the original 100.

Rapid growth in one quarter does not mean the economy has gained strong momentum. The collapse in the previous quarter had set a low baseline. Hence, any rebound from that depressed base would generate a huge growth rate.

Hours worked are often a better proxy for employment and economic recovery. Average hours worked in the first quarter were 5.1 million, dropping to 4.5 million in the second, before recovering to 4.8 million in the third, still below pre-COVID levels.

Other evidence also indicates that the economy has been slowing. For example, consumption growth was slower every month from June to August than in the month before.

Similarly, retail sales slowed over mid-2020, before a slight rebound in September. The Chicago Federal Reserve National Economic Activity Index indicated that August growth was the slowest since recovery began in May.

Disparities widen
The prestigious Lancet has observed, “COVID-19 exacerbating inequalities”, as the pandemic sharpened various US disparities already growing for decades. As 45 million Americans lost their jobs, US billionaires made US$584 billion.

Meanwhile, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show hospitalization rates for Blacks and Latinos 4.5 times that for non-Hispanic whites. A US National Academy of Sciences study also found age-adjusted COVID deaths more than 2.5 times higher for Blacks than for Whites.

US income and wealth inequalities have been rising since the early 1970s. The share of total income earned by the top decile (10%) rose from around 31% in the 1970s to about half in 2015, while the top 1% or percentile’s share rose from 8% to 20%.

Much of this increase among the top 10% came at the expense of workers in the bottom half of the distribution whose share of total income halved from 20% in the 1970s as median US workers’ real wages fell from 1973.

Over the past three decades, the wealth share of those in the top decile (10%) of household income rose from 61% to 70%, while that of the top 1% went up from 17% to 26%.

Jobless rates for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics were higher than the national average, even before the pandemic. Disproportionately employed in low paying occupations, they have suffered more job losses due to the pandemic.

Women have also suffered much more, e.g., as 617,000 women, compared to 78,000 men, dropped out of the labour force in September. Half of these women were between 35 and 44, the prime working age.

Omitting the important things in life
The pandemic can even augment GDP, which includes all COVID-related expenses, including those for treatments and funerals, plus the trillions that governments – federal, state, municipal – spend to tackle the crisis.

Perhaps, it is fitting to recall Robert Kennedy from over half a century ago:

“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product… counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

“It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

“It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

“It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

“And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

The post Economic Trends and What’s Important in Life appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: A Global Survey Shows Worrying Signs of Vaccine Hesitancy

Sun, 11/01/2020 - 21:36

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

By External Source
Nov 1 2020 (IPS)

It has been nine months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a “public health emergency of international concern”. Since then, more than 44 million cases have been recorded and over one million lives lost. Economic costs measure in trillions of dollars. Global recovery will take years.

A safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be developed in record time and may be approved for production, distribution and acceptance some time in 2021. Public health experts say that at least 70% of any community must get vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine to achieve an acceptable level of immunity to protect its members.

We recently surveyed 13,426 people in 19 countries. We included two of Africa’s most populous and visible nations, Nigeria and South Africa, which are among the most affected by COVID-19 on the continent.

Overall, we found that 71.5% of participants said they would take a “proven safe and effective vaccine” while 14% would refuse it outright. An additional 14% said they would hesitate to take the vaccine.

But that average figure is deceptive. It was raised by favourable responses from two Asian countries that also recorded very high trust in government health recommendations. More than 80% of Chinese respondents and 75% of South Koreans said they would accept a vaccine. South Africans came closer than any other country to the 70% standard, at almost 65%. But only 46.3% of Nigerians said they would do so. This is slightly higher than the results we found in Spain, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Ecuador.

Hesitancy

These vaccine hesitant people are not necessarily vaccine opponents. A large number of them consistently vaccinate their children against numerous childhood diseases. However, it must be noted that the increasingly well-coordinated global anti-vaccine movement has repurposed itself to challenge the very reality of COVID-19 as well as the usefulness of a new vaccine to prevent it. They have leveraged social media platforms to promote these doubts.

We also tried to determine how much trust people would have in a COVID-19 vaccine if their employer recommended it. Just more than three in five (61.4%) of all our respondents said they would do so. The numbers dropped to less than half of South Africans (46%) and Nigerians (44%).

Our data confirms a troubling trend towards vaccine hesitancy that has been found in other global and national studies. Professor Heidi Larson, a co-author of our paper, and her team at the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently reported on trends in vaccine confidence observed across 149 countries between 2015 and 2019. They found that political instability and religious extremism were critical factors in declining vaccine confidence in many of these countries.

Recent political unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million people, does not bode well for a successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign there. Only South Africa and Ethiopia have recorded more COVID-19 cases on the continent.

Many public health workers also recall a massive boycott against polio vaccination in northern Nigeria. It was caused by a single rumour, and not an adverse event. This boycott led to the years of more polio infections and deaths in Nigeria, and delayed polio eradication from the continent as a whole.

So what must be done to get on track for a successful African vaccination programme against COVID-19?

Moving forward

As scientists, we should help health leaders to prepare now with education and dialogue to set appropriate expectations for when a coronavirus vaccine may be available. We need to build vaccine literacy with effective communication and community engagement for acceptance country by country, village by village, taking into account community-specific issues, concerns or misconceptions and working with local religious and civil leaders and influencers.

We also need to help people become more fluent about vaccinations: Are they safe? Will they protect me and my family? Do I need to be vaccinated to be able to work? Will everyone be able to get it? Will vaccination sterilise me or my kids?

And we must be realistic that none of this information and advocacy will truly convince people to accept COVID-19 vaccination, or any other, in the absence of genuine societal trust. Without mutual trust, we may not be able to rebuild economies and return to anything approaching “normal” life.

It would be tragic if we developed, made and distributed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and people refused to take them, when health infrastructure and equipment levels cannot stem the pandemic.

Two authors of this study, Drs. Ratzan and Larson, are co-leaders of a recently launched global coalition – CONVINCE [COVID-19 New Vaccine Information Communication and Engagement]. This initiative is spearheaded by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, the Vaccine Confidence Project of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Wilton Park, a part of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. A number of African public health leaders have already joined it.

Scott C. Ratzan, Distinguished Lecturer, CUNY Graduate Center; Agnes Binagwaho, Vice Chancellor, University of Global Health Equity; Heidi Larson, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology & Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Jeffrey V Lazarus, Associate Research Professor, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal); Kenneth Rabin, Senior Scholar, CUNY Graduate Center, and Lawrence O. Gostin, University Professor; Founding Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law, Georgetown University

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

The post COVID-19: A Global Survey Shows Worrying Signs of Vaccine Hesitancy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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