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Dominic Kimara, the farm manager at an agri-food company, stands in a rice field grown using conservation agriculture technique. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
AMURU, Uganda/NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 23 2020 (IPS)

In Amuru district, 47 kilometres from Gulu town in northwestern Uganda, the Omer Farming Company has proven that it is possible to farm on thousands of acres of land using methods that conserve the environment and its biodiversity.

On a 5,000 acre piece of land, the company is growing upland rice with a yield of up to 3.5 metric tons per acre, using the conservation agriculture method.

“We do not plough the field, and we do not use fertilisers,” Dominic Kimara, the farm manager at the company, told IPS. “Instead, we grow a leguminous crop known as sunn hemp, and when it is 50 percent flowering, we roll it on the ground so that it can decompose and form green manure,” he explained.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, this type of farming technique has several advantages for the environment because it reduces the use of farm machineries (which often emit carbon), sequesters carbon, and is cost effective and beneficial to the soil.

According to the report ‘Fixing the Business of Food initiative‘ by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), agri-food companies must consider the environmental and social impacts of business operations, including their production processes and other internal processes, with a focus on issues such as resource use (land, water, energy) and emissions, respect for human rights, diversity and inclusion, and decent work conditions that improve livelihoods of employees and their families.

The report, which was released on Sept. 22 alongside the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly in partnership with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the Santa Chiara Lab (SCL) and the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (CCSI), identifies a four pillar framework for alignment of the food and agriculture sector with the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Indeed the four pillar framework is a sort of instruction manual to guide our efforts towards the active engagement of the private sector in the implementation of the 2030 agenda,” said Mariangela Zappia, ambassador and permanent representative of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the U.N. in New York.

However, the experts observed that despite a steady increase in investments in sustainable development and climate action, only eight percent of public climate finance is directed to the agri-food sector.

“There is one big risk: that a lot of our colleagues, a lot of other actors in the world of business feel the danger, but they do not have the courage to really take actions within their company to make these very difficult decisions,” said Guido Barilla, chair of Barilla Group and the BCFN Foundation, noting that the Barilla Group had to take a tough decision to stop the use of palm oil, which is the cheapest source of fat, but contributes to deforestation.

“We are late in the 2030 Agenda, we are losing time in completing the sustainability goals and to really rationalise the dangers and lower the dangers on climate change and on sustainability issues. It’s unaffordable. We need to make a call to action,” he said during a virtual launch of the report.

The report further points out that the shift towards more sustainable and healthier diets is a strong leverage to improve both planetary and human health.

This comes after a warning by another study about India that projects levels of undersupply and consequent malnutrition will significantly increase in 2030 and 2050 scenarios.

“Policy incentives in Indian agriculture since the Green Revolution have predominantly been focused on achieving caloric food security through increased production of cereals (wheat and rice),” wrote the researchers in a study titled ‘Sustainable food security in India—Domestic production and macronutrient availability’.

This, according to the scientists, has resulted in a heavy carbohydrate-based diet (65–70 percent of total energy intake) which may be significantly lacking in adequate diversity for the provision of other important nutrients.

The BCFN report points out that there is need for a radical transformation in order to cope with the environmental, social, and economic challenges of agri-food systems at global and local levels. “In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated global development challenges especially for the most vulnerable communities around the globe,” it reads in part.

So far, the European Union is already promoting such transformation through the European Green Deal and the ‘Farm to Fork’ Strategy, aiming to make European food ‘the global standard for sustainability’.

The authors explored the main gaps in aligning practices and strategies to sustainability principles through a deep qualitative analysis of sustainability reports for 2018 and 2019 published by 12 global companies with high reputations in terms of sustainability.

The other pillars include contribution to healthy and sustainable dietary patterns through its products and strategies, and the impact and influence of companies beyond the perimeter of their direct and outsourced operations. The report notes that in some contexts, companies have co-responsibility for enhanced sustainability throughout their supply chains, value chains and within the ecosystems in which they operate.

The last pillar considers companies’ external strategies and engagement: both with the communities where they operate and with the rules that govern them.

“We must generate partnerships between the private sector and the public sector so that everyone in the world has access to healthy diets that are produced sustainably,” said Rachel Kyte, the Dean, at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

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Waorani women from Alianza Ceibo march for the protection of their forest in Ecuador’s capital Quito. Credit: Mateo Barriga, Amazon Frontlines.

By Jamison Ervin
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 2020 (IPS)

A spate of reports on biodiversity – the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, the Living Planet Report, the Global Forest Resources Assessment Report and the Global Biodiversity Outlook– paint a stark picture for the world’s biodiversity.

All point in the same direction: we are on track to lose more than a million species by mid-century, we lost 68% of all wildlife populations since 1970, we lost more than 11 million hectares of primary forest last year, and we have failed to meet almost all of the conservation targets in the decade-long Strategic Plan for Biodiversity.

Failure to halt the loss of biodiversity, let alone reverse historic trends, has grave consequences for all of humanity. The livelihoods, food, water security and safety of billions of people are at risk.

The stability of our climate is at risk. Half of global GDP is at risk. Buffers against the next pandemic are at risk. Indeed, the very future of humanity is at risk. Halting biodiversity loss and restoring the health of the planet requires several profound and systemic transformations.

We must place nature at the heart of sustainable development. Because nature plays such as fundamental role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, all nations must take a closer look at how to integrate the protection, restoration and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems into their national climate, health, water, security and development plans.

We must tackle the root causes of biodiversity loss – the unchecked economic and market forces that fail to account for nature’s values. Our current economic system favors short-term gain over long-term stewardship of nature.

Governments must find ways to ensure that their national expenditures align, and do not countermand, their national development goals, especially those goals that depend on healthy ecosystems.

At the same time, we must ensure that corporations and finance institutions place nature at the center of financial decision-making by holding them accountable to the impacts of their decisions on the health of biodiversity and ecosystems.

We must invest in nature protection and recovery. While the cost of inaction on nature is profound, the economic cost of investing in nature is not. We currently spend less than $100 billion a year on nature — about what we spend on pet food globally.

We only need an additional $700 billion annually to achieve ambitious biodiversity goals for 2030 – that’s less than 1% of global GDP, and only a fraction of the $5.2 trillion that we spend on fossil fuel subsidies every year.

We must increase our global ambition for immediate action on nature. We are facing a complex and interacting planetary emergency – a nature crisis, a biodiversity crisis, a health crisis and an inequality crisis all at once.

To fully respond to this emergency, we need bold ambition, commitment and action at all levels, from local to global. We must commit to creating a nature-based planetary safety net, in response to our planetary emergency.

One way to do that is through greening Covid-19 economic recovery and stimulus packages a step many countries have yet to take.

We must transform global production and consumption. For example, global appetites for beef are responsible for as much as half of forest cover loss worldwide, while unsustainable agricultural practices are responsible for nearly a quarter of our global greenhouse gas emissions.

We must increase global commitment and accountability for deforestation-free commodities, though initiatives such as the New York Declaration on Forests.

We must promote, celebrate and accelerate local action on nature if we are to tackle our planetary emergency – we need an all-of-society approach. Examples such as UNDP’s Equator Initiative showcase how the world is witnessing action on nature by youth, Indigenous peoples and local communities in every country and in thousands of communities.

By protecting, restoring and sustainably managing biodiversity, local actors can realize direct and tangible development dividends. To support local efforts, we must also strengthen governance and rule of law, especially for the 90 percent of Indigenous peoples who lack title for their lands, and who face murder, persecution and intimidation, often by multi-national corporations.

We must raise awareness of all levels of society of the value of nature, and of the risks inherent in biodiversity loss. In September, a campaign to promote the hashtag #NatureForLife has already garnered more than 50 million views.

But we must do more to raise global awareness. On the margins of the UN General Assembly, marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, UNDP is convening more than 40 partners to create a virtual “Nature for Life Hub,” involving more than 300 speakers from every walk of life.

Join us, either during or after the event, and help us strengthen global resolve to bend the curve on biodiversity loss – for nature, and for life.

 

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The post Bending the Curve on Biodiversity Loss Requires Nothing Less than Transformational Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The UN will be hosting the first-ever Biodiversity Summit – remotely – on September 30.

 
Jamison Ervin is Manager, Nature for Development Global Programme, UNDP, New York

The post Bending the Curve on Biodiversity Loss Requires Nothing Less than Transformational Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Million Belay and Timothy A. Wise
STOCKHOLM, CAMBRIDGE (US), Sep 23 2020 (IPS)

As COVID-19 threatens farming communities across Africa already struggling with climate change, the continent is at a crossroads. Will its people and their governments continue trying to replicate industrial farming models promoted by developed countries? Or will they move boldly into the uncertain future, embracing ecological agriculture?

Million Belay

It is time to choose. Africa is projected to overtake South Asia by 2030 as the region with the greatest number of hungry people. An alarming 250 million people in Africa now suffer from “undernourishment,” the U.N. term for chronic hunger. If policies do not change, experts project that number to soar to 433 million in 2030.

The evidence is now convincing that the Green Revolution model of agriculture, with its commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers, has failed to bring progress for Africa’s farmers. Since 2006, under the banner of the billion-dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA), that strategy has had an unprecedented opportunity to generate improved productivity, incomes, and food security for small-scale farmers. African governments have spent billions of dollars subsidizing and promoting the adoption of these imported technologies.

According to a recent report, “False Promises.” evidence from AGRA’s 13 countries indicates that it is taking Africa in the wrong direction. Productivity has improved marginally, and only for a few chosen crops such as maize. Others have withered in a drought of neglect from donor agencies and government leaders. In AGRA’s 13 focus countries, the production of millet, a hearty, nutritious and climate-resilient grain, fell 24% while yields declined 21%. This leaves poor farmers with less crop diversity in their fields and less nutritious food on their children’s plates.

Small-scale farming households, the intended beneficiaries of Green Revolution programs, seem scarcely better off. Poverty remains high, and severe food insecurity has increased 31% across AGRA’s 13 countries, as measured by the United Nations.

Rwanda, the home country of AGRA’s president, Agnes Kalibata, is held up as an example of AGRA’s success. After all, maize production increased fourfold since AGRA began in 2006 under Kalibata’s leadership as Agriculture Minister. The “False Promises” report refers to Rwanda as “AGRA’s hungry poster child.” All that maize apparently did not benefit the rural poor. Other crops went into decline and the number of undernourished Rwandans increased 41% since 2006, according to the most recent U.N. figures.

Timothy A. Wise

Green Revolution proponents have had 14 years to demonstrate they can lead Africa into a food-secure future. Billions of dollars later, they have failed. AGRA wrapped up its annual Green Revolution Forum September 11 without providing any substantive responses to the findings.

With a pandemic threatening to disrupt what climate change does not, Africa needs to take a different path, one that focuses on ecological farm management using low-cost, low-input methods that rely on a diversity of crops to improve soils and diets.

Many farmers are already blazing that trail, and some governments are following with bold steps to change course.

In fact, two of the three AGRA countries that have reduced both the number and share of undernourished people – Ethiopia and Mali – have done so in part due to policies that support ecological agriculture.

Ethiopia, which has reduced the incidence of undernourishment from 37% to 20% since 2006, has built on a 25-year effort in the northern Tigray Region to promote compost, not just chemical fertilizer, along with soil and water conservation practices, and biological control of pests. In field trials, such practices have proven more effective than Green Revolution approaches. The program was so successful it has become a national program and is currently being implemented in at least five regions.

Mali is the AGRA country that showed the greatest success in reducing the incidence of hunger (from 14% to 5% since 2006). According to a case study in the “False Promises” report, progress came not because of AGRA but because the government and farmers’ organizations actively resisted its implementation. Land and seed laws guarantee farmers’ rights to choose their crops and farming practices, and government programs promote not just maize but a wide variety of food crops.

Mali is part of a growing regional effort in West Africa to promote agroecology. According to a recent report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has developed an Agroecology Transition Support Program to promote the shift away from Green Revolution practices. The work is supported by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as part of its “Scaling Up Agroecology” program.

In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal, farmers’ organizations are working with their governments to promote agroecology, including the subsidization of biofertilizers and other natural inputs as alternatives to synthetic fertilizers.

In the drylands of West Africa, farmers in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana and Niger are leading “another kind of green revolution.” They are regenerating tree growth and diversifying production as part of agro-forestry initiatives increasingly supported by national governments. This restores soil fertility, increases water retention, and has been shown to increase yields 40%-100% within five years while increasing farmer incomes and food security. It runs counter to AGRA’s approach of agricultural intensification.

Senegal, which cut the incidence of severe hunger from 17% to 9% since 2006, is one of the regional leaders. Papa Abdoulaye Seck, Senegal’s Ambassador to the FAO, summarized the reasons the government is so committed to the agroecological transition in a foreword to the IPES report:

“We have seen agroecological practices improve the fertility of soils degraded by drought and chemical input use. We have seen producers’ incomes increase thanks to the diversification of their crop production and the establishment of new distribution channels. We have seen local knowledge enriched by modern science to develop techniques inspired by lived experience, with the capacity to reduce the impacts of climate change. And we have seen these results increase tenfold when they are supported by favorable policy frameworks, which place the protection of natural resources, customary land rights, and family farms at the heart of their action.”

Those “favorable policy frameworks” are exactly what African farmers need from their governments as climate change and COVID-19 threaten food security. It is time for African governments to step back from the failing Green Revolution and chart a new food system that respects local cultures and communities by promoting low-cost, low-input ecological agriculture.

Million Belay is coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.
Timothy A. Wise is researcher and writer with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Tufts University, and the author of the recent book Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. His background paper contributed to the “False Promises” report.

 

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The post Africa at the Crossroads: Time to Abandon Failing Green Revolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Sep 23 2020 (IPS-Partners)

 
On the eve of the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, Dr. Anne Larigauderie calls on everyone to make ambitious commitments to protect #biodiversity and #nature.

 

The post Anne Larigauderie UN Biodiversity Summit #ForNature Video appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Itaipu, the largest hydroelectric power station in the Americas, shared by Brazil and Paraguay on their Paraná river border. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Rene Roger Tissot
VERNON, Canada, Sep 22 2020 (IPS)

Can the “energy transition” in Latin America help address the risks caused by greenhouse gases (GHG) on the climate, and the economic depression caused by the pandemic?

Energy transition refers to the shift from fossil-based systems of energy production and consumption — including oil, natural gas, and coal — to renewable energy (RE) sources like wind and solar, etc. Proponents of investments in RE highlight investments’ impacts on jobs and industrialization opportunities.

RE deployment implies a trade-off between the objectives of energy and industrial policies: The energy policy would seek the reliable supply of electricity at low cost while industrial policy would pursue an expansion and diversification of manufacturing capabilities impacting production costs.

Local Content Requirement Concept

Local content requirements (LCR) is a policy tool used to promote industrial development. The justification of LCR is based on the expectation that it increases economic linkages with local businesses resulting in more jobs locally. Any investment would have a “natural” level of local content, defined by the share of local procurement and jobs the investor would contract in the absence of LCR.

Latin America could achieve lower levels of GHG while also keeping electricity generation costs low by connecting regions with renewable energy surplus potential to demand nodes through transnational grids
That investment would generate a certain level of spillovers and learnings with the local businesses. Those spillovers can be expanded by requiring the initial level of investment to increase its local procurement level above its natural level.

However, there is an optimal level of LCR in which those linkages are maximized, beyond that point the costs of LCR would results in lower output or investment delays. If the gains from the linkages in terms of local procurement and job creation expected from LCR are higher thant the negative effects caused by their higher production costs, then LCR would be justifiable.

Most jobs in RE value chain are in the manufacturing of components. In the European Union, manufacturing accounts for 55% of all the jobs of the value chain. (Sooriyaarachchi, et al. 2015). Manufacturing of RE components requires the use of complex technologies and a skilled workforce.

 

Latin America’s experience.

Latin America’s GHG emissions from electricity generation are lower than world averages due to the reliance on hydroelectricity. But the region’s electricity generation matrix hides significant differences between countries.

Brazil, Colombia, or Costa Rica for example relied on hydroelectricity, while fossil fuels are the main source of electricity generation in the Caribbean, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, or Mexico. However, Latin America’s supply of hydroelectricity is becoming less reliable due to changing weather patterns, requiring an increasing use of fossil fuels to meet growing demand.

Moreover, hydroelectric projects encounter increasing communities’ opposition and environmental challenges. RE expansion would then have to consider both levels of dependency (hydro and fossil fuels) while keeping prices low and ensuring that intermittence challenges from RE are addressed. Until recently most of the growth of RE was on biofuels, then wind power and more recently solar energy.

Latin America could achieve lower levels of GHG while also keeping electricity generation costs low by connecting regions with RE surplus potential to demand nodes through transnational grids. Regional integration is believed to lessen the need for national investments while reducing overall GHG and electricity generation costs (Guimaraes 2020).

However, efforts of regional electricity interconnection have not always provided the expected results. Large cost overruns, expensive cost of capital, construction delays, and the tendency for governments to protect their own markets makes regional electricity integration and unlikely alternative.

RE deployment in Latin America has prioritized the expansion of installed capacity at the lowest cost over local manufacturing development.

 

Employees work on the solar panels of the El Romero plant, with a capacity of 196 megawatts, in the desert region of Atacama in northern Chile. CREDIT: Acciona

 

Market driven instruments such as auctions have been the preferred option for RE deployment since they tend to achieve lower prices by stimulating competition. Auctions have not included LCR clauses, but Mexico and Brazil adopted other mechanism promoting LCR in their RE deployment efforts.

Brazil’s LCR operated indirectly by offering companies that complied with the stringent local content access to preferential loans from Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES). Securing low cost of capital was an important competitive advantage during the auction process, encouraging companies to comply with the LCR.

The measurement of LCR was based on weight. Since a tower represents approximately 80% of the total weight of a wind turbine, it implied that developers would have to build in Brazil or acquire the towers from a local manufacturer the towers.

Manufacturing towers locally increased production costs since Brazilian steel was about 70% more expensive than imported one (Kuntze and Moerenhout 2012). The use of weight as a measurement for LCR helped to expand the manufacturing base, but it benefitted mostly a well-established industry (steel) as opposed to the development of new and more complex activities.

Mexico RE policy objectives were multiple but emphasis was given on capacity expansion and low cost of supply (Tyeler and Schmidt 2019). The government also opted for the use of auctions, but the development of a local value chain was not explicitly included in the design of the auctions.

Auctions attracted strong interest from large foreign RE firms. Smaller local developers struggled competing with foreign firms which had access to lower cost of finances from their home countries. Local manufacturers also had difficulty adapting to the discipline foreign buyers brought in terms of market competition and due diligence skills.

Many companies grew used to work through non-competitive procurement processes with CFE. Wary of the risks of entering a new market, foreign power generators opted to reduce risks by controlling what they could control such as their own supply chain.

Mexico meets several conditions for the expansion of solar power generation and the use of LCR to expand its manufacturing activities: The country’s photovoltaic and solar thermal resources are among the world’s best, it has a large market potential, and a strong industrial base. Since 2013 it developed a regulatory framework that, based on market response, was successful at attracting investments.

Even more, Mexico is well positioned to benefit from US re-localization of value chains. However, following the election of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018-2024) the outlook for RE expansion looks uncertain. The elected president preferred to support oil and gas activities, and protect the commercial interest of Pemex, even if that implied selling fuel oil to CFE although the power utility had already started to use RE sources as a viable source of energy. (Grustein 2020).

The government’s decision creates significant regulatory uncertainty, questioning the future of the entire RE deployment strategy, and the expansion of a local value chain.

Contrary to electricity generation, the main source of GHG emission in Latin Americas are from agriculture, forestry, and land use (AFOLU). This is where the region should focus its efforts (Guimaraes 2020).

The use of LCR in RE to expand manufacturing jobs of RE components has been modest. Most of the job opportunities from RE expansion would be on construction, operation, and maintenance.

As such, Latin America’s energy transition in electricity generation is unlikely to be the main solution to reduce GHG, nor will it be a significant source of jobs in the manufacturing of components if the priority is – as it should be- to ensure a supply of electricity at competitive prices.

This, however, does not mean RE deployment should be ignored. On the contrary, efforts should be on strengthening the stability of the regulatory environment on RE electricity generation to reduce dependency on hydroelectricity and fossil fuels.

To capture more jobs, focus should be on improving and expanding workforce’s technical skills on RE activities. As such, universities, and technical centers working in coordination with RE power generators and EPC companies should develop proper certification programs according to the expected market potential of each country.

 

Rene Roger Tissot, Energy Fellow Institute of the Americas, PhD Student University of British Columbia Okanagan, expert on energy economics and local content development programs. M.A. Economics, MBA, CMA.

The post Looking for Jobs in Latin America – Can the Energy Transition Help? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Trafficking survivor Devendra Kumar Mulayam, who hails from Shahapur in the Chandouli district of Uttar Pradesh, had to begin working at age 12 to help pay off the two loans his father had taken out. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
PUNE, India, Sep 22 2020 (IPS)

One of the worst fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the closure of industries in India, which caused thousands of migrant labourers to return home to villages in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal. In a region where the poorest have always been subjected to bonded labour, child labour and slave trafficking, it has meant revisiting the past.

“Uttar Pradesh has seen 35 lakh [3.5 million] workers return home. Azamgarh district alone has seen 1.65 lakh [165,000] returnees. Of these, only 10,000 people could be given employment under MNREGA [Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act],” activist and Rural Organisation for Social Advancement chief functionary, Mushtaque Ahmed, told IPS

• MNREGA guarantees 100 days of wage employment to a rural household where the adults are willing to undertake unskilled labour.

Of late, as the country has progressed into a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, and some workers — who comprised the bulk of the skilled labour in industrial belts — have returned to work.

Bonded labour – formally illegal but still continues

Bonded labour formally ended in India with the passing of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.

• The  Act seeks to end forced labour in all its forms, and is supported by other legislation, namely the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Contract Labour ( Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970, and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen ( Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service ) Act, 1979.

But in the underdeveloped districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where feudal lords exploited the lower castes and had them work for free on their lands in the past, it continues to exist in invisible forms, drawing sustenance from within the casteist social structure that has confined Dalits and Mahadalits to illiteracy and grinding poverty. 

The Mahadalits, are especially vulnerable, with their abjectly low literacy of 9 percent, as compared to the Dalit literacy level of 28 percent. First-generation learners for the most part, the Dalits and Mahadalits are generally unable to access government schemes that guarantee a better future. Often, the inability to pay back a small loan of Rs 5,000 ($68) or Rs 2,000 ($27) sees entire families being bound into slave or bonded labour in brick kilns, or farms owned by the person they are indebted to for generations.

Children also at risk

At times, families are forced to pledge a minor child to work for an unscrupulous trafficker, according to the Freedom Fund. 

The health infrastructure in eastern Uttar Pradesh and in Bihar districts along the Nepal border has always been wanting.

While the COVID-19 pandemic may have worsened the situation but matters become compounded as many villages in Bihar faced the fury of unprecedented floods last month, which saw almost 8.4 million people affected.  Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres in Bihar have collapsed, with the unprecedented floods straining them to the hilt.

• The ICDS  is a nationwide government programme under which children under six and their mothers are cared for through nutrition, education, immunisation, health checkup and referral services. The programme has managed to stem anaemia and other health problems mothers face in underprivileged, rural communities all over India.

Children are more at risk because of the current circumstances than previously.

Human trafficking for slave or bonded labour may either see a child being sent to a place thousands of kilometres away from home, or across the border into Nepal. Within India, the modus operandi involves sending children from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Bengal to a southern state where unfamiliarity with the local language prevents the child labourer from escaping or negotiating a way out and returning home.

With so few options, parents are sometimes lured with a lump sum of Rs 5,000 ($68) to Rs. 10,000 ($136) paid in advance, as Manav Sansadhan Evam Mahila Vikas Sansthan ( MSEMVS) executive director Dr. Bhanuja Sharan Lal told IPS. MSEMVS is an NGO that focuses on the eradication of child labour.

No option but to make children work

But the stories many of the survivors have to relate are harsh.

Wage labourer Umesh Mari from Mayurba village in Sitamarhi district in Bihar, had to take a loan of Rs 300,000 ($4,080) for his wife’s medical treatment.

Since Sitamarhi lacks healthcare facilities needed for serious medical problems, the family had to admit her to a hospital in the adjoining district of Muzaffarpur.

Unable to repay the loan, the family, comprising of four children and son-in-law, had no option but to look for additional, better-paying jobs.

It is how 13-year-old Ramavatar and his brother-in-law Kesari were recruited for a tile fitting job across the border, in Malangwa in neighbouring Nepal. The job promised a wage of Rs 300 ($4) per day. Once there, they found that the conditions entailed working from 9 am until 7 pm with just a half-hour break. It was bonded labour.

There was little food, and erratic or no payment for months. The recent COVID-19 lockdown helped Ramavtar escape and return to his village, as IPS found. However, the family remains worried on account of their unpaid loan. Chances are, Ramavatar may find it hard to resist the trafficking mafiosi, and may have to return to an enslaved existence in bonded labour in another factory once again.

Take the case of Devendra Kumar Mulayam, who hails from Shahapur in the Chandouli district of Uttar Pradesh. The second among five siblings of a landless Dalit family, Mulayam  told IPS how the family became desperate for a source of income following two loans that his father had to take — one was for the marriage of his elder sister marriage and second following an accident that resulted in this elder sister sustaining a sever head injury, which occurred after her wedding.

As the eldest son in the family, 12-year-old Mulayam had to drop out of school and start looking for a job, while his younger siblings had to forgo their education.

Courtesy of a recruiter, Mulayam soon found his way to a textile factory in Coimbatore, where he was hired as a loader, at Rs 150 ($2) per day in 2010.

He was made to work for 12-15 hours each day, and the payments were erratic. Worse still, he had to pay for his own treatment wherever he was injured during work. 

Mulayam and his fellow-workers remained closely guarded and were never allowed to move away from either their workplace or living quarters.

Any breach of “discipline” or error at work invited severe beatings. In 2011, when things became unbearable, Mulayam and 18 other fellow workers decided to protest. Theirs was one of the worst forms of bonded labour.

Recounting the horror, Mulayam told IPS, “We were heavily assaulted, and thrown out. Scared of being rounded up by the police and sent back to the clutches of our tormentors, we kept hiding in the forested tracts adjoining the town, for five days. Thankfully, I could manage to tell my family members back home of my plight. They sought the help of a local NGO, which managed to secure my release and arrange for my  return.”

Despite the pandemic, children are still being bonded.

“We recently rescued nine children from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh who were trafficked to a panipuri [an Indian snack]   factory in Telangana after their parents were paid an advance of Rs 10,000 each.  Once there, they were made to work from 2 am every morning to 4 pm in the evening. They were only given their meals, and had to work for free. Similar circumstances had driven eight children from Azamgarh (in Uttar Pradesh) to a textile factory in Gujarat where they were used as slave labour,” Lal told IPS.

• This is the first in a two-part series on bonded labour in India. Next week IPS will look at the government initiatives and impediments  in overcoming the problem.

 

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

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By Antonio Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2020 (IPS)

The ideals of the United Nations – peace, justice, equality and dignity — are beacons to a better world.

But the Organization we celebrate today emerged only after immense suffering. It took two world wars, millions of deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust for world leaders to commit to international cooperation and the rule of law.

That commitment produced results. A Third World War – which so many had feared — has been avoided.

Never in modern history have we gone so many years without a military confrontation between the major powers.

This is a great achievement of which Member States can be proud – and which we must all strive to preserve.

Down the decades, there have been other historic accomplishments, including:

Peace treaties and peace-keeping; Decolonization; Human rights standards – and mechanisms to uphold them; The triumph over apartheid; Life-saving humanitarian aid for millions of victims of conflict and disaster; the eradication of diseases the steady reduction of hunger’; the progressive development of international law; Landmark pacts to protect the environment and our planet

Most recently, unanimous support for the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change provided an inspiring vision for the 21st century.

Yet there is still so much to be done. Of the 850 delegates to the San Francisco Conference, just 8 were women. Twenty-five years since the Beijing Platform for Action, gender inequality remains the greatest single challenge to human rights around the world.

Climate calamity looms; Biodiversity is collapsing; Poverty is again rising; Hatred is spreading.; Geopolitical tensions are escalating.; Nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert.

Transformative technologies have opened up new opportunities but also exposed new threats.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the world’s fragilities. We can only address them together.

Today we have a surplus of multilateral challenges and a deficit of multilateral solutions.

I welcome the General Assembly’s 75th anniversary declaration and commitment to reinvigorate multilateralism.

You have invited me to assess how to advance our common agenda, and I will report back with analysis and recommendations.

This will be an important and inclusive process of profound reflection. Already we know that we need more — and more effective — multilateralism, with vision, ambition and impact.

National sovereignty —a pillar of the United Nations — goes hand-in-hand with enhanced international cooperation based on common values and shared responsibilities in pursuit of progress for all.

No one wants a world government – but we must work together to improve world governance.

In an interconnected world, we need a networked multilateralism, in which the United Nations family, international financial institutions, regional organizations, trading blocs and others work together more closely and more effectively.

We also need as the President said, an inclusive multilateralism, drawing on civil society, cities, businesses, local authorities and more and more on young people.

 

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, in a statement marking the 75th anniversary of the United Nations

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By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BERLIN and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 22 2020 (IPS)

‘Ethno-populism’ has emerged and spread in recent decades in response to the mixed consequences of neoliberal globalization. It appropriates nationalist rhetoric for narrow ethnic, religious, cultural or other communal ends, typically with a chauvinist, jingoist rejection of selected Others as politically expedient.

Vladimir Popov

Politics of macroeconomic policy
Most elected governments in the world typically rely on the political support of coalitions among different interest groups, including classes. Hence, unsurprisingly, most political platforms involve what are essentially populist coalitions, within a political party or among several such groupings, seeking popular electoral support.

Mancur Olson’s notion of ‘distributional coalitions’ — i.e., political alliances cooperating to secure shared, complementary, not conflicting demands — presumed that such populist regimes typically have to raise enough tax revenue for redistribution in response to demands and pressures from interest groups.

Thus, fiscal mechanisms became central for such redistribution by determining not only the sources of state revenue, especially taxation, but also the beneficiaries and consequences of government expenditure.

Alleged ‘macroeconomic populism’ in Latin America has been used to explain its 1980s’ ‘lost decade’ as due to irresponsible fiscal policy. Other factors, such as abuse of the ‘non-system’ after US President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, are ignored in this narrative.

Thus, macroeconomic mismanagement, especially fiscal indiscipline, was blamed for the developing country debt dilemmas of the 1980s and the transitional economies’ problems of the 1990s.

Retrospectively, the problems of communist party-run states were misleadingly blamed on both enterprise and national level ‘soft budget constraints’ (SBCs) when, in fact, these were much more pervasive during the problematic 1990s’ transitions of ‘post-socialist’ economies.

Coping with fiscal deficits
Constrained by the unwillingness and inability to raise enough tax revenue, and the desire to redistribute in favour of particular interest groups to remain in power, governments are left with four options to indirectly finance subsidies.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The first is to maintain control over particular prices, i.e., selective price controls. But controls over the prices of non-resource goods still require budgetary subsidies to companies producing the goods and services.

By contrast, price controls for fuel, energy and other resource commodities can redistribute resource rents to consumers. This option, only available to resource rich countries, thus contributes to the popular ‘resource curse’ story.

A second mode of subsidization, when funds are not available, is inflationary government budget financing. The government is said to cause inflation by spending beyond its (revenue) means, i.e., the tax revenue shortfall supposedly causes inflation, i.e., ostensibly ‘imposing an inflation tax’ on everyone.

A third option is debt financing, using either domestic or external borrowings. Debt financing buys some time to maintain subsidies, but debt servicing imposes an additional burden on the government budget to service the debt with payments for both the principal and interest.

A fourth option has been to maintain an overvalued exchange rate, effectively favouring consumers over producers, importers against exporters, and consumption at the expense of savings. Rising consumption, associated with increased imports financed by external borrowings or foreign exchange reserves, can only temporarily ‘kick the can down the road’, before balance of payments problems come home to roost.

There has long been a near consensus that persistent exchange rate overvaluation is detrimental for economic growth and transformation in developing countries. Needless to say, exchange rate overvaluation is favoured by governments collecting taxes in domestic currency having to service external debt in foreign currencies, and import lobbies, i.e., those earning at home and spending abroad.

Macroeconomic populism and deficit budgets
There seem to be two ways to deal with demands for populist redistribution and to ensure macroeconomic stability. First, by eliminating demands for redistribution by reducing inequalities, especially to maintain political support for the ruling distributional coalition.

Second, those leading the ruling distributional coalition in power can redistribute income explicitly via direct subsidies, rather than indirectly. They can also try to reduce the costs of preserving political support by other means.

Research on Latin American and other countries suggests that ‘transitional democracies’ are less effective than either authoritarian regimes or well-established democratic regimes in resisting macroeconomic populism. Hence, some populist distributional coalitions have proved more politically stable and less wasteful than others.

Contrary to prevailing economic mythology, fiscal constraints in socialist economies were harder than in developing countries and no less hard than in most developed countries. SBCs in socialist economies were not pervasive, as widely presumed, but selective, i.e., involving subsidization of some enterprises or industries at the expense of others.

Such selective subsidization is typically part of industrial policy, whether successful or otherwise, but is neither an intrinsic feature of centrally planned socialist economies, nor of fiscal constraints. In many countries, especially in East Asia, such selective subsidies, not pervasive SBCs, have been successfully used to promote export oriented and high technology industries.

With democratization, small and well-organized lobbies, e.g., for resource and military interests, have been able to influence public policies far more successfully than the far more numerous, but typically poorly organized consumers, producers and others amorphously constituting the public interest.

The generally weak post-socialist states were generally unable to resist pressures from influential interest groups. Thus, subsidies and other policies supporting such industries and enterprises increasingly undermined the strict national fiscal constraints under socialism.

Fiscal indiscipline myth
Thus, increasingly widespread enterprise-level SBCs engendered deficit financing, which became associated with permanent government budget deficits, debt accumulation and other macroeconomic imbalances, resulting in high inflation, in turn worsening macroeconomic instability during such transitions.

The combination of weak states and competing powerful interest groups thus caused governments to ‘kick the can down the road’ by accumulating deficits and debt, ‘printing money’ (inflationary financing), keeping domestic fuel and energy prices below world levels and maintaining an overvalued exchange rate.

Deficit spending is just one possible ‘populist’ macroeconomic policy. This was actually rare in socialist countries, but widespread in transition economies, especially the former Soviet republics, and also common to many developing countries, especially in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The recent and ongoing rise and consolidation of ethno-populist regimes underscore the need for more rigorous understanding of the socio-economic bases for new distributional coalitions, the conditions enabling their emergence and sustenance, as well as their likely implications.

 

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By Mabingue Ngom and Shoko Arakaki
NEW YORK, Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

The countries of Central Sahel—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—face an unprecedented crisis, marked by violent extremism, forced displacement, and rising insecurity. The sharp increase in armed attacks on communities, health centres, schools and other public institutions and infrastructure has disrupted livelihoods and access to social services. The impact on affected people is devastating.

As the international community responds to the crisis, we must meet immediate needs, and invest in long-term development. We must also work on shaping peace together, the theme of this year’s International Peace Day.

In Central Sahel, shaping peace together requires the full participation of women and young people. Engaging, employing, and empowering women and young people offers the best hope for peace, stability and recovery.

While the responses to address this complex crisis to date have centred on humanitarian and military interventions, collective investments are required simultaneously in all sectors including humanitarian response, economic and social development, and peacebuilding to foster a sustainable and resilient society.

As a priority, governments and partners must take action to reduce massive human suffering. It is important not to lose sight of the centrality of protection in our collective response to this crisis. Of 63 million people, more than 13 million, about 1 of 5, need humanitarian assistance. More than 1.5 million people are displaced, fleeing from non-state armed groups in the Central Sahel region and from neighboring countries, and violence is taking a massive toll.

Assistance is needed to address gender-based violence, lack of basic health services, growing food insecurity, rising poverty, and COVID-19. In Central Sahel, as in countries around the world, women and girls bear a disproportionate impact during crises, and face increased risks of sexual exploitation and abuse. During COVID-19, reports of violence against women are rising.

Given overstretched health systems and health worker capacity, it is vital that frontline responders are equipped with personal protective equipment to prevent the spread of COVID-19, respond to the needs of survivors, and provide much needed services.

An estimated 12 million girls in the Sahel are out of school due to the pandemic, which puts them at greater risk of sexual assault, child marriage, and early pregnancy, according to the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) programme.

Launched by the United Nations and the World Back Group in response to a call made by Sahel governments, the ambitious SWEDD programme, led by UNFPA with the West Africa Health Association and partners, is a benchmark initiative to reduce gender inequality and convert population growth into an economic dividend.

To move forward, the vulnerabilities and violations of women, adolescents and youth affected by the crisis must be addressed to avoid a disaffected and dependent generation, from which to draw young people (and young men in particular) to armed groups and extremism.

It is time for collective action to put women and young people at the center of efforts, support social reform, and invest in social services while responding to the pandemic. Dynamic partnerships between governments and humanitarian agencies could provide women and young people with opportunities and support protection, health including sexual and reproductive health, and education.

Enabling women and youth to develop their skills, receive training, and earn an income would foster social cohesion, reduce economic dependency and extreme poverty, and promote peace, resilience and recovery in a more sustainable manner. Building more inclusive and healthy communities diminishes risks such as early marriage and early and unintended pregnancy.

Enabling women and young people to become self-sufficient creates an atmosphere of ownership and empowerment.

To drive progress, there is a need to develop economic incentives for private sector companies to employ young people, including young women. A strong partnership with the private sector will allow governments to spur innovation, progress, and a more diverse funding base supporting longer-term youth employment strategies. A win-win with young people is one where companies can find a balance between philanthropy and business, and young people can achieve financial goals and independence as they transition into adulthood.

To succeed, the governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger should lay the institutional and structural foundation for youth employment by promoting programmes and partnerships for skills training and establishing small and medium-sized enterprises. This is especially important in remote communities to benefit young people and the communities in which they live.

Efforts should reflect the rights, and drive to self-determination and economic prosperity, of young women and men, and promote gender equality, social cohesion, and access to quality health services and care, including psychosocial support and family planning.

Given growing funding constraints, the UN system must demonstrate new and innovative ways of working and efficiency in “doing more with less”. A complementary humanitarian, development and peacebuilding approach is the only way to address the complexities of the Central Sahel crisis. Investments across these three pillars can address immediate needs, root causes, and fund efforts to build back better with women and young people at the centre.

 

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Excerpt:

Mabingue Ngom, Regional Director, West and Central Africa Region, UNFPA and Shoko Arakaki, Director of Humanitarian Office, UNFPA

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By External Source
Sep 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Vietnam is the ninth country to submit its updated NDC to the UNFCCC. The submission followed a comprehensive process over three years, under the guidance of Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc. Vietnam’s inclusive NDC review and updating process, which was coordinated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), involved active participation by scientists, ministries, agencies, non-governmental organizations, research institutes, enterprises, international organizations, and development partners. MONRE also spearheaded a series of national, sub-national, sectoral, and thematic workshops to assess feasibility, content, and implementation measures.

The more ambitious NDC features stronger mitigation and adaptation commitments. Vietnam’s updated NDC identifies economy-wide mitigation measures for the period 2021-2030 that spans the energy, agriculture, waste, land use, land use change and forestry, and industrial sectors. The plan is distinct for tackling greenhouse gas emissions by optimizing industrial processes, while changing its base year from 2010 to 2014 and increasing its unconditional emission reduction target to 9 percent by 2030. Vietnam’s new plans to decrease emissions from industrial processes includes replacing construction materials and improving cement and chemical production processes, as well as reducing HFC consumption. The successful implementation of this enhanced NDC is projected to increase emission reduction by 21.2 million tons of CO2e, or a third (34 percent) compared to the INDC, to a total of 83.9 million tCO2e. Vietnam’s conditional emission reduction target is now 27 percent (or 250.8 million tCO2e), which is 52.6 million tons of CO2e more than the emissions reduction target in the first NDC.

Vietnam’s updated NDC also includes robust adaptation components. The national climate plan identifies targets and pathways to improve adaptive capacity, enhance resilience, and reduce risks caused by climate change. The updated NDC is directly linked to the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), and includes loss and damage, health, gender equality, and child protection. In addition to the strengthened mitigation and adaptation components, the updated NDC features new elements and significantly improves the means of implementation. Vietnam outlines clear commitments to mainstream the NDC with socio-economic development plans and strategies and draws clear overarching and discrete linkages with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The country’s commitment to linking climate and development is typified by explicit links between elements of the updated NDC, SDG 11 on sustainable and resilient cities and human settlements, and SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production models.

As the first cycle for updated NDCs heightens, Vietnamese officials are rightly celebrating their climate leadership and collaborative approach. “This is a great effort of all relevant government agencies with strong leadership from MONRE and cooperation from development partners. I am proud of the achievement and would like to thank all for the support that we have received during the last three years. I look forward to working with all for the implementation of Vietnam’s updated NDC,” states Mr. Pham Van Tan, Deputy Director General at MONRE and NDC Partnership Focal Point for Vietnam.

NDC Partnership support for Vietnam’s three-year long review and update process

Vietnam’s ambitious updated NDC paves the way for sustainability and demonstrates country ownership. The NDC Partnership congratulates the people of Vietnam and is proud of our collaboration since 2017. The Partnership’s engagement with Vietnam contributed to the NDC review and updating process, both directly and through the efforts of many of Partnership’s institutional members. Coordination and collaboration among Government ministries and with development partners and other stakeholders for the implementation, review and update of the NDC was enhanced by an inter-agency matrix developed by GIZ, UNDP, and the World Bank at the start of the process. NDC Partnership members GIZ and UNDP played a key role in supporting the government, with GIZ focusing mainly on the mitigation components of the NDC (including agriculture, energy, industrial processes, LULUCF, and waste), while UNDP supported the adaptation component as well as co-benefits, synergies, and impacts of mitigation options on socio-economic development. At the same time, the World Bank contributed to the process through sectoral studies such as identification of investment and technical options for solid waste management in support of achieving the NDC mitigation targets, technical assessments to inform the development of policies to enhance water use efficiency in support of NDC priorities, and research with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) on getting to a low-carbon energy path to achieve the NDC target. The support of GIZ on the NDC mitigation component and the World Bank’s additional research with MOIT aided the inclusion of the industrial sector in the updated NDC. “It is an important milestone that the updated NDC now also covers emissions from industrial processes, which in 2014 accounted for about 12% of the country’s total emissions,” says Kia Fariborz, Chief Technical Advisor of SIPA at GIZ Vietnam. Mr. Fariborz added that “the updated NDC now calls for designing and implementing ambitious sector strategies and policies.” UNICEF, UN Women, and other partners also provided support for the Vietnam’s updated NDC.

NDC mainstreaming across provinces through CAEP

Vietnam is already taking action in line with its updated NDC. The country is leveraging support through the NDC Partnership’s Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), delivered by the World Bank, WRI, and SNV. CAEP support is focused on translating the NDC to the provincial level through mainstreaming of targets in socio-economic development plans. As part of these efforts, SNV is developing model approaches and a gender-sensitive framework for mainstreaming NDC targets and actions in provincial socio-economic development plans.

Accelerating implementation and coordination of the NDC with Partnership support

Vietnam’s strengthened climate commitments are an opportunity for greater collaboration to support coordinated and effective climate action. The updated NDC outlines clear needs for the implementation phase, including challenges and response measures. As the Government of Vietnam looks to collaborate with partners to increase support for climate change adaptation and mitigation actions, the Partnership stands ready to support the coordinated implementation of its updated NDC. We value the opportunity to support accelerating climate action in this early (since November 2016) and longstanding member of the NDC Partnership.

Source: NDC Partnership

 

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By External Source
Sep 21 2020 (IPS-Partners)

 

Special Issue on the contributions of non-governmental organisations and civil society
to agricultural and rural development

– Involving local communities in setting the agricultural development agenda
– Ten years of opportunities to improve the lives of family farmers
– BRAC’s contributions to agricultural development
– Updated data sets for more efficient investment strategies for family farms
– Can food production keep up with population increase in Malawi?

– Northern civil society in agriculture in the South: a failure?
– A systems approach to unlock the potential of African agriculture
– Promoting biodiversity and livelihoods through community forest restoration
– Introducing the new Chair of TAA
– Alternative livelihoods in an opium-based agricultural economy
– News from NGO institutional members

Source: ‘Agriculture for Development’ journal

The post Agriculture for Development appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The SDGs require renewed support and financing, experts say ahead of the United Nations General Assembly. Credit: Amanda Voisard / UN Women / CC BY-NC-ND

By Tim Mohin
AMSTERDAM, Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

The unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19 have reminded us that we are an interconnected global community. While this crisis rightly has dominated our attention, we must not lose sight of progress on the broader aims of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement.

Like the pandemic, our response must transcend national boundaries, engage the public and private sectors – and the pace has to quicken.

Corporations are absolutely essential to sustainable development. We live in a globalized economy where some multinational companies have revenues that exceed the GDP of many countries, workforces in the millions and supply chains that touch every corner of the world.

The good news is that most large companies recognize their responsibility and voluntarily report their progress, using the GRI Standards, which are the world’s most widely used for sustainability reporting.

It is crucial that all businesses recognize their impacts on society. This means a changed outlook in boardrooms and C-suites – from a solely inward facing consideration of financially material business impacts to a broader recognition of the full impacts to society.

Yet, without a full understanding of these impacts, businesses cannot enact the changes needed to improve their sustainability performance. At the core of the issue is transparency. And, not just any transparency.

For more than two decades, GRI has advanced the practice of reporting and managing impacts – those material to the company and the world around it. This kind of disclosure is needed to advance sustainable development and provide the accountability demanded by investors, consumers, employees, governments and civil society.

The quality of reporting is a critical issue. For transparency to be an effective tool, the disclosures must be complete, accurate and timely. Many companies do an excellent job, but more work is needed to raise the bar when it comes to the robustness and relevance of sustainability data.

Credit: United Nations

Companies and their accountants play a big role to help improve quality. Policy makers must also step in with mandates that require consistent, reliable, high-quality ESG disclosure. I am very encouraged by the commitment from the EU to enhance the non-financial reporting directive under their ‘Green Deal’.

The accountancy profession plays a major role here. For example, the Accounting for Sustainability call to action in response to climate change, signed by 14 accountancy bodies around the world, emphasised the influential role of accountants in supporting businesses to respond to the climate emergency.

This includes using their expertise to provide “financial and strategic analysis, disclosure, scenario analysis and assurance” while “ensuring transparency and appropriate disclosure around climate related risks and opportunities.”

As Michael Izza (CEO of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) put it at the World Economic Forum 2020, “it’s not just about collecting the data, it’s what you do with it”. He then identified the importance of accountants using their skills to measure, report, audit and assure data. I wholeheartedly agree.

The reality is that good corporate governance requires a long-term perspective that understands, considers and balances the multiple and competing demands of stakeholders.

Robust, reliable and complete ESG disclosure, based on global reporting standards, is one of the tools available to corporate leaders to make this possible. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that we face multi-faceted challenges as one interconnected global society. Now more than ever we must all be good stewards of one another and the global commons.

A version of this article was originally published in the ICAEW Quarterly (magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales).

 

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Excerpt:

Tim Mohin, is Chief Executive of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

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By Kirla Echegaray Alfaro
LIMA, Peru, Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

On the eve of its bicentennial, Peru is addressing climate change with the needed sense of urgency and ambition. Our inclusive, ‘whole society’ approach aims to awaken new opportunities that are within reach of all of our citizens. Like COVID-19, climate change is a landmark which will have a clearly established before and after period. Without a doubt, it is paving a path towards sustainable development that will improve the well-being of all Peruvians.

In this context, Carbon Footprint Peru is a government-led initiative aimed to recognize the efforts of public and private organizations in reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By doing so, they also contribute to reaching the 35 percent GHG reduction target established in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) by 2030.

To encourage more organizations to join the Peru Carbon Footprint, Peru’s Ministry of Environment (MINAM) created a symbolic figure, named Nono. Nono is a curious and observant Peruvian spectacled bear who uses his large glasses to seek out and monitor the carbon footprints left by companies. He also encourages new organizations to join this environmental initiative through the platform created for that purpose. In this way, they will leave a record of their contributions to face the climate crisis and contribute to the construction of a resilient and low-carbon country.

More than 165 organizations have already registered with the platform and 61 have calculated their GHG emissions. Our goal for the bicentennial is to have at least 100 organizations measure their carbon footprint, thus strengthening the country’s climate action and demonstrating that companies, in a COVID-19 context, are increasingly migrating towards a new coexistence that respects the environment, so ignored in recent times.

MINAM seeks to convey a clear message: climate change is a fact that should concern us as much as the COVID-19 pandemic currently threatening the health of all humanity. Today, Nono needs the help of all citizens to promote his message through social networks and to invite brands to join Peru’s sense of urgency and ambition to face climate change.

Kirla Echegaray Alfaro

Nono, Peru’s Carbon Footprint Bear, is part of the work being done in the country through the Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP). CAEP is an initiative of the NDC Partnership, a global coalition of more than 180 countries and institutions supporting countries in improving the quality, increasing the ambition, and accelerating the implementation of their national climate plans. It also has the support of Peru’s NDC Support Programme, implemented by the MINAM, with technical assistance from the United Nations Development Program, and is also part of the International Climate Initiative.

The work conducted under CAEP strengthens Peru’s comprehensive vision for managing climate change by addressing five dimensions: (1) strengthening the institutional framework; (2) multi-sectoral implementation; (3) multi-level implementation; (4) multi-stakeholder work; and (5) NDC funding. Through this initiative, Peru is working with various partners such as the AVINA Foundation, the Global Green Growth Institute, ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, SouthSouthNorth and its local partner Libélula, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. The work includes, as an example, the development of sectoral implementation plans, the preparation of emissions inventories at the regional level, training programs at various levels, the elaboration of a technical proposal for the National Strategy for Climate Change 2050, the design of a reporting and monitoring system for international climate finance, the design of a guarantee fund for climate responsible investments and, of course, raising awareness and creating ownership in various societal actors through campaigns such as Nono’s.

The work done through CAEP is part of Peru’s broad and ambitious action to catalyze transformational change towards resilient, sustainable, low-emission development. The involvement of the private sector in climate action is essential and entails a win-win relationship. There is a growing demand for highly efficient, low-carbon products and services. Thanks to the Peru Carbon Footprint, organizations are reducing their costs, promoting innovation, improving their reputation, and meeting Sustainable Development Goal 13: “Climate Action”.

Nono’s voice today is the voice of all. The time to act is now. Let’s share his message and leave a positive footprint.

 

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• Put Climate at the Heart of COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plans

The post Nono the Carbon Footprint Bear—Part of Peru’s Ambitious Work on Climate Action appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Minister Kirla Echegaray Alfaro holds a law degree and a Master's degree and specialization in Management and Public Policy. She has more than 15 years working with the government on issues of environment, technology, and health.

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David Mande shows the walls of a house made out ecobricks. The ecobricks, according to Mande, are filled with moist soil to ensure that they become hard. The bottle top is then tightly closed to ensure that the moist sand and soil bond to make a brick that can be turned into a strong wall. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
MPIGI/MUKONO/KAMPALA, Uganda , Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

About 40 kilometres out of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, in the Mpigi area, you can find an entire village hill with houses that have plastic bottles walls and car tyre rooftops.

Plastic bottles, which you can usually found littered almost everywhere in rural and urban Uganda, could help alleviate the country’s housing shortage as well as avoid environmental harm. An innovative idea of turning plastic bottles into “ecological bricks” is one of the latest solutions being promoted by environmentally sensitive individuals and NGOs here.

The village in Mpigi is part of a project by the Social Innovation Enterprise Academy (SINA), which promotes the use of ecobricks as an upcycling solution to the plastic waste problem rather than reverting to recycling.

• Recycling would involve the waste being reduced or destroyed from its current form to create something new. Whereas upcycling uses the existing waste and incorporates it into something new.

The initiative has spread out to a number of refugee camps in Uganda.

Uganda’s plastic headache 

Like many other African countries, Uganda is faced with the threats of plastics arising from the packing and beverages industry.

The plastics from bottled soft drinks end up in landfills, scattered all over the streets and block roadside drainage. Most of the plastics waste has been found floating on shores of Lake Victoria, it’s swamps and wetland or are simply burnt in the open air.

It is estimated that Kampala, the country’s capital, alone generates more than 350,000 tons of solid waste every year, only half of which is collected. So plastic remains one of the huge environmental concerns for the country whose plastic consumption increases by the day.

David Mande is a promoter of the ecobrick solution. He works as a builder and a trainer at SINA. The plastic waste have huge significance for him. Mande’s younger brother died tragically after trying to cross a swamp. After several hours of searching for the dead boy, his body was found concealed under a pile of bottles.

“I need to make use of these bottles. I found out that in Nepal and Nigeria, they were using those bottles to build houses in rural communities. And it has worked too in Uganda,” he told IPS.

He has become an enthusiastic promoter of upcycling plastic bottles instead of recycling.

The ecobricks, according to Mande, are filled with moist soil to ensure that they become hard. The bottle top is then tightly closed to ensure that the moist sand and soil bond to make a brick that can be turned into a strong wall.

Ultimately, Mande said, the aim is to maintain a green planet.

“So we collect the bottles and tyres from the environment and turn them into ecobricks and tiles. Then we use them for the construction of beautiful houses like the ones you are seeing across there,” said Mande. 

Are ecobricks a solution to the country’s housing shortage?

Mande estimates that three million plastic bottles that were littering the environment have been used to construct some 117 houses across this East African nation.

Though it may take a while yet to alleviate the country’s housing shortage. According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the country has a deficit of 2.1 million housing units, growing at a rate of 200,000 units a year. It is estimated that by 2030, the country’s housing deficit is expected to reach in excess of five million units.

Edison Nuwamanya, who runs a shop from one of the houses constructed with plastic bottles or eco-bricks, told IPS that he had not seen these types of buildings until he moved to Mpigi area.

“Nature always provides the cool environment; it is rarely hot in here. It looks nice and it feels good to be in,” Nuwamanya told IPS of the house.

Back in Kampala’s Kamokya slum, a group of young people have turned plastic waste bottles to their advantage by promoting ecobricks as an alternative to mud and wattle houses common in this area.

The men and women from the Ghetto Research Lab collect plastic bags and bottles and repurpose them into ecobricks. From a distance one is welcomed by piles of bottles and polythene bags, which they use to make the bricks.

Rehema Naluekenge is one of the women involved constructing houses using the bottles. She uses a metal rod to staff soil and polythene bags into the bottle.

“I compact polythene bags and soil into the bottle until it gets hard. Because if the bottle remains soft as it was meant to be, it can’t make a brick,” she explained to IPS.

“The houses constructed with bottles or ecobricks are proving to be quite durable. We have not seen any develop cracks,” said Nalukenge. “Our operating principal at Ghetto Research is that waste is only waste when you waste it.” 

Women in eastern Uganda’s Mbale city collect plastic waste for recycling. Proponents of upcycling say that in recycling waste one ends up polluting the environment. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

The demand for Uganda’s plastic waste has dropped

It has been common to find huge heaps of plastics in urban areas, these are usually collected by women and children for recycling into plastic flake products, which would be exported to China and India.

Manufacturers in India and China would recycle the flakes into products like polyester fibres for cloth and carpets or back into plastics bottles. But the market seems to have dried up. A middleman who was supplying these plastic flakes to China told IPS that the closure of particularly the China imports has had huge blow to the recycling industry in Uganda.

“There is no demand from our usual customers. It is not a COVID-19 effect. China’s demand reduced [before the outbreak], followed by India in mid-October last year,” the middleman, who declined to be named, told IPS.

A kinder method of construction

In the central Ugandan district of Mukono stands another upcycling project — this one is by high school teacher Allan Obbo. Obbo is the owner of the Bottle Garden Resort, whose entire perimeter wall and a number of cottages have been constructed from waste bottles.

“Research tells us that plastics are very dangerous to the environment … look at our lakes, the lakes are choked. And research tells us that for this bottle to degrade, it will take 300 years.

“So if I use one for building, it has more life than when left in the soil. So using this bottle as an alternative for construction saves the environment,” Obbo told IPS.

“Construction materials are detrimental to the environment. When you get the bricks, sometimes you are using soils that you could have used for farming. Then on top of that you go on cutting down trees, but when you are using the bottles, you are retrieving them from the environment,” said Obbo

Obbo doesn’t know how many bottles he has retrieved from waste bins to construct his Bottle Garden Resort. 

“I have one unit I took the time to count and it has 12,000 bottles. But if you put all the structures together, they are over a million bottles. It would have choked the environment,” he said

Lack of awareness and government support

While Obbo thinks that eco-bricks can serve as alternative building material, he told IPS that he was disappointed that construction engineers in the country’s urban areas cannot approve building plans for developers planning to construct houses using waste plastic bottles.

Obbo thinks recycling has not helped to retrieve all the bottles and that it cannot be comparable to upcycling.

“Remember recycling it into a reusable plastic, again there is that carbon emitted. And when that carbon goes to the ozone layer, it will affect the environment. With this one, there is nothing that goes in the air to pollute the environment,” he said.

Architect Patricia Kayongo, the managing director of Kampala-based Dream Architects Ltd., has been involved in supervision of construction projects in government and the private sector in Uganda. 

She told IPS that while the ecobricks have not been tested and approved by the country’s bureau of standards, they, together with other buildings materials, can be used as a sustainable building solution.

“And not much research has been done on them. It means that people have been denied of more options for constructing houses cheaply,” said Kayongo.

She said recycled materials like glass and plastics are good for construction but they were not being utilised to solve the housing deficit in most countries.

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A landmark handshake-former Prime Minister Raila Odinga & President Uhuru Kenyatta bridge their differences and sign a declaration of peace between the two political leaders. March 9, 2018. Credit: State House

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Walid Badawi
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

Amid various global conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Day of Peace (IDOP) was established to commemorate the strengthening of the ideals of peace globally. Today, peace is not just the absence of conflict, but a key prerequisite for development. It is in recognition of the crucial linkages between peace, respect for human rights and sustainable development that more than 36 indicators for peace were included across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Just like charity, peace begins at home.

Kenya stands out as a paradigm of locally crafted peace processes and cross-border initiatives with Ethiopia and Uganda that are gaining global visibility.

March 9, 2018 will go down in Kenya’s history books as one of many defining moments when the country took a step closer towards peace. On this day, on the steps of Harambee House, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Rt Honorable, Raila Odinga, shook hands. This averted a major political crisis that was characterized by calls for regional secession, economic boycotts and mobilization for civil unrest.

The theme of this year’s IDOP is ‘building peace together’ which reminds us of what has been achieved, and what remains to be done to secure a peaceful and just world. In the midst of continuing conflicts around the world, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has appealed for a global ceasefire, urging all warring parties to lay down their weapons and focus on the battle against the common enemy, the COVID-19 pandemic. This call was by no means directed merely to armed parties, but is a call to Member States, regional partners, non-State actors, civil society organizations, to return to the fundamental values of the UN Charter.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a host of inequalities and vulnerabilities in our societies that threaten human progress. For the first time since 1990, human development is on course to decline, affecting the most marginalized in our societies disproportionately, women, the elderly, unemployed youth, refugees, and other vulnerable groups, especially those in humanitarian settings. That is why it is more important than ever to work together across all sectors and at all levels to “build forward better”.

But with every crisis comes opportunity. The UN is working with countries around the world, including Kenya, to take immediate bold action to stem the socio-economic impacts and put in place recovery strategies that are sustainable, transformative and innovative. Together, we have a chance to take a bold leap forward to a sustainable, inclusive, peaceful, and resilient future, with the SDGs as our compass.

In its support to the Government and people of Kenya, the UN is not only responding to the dire health and economic needs of COVID-19, we are also engaging closely on the impact of the crisis on stability and social cohesion.

The National Peacebuilding Strategy on Covid-19, being launched during IDOP 2020, sets out an inclusive and integrated framework for the governance, peace and security sector to respond to and recover from the impacts of COVID-19. The Strategy is a great opportunity for all Kenyans to shape peace together and steer the national debate in the direction of a united, peaceful and prosperous Kenya.

The 17 SDGs provide a framework for improving the conditions which will engender peaceful societies while addressing the underlying causes and drivers of conflict. Peace enables every individual to attain their human capability, dignity and choice. It creates an environment for optimal development. The mutually reinforcing nexus between peace and development places prevention and peacebuilding at the centre of the work of the UN.

This year’s observance of IDOP is particularly special, coming as the UN celebrates its 75th Anniversary. The UN General Assembly will mark the occasion at a time of vast and unprecedented stress on people and planet under the theme: “the future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism – confronting COVID-19 through effective multilateral action.”

Kenya’s unwavering commitment to the UN and to multilateralism has received international recognition, evidenced by the recent election to the Security Council from 2021 to 2023 and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s leadership as a global youth champion.

As Kenya continues to shine on the global stage, so must she continue to demonstrate her resolve to maintaining peace and social cohesion domestically. The inclusion of women and youth in all institutions and decision-making processes as enshrined in the constitution, must serve as the basis for governance, no matter how bumpy the road ahead may be.

Effective implementation of the National Peacebuilding Strategy is the right way forward.

 

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Excerpt:

Siddharth Chatterjee (@sidchat1) is the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Walid Badawi (@walidbadawi) is the UNDP Resident Representative to Kenya.

The post Peace is the North Star During and the Post COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Sep 20 2020 (IPS)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has generated an outpouring of grief around the globe. Part of this grief reflects her unparalleled status as a feminist icon and pioneer for women in the legal profession and beyond.

There is already considerable interest in what her departure means for the future of the US Supreme Court, and indeed, the wider political landscape. But to understand that, we must reflect on her legacy.

In 1956, Ginsburg enrolled in Harvard Law School, one of only nine women in her year alongside about 500 men. Reflecting the prevailing mindset of the time, which regarded the study and practise of law as the proper domain of men, the Harvard dean, Erwin Griswold, asked each of the nine women how they could justify taking the place of a man.

Ginsburg’s answer, that she wanted to better understand her husband Marty’s career as a lawyer (he was the year ahead of her at Harvard), belies the reality of the enormous contribution she would make to public life in the subsequent six decades.

 The number nine would come to be significant in marking her success in a profession traditionally dominated by men. In 1993, she took her place on the nine-judge Supreme Court as the second woman appointed in its history.

In more recent years, in response to questions about when there will be “enough” women judges, Ginsburg replied there would enough when there were nine women on the Supreme Court. Acknowledging that people are shocked by this response, Ginsburg famously countered,

there’s been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.

This exchange points to just how ingrained the idea that judging is men’s work had become.

 

A formidable mind

Long before President Bill Clinton resolved to nominate Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg had established a reputation as an academic (she was the second woman to teach law full-time at Rutgers University and the first woman to become a tenured professor at Columbia Law School). She was also known as a feminist litigator, leading the American Civil Liberties Union’s campaign for gender equality.

Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court was an uncontroversial appointment. She was regarded as a restrained moderate and was confirmed by the Senate 96 votes to three.

Although there were some concerns she was a “radical doctrinaire feminist”, her credentials were bolstered by her record on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980).

 

 

Ginsburg had spent the 1970s pursuing a litigation strategy to secure woman’s equality — although she would describe her approach in broader terms as the

constitutional principle of equal citizenship stature of men and women.

In a series of cases, she sought to establish

sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability.

By extension, she argued, legal classifications on the basis of sex should be subject to the “strict scrutiny” required in cases where there were distinctions or classifications on the basis of race. To put it more bluntly, pigeon-holing on the basis of sex should be unconstitutional. The nub of her argument, whether acting for men or women plaintiffs, was that treating men and women differently under the law helped to

keep woman in her place, a place inferior to that occupied by men in our society.

 

Outside the court — and inside, too

Feminist theorists have sometimes expressed reservations about the extent to which a legal system designed by men to the exclusion of women can ever be fully appropriated to achieve equality for women.

While some feminists have seen much promise in the possibility for law reform, others have been more circumspect. This tension is reflected in the two-pronged strategy proposed by Professor Mari Matsuda — that there are times to “stand outside the courtroom” and there are times to “stand inside the courtroom”.

Ginsburg’s legacy in life and law reflects the latter approach. Her faith in the law is reflected in her approach to stand inside the courtroom (literally as a litigator and a judge) to transform existing legal categories. In this way, her approach was reconstructive rather than radical (which is not say that some of her thinking wasn’t radical for its time).

Ginsburg sought to reconstruct sex roles and emphasised men and women alike were diminished by stereotypes based on sex.

Importantly, Ginsburg did not simply pursue formal equality (the idea that equality will be achieved by treating everyone the same). Rather, she advocated for affirmative action as a principle of equality of opportunity.

She favoured incremental rather than radical change, reflecting a view that such an approach would minimise the potential for backlash. Her critique of the strategy adopted in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade (the case upon which US reproductive rights are based), and her departure from the feminist orthodoxy on this point, reflected her preference for incrementalism.

 

Legacy on the bench

Ginsburg’s jurisprudential contributions on the Supreme Court continued the legacy she began in the 1970s.

One of her most significant majority opinions in 1996 required the Virginia Military Institute to admit women. Importantly, this was because it had not been able to provide “exceedingly persuasive justification” for making distinctions on the basis of sex. Although this standard fell short of the “strict scrutiny test” required in cases involving classifications on the basis of race, it nonetheless entrenched an important equality principle.

But it was perhaps her judicial dissents, sometimes delivered blisteringly in the years where she was the lone woman on the bench (prior to President Barack Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan in 2010), that seem to have really captured the wider public imagination and catapulted her into the zeitgeist.

It was in the wake of her 2013 dissent in a case about the Voting Rights Act that she reached the status of a global feminist icon. A Tumblr account was established in her honour, giving her the nickname “Notorious RBG” (a title drawn from the rapper Biggie Smalls’ nickname Notorious B.I.G). A 2018 documentary RBG chronicled her legacy and status as a cultural icon, and a 2018 motion picture On the Basis of Sex depicted her early life and cases.

Ginsburg’s celebrity certainly expanded during her time on the court — but this is not to say to it has been without controversy or critique, even from more liberal or progressive sources.

She has been criticised for her decisions (for example, a particular decision about Native Americans and sovereignty), for her comments about race and national anthem protests, and for being too partisan — particularly in her criticism of President Donald Trump. (She called him a “faker” and later apologised.)

 

A great legacy

Did Ginsburg’s feminism or celebrity undermine her legitimacy as a judge? Questions of judicial legacy and legitimacy are complex and inevitably shaped by institutional, political and legal norms. Importantly, her contributions as a lawyer and a judge have done much to demonstrate how legal rules and approaches previously regarded as neutral and objective in reality reflected a masculine view of the world.

Over 25 years ago, Ginsburg expressed her aspiration that women would be appointed to the Supreme Court with increased regularity:

Indeed, in my lifetime, I expect to see three, four, perhaps even more women on the High Court Bench, women not shaped from the same mold but of different complexions. Yes, there are miles in front, but what distance we have travelled from the day President Thomas Jefferson told his secretary of state: ‘The appointment of women to [public] office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared.’

That Ginsburg came to share the Supreme Court with two women, Kagan and Sotomayor, must have given her some hope that women’s access to places “where decisions are being made” was at least tentatively secure, even if hard-won feminist gains sometimes felt tenuous at best.

Ginsburg was a trailblazer in every aspect of her life and career. The women who follow her benefit from a legacy that powerfully re-imagined what it means to be a lawyer and a judge in a legal system that had been made in men’s image.

Kcasey McLoughlin, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Newcastle

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

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By External Source
NEW YORK, Sep 20 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) brought together an impressive, diverse line-up of world leaders, policymakers, youth, teachers, celebrities and global advocates to rally around the cause of education in emergencies and protracted crises during the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly under the inspiring theme “The Future of Education is Here for Those Left Furthest Behind.”

With over 30,000 viewers watching on Twitter livestreams and 1,085 viewers tuned in to watch the two-hour, high-level online event live on Zoom, ECW’s 17 September #UNGA75 event – moderated by Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait and co-hosted by Canada, Colombia, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America together with Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Somalia – emphasized the importance of education in emergencies and protracted crises to a global audience.

“We are facing an economic and a health crisis which has now become an education crisis – and the people who are the hardest hit are the 13 million refugee children, the 40 million displaced children and the 75 million children in conflict zones,” said The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the ECW High Level Steering Group, during his opening remarks.

“Despite all our efforts, the situation is still getting worse and we have to do more,” Brown added, calling on public and private donors to answer ECW’s urgent appeal for an additional $300 million dollars to meet the immediate education needs of vulnerable girls and boys caught in armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate change-induced disasters and protracted crises – and who are now doubly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Let’s make sure that we can see the talent of a new generation realised and fulfilled.”

Maintaining the momentum of progress to increase financing for education in emergencies and protracted crises

Expert panellists stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening hard-won development gains, including encouraging funding trends in the education in emergencies and protracted crises sector registered since ECW’s inception. All agreed that despite the pressures on aid budgets, education for the most marginalised children and youth must be prioritised as their inherent human right, and to empower crisis-affected girls and boys, their families and communities to help lead recovery and post-crisis rebuilding efforts. Key strategic donors demonstrated their commitment with new additional contributions to ECW.

“Where conflict rages, access to education is not just crucial for the future of each individual child, but for re-integration, economic development and building the sustainable peace we all want to see,” said Baroness Liz Sugg, Minister for Foreign and Development Affairs for the United Kingdom and Special Envoy for Girls’ Education. The United Kingdom is ECW’s top donor.

Dr Maria Flachsbarth, German Parliamentary State Secretary for Development, stated Germany’s goal to invest 25 percent of its development aid in education and announced a new, additional €8 million (US$9.5 million) contribution to ECW. “Solidarity and cooperation are more important now than ever before if we want to ensure that we leave no one behind,” she said.

“We strongly believe that education can be lifesaving and life-changing. We know that many of the gains made are at risk today. Our collective efforts now are therefore more important than ever,” said Carol O’Connell, Acting Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of State, as she announced an additional $5 million contribution to ECW.

“The story about how humanity handled COVID-19 is being written now. Let it not be the story of a lost generation. Let it rather be the story of a global community that came together to ensure that the right to learning was upheld for all,” said Dag Inge Ulstein, Minister for Development for Norway, as he announced an additional contribution of NOK 20 million ($2.2 million) to ECW.

Highlighting the scope of needs

Education ministers from crisis-affected countries highlighted the challenges they face in reaching vulnerable and marginalised girls and boys who are now at even greater risk of being left behind due to the pandemic, while also stressing the crucial support received from ECW and partners.

“We have the lowest enrolment rate in sub-Saharan Africa, with 68 percent of children out of school,” said The Hon. Abdullahi Godah Barre, Minister of Education, Culture and Higher Education for the Federal Republic of Somalia. “We try to focus on the most vulnerable communities of our society. We have a very significant and helpful partnership around the world, including ECW which we find very instrumental in this front.”

H.E. Excellency Dr. Getahun Mekuriya, Minister of Education for Ethiopia, presented the distance learning solutions deployed to respond to the COVID-19 crisis – and the challenges faced – in a country that hosts one of the largest refugee population in Africa and also is experiencing multiple crises. The pandemic “has widened the digital divide,” he said, thanking ECW for its support and encouraging the Fund to “continue to harness the deployment of digital technologies to the less advantaged.”

In Burkina Faso, “the future of an entire generation is at risk as the number of out-of-school children increases as a result of conflict, terrorist attacks and forced displacement,” said H.E. Stanislas Ouaro, Minister of Education and Literacy for Burkina Faso.“Education is now more than ever a powerful weapon in preventing violence, terrorism and growing insecurity,” he stressed, welcoming ECW’s upcoming Multi-Year Resilience investment in the region.

H.E. Maria Victoria Angulo, Minister for Education for Colombia, stated that “Colombia is facing the second largest migration flow in recent history,” and that with the support of ECW, “Colombia has learned to innovate and create learning opportunities during multiple crises.” She stressed her Government’s focus on “access to quality education, fostering gender equality, and bringing education to rural and urban contexts.”

Reimagining education in emergencies in the wake of COVID-19

Expert speakers agreed that the unprecedented education crisis triggered and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic must be seized as an opportunity to transform education systems, make them more resilient and adapt them to 21st century needs and realities.

“While many children are going back to school this month, there are millions of children who do not have school to go back to,” said Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “We have to get them back to school” she said, calling for all to “reimagine education”, and to “refresh our thinking about what education can be” with a focus on four areas: quality, universality, humanitarian crises settings and safety.

“Children can retain hope even in the most desperate circumstances,” said Kevin Watkins, Chief Executive of Save the Children UK. “ECW is keeping hope alive for millions of children around the world. So, it is imperative that governments – as we respond to this appalling emergency in education – get behind ECW and get behind the children. They have the courage; we have to get behind them.”

Jutta Urpilainen, EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, reaffirmed her commitment to boost the share of education in the European Union’s development expenditure. “The crisis has revealed and deepened inequalities. Weaknesses of our education systems have been exposed. We have a once in a generation opportunity to reopen schools better than they were before and improve learning,” she said.

“The pandemic forces us to re-imagine all aspects of education, from policy to practice. This means directly empowering the voices of local communities, of refugees, of internally displaced persons in every aspect of our work,” said The Hon. Karina Gould, Minister of International Development for Canada. She highlighted Canada’s specific focus on the urgent education needs of adolescent girls and forcibly displaced children.

“We are all worried that a victim of this pandemic – of the largest education crisis of the last 100 years – is equality of opportunities. This is a moment to make education more equitable, more efficient, and more resilient,” said Jaime Saavedra, Global Education Director for the World Bank.

Voices from the field

Teachers and youth recounted how the pandemic and the ensuing school closures are affecting students and their communities in countries already experiencing conflict and crises, while also highlighting the challenges and successes in adapting to distance learning solutions.

“School was giving them hope and helping them transit from the trauma they came with, so now they are getting a little demoralised because they are not at school,” said Amyera Irene who teaches refugee children in Uganda. “Staying at home every day is very hard, they have parents engaging them in agricultural activities. They say reading is becoming a little difficult and that some words have disappeared from their minds,” added her colleague, Okema Geofry.

“My academic practices have been totally rethought. Initially only three students had internet at home and I had to communicate with the others though phone calls and WhatsApp messages,” said Yaqueline Hernandez, a teacher in Colombia.

“We tried to prepare the lessons in an interesting and enjoyable manner and transmit these through social media to reach a maximum number of students,” said Mona Ibrahi, a teacher in Lebanon. “Our success is due to the role the parents played serving as a link between the teacher and the student,” underscored Nada Fakherelddine, another teacher in Lebanon.

“The opportunity to engage in digital learning makes me feel excited about the future. If students can learn digitally, they can connect to all the resources and opportunities that exist. Then, we move from surviving to thriving,” said Miranda Ndolo, a youth advocate from Cameroon who has herself gone through the hardship of forcible displacement.

“Something that we have learned from COVID-19 is that education can be reached with just one click. Technology has provided us with a huge opportunity to take education to the shorelines of Greece and to refugees around the world. Every refugee deserves the right to study. Every human deserves an education,” said Sarah Mardini, a refugee youth advocate from Syria.

Supporting “whole-of-child” responses

Panellists agreed that to achieve education outcomes for children and youth caught in conflict and crises, it is essential to provide holistic, ‘whole-or-child’ education responses that cover a broad range of needs, addressing the full dimension of a child’s well-being.

“ECW makes a difference because they know and respond to the complex needs of every child. They don’t just repair buildings and build schools. They support the nutrition, mental health, protection, and gender programmes that run within them. They equip, train, and support teachers, who work in these difficult settings, to relate to these students – I have seen it first-hand,” said Emmy Award winning actress and education champion, Rachel Brosnahan.

“For many vulnerable children, school meals are often the only food they get in a day. Getting these children back into school “is essential if we are to avoid a hunger pandemic triggered by the COVID-19 crisis,” said David Beasley, World Food Programme Executive Director, who stressed WFP’s partnership with ECW and UNICEF and their joint ongoing work to support governments in reopening schools safely.

Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, underscored the importance of ensuring a transition “between immediate urgency assistance and support for education systems step-by-step over time” to build back resilience. “It’s about having value for learners,” she said, highlighting the need for a stronger focus on inclusion and data.

“In conflict and crises contexts, girls are often the hardest hit when schools are closing, and this is what we are seeing with the COVID-19 crisis,” said Delphine O, Secretary General of the Generation Equality Forum, calling all stakeholders to work to remove the specific barriers to girls’ education.

Creative partnerships: the key to unlocking big changes

Speakers emphasized that partnerships are essential to successfully unlock the necessary changes to meet the full scope of needs in education in emergencies and protracted crises, building on their experiences and concrete examples.

“The important role of government and their duty is to deliver, and sometimes to get that big machinery moving, we need quite unlikely partners to come together,” said Sarah Brown, Chair, Their World and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education. “Creative partnership is more than business,” she said, recounting how Theirworld developed an innovative partnership with the Dutch Postcode Lottery, Education Cannot Wait, UNHCR and UNICEF to support education for refugee children on the Greek islands.

“We are committed to supporting all children, including the youngest and most vulnerable who are affected by conflicts and crises. We are partnering to deliver programmes on the ground and, importantly, are committed to extracting learnings from those programs that can be shared across the whole of the ECW community. Then, we can reapply those insights into new, emerging crises,” said John Goodwin, Chief Executive Officer of the LEGO Foundation.

H.E. DR. Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares appealed to existing and new partners to join and redouble collaborative efforts. “What we bring together as ECW is coordination on the ground,” he said. He also pointed out that partnership is more crucial than ever at this historic moment. After years of trying to deploy the potential of EdTech, “the whole world switched to remote learning overnight”, because of the coronavirus pandemic. “Let’s see how we can reshape education together.”

“Education, as we have known it, will be forever changed. That presents opportunities and challenges and responsibilities to the children of today and the leaders of tomorrow, to envision and contribute to a world where school doesn’t have to be disrupted by future shocks. Together, today, we must use this opportunity to create a brighter future,” said Julie Cram, USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator.

The future of education, here and now

“When it comes to education for children who are suffering and left furthest behind, patience is anything but a virtue. We have to move with speed,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We all agree that investing in education is investing in humanity, to unleash the potential of humankind,” she stressed during her concluding remarks. “Crises always lead to opportunities. We determine how to respond to crises. We can decide to do nothing. We can decide to do something. We can also decide to give it our all, and that is what we do across the Education Cannot Wait community. We can – and we will – turn the future of education into the present here and now, for those furthest behind.”

Source: Education Cannot Wait

 

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The post Global Leaders Focus on Education in Emergencies & Protracted Crises at ECW’s Global High-level #UNGA75 Event: ‘the Future of Education Is Here for Those Left Furthest Behind’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Liu Bolin (China), Guernica, 2016

By External Source
Sep 18 2020 (IPS-Partners)

US President Donald Trump and his ‘war council’ – led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – have amplified their aggression against China. What began as a trade dispute in the 1990s has now escalated into the United States making an existential challenge against China.

The threat against China is made not for irrational reasons, but for perfectly rational ones, which are laid out below in our Red Alert no. 9 (also available as a separate download from our website). These have to do with the emergence of China as a major economic and technological power. What most rankles the US ruling class is that the various hybrid war techniques to weaken or overthrow the government are simply not available. The only means at the disposal of the United States to hold on to its power – chillingly – is armed force.

Red Alert no. 9. The US-Imposed Hybrid War on China

Is the United States trying to impose a war on China?

For the past several decades, the US has conducted a trade war against China. There are two key issues that worry the United States: first, a trade imbalance that benefits China, and, second, the growth of the Chinese technology sector. Techniques that the US has used against China include: pressuring China to revalue its currency against the dollar, pressuring China to prevent ‘piracy’ on intellectual property in order to slow down its domestic intellectual property developments, and pressuring China to slow down or cease its Belt and Road Initiative.

The US has now begun a war against the Chinese economy. The attempt to isolate Huawei and ZTE from their suppliers and their markets will have a debilitating impact on the growth potential of the Chinese economy. The US has sanctioned roughly 152 companies that make chips and other products for Huawei and ZTE. Increased bans – through the US government’s Clean Network initiative – would prevent US companies from using Chinese cloud services and undersea cables, and it would ban Chinese apps from appearing on app stores. The US government has increased pressure on other countries to join in this campaign.

The US government has increased its military pressure along the eastern rim of China. This includes the 2017 revival of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the US), the creation of the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy (its key document from 2020 is called ‘Regain the Advantage’), and the development of a range of new weaponry, including cyberweapons. This military power has come alongside hostile rhetoric against China, with attention focused on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, and the depiction of the coronavirus pandemic as a ‘China virus’. Evidence is not as important here as the use of older racist and anti-Communist ideas to demonise China.

Liu Xiaodong (China), Wedding Party, 1992.

Why is the US increasing its pressure against China?

China’s technological advances could result in a generational advantage over the West. China’s scientific and technological developments came because of the country’s investment in higher education and in its ability to transfer technology from firms that entered the country to manufacture goods. In 2018, Chinese scholars for the first time published more scientific articles than their colleagues in the US, and Chinese firms filed more patent applications than US firms. Chinese tech firms have now produced products that appear to be ahead of US, European, and Japanese products. Examples for this include 5G, BeiDou (a better mapping technology than GPS), high-speed trains, and robots.

Faced with US pressure, China has crafted an independent trade and development agenda. Since the world financial crisis, China began diversifying its economy from reliance upon the US and European markets to build up its own internal market and to increase engagement with the Global South. The immediate projects that developed included the Belt and Road Initiative, the String of Pearls Initiative, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Forum. The Chinese government has also begun to pay more attention to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). These moves come alongside a remarkable poverty eradication programme.

Currently, China is highly dependent on imported energy – such as gas from ASEAN nations, Australia, and Qatar. The China-Russia 6000kms ‘Power of Siberia’ pipeline will bring 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas, a substantial increase to meet the demands for the 90 billion cubic meters consumed by China. In 2014, Russia’s multinational energy corporation Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation signed a $400 billion for a thirty-year deal.

Increasingly, China has attempted to build institutions outside of Western-controlled trade and development architecture, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (founded in 2014). As part of this, China has committed to de-dollarisation; China has proposed to hold its reserves and to conduct trade in currencies other than the US dollar. This is a long-term but inevitable development, and one that threatens the overall role of the Wall Street-Dollar complex. China’s cooperation with Russia is most advanced in this arena, with about 50% of Russia-China trade conducted in roubles and yuan (Russia owns about 25% of the global yuan reserves). Both Russia and China are divesting themselves of their dollar reserves. In January 2020, Russia sold $101 billion, or 50%, of its dollar reserves and moved $44 billion into Euros and $44 billion into yuan. The yuan, however, represents only 2% of global currency reserves.

Against the eastward expansion of NATO and the emergence of the Quad, China and Russia have crafted a military and diplomatic Eurasian security bloc. This is evident in the arms deals and the military exercises, but also in diplomatic coordination. For example, Russian and Chinese foreign ministry spokespersons Maria Zakharova and Hua

Chunying said in late July that they would join efforts in combatting the information war against China and Russia. Chinese diplomats have taken a more forthright attitude in their statements; they have been dubbed the ‘wolf warrior diplomats’, an allusion to a popular film where a Chinese soldier from an elite Wolf Warrior troop defeats a group of terrorists led by an ex-US Navy Seal.

Clearly, the US has found that Chinese leadership has been unwilling to go the Gorbachev road – namely, to surrender the Chinese model to the will of the United States. There is no possibility that the Communist Party of China will dissolve itself. The Chinese middle class – possible fodder for a ‘colour revolution’ – does not have any appetite to overthrow the government. It is content with the direction of the government and sees that its government has improved living standards and has been able – unlike Western governments – to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic (as we write about in a series on ‘CoronaShock’). A Harvard University study shows that the government led by the Communist Party of China has increased its approval from 2003 to 2016, largely because of the social welfare programmes and the fight against corruption pushed by both the Communist Party of China and by the Chinese government. The overall approval stands at 93%.

Zhong Biao (China), Paradise, 2007.

What contradictions does the US war project face?

Chinese economic developments – such as the country’s capacity to outspend the US in development aid to outbid Western firms in trade deals – has produced alliances between China and key capitalist sectors in countries that have otherwise been secure US allies. Examples of this are amongst sections of the capitalist class in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, where Chinese investment has been welcomed.

The Chinese state has intensified its intervention in the tech sector inside China, with a $14 billion private and public fund to support tech developments. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – China’s top chip company – had an initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai which netted $7. 5 billion. As a consequence of such funds and its own scientific developments, China will soon be able to bypass the US chip firms.

China’s economic capacity continues to exert pressure on fragments of capital in different countries. For instance, Australian mining companies rely upon China to buy iron ore from Australia. These companies lobby Canberra not to take too hostile a position against China. Roughly one third of Australia’s total exports go to China; these include soy, barley, meat, fruits, gas, and the raw minerals. The Australian government is forced to acknowledge these concerns, even though it has a longer-term perspective than the short-term profit concerns of the mining conglomerates. China has already hedged its bets, increasing purchases of soy and meat from Argentina and Brazil, and it will likely buy more mined goods from Brazil (Brazil’s Vale is using massive ships to carry mined goods to China).

The US military is stretched thin between the conflicts in Venezuela and Iran, and now in China. The US Navy has had four secretaries in a year, part of the chaos in the Trump administration. As a consequence, the US Navy has complained about the lack of ability to handle so many theatres of war at the same time. China has developed sophisticated defence mechanisms, such as cyber warfare techniques that have the ability to shut down US communications, starting with their satellites, and such as their Dongfeng missiles, which are capable of hitting the US navy ships that are in the South China Sea.

The eighth century Chinese poet Li Bai wrote of the ugliness of war; as far as war is concerned, nothing has changed over the centuries.

Soldiers smear their blood on the dry grass

While generals map the next campaign.

Wise people know winning a war

Is no better than losing one.

The post Wise People Know That Winning a War Is No Better Than Losing One appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dedicated to Soni Prashad, 1929-2020, who spent her life looking for a better world.

The post Wise People Know That Winning a War Is No Better Than Losing One appeared first on Inter Press Service.

According to the United Nations, school closures resulting from the pandemic have affected 1.6 billion learners across more than 190 countries. It is estimated that some 23.8 million more children would drop out of school and an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the coronavirus pandemic. Education Cannot Wait has appealed for more funding to provide an education for 30 million refugees, 40 million displaced children, and 75 million children in conflict zones - of whom 39 million are girls. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
BONN, Germany/UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2020 (IPS)

Aryan is a 15-year-old girl from Afghanistan who lives with her family in a shelter in an undisclosed country in Europe. She doesn’t go to school. But she is hugely creative. And it shows in how she occupies her time during the day — writing poetry and making bracelets and earrings that she hopes to sell online one day.

Her mom is creative too. Though her creativity stems more from necessity and a need to care for her family. At the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns when Aryan’s mother couldn’t find a supply of protective masks for her family to wear, she made them out of socks.

Aryan likens the COVID-19 lockdowns to a war, one without the dropping of bombs.

But she says life is more difficult for those without a place to live, with no home and no shelter.

She thinks specifically of what is happening on the border of Greece and Turkey. In the refugee camps, particularly Moria, which is located on the Greek island of Lesbos.

“How crowded and cold it is there, how can people be so blind to forget the children, how their toys can become infected from dirty water and from garbage all around,” she says.

Not just a health crisis but an education crisis also

Aryan is sadly just one of the world’s 40 million displaced children. Her story is just a chapter of the larger story faced not only by refugee children but also the 75 million children living in conflict zones. Children whose lives have become more complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations, school closures resulting from the pandemic have affected 1.6 billion learners across more than 190 countries.

“We are facing an economic and a health crisis, which has now become an education crisis. And the people who are hardest hit are the 30 million refugees, the 40 million displaced children, the 75 million children in conflict zones. And we know from the reports that we’ve just heard … despite all our efforts the situation is just getting worse and not better and we have to do more,” former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown said yesterday Sept. 17.

Brown was speaking at a webinar on the sidelines of the 75th Session of the U.N. General Assembly hosted by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) — a multilateral global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises — titled “The Future of Education is Here for Those Left Furthest Behind”. He was joined by education advocates, leaders and politicians, as well as teachers from around the world. 

Seeing young children from Moira, forcibly on the move, must be catalyst for supporting their education

Brown, chair of the ECW high-level steering group and also the U.N. special envoy for global education, brought attention to the current situation in Moria, which was devastated on Sept. 8 by a fire.

According to Human Rights Watch, the destruction in the largest refugee camp in Europe left some 13,000 refugees and asylum seekers without shelter and services.

Greek authorities have been attempting to move people to a new camp, while Germany has offered to give shelter to some of the refugees and asylum seekers.

But Brown had raised the tragic situation of the camp two years ago.

“I highlighted the tragic situation of three young teenagers who couldn’t get [an] education or any resources at the Moria camp in Greece. Young people who were driven to try suicide themselves. Losing hope, desolate, they tried to take their own lives. And I appealed for more funds to help the refugees there and in the other camps nearby,” he recalled.

“A few weeks ago, when I was trying with others to get money into this camp for help with education, we had one of the worst fires we have seen. Today we are seeing hundreds of people moving from that area into other camps in the area but worried about their future,” Brown said.

He said that if there was anything to persuade people to do more and commit to the education of children in conflict it was seeing young children from Moira, forcibly on the move “having to find a new camp for themselves but still in need of the education and the help and the support that we haven’t been able to give so far,” Brown said, emphasising that this was the mission and task at ECW and to ensure that millions of people and displaced refugees have a better future.

ECW has reached 2.6 million children, raised an additional $23.6 million

Brown said that its inception a few years ago, ECW has created several million places for young people to receive an education when they are either displaced or in refugee situations. He also stressed that ECW has been the catalyst for other organisations to come together and do more.

Working with 75 partner organisations globally, ECW has so far provided $662.3 million for supporting education in emergencies.

In August, ECW launched its 2019 annual results report tiled Stronger Together in Crisis, showing that in 2019 alone the fund provided education to 2.6 million vulnerable children, raising $252.8 million from private and public donors. In total, since its inspection ECW has raised $600 million.

Thursday’s event, which hosted a new donation feature in partnership with Zoom and online fundraising platform Pledgeling, raised an additional $23.6 million to support vulnerable children and youth, particularly those affected by conflict, forced displacement and protected crises. The aid will focus on the most marginalised, including girls, refugees and children with disabilities, ECW said in a statement. Within the first few minutes of the meeting 4 donors had already pledged over $12,000.

But Brown pointed out that ECW will require $300 million in the coming year to provide the service needed for children.

ECW director, Yasmine Sherif, said despite the gains made over the years, “education is still not here for a large part of children and youth affected by conflict and crisis and forced displacement”.

She said ECW wanted to make education a reality for all the 75 million children in conflict zones, more than half of whom — some 39 million — are girls.

She also pointed out that the type of education delivered was also very important “to make sure that we deliver quality education, an education that is relevant”.

She explained that it was important that the curriculum thought what was relevant and important to learn in the 21st century but also addressed the specific needs of children or young people who had grown up in a country of violence or had been uprooted from their homes and forced to flee.

“There needs to be a holistic approach and to look at all the needs and the potential that they have because of what they have gone through,” Sherif said.

The global crisis in education – the stakes are far higher with COVID-19

A staunch supporter of ECW, and U.K. Minister for Overseas Territories and Sustainable Development at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Baroness Liz Sugg said that while there was already a global crisis before the pandemic, the stakes are “far, far higher” now.  

“Where conflicts rage, access education is not just crucial for the future of each individual child but for the reintegration, for economic development, and for building that sustainable peace we really want to see,” Sugg, who is also the U.K. Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, said.

She added that just because every country is facing economic instability at the moment, is not an excuse for inaction on education. 

16-year-old Catherine from South Sudan said that the most difficult part of the COVID-19 pandemic was not being able to attend school. “Before, I was out of school for one and a half years because I am an orphan,” she explained.

Catherine’s concerns about being able to attend school again are valid. According to a recent U.N. policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 on education, countries with low human development are facing the brunt of school lockdowns, with more than 85 percent of their students effectively out of school by the second quarter of 2020. It was also estimated that some 23.8 million more children would drop out of school and an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the coronavirus pandemic. Women and girls will ultimately bear the brunt of the worst impacts of the pandemic.

Ministers from Burkina Faso, Somalia and Ethiopia also highlighted the plight of many of their refugee children. 

Abdullahi Godah Barre, Minister of Education and Higher Education in Somalia, said 68 percent of the country’s children were out of school. 

Ethiopia’s Minister of Education Dr. Eng. Getahun Mekuriya discussed how, with one of the largest refugee populations in Africa, the country is addressing the current crisis. In the refugee camps, Mekuriya said, there is heightened food insecurity, inability to pay rent, among other issues — further exacerbated by the pandemic, which in turn has grave effects on education. 

The Ethiopian government has created a distant learning plan which is helping children to learn through television, radio and other digital platforms. 

“An estimated 5.1 million primary and secondary school children received this service,” Mekuriya said, adding that technology access and connectivity still remains a challenge for many in the community. 

U.N. Education chief calls for reimagining of education

Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, which hosts the ECW secretariat, called for a reimagining education — “of changing our way of thinking, of rewriting our story”.

“We really have to refresh our thinking about what education can be,” she said.

She shared her recommendations on what the steps forward ought to focus on:

• Quality: to ensure young people are taught fundamental skills, entrepreneurial skills to have as tools if they don’t have the chance to go higher education.
• Universality: “All children need this,” she said, “it doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban or rural world. We’ve got to come up with hybrid solutions.”
  
• Promoting humanitarian cases: “Humanitarian spots are harder,” she said, “Those who are living in and fleeing from conflict are hard to find, hard to settle — it can be hard to get them to a learning space.”
  
• Safety: Schools are also safe spaces for children, and she said it’s crucial to help them create that space for themselves
  

Despite the concerns and the high number of students the crisis is affecting, leaders were hopeful. Dag-Inge Ulstein, Norway’s Minister for International Development, said there is light ahead on the road. 

“The story about how humanity handled COVID-19 is being written now, and education will have a central place in the conclusion,” he said. “Let it not become the story of a lost generation, nor of a community that abandoned its promise to leave no one behind when push came to shove.” 

Brown echoed these sentiments. “I know that everybody will share the same aim, let us build a better future for this generation of young people. Let them have the education they need. They are more talented and with more potential than the underfunded education systems we’re providing them with at the moment. Let’s make sure that we can see the talent of a new generation realised and fulfilled,” Brown said.

But until then, life for Aryan remains a nomadic one.

Today, Aryan is sitting outside the shelter her family have been staying at. Her backpack full with her belongings.

She has found out that the family have to move. “This is how the situation of most refugees are running like this. Having their backpack, their suitcase, moving around, from place to another place,” she says in a video she has made for GlobalGirl Media — a digital journalism training and platform dedicated to providing content by, for and about girls and young women, globally.

“I can describe my situation like kicking the ball, and its very difficult. It’s very difficult.”

 

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While women have come a long way since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action nearly 25 years ago, they still lag behind on virtually every Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Credit: UN Women, India

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2020 (IPS)

When the United Nations was dominated by men, holding some of the highest positions in the staff hierarchy, women staffers were overwhelmingly administrative secretaries seen pounding on their Remington typewriters seated outside their bosses’ enclosed offices.

A legendary story circulating in the 1960s recounts the plight of a woman candidate being interviewed for a job. She had superlative credentials, including work experience as a political analyst, and was armed with a post-graduate degree from a prestigious university in the US.

The male UN director from human resources, however, had one final question at the end of the interview: “But can you type?”

Mercifully, that was a bygone era. But since then, the UN has made significant progress trying to conform to an age-old General Assembly resolution calling for gender parity system-wide.

As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted last week: “The #COVID19 pandemic is demonstrating what we all know: millennia of patriarchy have resulted in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture which damages everyone – women, men, girls & boys.”

As the UN commemorates its 75th anniversary, the world body claims it has achieved 50:50 gender parity in the higher ranks of its administrative hierarchy.

But it still falls short of reaching “full parity at all levels” of the Organization —even as two recent staff surveys in New York and Geneva raised several lingering questions, including the largely system-wide absence of women of color, widespread racism in the Organization and the lack of equitable geographical representation of staffers from the developing world.

In a letter to staffers on September 2, Guterres singles out the efforts made shortly after he took office: ”Nearly four years into this effort, I can report that we have come a long way”.

In 2019, for the first time in United Nations history, he said; “we reached parity in the Senior Management Group and among Resident Coordinators. On 1 January 2020, and well ahead of schedule, we attained this milestone by reaching parity among all full-time senior leaders, comprising 90 women and 90 men at the level of Assistant and Under-Secretaries-General.”

“In addition to the commitment to reach parity and diversify in our senior leadership by 2021, I have committed to achieving parity at all levels of the Organization by 2028”.

“We are on track to meet this target, but progress is uneven and inconsistent. Our greatest challenge is in field missions, where the gap is the largest and the rate of change is slowest”, he added.

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

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

The Organization can do better at bringing the valuable and creative talents of diverse women together to help bridge the gender gap. This can only help the UN better deliver on its mandate – especially in these challenging times.

“Gender and geographic diversity should not be mutually exclusive. We can implement the Gender Parity Strategy while ensuring improved geographical representation and diversity,” Chaoui declared.

Meanwhile, the lack of geographical diversity is reflected in the absence of staffers from some 21 member states, according to the latest December 2017 figures released in a report to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee.

The 21 “unrepresented” countries among staffers, mostly in the developing world, include Afghanistan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic Saint Lucia, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines., Angola, Marshall Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, Belize, Monaco, Timor-Leste, Equatorial Guinea, Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Vanuatu.

Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told IPS that last year Guterres asked the UN’s member states at the General Assembly to let him change the staff regulations to allow the quotas and promotion and recruitment bans based on gender that he had been seeking for a while. But they refused his request.

“It seems they felt it went against Article 8 of the UN Charter on non-discrimination and Article 101 on merit”.

However, this year, while the pandemic and Covid-19 recovery efforts drew attention elsewhere, it seems he made the changes anyway, albeit through a type of executive order called an “administrative instruction”, complained Richards.

Firstly, is the executive order legal if it contradicts the staff regulations? he asked. Lawyers have apparently been looking at this. And, secondly, is it wise to provoke our member states by disregarding their instructions at a time when some are trying to cut our funding? There seems to be some disquiet.

“We all want to advance gender balance and we are all impatient. But I hope our efforts to do so doesn’t backfire because of this”.

A further question is why aren’t the General Service staff included?. They are staff like everyone else and form the backbone of our organization,” asked Richards.

Currently, the UN has a global staff of about 34,170, 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, the five largest UN agencies worldwide include the UN children’s agency UNICEF (12,806 staffers), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (9,740), the World Health Organization (8,049), the UN Development Programme (7,177) and the World Food Programme (6,091).

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS it is indeed heartening to hear that the UN has reached gender parity among its senior leadership.

The Secretary-General further promises that steps will be taken to ensure parity at all levels of the organization by 2028 which is most welcome, she said.

“It is also heartening to note that there is attention to the reality that it is not just about numbers but also about a shift in organizational culture. There obviously needs to be transparency on what this shift implies in terms of its goals, how they will be achieved, and how success will be measured.”

While equitable recruitment is one way to measure gender parity, number of male and female staff obviously cannot be the sole measure of success in achieving gender equality, she argued.

“Parity in numbers is one, critical part of ensuring gender equality in the UN but it needs to be matched with efforts that address the quality of work life. Recognizing the demands on the lives of women and men today and building flexibility in work life policies is a key part of ensuring this quality and equality,” she added.

Attention will have to be paid to other critical areas of work life, such as parity in retention, rate of promotion, salary, benefit package including adequate and flexible work arrangements especially those related to maternity (and paternity) leave, and support and mentoring of women, Mane said.

Targets will not only need to be set for each of these areas but also reported on to ensure transparency and accountability that gender parity is successful in a comprehensive and meaningful way, in the long run, she declared.

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ and former Campaigns Director for Oxfam and for ActionAid, told IPS there is a growing unity amongst grassroots groups across the world fighting intersecting inequalities.

That is what ‘we the peoples‘ really means. It is that united push that is driving a long-overdue reckoning across institutions of every kind, said Phillips who co-founded the Fight Inequality Alliance.

 

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