Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

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

By Angela Lusigi and Achievement Dhlakama
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2020 (IPS)

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Africa, countries are simultaneously dealing with the health and socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, and how and when to ease lockdowns and curfews imposed to stop the disease spreading and get onto the path of recovery.

However, some government actions taken to restrict people’s movements during this crisis, including enforcement measures and emergency laws and policies, could have long-term impacts and the potential to undermine social cohesion ̶ the trust between governments and their citizens and the solidarity between citizens themselves.

With the health and wellness of millions of Africans at stake, governance measures taken to address COVID-19 must be appropriate, effective and sustainable. In some instances, responses to the pandemic so far have led to rising tensions and pushback against human rights.

Lessons from this pandemic should inform how governments, citizens and other partners can collaborate to strengthen governance and social cohesion during the response, and even beyond.

But the question is, what are the optimal measures and enabling environment required for response measures to succeed while protecting freedoms and minimising disruption to livelihoods?

Africa’s governance context is complex. Although there has been significant progress in democracy, the majority of countries are in the lower half of the 2019 Human Freedom Index produced by the US-based Cato Institute.

Yet another study, the Fragile States Index by the Washington-based Fund for Peace, finds that in some of these countries, political fragility and low trust in government institutions still remain a challenge.

As COVID-19 spread in Africa, there were also concerns that planned elections this year in at least 22 countries, in the midst of a pandemic, could heighten tensions and fears of suppression.

It is in this context that governments should guard against measures that fan mistrust between them and their citizens and could lead to undermining democratic processes or intensifying fragility.

Emergency laws limit rights and disrupt services, supply chains and livelihoods. At the start of the pandemic in Africa, at least 17 countries declared states of emergency, 9 declared states of public health emergency and 3 declared states of national disaster.

These measures are important in safeguarding public health and wellness, but their impact varies according to how they are communicated and understood, how oversight mechanisms function and whether there is trust between the government and its citizens.

A state of emergency empowers governments to perform actions or impose policies that it would normally not be permitted to. These include making regulations without an act of parliament or taking actions without complying with statutory duties.

These emergency powers, although temporary in nature, could be used to introduce measures that may affect fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of movement or assembly, freedom of the media or freedom to work, among others.

On the other hand, a state of public emergency may help the government to take necessary measures to protect the public’s health. These include closing of schools, restricting travel, isolating people exposed to the virus and prosecuting those who do not comply with quarantine orders.

In the case of a national state of disaster, limitations of rights should not extend beyond what is necessary and must be in line with the constitutional values of the society.

The application of these measures to deal with the pandemic has not been without challenges. Firstly, these executive declarations were made in a hurry and with less consultation and oversight. Secondly, citizens were caught unprepared and were not fully informed about the extent of limitations of their rights.

There were media reports of altercations between civilians and police or military enforcing COVID-19 measures in some countries. In others, citizens are increasingly voicing their discontent with the lack of food, services, water and sanitation, and concerns about the abuse of authority by security forces. This may risk the effectiveness of COVID-19 response and recovery measures in the long run.

As countries move towards easing lockdowns and opening up economies, there is still need for a supplementary mechanism to help identify, isolate and trace COVID-19 cases. However, this raises new concerns over the use of surveillance technology to track the spread of the virus, infringement of data protection, and the right to privacy and non-discrimination.

Lessons from those early experiences can help guide governments on appropriate mechanisms to ensure that new measures to respond to COVID-19 do not threaten the fabric of society.

An effective and sustainable response must build on capable institutions that deliver essential services, community ownership and engagement, rights-based oversight control mechanisms and concrete partnership with other stakeholders, including the private sector.

Capable institutions at local and national level ensure the effective delivery of essential services including health, water and sanitation, that are at the heart of the response to COVID-19. For instance, South Africa and Zimbabwe are now delivering water to many undeserved areas and communities.

Community and youth engagement also make a difference in the uptake of public health provisions and in reaching those most impacted by economic and social lockdowns.

Several countries such as Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda have made provisions for cash and food to vulnerable populations. Communities are best positioned to identify those most in need, thereby improving the likelihood of actually reaching them.

They are also able to disseminate accurate information. In South Sudan, a digital community of youth —#DefyHateNow -— has helped to fight misinformation and raise awareness. In Benin, a young medical doctor has launched a mass media literacy programme in Francophone Africa called Arya, on Twitter.

Their hashtag #AgirContreCOVID19 has reached more than 90,000 people. They are now developing an application than can disseminate COVID-19 information in local languages. The provision of information as a ‘right’ to citizens and as a mechanism to build trust, promote adherence to measures and build social cohesion has become more important now than ever before.

Control and oversight mechanisms help to improve transparency and accountability. The examples of the national assembly in the Gambia and the high court in Malawi that challenged proposals to extend the states of public emergency in their countries illustrate the importance of capable oversight mechanisms.

Finally, for many cash-strapped countries, the government’s COVID-19 response will benefit from close collaboration with the private sector, which in Africa is a hub of innovation. From Cameroon to Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco and others – businesses are transforming to produce necessary medical supplies and equipment and improve access to services through digital and mobile platforms.

As governments navigate these policy options it is clear that the most effective and sustainable responses to COVID-19 in Africa place people at the centre to preserve and strengthen social cohesion.

*This article originally appeared in Africa Renewal—a UN publication focusing on African news and analysis. www.un.org/africarenewal.

 

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

The post COVID-19: Smarter Response & Recovery Measures Can Help Preserve Human Rights in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“Social cohesion is built over years and is the result of policies that allow everybody in society to share in its sustainable prosperity,” Ahunna Eziakonwa, Director - UNDP Africa

The post COVID-19: Smarter Response & Recovery Measures Can Help Preserve Human Rights in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Kanni Wignaraja and Bambang Susantono
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jul 27 2020 (IPS)

As lockdowns ease in countries across Asia and the Pacific in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear—a return to business as usual is unimaginable in a region that was already off track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The virtual High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development recently convened governments and stakeholders across the globe to focus on the imperative to build back better while keeping an eye on the Global Goals.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Asia was the first to be hit by COVID-19 and feel its devastating social and economic impacts. Efforts to respond to the pandemic have revealed how many people in our societies live precariously close to poverty and hunger, without access to essential services. Between 90 million and 400 million people in Asia and the Pacific may be pushed back into poverty, living on less than $3.20 a day. Many countries are taking bold actions to minimize the loss of life and economic costs, estimated in May by ADB at $1.7 trillion to $2.5 trillion in the region alone.

Mission orientation and mobilizing fiscal and social support that realize the SDGs

As attention shifts from the immediate health and human effects of the pandemic to addressing its social and economic effects, governments and societies face unprecedented policy, regulatory and fiscal choices. The SDGs— a commitment to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development, globally, by 2030—can serve as a beacon in these turbulent times.

Our new joint report Fast-tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia Pacific Transformations, highlights six entry points for achieving the SDGs in the face of the pandemic. These include strengthening human well-being and capabilities, shifting towards sustainable and just economies, building sustainable food systems, achieving energy decarbonization and universal access to energy, promoting sustainable urban and peri-urban development, and securing the global environmental commons.

Each of these entry points has been disrupted by the pandemic. Yet, these disruptions may create opportunities for new approaches to deliver on SDG targets that reflect the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda.

What will it take to align systems and institutions with the SDGs as they build forward?

Kanni Wignaraja

The pandemic has exposed fragility and systemic gaps in many key systems. However, there are many workable strategies that countries have used, both before and after COVID-19, to accelerate progress related to development goals and strengthen resilience. Countries have taken steps to extend universal health care systems, strengthen social protection systems, including cash transfer and food distribution systems for vulnerable households. Accurate and regular data have been key to such efforts. Innovating to help the most disadvantaged access financing and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) credits have also been vital. Several countries have taken comprehensive approaches to various forms of discrimination, particularly related to gender and gender-based violence. Partnerships, including with the private sector and financing institutions, have played a critical role in fostering creative solutions. These experiences provide grounds for optimism.

Policy revolutions to manage complexity

Responses to the COVID-19 crisis must be centered on the well-being of people, empowering them and advancing equality. Driving change in the people-environment nexus to protect the health of people and natural resources is key to a future that does not repeat the crisis we are in today.

We need a revolution in policy mind-set and practice. Inclusive and accountable governance systems, adaptive institutions with resilience to future shocks, universal social protection and health insurance and stronger digital infrastructure are part of the transformations needed. All are driven by a low carbon and environmentally sustainable infrastructure and energy transition.

Bambang Susantono

Several countries in Asia and the Pacific are developing ambitious new strategies for green recovery and inclusive approaches to development. The Republic of Korea recently announced a New Deal based on two central pillars: digitization and decarbonization. Many countries in the Pacific, already proponents of ambitious clean energy targets and climate action, are focusing on “blue recovery,” seizing the opportunity to promote more sustainable approaches to fisheries management. India recently announced operating the largest solar power plant in the region. China is creating more jobs in the renewable energy sector than in fossil fuel industries. Many countries in our region are expanding social protection systems as part of COVID-19 recovery to go beyond a temporary patch and include the marginalized, such as informal sector workers.

Institutions such as the United Nations and ADB have mobilized to support a shared response to the crisis. Now it is vital that we enable countries to secure the support they need to go beyond, to achieve the SDGs.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Kanni Wignaraja, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Bambang Susantono, Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, Asian Development Bank (ADB)

 

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

The post A Determined Path to the SDGs in 2030 Despite the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Unsplash / David Clode

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Jul 27 2020 (IPS)

“What do you think happens to kerosene when it is poured on your head?”
Surya stumbles as she speaks to IPS. “It goes down, it goes trickling down.”

When someone speaks to a burn victim, one naturally feels shocked, sad, and sympathetic. But in talking to Surya, who has the major part of her body burned, the feelings were of hope and inspiration. How is it possible to survive this trauma and still have so much love and joy to share?

Among the many domestic abuse survivors I have interviewed over the past several years, Surya stood out. The incident that forever changed her physical attributes paved the way of hope for millions all over the world. She had a shining soul and a beautiful spirit.

Sixty-two-year-old Surya is a mother of two and a burn abuse survivor. She was doused with kerosene by her former husband following a heated argument in Chennai, India, almost three decades ago.

It was a regular summer day and the couple had a rift. At one point both lost their cool and before it became physical she retreated and went to the kitchen. The last thing she remembers is a liquid poured on her that felt like intense burning. She ended up in a hospital for six months. It took another 2 years to get back on her feet. Had it not been for helpful neighbors who transported her to a hospital, Surya might not have survived her burns. Now, many years after the incident she speaks with confidence and says she has fully accepted her fate and the scars have made her stronger and sparked in her a love for life.

Surya’s energy was infectious and it confirmed the fact that people who have experienced trauma, can, in fact, learn to be happy again. She does not harbor hatred or resentment. Rather, she revisited, with great dignity, how she became a burn victim and how the incident unfolded.

“It is important to educate men and women alike to understand the various dynamics of a relationship, and how to foster tolerance from an early age,” Surya said to IPS. She went on to explain in detail how boys should be educated to understand their roles as brothers, husbands, and fathers.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 180,000 deaths every year are caused by burns – the vast majority occur in low and middle-income countries. In India, over one million people are moderately or severely burnt every year. According to India Today, twenty-one dowry deaths are reported across the country every day. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) states that in a single year more than 7,634 women die due to dowry harassment. Either they were burnt alive or forced to commit suicide over dowry demands. Bride burning continues in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and others.

Surya said to IPS that she had an arranged marriage and, as a dutiful wife, she respected her in-laws and tried her best to be a good wife and a good mother. But something was very wrong from the beginning. The way her husband treated other women in and out of the household was accepted as the norm. It was meant to be the duty of his wife and the mother of his children, to bear everyone else’s wrath. It was also a cultural expectation to remain silent, to uphold the family status, and save face. Her husband showed no empathy and the society Surya lived in made his abuse permissible.

This mindset of blaming women for everything that goes wrong in a household is echoed widely in South Asian countries. Women are taught from an early age to endure abuse. Although it is expected that women will hold the family unit together, this responsibility comes with the added expectation that they do not speak up and suffer in silence.

I asked Surya: “What is the one piece of advice you would give your own self if you could go back in time?” She replied that she would make sure to tell herself that anything and everything can happen to anyone.

No matter how much she would pray for things to be different and for things to get better, the physical and mental abuse continued and increased in severity. Her former husband considered himself as superior, believing he was always right and that women were nothing but objects to be dealt with harshly as he willed.

Surya stressed the fact that from an early age, boys need to be taught that men and women are equal. And everyone must speak up about how they feel. Men need to channel their frustration in a healthy way and should be encouraged to speak up as well.

According to The Lancet, in 2017 there were 197.3 million people with mental health problems in India, comprising 14.3% of the total population. Some 29.5 % of men went through depressive disorders closely followed by women.

Surya is now an advocate, speaking about her journey and inspiring many with her story. She works at a reputable company as a senior advocate and is now self-sufficient. Her journey has inspired many girls to get back on their feet and heal both mentally and physically from brutal trauma. She has also inspired a new tech startup that is working to provide safe and secure communication for domestic abuse victims.

Picture Courtesy: The Parasol Cooperative

Meghana (Megs) Shah, founder of The Parasol Cooperative said to IPS. “At the age of seven, I met Ms. Surya. She was unrecognizable except for a few distinct features. Her face was always covered and she wore a scarf around her scalp and the side of her face at all times. One day I walked in while she was on applying ointment – she was actually resetting ‘silicone prosthetic’ ears. There was a hole where her ears once used to be.

“I was startled, but it reminded me that injustice exists in the world and people can be cruel. It is this moment that shaped my desire to help people and stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. She and so many people like her
have had their lives compromised – that is my motivation and the reason behind creating my tech non-profit, The Parasol Cooperative.”

In many cultures, men believe they are especially privileged which creates added pressure and expectation. Suppressing emotions and fomenting anger takes center stage. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aim to minimize the global gender gap. Awareness from an early age can equip future generations to be more tolerant, expressive, and open.

Girls need to be taught to be vocal and to be aware of their surroundings. If a crime is committed, or if abuse takes place, these need to be exposed and women need space and ways to communicate their fears, without being judged or shunned by society. Community centers, schools, online, and offline outreach programs can come to aid in building such safe grounds for sharing and expressing concerns. In many societies, denial or making light leads to the problem blowing out of proportion. The society needs a collective shift in how abuse, oppression, and gender inequalities are dealt with.

The post Gender Inequality and Oppression of Women: A Survivor’s Story appeared first on Inter Press Service.

UN Staff Day with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (left). Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2020 (IPS)

When the coronavirus pandemic delivered a mortal blow to the United States, grounding the country to a virtual standstill and throwing its economy into a deep recession, hundreds and thousands were forced to work “remotely” while offices remained shuttered, beginning late March.

The United Nations, including the Secretariat in New York and UN agencies worldwide, was no exception– and remained locked down for more than four months with no end in sight.

And now, several major corporations and Silicon Valley high-tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, IBM and Morgan Stanley, are planning to “reduce real estate footprint” by urging most of their staff to continue working from home— indefinitely.

At the United Nations, more than 6,400 staffers, including those on the payroll of UN agencies based in New York, have continued to work remotely ever since the Organization was grounded.

But will the UN, facing a cash crisis and a severe shortage of office space in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets in New York, urge hundreds of its own staffers to work from home – permanently?

Perhaps the only exceptions could be those designated by the UN as “critical” and “essential.”

Asked how the COVID-19 lockdown has impacted on the work of the Organization, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters last week: “Despite the lockdown, we are all working from home (and) the business of the UN has continued full throttle”

“We continue to support our humanitarian operations. We continue to support our peacekeeping operations and our development projects. And the Secretary General is very much out there with the policy briefs we put out on a regular basis. The UN may be physically closed, but it remains open for business,” Dujarric declared.

So, it raises the question: Is there any justification for all of the 6,400 staffers to return to the UN?

Perhaps working from home indefinitely is still a far better option than what corporate America is pushing for, including furloughs, mass layoffs, drastic salary cuts, and in some cases, filing for bankruptcy protection—as with JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew and Ann Taylor.

Will the UN also face such calamities in the post-Covid era—particularly if some of the major funders, particularly the high-paying US, defaults on its assessed contributions, cuts off funding and withdraws its membership—as it has already done with UNESCO, the WHO, the World Trade Organization and the Human Rights Council?

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN (2002-2007), told IPS: “As we are going through the on-going pandemic, very often we hear that “our world would perhaps never be the same again”.

“For many of us who are immersed deeply in the work of UN and its mission for decades and internalized that as part of our living culture, we wonder how would the citadel of multilateralism – the United Nations – shape up when the humanity, if ever, emerges free of this pandemic,” he said.

“It is being said that one clear manifestation of that could be that a big chunk of the UN work force at its Headquarters in New York will continue to work from home – permanently, in the manner some big corporate organizations are adopting the work culture ensuring that many work remotely, he noted.

Chowdhury said one can argue that in case of UN, it could be cost-effective and more efficient. Travel budget and operating expenses would be greatly reduced. No more files, paper trails, no more flyers, brochures, publicity materials.

“Think of how many trees would be saved and how environment would be less stressed. No overtime. Less security expenditure. Also, one issue would not arise – no possibility of sexual harassment in the absence of physical contact,” he argued.

For staff members, he pointed out, no more baby-sitters … household and related responsibilities would be shared hopefully.

“One can think of many other benefits, I guess,” said Chowdhury, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to UN (1996-2001) and Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee (1997-1998).

Faced with a growing need for more office space, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources delivered a message titled “Flexible Working Arrangements,” providing staffers with an option to work from home – and that was back in June 2019 long before the virus outbreak.

Guy Candusso, a former First Vice President of the UN Staff Union, told IPS that many staff like working from home —but they should be aware that with today’s technology the Organization can shift quite of bit of work to lower cost areas of the world.

As a cost cutting measure, the UN has been debating a proposal to relocate some of its offices to new locations, including Budapest, Nairobi, Montreal and Shenzen, but there has been no final decision.

A robot named Sophia had an interactive session last year with Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed. Meanwhile, will artificial intelligence (AI), which is expected to replace humans, be the wave of the future, even at the UN? Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

The total number of staffers in the global Secretariat, including over 32 UN agencies, is estimated at more than 37,500, according to the report titled “Composition of the Secretariat: Staff: Demographics.”

In a report to the Administrative and Budgetary Committee, back in December 2015, the Under-Secretary-General (USG) for Management Yukio Takasu said about 5,342 of UN staffers, including those working for liaison offices of UN agencies based in New York, were located in eight leased buildings outside the UN campus at a cost of $56 million a year.

He said rents were expected to spike in the coming years, and in 2023, favorable term leases of the DC1 and DC2 buildings, across from the Secretariat, which together housed over 2,060 staff members, would expire.

But when some of the existing leases expired, the staffers were gradually moved to the secretariat building causing a severe shortage of office space during the last few years.

Ian Richards, former, President, Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA), told IPS Covid-19 has accelerated a lot of trends that were already underway.

One of these, he said, is telecommuting, for which the UN Secretariat was relatively behind, compared with both other international organizations and governments in general. “We are likely to see more staff making use of one or two days of telecommuting a week.”

At the same time, he argued, “we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from this exceptional period”.

History shows that normal life eventually resumes. Offices and meeting rooms will come back to life and permanent telecommuting won’t be an option, only partial telecommuting will, said Richards.

If you look to Europe, he pointed out last week, Vienna is almost fully back. Meanwhile Geneva is slowly resuming, with the Human Rights Council and the WTO General Council both meeting physically.

Salim Lone, a longtime Director of Communications under Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told IPS what is needed is office work being altogether redefined in a way that simultaneously addresses the challenges the world’s people and our planet are mired in.

“We have seen, entirely without any input from our thinkers and visionaries, a new world emerge in which tens of millions of office workers working from home have had reduction of the intense stress levels that increasingly lengthy commutes generate, resulting in much time being spent with families and significant reduction in greenhouse gases through reduced vehicular traffic and other activity”.

Moving away from the long, stagnant history of working from offices, he said, provides an exceptional opportunity for the United Nations to showcase its unique multi-lateral, multi-disciplinary and global norm-setting expertise, embedded in the Secretariat and organizations like the International Labour Organization, Habitat, UNEP and WHO.

He pointed out that the US corporate sector has taken a huge leap on the issue of remote work, making it permanent measure for large numbers of staff, given the significant implications for productivity and office space costs.

But the private sector inevitably is over-invested in profitability and in the last few decades has overseen drastic losses in formal jobs, pushing tens of millions into the so-called “gig economy” with lower wages, and without health insurance and annual or sick leave, he noted.

“The UN needs to add it’s much more credible voice to the many initiatives under way for the post-Coronavirus world,” said Lone, onetime spokesman for Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga for more than a decade and author of an upcoming book on Kenya in the Global Context (with a focus on the UN).

Chowdhury said all these, of course, relate mainly to the nearly 6,000 staff members in New York. But UN is an intergovernmental organization and the Member States are supposed to be the governing entity. The experience of a “new normal” should not be limited only to the change in physical aspects of its work culture.

How about the change of heart, change of behaviour, change of mindsets on the part of the Member States, the governors of the UN?, he asked.

“The hope of a “new normal” which we are anticipating would be dashed when we find that the today’s normal is dusted up and branded as the so-called “new normal”.

He said the plethora of UN online meetings preoccupying the delegations time and energy since March have shown no sign of any real change for the better decision-making.

The same old language, the same old obstinacy of holding on to the so-called national position, the same old irrational opposition to good ideas and thoughts in the name of instructions from the capitals, the same old manipulation of the decision-making processes by powerful Member States, the same old marginalization of the voice of the small, vulnerable Member States in pursuing their genuine, legitimate interest as the weakest part of humanity, Chowdhury pointed out.

“There has to be a leadership initiative for such a real change to happen. Who will provide that? My first choice is the world’s topmost diplomat, the Secretary-General of the United Nations,” he declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post If UN is Working “Full Throttle” While Locked Down, Shouldn’t Most Staffers Work from Home –Permanently? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2020 (IPS)

Rohingya women are coming together to feature their own work, plight and stories in mainstream conversations about their community — a space they say they’ve been left out of.

“If we think of revolutions or liberty or think of any ways to liberate ourselves from the shackle of suffering and being dubbed as ‘the most persecuted minority on earth’, women have to be part of it,” Yasmin Ullah, president of the Rohingya Human Rights Network, told IPS.

On Jul. 24, the first ever Rohingya women-only panel, facilitated by Ullah and other organisations, brought together Rohingya women leaders from around the world who shared their experiences and knowledge at the “Her Voices, Her Journey: The Gendered Experiences of Rohingya Women” webinar.

It featured Azizah Noor, a refugee ambassador for the Refugee Council of Australia; Hasnah Hussin,  a refugee advocate who works with refugee support organisation Tenaganita in Malaysia; Razia Sultana, chairperson of the RW Welfare Society; and Zainab Arkani, co-founder of the Rohingya Association Canada.

“There are lots of challenges that Rohingya women face such as gender-based violence, societal and community expectations and these are things we need to address in our community,” Noor told IPS.

The webinar aimed to provide Rohingya women with the agency to tell their own stories and be included in the larger conversation surrounding Rohingya rights, the genocide and refugee crisis. Rohingya women are often not seen at the forefront of advocacy efforts for the community. Ullah said that often Rohingya women were invited to speak only around a certain narrative, or the same woman speaker would be invited to different events and talks.

According to Reliefweb International’s 2018 report, more than 52 percent of Rohingya refugees were women, but that was not reflected in panel talks or rallies for and by Rohingya refugees. 

“Not having a proportionate representation of our voices in different discussions at different tables is just so unjust,” Ullah said.

Moreover, it risks trapping Rohingya women in a constrictive narrative where they are only seen as victims. Ullah said when more women were included in the conversation about the refugee crisis as well as about the trials of Rohingya women, the narrative would eventually shift to also include their triumphs.

“It’s so important for the outside world to see that there are more to Rohingya women than a bunch of suffering women, a bunch of raped women, a bunch of survivors and know nothing about the outside world, there are so many exemplary women out there for their word to be shared, their ideas to be shared,” Ullah said.

How a fear perpetuated the invisibility

In many ways the invisibility of Rohingya women in the global movement around the rights of the Rohingya began in Myanmar. 

Ullah said many Rohingya women are encouraged to stay home for their own protection against the Myanmar military. Over time, she said, this has normalised Rohingya women’s absence in larger political conversations. She added that the deep fear of Myanmar’s military attacking Rohingya women lessened their overall participation in society. 

Myanmar’s military is notorious for sexual violence against Rohingya women, which some experts say is a genocidal tactic used against the ethnic minority.

Ullah said it’s so prevalent that the military could just show up to one’s door and drag a woman out to rape — rape survivors have shared their testimony of this.

While Rohingya women are encouraged to always stay indoors for their safety, this creates a shift in the views of the gender roles, which Ullah said are “a direct correlation of the military strategies, tactics and propaganda used on the Rohingya [people]”.

“The traditional value of Rohingya culture has kind of shifted multiple times, and it shifted because there is a lot of fear, insecurity for women being protected,” Ullah said. “That’s why women are kept home because there are so many things that could go wrong.”

“As a result, slowly Rohingya women have receded and became homebound and that turned into the kind of mindset that we see today,” she said.

Education and security

Ullah said that when given opportunities and a safe environment, Rohingya women thrive. One such example is Sultana, who documented sexual violence Rohingya women were subject to and received the prestigious International Women of Courage Award in 2019, among others.

“There is so much more to us, so many things that we are able to do, especially when we’re given the security granted by the state, human rights, education, access to healthcare, essential services,” Ullah said. “Those few things really pushed Rohingya women to excel in their career in their respective field of studies.”

Meanwhile, access to education for Rohingya refugees in itself remains a challenge, especially under the pandemic, said Noor, a former Rohingya refugee from Australia.

“Factoring in equity during COVID-19  is extremely important,” Noor told IPS. “Refugee families are already struggling with fitting in, and are often marginalised. Technology is something that not all refugee families have and resources are not available for all families.”

As for the panel, Ullah said this was the first of many to come and was optimistic about the turnaround for the event.

“The time is now because if we wait 20 to 30 years from now, the damage would already be done and it would be too late for women to even be involved in any of these discussions.”

Related Articles

• Dying for a Better Life – How Rohingya Refugees Risk their Lives to Cross into Malaysia
• Concerns for the Nearly 400 Rohingya Refugees Rescued off the Coast of Bangladesh

The post Rohingya Women Take a Seat at the Table & Share Stories in a Growing Rights Movement appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Many of the tools needed to tap into the potential of Africa’s livestock sector exist already. But with limited resources, they must be deployed smartly to improve the entire value chain. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By External Source
KAMPALA, Jul 24 2020 (IPS)

There is no shortage of technological innovations designed to boost animal agriculture in Africa. These range from GPS tracking systems which identify and trace pastoralists’ herds to livestock vaccine SMS services that alert farmers to disease outbreaks.

But to unlock the economic potential of the sector as demand for meat and milk swells threefold towards 2050, countries must invest in the critical areas that will improve quality across the whole value chain. That is increasing productivity and quality from the breeding of the animal throughout the production process to the end product. This includes safe storage, handling and sale.

My native Uganda offers some useful lessons from its use of smart investments in technology and farmer organisation. These have made it the only East African country that is self-sufficient in milk.

With meat and milk being perishable goods, innovation in the cold chain and sustainable energy supplies will help strengthen the sector. For example, an East African initiative which centralised milk quality testing and storage in chillers prior to sale increased yields sixfold within five years

In recent years, some private sector players in Uganda have invested in testing systems to detect aflatoxin in animal feeds. The goal is to prevent milk and meat contamination. Others have developed refrigeration units that are powered with biogas from manure. Both are among the innovations that improve the quality of the final product.

As highlighted by a new report from the Malabo Montpellier Panel on which I sit, the same can be achieved elsewhere. It can also benefit other livestock commodities, to give Africa food sovereignty across animal-sourced foods and greater access to international markets.

The report makes 11 recommendations for Africa’s livestock sector. These range from technological innovations and supportive policies to addressing trade barriers and challenges specific to each commodity.

 

Priority areas

African nations must be strategic in prioritising the infrastructure that will make the most difference to quality and productivity. The first priority is to increase consumer awareness around food safety, nutrition and sustainability to kickstart demand for better quality products.

Partly as a response to European consumer expectations around quality and safety, for example, Morocco developed a new system for animal identification and traceability in 2015.

Livestock can be identified using electronic tags that communicate with the national database via mobile phone networks. This increases transparency and traceability. It also promotes Moroccan animal products on international markets such as the European Union.

The second priority is then to direct technology towards opportunities to open up market access.

To unlock trade means investing in improved animal health, processing operations, storage and distribution. Meeting regional and international standards for food safety and quality is a vital goal. Africa currently contributes 2.8% of the global meat market, which translates to 14 million tons. The continent produces just over 10% of the world’s milk.

There are a number of barriers to increasing this production and gaining greater market share. They include limited availability of quality animal feed, access to affordable energy needed in producing and processing livestock, and limited infrastructure, particularly in the last mile.

With meat and milk being perishable goods, innovation in the cold chain and sustainable energy supplies will help strengthen the sector.

For example, an East African initiative which centralised milk quality testing and storage in chillers prior to sale increased yields sixfold within five years.

The volume of milk supplied to the 30km catchment area rose to three million litres a month. This increased income per smallholder household by more than 160% in Uganda, 120% in Kenya, and almost 65% in Rwanda.

The success of such projects in turn drives demand for continued innovation, such as solar-powered cold chains or interventions that protect other resources like water and grasslands.

Finally, countries also need to prioritise policies that support new technologies across the livestock sector.

To transform its milk production sector, Uganda privatised the state-owned processing company Dairy Corporation as well as creating a Dairy Development Authority.

The Dairy Industry Act of 1998 empowered the authority to enforce milk hygiene standards and quality controls. As a result, traders were licensed to meet public health and milk quality standards. This encouraged the modernisation of the sector through the expansion of pasteurisation plants and processing infrastructure as well as processing of high value products.

Certainly, the gains have trickled down to the farmers in better farm gate prices.

 

Conclusion

As the Malabo Montpellier Panel points out, many of the tools needed to tap into the potential of Africa’s livestock sector exist already. But with limited resources, they must be deployed smartly to improve the entire value chain.

Scaling up innovation at critical points will unlock new opportunities and help ensure animal agriculture keeps pace with a rising demand from a growing population.

 

Noble Banadda, Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Bio Systems Engineering, Makerere University

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

The post How Smart Investments in Technology Can Beef up Africa’s Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ippei Shibata
Jul 24 2020 (IPS-Partners)

There has been much discussion in recent months about how workers who transitioned to working from home—and those who were deemed “essential”—are less affected by the layoffs and job losses brought on by lockdowns than are workers in “social” jobs that require closer human interaction (e.g. restaurant workers). However, our new IMF staff research suggests that this does not tell the full story.

In particular, we find that while teleworkable jobs are indeed more secure than non-teleworkable occupations during the current pandemic-related recession, this pattern has also been observed during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09—meaning that something more than pandemic-related restrictions is at play.

As the chart shows, unemployment has increased less for teleworkable occupations during both recessions. This pattern suggests that people in teleworkable occupations tend to keep their jobs not only because they satisfy the need for social distancing and other novel requirements of the current pandemic, but also because such people tend to be more highly-skilled and educated—and hence less vulnerable to recessions. The paper also finds that essential jobs have been less affected not only during the current recession but also during the Global Financial Crisis. On the other hand, while social jobs have been severely affected during the current recession, they were indeed less affected during the Global Financial Crisis.

Our research also confirms some interesting observations regarding the distributional aspects of recessions. It finds that young and low-skilled workers have always been harmed more in recessions, while women and Hispanics are more severely affected during the current recession. Women in particular are more likely to work in industries and occupations that are being affected more severely during today’s recession. During both recessions, low-income workers have suffered more than top-income earners.

The post Unemployment in Today’s Recession Compared to the Global Financial Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Jul 24 2020 (IPS-Partners)

On the first Sunday of July, there was an important telephone call between the Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi and the Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Duval. Some important decisions were announced thereafter. This is not to say that these were the outcome of that interaction only. For weeks the militaries of both China and India and their diplomats had been negotiating on the grounds of the disputed territory along the Line of actual Control at the Galwan Valley, as well as through other channels to end the bloodiest border stand-off between the two Asian powers that had lasted two months. True, while not a bullet was fired in anger, troops had battled with sticks and stones that left twenty Indian soldiers dead and, reportedly, an unknown number of Chinese casualties. Indeed, it appeared that the two sides, who had fought a war in the Himalayas in 1962, was yet again on the brink of a possible war.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

The situation was rendered dangerous by a combination of other factors. Over the immediate past, thanks largely to the policies pursued by President Trump of the United States, the multilateral global institutions such as the United Nations were left with eroded powers. The US itself embroiled in deeply divisive domestic issues and the burgeoning movement to reshape traditional values viz., ‘Black Lives matter’, was becoming disinterested in any further global engagements. Moreover, elections due come November speeded up the process of the return to ‘Fortress America’. The entire world was reeling under the merciless spread of the deadly coronavirus COVID-19 which had rendered their populaces vulnerable, and governments looking inwards. Amidst the global turmoil, China was racing to reach the status of a peer of the US with aggressive assertiveness, and had signalled that it would brook no opposition from any quarter along the way to reaching this goal. So, there was no global supervision of conduct of states in an anarchical system, and no watchman to keep any combatant nations apart.

The crisis between China and India seemed to have gone ignored by much of the world. Some Indians, if social media was any indication of prevalent sentiments, appeared to veer towards the US, as a source of traditional counterbalance to China. The embattled US Administration did little to assuage Indian friends, and in a Hawaii between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chinese senior leader Yang Jiechi the Indo-Chinese spat found a mention only in passing. The Europeans urged calm on both parties reluctant to choose sides. India’s immediate neighbours, nearly each of whom had issues with India,( either bilateral or flowing out of India’s domestic legislations alienating Muslims) and being beneficiaries of China’s deep pockets, remained silent, except India’s arch-rival Pakistan, which unsurprisingly supported China. So, both China and India seemed bereft of any significant external support, and were largely left on their own to resolve the issues.

Only Russia, friend to both China and India, seemed interested to constructively engage to help stabilize. In late June, in a celebration of Russian victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World war, the two key guests who turned up in Moscow, even in masks, were the Defence Ministers of India and China, though neither country had any significant contribution to Moscow’s wartime triumph over Berlin. It would be naïve to believe Russian diplomacy did nothing to try close gaps between the battling protagonists, though Delhi claimed the two never met, which ironically, might have yielded better results, and probably did, than if they had actually interacted frontally!

While the standstill was in progress, there was a huge display of nationalism, particularly in India, where the electronic and print media went to town in criticism of China. Stiff retaliation was being urged upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi, himself struggling to lead India out of the twin crises of COVID19, and a major economic downturn. Modi was aware that war would mean taking on China and Pakistan simultaneously, a tall order at any time, and now more so given the global situation. So, Modi opted for discretion as being the better part of valour, did the right thing by visiting troops at the borders, and also by being extremely circumspect in getting Indian forces to exercise ‘fire control’ at the borders. The Chinese public opinion was eerily quiet, as if nothing significant was happening, except that the ‘Global Times’ often seen as Beijing’s mouthpiece, would issue warnings from time to time urging India to desist from provocative actions. China put across that its primary ‘contradiction’ was the US, not India, but any attempts to join efforts to constrain China would be severely dealt with. What China was doing was reading India the riot act from the textbook of ‘scientific realism’ in international affairs.

Immediately following the Duval- Yang Jiechi talk, Delhi issued a Press statement which said that “it was necessary to ensure at the earliest the complete disengagement of the troops along the LAC and de-escalation from India-China border areas for full restoration of peace and tranquillity” (Peace and tranquillity , ironically, is an oft cited expression that the Indians and Chinese use to describe their relations- this is also how they call the LAC line- however incongruous it may sound to the existing realities!) The Chinese Foreign Office also said, after the phone conversation, that the two sides had made ‘positive progress… to disengage frontline troops and ease the border situation. The Chinese were reportedly seen removing tents and structures in the Galwan valley. However, they will doubtless ensure capabilities are close at hand for instant deployment, if needs be. Indian withdrawal is as yet unreported at writing, but will surely happen, because India cannot afford to be engaged in a firefight with China at this time. It remains to be seen how far this disengagement can translate into genuine de-escalation. In July 1962 Chinese troops had disengaged from the Indians only to sweep down the Himalayas with a full-blown invasion in less than four months!

Even as they were withdrawing this time, the Chinese took out an insurance on Indian good behaviour, from China’s perspective. This was a Chinese fresh claim over Sakteng wildlife sanctuary in eastern Bhutan’s Trashigang district, supposedly based on an agreement between Bhutan and Tibet in the early eighteenth century. This is far away from Ladakh, on the eastern side of the LAC. Now, Bhutan, though sovereign, is bound by treaty obligations to India’s oversight of its foreign relations. Should it entertain any aspiration for untrammelled relations with China, this is not likely to be approved by Delhi. Now this Chinese claim is on territory that has no border with China, but with Arunachal, the Indian State, the entirety of which China claims for itself.

Obviously, this is something the Chinese now have on the files, to be brought up at any time in the future, if so required. It also serves as encouragement to Bhutan to obtain its full autonomy from Delhi, with a warning that links with India henceforth will come at a price! Also, it is noteworthy that the lesson of history is that China might give up on territories tactically, but not on its claims.

In future, the two dominating powers will be the US and China. But in the meantime, there will be a period of instability as China maneuvers to position itself to be a peer of the US, which the US will oppose. At this time some deft crisis management will be necessary. If there is a new Administration in Washington after the November elections, it will settle down to business as usual with Beijing because of the pre-existing economic linkages, and sober policy analysis will support such policy-direction. The course of deglobalization that COVID 19 has set in motion is likely to be corrected. Just as no man is an island, States in the global -system cannot also function in isolation over a long period of time. Depending on the nature of post-COVID recovery, it will be a slow process, but an inexorable one.

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

Source: UNB United News of Bangladesh

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

The post Sino-Indian Disengagement at Galwan: Two Steps Back and One Step Forward? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dr David Nabarro
GENEVA, Jul 24 2020 (IPS)

Dr David Nabarro is Special Envoy to the World Health Organisation on COVID-19 and Strategic Director of 4SD. He sets out his challenge to leaders to use COVID-19 as an opportunity for radical change that responds to the needs and the interests of all of humanity.

• Countries must work together
• Focus on equity
• Effective local action

David Nabarro

I just participated in the beginning of the High-Level Political Forum in New York in early July. This is the annual meeting that looks at how the world is progressing on the Sustainable Development Agenda. And it was quite clear that the officials and government representatives participating in that event are of the opinion that the advances that are being made on the Sustainable Development Agenda and on the Sustainable Development Goals are really threatened by COVID.

And not just because of COVID, but because of all the challenges that our world faces. We have to keep this work up, we have to keep connecting with each other, and finding the inner resources that are necessary for living systems leaders.

This is not an idle remark. I’m saying it as a heartfelt, genuine personal feeling. I think I’m reflecting the feeling of hundreds of millions of people all over the world who are looking for a different kind of leadership to help them find their pathways forward and to see COVID as a real opportunity to do that.

It means that we have to keep a narrative, the language that we use, the stories that we tell, patterns that we weave. Language has to be kept as simple as we can make it. It also has to be coherent and consistent. And that’s where I, and I think many others, so easily get tripped up. We must continue to develop the language and the metaphors that will help others as they try to establish and implement the new patterns of leadership. If we slip into the adversarial language of modern politics and present every issue as an “either, or” choice, we get stuck.

Finding these ways, finding the language, finding the idioms is my big challenge of now. At my own organisation, 4SD, we have produced a number of narratives that talk about local level solidarity with rigorous action to find the people with the disease and interrupt transmission.

Networks that brought together a non-hierarchical approach with a clear strategic direction, and with the capacity for adaptation to local realities; consistent and clear communication and continuous accountability. Without that, people can’t shift. We need to be able to trust our leaders, and we’ll only trust leaders through accountability.

What we’ve learned is that where action has been integrated and local, built around the basics of public health – interrupt transmission and suppress disease outbreaks – it has been an extraordinary success.

I want to share with you three major conclusions.

Countries must work together

The outbreak is advancing so fast, all over the world. The impact on people – their lives, economies and systems that are so important like food, like employment and systems for law and order – is just growing. There is nothing to suggest this is going to slow down in the coming weeks and months.
We need every national leader working together on it and treating it with the attention it deserves.

Get it done quickly. It’s no good waking up at the end of this year and realising that the world really has broken badly and international relations have fractured. We need to deal with it now.

Focus on equity

Thousands of people employed in really awful conditions is just one extraordinarily bad situation revealed by this virus. How many such situations of indignity and inequity are there? Where people are working under unacceptable conditions to enable people to have kind of food we want, the kind of products we want, the kind of opportunities we want?

This revealed inequity is right at the heart of my own thinking on whether I personally do not want to go on tolerating a situation where people’s lives are massively endangered. They are unable by economic and other reasons to reduce that danger, simply to enable me to have more luxuries and pleasures in my life. I am part of the system that encourages and then tolerates inequity. And I have to look at myself.

Effective local action

There’s no magic in this. People’s lives reflect the interconnections of systems in their own experiences in their own locations. We must focus what we do on local realities, respond to people’s perceptions in their local setting and encourage coordinated action.

The power of dialogue and engagement at local level flies in the face of the tendencies that some want to centralise and control in government. We’ve seen this in so many issues over the last few years, particular on this COVID. Well-organised, data driven, integrated, local level action is immensely powerful.

We can’t deal with climate change without global action and it’s really urgent.

At the same time, humans are not going to be able to find pathways through the current challenges by relying just on global factors. Let’s get better at encouraging local solidarity with coordinated, networked action.

We must do it through constant connections, without worrying about who’s in charge. Get more and more people appreciating the value system that has to underlie this way of working, and not worrying about where it’s going to lead to. Not worrying about who’s going to be in charge. Not worrying too much about whether a political leader here or there is going to be able to deliver. Just let the feeling grow that we need to be able to have these kinds of connections, working to navigate the challenges now and those still to come.

Dr David Nabarro is Special Envoy of the World Health Organization (WHO) on COVID-19. He is also Co-Director of the Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation and Strategic Director of 4SD, a social-enterprise focused on developing Skills, Systems and Synergies for Sustainable Development. This article is extracted with permission from David Nabarro’s Online Briefing on 9 July 2020.

This story was originally published by Thinking the Unthikable

 

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

The post Three Steps for Leaders to Tackle Covid and Climate Emergency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

US President Donald Trump with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jul 24 2020 (IPS)

I, like many of my fellow Americans, am extremely concerned about Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. Given his behavior – what he said and did over the past four years – he may well act on some of these tendencies, especially if he loses the election by a narrow margin.

The concerns I have are not numerous, but are extremely critical: what if he challenges the results of the election and remains adamant on calling for a recount or a new election entirely? What if he refuses to leave the White House and prevents the peaceful transition of power?

What if he calls on the military to occupy all major American cities while he still is the Commander-in-Chief between Election Day and the inauguration of the new president? And what if he prompts his supporters to take up arms, converge into the streets, and violently confront the likely massive number of protesters who would demand Trump’s removal from the White House, which could lead to some kind of a civil war?

Although many Democratic leaders, including Joe Biden, and scores of journalists and others have spoken about their concerns in this regard, there is still no rife discussion about the above unthinkable scenarios.

Besides, does Congress – the House and/or the Senate – have the constitutional power to take action in such a situation, or does the Supreme Court have the authority to intervene? Is there anything else in the constitution that would address these troubling issues?

The 20th Amendment says that “The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” But what if he doesn’t leave? I posed this question to Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and one of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars. “After all,” he said, “that has happened elsewhere in the world. 

My hope is that the courts would quickly rule that Joe Biden is the President and has all of the powers of the office… Every incumbent president who has lost a reelection bid, starting with John Adams in 1800, has left office without incident.”

In my view, however, Trump may well be an aberration. And what if Trump still will not leave the White House? Chemerinsky said, “I doubt that the military would stick with him in that circumstance. Of course, if it did, we would then have a military dictatorship, as other countries have experienced. What if some of the military with the right-wing militias support Trump.  Then we would have some kind of a civil war.”

While many Republicans and Democrats may think that any of these scenarios are far fetched, the fact remains that Trump has dictatorial tendencies and occasionally acts on them by testing the ground to gauge the public reaction and weigh how his base responds to his moves. Here is what he displays, and how much in common he shares with dictators in general.

President for life: Trump has said on many occasions that he will be president for life —in March of 2018, he played around with the idea after praising Xi Jinping for granting himself precisely that term extension. Trump also retweeted an absurd meme showing him remaining president for 88,000 years — slightly longer than the human lifespan.

‘I can do whatever I want: Like many despots, on Tuesday July 23, 2019 Trump suggested that the constitution gives him the power to do “…whatever I want as president.” But I don’t even talk about that.” Albeit, he often tries to do just that to see if he can get away with it.

Defies reality: Trump notoriously lies and create his own reality just like many dictators do. Bob Woodward reports in his book Fear that John Kelly described Trump as unhinged: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here.”

Presents himself as infallible: Authoritarian leaders never admit that they made a mistake, and neither does Trump. For example, in a tweet he refused to back down from his “forecast” that Alabama was going to be hit by Hurricane Dorian, which was false. Trump went so far as to alter the National Weather Service’s map of Dorian’s trajectory to include part of Alabama to ‘prove’ that he was right.

Vindictive: Vindictiveness is second nature to all dictators. Following his impeachment acquittal, Trump was characteristically vindictive towards his perceived enemies. They were “evil, vicious, corrupt ‘dirty cops.’” He is habitually mean-spirited and spiteful. Trump’s cruelty is often gratuitous, without any explanation. It is just who he is.

Narcissist: We have yet to know one despot who is not self-centered to the core. Trump, in fact, is a textbook narcissist. Sander Thomaes, developmental psychologist at Utrecht University, maintains that Trump is “a prototypical narcissist.” He has grandiose visions of oneself; the need to be admired, and envied.

Domestic military intervention: Trump is quick, like all tyrants, to resort to the military to show his strength and authority. On June 1, 2020 Trump deployed the military to intervene during the protests in DC. He dispatched federal troops with no identification to quell the protests in Portland two weeks ago against the will of the mayor, which continue to haul peaceful protesters off in unmarked cars, akin to the Gestapo. He is further threatening to send more federal law enforcement officers to major US cities. “We’re not going to let this happen in our country,” he said, “all run by liberal Democrats.”

Praises dictators: Trump’s affinity for dictators, whom he envies for doing whatever they please without accountability, is well-known. On Sept. 7, 2016 Trump said on NBC: “If [Putin] says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader.” About the ruthless Turkish President Erdogan, he stated “I’m a big fan of the president.”

Attacking media: Free media is the biggest threat to authoritarian regimes. Trump’s attacks on the media are routine, calling it the “enemy of the people.” During last year’s trip to the G20 summit in Japan, Trump said to Putin regarding the media present: “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it?”

Conspiracy theorist: Trump is a master in conspiracy theories. That’s what despots often concoct to punish their enemies. Among the many conspiracies he promotes, Trump claims Ukrainians, not Russians, interfered in the 2016 election and were working against him (despite overwhelming agreement from intelligence that Russians hacked the DNC server).

Withdrawal from international agreements/organizations: Authoritarian leaders often defy international agreements when it serves their interests to appeal to their political base. Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate change in June 2017, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018, and the UN Human Rights Council in June 2018, among many others.

Trump’s attacks on critics: Dictators do not tolerate any criticism. In January 2017, in response to criticism from Rep. John Lewis, Trump said “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.”

Surrounding himself with Yes men: Like any despot, Trump retains only those who agree with him. As a former National Security Council official told Politico “I feel like you already don’t have an A Team or B Team. You’re really getting down to who’s left that will say ‘yes.”

I do not believe that Democrats and responsible Republican leaders should simply dismiss any of the above alarming scenarios only because they did not happen before. Trump is unlike any of his predecessors; he is corrupt to the core and his self-interest as he perceives it comes before the nation.

He desperately wants to cling to power, in whatever way he can. Just like any dictator, he will stoop to any low, cheat, lie, threaten, viciously attack his opponents, suppress voting rights (especially of the Black and Hispanic communities), and continue to delegitimize the upcoming elections even before they take place.

His enablers, the leadership of the Republican party, stood idly by all along and allowed him to run wild, to jeopardize the country’s domestic security and global standing, for which they will pay dearly come November.

I am hopeful that none of the above scenarios will occur. But can we be certain that, given his disturbing behavior and consistent efforts to emulate dictators, Trump would simply concede if he loses the election and peacefully vacate his office come January 20, 2021?

We can only hope so, but it will be a grave mistake not to take these clear warning signs seriously. Be aware America, and be prepared to act.

 

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

The post Trump the Wannabe Dictator appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

The post Trump the Wannabe Dictator appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Jennifer Maldonado (I), her little sister and Carmen Carbajal, at the entrance to her home in San Salvador. They hung a white flag as a sign that they had run out of food during the quarantine adopted by the government since March 21 to contain the COVID-19 infections, as did many families in El Salvador and neighbouring Guatemala. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It was supposed to have been a ground-breaking year for gender equality, but the coronavirus pandemic has instead widened inequalities for girls and women across every sphere. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 24 2020 (IPS)

Sixteen-year-old Suhana Khan had just completed her grade 10 exams in March, when India imposed a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Since then, she has been spending her mornings and evenings doing household chores, from cooking and cleaning to fetching drinking water from the tube well. 

“I am really missing school. Nearly half the year has gone and we have no books and no teachers to teach. We don’t know if and when we will be able to resume our studies,” Khan, who is from Kesharpur village in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, told IPS.

The disappointment in her voice is palpable. While teachers at the local government school are supposed to conduct online classes, most of the 350 households in the village have only one mobile phone with internet connectivity, which male members in the family take to work.

School closures are putting young girls at risk of early marriage, unintended pregnancies and female genital mutilation (FGM). A recent analysis has revealed that if the lockdown continues for six months, the disruptions in preventive programmes may result in an additional 13 million child marriages, seven million unintended pregnancies and two million cases of FGM between now and 2030.

Suhana Khan (right) has been unable to complete her schooling after schools in India closed during a nationwide lockdown. Now she works as a volunteer teacher for younger children. Courtesy: Bodh Shiksha Samiti

Khan has been fortunate to find work as a volunteer teacher with a local community based Non-Government Organisation, Bodh Shiksha Samiti. She teaches 11 children from her extended family for two hours daily in her own home.

“I wish there was someone to teach me too. I am desperate to continue my education and become a police officer so I am able to protect myself and other girls and women. We can’t step out of our homes after sunset. Every day, we hear of girls being abused,” she told IPS.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights and gender equality. It was supposed to have been a ground-breaking year for gender equality, but the novel coronavirus pandemic has instead widened inequalities for girls and women across every sphere – from education and health to employment and security. It has increased women’s unpaid workload and aggravated the risk of domestic violence. 

Gabriela Cercós, 24, from Barueri, a municipality in Brazil’s São Paulo state, told IPS, “Women, who work from home are overburdened with housework, home schooling and looking after their children. In isolation, domestic violence has grown. Recently my close friend was assaulted, but she didn’t report the incident because she has a child and she can’t afford to be a single mother.” 

As COVID-19 cases spiral, lockdowns are being extended, further isolating women living with abusive, controlling and violent partners. Civil society organisations are reporting an escalation in calls for help to domestic violence helplines and shelters across the world. But for every call for help, there are several others who are unable to seek support.

Globally 243 million girls and women (aged 15-49 years) have been subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in the past 12 months. Yet, nearly 50 countries have no laws that specifically protect women from such violence. The global cost of public, private and social violence against women and girls is estimated at approximately two percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) or $1.5 trillion. As security, health and money worries heighten, and the stress is compounded by cramped and confined living conditions, these numbers will soar, according to United Nations Women. 

“Before COVID-19, we already knew that every country in the world would need to speed up progress to achieve gender equality by 2030. And we also know that disease outbreak affects women and men differently and exacerbates gender inequalities. That’s why to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and have a strong response and recovery to COVID-19, we must apply a gender lens in order to address the unique needs of girls and women, and leverage their unique expertise. Without this gender lens, we can’t truly ‘Build Back Better,’” Susan Papp, Women Deliver’s managing director for Policy and Advocacy, told IPS.

Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, is powering the Deliver for Good campaign, an evidence-based advocacy campaign that calls for better policies, programming, and financial investments in girls and women. 

Essential maternal healthcare and family planning needs of girls and women have also been adversely impacted by reallocation of resources to contain the pandemic. 

“The impact of COVID-19 across Africa on women, girls and youth in particular has been immense. The pandemic closed more than 1,400 service delivery points across IPPF’s member countries, including nearly 450 mobile clinics, which are vital to reach rural populations, and in humanitarian settings so often poor and underserved,” International Planned Parenthood Federation’s (IPPF) Africa Regional Director Marie-Evelyne Pétrus-Barry told IPS. IPPF is one of some 400 organisations and diverse partners that have joined the Deliver for Good campaign by committing to deliver for girls and women. 

“Twenty of our African member associations reported shortages of sexual and reproductive health commodities within weeks of COVID-19 appearing. We’re now seeing the impact on our ability to deliver services, despite the very best efforts of our members to adapt to new ways of working. 

“The number of services delivered to young clients in Benin between March and May fell by more than 50 percent compared with the same time last year. In Uganda the fall was 47 percent. These are devastating figures, and the impact on women, girls and youth will be have a very negative impact on the development, livelihood and human rights of African women, girls and youth,” Pétrus-Barry added.

Women are primary caregivers, nurturing their own families, and they are also serving as frontline responders in the health and service sectors. Globally, women make up 70 percent of the health workforce – nurses, midwives and community health workers. They also comprise the majority of staff in health facility services, such as cleaning, laundry and catering. 

The pandemic has compounded the economic woes of women and girls, who generally earn less, work in insecure informal jobs and have little savings. Many women work in market or street vending, depending on public spaces and social interactions, which have now been restricted to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Almost 510 million or 40 percent of all employed women globally work in the four economic sectors – accommodation, food, sales and manufacturing – worst affected by the pandemic.

Cercós, who worked in hospitality at one of the international hotel chains earning a monthly income of BRL 2200 ($ 412) before the pandemic, is now on unemployment insurance. She’s just received the first of four instalments of BRL 1700 ($ 319) each.

“It is very difficult to get a job now. I have been having anxiety attacks. I am afraid to leave home and I am trying not to sink into depression. Some days are harder than others and the news doesn’t help,” she said.

This year, some 49 million extra people may fall into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis. In June, at the launch of the policy brief on food security, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ warned that the number of people who are acutely food or nutrition insecure will rapidly expand.  He is urging governments to put gender equality at the centre of their recovery efforts.

Gerda Verburg, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement coordinator and U.N. Assistant Secretary-General, noted that gender equality (SDG 5), good nutrition and zero hunger (SDG 2) are intrinsically linked. SUN is also a partner organisation for the Deliver for Good campaign, prioritising action and investments for girls and women.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic reared its head, progress was stalling in these areas, alongside needed climate action. Although the impacts of the coronavirus on women’s and girls’ nutrition and food security are yet to be seen, there is no doubt that the loss of livelihoods and food system disruptions – disproportionally affecting women and the future perspectives of young women – will push countries even further from reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and ensuring a more equal world, free from hunger and malnutrition in all its forms,” Verburg told IPS.

 

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

The post It was Meant to Be a Ground-breaking Year for Gender Equality but COVID-19 Widened Inequalities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

António Guterres, laying his left hand on the Charter of the United Nations, takes the oath of office as Secretary-General of the United Nations for a five-year term that began on 1 January 2017. Peter Thomson, then President of the General Assembly, administers the oath. 12 December 2016. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By António Guterres
NEW YORK, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

The Charter of the United Nations has been a constant presence in my life. My awareness of it started with the usual brief introduction to the basics of the United Nations as an organization that many young people receive in school. Later, as my political awareness took shape against the backdrop of military rule in Portugal and my country’s status as a colonial power, the Charter’s calls for self-determination and other freedoms registered with urgency. During the time I spent as a volunteer in the poor neighbourhoods of Lisbon, the Charter’s vision of social justice was equally resonant. In subsequent service as a parliamentarian and then as Prime Minister, I was privileged to have an opportunity to advance not only national progress but one of the Charter’s other main objectives: international cooperation. Across a decade as High Commissioner for Refugees and now in my current role, the Charter’s power inspires me onward every day in serving “we the peoples”, including the most vulnerable members of the human family, who have a special claim on that landmark document’s provisions and protections.

The adoption of the Charter of the United Nations was a pivotal and historic moment. The document enshrined a determination to establish a new international order built with the purpose of avoiding a third world war following two such cataclysms that took place within the space of a single generation. Over the past seventy-five years, the Charter has proven to be a solid yet flexible framework. Its ideals have endured, and its legal foundation has progressively adjusted to new situations and needs. Amidst crisis and complexity, the Charter has remained the touchstone we all refer to and rely upon to uphold our shared responsibilities and achieve our global commitments.

In an era of spreading hatred and impunity, the Charter reminds us of the primacy of human dignity and the rule of law. And in a time of rapid transformation and technological change, the Charter’s values and objectives endure: the peaceful settlement of disputes; the equal rights of men and women; non-intervention, self-determination and the sovereign equality of Member States; and clear rules governing the use of force, as set out in Article 2, paragraph 4, and Chapter VII of the Charter.

These principles are not favours or concessions. They form the bedrock of international relations and are central to peace. They have saved lives, advanced economic and social progress and inspired the further elaboration of international law, encompassing key areas such as human rights, the environment and international criminal justice.

View of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, United States, the city in which the Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945. Credit: Kishan Rana

When these principles have been flouted, put aside or applied selectively, the results have been catastrophic: conflict, chaos, death, disillusion and mistrust. Our shared challenge is to do far better in upholding the Charter’s values. One of the most effective ways to fulfil our commitments is to invest in prevention, as envisaged in the Charter’s Chapter VI. Another is by working more closely with regional organizations, as foreseen in Chapter VIII. And while peacekeeping is not mentioned in the Charter, it epitomizes the kind of collective action for peace that the Charter envisions and is an indispensable tool that merits strong international support.

Resilient and visionary, the Charter of the United Nations speaks to all people; it belongs to everyone, everywhere. At a time when the world is wrestling with the COVID-19 pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions and growing climate disruption, the Charter points the way to the solidarity we need today and across generations. As we strive to maintain international peace and security, protect human rights, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and strengthen multilateralism, we must return to fundamental principles; we must return to the framework that has kept us together; we must come home to our Charter.

This article was first published by the UN Chronicle on 25 June 2020.

 

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

The post Marking 75 Years of the Charter of the United Nations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

António Guterres is the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The post Marking 75 Years of the Charter of the United Nations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

Most of  the countries in the Caribbean have done a great job of containing the COVID-19 pandemic, with a few notable exceptions, namely, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. A University of Oxford study highlighted Trinidad and Tobago as being among the most successful. However, management of wildlife and illegal hunting in that country remains ineffective. 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 66 endangered or vulnerable species in Trinidad and Tobago, including fish and amphibians. A few, like the Piping Guan, are listed as critically endangered because of being avidly hunted.

Could the scourge of illegal hunting in Trinidad and Tobago lead to an outbreak of another zoonotic disease?

In this Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS Caribbean correspondent Jewel Fraser talks with a University of the West Indies virologist, a wildlife conservationist and a wildlife biologist about the threats posed to both human and animal health by illegal hunting in Trinidad and Tobago.

 

The post Trinidad Skilfully Handles COVID-19 but Falls Short with Wildlife appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Could indiscriminate hunting lead to an outbreak of another zoonotic disease in Trinidad and Tobago. In this Voices from the Global South podcast our correspondent Jewel Fraser finds out.

The post Trinidad Skilfully Handles COVID-19 but Falls Short with Wildlife appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A group of women farmers ready to head out to the plots they farm on the community lands outside of Huasao, a rural town in Peru’s Andes highlands department of Cuzco. Credit: Nayda Quispe/IPS

By Nout van der Vaart
ROTTERDAM/THE HAGUE, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

At last week’s 2020 High Level Political Forum (HLPF), UN member states discussed how to get back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. They focused on a dire need for “accelerated action and transformative pathways to realize the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

Given the fact we’re also entering an unprecedented climate emergency, let’s be specific about what’s needed. Responding adequately to Covid-19 and achieving the SDGs in the next ten years will need to include serious efforts to rein in and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Agricultural biodiversity is the key to thriving, resilient food systems. So governments, agribusinesses and civil society organizations should promote food production practices that create and maintain agrobiodiversity – including indigenous foods and knowledge

Climate change is already hitting low-income and marginalized groups the hardest. If we want to realize a just and rights-based transition to climate-resilient and inclusive societies, we need to make sure of one important thing. That all those in today’s food system – especially those hit hardest – are involved in re-shaping our future food system.

 

Why transforming our food systems will be essential

Food production systems are among the largest contributors to climate change. Last year’s IPCC special report on climate change and land stated that an estimated 21 to 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities come mainly from animal production and deforestation.

At the same time, the changing climate is also adversely affecting food production systems and food security worldwide.

Who is caught up in the vicious circle of climate change? Everyone. From smallholder farmers and informal food vendors to factory farms and powerful multinationals. Yet marginalized groups are impacted the most. Groups like low-income consumers, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and women in particular. The problem is, the powerful – who are the most responsible – have the resources to dodge the bullet, while the marginalized need support to adjust and adapt.

What many people ignore – or don’t realize – is that these groups are vital elements of local food systems. Smallholder farmers and informal food vendors largely shape and sustain these systems. We simply cannot overlook this fact as we enter the “decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

 

Food Parliament in Uganda, photo courtesy of Slow Food Uganda.

 

How civil society enables marginalized groups to transform food systems

As the climate emergency advances, it’s clear that those who are least responsible for climate change suffer from it the most. In this context, the SDG mantra “leaving no one behind” is also a call to enable marginalized groups – smallholder farmers, low-income consumers, and informal vendors – to become resilient to climate change.

That will help bolster everyone’s food security and protect food systems worldwide. Hivos and our partners recognize the pivotal position of these groups. At the same time, “leaving no one behind” must go hand in hand with broader climate mitigation efforts, including structural changes to food production practices and marketing, and food consumption patterns.

Our new paper with IIED shows how our Sustainable Diets for All (SD4All) program has empowered CSOs and low-income groups to advocate for more inclusive, sustainable food system policies that integrate climate resilience. We can highlight two examples here.

In Zambia, monoculture production of maize is encouraged by national agricultural policies. This has led to soil degradation and biodiversity loss, leaving many smallholder farmers vulnerable to climate change. Our SD4All partner Civil Society for Poverty Reduction worked with the government to create an e-voucher system that helps smallholder farmers access seeds and other inputs for different crops than maize.

In Uganda, our SD4All partner Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO) has trained and deployed what they call “diet champions.” They go into the field, visiting farmers and local authorities alike. Their mission is to promote the production and consumption of local vegetables among farmers. And to convince local authorities to adopt policies and pass regulations that stimulate the same behavior. The champions have special advice for both: indigenous crops are often better suited to the local climate and more resistant to climate shocks.

 

How government can multiply civil society’s efforts to change our food systems

The good work civil society does to tackle the climate crisis and transform our food system can only go so far. For truly effective global change, governments, international institutions and other relevant stakeholders must scale up these efforts. In light of upcoming international conferences like the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit and the Nutrition for Growth Summit, we urge them to prioritize three action areas:

1. Strengthen the role of citizens and CSOs in food governance. Lasting results are only possible if you include the voices normally left out of decision-making. So governments need to hold transparent and inclusive dialogues with everyone who has a vested interest in food systems. Only then will the needs and opinions of the most marginalized and underrepresented groups be included.
2. Promote and invest in diverse, climate-resilient food systems. Agricultural biodiversity is the key to thriving, resilient food systems. So governments, agribusinesses and civil society organizations should promote food production practices that create and maintain agrobiodiversity – including indigenous foods and knowledge.
3. Embrace and empower smaller, local players in food systems. Most underprivileged citizens in low-income countries buy their food at local informal markets and smaller businesses (formal and informal SMEs). At the same time, these are the main outlets smallholder farmers use to sell their produce. Governments need to acknowledge the vital role these local markets and SMEs play and encourage them. They can do this in two ways. Through policies that allow a wide range of local food producers and sellers to thrive within food systems. And by adopting legislation that prevents large companies from monopolizing the food system.

 

It’s now or never

The next “decade of action” for sustainable development and combatting climate change is here – and the time to act boldly is now. With Covid-19 amplifying the imbalances and unjust structures of our food system, the need for an inclusive and green recovery is staring us in the face.

Failing to shift towards climate-proof food systems risks collapsing the ecological and social-economical support structures our societies are based on. For the benefit of future generations, we must prevent the climate crisis from worsening any way we can. Radically transforming the food system by putting citizen’s voices and needs – so often ignored – at the center of the transformation is crucial.

 

This opinion piece was originally published here

The post Involve Marginalized Groups to Make Food Systems More Climate-Resilient appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nout van der Vaart is Hivos' Sustainable Diets for All advocacy officer

The post Involve Marginalized Groups to Make Food Systems More Climate-Resilient appeared first on Inter Press Service.

People living in Lagos State in Nigeria, simulate sneezing into their elbows during a coronavirus prevention campaign. Credit: Africa Renewal

By Franck Kuwonu
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

Re-opening economies is a tough balancing act between keeping people safe from the virus while ensuring they can still make a living.

Some four months after the first COVID-19 case in Africa was reported in Egypt, countries on the continent are beginning to ease public health and social measures, such as lockdowns and curfews, imposed to curb the spread of the pandemic.

In Côte d’Ivoire, commercial activities have resumed, and students are back in classrooms, while in South Africa, where the army enforced strict lockdown rules, the government has allowed all essential services to resume operations, and on Monday 8 June some schools reopened.

As of 29 June, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa reports over 380,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases – with more than 181,000 recoveries. 9,500 people have lost their lives to the disease.

Across the continent, people are still encouraged to practice social distancing, wear masks and frequently wash their hands. International borders remain closed to regular passenger travel. Nevertheless, most countries are slowly easing restrictive stay-at-home measures in the face of their most severe consequences on the livelihoods of people.

In May, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) estimated that the continent could lose up to $65.7 billion (2.5 percent of annual GDP) for every month of lockdown.

Nigeria, the top African economy, may have lost about $18 billion which represents a 38 per cent drop in GDP in just five weeks of lockdown from March to April, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), found.

However, as COVID-19 cases remain on the uptick, including in countries that have re-opened their economies, governments are having to balance containment with preserving people’s means of earning a living.

Franck Kuwonu

As a result, some countries have paused their plans to open up further, while others have extended their lockdowns indefinitely. Yet others continue to re-open their economies while ramping up testing and isolation of cases.

Rwanda, one of the first countries to impose a complete lockdown allowed people working in public and private essential services, including market vendors, to return to their workplaces at the beginning of May. A month later, authorities cancelled plans to re-open further as COVID-19 cases rose and the country registered its first coronavirus-related death.

Zimbabwe remains under an indefinite lockdown, with a fortnightly review to determine when to re-open.

At the start of the pandemic, Ghana’s president Nana Akuffo-Addo declared a lockdown in and around the capital Accra and other urban centres such as Kumasi in the south.

“We know how to bring the economy back to life. What we don’t know is how to bring people back to life,” President Akuffo-Addo said at the time.

Ghana ranks among the leading African countries in testing, and has registered a high number of cases, even as the lockdown was lifted. Since April, Ghanaians can move between urban centres that were earlier cordoned off. Internal flights have resumed. They are allowed into houses of prayer, but public gatherings remain highly restricted in size and schools remain closed.

Some countries decided against lockdowns altogether amid concerns of the socio-economic effects. Benin’s president Patrice Talon did not enforce restrictive measures that, he said, will “starve everybody” and “end up being defied and violated,” adding that the government lacked the “means of rich countries.”

“[A] one-size-fits-all approach to COVID-19 could have lethal consequences” for Africa, warned two University of Johannesburg academics in March, in The Conversation magazine, as more than half of the continent rushed to put in place very stringent transmission-curbing measures.

The easing of lockdowns appears to be an acknowledgement of those concerns. However, the accelerated increase in the number of COVID-19 cases being witnessed now suggests that previous stay-at-home orders were effective in curbing the spread of the virus.

According to WHO, the number of days for case numbers to double in a given country – increased during the lockdown period in most of the countries of the region (5 days to 41 in Cote d’Ivoire, 3 days to 14 in South Africa).

In a recent survey across 28 cities in 20 African countries, a majority of people say they supported these public health and social measures, even the most restrictive, aimed at slowing the pandemic. At the same time, some admitted to violating stay-at-home orders to look for food.

The survey was conducted between 29 March and 17 April by PERC (Partnership for Evidence- Based Response to COVID-19), a global private-public partnership on health, including the WHO, the African Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), and the World Economic Forum.

As COVID-19 began to spread in Africa, governments took measures early on to cushion people from the socio-economic impact of the pandemic. Namibia is offering emergency income grants to workers who have lost jobs, Cabo Verde is providing cash transfers and food assistance, while Togo is subsidizing access to water and electricity, to name a few.

Yet, the PERC warns that those targeted measures and the gradual re-opening of public spaces may not be enough to meet people’s needs in the long run as domestic and international supply chains remain disrupted.

These are concerns shared by African governments as they contend with when and how to re-open their economies while still managing the health aspects of the ongoing crisis.

*This article, originally published in UN’s Africa Renewal, has been updated to reflect the number of confirmed cases, recoveries and deaths as of 29 June.

 

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

The post As COVID-19 Cases Rise, African Countries Grapple with Safely Easing Lockdowns appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Franck Kuwonu, Africa Renewal*

The post As COVID-19 Cases Rise, African Countries Grapple with Safely Easing Lockdowns appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 is expected to take a heavy human and economic toll on developing countries, not only because of contagion in the face of weak health systems, but also containment measures which have precipitated recessions, destroying and diminishing the livelihoods of many.

Limited fiscal space
Developing countries generally have limited fiscal capacities to finance relief and liquidity provision in the short-term while rebuilding economic life on a more sustainable basis in the longer-term.

Anis Chowdhury

The 2020 Financing for Sustainable Development Report shows debt vulnerability growing in many developing countries well before the pandemic. For example, public sector borrowings of commodity exporters increased substantially after prices collapsed in 2014-15. With these prices further depressed now, the pandemic will increase developing country debt.

Investors withdrew nearly US$80 billion from emerging markets in the first quarter of 2020 – the largest capital outflow in history, according to the Institute of International Finance – as remittances fell at least 20%, i.e., by over US$100 billion.

Most other developing countries do not have strong enough credit ratings to secure low-cost foreign sovereign debt despite low interest rates in the North.

Ballooning debt
According to the World Bank’s recent Global Waves of Debt, the past decade has seen the largest, fastest and most broad-based increase in emerging market and developing economies (EMDE) debt in the past half century.

Since 2010, total EMDE debt – both public and private – rose from 108.6% of GDP (88% without China) to more than 170% (108% excluding China), totalling US$57 trillion in 2019.

Private corporate debt accounted for much of this ballooning EMDE debt, rising from 77% of GDP in 2010 to 117% in 2018. But public debt (without China) has also risen from 38.6% of GDP in 2010 to 49.4% in 2018.

Following a sharp decline during 2000-10, total low-income country (LIC) debt rose from 51.5% of GDP (US$137 bn) in 2010 to 65.8% (US$268 bn) in 2018. Public debt is far more important in LICs, rising from 36.5% of GDP in 2010 to 45.7% in 2018, borrowing more from ‘non-traditional’ sources, notably China.

Dangerous borrowings
When governments can borrow on reasonable terms to invest in projects needed for sustainable development, debt may be desirable, if not necessary, especially in resource-poor countries. IMF research suggests that optimal debt levels depend on many considerations.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Nevertheless, debt can have very undesirable impacts, especially when not well used. Debt composition can also be worrisome. The recent debt build-up is particularly concerning because much of it is external.

And now, developing countries’ ability to service growing debt is constrained by falling export revenues due to pandemic-induced commodity price collapses complicated by the shift to riskier debt.

The external share of EDME government debt reached 43% in 2018, while foreign currency denominated corporate debt rose from 19% of GDP in 2010 to 26% in 2018.

Commercial credit increased over three-fold from 2010 to 2019, rising from 5.0% to 17.5% of LICs’ external public debt, while contributing to more than half of their non-concessional government debt.

Heavier burdens
Many developing countries face sovereign debt crises, unable to pay off accumulated debt or interest. An increasing share is owed to China, especially by ‘un-creditworthy’ poor countries, but European bond markets and private lenders still account for more.

African government external debt payments doubled in two years, from 5.9% of government revenue in 2015 to 11.8% in 2017. A fifth of Africa’s external debt of about US$405 bn is owed to China, 32% (US$132 bn) to bond markets and other private lenders, and 35% (US$144 bn) to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank.

Debt servicing accounts for the largest share of government spending, and remains the fastest growing expenditure item in sub-Saharan African budgets. As debt from private creditors is more expensive, 55% of interest payments go to them.

Interest payments due on private debt to African nations for the rest of 2020 are around US$3 billion. Compared to very low to negative rates in Europe, America and Japan, most African governments are paying 5~16% interest on 10-year government bonds.

African countries have been accused of borrowing too much, but the problem is that they are paying far too much interest, mainly due to rating agencies’ and bond issuers’ prejudices and practices. Thus, although Ethiopia has grown at 8~11% for over a decade, its sovereign credit rating has not improved.

Also, transparency about contingent liabilities, e.g., due to state-owned enterprise debt and public-private partnership transactions, is limited in most developing countries, especially for debt owed to commercial and non-Paris Club creditors.

Contingent liabilities may also grow during this pandemic as governments have to extend loan guarantees for the private sector to prevent total economic collapse.

Debt worsens inequality
Debt also increases inequality in at least four ways. First, debt enriches creditors and financial intermediaries, typically at the expense of borrowers. Interest and other capital gains greatly increase asset incomes, wealth and capital.

Second, government debt often enriches wealthy elites. Some of the politically well-connected profit from project financing, the burden of which is borne by the people.

A leaked World Bank study estimated that 5% of all new Bank finance to poor countries ended up in tax havens. Bank loans to 22 countries receiving aid during 1990-2010 also increased deposits in secret offshore bank accounts.

Third, fiscal arrangements involving debt typically deepen inequality. To service debt, governments often increase taxation and cut spending. While the IMF and financial interests usually insist on fiscal consolidation involving austerity, creditors may even demand ‘credible’, compliant finance ministers.

While taxes on the wealthy can be increased, the dominant trend in the last four decades has been otherwise. Instead, the IMF has urged governments for decades to increase revenue through value added and other regressive indirect taxation, usually on consumption.

Many governments have had to cut expenditure to increase revenue to service debt, usual making social spending cuts, worsening inequality and social discontent, triggering widespread protests in Kenya, Ecuador, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Relief urgently needed
The severity of current recessions, affecting most countries, and dim prospects of robust rebounds, may tip many LICs into debt distress. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has warned of a “looming debt disaster” in developing countries, calling for US$1 trillion in debt relief.

On 15 April 2020, G20 finance ministers agreed to a “time-bound suspension of debt service payments” for 76 low-income developing countries eligible for World Bank International Development Association consideration, while the IMF has offered debt service relief to 25 of the poorest countries.

Nevertheless, the UN believes these actions will not be enough to avoid defaults as the G20 move does not effect private lenders.

The unique, but varied and changing nature of the pandemic and efforts to contain contagion, and the specific challenges of relief, revival and reorientation imply that neither ‘one size fits all’ nor other formulaic solutions, e.g., to address financial crisis, are appropriate.

Policy measures will not only need to address the specificities of the Covid-19 crises, but must also take into consideration the legacy of earlier problems, including the burdens of accumulated debt and debt-servicing.

 

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

The post Covid-19 Compounds Developing Country Debt Burdens appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Elwyn Grainger-Jones is the Executive Director of the CGIAR System Organization.

By Elwyn Grainger-Jones
MONTPELLIER, France, Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the structural weaknesses of today’s food systems, showing how quickly global networks of food production, trade and supply can waver under the impact of a single disease.

By compromising access to safe, nutritious food through enforced restrictions on distribution and labour resulting in shortages and price rises, the coronavirus outbreak has shaken the foundations of global wellbeing, with repercussions for health, livelihoods, and equality.

Elwyn Grainger-Jones

But while such an interconnected system, in which food and agriculture prop up healthy economies, environments and societies, has its vulnerabilities, it also points to potential strengths.

By responding with the best available science and research on resilient, healthy and sustainable food systems, the global community can not only recover food security, but it can also build back better entire systems that support health, nutrition, incomes and climate action.

This is why CGIAR’s response to COVID-19 is underpinned by four key pillars of research that provide crucial insights into how to transform food systems with short-, medium- and long-term changes for the better ahead of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.

In the months leading up to the decisive summit, CGIAR will make the case for a science-based approach to response, recovery and resilience, to support a much-needed transformation of food production, distribution, consumption and disposal, which form global food systems.

The first of these four pillars is research into food systems and within this, CGIAR has prioritised the means and ways to ensure sufficient and diverse food supplies during the pandemic and its aftermath.

For example, as part of the short-term response in the next 12 months, CGIAR will gather and provide on-the-ground monitoring data and scientific evidence that will help policymakers and agencies to better understand and overcome the pressures on local and regional food systems.

The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) is monitoring harvests in South Asia to identify food supply shocks caused by COVID-19 while the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT will document the effects of the pandemic on the production and consumption of rice in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, researchers are working to improve the very starting points for food production, from improved rice germplasm to improved species of carp to produce more and better food to consume and to sell.

The second research pillar addressed the need for robust understanding of both animal and human health to support the sustainable growth of animal agriculture.

Research dedicated to “One Health” – or the concept that animal, human and environmental health is inextricable – includes the threat of disease spillover between people and livestock as well as improved disease control measures from hygiene and decontamination to vaccination and safe food storage.

The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub is carrying out research into food safety in informal value chains, for example, in Kenya’s dairy sector and the pork market in Vietnam.

Such research offers valuable insights to inform and shape government and multilateral investments that prioritise protecting the most vulnerable from the impact of the pandemic.

Under this third research pillar, scientists are studying the effects of social protection programs, identifying areas of vulnerability and mapping local food systems to understand existing and needed coping mechanisms, which are often embedded in informal and social structures.

Finally, the fourth research pillar is focused on the broader framework needed for policies and investment that support response, recovery and long-term resilience.

At a country level, this means using science and research to develop tailored policies that mitigate the impact of shocks on the most vulnerable.

In Bangladesh, CGIAR research and evidence is being used to develop interventions designed around specific crop seasons as well as household food aid distribution and wet market management.

And at a global level, CGIAR is also working with UN agencies and development partners on research including phone-based survey assessments to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on rural household livelihoods and food security.

COVID-19 may have caused devastating setbacks and instability around the world that risk undermining progress towards global development, including ending hunger, malnutrition and poverty. But for those of us working on agricultural development to serve public health, wellbeing and prosperity, the pandemic has only accelerated efforts towards our mission.

CGIAR research in four key areas can help ensure that instead of uprooting progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the pandemic is taken as an opportunity to add urgent reinforcements and bolster the structures on which global development depends.

Between now and the culmination of the UN Food Systems Summit, countries and authorities must build stronger bridges with the academic and research community to ensure that all of us can build back better.

 

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

The post Research Provides the Bricks and Mortar for Our Food Systems to ‘Build Back Better’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Elwyn Grainger-Jones is the Executive Director of the CGIAR System Organization.

The post Research Provides the Bricks and Mortar for Our Food Systems to ‘Build Back Better’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Agroecological systems, which build resilience through crop/species diversity and natural synergies across the whole agro-ecosystem, are showing major potential. Credit: (C. Perodeaud, 2018)

By the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food)*
BRUSSELS , Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

While the ‘CGIAR System’ may sound like a technocratic body, few organizations have exerted as much influence on today’s food systems as this network of global agricultural research centres. Since its inception at the height of the ‘Green Revolution’ in 1971, the CGIAR has driven advances in crop breeding and agricultural mechanization and modernization across multiple continents. Its mission – to develop knowledge and innovation for agriculture in the global South – is as relevant today as ever, in light of climate change, COVID-19 and a host of additional challenges.

The process now underway to reform the CGIAR is therefore of major public interest. The ‘One CGIAR’ process seeks to merge the CGIAR’s 15 legally-independent centres, headquartered in 15 countries, into one legal entity. The impetus has come from some of its biggest funders, notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and the US and UK governments.

Reform of the CGIAR is long overdue. However, we are concerned that the current reform process, like previous versions, will fall short of the fundamental change that is required, and risks exacerbating major power imbalances in global agricultural development.

Firstly, the restructuring appears to have been advanced in a coercive manner, and without genuine buy-in from the global South. A ‘carrot and stick’ approach has been adopted: an increase in the overall CGIAR budget has been promised if the merger goes through, while centres resisting the move have allegedly been threatened with budget cuts. Insiders say that representatives from governments and agricultural institutes in the global South – the much-touted beneficiaries of the CGIAR and the Green Revolution – are generally against the merger, while the big funders and closely-affiliated scientific institutions are in favour. The two centres voting against the merger last week were the forest and agroforestry centres headquartered in Indonesia and Kenya respectively.

Secondly, there is insufficient diversity among the inner circle driving forward CGIAR reform. In the mid-1990s, when the CGIAR underwent an earlier restructuring, men from just four countries – the US, the UK, Canada and Australia – accounted for 85% of board chairs and directors. The CGIAR has subsequently made efforts to improve gender balance, and to bring on staff and board members from the global South. However, a true diversity of perspectives is still missing: many of those recruited have close associations with Northern universities and donor-led partnerships, while the voices of farmers, civil society and independent researchers in the global South are still largely absent. Only 7 of the 22 members of the CGIAR System Reference Group (SRG) – responsible for managing the transition process – are from the global South, of which two are already affiliated to CGIAR centres.

Thirdly, the proposed restructuring fails to equip CGIAR for the urgently-needed paradigm shift in food systems. Business-as-usual approaches to agricultural development are failing to address hunger and improve the livelihoods of smallholders, as shown by the shortcomings of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Meanwhile, agroecological systems, which build resilience through crop/species diversity and natural synergies across the whole agro-ecosystem, are showing major potential – as recognized by the World Bank-led global agriculture assessment (‘IAASTD’), IPBES, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and a July 2020 statement by 366 scientists. The CGIAR has taken some steps towards systemic approaches, particularly through the work of some of its centres on participatory plant breeding, farmer-managed seed systems, varietal and species diversification for nutrition and resilience, biological control and agroforestry. But it has failed to mainstream these approaches: a 2017 study concluded that the “CGIAR environment was not conducive to implementing systems research”. Recent analysis by Biovision and IPES-Food found that, on average, CGIAR research programmes meet less than 20% of the indicators of systemic agroecological research.

While the basic shortcomings have been acknowledged in the current reform process, the CGIAR’s underlying philosophy does not appear to have shifted. The focus remains on scientific innovations being “deployed faster, at a larger scale, and at a reduced cost”, and provided to rather than developed with beneficiaries. By ushering in a single board with new agenda-setting powers, the restructuring may further reduce the autonomy of regional research agendas and reinforce the grip of the most powerful donors – many of whom have proven reluctant to diverge from the Green Revolution pathway.

Underlying all three of these problems is the disproportionate power of a handful of actors to control the purse strings and set the global agricultural development agenda. This reality risks undermining and short-circuiting the significant efforts to consult stakeholders over the past year.

It is therefore crucial to consider how these risks can be averted as the restructuring process moves forward, and to open a discussion on fundamental reform of the CGIAR. In order to rebuild its legitimacy and relevance, the CGIAR must: diversify its governance; put at centre stage the views of farmers, researchers, civil society groups, and governments in the global South; support transformative, transdisciplinary, agroecological research co-led by farmers and farmer organisations; collaborate with a broad network of regional, sub-regional and national research centres and universities to strengthen autonomous research capacity in the global South; and participate alongside the Rome-based agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP) in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Ultimately, the CGIAR system should mirror the food system we need: decentralized, context-specific, agroecological, and with more distributed and equal power relations.

*The IPES-Food expert panel: Olivier De Schutter (Co-chair), Olivia Yambi (Co-chair), Bina Agarwal, Molly Anderson, Million Belay, Nicolas Bricas, Joji Carino, Jennifer Franco, Mamadou Goïta, Emile Frison, Steve Gliessman, Hans Herren, Phil Howard, Melissa Leach, Lim Li Ching, Desmond McNeill, Pat Mooney, Raj Patel, P.V. Satheesh, Maryam Rahmanian, Cécilia Rocha, Johan Rockstrom, Ricardo Salvador, Laura Trujillo-Ortega, Paul Uys, Nettie Wiebe, Yan Hairong.

 

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

The post ‘One CGIAR’ with Two Tiers of Influence? The Case for a Real Restructuring of Global Ag-Research Centres appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This is an abridged version of an open letter by IPES-Food to the CGIAR on 21 July 2020.

The post ‘One CGIAR’ with Two Tiers of Influence? The Case for a Real Restructuring of Global Ag-Research Centres appeared first on Inter Press Service.

11-year-old Fatoumata Binta (left) and her brother Iphrahima Tall (right) collect water from a dry river bed. This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

With Tabaski (Eid al-Adha) around the corner, 11-year-old Fatoumata Binta from Terrou Mballing district in M’Bour, western Senegal, wakes up early and joins her brothers Iphrahima Tall and Ismaila to fetch water from a river several miles from home.

This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water as city taps have often run dry. But because of the coronavirus, they need extra water for maintaining cleanliness and frequent handwashing.

But there is another reason why they need additional water.

In a few weeks time, Muslim families will sacrifice a livestock animal to mark Tabaski. Binta’s family have been raising goats to sell on the market ahead of the festival, but the animals need lots of water. 

“If they don’t drink enough, the goats will lose weight and sell for less,” Binta, who has not been to school since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, tells IPS.

Schools in Senegal, which closed on Mar. 15, were scheduled to reopen on Jun 2. However, the return was cancelled as several teachers tested positive for the coronavirus across the country, but mainly in Ziguinchor in the southern Casamence region. To date, the country has officially counted more than 8,985 coronavirus cases, including 174 deaths.

But when schools reopen in August-September, Binta might not return. The reason, she says, is that her community school doesn’t have enough water. Besides, there are no toilets for girls and Binta, who has just begun to menstruate, feels too shy to use a shared toilet.

Poor WASH Reflects Low Priority

According to the recently published United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report on global education, only one percent of schools in Senegal have separate toilets for girls. The dismal performance has actually put the country at the bottom of a list of 45 developing countries.

Experts say that the core reason behind this is the low priority attached to girls’ education. Although the government has been focusing on girls’ enrolment at elementary level, the focus on improving their water and sanitation needs has remained a neglected subject.

Fatou Gueye Seck, programme coordinator from the Coalition of Organisations in Energy for the Defence of Public Education (COSYDEP Senegal), shares an example. 

Since 2016, the number of people enrolled in Functional Literacy Centres (CAF) has fallen by more than half, with the number of learners decreasing from 34,373 to 15,435. This underperformance is explained by the insufficiency of the overall amount of funding for CAFs.

“The funding is supposed to be one percent of [public spending] but in reality that is not happening. Unless the funding is increased, in the middle and secondary cycles, gender parity in the country’s education sector cannot be reached until 2021,” Seck tells IPS.

Seck is also the president of the education theme of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, an evidence-based advocacy and communication platform that promotes the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women. The campaign is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver.

“In Senegal, the gender index is still against girls,” Seck told IPS in an earlier interview.

Girl students at a school in the Pikine suburb of Dakar, Senegal. A recent United Nations report says, only one percent of schools have a separate toilet for girls. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Growing water crisis in urban areas

In urban Senegal, water shortages have been frequent for several years, affecting thousands of households. 

But this summer, the shortage has been more acute, as most homes have seen their taps run dry or reduced to a trickle. 

In recent weeks during the  emergency coronavirus lockdown, protests have rocked both the streets of the capital Dakar and M’Bour, a city in western Senegal. Many citizens complained that water supply has worsened since this January when the government signed over the rights of water distribution and management, for 15-years, to a private company called Sen’eau.

As the protests grew, the company made a public statement, blaming the crisis on a storm that damaged some of its infrastructure and promised to normalise distribution by next year.

The government has also assured the public that a solution will be found. On Jun. 17, following a cabinet meeting, Senegalese President Macky Sall stressed  “the imperative to mobilise technical expertise and financial resources to ensure the optimal functioning of hydraulic infrastructures”.

But in the meantime, citizens are spending extra money on purchasing water. Although the rainy season arrived in July, urban Senegal is still struggling with supply shortages of daily water.

Fatima Faye, a 23-year-old health worker in M’Bour, tells IPS that she spends $10 every week on purchasing water: “The taps only give droplets, but the water bills are quite big.”

Unsafe water affecting education

According to Global Waters, an agency supported by the USAID Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene, 49 percent people in Senegal lack access to proper sanitation facilities while 20 percent of Senegalese don’t have access to safe drinking water.

For them the only source of water are open wells and rivulets. So they drink non-potable, unfiltered and untreated water.

Amina Diop, a fruit seller from Guediyawaye, a suburb in Dakar, has been using an open well for all her domestic water needs. Her entire family, including her two daughters, also drink from the same water source. 

Before the lockdown began, one of her girls, 10-year-old  Aminata, often missed school. “Her stomach ran, so I just let her be at home,” Diop tells IPS. Aminata was likely ill because of contaminants in the water source.

But a Women Deliver policy brief on access for girls and women to resources such as water and sanitation notes the benefits of “bringing sanitation options closer to or within the home is a critical improvement for women in the community”.

“It means they won’t have to walk long distances to find a site that is private, which decreases the risk of gender-based violence. It saves them time and energy, reduces their exposure to violence, and improves their nutritional status, which in turn has a positive impact on their reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes,” the brief notes.

It also notes a 2012 study in sub-Saharan Africa that showed a 15-minute decrease in time spent walking to a water source is associated with;

• 41 percent average reduction in diarrhoea prevalence, 
• 11 percent reduction in under-5 mortality, and
• improvements in the nutritional status of children.

Menstrual hygiene takes a hit

According to a 2017 survey done by Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) — the United Nations-hosted organisation dedicated to advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6 of providing clean water and sanitation for all people — 56 percent of girls students in Senegal miss school due to menstruation and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

Some Senegalese NGOs have started to fill the knowledge gap by holding informal classes and workshops with young female students. One of these is Apiafrique, a Dakar-based social enterprise that produces environment-friendly feminine hygiene products,

Marina Gning, the CEO of Apiafrique, has held several workshops for school-going students over the last two years where she teaches them the importance of maintaining menstrual hygiene and also trains them in making sanitary pads that can be reused.

“Throughout Africa, women and girls are often thought of as impure during menstrual cycles, and face societal exclusion, as well as a lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure in schools and homes,” Gning tells IPS.

Between the fight against pandemic, which requires extra water for frequent handwashing, and the country’s water-supply crisis, maintaining menstrual hygiene has become a challenge.

“The challenge now, is keeping the sanitary pads clean. Reusable pads means something that you need to wash. But if there is not enough water, how can you do any washing? So, what use can you make of the knowledge?” Amelie Ndecky, a college student who attended one of Gning’s workshops in 2018 in Ngaparou, a suburb of M’Bour, asks IPS.

Her questions remain unanswered.  

Related Articles

• Providing an Education in Favour of Senegal’s Girls
• Non-formal Education Helps Senegalese Women Combat FGM and Harmful Practices
• How Senegal is Providing Reproductive Health Services to those Who can Least Afford it

The post Inadequate Water & Sanitation Threatens Women’s & Girls’ Development in Senegal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dr. Joseph Gerson
NEW YORK, Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

In the words of (ret.) Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of Defense Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, the Trump Administration has been dangerously “poking China in the eye.”

After sending aircraft carriers and destroyers to the precincts of the Taiwan Strait, last week the Pentagon dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups – including escort cruisers and destroyers, 120 warplanes and 12,000 troops — to South China Sea waters claimed by China. China responded by deploying fighter jets to its near-by base on Woody Island and reminding the world of its anti-aircraft carrier missile capabilities.

Such a massive U.S. fleet has not been deployed to this intensely contested region since 2014. It is only the second time in two decades that such a bellicose show of force has been provocatively displayed in the Asia-Pacific.

This comes midst President Trump’s efforts to deflect attention from his catastrophic Covid-19 failures by blaming and scapegoating China. We had Trump’s “Wuhan virus” rebranding. On July 13, Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement which appears to lay the legal foundations for war with China.

And, Chinese students and researchers in the United States have all been labeled as spies and potential spies. Ignoring the possible consequences or an unpredictable war, Trump appears to be pushing China to the brink, seeking a military incident that can be used to rally Americans around an actual wartime president and save his failing reelection campaign.

Joseph Gerson

Two thousand five hundred years ago, the revered Greek historian Thucydides wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. His analysis of the inevitable tensions between rising and declining powers which frequently – but not always – result in catastrophic war, became known as the Thucydides Trap.

In the South China Sea, President Trump is playing dangerously with the trap’s trigger. Even as we decry Beijing’s human rights abuses and provocative actions to create its version of the Monroe Doctrine in the South China Sea, we have an urgent responsibility to prevent war and to press for diplomatic initiatives to pull the two nuclear powers back from the brink.

COMPETING CLAIMS

The crisis has been brewing for decades. The South China Sea, portions of which are claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei extends across 1.3 million square miles of the western Pacific.

Its sea-bed is thought to contain up to 17.7 billion tons of crude oil (making it the world’s fourth largest oil reserve), massive amounts of natural gas, and other minerals.

It also lies astride the sea lanes over which 40% of the world’s trade transits, including fossil fuels that power the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean economies. Its waves lap against China’s most vulnerable frontier – it’s coastal economic powerhouse from Shanghai to Guangzhou.

Much like the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf throughout the second half of the 20th century, the South China Sea functions as the jugular vein of the world’s most dynamic capitalist economies.

Were the Malacca Strait on the South China Sea’s western perimeter or its other sea lines of communication to be blockaded, the region’s economies would face disaster. The South China Sea can thus be understood as this century’s geostrategic center of the struggle for world power.

In 1949 both China and Taiwan first laid their claims to the U-shaped so-called “nine dot line”, consisting of roughly 80% of the entire South China Sea and its mineral-rich sea-beds.

Credit: United Nations

By the late 1990s, with the Soviet Union consigned to memory and China’s “reform and opening” well under way, geo-strategists in Washington began their obsession with managing or containing China’s rise.

Given China’s growing economic power and its proud legacy of being the world’s most advanced and powerful nation for most of recorded history, they understood that the Middle Kingdom would inevitably test and challenge U.S. regional and global hegemony.

Taiwan, seen by China as a “renegade province” was the first and most obvious flashpoint. It took decades for the Pacific Ocean, an “American Lake” since the defeat of Japan in 1945, to once again become a focal point of great power tensions.

After Chinese leaders completed national boundary negotiations with their northern and western neighbors – excepting India – the South China Sea on its eastern and southern Pacific shores remained vulnerable. In addition to providing access to sea-bed riches the coast remained military fault line.

In the mid-19th century, in two “Opium Wars” fought to enforce British (and U.S.) rights to deluge the Middle Kingdom with addictive opium and thus rectify massive balance of payment inequalities, British naval and land forces invaded China from the coast, defeated China, and precipitated the subsequent collapse of the Qing Dynasty.

Then, beginning in 1895, Japan’s invasions of China came from the sea.

Competing territorial claims lie at the ostensible core of South China Sea tensions. The oil-rich fishing waters around the Parcel Islands, claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, are in the northern reaches of the South China Sea, just south of China’s Hainan Island and its new and massive naval and air force bases.

To the south are the Spratly Islands, claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. And, close to the Philippines, in waters named the West Philippine Sea by many Filipinos, is the Scarborough Shoal, claimed by China, Taiwan and the Philippines.

As early as 1974, when international attention focused on U.S.-Chinese triangulation against the Soviets, China seized a Vietnamese garrison on a western Parcel Island and transformed it into a Chinese military base.

To the south, Fiery Cross, built on a rock in 1988, is the most important of China’s Spratly Island bases. Its construction was followed by others at Subi and Mischief Reefs. And, with Coast Guard and naval deployments China has functionally seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines.

U.S. RESPONSES

The U.S. is not a party to these territorial disputes, but the enemy of an enemy often serves as a friend. The U.S. became a colonizing Pacific power with its brutal turn of the 20th century conquests of the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, and its annexation of Hawaii – in large measure to gain privileged access to the potentially enormous China market.

Its Pacific empire was later expanded and consolidated with Japan’s defeat in World War II. To preserve this imperial domain, the U.S. has since encouraged resistance to China’s South China Sea territorial claims and has conducted provocative “freedom of navigation,” naval and air forays in close proximity to the disputed islands. A record number were held in 2019, with Trump apparently on track to set another record in 2020.

Even before the Barack Obama – Hillary Clinton “Pivot to Asia,” with its commitment to to deploy 60% of U.S. naval and airpower to the Pacific and Asia, President G.H.W. Bush began the U.S. Asia-Pacific build up to contain China’s rise. To reinforce U.S. military power, Bush, Obama and the Pentagon have since focused on reinforcing U.S. alliances, arms sales and deliveries, along with their military bases that encircle much of China.

Despite Trump’s disregard for the United States’ Japanese and South Korean allies and his withdrawal from the Transpacific Partnership, which was designed to limit China’s economic influence, the military build up continues apace.

U.S. military power still far exceeds that of China. Fueled by a military budget four time greater than Beijing’s, a campaign to increase the size of the U.S. Navy, upgrade the Air Force, restore U.S. nuclear primacy, and maximize cyber warfare capabilities, the commitment to containing China includes numerous and often provocative joint military exercises, not the least of which are the “freedom of navigation” deployments.

With the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) claimants unable to compete with China militarily, their primary means of asserting their territorial claims have been via diplomatic forums and the court of international public opinion.

Rooting their claims in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, they have pursued multilateral negotiations with China to create South China Sea codes of conduct, two of which have been agreed upon, but they have yet to be fully implemented. Encouraged by Washington, they also took their case to the U.N. Court of Permanent Arbitration where they prevailed.

Relying on its historical claims and the U.S. tradition of understanding international law being what those who have the power to enforce it say it is, China rejected the Arbitration Court’s findings.

Reinforcing the economic leverage Beijing exercises over ASEAN nations which are economically dependent on China, the Communist Party’s hardline newspaper The Global Times warned that those who persist in challenging China’s claim should “mentally prepare for the sounds of cannons.”

But, as the two imperial elephants struggle for geopolitical advantage, the Pacific ants remain steadfast in their claims and pursuit of diplomatic solutions.

MEETING CHINA HALFWAY

In his book Destined for War, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison reminds us that while the Thucydides trap has often resulted in war, great power conflagrations have also been avoided. War with China is not inevitable.

A case in point was the 20th century U.S-Soviet contest for dominance. At the height of the Cold War, Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme convened elite figures from Europe, North America and the Soviet Union to prevent potentially omnicidal nuclear war.

Drawing on the truism that neither individuals nor nations can be secure unless their rivals simultaneously enjoy security they created the Common Security approach to diplomacy.

The Commission advised that we “must achieve security not against the adversary but together with him,” recognizing that when nations develop and deploy new weapons and military doctrines to counter perceived threats, their actions are seen by their rivals as escalating threats. This, in turn, leads the newly threatened nation to respond in kind, resulting in a spiraling arms race and to increased dangers of deadly miscalculations.

The Commission went on to suggest diplomatic steps that in time resulted in the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Treaty that functionally ended the Cold War.

In this tradition, Lyle J. Goldstein, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, has enumerated ten “cooperation spirals” in his landmark volume Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry. One of Goldstein’s spirals of mutual and sequential diplomacy focuses on reducing tensions and stabilizing relations across the South China Sea.

He acknowledges that such negotiations will be difficult, will require patience, and could likely be improved upon. Most important is creating will on both sides of the Pacific to coexist despite our differences.

Clearly, and most urgently, those with influence on President Trump must press him to reverse course in the South China Sea, as he did with his “fire and fury” threat against North Korea. His aircraft carrier fleets must be recalled. “Freedom of Navigation” provocations must be halted.

And, it is past time to signal a U.S. commitment to pursue common security diplomacy with China and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.

Goldstein concedes that there might be better ways to meet China halfway in the South China Sea, but the mutual and sequential steps that he outlines provide a pathway that begins with small trust-building steps and which lead to coexistence that should be seriously considered, debated and improved upon. He recommends:

Step 1: The U.S. invites China to join the annual CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) exercises in Thailand. This modest step can provide a “bridge between the two powers.” In response, China would propose a “regional antipiracy patrol”, focused on the critically important Malacca Strait. This would provide a vehicle for “building trust and confidence.”

Step 2: The U.S. proposes a Southeast Asia-Pacific Coast Guard Forum. With its Coast Guard focus, it will contribute to demilitarizing maritime security issues and improve the working relationships of U.S., Chinese and other regional leaders.

In response, China would invite ASEAN defense officials for annual tours of PLA (People Liberation Army) facilities, including Hainan Island. This would allow for greater transparency and trust building between China and its rival South China Sea claimants.

Step 3: The U.S. reduces its provocative surveillance activities along the Chinese coast and Hainan Island. The surveillance can be conducted from satellites and by other technical means, reducing the possibility of potentially dangerous military incidents as China takes military counter measures. (Serious incidents occurred in 2001, 2009 and 2014.)

In response, China would clarify its still ambiguous South China Sea territorial claims, making them consistent with the Law of the Sea. In doing so, “China’s U-shaped line may continue to exist but in ‘harmonized” form, to accord with greater peace and stability….”

Step 4: In response to China’s concession of clarifying its SCS claims, the U.S., which until Pompeo’s provocative July statement had remained neutral about the competing South China Sea claims, would “endorse’ China’s role as a claimant to the Spratley/Nansah Islands.

This would not be an endorsement of China’s claims, but it suggests that China’s claim is on a par with others’ claims. China, in response would move to finally “operationalize its policy of ‘joint development’” for South China Sea resources, with a 50-50 split serving as the basis.

Step 5: The U.S. ceases joint military operations with Vietnam, the only claimant nation that – given its long history of tensions with China – may wish to see the U.S. “embroiled in a confrontation with China.” Beijing, in response, would cease military cooperation with the Philippines and Indonesia as a way to stabilize the region.

In 1964, before the U.S. and China were economically integrated and before cyber warfare could threaten the implosion of national infrastructures, U.S. intelligence reported that China was on the verge of testing its first nuclear warhead.

In response U.S. and Soviet leaders considered the possibility of joining together in a preemptive attack to derail Beijing’ nuclear program. Wisely, President Johnson was led to reconsider and cancel what would have been a catastrophic war.

Eight years later, President Nixon was Mao Tse-Tung’s guest in Beijing. A U.S.-China war must be averted. Peace and coexistence, despite our differences, are possible.

 

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

The post South China Sea Provocations & Meeting China Halfway appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Joseph Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security and Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.

The post South China Sea Provocations & Meeting China Halfway appeared first on Inter Press Service.