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Why COVID-19 Vaccines Need to Prioritize ‘Superspreaders’

Wed, 09/09/2020 - 13:26

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

By External Source
Sep 9 2020 (IPS)

Once safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are available, tough choices will need to be made about who gets the first shots.

A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health – has proposed an equitable way to allocate the vaccine.

They recommend first responders and health care workers take top priority. Older adults in congregate living situations would also be part of a first vaccination phase, according to the plan.

We are faculty at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Southern California who have spent decades studying health economics and epidemiology. One of us is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Having seen firsthand the real risks of rapid, asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 among younger adults, we disagree with some of the recommendations. Asymptomatic spread is shutting down schools and universities nationwide and threatening surrounding communities.

We argue that this pandemic requires a different model for making vaccination choices. After taking care of essential workers, vaccinations should be given to the biggest transmitters of the virus – mostly the young – and only then to the most vulnerable.

Lessons from 2009 flu epidemic

The textbook vaccine model goes out the window when novel viruses emerge.

Some lessons can be drawn from the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, which killed an estimated 500,000 people around the world. In the U.S, President Barack Obama declared the spread a national emergency.

Optimally, older people will drive down deaths by staying home in large numbers, and younger people will drive down infections by getting vaccinated in even larger numbers. It all works if the vaccine is effective and enough people take it

A vaccine was developed as early as the fall of 2009. However, only 16 million doses were initially available. The CDC was required to make some difficult decisions about allocation. Some states requested 10 times the amount they were allocated.

In the end, the CDC allocated the vaccine strictly in proportion to a state’s population – that is, on a per capita basis. States then allocated them, often with priority to infants and the elderly, along with people at high risk.

This priority – to protect the most frail – has been public policy since at least the 1957-1958 influenza pandemic.

Later studies, however, have shown that a better way to protect older people was to control spread among the young, which often has meant vaccinating school-age children early.

One of the lessons from these past pandemics is that vaccinating the likely asymptomatic spreaders early can avert multiple infections with others.

The superspreaders

The experience of the past few months has shown how important it is to check transmission with COVID-19. A recent study found that as few as 10% of those infected lead to 80% of the infection cases. What has made it more difficult is that up to 40% of those who carry the virus, often known as superspreaders, show no symptoms at all.

Very few of the COVID-19 superspreaders are elderly. It is the younger people who have a much greater propensity to resume social lives at schools and in other venues.

Among the young are a subset of highly social people with wide circles of friends who become the most fertile ground for the spread of COVID-19. These young people also have a much lower risk of death or even severe symptoms, which also means they are more likely to infect others.

Cases have been spiking in the 15- to 25-year-old age group, another likely sign that they are propelling the spread of the virus. A recent outbreak on the University of Southern California’s fraternity row infected at least 40 people.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association reports that at least 338,000 children have tested positive for the virus through July 30, with more than a quarter of that number having tested positive in just the last two weeks of that month.

More broadly, younger residents in the virus hot spot of Los Angeles County make up the majority of positive new cases. In California, young people between 18 to 34 years of age account for more than one-third of cases.

Young versus old

Anticipating that young people will engage in activities that spread the virus, many universities put their fall classes exclusively online. Some that decided to go in-person had to close after as little as a week on campus.

With or without a vaccine, the best strategy for older Americans, especially those with underlying medical conditions, is avoiding contact with potential carriers.

We predict the pressures and politics around prioritizing vaccine distribution will be intense. We argue that the key will be to take the most beneficial route, not the most obvious one. With a full-scale public health campaign behind it, that will mean prioritizing those who are driving transmission, not those who are most vulnerable.

As counterintuitive as such a strategy may appear, plenty of evidence shows this would be the right approach.

Dana Goldman, Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics, University of Southern California; David Conti, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Associate Director for Data Science Integration, University of Southern California, and Matthew E. Kahn, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business, Director of JHU’s 21st Century Cities Initiative, Johns Hopkins University

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

The post Why COVID-19 Vaccines Need to Prioritize ‘Superspreaders’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Re-inventing Multilateral Solidarity: Rhetoric, Reaction or Realignment of Power?

Wed, 09/09/2020 - 11:34

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development made a valiant effort to connect the dots and the COVID-19 tragedy has forced governments back into the driver’s seat, a role many had relinquished willingly or under pressure. Credit: United Nations

By Barbara Adams
NEW YORK, Sep 9 2020 (IPS)

Multilateral solidarity is gaining traction as the slogan for mobilizing support for international cooperation and for the UN. Is it replacing or merely renaming cross-border obligations, many of which have been enshrined over decades in UN treaties, conventions and agreements, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibility in their implementation?

Why do we seek another name at this time? It seems that reaffirmation is less attractive than invention in this time of innovation, short term thinking and results measurement and messaging via social media and 280 characters. How should it be reinvented?

Solidarity assumes trust and common responsibilities.

In the 1980s, Chase Manhattan CEO David Rockefeller said that the economics of international relations drives the politics. Certainly, the politics of international relations has failed to keep pace with globalized economics and has resulted in unfettered hyper – globalization and multi-dimensional inequality and violence.

Decades of structural adjustment, market liberalization and austerity policies, together with financialization and digitalization have propelled the rush to neo-liberal governance. This is characterized by the unwillingness and/or loss of capacity of UN Member States to govern at the national level, and by implication and logic, also at the global level.

The vacuum has been nurtured and “filled” by power centres, public and private. One prominent forum is the World Economic Forum (WEF) that defines itself as “the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation” and asserts: “The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”1

In June 2019 the UN Secretary-General signed a framework agreement with the WEF, promising multiple areas of cooperation on activities the WEF describes as “shaped by a unique institutional culture founded on the stakeholder theory, which asserts that an organization is accountable to all parts of society.

The institution carefully blends and balances the best of many kinds of organizations, from both the public and private sectors, international organizations and academic institutions.”2

Is this agreement a recognition that stakeholders are replacing public sector representatives and rights holders as the primary “subjects” of multilateralism and the UN?

One of the victims of this (stakeholder) trend is the UN. The pragmatism of Secretaries-General Annan and Ban Ki Moon launched a succession of public-private partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives to keep the UN in the multilateral game. Are these what is meant by multilateral solidarity?

If so, how can it be expected to tackle the most serious global challenges that include climate degradation, ballooning inequalities and systemic discriminations, the COVID-19 pandemic and an unsustainable debt burden for many developing countries?

The record of the BWIs/IFIs is not encouraging. The looming debt crisis, exacerbated by COVID-19 and economic lockdowns, is not a unique phenomenon. The failure of IFIs to assess debt sustainability and related fiscal policy according to rights and social, economic and environmental justice obligations is a long-standing practice, one that treats symptoms at best.

Climate change and COVID-19 are not the only crises that have exposed the abdication of achieving substantive democratic multilateralism but have been of such dimensions that Member States have to step up and govern. Has the preference of many to partner rather than govern met a dead end?

Reinventing multilateral solidarity must start with bending the arc of governance back again – from viewing people as shareholders – to stakeholders – to rights holders.

There are many global standards and benchmarks that could be developed to measure this progression. These should be at the forefront of pursuing substantive, rights-based multilateralism and distinguishing it from multilateralism for rhetoric’s sake. Just a few to get started:

• Demotion of GDP as the primary measure of economic progress and prosperity

Multilateral solidarity relies on trust and requires addressing the trust deficit in the public and private spheres. Solidarity is demonstrated by a commitment to all rights for all and this cannot be achieved or aspired to without an effective duty bearer – government and the public sector. The UN should be the standard bearer at the global level, not a neutral convenor of public and private engagements.

Credible public institutions with commitment and capacity for long-term programming and non-market solutions and responses are essential at all levels.

And this requires predictable and sustainable public resources, currently undermined by tax evasion and illicit financial flows and detoured to servicing undeserved debt burdens.

The necessary but not sufficient condition for multilateral solidarity, the fuel to change direction, is a new funding compact at national level and to finance an impartial, value-based and effective UN system.

1 https://www.weforum.org/about/world-economic-forum
2 Ibid.

* Barbara Adams also served as Deputy Coordinator of the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) through the period of the UN global conferences and until 2003. From 2003–2008 she worked as Chief of Strategic Partnerships and Communications for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

This oped is a short chapter in the 2030 Spotlight Report to be launched on 18 September 2020. The authors will hold a side event on 18 September 9.00-10.00 am ET. Details and the report at: www.2030spotlight.org

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The post Re-inventing Multilateral Solidarity: Rhetoric, Reaction or Realignment of Power? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Barbara Adams*, chair of the board of Global Policy Forum, was trained as an economist in the UK and served as Executive Director of the Manitoba Council for International Affairs from 1977–1979 in Canada. She also served as Associate Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in New York (1981–1988), where she worked with delegates, UN staff and NGOs on issues of economic and social justice, women, peace and human rights.

The post Re-inventing Multilateral Solidarity: Rhetoric, Reaction or Realignment of Power? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Hopes and Challenges for the First-Ever Food Systems Summit

Wed, 09/09/2020 - 11:11

Food systems are at threat, owing to climate change “massively interfering” with food systems around the world, leading to droughts, floods and fires. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

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

Building inclusive and healthier food systems, and safeguarding the health of the planet will be some of the key priorities at the first-ever Food Systems Summit next year.

The United Nations is gearing up for the Food Systems Summit 2021, which will be spearheaded by Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Food Systems Summit Dr. Agnes Kalibata.

“Food is more than what satisfies our hunger, it’s more than what nourishes our bodies and brains,” Kalibata, former Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources in Rwanda, said in a passionate speech in February. “Food is…economics, politics.”

In an interview with U.N. News last week, Kalibata said being born in a refugee camp in Uganda shaped her view on food sustainability in many ways. Her family was provided land by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which they used to start a small farm. It opened her eyes to the different ways the agricultural sector has the potential to “provide huge opportunities for smallholder communities”.

But systems are at threat, owing to climate change “massively interfering” with food systems around the world, leading to droughts, floods and fires, she said in her February speech.

“Today’s food systems do not respond to what we need as people,” she added in her interview with U.N. News. “The cause of death for one in three people around the world is related to what they eat.”

Kalibata has ambitious plans for the Food Systems Summit. She said there’s a U.N. Task Force dedicated to the summit that will be guiding existing research “so that nothing falls through the cracks”, and it will be collaborating with experts examining scientific data from around the world.

However, her leadership has been met with resistance from some watchdogs. Since 2014, Kalibata has been president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a Gates Foundation project that aims to address food insecurity as a means to address poverty across Africa.

Since Kalibata’s leadership of the 2021 Food Systems Summit was announced in February, a petition has been circulating to revoke her status as the special envoy.

“Given the history of AGRA, the appointment of its President to lead, prepare, and design the Summit, will result in another forum that advances the interests of agribusiness at the expense of farmers and our planet,” read part of the petition.

It claims that AGRA’s core interest remains in satiating corporate interest, and funnelling public resources in that direction.

“Their finance-intensive and high input agricultural model is not sustainable beyond constant subsidy, which is drawn from increasingly scarce public resources,” read the petition, adding that there is a large imbalance in the power dynamics between the farmers and multinational grain traders, among others, who profit off the operation, while farmers “remain trapped in cycles of poverty and debt.”

It remains to be seen how it will affect her leadership, given climate change and sustainability efforts are increasingly distancing themselves from big corporates and those aligning with them.

Meanwhile, Yemen, which has been ravished by a famine for almost five years, is once again in critical need as torrential rains and floods have created an urgent need for food and safety measures.

The spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary General announced that the U.N. and their partners have distributed emergency food supplies among other resources. Yemen remains one of the most food insecure countries in the world, ranking 111 out of the lowest ranking of 113.

For the upcoming Food Systems Summit, it would also be crucial to keep an eye on how it will address the country’s famine and food insecure concerns.

The post Hopes and Challenges for the First-Ever Food Systems Summit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

TikTok, Trump and the Need for a Digital Non-Aligned Movement

Wed, 09/09/2020 - 10:37

Image compiled by the author, public domain

By Juan Ortiz Freuler
CAMBRIDGE, United States, Sep 9 2020 (IPS)

Recent weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in the U.S.’ stance towards tech companies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After hounding the telecommunications company Huawei for years, the social networking app TikTok is the latest Chinese company to enter the firing line.

On 5 August U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo published a press release that could be seen as the master plan that explained the logic behind these policies: creating a parallel internet, defined as a place where companies from the PRC have no place. The text states that “the momentum of the Clean Network program is growing. More than thirty countries and territories are now clean countries…”

But what is the ultimate goal of this program? The press release, which is more than 450 words long, includes the term ‘safety’ only in its title, ‘Announcing the Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America’s Assets’. It refers to security only four times, mostly included in the term ‘national security’. However, the word ‘clean’ is mentioned 14 times. Clean, as opposed to dirty. And, in Pompeo’s press release, dirty is defined as anything the People’s Republic of China or the Communist Party of China (CCP) is involved in.

Juan Ortiz Freuler

The press release does not provide any evidence to justify the drastic measures it proposes, nor does it include references to any technical analysis that could explain the decision to promote the creation of a parallel network over any of the other options available towards building trust (such as the development of industry-wide standards that could increase transparency and accountability, greater public oversight, and spot audits, among many others). It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the U.S. statement is best understood as an expression of xenophobia.

A break away from tradition

For decades the community of internet experts and developers have worked collaboratively to solve pressing issues. This community has been key towards building trust in the internet, both in terms of process (open and consensus driven) as well as in terms of the substance (often technical standards and processes to increase the security of the internet). Pompeo’s press release shows disdain for technical debates and for consensus driven processes. It’s the equivalent of the U.S. banging its shoe on the table before storming out. The recent actions by the U.S. show a pattern: the U.S. is no longer willing to discuss technical issues pertaining technology on their merits. Pompeo and Trump insist on pivoting towards another factor: identity. This is evident in the way in which President Trump explains how his administration is going to force TikTok to sell its U.S. business to Microsoft. How Microsoft will offer privacy to its U.S. users is not part of the public debate, nor is how any U.S. based platform protects people’s privacy. The important thing in Trump’s view is that whoever takes control of TikTok is a very American company.

As an Argentine from a region of the world that has suffered documented cases of surveillance in the United States (even for commercial reasons), the idea of identity based trust feels unsatisfactory. If the world allowed U.S. companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google to continue operating within the global network even after evidence about their collaboration with U.S. espionage, it was because the international community agreed that security issues could and should be addressed by developing and implementing robust industry-wide standards and processes. We clearly failed to develop a set of institutions that would oversee compliance with these rules at a global level, and that might be part of the problem.

A missed opportunity to compete on transparency

Many of us expected that, in the absence of some form of global institutional oversight, we would at least be granted a market-based lookalike through competition. The hope was that disagreements between the U.S and the PRC would spark a race to the top on security, privacy and transparency. And for a brief moment it seemed like we would get something out of it, like when TikTok claimed it would open up its algorithms and challenged Facebook to follow it. But it seems that the U.S. was uninterested in such an approach. Instead, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo extends an invitation to the world titled ‘Announcing the Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America’s Assets.’ The subtext is clear: either join the clean network, or be sent to the leper colony.

Image: UI Here

The domino effect

Pompeo’s press release does not build upon the tradition of open discussion towards the implementation of security standards and protocols, nor does it promote competition between private entities on the basis of security. Instead, Trump and Pompeo propose a reductionist narrative: security depends exclusively on identity. This narrative does not provide tools or reasons for the governments of the world to trust any company, be they from the People’s Republic of China or the United States. In doing so, the U.S. has just put rocket boosters under the camp of public servants in every country in the world who have long advocated for the use of firewalls and the blocking or nationalization of any foreign apps, in the name of national security.

Does Pompeo really believe that countries around the world should nationalize all foreign applications and infrastructure providers? If the answer is yes, it does not appear to be in the interest of U.S. companies, which his office in some form is set to serve. If the answer is “no, the nationalist and protectionist measures promoted under the umbrella of America First should only be applied by the U.S.”, then Pompeo has just re-defined the U.S. as a neo-colonial power.

Many details regarding the scope and implications of this press release will be clarified over the next few weeks, but it is important to highlight three consequences.

First, the United States has burned the political and moral capital it had left to speak against internet shutdowns, and more generally in the name of the open Internet. And this is not just about the Snowden revelations. This statement can be seen as the most recent delivery in a series of regressive actions: the U.S. has recently rolled back net neutrality protections, dismantled the open technology fund, argued for the weakening end-to-end encryption, and more generally, has shown the systematic failure of its regulatory bodies to guarantee competition, and consequent re-decentralization of the network that would provide reassurance to other countries that the internet is a levelled playing field worth engaging with.

Second, the logical consequence of Pompeo’s press release is the fragmentation of the global information system as we know it. The 450 word press release, peppered with nationalism and xenophobia, will most likely go down in history as the beginning of the end of the open internet, and the utopias that were projected upon that narrative.

Third, we need to build a third way. The expectation in Pompeo’s press release is that countries will be called upon to make a “choice” and join one of these intranets. However, under the current paradigm, our options will remain restricted to the clogs section of machines that favor the centers at the expense of the peripheries in ever-accelerating processes of extraction.

The timing for the collapse of our global communications system couldn’t be worse: with health specialists warning that we are, at best, in the middle of this pandemic, and scientists claiming that climate collapse will cause a great pain to millions in the years to come, the interdependence of our future has never been so evident. We need a communication system commensurate with the scale and breadth of our problems as a planet and as a species. We need a system that acknowledges the powerful machinery that has become available, and re-aligns its energy towards helping us solve problems like Covid-19 and climate change.

Everything seems to indicate that we are entering a digital cold war. If this is so, it is time for the peripheries to start giving shape to a digital non-aligned movement. Such a movement could operate as a buffer between the PRC and the U.S. – striving to protect the value of an open Internet, helping us adapt the Internet to become the knowledge-sharing tool that our times demand, and offering the necessary cover so that no nation feels coerced into joining an intranet that does not work in the interests of its people.

It is time for the leaders of the non-aligned digital movement to step forward and commit to coordinating our fight for the future of the web, our species, and our planet.

This article was originally published by opendemocracy

The post TikTok, Trump and the Need for a Digital Non-Aligned Movement appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Juan Ortiz Freuler is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

The post TikTok, Trump and the Need for a Digital Non-Aligned Movement appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Caring for Poorest and Most Underserved Children Vital for Creating a Better World

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 19:09

Raju, a young child who was rescued from traffickers by women child rights' activists in in Andhra Pradesh, India. There is an urgent need for fund allocations to protect the world’s most marginalised and vulnerable children gravely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Kerry Kennedy has a clear mission – along with Nobel laureates and leading international figures – she wishes to ensure that hard-won gains in children’s rights are not destroyed by the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kennedy is the president of Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights, a nonprofit human rights advocacy organisation.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, held on the eve of the Fair Share for Children Summit, Kennedy speaks of the urgent need for fund allocations to protect the world’s most marginalised and vulnerable children gravely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also explains why protecting children is crucial for the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Goals and why the world must also engage the private sector in the effort.

Kennedy warns that because children are increasingly completing their education online, there is a need for greater controls to ensure their safety.

Kennedy started working in the field of human rights in 1981 when she investigated abuses committed by United States immigration officials against refugees from El Salvador. Since then, her life has been devoted to the pursuit of justice, promotion and protection of fundamental rights, and preservation of the rule of law.

The Fair Share for Children Summit global virtual conference takes place from Sept. 9 to 10. It brings together Nobel laureates and leading international figures to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19. Speakers include Kennedy, the Dalai Lama, Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and chair of the Elders, 2014 Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, and Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein.

Kerry Kennedy explains why protecting children is crucial for the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Goals and why the world must also engage the private sector in the effort. Courtesy: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

IPS: How long have you been associated with Kailash Satyarthi? Could you tell us about your experience of working on child rights?

Kerry Kennedy (KK): Kailash received the RFK Human Rights Award in 1995 for his courageous work emancipating children from slavery and creating systemic change and legal reforms, which make him, arguably, the person who has freed more people from slavery than any person in history. He is not only my colleague, but I consider him one of my closest friends and an inspiration. Both his son and his daughter worked at RFK Human Rights, and my daughter Cara worked at Kailash’s ashram in India.

IPS: Do you think violations of child rights are taken as seriously as they should be?

KK: No. Worldwide there are 152 million children in slavery and other forms of exploitation. We know what the solutions are, we just need to implement them.

IPS: Sexual violence against children has been growing alarmingly. How can this be tackled, especially in a post-pandemic, economically weakened world?

KK: Sexual violence against children is a hidden pandemic we must confront, and we all must play a role in the coming months. This includes paying greater attention to warning signs that children in our communities may have been abused and strengthening reporting mechanisms. We should also help ensure that online protections are in place to keep children safer than ever, especially as their school days are increasingly virtual.

IPS: Why are the protection of child rights crucial for achieving the SDGs?

KK: None of the Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved in isolation. They are all part of the ecosystem of humanity and the protection of the earth. And they all have to be achieved together. Child rights are particularly important because the cycle of violence and exploitation against a child follows that child throughout life and creates a system in which everyone on the supply chain is harmed and lives in fear. We have the expertise and the knowledge to stop that, and we need to do so.

IPS: You have been working a lot with corporations to promote human rights in the private sector. Do you think the corporations can also be roped in to promote child rights?

KK: Of course, our work has primarily been focused on investors in major corporations. Those investors are often pension funds for union labourers or sovereign wealth funds for countries which have an inherent interest in protecting workers and promoting child rights.

Kailash has repeatedly said that child slavery is as much an economic issue as a human rights’ one. We must go further than simply having government regulations in place to eradicate the practice. As Dartmouth Professor Vijay Govindarajan notes, the rug industry has led by example here, with GoodWeave, a non-profit founded by Kailash in 1994, granting licenses to rug importers and exporters who have signed a contract agreeing to adhere to no-child-labour standards.

IPS: The theme of the summit is #FairShare4Children. What would be considered a fair share of the estimated $9 trillion set aside globally to mitigate the effects of the pandemic? Where are the most critical areas? And how should it be managed?

KK: There are an estimated 1.9 billion children worldwide – composing roughly 27 percent of the world’s population. By setting aside a proportional share to address child-specific needs: among them, educational equity; eradicating slavery and sexual violence; ensuring adequate nutrition; medical care and the distribution of vaccines to the poorest and most underserved children is a vital component of creating a better world.

The post Caring for Poorest and Most Underserved Children Vital for Creating a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS senior correspondent Stella Paul interviews KERRY KENNEDY, president of Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights, about why allocating funding for the poorest and most underserved children is a vital component of creating a better world.

The post Caring for Poorest and Most Underserved Children Vital for Creating a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 15:37

Longer term investments are needed to enable the over 500 million small holder farmers in developing countries to grow more food, thus increasing their incomes and resilience. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

African organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent.

The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual weeklong event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.”

Based on the findings of a recent report on the host, AGRA, a more appropriate theme would be “Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent.” The report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” found that the 14-year, billion-dollar AGRA initiative has failed spectacularly to meet its self-proclaimed objectives.

My background research, which contributed to the report, showed that yields have risen slowly, poverty remains endemic, and there has been an alarming 31% increase in the number of undernourished people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries.

After AGRA offered no substantive responses to the findings from the July 10 report, three African organizations are issuing a public letter to AGRA demanding it release internal documents on its impacts.

They demand that AGRA provide “evidence to refute the study’s findings that AGRA and the larger Green Revolution project are failing to meet its goals of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity by half.”

As Zambian researcher Mutinta Nketani told the German outlet DW, when an organization like AGRA “fails to achieve the goals it had set itself, all alarm bells should go off — not only amid civil society, but also amid AGRA itself as well as its donors.”

Failed policies of the past

The annual Green Revolution Forum brings together (virtually this year) leaders from government, business, civil society, research institutions, and the donors who have funded the latest effort to promote commercial seeds, fertilizers, and the markets that deliver them to Africa’s millions of small-scale farmers. Since its launch in 2006, AGRA has received about $1 billion in funding to lead this productivity revolution in its target countries.

African governments, though, have provided the bulk of the Green Revolution funding. Many use significant portions of their agricultural development budgets to subsidize the purchase of these commercial inputs for farmers who otherwise would not buy them. Collectively, those subsidies have totaled as much as $1 billion per year.

The strategy promises that commercial seeds and fertilizers will dramatically increase yields, allowing small-scale farmers to sell surplus crops, increase their incomes, and improve their food security.

According to the False Promises report, none of that has happened as AGRA reaches its self-declared 2020 deadline:

Rwanda: “AGRA’s hungry poster child”

Not only does AGRA have a lot to answer for at this year’s forum, so does Rwanda, which now hosts these annual gatherings. According to former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who is now chair of AGRA’s board, Rwanda was selected to host the AGRF because “Rwanda has shown the best example in agriculture transformation.” Based on that reputation, Rwanda’s former Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata now leads AGRA.

According to the False Promises report, Rwanda is a very poor example for sustainable and inclusive agricultural development. Under the government’s strict mandates to increase maize production, crop diversity declined dramatically.

Kalibata may point to a 300% increase in maize production and a 66% increase in yields, but traditional and nutritious crops like sorghum and sweet potato withered from neglect.

Overall yields for a basket of staple crops increased just 24%. And according to the latest U.N. figures, the number of undernourished Rwandans increased an alarming 41% since 2006 in spite of the boom in maize production.

The report calls Rwanda “AGRA’s hungry poster child.”

A former U.N. official recently decried Rwanda’s approach under Kalibata as “replacing hunger with malnutrition.” He and others have questioned her appointment by the U.N. Director General to lead next year’s scheduled Global Food Systems Summit.

Demand for accountability

In the public letter, PELUM-Zambia, BIBA-Kenya, and HOMEF of Nigeria ask Andrew Cox, AGRA’s Chief of Staff and Strategy, to provide evidence from AGRA’s own monitoring and evaluation to address the serious concerns raised in the False Promises report.

They note that AGRA refused researchers’ requests for such data to inform the report. They pose a provocative series of concrete questions about AGRA’s impacts.

“African farmers deserve a substantive response from AGRA to the findings in the report. So do AGRA’s public sector donors, who would seem to be getting a very poor return on their investments. African governments also need to provide a clear accounting for the impacts of their own budget outlays that support Green Revolution programs.”

They conclude with a plea that could be addressed to all the esteemed stakeholders at this year’s Green Revolution Forum: “We hope this request can refocus this important discussion on AGRA’s 14-year record in increasing productivity, incomes, and food security for smallholder farmers in Africa.”

That would be a better theme for the forum to take up.

Timothy A. Wiseis a senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Future of Food (New Press 2019). He provided a background paper that contributed to the report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.”

The post Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Financing Economic Recovery

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 12:29

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

As the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the length and breadth of Asia and the Pacific, finance ministries are continuing their relentless efforts to inject trillions of dollars for emergency health responses and fiscal packages. With continued lockdown measures and restricted borders, economic rebound seems uncertain.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Compared to 2019’s economic situation, over the past six months, countries in Asia and the Pacific have been experiencing sharp drops in foreign exchange inflows due to declines in export earnings, remittances, tourism and FDI. This is worrying as policymakers are tackling difficult choices over how to prioritize development spending, while continuing to expand their squeezed fiscal space.

The United Nations is contributing through a global initiative on Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond, co-convened by Canada and Jamaica, to articulate a comprehensive financing strategy to safeguard the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Governments are united together to ensure that adequate financial resources are available to steer an inclusive, sustainable and resilient post-COVID recovery. In the Asia-Pacific region, several countries have already adopted financing plans in three key areas. They aim to address the challenge of diminished fiscal space and debt vulnerability; to ensure sustainable recovery, consistent with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda; and to harness the potential of regional cooperation in support of financing for development.

The development arm of the United Nations in our region, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has recently launched its first-ever Regional Conversation Series on Building Back Better. We are joining forces with ministers, decision makers, private sectors and heads of international agencies to share collective insights in sharing pathways to resilient recovery from ongoing health pandemic and economic collapse.

To improve the fiscal space and manage high levels of debt distress, a growing call for extending the debt moratorium under global initiatives like the Debt Service Suspension initiative (DSSI) is timely. Central Banks can continue to keep the balance right of supporting the economy and maintaining financial stability. This further involves enhancing tax reforms and improving debt management capacities, while using limited fiscal space to invest in priority sectors. Exploring sustainability-oriented bonds and innovative financing instruments options such as debt swaps for SDG investment should be explored further.

In addition to economic considerations, the policy paradigm and financing architecture for recovery plans must mainstream affordable, accessible and green infrastructure standards, while promoting social equality and environmental sustainability principles as enshrined in the Paris Agreement. As we scale up the use of digital technology and innovative applications, the financing support of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) must go hand in hand with these national job-rich recovery strategies.

The Regional Conversation on Financing for Development highlighted that no country could take this agenda forward alone. Regionally coordinated financing policies can restart trade, reorganize supply chains and revitalize sustainable tourism in a safe manner. Thankfully, several countries in the region have valuable experiences to share.

Across Asia and the Pacific, governments must pool financial resources to create regional investment funds in areas such liquidity funds for sustainability, funds for resilience and travel funds to relaunch our economies. Strengthening regional cooperation platforms to ensure that all countries receive an equitable number of doses of the vaccine on short notice to everyone everywhere is particularly essential. Without an end to the pandemic, the economic and social costs can’t be contained.

Through ESCAP, we can scale these efforts across the region, working closely with our member States, the private sector and innovators to build a collective financing response to mobilize the necessary additional resources. Together, we can chart financing strategies of Asia and the Pacific which can enhance societal well-being and economic resilience to future pandemics and crises.

The post Financing Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

The post Financing Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:54

Women of the Batwa community tilling the soil in preparation for planting potatoes, in Gashikanwa, Burundi. Credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano

By Agnes Kalibata
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Food systems involve all the stages that lead up to the point when we consume food, including the way it is produced, transported, and sold. Launching a policy brief on food security in June, UN chief António Guterres warned of an “impending food emergency”, unless immediate action is taken.

My commitment to improving food systems is closely linked to my early life as the daughter of refugees.

“I was born in a refugee camp in Uganda, because my Rwandan parents were forced to leave their home around the time of colonial independence in the early 60s.

Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy for 2021 Food Systems Summit. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer

Thanks to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), were given land, which allowed my parents to farm, buy a few cows, and make enough money to send me and my siblings to school. This allowed me to experience, first-hand, how agriculture, in a functioning food system, can provide huge opportunities for smallholder communities.

I took this appreciation with me when I eventually returned to Rwanda, as Minister for Agriculture, working with smallholders and seeing them grab every opportunity to turn their lives around against all odds. This was probably the most fulfilling period in my life.

But, I have also seen what can happen when threats like climate change, conflict and even more recently, a pandemic like Covid 19, hit the world’s farmers, especially those who are smallholders, like my parents were.

As a daughter of farmers, I understand how much people can suffer, because of systems that are breaking down. I often reflect that I, and other children of farmers my age that made it through school, were the lucky ones because climate change hits small farmers the hardest, destroying their capacities to cope.

My experience has shown me that, when food systems function well, agriculture can provide huge opportunities for smallholder communities. I am a product of functional food systems, and I am fully convinced of the power of food systems to transform lives of smallholder households and communities, and bring about changes to entire economies.

I’m extremely passionate about ending hunger in our lifetime: I believe it’s a solvable problem. I don’t understand why 690 million people are still going to bed hungry, amidst so much plenty in our world, and with all the knowledge, technology and resources.

I have made it my mission to understand why this is the case, and how we can overcome the challenges we see along the way. That is why I gladly accepted the offer by the UN Secretary General to be his Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit.

Female farmers in discussion with former Rwandan Minister for Agriculture, Agnes Kalibata (far left). Credit: UN Food Systems Summit

Why food systems need to change

Today’s food systems do not respond to what we need as people. The cause of death for one in three people around the world is related to what they eat. Two billion people are obese, one trillion dollars’ worth of food is wasted every year, yet many millions still go hungry.

Food systems have an impact on the climate. They are responsible for around one third of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, which is interfering massively in our ability to produce food, upending farmers’ lives, and making the seasons harder to predict.

We have built up a lot of knowledge around the things that we’re doing wrong, and we have the technology to allow us to do things differently, and better. This isn’t rocket science: it’s mostly a question of mobilizing energy, and securing political commitment for change.

Galvanise and engage

The main impetus behind the Food Summit is the fact that the we are off track with all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that relate to food systems, principally ending poverty and hunger, and action on the climate and environment.

We want to use the Summit to galvanise and engage people, raising awareness about the elements that are broken, and what we need to change; to recognize that we’re way off track with the SDGs, and raise our ambitions; and to secure firm commitments to actions that will transform our current food systems for the better.

Traditional Hadong Tea Agrosystem in Hwagae-myeon, Korea, cultivate indigenous tea trees around streams and between rocks in hilly areas surrounding temples. Credit: Hadong County, Republic of Korea

Pulling together the UN System

The UN system is already doing a lot of work in this area, and we’ve pulled together several agencies and bodies to support the Summit.

We have formed a UN Task Force to channel the existing research, so that nothing falls through the cracks, which will work closely with a core group of experts we have assembled, which is looking at scientific data pooled from institutions all around the world. At the same time, we are examining national food systems, to see what is and isn’t working.

We are going to pool all the information, evidence and ideas we receive, and create a vision for a future food system that benefits all.”

At a briefing on the Food Systems Summit held recently, Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, noted that a transition to more sustainable systems is already underway, with countries beginning to “take action and change behaviours in support of a new vision of how food arrives on our plate.”

UN Member States, she continued, are increasingly aware that food systems are “one of the most powerful links between humans and the planet”, and bringing about a world that “enhances inclusive economic growth and opportunity, while also safeguarding biodiversity and the global ecosystems that sustain life. “

The Summit objectives

2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

*This article was first appeared in UN News, a publication of the United Nations.

The post UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Agnes Kalibata, in an interview with UN News*

Agnes Kalibata, UN Special Envoy for 2021 Food Systems Summit and a former Rwandan Minister for Agriculture, has been tasked with leading the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit, on a date to be determined next year. In an interview with UN News, she outlined her vision for a transformed international system that is more resilient, fairer, and less harmful to the planet.

The post UN’s First-Ever Food Systems Summit to Fight Impending Emergency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Regressive Taxation Must Be Reversed

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:05

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

With many in the world experiencing declining living standards, there has been growing frustration. Many hope that progressive taxation will improve things. While some economies once had progressive tax systems, recent decades have seen regression.

Competing, contradictory trends
Triumph of Injustice, the recent book by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both associates of ‘rock-star’ economist Thomas Piketty, calls for a US return to progressive taxation. The duo show that the US had one of the world’s most progressive tax systems, but now, the richest pay a lower tax rate than the poorest.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The two French economists at Berkeley consider the two major competing US ideologies on taxation based on rival claims with contemporary echoes. The socially regressive, ostensibly libertarian tradition has its roots in property, including slaves, who once accounted for 40% of the population of the US South.

Plantation owners and slaveholders opposed property taxes in the name of freedom and liberty. Meanwhile, the myth of the wealthy that low taxes have long been part of US history and tradition has become far more influential.

Another more progressive tax ideology can be traced to more egalitarian traditions, including some involving wealth taxation. The US has actually had some of the highest tax rates on the rich in world history, as taxation became more progressive from the 1930s, especially after the Second World War.

Regressive turn
Those most responsible for the U-turn from the 1980s have been US Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. The authors attribute the great recent increase in US economic inequality to the “negative spiral” involving regressive tax reforms over the last four decades.

However, empirical support for their claim is suspect as the ‘primary’ distribution of income before taxation is hardly egalitarian. Besides the traditional division between capital and labour, rentier incomes and much higher executive remuneration have become far more significant in recent decades.

While regressive tax incidence has undoubtedly made things worse, exaggerating the fiscal system’s redistributive impact detracts from a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary inequality.

Avoidance and evasion
Successive US governments have also enabled tax evasion and avoidance by not investing enough to effectively enforce what remains of the US tax code. These have been portrayed by beneficiaries and their propagandists as ‘unavoidable’.

They then claim that the best option to ensure greater compliance is to lower ‘headline’ tax rates. Thus, instead of greater efforts to reduce tax avoidance and evasion, they urge further reduction of tax rates.

Saez and Zucman insist that governments, especially the world’s most powerful one in Washington, DC, must come down hard on tax dodgers, pointing out that not doing so is due to political choices made. They propose a Federal Protection Bureau to enhance capacity against tax evasion and avoidance.

Corporate taxation
The duo show that corporate taxes were crucial in narrowing the gap between rich and poor during the Keynesian Golden Age for a quarter century or so in the mid-20th century after World War Two.

While very high top personal income tax rates, and much more inheritance and property taxes can help, they show that corporate taxation was crucial. The corporate income tax rate then was 50%, taking half of firm profits.

The high tax rate also encouraged re-investing profits, rather than paying dividends and bonuses, encouraging firm growth with higher capital accumulation in the long-term.

Meanwhile, progressive government expenditure complemented progressive taxation, including more direct taxes, for a comprehensively progressive fiscal system, reducing overall economic inequality.

Proposals to reduce inequalities
Saez and Zucman persuasively offer a comprehensive set of proposals to reverse the downward spiral to rebuild a much more progressive US tax system, with many lessons very relevant elsewhere as well. Importantly, they discuss various options for the US, including many not requiring international cooperation.

They acknowledge that the US has already shown the way with its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA compels all US citizens, both at home and abroad, to file annual reports on all their foreign holdings, ensuring greater financial transparency in the age of globalization.

Nevertheless, they insist it is not enough, arguing that “when it comes to regulating the tax industry, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) brings a knife to a gunfight”, instead of enhancing US tax capacities and capabilities.

‘Tax all incomes equally’
The first principle of taxation for them is that all income should be taxed equally, whether from work or assets. Today, capital income is taxed much less than labour income, increasing inequality contrary to the popular presumption that taxation is progressively redistributive.

Saez and Zucman also show that the rich can afford to pay 4% of national income, or US$750 billion more in tax. Four sets of taxes would double their current average tax rate from 30% to 60%.

They propose a steeply progressive income tax, arguing that a top rate of 75% is most viable. The duo also recommend strongly enforced corporate tax, doubling inheritance tax revenues, and introducing a wealth tax.

Wealth tax necessary
The duo also insist that it will be impossible to reduce inequality in the contemporary world only by raising corporate, inheritance and income taxes, as important as these are to the overall effort.

At the rates recommended, a wealth tax would raise significant sums, but still would not radically reduce inequality or extreme wealth concentration. Hence, the authors argue for higher rates, not only to raise more government revenue, but also to reduce extreme wealth inequality and concentration.

Saez and Zucman argue that extreme wealth concentration has led to growth benefits being captured by a few. They argue for taxing the rich, not only to enhance revenue, but also to reduce extreme wealth concentration.

For them, “a radical wealth tax would lead to a reduction in the number of multibillionaires. More than collecting revenue, it would deconcentrate wealth”. They suggest a 10% rate on fortunes over US$1 billion.

This would not only make it harder to be a billionaire, but also much harder to become and remain a multi-billionaire. If their proposed wealth tax was in place from 1982, most of the 400 richest Americans would still be billionaires, but worth much less.

Their wealth shares would be closer to what they were in 1982, before the rapid rise of wealth inequality. Mark Zuckerberg would still have US$21 billion, instead of US$61 billion, while Bill Gates would be worth US$4 billion, instead of US$97 billion.

Inequalities linked
Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, an income tax top rate of 94% was introduced, apparently not to raise revenue, but rather, to limit high incomes and wealth concentration.

This effectively limited income differentials between the highest and lowest paid to far more reasonable levels. As top tax rates have drastically fallen since, executives now get several hundred times more than their lowest paid employees.

In a recent interview, Gates commented, “I’m all for super-progressive tax systems…I’ve paid over $10bn in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20bn, it’s fine. But when you say I should pay $100bn, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.”

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Categories: Africa

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Where to Find the $1 trillion Needed for Marginalised Children

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 10:03

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi says that $1 trillion can solve many of the problems the world’s most marginalised communities are facing.

Satyarthi spoke to IPS in an exclusive interview on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children, which is founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

This fair share, the Laureates and Leaders for Children say, translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity and amounts to $1 trillion.

Watch as Satyarthi outlines just what the money will be spent on.

Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis

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Categories: Africa

Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis

Tue, 09/08/2020 - 09:37

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe. Courtesy: Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi warns of the danger that over one million children could die, not because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis facing their families.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Satyarthi said that without prioritising children we could lose an entire generation as evidence mounts that the number of child labourers, child marriages, school dropouts and child slaves has increased as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe.

He candidly noted that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised by governments and policies and that the political will and urgency of action was simply not there to offer them protection.

Satyarthi is undoubtedly one of the greatest child rights’ crusaders of our time. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) – India’s largest movement for the protection of children and centred around ending bonded and labour and human trafficking, Satyarthi has been relentlessly working to protect the rights of children for over four decades. Save Childhood Movement has rescued almost 100,000 children from servitude and bonded labour, re-integrating them into society and aiding them in resuming their education.

IPS interviews Satyarthi on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children – also founded by Satyarthi. The summit, which takes place from Sept. 9-10, brings together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies to demand a fair share for the world’s most marginalised children during and beyond COVID-19.

The pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe, and it is not just a moral obligation but also a practical step to protect these children, Satyarthi says.

He also elaborates what could be a fair share of the global pandemic recovery package for the children and how this could be managed. Excerpts follow:

IPS: Where does the world stand today in ensuring child rights? Which are the areas where we have clear progress, and where are we still failing?

Kailash Satyarthi (KS): I would be very blunt to say that the most marginalised and vulnerable children in the world are still not prioritised in the policies and fund allocations and spending on them. Protection of children needs a lot of political will and a lot of urgency and action which was not there. But I would agree that we have been making progress, slowly but surely, we are trying to protect our children in different areas. There is clear evidence that the number of child labourers has decreased over the last 20 years or so, the number of out-of-school children has also dropped considerably. Similarly, we made progress in the field of malnutrition. So, there were many areas we made progress. But as I said before, we require a tremendous amount of political will and action to protect our children.

IPS: How has the COVID pandemic endangered lives of children across the world?

KS: Well, before the pandemic, we had several problems in relation to safety, education, health and freedom of children. And since these children belong to the most marginalised sector of society – they are children of unorganised workers, peasants, farmers, they are children of indigenous peoples and children belonging to refugee communities. So, they were already suffering, injustice was there, inequality was there, but COVID-19 has exacerbated that inequality and injustice, and we see the worst effect is on children.

Though there is no direct infection or disease, the indirect effect is alarming, and that has to be addressed now. It is very clear that if we do not take urgent action now, then we risk losing the entire generation. It is evident and eminent from all sources that the number of child labourers, the number of child marriages, school dropouts, the number of child slaves, even children engaged in petty crimes – these will increase.

So, we have to underline these factors which are impacting the lives of children and their families, of course. And we have to be extremely vigilant and active about it. So, that sense of moral responsibility and political responsibility should be generated and educated.

I also think that this crisis is the crisis of civilisations. We were thinking that since everybody is facing the same problem, the pandemic would be an equaliser. But instead of being an equaliser, it has become a divider. Divisive forces are quite active in society, and equality and injustice are growing in the children. So, first of all, as an individual and a concerned citizen, one should generate compassion.

Two Tamil refugee children play in Mannar in northern Sri Lanka. The COVID-19 pandemic has gravely endangered millions of children around the globe. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

IPS: The government stimulus package is expected to provide employment and help in economic recovery. Is it feasible to use this specifically for child development and child protection?

KS: It is not only feasible, it is necessary. We cannot protect humanity and ethos of equality and justice until and unless we address the problems of the most marginalised children and people of the world.

I am quite supportive of the government stimulus package, which is $9 trillion so far. I will give you an example – the stimulus is prioritised to bail out their own companies. Most of the developed countries are putting up stimulus to bail out their own economy, their banks, financial institutions and companies. In the United States, some companies have all-time high stock market situations.

On the other hand, we have a danger that over a million children will die – not because of COVID-19 pandemic, but because of the economic crisis, their parents are facing. So, this is injustice. How can you justify this? You need a stimulation package to bailout [the] economy, but you need a stimulation package to ensure that our children are protected. So, this is not just a moral question but also a very practical issue.

This is why in May earlier this year, I joined 88 Nobel Laureates and global leaders to sign a joint statement demanding that 20 percent of the COVID-19 response be allocated to the most marginalised children and their families. This is the minimum fair share for children.

KS: Even if you only look at the $5 trillion packages announced in the first few weeks of the pandemic, 20 precent of that is $1 trillion – enough funding to fund all the COVID-19 U.N. appeals, cancel two years of debt for low-income countries, provide the external funding required for two years of the Sustainable Development Goals on Education and Water and Sanitation and a full ten years of the external funding for the health-related SDGs.

Within the estimated $9 trillion of governments’ aid, this would mean $1 trillion (for children). This funding would mitigate the increase child hunger and food insecurity, tackle the increase in child labour and slavery, the denial of education and the heightened vulnerability of children on the move such as child refugees and displaced children. These are the areas of immediate criticality.

Some key demands to this end include – for one, the declaration of COVID vaccines as a global common good so that it is made available for free for the most marginalised communities. Secondly, the creation of a Global Social Protection Fund to provide a financial safety net to the poorest communities in lower and lower-middle income countries. Thirdly, all governments should cancel the debt of poor countries to allow them to redirect funds towards social protection. Lastly, governments should establish legislation to ensure due diligence and transparency for business and ensure its strict compliance to prevent the engagement of child labour and slavery in the global supply chains.

If we can prevent the devastating impact of COVID-19 on these areas in the present, if we can reduce the inequality in the world’s COVID-19 response, if we ensure the most vulnerable receive their Fair Share to we can then be in a position to salvage the future of our children.

The post Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS senior correspondent Stella Paul interviews Nobel Laureate KAILASH SATYARTHI on the eve of Fair Share for Children Summit, a global virtual conference in which Nobel Laureates and world leaders are calling for the world's most marginalised children to be protected against the impacts of COVID-19.

The post Exclusive: Kailash Satyarthi Warns over a Million Children Could Die Because of COVID-19 Economic Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Lessons from the Losses

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 19:14

Clementine, a community health volunteer, meets with a mother and child. Credit: Lys Arango for Action Against Hunger, Kenya

By Dr Patrick Amoth
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

If countries considered Universal Health Coverage (UHC) a central policy in their health systems, the COVID-19 has surely demonstrated the need for its urgent and widespread roll out. The pandemic has upended world systems in a manner that no scientists or sophisticated global intelligence could have foreseen.

Having been tapped to join the World Health Organization’s Executive Board to represent Africa midst this global crisis, I am persuaded that despite its toll, this pandemic has ‘blessings’ on its flipside. COVID-19 has exposed the global crisis of weak healthcare systems that previously lay under the carpet and forced nations’ global attention on strengthening systems to achieve UHC. Kenya, for example, has never suffered any major epidemic, having escaped the SARS, Swine Flu and even the deadly Ebola that ravaged neighboring countries. This is therefore a first and has indeed tested its preparedness for epidemics.

Thankfully for Kenya, the Covid-19 epidemic appeared in the midst of the roll-out of the President’s Big 4 Agenda, which prioritized UHC as a key pillar . The pilot implementation of UHC in four counties in Kenya has demonstrated better impact on the health outcome and greater accessibility while building Resilient and Sustainable Health system that can respond to unforeseen shocks. However, the success of UHC in Kenya will require more than executive or national-level goodwill; with health as a devolved function, each of the 47 counties must put in systems and resources to ensure its success.

The county bosses ought to prioritize delivery of a better healthcare system to citizens. This will be only be possible with a deliberate cohesive approach to UHC between the central government and the counties in order to achieve desired outputs within a short time. Both the national and county budgets have to be aligned and apportioned appropriately towards this goal.

Primarily, sufficient resources have to be channeled towards better healthcare infrastructures such as more hospitals and better equipment. However, investment in infrastructure must be done simultaneously with that in human capital. State-of-the-art equipment and beautiful hospitals without competent and well-trained personnel to handle the equipment and patients, is tantamount to wastage. As such, governments and partners ought to make enormous investments in medical and health related sciences to develop well trained healthcare professionals. The country needs to improve the current ratio of healthcare workers to population to reach every citizen with quality healthcare. Continuous medical education learning and training of healthcare workers needs to be underscored to hone their skills in latest technologies and prepare them to deal with emerging diseases.

World Health Organization (WHO) recently adopted Home-Based Isolation and Care as one of the case management strategies for Covid-19. For a continent whose populations largely reside in rural areas, this change in strategy has highlighted the importance of competent, capable and motivated community health volunteers. The community health volunteers have become crucial tripods of the healthcare stand during this pandemic. Whereas most of the CHVs may not necessarily have college training in health-related fields, their experience and informal training has gone a long way to help alleviate the challenges of Covid-19 in communities.

Kenya has for example trained and oriented 60,000 CHVs to handle patients who may present with Covid-19 symptoms. Guided by a carefully thought out Community Health Policy (2020-2030) and Guidelines on training of community health workers on COVID 19, the trained CHVs are approximately 70 percent of all CHVs in the country. The training and commensurate results from the CHVs during this pandemic has demonstrated that CHVs are a key component of the UHC success. Apart from making UHC work better, the need for more and better-trained CHVs will also be a credible avenue for job creation, especially at a time when the economy has taken a massive hit and many people with diverse skill sets are jobless.

Covid-19 has been a perfect crucible for testing the effectiveness and efficacy of technology in healthcare management. Due to the unpredictability of the epidemic and having led to total and partial lockdowns, Kenya’s CHVs received relevant information about Covid-19 through text messages, once again proving that technology is indeed the present and future of healthcare management.

Apart from achieving healthier nations, Universal Health Coverage will also be a great opportunity for multilateralism. If Kenya, its neighbors and the whole region were to invest in more hospitals and better quality of healthcare, medical tourism would grow considerably. The increase in number of patients will in turn drive up revenues and eventually lead to a drop in the cost of healthcare, much to the benefit of even local citizens. This has been the model of nations like India, whose cost of healthcare has become relatively affordable due to huge numbers of global citizens seeking medicare in their country. For India and other medical destinations, technology has also played a pivotal role in healthcare since it enjoys advanced medical technology for faster and more accurate diagnosis and management.

Advanced medical technologies such as telemedicine and compliance with international quality standards will further guarantee health tourists of excellent healthcare services, thereby creating investor confidence and opening up the region further to economic investment and strength.

Covid-19 pandemic must be a turning point for nations that have not prioritized Universal Health Coverage. A healthy citizenry is a surety towards economic growth for any nation. The success of UHC will however largely depend on the political goodwill, policy priority and a well-trained and properly equipped army of healthcare workers. There can be no better time to mainstream UHC than today. The Chinese proverb on planting trees is applicable for UHC too: the best time to start was 20 years ago, the next best time is now.

Dr. Patrick Amoth is the Ag. Director General in the Ministry of Health in Kenya and is also the Vice-Chair of the World Health Organization Executive Board.

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Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 18:31

By PRESS RELEASE
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) today approved US$1.5 million in new education in emergency funding in response to last month’s explosion in Beirut.

The new funding comes just one month after the 4 August 2020 blast, which damaged 140 schools and affected at least 55,000 Lebanese and non-Lebanese students.

Through the ECW grant, UNESCO, in close coordination with Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will support the rapid rehabilitation of approximately 40 schools in the area of the explosion, allowing at least 30,000 children and youth whose schools were damaged to resume their learning in a physically safe environment during the 2020-2021 school year.

“Beirut has suffered a lot, but will rise again. We need to support the young generation to sustain and this means rehabilitating their damaged schools without delay,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We know that our strategic partner UNESCO, working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will be able to rapidly rehabilitate 40 damaged schools for these girls and boys.”

Severe destruction of the schools has been reported by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and education sector, including crumbling walls, broken windows, leaking roofs, broken desks and chairs. School water and sanitation facilities have also been damaged, further exacerbating the ongoing health crisis posed by COVID-19.

Compounding economic and political crises are putting over a million children and youth at risk in Lebanon. Analysis from ECW’s 2019 Annual Report indicates that approximately 631,209 Syrian children and 447,400 vulnerable Lebanese children faced challenges accessing education in 2019.

The approval of today’s additional funding builds on the results from ECW’s US$2.3 million grant for Lebanon, which ran from August 2018 to February 2020.

The post Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Through ECW's first emergency response window, UNESCO will rehabilitate 40 schools and support 30,000 students to resume learning.

The post Education Cannot Wait Responds to Beirut Explosion with US$1.5 Million in Education in Emergency Funding to Rehabilitate Damaged Schools appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

A Red Notice against Trump?

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 17:05

By Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha
LONDON, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

When INTERPOL is asked to intervene against targeted killing.

Introduction

Last June, news broke that Iran had issued an arrest warrant and asked INTERPOL for help in detaining US President Donald Trump and dozens of others it believed had carried out the drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.1 INTERPOL denied this request,2 stating that it “would not consider requests of this nature” because “it is strictly forbidden for the Organisation to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”3

Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha

INTERPOL General Secretariat, which is the body of the Organisation which has the power to issue red notices4, thus spontaneously or at the request of the USA, determined that the publication of such red notices would contravene INTERPOL’s Constitution and/or the rules adopted thereunder. Given Iran’s own successful challenge, in 2007, of an Argentinian request for red notices against i.a. former President Rafsanjani and the former foreign minister5, INTERPOL’s rejection should not have come as a surprise. However, on the basis of the same experience6, if all the other red notice requests have also been rejected, Iran might want to question that decision. Such challenge can potentially lead to a showdown at the INTERPOL’s General Assembly7. The following highlights the substantive issues that would be involved.

Interventions against Heads of State are not per se political

The reason why Iran might be tempted to challenge the General Secretariat’s decision is because of the less assertive position adopted by the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (“CCF”) in an advisory opinion of 2005. The CCF rejected the view that an intervention against a Head of State or a Head of Government should systematically be considered in contravention of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution. According to the CCF, the advisability of processing such information must be assessed in the light of a number of criteria, such as: (i) any immunities enjoyed by the person concerned or attached to the person’s office at the time when police co-operation is requested, (ii) the entity which had issued the arrest warrant, it being understood that, even in the case of a military tribunal, this fact alone does not mean the entity is systematically considered to be in contravention of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution, even if at first sight it tended to support the idea that the information should not be processed, (iii) the type and seriousness of the crime concerned; fraud, for example, was not considered to be an aggravated crime with regard to the risks of damage to property or persons.8

It is firmly established that, unless waived, certain holders of high-ranking office in a State, such as the Head of State, Head of Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs, enjoy immunities from jurisdiction in other States.9 This immunity entails “full immunity from criminal jurisdiction and inviolability”10 public, private, before or in office.11 Full immunity protects the individual concerned against any act of authority of another State which would hinder him in the performance of his duties.12 Accordingly, in 2006, the General Secretariat acted upon this advice and cancelled a diffusion concerning Kosovo’s Prime Minister Agim Ceku13. Against this background, it is unsurprising that the INTERPOL General Secretariat refused to assist Iran in detaining President Trump.

Targeted killings as ordinary law crimes

The identity of the 35 other individuals wanted by Iran in connection with the death of Soleimani is unclear. Thus, it is not possible to determine whether the INTERPOL General Secretariat was justified in refusing to assist Iran in respect of those 35 individuals on the basis of any immunity. In the absence of any immunity, the “nature of the offence” is particularly important. It has been reported that the 35 individuals are the subject of “murder and terrorism” charges in Iran. Prima facie, INTERPOL considers that murder and terrorism are ordinary law crimes.

According to Resolution AGN/20/RES/11 (1951) “… no request for information, notice of persons wanted and, above all, no request for provisional arrest for offences of a predominantly political, racial or religious character, is ever sent to the International Bureau or the NCBs, even if – in the requesting country – the facts amount to an offence against the ordinary law”. This requires a case by case assessment, taking into account its particular context. Thus, while the resolutions concerning the interpretation of Article 3 generally focused on the nature of the offence (e.g. pure political offences such as treason), the requirement of evaluating the overall context of the case introduces other relevant elements to be assessed14. The general trend of Article 3 interpretation clearly points to the narrowing of its application in relation to the nature of the offence.

Given that the individual concerned is denied the right to be heard—to establish his identity and demand that prosecutors prove his selection for sanctions was justified15, targeted killing cannot be considered an act of international criminal law enforcement16. Therefore, such targeted killing can hardly be distinguished from ordinary assassinations because arguably, outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal17.

Interestingly, in 2010, INTERPOL issued a red notice against 11 individuals wanted for the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai18 and even joined the task force established to investigate the murder19. However, in the same year, the INTERPOL General Assembly, concerned about the exposure of the organisation becoming involved in political conflicts between its member countries, moved to curtail the use of the organisation’s channels and tools against targeted killings. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 effectively precludes the publication of red notices against non-nationals of the requesting country in cases where the country of nationality opposes. It provides that:

“DECIDES, in light of the above that, in addition to the application of INTERPOL’s general rules and regulations with regard to processing of requests for international police co-operation, the processing via INTERPOL channels of new requests concerning genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes shall continue with regard to: …

3. Requests submitted by member countries, except in cases where the request concerns a national of another member country, and that other member country, upon being informed by the General Secretariat of the request, protests against the request within thirty days;

This resolution only applies to cases where the request concerns persons suspected or guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. If Iran’s request for police cooperation was predicated on the commission of war crimes, the INTERPOL General Secretariat will have informed the US of Iran’s request and the US will, no doubt, have protested against Iran’s request. In that case, it is likely that, relying on AG-2010-RES-10, the USA successfully opposed the issuance the of the red notices requested by Iran against its nationals. If this is the case, it is unlikely that either the Executive Committee or the INTERPOL General Assembly would overrule the decision of the General Secretariat to deny the requested red notices.

A potential way forward for Iran

If Iran’s request for police cooperation was not predicated on the commission of war crimes, there is a potential way forward for Iran in respect of the wanted individuals who do not benefit from any immunity. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 would not apply and the request would have to be examined in accordance with the predominance test set forth in Resolution AGN/20/RES/11 (1951). At first sight, it is not obvious what would make this case different than the targeted killing in Dubai in 2010, in which case INTERPOL did issue a red notice against the suspected Israeli officials20. Indeed, as mentioned before, Iran successfully invoked this dispute settlement mechanism in the 2000s in connection with red notices published by the INTERPOL General Secretariat at the request of Argentina against Iranian nationals for allegedly participating in the bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Conclusion

To conclude, if as the CCF advised in 2005, interventions against Heads of States are not per se prohibited by Article 3 of the INTERPOL Constitution, the rejection of the red notice against President Trump was probably justified only on account of his personal immunity under international law. This also means that the same justification would not necessarily apply to all the other persons wanted by Iran. It is thus possible that like in 2007, INTERPOL’s General Assembly could agree that, given the predominance test, the red notices against those not enjoying immunity under international law can be issued by INTERPOL. However, the USA would be able to invoke AG-2010-RES-10, to oppose the issuance the of the red notices requested by Iran against its nationals. Resolution AG-2010-RES-10 only applies to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Thus, if the Iranian request against the others than Trump, was not predicated on war crimes, Iran could challenge the General Secretariat’s decision in connection with the death of Soleimani, and could again invoke the INTERPOL dispute settlement mechanism and agitate for a showdown at the 89th session of the INTERPOL General Assembly in December 2020.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1 Iran Issues Arrest Warrants for Trump and 35 Others in Suleimani Killing, The New York Times 29 June 2020. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/world/middleeast/iran-trump-arrest-warrant-interpol.html
2 Iran issues arrest warrant for Trump; Interpol denies help, Al Jazeera 20 June 2020. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/iran-issues-arrest-warrant-trump-asks-interpol-200629104710662.html
3 Interpol shuts down Iran’s request for Trump arrest, CNBC 30 June 2020. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/interpol-shuts-down-irans-request-for-trump-arrest.html
4 Article 74 INTERPOL Rules on Data Processing (“IRPD”).
5 Iran rejects Interpol wanted notices – official, Reuters 8 November 2007. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSHAF837597
6 INTERPOL General Assembly upholds Executive Committee decision on AMIA Red Notice dispute, INTERPOL Press Release 7 November 2007. Available at: https://www.interpol.int/ar/1/1/2007/INTERPOL-General-Assembly-upholds-Executive-Committee-decision-on-AMIA-Red-Notice-dispute
7 For a detailed analysis of these procedures and a discussion of the previous instances inter-State dispute settlement within INTERPOL, see: RSJ Martha, C. Grafton & S. Bailey, Chapter 10, The Legal Foundations of INTERPOL, Hart Publishing, 2nd edition (forthcoming October 2020).
8 Annual Activity Report of the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files 2005, Section 7.2.
9 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 51.
10 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 54.
11 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 55.
12 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, para. 54.
13 INTERPOL statement concerning arrest warrant for Agim Ceku, INTERPOL Press Release 28 March 2006. Available at: https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2006/INTERPOL-statement-concerning-arrest-warrant-for-Agim-Ceku
14 See: Yaron Gottlieb, Article 3 of Interpol’s Constitution: Balancing International Police Cooperation with the Prohibition on Engaging in Political, Military, Religious, or Racial Activities (January 1, 2011). Florida Journal of International Law, Vol. 23, p. 135, 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2325891
15 Anyone targeted for sanctions is entitled to the basic rights. Joined Cases C-402 & C-415/05, Kadi & Al Barakaat Int’l Found. v. Council & Commission, 2008 E.C.R. I-6351, 336-337.
16 Barry Kellman, Targeted Killings—Never Not an Act of International Criminal Law Enforcement, 40 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 27 (2017), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol40/iss1/3
17 Cf Patryk I. Labuda, The Killing of Soleimani, the Use of Force against Iraq and Overlooked Ius Ad Bellum Questions, EJIL Talk 13 January 2020. Available at: https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-killing-of-soleimani-the-use-of-force-against-iraq-and-overlooked-ius-ad-bellum-questions/ ; The Killing of Qassim Suleimani Was Unlawful, Says U.N. Expert, The New York Times, 9 July 2020. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/world/middleeast/qassim-suleimani-killing-unlawful.html
18 Interpol Posts Wanted Notice in Hamas Assassination, VOA News 17 February 2010. Available at: https://www.voanews.com/world-news/middle-east-dont-use/interpol-posts-wanted-notice-hamas-assassination
19 Interpol joins international task force investigating Dubai assassination, The Christian Science Monitor 9 March 2010. Available at: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0309/Interpol-joins-international-task-force-investigating-Dubai-assassination
20 Interpol red notices on 11 Hamas murder suspects, Euronews 18 February 2010, Available at: https://www.euronews.com/2010/02/18/interpol-red-notices-on-11-hamas-murder-suspects

Dr Rutsel Silvestre J Martha is the principal of Lindeborg Counsellors at Law, a London-based public international law boutique firm, and Fellow Partner of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. From 2004 to 2008 he was the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs of INTERPOL.

His publications on international law include: The Legal Foundations of INTERPOL (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2010.), “Challenging Acts of INTERPOL in Domestic Courts” In: Challenging Acts of International Organizations Before National Courts, Edited by August Reinisch, OUP, September 2010., and “Remedies Against INTERPOL: role and practice of defense lawyers” Conference European Criminal Bar Association Lyon, 6 October 2007 (online).

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Categories: Africa

US Poll Predictions and Presidential Politics in the American Polity

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 13:36

By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The US residential polls are akin to a drama that is staged every four years in which the American are actors on stage and the rest of the world is the audience. With one major difference, however. While in a usual theatrical performance the viewers are there mostly for amusement, though some may be enlightened and enriched by the experience, in the case of the US elections, unlike in others, their fates are inextricably linked to the outcome of the play. This is not predetermined by any playwright, though it can often be predicted. It is not implausible therefore for some on-lookers to want to intervene in what’s happening onstage. It must be done discreetly, and with great circumspection. Take for instance, the Russians in the American elections in 2016. The Russians and President Donald Trump hotly dispute allegations of any such interference.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of intellectual resources devoted to model-building in order to be able to predict election outcome. The purpose is to develop a methodology superior to mere crystal -ball gazing. So many caveats are often entered into the exercise that robs it of major value. In the US, elections are ultimately decided according to votes cast by the electoral college of 538, comprised of representatives from the States. So, the magic number for victory is 270. Each State chooses its own electors, and these members of the electoral college vote on a ‘winner take all basis’. In other words, if a majority of the voters from a State vote for one candidate, all electoral college votes from that State are meant to be cast in favour of that candidate. Electoral college vote results may not, therefore, as they have not in some cases in the past, reflect the winner in terms of national popular votes.

For the purposes of prediction, the prestigious British journal ‘The Economist’ has developed a somewhat complex model indicating Mr Joe Biden of the Democratic Party as the winner. At writing, it is giving 91.7% chance of electoral victory and 98% chance of popular majority to Mr Biden. The Financial Time’s tally for Biden stood at 298. Professor Allan Lichtman of the American University and author of “The keys to the White house”, who has accurately predicted every Presidential electoral outcome correctly since 1984 using “13 key factors”, has predicted Mr Biden will win. In the ancient times, Greek and Roman drama-writers used a concept called “deus ex machina’, literally god out of a machine, in their scripts. This is an unexpected power originating from the gods, is introduced which alters the course of the narration.

It seemed for a while that nothing short of a divine intervention, a remote likelihood for Mr Trump in the view of his detractors, could save him from certain defeat. But then the race began to tighten, partly caused by apprehensions in some quarters with regard to the social unrest currently sweeping America, and Mr Trump’s repeated reassertion of Jeremiads against violence .Given the dichotomized and divided nature of the American electoral , both sides have loyal bases who will vote in accordance with their a priori views, come what may. So, the contest is basically for the minds and hearts of 8 to 9 % who are still undecided. These are the potential Biblical ‘Sauls on the Road to Damascus’ of the electorate, the potential converts to the other side. That is also the percentage point of Mr Biden’s current lead. So even if Mr Trump should win over most of the undecided numbers, which in itself is a stretch, Mr Biden would still have an edge.

This has encouraged Mr Trump to fight back. Unlike in the UK where the system of governance usually follows a culture of “good- chap model”, whereby political actors conform to a code of conduct perceived to be virtuous, no such tradition appears to shape American political behaviour. The absence of European-style feudalism that helped inspire such norms in the ‘old world’ might have impeded the development of such values in the immigrant political milieu of the ‘new world’. Mr Trump has provided a supreme example of this phenomenon almost all through his entire first term in office. He capped it at the Republican National Convention by using the White House, always seen as an apolitical institution (a ‘Peoples’ House’) as the venue for his speech accepting Party nomination for his second term of the presidency. Past occupants of the official residence of the president of the United states have abstained, indeed recoiled from politicizing what is largely accepted as a national symbol of unity Because of these reasons, the framers of the US Constitution had thought it wise to put down in writing the details of how the polity should be governed. They were wary of putting their trust entirely trust entirely on intrinsic human morality. Their faith in God did not extend to the faith in their own ilk. They were uncertain if their fellow-Americans would be able to rule democratically within a framework of established tradition of good governance unless a written Constitution set-out the guidelines. They were wise, but apparently not comprehensive enough. They left sufficient gaps and loopholes for the system to be gamed by politicians of lesser virtuous pedigree.

The equivalent of the US President in Britain is, not the Queen, but the Prime minister. Across the Atlantic the Prime Minister is the ‘primus inter pares” or first among equals who governs with the aid and joint responsibility of a Cabinet of colleagues. In the US the Secretaries, often termed Cabinet-officers rather than Cabinet–members, are, though appointees of the President, are approved by the Senate. As heads departments they are loosely equated with British Ministers. But they are not colleagues of the President in a political sense and become a part of their department whose role is apolitical. For instance, the top diplomat in Washington the Secretary of State does not while performing duties at home and abroad, associate his office with domestic politics. Recently, the current incumbent, Mike Pompeo, blatantly broke that rule, by politically using a trip to Jerusalem to advance the President’s political aspiration publicly.

According to British public service culture, as also in many democracies, officials shun active politics. In the US such behaviour was written into law. The Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits employees of the federal government, except for the President and Vice President, in engaging in some form of political activities. But nowadays some allege that it is being honoured more in the breach than the observance. Many elements of democracy, such as voting rights for all, came later in the US than is often realized. The author and historian Michael Beschloss worries that unless these are protected they may also erode quickly. The incredibly sad consequence would be what the Fathers of the Republic wanted to avoid foremost, a descent into tyranny. Any law has content and spirit. The spirit is often equally important.

Take the question of leaving office. In Britain, should a Prime Minister lose the elections, or be defeated in a vote of no-confidence in the House of commons, he or she would proceed to the Palace, either kiss the Queen’s hands or offer her a curtsy and resign office. For this politician, it would not mean a withdrawal from politics, and thereby would be less painful. Office is seen as merely a privilege to serve the community. In America on the other hand for the President calling quits is forever, hence there is a burgeoning view that given Trump’s disinclination to conform to ‘good chap ‘ behaviour , he may drag his feet at leaving office , particularly if the results are close , alleging electoral fraudulence. The Biden crowd is suggesting if that be the case, the military would, or should, march Trump out of office. The US military has experience of marching several foreign Presidents out of office, but never one of its own. That would indeed be a unique experience!

While the component States of the American Union is largely governed by the Governors, foreign policy is the President’s domain. Given the military and economic clout of the US, their politics often become central to our concerns. Hence the need for the world beyond the US to understand, assess and evaluate them. For instance, a re-election of Mr Trump would mean a further retreat of the US into “Fortress America” and a greater disengagement from the world. On the other hand, a Biden Administration would mean a greater engagement, with other nations, multilateral institutions and issues such as Climate Change and Arms Control. That is why a US Presidential election generates a degree of interest in say India, Pakistan or Bangladesh as in Hawaii, Nebraska or North Carolina.

Text-books in Civics and Comparative politics, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, often tend to differentiate the British and American systems, sometime a tad simplistically, as being ‘Parliamentary’ ‘and ‘Presidential’ forms of governance. The French, with their own mixed form, never quite played along with this idea. That was also before China came to salience with their model of government based on ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which no one else follows till now, but is important because China is. The Indian example is too chaotic to be recognized as a norm.

Writing his classic work ‘The English Constitution’ in 1867, Walter Bagehot argued a Constitution needed two parts: a ‘dignified’ one, to ‘excite and preserve the reverence of the population’ and the other , an ‘efficient’ part , ‘to employ that homage in the work of the government’. In Britain the two parts were sought to be kept distinct and to date has operated more or less smoothly. In the US they became, somewhat of a mixed hodgepodge. Around the mid- nineteenth century, a French political observer visiting America, de Tocqueville, perceived a discernible difference between appearance and reality in America. So, while trying to rid the new world of the tyranny of a King, were the framers of the US Constitution inadvertently creating an Emperor? Some may ponder. Confronted with such a question, Mr Trump might nonchalantly respond, “it is what it is”!

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

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Categories: Africa

UN Women Calls for Accelerating its Unfinished Business

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 11:47

Women in Bangladesh stand up for gender equality. Credit: UNICEF/Jannatul Mawa

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set a path-breaking agenda for women’s rights. As a result of the two-week gathering with more than 30,000 activists, representatives from 189 nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

This historic blueprint articulated a vision of equal rights, freedom and opportunities for women – everywhere, no matter what their circumstances are – that continues to shape gender equality and women’s movements worldwide.

A quarter century on, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calls for urgent action: “With nations around the world searching for solutions to the complex challenges of our age, the leading way for all of us to rebuild more equal, inclusive, and resilient societies, is to accelerate the implementation of women’s rights – the Beijing Platform for Action. That vision has been only partly realized. We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, and this simply has to change”.

The Beijing Platform for Action imagined a world where every woman and girl can exercise her freedoms and choices, and realize her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions and to earn equal pay for work of equal value. As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern.

Twenty-five years later, no country has fully delivered on the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. A major stock-taking UN Women report published earlier this year showed that progress towards gender equality is faltering and hard-won advances are being reversed.

Women currently hold just one quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board. Men are still 75 per cent of parliamentarians, hold 73 per cent of managerial positions, are 70 per cent of climate negotiators and almost all of the peacemakers.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The anniversary is a wake-up call and comes at a time when the impact of the gender equality gaps is undeniable. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and threatening to halt or reverse the gains of decades of collective effort – with just released new data revealing that the pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line.

We are also witnessing increased reports on violence against women throughout the world due to the lockdowns, and women losing their livelihoods faster because they are more exposed to hard-hit economic sectors.

While much works remains on fulfilling the promises of the Beijing Platform for Action, it continues to be a global framework and a powerful source of mobilization, civil society activism, guidance and inspiration 25 years later.

It was at the Fourth World Conference on Women, specifically at the Women & Health Security Colloquium, where Hillary Clinton coined the phrase, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights”.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, she recalled her participation at the Conference as the Honorary Chairperson of the US delegation, and the significance of the Beijing Declaration: “A 270-page document might not lend itself to bumper stickers or coffee mugs, but it laid the groundwork for sweeping, necessary changes.”

Underlining the urgency for implementation, she added: “As the changes laid out in the Platform for Action have been implemented, what’s become clear is that simply embracing the concept of women’s rights, let alone enshrining those rights in laws and constitutions, is not the same as achieving full equality. Rights are important, but they are nothing without the power to claim them.”

Years after, global activists continue the hard work and those who participated at the 1995 Beijing Conference remain touched by this historic meeting. Zeliha Ünaldi, a long-standing gender advocate from Turkey, said it was a life-changing experience: “When I recall those days, mingling around the tents with thousands of women committing to a better world, two words immediately come to my mind: sisterhood and peace. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the subsequent five years helped me understand the power in us and of us as the global women’s movement.”

The upcoming UN General Assembly later this month will be a key opportunity to bring to the forefront the relevance of the Beijing Declaration and move the needle on implementation, with a High-Level Meeting attended by global leaders on “Accelerating the Realization of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of all Women and Girls” on 1 October.

The event will showcase how building equal and inclusive societies is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages lives and livelihoods.

Calling on world leaders to use their political power to accelerate robust action and resources for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls: “This is a re-set moment. On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.”

The anniversary will be further commemorated in the context of the Generation Equality Forum, a civil society–centred, global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of France and Mexico, foreseen to take place in the first half of 2021.

Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions to shared problems.

Back in 1995, the deliberations of the Conference resulted in the framing of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: a bold agenda for the change needed to realize the human rights of women and girls, articulated across 12 critical areas of concern.

The Platform for Action provided a blueprint for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, adopted by 189 UN Member States and universally referenced.

The continued relevance of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action cannot be overstated today. The far-reaching social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significant increases in violence against women, threaten to reverse many of the hard-won advances made in the last 25 years to empower women and girls.

At the same time, the outstanding value of women’s leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic is in plain sight, along with the recognition of just how much women’s work and women’s movements have sustained the world, from domestic life, the fight for human rights, to national economies.

We also know that by next year, 435 million women and girls are likely to have been reduced to extreme poverty. Governments, local administrations, businesses and enterprises of all sorts must not let this happen.

To tackle persistent systemic barriers to equality, we need transformative approaches and new alliances that engage the private sector alongside governments and civil society. This is a re-set moment. The economic and policy lifeboats for our struggling world must put women and children first.

The political will of leaders can make the difference. World leaders convening at this year’s United Nations General Assembly have the opportunity to use their power in action to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and to support the role of civil society organizations and youth.

Our humanitarian responses to COVID-19, our economic stimulus packages, our reinventions of working life and our efforts to create solidarity across social and physical distance – these are all chances to build back better for women and girls.

For success, we need to work together on these transformative actions. In 2019, we launched a global campaign called Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights for an Equal Future, with a call for renewed commitment by governments in partnership with civil society, academia and the private sector.

It included clear timelines, responsibilities and resources towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious long-term framework that included goals to achieve universal gender equality.

On October 1, 2020, when a High-Level Meeting on the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is convened by the President of the General Assembly, Member States can put into action their commitment toward a more gender-equal world.

On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women and girls in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.

The post UN Women Calls for Accelerating its Unfinished Business appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women

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Categories: Africa

World Risks Losing Entire Generation of Children, Nobel Laureates Warn

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 11:10

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, says the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families. Courtesy: Marcel Crozet / ILO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of millions of people worldwide, accounted for over 869,000 deaths, destabilised the global economy and triggered a marked rise in poverty and hunger in the developing world.

But the fallout from one of the most devastating consequences of the spreading virus is on the lives of a growing new generation: children.

Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, rightly points out that the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequalities faced by the poorest families, who are the least equipped to protect themselves in times of global crisis.

“However, despite unprecedented government spending to protect national interests and the global economy,” he warns, “little has been allocated to protect the 1 in 5 children who live on $2 per day or less.”

Without urgent action now, he said, “we risk losing an entire generation”.

An upcoming summit – officially called the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit, scheduled to take place remotely on Sept. 9-10 – will focus on the plight of children, and more importantly, call for increased spending on marginalised families ravaged by the pandemic

Several Nobel laureates, along with world leaders and heads of UN agencies, are listed as speakers, including the Dalai Lama, Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

Kailash says if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

Kul Gautam, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic has commanded unprecedented attention and action throughout the world in recent months.

While some leaders have tried to capitalise it for their own political gain, there has also been an outpouring of support and solidarity for international cooperation to tackle it, he noted.

Though subjected to unfair and unfounded criticism by leaders like United States President Donald Trump, he argued, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. system are playing a valuable coordinating role and providing much needed technical and material support, particularly for developing countries

“While the elderly and those with pre-existing health complications are the most susceptible to COVID-19, as always, women and children often become extra-vulnerable not only from the virus but also from their exposure to domestic abuse, gender-based violence and lack of effective social safety nets in most societies.”

“Millions of children being deprived of schooling and confined at home for a prolonged period threatens their future,” declared Gautam.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, points out the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move.

“We must ensure that the most marginalised children and communities have their fair share of the relief funds and services. We must unite in this effort to protect the most vulnerable among us,” she warns.

Mohammad Rafique, along with other refugee children, gathered at the Rohingya market of Kutupalong camp to sell vegetables he brought earlier from a local market in this photo dated Mar. 11, 2020. This was two weeks before Bangladesh went into a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. the pandemic is leading to a global child rights crisis with increases in poverty and hunger, child labour and child marriage, child slavery, child trafficking and children on the move. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, says the pandemic’s public health emergency is set to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children, including those in detention.

Calling for government action, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, said: “We need the governments of the world to come together to announce a rescue package for the most marginalised children and their families.”

The ongoing crisis could increase the number of children living in monetary poor households by up to 117 million by the end of the 2020, according to the latest analysis from UNICEF and Save the Children.

“Immediate loss of income often means families are less able to afford basics, including food and water, are less likely to access health care or education, and are more at risk of violence, exploitation and abuse”.

The children’s agency also pointed out that 188 countries have imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth. The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom.

“More than two-thirds of countries have introduced a national distance learning platform, but among low-income countries the share is only 30 percent. Before this crisis, almost one third of the world’s young people were already digitally excluded”.

UNICEF also said the COVID-19 crisis could lead to the first rise in child labour after 20 years of progress. Child labour decreased by 94 million since 2000, but that gain is now at risk.

“Among other impacts, COVID-19 could result in a rise in poverty and therefore to an increase in child labour as households use every available means to survive. A one percentage point rise in poverty could lead to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries.”

Gautam, who was Director of Planning and responsible for drafting the Plan of Action at the 1990 first-ever World Summit for Children, told IPS: “So far, the international response and focus of national action to combat COVID-19 has not given enough attention to the multi-dimensional plight of children, especially in poor countries and communities”.

He said there is also an imminent risk that “Vaccine nationalism” in the rich countries will lead to life-saving treatments being over-priced and hoarded by the rich leaving the world’s most vulnerable people, especially children, waiting in the cold.

In this context, the initiative by a group of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children calling for a fair share of the resources mobilised for COVID-19 to be devoted to the wellbeing of children is most timely and welcome, he said.

“Children have only one chance to grow, and if they do not get the priority for protection from this devastating pandemic, they will be doomed for life. This simple truth is often forgotten or neglected by political leaders and decision-makers driven by short-term political calculations.”

Hence the importance of the voice of Nobel Peace Prize laureates with their moral authority and non-partisan credibility, he added.

A joint statement released here by Nobel Laureates and world leaders, said: “ We, the Laureates and Leaders for Children, call upon the world’s Heads of Government to demonstrate wise leadership and to urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised. Decisions made by our leaders, actions taken by us and the discourses that ensue in the next few weeks will be crucial.”

“They are going to shape the future of polity, economy, culture and morality. Development priorities will be recalibrated, individual freedom, privacy and human rights will be redefined. We must take this opportunity to transform traditional diplomacy and politics into compassionate politics. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in our world.”

While this virus does not differentiate between nationalities, religions or cultures, said the statement, it is most adversely impacting those who are already marginalised – the poor, women and girls, daily wage earners, migrant labourers, indigenous peoples, victims of trafficking and slavery, child labourers, people on the move (refugees, internally displaced and others), the homeless, differently abled people, among others.

The virus, restrictions placed on the majority of the world’s population, and the aftermath will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable amongst us

Elaborating further on the potential dangers of “Vaccine nationalism,” Gautam singled out the example of “Vaccine nationalism” — i.e the U.S. refusal to join the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (Covax) – an international effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.

The result of this US boycott of a joint effort by 170 countries coordinated by WHO, Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is that it could potentially lead to hoarding of the vaccine and higher prices for doses, he said.

“The ultimate victims of such “vaccine nationalism” are likely to be children in poor countries – who might be the last on the line to get the vaccine, contrary to the call for vulnerable “Children First” priority that organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children and others have been promoting for decades.”

“I hope that the Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit will raise their voice against the risk of any such “vaccine nationalism,” Gautam declared.

The post World Risks Losing Entire Generation of Children, Nobel Laureates Warn appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Presidents, the Press, and the Pandemic

Mon, 09/07/2020 - 10:36

US President Donald Trump (right) and Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House July 2020. Credit: Toa Dufour/White House

By Andrés Cañizález
CARACAS, Sep 7 2020 (IPS)

The presidents of the Americas, beyond their ideological differences, seem to agree in questioning the role of journalists and the media in the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, human rights organizations remind us of the fundamental role of information, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty like the one we are experiencing in this 2020.

NGO Inter-American Dialogue and expert Edison Lanza, current Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, prepared the report “COVID-19 and Freedom of Expression in the Americas” which has three thematic areas: The role of journalists and the pressure against them from those in power, access to public information in the current context, and the dynamics of pandemic-related disinformation and misinformation.

Ultimately, the goal is for journalists and the media, as well as healthcare professionals and relevant experts, to be able to speak and report freely about COVID-19, "including coverage that is critical of government responses, without fear or censorship”. And this mandate goes beyond the ideological leanings of those who govern

The report, released on August 31 in Washington, reviews the role of leaders who, in the face of the pandemic, divert the focus towards challenging or discrediting newspersons’ work in their respective countries. This policy has coincidentally been implemented by leaders who, ideologically speaking, are at the antipodes from one another, such as Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, or Daniel Ortega and Alejandro Giammattei in Central America.

The report confirms, on the one hand, the importance of the right to inform freely, even in situations of crisis, as set forth in documents by the Inter-American Human Rights System and, in turn, echoes public concerns expressed, for example, by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

“Undermining rights such as freedom of expression may do incalculable damage to the effort to contain COVID-19 and its pernicious socio-economic side-effects”, remarked Bachelet.

The report outlines this situation: “[…] under the cover of Covid-19 response, some governments in the Americas have taken steps to criminalize free speech […]”

In Mexico, in the context of the pandemic, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO, his acronym) criticized the ethics of both Mexican and international “conventional media” for questioning official data on COVID-19 provided by his administration. This was in May. In April, AMLO had already said that professional journalism did not exist in his country and verbally attacked newspapers Reforma, El Universal, Milenio, and Excélsior.

In theory, ideologically on the other side of the aisle, Bolsonaro also infamously launched a tirade of verbal attacks against journalists and the media in Brazil. Only in the first quarter this year, when the onset of the pandemic was being faced by the South American giant, the president made 32 verbal attacks.

The climate of “continued harassment and abuse” compelled several of Brazil’s main news organizations to stop reporting outside the presidential residence at the end of May, in order to underscore their discontent with Bolsonaro’s public statements.

The report highlights the permanent verbal sparring with the media engaged by President Donald Trump, from Washington, DC, during the harsh weeks of the pandemic that has significantly affected the United States. Between the months of March and May, Trump confronted at least eight journalists during his daily press conferences on COVID-19. The President has responded irately or simply left unanswered questions that are uncomfortable for him and that have been asked in these exchanges with the press at the White House.

Andrés Cañizález

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, president Daniel Ortega accused the media of spreading fake news about his government’s concealment of COVID-19 figures. According to Ortega, there is “disinformative terrorism” in his country on the part of those journalists critical of him.

However, one premier from around the continent who has most clearly voiced his rejection to the exercise of independent journalism during the pandemic has been the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. “I would like to put the media in quarantine but I cannot”, he said candidly last March, when he lashed out at what he called negative coverage of his government’s policies in response to the pandemic.

The Inter-American Dialogue report closes with recommendations. As has been the case in other situations of crisis, amidst uncertainty, societies need more and better information.

Regarding the role of authorities, it is stated in the document: “Governments have a duty to ensure that journalism thrives and plays its essential role during the pandemic, as the protection of the media is a protection of the public’s right to information”.

Ultimately, the goal is for journalists and the media, as well as healthcare professionals and relevant experts, to be able to speak and report freely about COVID-19, “including coverage that is critical of government responses, without fear or censorship”.

And this mandate goes beyond the ideological leanings of those who govern.

The post COVID-19: Presidents, the Press, and the Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UNESCO urges action to meet rampant $200 billion annual funding gap for education in poorest countries due to COVID-19

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 17:14

By PRESS RELEASE
PARIS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

New research by the Global Education Monitoring Report at UNESCO shows an increase in the annual funding gap for education in the poorest countries to as much as US$200 billion a year. These findings are published in the new paper, Act Now: Reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the Cost of Achieving SDG4.

The paper calls for the immediate introduction of emergency remedial programmes, which could reduce the potential cost of COVID-19 on education by 75%. This could also reduce the social cost of failing to meet the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) which calls for the provision of inclusive quality education for all by 2030. It is therefore imperative for leaders to prioritize investment in education for low and middle-income countries and avoid the higher cost of catching up on lost education later.
Before the pandemic, UNESCO estimated the annual spending requirement to meet SDG4 at US$504 billion, of which US$148 billion were unavailable. Under plausible school closures and present GDP growth scenarios, COVID-19 looks set to increase this funding gap by up to a third.

COVID-19 is pushing countries’ educational costs up due to the need to re-enrol students and to offer remedial programmes to support the return to school of the most marginalized learners, help them catch up and maximize their chances of staying in school. Additional costs are needed to ensure children are safe in the classroom, with access to hygiene facilities and more space to enable physical distancing. These programmes and actions imply costs of up to US$35 billion. Immediate action is, however, far cheaper than having to roll out second chance programmes later.

With less than a decade to go before the SDG deadline, the world is facing a funding crisis that threatens to unravel progress in education so far. An entire generation is at risk due to the pandemic. An estimated 11 million children of primary and secondary school age may not return to school. But while education is clearly a victim of the pandemic, it is also the solution to longer-term recovery. To #SaveOurFuture, investment in education must become an urgent priority.

Actions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on children’s education:

Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report added: “The uncertainty about when schools will reopen means reduced participation and prolonged learning loss, particularly for the most marginalized children. We know from previous research that poorer learners are least likely to catch up, which will affect their future ability to earn a living. Urgently needed long-term planning for recovery from the pandemic must include increased funding for education in the form of remedial programmes, rather than waiting to pay for second chance classes many will not be able to join or afford.”

Filling a finance gap that risks rising to $200 billion per year due to COVID-19 requires systemic change- and is only possible if leaders respond to the ongoing global education emergency.

UNESCO has warned that total aid to education is likely to decline by 12% by 2022 due to the economic consequences of COVID-19. This poses a threat to the recovery of education from the disruption of the pandemic.

The international community urgently needs to mobilize additional funding for education if there is any hope of achieving the SDG 4 targets made all the more difficult by the pandemic.

The post UNESCO urges action to meet rampant $200 billion annual funding gap for education in poorest countries due to COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Americans By Force

Fri, 09/04/2020 - 16:26

Protests have been taking place in cities across the United States. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Why, in the United States, where change is the most pronounced hallmark, do some aspects never change? Why do many bad habits resist giving way to novelties that prove to be the basis of the success of the most developed country on earth and still the leading power? Why is the explanation for that leadership due to a few factors? Why does Trump profess a visceral opposition to immigration, knowing that it is the key to the country’s success? Because millions of his compatriots interpret the sinew of American DNA as a threat to their comparative social advantage.

Meanwhile, in this drama, blacks continue to bear the brunt of it all. The explanation for their endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

No one can say that their grandparents were forced to change residence. Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

Joaquín Roy

This country is the most genuine example of national construction opposed to that based on ethnicity, religion, race. America is the most definite specimen of the nation of choice, based on personal conviction.

It is not by chance that theorists of nationalism call this alternative “liberal.” The “American dream” explains its survival. As long as millions of citizens of other continents answer Ernest Renan’s question with a negative vote every night in his imaginary “daily plebiscite”, and decide to opt for the residency trick, the United States will exist.

The day a majority of Americans vote negative for residency, the country would be deserted. There is nothing that unites Americans, except their desire to be. Their religion is summarized in the offer provided by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He does not give them a guarantee, but a promise. And it is enough for them.

However, the absence of a residency obligation has two crucial exceptions: black and indigenous minorities. These two sectors contrast in their implementation in what for them is, more than a dream, an “American nightmare.”

Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

The original owners of the immense territory, although their immemorial ancestors crossed the Straits of Alaska at the dawn of North America, have been reduced to their reservations, marginalized, eaten away by poverty and alcoholism. Even in the sporadic mythos in Hollywood movies, Sitting Bull and his imitators do not overcome the mystique of Buffalo Bill.

The blacks were unfortunately marked by the original sin of not having booked a ticket for the forced trip to the United States. Their implantation has been resisted from the beginning by themselves and by the descendants of the merchants who deposited them in America.

With their emancipation and its disastrous execution, the peculiarity of their residence became more apparent. When they were stripped of the benefits that they had given away to their owners for free, their value was lost in Wall Street.

The successive corrective measures of discrimination and segregation only made the division of society even more evident. Despite the actions of Martin Luther King, who paid for his daring with his life, legal advances supercharged racist resentment from a part of society that resisted reform. “Affirmative Action” and food stamps multiplied the opposition.

Simultaneously, the black community, which had ceased to call itself “colored,” to take a curious journey back to being classified as “African,” watched with amazement as other newcomers from other continents were climbing ranks.

Latin Americans began to outnumber blacks not only in economic resources, but in numbers. As a result of the new census parameters, while whites held 63%, Hispanics (15%) and Asians (10%) cornered blacks (13%).

Internally, the new “African-Americans” decided to opt for a peculiar nationalism: they defended themselves with their signs of “black is beautiful”, they enthroned their peculiar English inherited from their owners, and they monopolized some entertainment professions.

Some were more fortunate and co-opted the rosters of basketball teams. For their part, some managed to settle on the ladders of power as senators and congress people, thanks in part to the restructuring of electoral districts.

Then they even aimed, with the decisive support of white sectors, to opt for the incredible: the presidency of the United States. It was already too much and the opposition to this impudence did not forgive Obama or the rest of the community, and even less the Democrats and liberals.

The mirage of the election of the first black president bypassed the resistance of deep America and the withdrawal of the “silent majority” that Nixon tried to awaken. Now Trump has reinvented it.

It was forgotten that only about a third of the electorate voted for Obama, while another third chose the Republican candidates. Another third stayed home. Among those 60-70% of Americans who abstained from voting on the traditional electoral correction, crouched was the mostly white sector, both high-income and lower-middle-class that followed the sounds of the piper Trump.

Those who rejected the candidate Hillary Clinton believed, and still believe, that their faltering economies have been pierced by the rise of the historically vanquished. They now believe that their pristine suburbs, real or imagined, are threatened by the “socialist” hordes of predominantly Latino origin, and the “terrorists” who insist on protesting against what they consider dangerous interference by the security forces in daily life.

The only thing missing is that the statistical evidence of the black overpopulation of the prisons and the number of crime victims of the same origin is “enriched” with sad deaths of blacks at the hands of white policemen.

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

The post Americans By Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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