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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jul 16 2019 (IPS)

On 8 July, Bosco Ntaganda was by the International Criminal Court (ICC) found guilty of crimes against humanity. The 41-year-old rebel leader, nicknamed The Terminator, had ordered his fighters to “target and kill civilians”, kidnap children to be brought up as soldiers and girls to become sex slaves, while personally partaking in the crimes. The Court had gathered evidence from 2,000 survivors from the rampage that Ntaganda and his army ran through the north-eastern Congolese region of Ituri, where beginning in 1999, 60,000 people have been murdered by warring rebel armies. Eighty witnesses testified directly during the court proceedings, thirteen were “experts” and the rest victims.

The International Criminal Court is an intergovernmental tribunal with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals accused of committing crimes of genocide (the intentional destruction of a group of people), crimes against humanity (mainly violations of the UN Charter),1 war crimes (mainly violations of the Geneva Conventions), and crimes of aggression (when a person plans, initiates or executes an act of aggression using state military force violating the UN Charter). The IIC has in great detail specified these crimes and has since its establishment in 2003 indicted 44 individuals, some of them influential, national leaders – former presidents like Sudan´s Omar al-Bashir and Ivory Coast´s Laurent Gbagbo and Uhuru Kenyatta, who recently was re-elected as Kenya´s president. The International Criminal Court is controversial, particularly since it is at a nexus where politics/ideologies merge with individual guilt.

Jurisprudence has since the ruthless European wars of the sixteenth century discussed the existence of a natural law dictating how humans have to behave towards one another. The general agreement was that if no natural law could be proven it was up to each Government to judge criminals in accordance with local legislation. For several hundred years, the pre-eminent political institution was the national State and it was free to apply state-sanctioned violence and punishment. However, in a world where the entire humanity is threatened by international crime, terrorism, and climate change, laws exclusively limited to nations can no longer be valid.

That state-supported atrocities do not recognize national borders became evident during World War II, when moral and geographical boundaries were ignored and even despised. After the War, it was almost universally agreed that some kind of global/natural law had to be applied to safeguard all humans from horrors caused by vicious regimes. In 1948, a non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly urging all nations to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, while asserting that the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family are the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.2

The Declaration was adopted almost unanimously. The only dissidents were Stalinist Soviet Union, Apartheid-governed South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, nations well aware of the fact that any declaration of equal human rights was contrary to their politics. Criminal refusals to acknowledge an “inalienable” duty to respect human rights became apparent during the Nuremberg Trials and those staged by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, during which victorious powers judged abominable crimes committed by individuals serving the vanquished governments.

The defendants could be divided into three groups; those who were afraid, those who followed orders, and those who actually believed in the twisted ideologies of the regimes they had served. Defense attorneys declared that servants of the victorious powers – USA, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union – had committed acts just as bad, or even worse, than those perpetrated by minions of the Nazi regime and the Japanese Empire. Judges ruled that such arguments could not whitewash any personal guilt. However, one problem remained – can a few individuals be punished for crimes committed, or approved, by thousands of “law-abiding” citizens? It was argued that if the damaged nations of Germany and Japan had to be healed and re-built, the victors had to avoid causing distress and anger by convicting too many of the ”willing executioners”. Murderers and rapists were thus welcomed back into society and continued to serve as administrators, policemen, medical doctors, and teachers.

One example among many – so-called Einsatzgruppen were responsible for mass killings of the “intelligentsia” in German-occupied territories, as well as political commissars, partisans, and above all Romani people and Jews. Together with Romanian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian auxiliaries 3,000 German and Austrian soldiers did between 1941 and 1945 execute more than 2 million people. The scale of the killings was almost unbelievable – the massacre at Babi Yar lasted for two days during which 33,770 Jews were killed, the massacre in Rumbula also lasted two days and resulted in 25,000 victims. After the close of World War II, 24 senior leaders of the Einsatzgruppen were charged with crimes against humanity. Fourteen death sentences and two life sentences were handed out, while four additional Einsatzgruppen leaders were later tried and executed by other nations.3 More than 800,000 members of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), an ”elite” that had sworn an oath of ”complete obedience to the Führer” survived the war. Many thousands of them were prosecuted for crimes against humanity, but only124 were convicted.4 This meant that thousands of cold-blooded murderers went unpunished and could resume a quiet life.5

The International Criminal Court is supported by 134 nations, though so far only 107 have ratified the statutes. Seven countries do for various reasons not approve of an international criminal court – China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen. Israel’s opposition stems from the fact that “the action of transferring population into occupied territory” is included in ICC´s list of war crimes. The U.S. fears that if its citizens participate in crimes against humanity in foreign countries they run the risk of being convicted by a court that does not accept the excuse that they served U.S. interests. The Trump Administration is openly opposing the Court, imposing visa bans on ICC staff in response to concerns that an investigation of U.S. nationals may be opened in connection with war crimes committed in Afghanistan. In October 2016, after claiming the Court was biased against African states, Burundi, South Africa, and the Gambia announced their withdrawal. However, following Gambia´s last elections that ended the rule of Yahya Jammeh, this nation rescinded its withdrawal notification, while the High Court of South Africa ruled that a withdrawal would be unconstitutional.6

Like war criminals judged in Nuremberg and Tokyo, Bosco Ntaganda pleaded not guilty, declaring:

1. 1. I was informed of these crimes, but I plead not guilty. I have been described as “The Terminator”, an infamous killer, but that is not me. I am a soldier … I am not a criminal.

7

During the trial, survivors described several massacres. For example, one carried out close to a Hema village. Hema was a specially targeted ethnic group. Ntaganda and his soldiers brought 49 captured villagers to a banana plantation where they were slaughtered with
sticks and batons, as well as knives and machetes. Men, women, children, and babies were found in the field. Some bodies were found naked, some had hands tied up, some had their heads crushed. Several bodies were disemboweled or otherwise mutilated.

Rwandan-born Bosco Ntaganda has a long and bloody career. As a teenager he participated in the slaughter of Rwandan Tutsis, only to end up in the ranks and files of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) headed by the Tutsi Paul Kagame, current president of Rwanda. Some years later we find Ntaganda fighting for the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC), serving as deputy chief of the general staff of Thomas Lubanga, who in 2012 became the first person convicted by the ICC and sentenced to 14 years in prison.8

Bosco Ntaganda is just one example of ”murderers among us” who has been and are protected by world leaders and other decision-makers who all over the world make use of their services and thus become accomplices in their crimes. It is high time for them and the rest of us to assume responsibility for crimes against humanity. It is not only perpetrators who are guilty of atrocities, but supporters and onlookers are also accomplices. In the words of Primo Levi, a great author and survivor from Auschwitz´s hell:

1. 1. We must remember that these faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with few exceptions) monsters. They were ordinary men. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

9

1 https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.html
2 https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
3 Browning, Christopher R. (1998) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. London; New York: Penguin, and Hilberg, Raul (1985) The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier.
4 Shoychet. Matthew (2018) The Accountant of Auschwitz. A Canadian documentary film distributed by Netflix.
5 As in the title of a German movie from 1946 – The Murderers Among Us.
6 https://www.fidh.org/en/issues/international-justice/international-criminal-court-icc/gambia-and-south-africa-to-remain-in-the-international-criminal-as-a-soldier,-not-a-criminal.html 03-bosco-ntaganda-at-the-icc,-i-wcourt
7 https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/tribunals/icc/19
8 DR Congo´s Bosco Ntaganda convicted of war crimes by ICC. https://www.bbc.co.uk
9 Levi, Primo (1965) The Reawakening: The Companion Volume to Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Touchstone. p. 228.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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Excerpt:

Wars, conflict – it´s all business.
One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero.
Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!
                                Charles Chaplin Monsieur Verdoux

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Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, Special Adviser and Head of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD), briefs the Security Council meeting on threats to international peace and security. Courtesy: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2019 (IPS)

A United Nations-backed probe into atrocities committed by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq has frequently been criticised for making slow progress during its first two years of operations. Lately, that could be changing.

The head of the team, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, told the U.N. Security Council this week that his investigators are digging up mass graves in Iraq, speaking with witnesses and could be assisting in their first prosecution of an IS suspect within weeks.

U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said the U.N. Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD), was putting the “voices of survivors, witnesses and communities at the heart” its work.

“There is an urgent and clear call for individual members of Da’esh to be held accountable, and for their crimes to be recognised and prosecuted as offences under international law,” Haq told reporters on Monday.

UNITAD was created by the U.N. Security Council in September 2017, but has struggled to make headway as world leaders grappled with the problem of detained IS jihadists, who come from Iraq and Syria and dozens of other countries.

Addressing the New York-based council on Monday, Khan said that his investigation team had expanded from 10 to 79 members this year and that they were making solid progress in securing justice for the victims of IS. 

“Core staffing, facilities and evidence collection practices are now in place, and documentary, digital, testimonial and forensic material is now being collected in line with our investigative strategy,” Khan told the 15-nation council.

Researchers are digging up mass graves in Iraq and are focused on three probes — atrocities in Sinjar in August 2014, the massacre of Iraqi cadets in Tikrit in June 2014, and a pattern of atrocities in Mosul between 2014-2016, said Khan.

They are also gathering witness testimonies from Turkmen, Christians, Kaka’is, Shabaks, Sunnis, Yezidis, Shias and others who endured violence, rape and other horrors as IS launched a blitzkrieg assault through Iraq in 2014, he said. 

The team has moved out of temporary lodgings and into offices in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. It has acquired DNA, forensics gear and computer systems for storing Terabytes of data, videos and ISIS documents, said Khan.

In the past two weeks, investigators have collected some 600,000 videos of IS crimes and more than 15,000 pages of internal IS documents that can be used as evidence in trials in Iraq and elsewhere, said Khan.

Within two months, Khan expected to have reached an “important milestone” by providing “tangible support” in a case against a detained IS suspect. He did not identify the defendant or where the trial was taking place.

“While significant progress has been made in the last six months, I would wish to underline that the ability of the team to deliver on in its mandate remains dependent on the continued support of the council and the international community,” said Khan.

At its peak, IS controlled a swathe of Syria and Iraq that was almost the size of Britain. In March, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared the group’s “total elimination” after its final desperate stand in the east Syrian hamlet of Baghuz.

Today, there are an estimated 55,000 captured IS fighters detained in Syria and Iraq, including many alleged foreign fighters from some 50 countries and 11,000 family members held at the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. 

There is no international tribunal to prosecute the widespread atrocities committed under the self-declared IS caliphate. Several European countries have put citizens who joined militant groups in the Middle East on trial, but the approach has been piecemeal.

Prosecutions of IS suspects by the U.S.-backed SDF and by Iraqi authorities have come under criticism over fairness and other concerns. UNITAD was tasked with helping make trials in Iraq meet international standards.

The U.N. has called the massacre of the Yazidis by IS jihadists a possible genocide and investigators have detailed horrific tales of abuse against women and girls. Their cause has been championed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad and lawyer Amal Clooney.

 

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By Ambassador A. L. A. Azeez
GENEVA, Jul 16 2019 (IPS)

As I reflect on the varied views and perspectives that emerged during the Human Rights Council’s Social Forum 2018— where the theme of Olympic ideal and inclusive sports and their contribution to the promotion of the human rights, peace and development through sports were extensively deliberated on– I observed an immediate connect with the preparations that are currently underway for the hosting of the Olympics 2024 in France.

The International Forum on Olympic Legacy and Social Inclusion was a timely platform to bring that relationship into sharper focus and explore and analyse how best the outcome of the 2018 Social Forum could contribute to strengthening inclusion and solidarity through a human rights and SDGs-based (Sustainable Development Goals) approach to major sporting events.

Social inclusion through promotion of sports ideals

Preparations for and planning of a major sporting platform such as the Olympics 2024 no doubt provides an important opportunity to address the concept of sports from a holistic perspective, look at ways of making sports, in particular the Olympic games, more inclusive, and to help build solidarity based on the Olympic ideal, further strengthened by inclusivity and collegiality.

The path to inclusion — in the sense that sports bring societies, peoples and nations together — is a long and arduous one. Nevertheless, it is the path that we should tread, if our vision of an equal and non-discriminatory world does not just remain a dream, but a goal to be relentlessly pursued to its logical end. There are not many truly global sporting platforms as what the Olympics stand for, that can lend itself readily to realising this noble objective.

Apart from the strong emphasis that we place on democracy, governance and human rights in our civil and political life, as well as in economic and social spheres of human activity, it must be noted that developing countries also place a high premium on what they consider is significant for their progress: the realization of the right to development.

Ambassador A.L.A. Azeez

All these combine to play a very crucial role in advancing the UN Development Agenda 2030, in cooperation with all stakeholders including cities and local authorities. Addressing ways and means of increasing representation of all groups, including the vulnerable ones, in sports, accords well with the spirit of sports and the Olympic ideal which inspire us to move forward in the face of stiff resistance. Diversity and inclusivity wanting, such a vision, sadly, would only be a mirage, with the full potential of humanity not being fully tapped.

Fairness and equity underpin the SDGs

Providing for equity and fairness to make inclusive participation meaningful is a key goal of modern sports and sports bodies. Such an approach and vision go a long way in complementing the SDGs Goals 2030.

Aside from education, health, employment, life on earth, life under water, most importantly with regard to organization of sports, in particular, in respect of bigger enterprises such as the Olympics, SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) are key.

An inclusive society, as called for by SDG 16, underpinned by SDG 10, lies at the heart of global efforts towards achieving a world that is peaceful and prosperous.

Inclusion, solidarity and sustainable development

As planning and hosting arrangements for the 2024 Olympics are underway, it gives us hope that all fundamental criteria required for inclusive participation are under consideration. The Social Forum 2018 and the initiatives that ensued bringing a clear focus on its outcome, are a significant stepping stone for practical and meaningful action towards enhancing respect for dignity and diversity and ensuring equality and non-discrimination as well as equity and fairness through the strengthening of solidarity among peoples at all levels.

The Olympics, that bring nations together through the unifying power of sports manifesting the shared spirit of humanity, can serve as an effective avenue of addressing the rising phenomenon of hate and extreme violence that today tear nations and communities asunder.

In this regard, it is hoped that the 2024 Paris Olympics and other major sporting platforms that precede it would offer a valuable opportunity to underscore the imperative of norms and values that reject hate and violence, and to work towards the shared goal of humanity in all spheres of human activity. The potential of the media, including the social media, should be harnessed to bring out messages of unity in diversity.

The UN Social Forum 2018

Following the adoption of resolution 35/28 by the UN Human Rights Council mandating the Social Forum to address the role of sports and the Olympic ideal in promoting human rights, the Forum, held in October 2018, attracted a wide range of players and actors representing different segments of the global community.

There were, among participants, women athletes who had set unsurpassed records in their respective fields or had become trail blazers for others. There were representatives of minorities, indigenous communities and persons with disabilities, youth and women, with inspiring narratives, who had all collectively contributed with a sustained focus on gender, towards bringing greater awareness and understanding of both the challenges and opportunities they faced.

Most recounted the varied constraints they had faced in their respective societies, and also how they sought to overcome them through collective action and solidarity, reflecting the indomitable spirit of humanity.

It is relevant to recapitulate aspects of the recommendations of the Social Forum 2018 for the positive bearing that they have for the Olympics:

i. States, sports governing bodies and other stakeholders should respect, protect and consider all human rights in the context of sports. Their actions should be guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, core human rights treaties, the Declaration on the Right to Development and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and other instruments such as the Olympic Charter, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the International Charter of Physical Education, Physical Activity and Sport. Furthermore, the 2030 Agenda, the Kazan Action Plan and follow-up mechanism, and the United Nations Action Plan on Sport for Development and Peace can help inform this process.

ii. States should leverage sport to contribute to human rights protection and achieve the 2030 Agenda by working in collaboration with all interested stakeholders, including the sports community, civil society, international organizations and businesses.

iii. Sports and mega sporting events should serve as a platform to promote human rights and more peaceful, inclusive, just and equitable societies and international order. Athletes, as role models, should be encouraged to stand up for human rights. Physical education, physical activities and sport should be inclusive and based on human rights values. Upcoming sports and new technologies should embed human rights by design.

iv. Sports and mega sporting events should respect and consider the human rights of especially affected groups, populations and peoples. The planning, implementation and follow-up to sports policies and events should rely on transparent processes, include human rights impact assessment and due diligence dimensions, and provide effective grievance mechanisms for possible violations. The voices of those affected should be taken into account at all times. Decision-making bodies should ensure diversity, including by promoting gender equality.

v. Players and other workers in the context of sports should enjoy rights to representation and to organize for their own rights. Migrants, including undocumented migrants, should have their freedom of association and labour rights respected and promoted in the context of sports.

vi. Sports policies and events should be based on multi-stakeholder collective action at all levels. Relevant United Nations organizations, in particular OHCHR and UNESCO, should continue to provide guidance on sports and human rights and engage actively with governments, the sports movement, the Centre for Sport and Human Rights and other relevant stakeholders.

vii. The Centre for Sport and Human Rights should consider mapping initiatives and disseminate good practices on the promotion of reconciliation, peace and understanding through sports, especially in conflict and post-conflict scenarios.

viii. Sports-related reporting should adopt a human rights-based approach to data, and human rights indicators should include sport-related indicators. Human rights mechanisms should continue to consider sports and sporting events in their reports and recommendations.

Local Authorities as Enablers of Rights

While these recommendations deserve due consideration and accommodation, three inter-related points which I think are salient in the context of the role of sports and organising major sporting events and platforms also need to receive priority attention.

First, it is important to have a sustained focus on the enabling of local authorities and the empowerment of local communities. They both are mutually reinforcing, but distinct. In the framework of rights and duties that bear upon all stakeholders in any activity, local authorities have the essential duty of serving as the ‘Enabler’ of Rights.

This involves not just creating a congenial environment in which the society at large and its members can efficaciously enjoy their rights. In plural societies, this specifically requires, going beyond the mere concept of inclusivity, bringing all the different segments of the society to effectively and meaningfully interact with one another as well as with the local authorities.

An inclusive and ‘involved’ approach linking local authorities and local communities in all situations, but especially in the context of mega sporting events, should seek to leave out none – be it senior citizens or elders, women and children, or vulnerable groups. This includes, in particular, migrants, who often live on the margins of society, clamouring to be stakeholders in the activities of local authorities and local communities.

Simultaneously, the empowerment of local communities should complement the enabling of local authorities to be able to effectively provide services and to conduct its activities in a manner that brings dividends to all.

Constructing an Inclusive Future of Work and facing up to key challenges

Second, it is pertinent to note that humanity is currently on a continuum from the ‘World of Work’ to the ‘Future of Work’. As it presents itself, the world of work is getting more and more dismal by the day. There are conventional and unconventional factors that contribute to this situation.

Lack of economic growth, shrinking space of public service, changing patterns of investment and trade, unchecked ‘hire and fire’ policies, lack of support for small and medium enterprises are among factors that impact negatively on employment prospects.

As we move slowly into the future of work, a host of challenges stare in our faces, ranging from Artificial Intelligence, robotics, automation on the one hand, to digital commerce, block-chains on the other. The list, however, is not exhaustive.

As we discuss this crucial issue, it is pertinent to touch on the phenomenon of Urbanisation as well. We are fully aware that urbanisation is both a challenge and an opportunity, but what actually it is, for each city or metropolis, will eventually be determined by the effectiveness of urban governance, first and foremost.

A host city of any mega sporting event or platform should find strength in constructing its own future of work going forward, in the spirit of inclusivity. Sports and sportspeople have a special role to play in this particular aspect of the world of work: creating opportunities for others and benefiting themselves from opportunities and dividends that accrue.

A last, but more important point is the challenge of Climate Change. France, the host of Olympics 2024, is well known globally for its effective leadership to, and for the successful hosting of, the Paris Climate Summit.

It is logical that any initiative that seeks to make Olympics 2024 environment- friendly, with sustainable development policies and plans well in place including in local authorities, would be expected to derive naturally from the outcome of the Climate Summit, complemented further by the SDGs 2030.

Finally, it behoves one to recall the all too imperative nature of the duty cast upon the local authorities, sportspeople, local communities, visitors and tourists, businesses and industries, public service and other stakeholders to not just reflect the spirit of climate-friendliness in all that is done, but to lead, in their respective realms, by example. Any mega sporting platform and the host venue cannot simply wish away this responsibility any longer.

*Based on a key note address delivered at the opening of the ‘International Forum on Olympic Legacy and Social Inclusion’, jointly organised by Seine-Saint-Denis, France, and United Cities and Local Governments, an organization based in Barcelona, on 2-3 July 2019 in Paris.

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Excerpt:

Ambassador A.L.A. Azeez is Chair-Rapporteur of the Human Right Council’s Social Forum 2018 & Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva*

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 16 2019 (IPS)

On 17 June, a Facebook white paper proposed a new global digital currency it plans to launch in the first half of 2020. The Libra will be managed by a ‘not for profit’ Swiss-based Facebook-led consortium of ‘for profit corporations’, with Uber, eBay, Lyft, Mastercard and PayPal among its founding members.

Anis Chowdhury

Mixed reaction
The initiative has received mixed reactions. While a few have cautiously welcomed it, most commentators want it stopped or tightly regulated, with one calling it a ‘totally insane idea’.

Even President Trump has declared he is ‘not a fan’ of cryptocurrencies, which facilitate illegal activity, adding, “If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new banking charter and become subject to all banking regulations, just like other banks, both national and international.”

President Trump’s comments came a day after US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers that Libra could not move forward unless it addressed concerns over privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.

Meanwhile, the G-20 finance ministers agreed that regulation of cryptocurrencies requires globally coordinated efforts involving national, regional and international authorities, spanning different regulatory and geographical borders.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies with no intrinsic value, Libra will be backed by “a basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities”. Hence, when anyone buys Libras, the Facebook-led consortium will acquire matching securities in different currencies, reversing this process when Libras are redeemed.

Although securities’ prices and exchange rates will become more volatile, it is claimed that the Libra will be more stable! The plan is to become ‘more decentralised’ over time, more resistant to regulation, and hence, an unregulated, ‘shadow’ payment system.

Cost-cutting appeal
Facebook claims that Libra will be more efficient than all existing payments platforms, which are both fragmented and costly, with highly-regulated financial institutions at their core, facing expensive prudential compliance requirements against money laundering, and for consumer and privacy protection.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

By avoiding them, Libra could reduce costs, particularly for cross-border transactions. As Facebook asserts, its user-friendly Libra system can process 1,000 transactions every second, with almost no transactions costs. In early 2019, Facebook had 2.38 billion monthly active users. Libra will allow Facebook users to make financial transactions anywhere almost instantaneously.

As the Libra becomes popular, the consortium may offer more services, particularly credit. Thus, Libra can shake up world finance, not just banking systems, but also by circumventing and disrupting central banks and governments.

Compounding risks
Critics have raised privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability concerns, pointing to Facebook’s track record of disregarding privacy, exploiting user data and failing to control its platform.

Facebook has already been investigated for massive privacy violations, anti-competitive practices, eroding the free press and fomenting ethnic cleansing while the ‘new money’ may enable more illicit activities.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, cryptocurrencies issued by big tech companies, such as Facebook, could quickly dominate global finance, threatening competition and stability.

Matt Stoller, of the Open Markets Institute, has described Libra “like a private global International Monetary Fund run by techbros, except it needs reserves so it’ll need a giant bailout during a crisis”, highlighting four core problems with Libra.

First, ensuring a reliable payments system while preventing illicit financial activities, e.g., money-laundering, terrorist financing, tax avoidance, and counterfeiting. Second, preventing conflicts of interests, e.g., involving access to information, business relations or technology.

Third, greater global systemic risk if Libra succeeds. Governments will need to prepare for public bailouts of a private ‘too big to fail’ system due to the systemic threat posed, requiring more liquidity than any single central bank or government can provide.

Fourth, governments’ ability to pursue sovereign policy making will be curbed as Libra and related decision-making will be in private corporate hands, not democratically accountable governments. Mark Zuckerberg once bragged, “In a lot of ways, Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company… We’re really setting policies.”

When Libra becomes popular and the consortium offers other financial services, private ‘for profit’ companies would have their own central bank and ‘fiat currency’, undermining central bank and government control over monetary policy. This will effectively privatise monetary policy, with scant regard for the public interest.

Not for profit?
Facebook claims the Swiss-based consortium governing Libra will be a ‘not for profit’ foundation. But as Libra becomes popular, people will exchange their national currencies for Libra to transact with. When they hold Libra, the Association will earn from investing users’ money, and may even issue extra Libra to earn seigniorage, as central banks do with national currencies.

They can also profit handsomely from regulatory arbitrage, e.g., between regulation and no regulation, or even just less regulation. Even if Libra remains just a payments system, fully backed by fiat currencies in reserve, consortium decisions to buy certain currencies and assets will move bond markets and exchange rates. Partners’ profits from using the financial data of Libra users can grow rapidly, if loosely checked and regulated.

First target: developing countries
Facebook’s explicit target is 1.7 billion developing country citizens without banking services, promising to speed up transactions and cut costs for them. Thus, developing countries’ poorer capacities and capabilities make them especially vulnerable to the Libra threat. Already losing trillions of dollars via illicit fund transfers, Libra will likely accelerate such losses.

Macroeconomic policies in major advanced economies make developing countries’ financial sectors vulnerable to shocks and volatility. Their already limited capacity for making independent macroeconomic policies will thus be further constrained.

As with the dollarization temptation, those in countries with weak currencies will be tempted to ‘Libralize’, reducing use of national currencies for accounting and invoicing, further complicating monetary policy and stability.

Alternatives?
Such an unregulated, privately owned and directed global payments system issuing its own currency, further diminishing policy space for development, is alarming, especially for developing countries.

But merely suspending the initiative, until all its full ramifications are understood and appropriate regulatory measures are in place, will not address the problems of existing systems that encourage such moves, e.g., governments and central banks have lagged behind technological developments, and have been slow in enabling low-cost real time transactions.

Therefore, policymakers must urgently consider alternatives, e.g., creating publicly owned digital currencies to supplement traditional monetary instruments. They also need new laws and global treaties to check those issuing global digital currencies and mitigate negative fallouts.

Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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By Jamil Dakwar and Sonia Gill
NEW YORK, Jul 15 2019 (IPS)

The Trump administration appears to be trying to find moral footing for the president’s discriminatory policies. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally announced the creation of a “Commission on Unalienable Rights.”

Its stated purpose, according to a notice published in the Federal Register in May, is to provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

The Trump administration’s actions and words — from threatening International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and severing relations with its independent experts, to cozying up with authoritarian leaders and advancing xenophobic policies that defy international law — have made it abundantly clear that the administration has zero interest in being a global champion of human rights. This commission isn’t fooling anyone.

We know that references to “natural law and natural rights” are code words used by the religious right and social conservatives to advance anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s rights agendas. We also know that members of the new commission have troubling anti-LGBTQ and abortion rights records.

And based on the Trump administration’s record, there is good reason to believe the commission is intended to redefine universal human rights to fit the administration’s twisted and troubling worldview, with the clear and first target being the State Department’s long-standing work to advance the rights of LGBTQ people, women, and other vulnerable populations across the world.

In defending the commission in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Secretary Pompeo charged that human rights advocates have created “new categories of rights” that “blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments.” And that the commission will “ground our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.”

That’s a load of nonsense. Secretary Pompeo speaks of longstanding international human rights norms as if he’s demonstrated a single iota of respect for them, and as if those norms are incongruent with defending human dignity and democratic values.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) — which Secretary Pompeo names as a foundational document that will be examined by the commission — is grounded in democratic values of equal rights, justice, and the right to self-determination.

It establishes the modern international human rights framework that provides the legal and moral authority to hold governments and other perpetrators accountable for human rights violations — a framework that the Trump administration seems bent on dismantling.

What Secretary Pompeo fails to understand, or perhaps acknowledge, is that this modern international human rights framework is made up of the very same traditions and values that also guided America’s democratic origins.

In fact, all too often in our modern history, it is the U.S. — irrespective of the political party in power — that has failed to live up to the UDHR, including the UDHR’s promise of economic justice.

Different groups throughout American history, including indigenous peoples, enslaved African people, and women, among others, have all been the victims of America’s double-standard.

When the United States has wavered on its commitment at home and abroad, it is the UDHR in many cases that has provided the framework to hold our country’s leaders accountable.

That’s because the full spectrum of rights enshrined in the UDHR are preordained by well-recognized democratic values, traditions, and principles, including the founding principles of our democracy.

The world has now witnessed the human costs of the Trump administration’s atrocious disregard for these basic human rights and democratic values: the inhumanity of family separation and detention, the discriminatory Muslim ban, the upended lives from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the revival of the racist ‘War on Drugs,’ numerous attempts to roll back advances in LGBTQ equality, trampling on the rights of women, and illegal restrictions on the rights of asylum seekers.

Having had it with the world naming and shaming under the international human rights framework, the administration appears to be trying to find moral footing for President Trump’s discriminatory policies with the announcement of this commission.

Make no mistake: Pompeo’s commission is a dangerous initiative intended to redefine universal human rights and roll back decades of progress in achieving full rights for marginalized and historically oppressed communities.

It is likely to use religion as grounding to deny human dignity and equality for all. It will undermine the existing State Department’s well respected and legally-mandated Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs.

And it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars, which would be better spent on implementing U.S. human rights treaty obligations and putting an end to Trump’s era of human misery and assault on our humanity.

We won’t let him get away with it.

The post Pompeo’s New “Human Rights” Commission Is Up To No Good appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jamil Dakwar is director of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Human Rights Program and adjunct lecturer at John Jay College at the City University of New York (CUNY). Sonia Gill is senior legislative counsel with the ACLU.

The post Pompeo’s New “Human Rights” Commission Is Up To No Good appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Faustino Pinto, national coordinator of the Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis (Morhan)

By Mario Osava
BRASILIA, Jul 15 2019 (IPS)

On Jun. 27, Faustino Pinto was in Geneva, Switzerland, where he spoke to people at the United Nations about the fight against Hansen’s Disease and the stigma surrounding it, at a meeting during the 41st session of the Human Rights Council.

Eleven days later, in Brasilia, he discussed the question with President Jair Bolsonaro, when he took part in a meeting along with Yohei Sasakawa, president of the Nippon Foundation and World Health Organisation goodwill ambassador for leprosy elimination, who visited Brazil Jul. 1-10.

Pinto was able to present his views, as national coordinator of the Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis (Morhan), in all the meetings Sasakawa held with ministers, legislators and health and human rights officials in the Brazilian capital.

 

 

The aim was to intensify action at a national level to eliminate the infectious disease as well as the discrimination suffered by current and former patients.

Abolishing the term leprosy to refer to the disease caused by the Mycobacterium leprae bacillus is a central focus of Pinto, who sees it as necessary given the burden of prejudice that the word has accumulated over centuries, which is even reflected in sections of the Bible.

Another great difficulty, he said, is the lack of knowledge about the disease among the public, which hinders early detection, needed to prevent permanent damage in patients, such as damage to the peripheral nervous system that can even cause disabilities.

Pinto felt the first symptoms of the disease at the age of nine and suffered for another nine years until he was diagnosed with Hanseniasis. Because of the delay, the five years of treatment he later received could not prevent some permanent damage, especially noticeable in his hands, which are partially paralysed.

He emphasises the need for early diagnosis in order to achieve a true cure for patients and ultimately eliminate the disease. At the age of 48 he became an activist who is known even at an international level, as he combats Hansen’s Disease which mainly affects the poor.

In Brazil there are almost 30,000 new cases per year, a figure surpassed only by India.

The post Early Detection is the Solution for Hansen’s Disease appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is the country’s largest city. However, the country hopes to soon implement the first stage of a new dynamic plan for the development of six climate-resilient secondary cities. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Emmanuel Hitimana
KIGALI, Jul 15 2019 (IPS)

How do you plan a resilient city? A city that can withstand climate change impacts, and the natural disasters that it produces at increased frequencies. And how do you protect the city, its individuals and communities, its business and institutions from either the increased flooding or prolonged droughts that result? It’s a complex question with an even more complex solution, but one that the central African nation of Rwanda is looking to answer.

“Urban resilience means preventing disasters, and planning ahead in order to cope with them in an efficient way,” says Rwanda’s National Roadmap for Green Secondary Cities Development.

The roadmap, which was developed by the government with assistance from the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in 2016, provides guidance for the development of six climate resilient secondary cities in the country. It also outlines how they can grow sustainably while also contributing to Rwanda’s national urbanisation strategy, which according to the roadmap is to “achieve 35 percent urbanisation by 2020 for each of the secondary cities”.

Environmentalists convened in Kigali to discuss the integration of green growth in Rwanda’s satellite cities.  

What is a green city?

Rwanda, along with its development partners, hopes to soon implement the first stage of the dynamic plan that will kick off in Nyagatare, a district that borders Uganda in the northeast. On Thursday, Jul. 11, environmentalists, private sector stakeholders and government officials convened for a workshop in Kigali to discuss the integration of green growth in Rwanda’s secondary cities. 

While large cities are often known for waste, pollution and bad urban planning, Nyagatare will be a far cry from this. Nyagatare will be a green city not only because of the lush, hilly landscape in which it sits, but because the city itself will be built along the lines of a green economy. It will be net zero carbon (by 2050), resource and waste efficient and have a green economy, which aims to offer high quality employment to its residents.

Also key is improved water efficiency—which includes installing water efficient plumbing fixtures, rainwater harvesting systems, wastewater treatment in buildings, and the reuse of treated wastewater for flushing and other secondary applications etc.—green public spaces, green transport modes and buildings constructed from eco-friendly products.

Nyagatare will be the first of six districts to be developed under the “Readiness and preparatory support to implement Green City Development Projects in Rwanda’s Secondary Cities”, which operationalises the national roadmap and which is being implemented by the government, and the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) in partnership with GGGI.

The establishment of the secondary cities is a key part of Rwanda’s priority to tackling climate change. Rwanda was awarded 600,000 dollars by Green Climate Fund (GCF) for the project, which will not only protect the environment but will consolidate the land use in the six districts, according to Jean Pierre Munyeshyaka, the senior associate for Green Urbanisation at GGGI Rwanda.

“The chosen cities were part of districts that showed signs of development but they were not ready for green growth. That is why we did this project and submitted this project to GCF to help them build conscious-driven green development,” Munyeshyaka told IPS.

All districts have been strategically chosen because of their population size, geographic location and contribution to the country’s economy. The other districts are Muhanga, which is close to Kigali; Huye, which is considered the country’s knowledge centre and is home to the National University of Rwanda and the National Institute of Scientific Research; Musanze and Rubavu, which are tourist destinations and close to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda respectively; and Rusizi district, which borders the southern DRC and is the location of one of the country’s three major lake ports.

Munyeshyaka explained that the secondary cities will be run on renewable energy and be built to ensure low carbon emissions. There will also be easy-to-use public roads and transport, easy access to markets and health centres. He explained that when more people spent less money to travel to hospitals or markets, it meant they could save more and use their money for other things, such as business development etc.

Rapid economic and urban growth

The hilly, fertile, and relatively non-resource rich nation of Rwanda has made great strides in economic growth over the last decade, its 8.6 percent growth in 2018 was listed as the highest on the continent, according to the World Bank.

But it is also one of the most densely-populated countries on the continent with almost 12.2 million people living in a nation the size of the U.S. state of Maryland. That’s approximately 445 people per square kilometre, according to Rwanda’s 4th Population and Housing Census Projection.

And while Rwanda has been called one of the “least urbanised” countries on the continent, with only 18 percent of its population living in cities, its urban population growth rate “is 4.5 percent, which is well above the world average of 1.8 percent”, according to the roadmap.

“Rwanda, although predominantly rural, has been urbanising rapidly, from a half-million urban residents in 1995 to more than three and a half million today,” according to Ilija Gubic, a senior urbanisation and infrastructure officer with GGGI in Rwanda and Dheeraj Arrabothu, a GGGI green building officer who helps the Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA) promote green urbanisation in Rwanda.

Faustin Munyazikwiye, the deputy Director General of Environment Management Authority, said all sustainable development projects in the country need to be considered with a green economy in mind. 

No growth without green growth

Faustin Munyazikwiye, the deputy Director General of REMA, the national designated authority mandated to facilitate coordination and oversight of the implementation of the national environmental policy and the subsequent legislation, said any sustainable development project in the country needs to think in terms of a green economy.

“We have seen and we are aware that our country is under immense risk when it comes to climate change. For that matter, we have identified six cities to start with readiness and preparation. We will equip them with necessary infrastructures that will resist any harm to climate change,” Munyazikwiye told IPS.

According to a USAID climate change risk profile on Rwanda “rising temperatures, more frequent and intense heavy rains, and potentially increased duration of dry spells threaten Rwandan agriculture”. Some 70 percent of Rwandans are employed in the agriculture sector, which accounts for 50 percent of the country’s export revenue.

Munyazikwiye was speaking during the Jul. 11 workshop on implementing green growth strategies of the Nyagatare master plan.

During the workshop, staff from various government and private entities were trained on how to include green growth and climate resilience in project concepts and taught how to engage with the GCF for climate finance and green investment opportunities in Rwanda.

Green growth success dependent on private sector partners

“Private sector is absolutely the key. At the end of the day there is limited public funds in the world. It is actually the private [sector] that has to step in to help reach climate change goals and [get] implementation process running, ” Inhee Chung, Rwanda Country Director for GGGI, told IPS.

She explained that aside from getting the private sector on board with the concept of a green economy and getting it to invest in eco-friendly products like building materials and other innovations that will be used during the development of the secondary green cities, GGGI have also been focusing on integrating the community to help them understand the shared vision.

“For us green growth does not just mean only the environment. It actually means growth with the people. Environment, people and economy, they are all interlinked because if one is excluded  sustainability isn’t really achieved, this is why we make every step inclusive,” she said.

Much of the area earmarked in Nyagatare district for the secondary city is inhabited by middle income families.

Parfait Karekezi, the Green and Smart Cities Specialist at the RHA, the agency responsible for urbanisation, whose mandate includes responsibility for settlements and building construction, told IPS that while previous expropriation of land for other projects was done without considering existing land tenants and by removing a poor families to make way for large projects, this time around it will be different and families will be given housing that is equivalent in value to their property.

“Rwanda has an opportunity that may be unique in Africa – to harness urbanisation to its full potential,” Sally Murray, a country economist at the International Growth Centre, states in a paper on urbanisation and economic growth in the country.

And it seems that Rwanda is on its way to doing just that.

Related Articles

• Q&A: How Political Will can Accelerate Green Growth in Africa
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• Fostering Green, Made-In-Africa Innovations

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The UN Secretary General meeting with women’s groups in Nairobi on 10 July 2019. Photo: @UN

By Ambassador Amina Mohamed
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 15 2019 (IPS)

On 10 July 2019 I was honored to moderate a meeting with women’s groups for the UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres, whose aim was to better diagnose the role of women in the prevention or instigation of violent extremism.

The Secretary General remarked, “The women activists I met in Nairobi are among the many women across Africa who are leading the way in preventing the expansion of violent extremism from within their own communities. Women are on the frontlines of this fight: we must listen to them and support their efforts.”

Recent efforts to enlist the participation of women in activities to combat radicalization are encouraging, considering that for a long time, gender and security has been a blind-spot in counter-terrorism programmes.

Examination of the ever-evolving drivers of radicalization and terrorism has gradually morphed perspectives of the role of the women, spanning from victims, perpetrators and lately, preventers of terrorism.

As Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and president of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq said during the UNSC’s open debate on Resolution 2242:‘Improving women’s participation in efforts to counter extremism and build peace is not just a normative concern about equality; including women’s insights offers a strategic advantage to those looking to build lasting peace and prevent conflict and violent extremism.’

For quite some time, the social construct of femininity was often expressed as one of subservience to men in the context of violent extremism. Media coverage of women affiliated to radical groups often portrayed female recruits as docile followers of their partners.This stereotypical portrayal of women as harmless undermined the accuracy of counter radicalization policies as well as operational responses and entailed a missed opportunity in the war on violent extremism.

In Kosovo, for example, women were the first to detect unusual patterns of behaviour and activity in their homes and communities, including stockpiling of weapons. These signs were reported well before violence broke out.

Despite the acknowledgement of the role women can play in preventing violent extremism, several current national approaches to violent extremism are not adequately gendered. More specifically, they are not systematically inclusive of women, nor are they substantively and sufficiently gender-specific or gender-sensitive.

In Kenya, there are encouraging signs that this narrative is changing. In Kwale County, itself a region that has been a recruitment reservoir, the county government has launched a strategic counter terrorism strategy that includes prioritizing meaningful inclusion of women in the development and implementation of CVE approaches aimed at addressing the driver of violent extremism. The plan also includes allocating funds to train small women-driven civil society entities in countering violent extremism.

To effectively harness the potential of women to prevent violent extremism, it is important to understand the drivers of violent extremism and how women can help tackle these drivers in the first place.

It must be understood that poor governance, marginalization, exclusion and corruption often result in economic and socio-political grievances. These grievances can degenerate into violent conflicts which lead to the breakdown of law and order, providing fertile ground for indoctrination and violent extremism.

Increasing the number of women in leadership positions is one way in which women can help in preventing violent extremism. A World Bank study indicated that the participation of more women in leadership leads to the prioritization of social issues such as child care, equal pay, parental leave, and pensions; physical concerns such as reproductive rights, physical safety, and development matters such as poverty reduction and service delivery.

Grievances about lack of the above services are among the leading reasons recruiters find a fertile ground in communities across the world in both the North and South.

That together with the anonymous spaces provided by the Internet for spreading extremist ideas need urgent attention. The use of school systems and curricula to counter indoctrination and promote egalitarian attitudes and mind sets, cultivate tolerance and respect for other cultures and religions and correct the distorted view of reality is critical.

There are also other ways to ensure that we do not give the upper hand to terrorists in taking advantage of gender roles. These include increasing the number of women in police forces. Currently, women represent less than one fifth of police forces around the world. That is a shame. It now proven beyond reasonable doubt that greater participation of women will improve governance and significantly neutralize the drivers of extremism.

In fact in this primary war of our time, it is time to place gender pivotal to prevent violent extremism and counter terrorism.

Ambassador Amina Mohamed, is the Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Culture and Heritage in the Government of Kenya.

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 15 2019 (IPS)

The world’s two most populous nations-– China and India—have been making steady progress in eradicating extreme poverty, but have fallen short in their attempts to eliminate extreme hunger, according to the Bangkok-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

In an interview with IPS, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP said Asia-Pacific is on track to eradicate extreme poverty, which still afflicts 285 million people in that region, but that goal would be successful only “if current progress is maintained until 2030”.

“Both China and India are reducing extreme poverty faster than the regional average. And half the population lifted out of extreme poverty globally, since 2000, comes from China,” she said.

The Asia-Pacific region, the world’s most populous, comprises of 53 members and nine associate members, and is home to over 60 per cent of the world’s population.

This makes ESCAP the largest UN intergovernmental body serving the Asia-Pacific region.

Of the world’s 7.7 billion people, China ranks number one with a population of 1.42 billion followed by India with 1.36 billion, with the US ranking third with 329 million people.

A new report on a global poverty index, co-authored by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPDI) released last week, says of the 1.3 billion people worldwide who are multidimensionally poor, more than two thirds—886 million— live in middle income countries (also described as developing nations).

“To fight poverty, one needs to know where poor people live. They are not evenly spread across a country, not even within a household,” says Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. “The 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) provides the detailed information policy makers need to more effectively target their policies.”

The MPI goes beyond income as the sole indicator for poverty, by exploring the ways in which people experience poverty in their health, education, and standard of living.

Alisjahbana said the ambition of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goes beyond eradicating extreme poverty.

“It also focuses on reducing multidimensional poverty for all, and the Asia-Pacific region is lagging in other dimensions, such as provision of sustainable jobs and promoting equality. Inequalities of opportunity, and exposure to environmental degradation and natural disasters, which are widening within and between countries.”

With this challenge in mind, she pointed out, there is scope to significantly increase government investment in basic services, such as education, health and social protection, but also to strengthen our region’s resilience to natural disasters. This is essential to break the cycle of poverty.

“When it comes to eradicating hunger, progress has been too slow in Asia and the Pacific since 2015. While levels of stunting have been reduced in parts of the region, particularly in China, there remains work to be done across the region to support sustainable agriculture and reverse losses in biodiversity,” she declared.

Meanwhile, the targeted date for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will be up for review at a UN summit meeting of world leaders September 24-25, is 2030.

But how many of these goals are really achievable?

These are some of the issues, up for discussion, during a ministerial meeting of the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) in New York July 16-18. The theme: “Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality.”

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: What are the countries in the Asia-Pacific region which have made the most progress on SDGs?

Alisjahbana: ESCAP takes a regional approach to the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, but we conduct analysis of our subregions which is included in the Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2019. This indicates how different parts of Asia and the Pacific have their own distinct set of challenges and priorities.

For instance, East and North-East Asia has made the greatest progress towards poverty eradication but has registered a regression on several Goals focused on the environment. Urgent action is required to reverse course if the subregion is to build sustainable cities and communities and protect life below water and ecosystems on land by 2030.

South-East Asia and the Pacific have made the swiftest progress towards building a resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation. Yet our analysis finds the subregion to be heading in the wrong direction when it comes to promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

North and Central Asia made the most progress towards six Goals, while South and South-West Asia is ahead in its efforts to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

IPS: Of the 17 SDGs, which are the goals which are most likely to be achieved by 2030 by all countries in the region?

Alisjahbana: Asia-Pacific governments have taken on the challenge of the 2030 Agenda with decisive leadership – making significant investments to enhance data and statistical coverage, scale up partnerships and promote people-centred policies and strategies. This however has yet to take full effect.

The region is making significant headway towards poverty reduction (SDG1), good health and well-being (SDG3), quality education (SDG4) and affordable and clean energy (SDG7), and partnerships for the goals (SDG17). On more than half of the 17 Goals, progress is stagnant, or the situation has deteriorated since 2000.

On our current trajectory, we need to accelerate progress towards all Sustainable Development Goals if they are to be met by 2030. Supporting this accelerated progress lies at the heart of ESCAP’s work, it guides our analysis, our intergovernmental work and our technical assistance.

IPS: The recent ESCAP report on concluded that, Asia and the Pacific will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030? What are the primary reasons for this and is this due to lack of funding or the absence of political will?

Alisjahbana: Our recent Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019 estimates that developing Asia-Pacific countries need an additional annual investment of $1.5 trillion, or just under a dollar per person per day, or 5 per cent of the region’s GDP in 2018.

People and planet related interventions would account for most of the additional investment, with $669 billion needed to support basic human rights and develop human capacities, and $590 billion to be invested in our planet to support clean energy, combat climate change and strengthen environmental protection.

The remaining $196 billion is needed to support sustainable transport, improved access to ICT, and water and sanitation services.

While the level of investment required is within reach for many countries, the price tag is highest for those which can least afford it, including least developed countries and small island developing States.

Strong development partnerships and strengthened multilateral financing mechanisms will be essential. A shift in mindset is needed to look beyond economic growth and focuses on an economic philosophy which puts people and the planet first.

To help shape sustainable development policies and target our investments, work must continue to produce timely and reliable statistics. Currently only 36 per cent of the SDG indicators in the Asia-Pacific have sufficient data for progress to be accurately assessed. Improving data and statistics is a key area of ESCAP’s work. Non-traditional data pools such as geospatial information and big data need to be fully tapped help address data gaps in the region.

IPS: As far as the Asia-Pacific region is concerned, do you expect anything concrete to come out of the SDG summit in New York September 24-25?

Alisjahbana: The SDG Summit is an important opportunity to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It can help ensure ongoing work is taken a step further in Asia and the Pacific to achieve the SDGs.

It is crucial it does, because the region’s sustainable development achievements and failures will have a strong impact on the rest of the world. We are home to two-thirds of the world’s population and have in recent years been the engine of global economic growth and poverty reduction.

In addition to the inter-governmentally agreed political declaration that has been negotiated over the past months, the SDG Summit is an opportunity for our leaders to identify ways, cross-cutting areas and critical multi-stakeholder action to accelerate progress.

I also look forward to the announcements of “SDG Accelerated Actions”, which are voluntary initiatives undertaken by countries and other actors and should raise ambitions to advance the Goals at the speed and scale required.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post A Relentless Battle Against Poverty & Hunger in World’s Most Populous Region appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post How NGOs in Rich Countries Control their Counterparts in Poor Countries..and Why they Refuse to Resolve it appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Paul Okumu is head of secretariat for the Africa Platform on Governance, Responsible Business and the Social Contract. He is also head of strategy at the Internet of Things Solutions Africa.

The post How NGOs in Rich Countries Control their Counterparts in Poor Countries..and Why they Refuse to Resolve it appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 2019 (IPS)

Parliamentarians met in Laos last week to discuss violence against women and girls.

The meeting was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and hosted by the National Assembly of Laos.

It was a chance to push parliamentarians to continue developing programs to protect women. For the Members of Parliament (MPs) who participated, it was an opportunity to demonstrate how they are already increasing protections for women and girls who face physical and sexual violence, and to commit to doing even more for their security.

The discussions held by the APDA and participating organizations, (International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Plan International, and UN Women) focused on the specific challenges and progress made within the region.

“A majority of the countries in the region have laws in place criminalizing violence against women, including sexual violence,” Sujata Tuladhar, the Asia-Pacific Regional Gender-Based Violence Programme Specialist at the United Nations Population Fund, formally the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), told IPS.

The meeting covered topics such as ‘Where Are We Now? The Current Situation surrounding Women and Girls: Progress and Challenges in the Region,’ and ‘Gender and ICPD PoA: Empowering Women and Achieving Universal Access to Reproductive Health.’

The subjects under discussion also included the prevalence of violence and progress made in limiting that prevalence within the region.

The National Assembly hoped the meeting would give knowledge and voice to violence against women and girls. They note that “Parliamentarians play a lead role in advocacy, policy making, and monitoring in relation to the prevention of violence against women and girls and other women-related laws and policies in their countries. They can hold governments accountable for the implementation of laws and policies.”

A Cambodian Member of Parliament, Damry Ouk, told IPS the meeting was a place where Cambodia could “share with other countries about the empowerment of women [both in and outside of Cambodia].”

Ouk articulated that the particular focus for Cambodia was on “labor, education, the decision-making process (public service and political participation) and the rights-based approach that promotes choice and access to social services including institutional health deliveries.”

In Cambodia, the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of Victims (September 16, 2005), is meant to aid women who are victims of domestic violence.

It states that “Domestic violence is required to be prevented in time effectively and efficiently and that it is required to take the most appropriate measures in order to protect the victims or the persons who could be vulnerable.”

This includes sexual aggression, which involves: “Violent sex, Sexual harassment, and Indecent exposures.” A further explanation of sexual harassment or violent sex is not offered. Marital rape is not specifically referred to, though it may be included in violent sex.

According a report out of UNFPA in 2017, 33% of women in the region have experienced violence in the region of Kampong Cham, Cambodia.

The UNFPA and Cambodia have been working to combat this through the Partners for Prevention Regional Joint Programme that trains participants to share knowledge to caregivers and community members to prevent violence against women and girls.

But still, according to Tuladhar, not enough progress has been made in the Asia-Pacific region to combat violence against women and children.

“While most countries in the region prohibit domestic violence, many still do not include marital rape or violence by an unmarried intimate partner,” Tuladhar said.

She says that legislation in place to protect women in countries like Cambodia can be undermined by several factors including “limited awareness and knowledge of existing laws, barriers to reporting violence, bias, unresponsive or weak capacity among service providers (health, police, judiciary, shelter, psychosocial support providers), and legal systems and courts that are insensitive to the needs of survivors of violence.”

The UNFPA and participating countries are still working on the best way to prevent violence against women, and the meeting was only a continuation of efforts.

“The evidence base on what works to prevent different forms of violence against women is still evolving,” says Tuladhar, “UNFPA has initiated several programmes in the region to change these harmful social norms and promote healthier, happier and more equal and respectful relationships between men and women.”

She said UNFPA’s project Generation Breakthrough works with children aged 10-19 to promote healthy relationships and give children the tools to be knowledgeable about and have access to their reproductive health.

Drivers of violence against women (VAW) internationally are largely similar to those in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tuladhar sees the three main drivers as harmful social norms, toxic masculinity, and patriarchal societies, factors that most regions are not immune to.

Social norms in the Asia-Pacific region play a key role for the prevalence of violence against women in the region, and this role is changing.

The percentage of women who report experiencing physical/sexual violence from a partner varies widely across the region, being anywhere from 15% to 68%.

Tuladhar explains that “social norms that under pin and perpetuate this violence are embedded very early in life.”

She reports that the Partners for Prevention, a United Nations joint program on the prevention of violence against women, showed that “experiencing or witness violence in childhood and growing with and adopting inequitable gender norms, are among the key risk factors for men’s use of violence in adulthood.”

But Tuladhar says that the Asia-Pacific region faces even more trouble because it is so disaster prone.

“During emergencies, national systems and community and social networks weaken, increasing the risk of violence, exploitation and abuse – particularly for women and girls,” she said.

45% of the world’s natural hazards occur in the Asia-Pacific region. On top of this, the region is fraught with long-term conflicts that result in high levels of refugees.

Tuladhar says that for the Asia-Pacific region in particular, “all investments in addressing violence against women and girls need to ensure a resilience framework that makes the policies, provisions, systems and services adaptable to both humanitarian and non-humanitarian settings.”

For Cambodia, Ouk sees trafficking as a big problem still in need of being eliminated.

Ouk looks to the National Committee for Counter Trafficking in Person under the Ministry on Interior for prevention.

The goal there is “to collaborate together [with national and international non-governmental organizations] for combatting human trafficking in transparent, accountable and highly effective manner responding to the commitment of the Government to suppress trafficking in persons UNFPA remains focused on prevention and increased awareness,” she said.

The meeting in Laos was a reminder to parliamentarians across the Asia-Pacific region that despite progress, there is still a need to increase protections.

Moving forward, Tuladhar believes that action must take the form of “strengthen [ing] protection mechanisms for women and girls through improving quality and accessibility of services for violence against women survivors, while ensuring the survivor’s interest and wishes are the focus.”

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Bangladesh is one of many countries to be affected by the problem of climate-change-induced migration. Photo: AFP

By Sharaban Tahura Zaman
Jul 12 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(The Daily Star) – WE’RE running out of time on climate change. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report released in October 2018, revealed that there are only a dozen years left for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Reaching temperatures beyond that, even half a degree higher, will significantly worsen the risks of droughts, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Of course, we are already feeling these symptoms as the five hottest years on record, globally, all took place within the current decade. According to scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2016 was the hottest, 2015 the second hottest, and 2017 the third hottest—2018 is currently on track to be the fourth hottest. Urgent changes are needed in order to keep global temperatures down.

However, the existing climate regulatory regime, built upon 27 years of negotiations, has already proven woefully inadequate to help the world reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are exacerbating climate change, and to remedy their consequences.

One of the key reasons behind such failure is that the existing, legally binding climate change agreements are designed without a mechanism of enforcement. Being non-punitive, non-adversarial and flexible in nature, existing legal mechanisms are failing to cope with the scale of the global issue and its wide-ranging impact on individuals, leaving climate change justice issues unaddressed.

In this context, there is a growing demand for the establishment of an international court which can address significant gaps in the current international environmental legal order. That sounds like a great idea! Though a number of challenges are rooted there. First, if the existing climate regime is non-punitive, non-adversarial and flexible in nature, how can we enforce it in an international court? Among other things, it involves challenges in identifying the “actionable rights” that will determine which climate change transgressions lie within the scope of the court, establishing appropriate standards for proving a legally cognisable causal link between greenhouse emissions and the relief sought, and developing methods for awarding remedies. Obstacles also lie with global cooperation, different priorities for the developed and the developing countries, the exercise of absolute sovereign power, anarchic nature of the world order, and thus the perceived unenforceability of international law.

Nevertheless, these obstacles should not be viewed as insoluble. We should expand our understanding of what is possible by reimagining the tools of international law. Establishing a new specialist International Court can be an effective way forward, depending on how we can design it.

First, the international court should not be structured in a traditional form where prosecutors will look to persuade a judge to punish polluters. That would be more in line with a criminal court and will discourage states to be party to this process. The international court should be a forum with a goal to elevate behaviours/actions in line with mutually agreed standards, rather than to punish.

Second, the judge of the court must be sufficiently specialised so that the judiciary is able to weigh competing interpretations of complex scientific evidence against salient geopolitical, and international economic and social development priorities.

Third, both state and non-state actors should have standing (be able to initiate cases) before the court.

Fourth, states should be bound by the decisions of the court (what is called compulsory jurisdiction). States that allow environmental degradation in contravention of mutually agreed international standards should be held accountable.

Fifth, the court should rely on clear, precise, and enforceable language, to be found in a new era of international environmental laws. Aspirational treaty language is insufficient to protect the environment.

So the overall purpose of the international court on the matter related to environment would be: to build trust among the international community; to clarify legal obligations; to harmonise and complement existing climate regulatory regimes; to provide access to justice to a broader range of actors; and to create workable solutions for enforcement of international standard.

However, on the matter of “compulsory jurisdiction” of the court, imagining an international court holding states accountable might seem overly optimistic, particularly when only 66 countries agree to the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). But then again, if we look to the effectiveness of the Dispute Settlement Body at the World Trade Organization, and arbitration under the international investment regime, we can clearly learn the lesson that compulsory jurisdiction is possible when the costs of non-compliance are deemed to be sufficiently high. The European Court of Human Rights, similarly, has demonstrated that compulsory jurisdiction can work for equitable public interest. Moreover, in the European Court of Human Rights, vast majority of cases are initiated by non-state actors which empowered non-state actors in enforcing global standards to change the politics of transnational adjudication.

An international court for the environment could be a better forum to overcome climate inaction, global cooperation, economic conflicts, and enforcement problems if we can construct it adequately with the aim to vigorously enforce mutually agreed obligations and standards. However, establishing an international court will require more support. Therefore, let’s start considering how to turn it into a reality in the interest of future generations.

Sharaban Tahura Zaman is lecturer of Environment Law, North South University and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Climate Justice, Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Andrew Kanyegirire is Senior Communications Officer at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

By Andrew Kanyegirire
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 12 2019 (IPS)

Claire Akamanzi spends her days working on innovative ways to bring more business to her country.

As CEO of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a multiagency governmental department billed as a “one-stop shop” for investors, Akamanzi has seen the country earn accolades for its business-friendly environment, recently winning the #2 spot regionally in the World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings.

Claire Akamanzi

Prior to her RDB role, Akamanzi served as head of strategy and policy for Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda. She was also Rwanda’s commercial diplomat in London and its trade negotiator at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

Akamanzi holds a law degree and a master’s degree in international trade and investment policy.

She spoke with Andrew Kanyegirire, for Finance & Development (F&D) magazine, published by the IMF. Excerpts from the interview

F&D: What is the RDB’s role in getting the private sector to contribute to Rwanda’s development?

CA: Our vision is to transform Rwanda into a dynamic global hub for business, investment, and innovation. We are responsible for promoting investments and exports.

We provide services covering a range of issues faced by the business community: negotiating contracts with the private sector, helping investors to secure concessions, and settling disagreements. We are also in charge of the privatization of government assets and tourism promotion, including the management of national parks.

Since the RDB’s establishment in 2009, doing business in Rwanda has gotten easier, and the private sector has contributed more toward Rwanda’s economic growth. About 25 years ago, we were 100 percent reliant on aid, but today we are 86 percent self-reliant, which means that we depend on aid for only about 14 percent of our budget. On average, the private sector now creates about 38,000 jobs per year, many of which are targeted toward our young people.

F&D: How have you improved the business environment?

CA: Along with the Ministry of Economic Planning, we have spent a lot of time thinking about those sectors that require private sector engagement, what the challenges are, and whether these sectors can indeed help to generate wealth and jobs for Rwandans.

We took a very focused approach to this, and it is therefore not surprising that today the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report ranks Rwanda the 29th easiest place to do business in the world and the second in Africa. A few years ago, we were ranked at 150.

This is the result of some concrete reforms put in place to simplify the processes for starting a business, registering property, filing taxes, and accessing tax-related information. Today, you can register a company in six hours. In some instances, digital solutions have played a key enabling role.

We have also focused on promoting Rwanda as a place to come and do business. Last year, by the time we closed our investment books, we had registered $2 billion worth of investments. In 2010, it was about $318 million. So, we have grown considerably in the space of eight years, which shows that the reforms that we are putting in place are working. Some of the investments are practical ones, and we are very proud of them.

For example, Volkswagen is assembling in Rwanda. We have a company from Latin America called Positivo that is assembling laptops. We have an American-Nigerian company, Andela, that is going to train about 700 local programmers.

And we have a company that has begun refining our coltan. If you break down the $2 billion that we have attracted, you realize that these are investments in sectors that can help transform the lives of Rwandans by providing jobs, incomes, and broader economic diversification.

F&D: What factors have most enabled you to push for reforms?

CA: One key factor has been the leadership’s concerted efforts to transform the country. You can call it political will. The Cabinet, a related steering committee, and the president himself have taken an avid interest in understanding the reforms that we are pushing for.

President Kagame has made himself available to us, and we have found this to be extremely important. Because without buy-in at that level, it can be difficult to try out new, bold, and even risky initiatives.

Let me give you an example. We wanted to automate our business registration system. That meant cutting out the revenue sources of some of the private players in that process.

To make it easier to start a company, we had to take out a step that requires every company to have articles and memoranda of association. We estimated that the cost for getting these documents done via a lawyer was about $400, and so it was quite clear to us that this cost was deterring potential companies from registering.

However, to eliminate this step also meant that lawyers were losing out on clientele. It was a bold decision—we needed political support to get it done. But we were able to show that if you make it expensive and difficult to set up a company, the private sector will not grow.

We were registering on average about 500 companies at the time, and today we are registering about 13,000 companies a year. Having that political will helped us to show that sometimes there is a short-term cost to be paid for longer-term gain.

F&D: How about the challenges?

CA: Here, there are mainly two issues. The first has to do with the fact that we are a landlocked country. The high cost of transportation, especially for imported goods, is evident in almost every sector of the economy. This is a challenge that creates an additional cost for Rwanda.

The second, related to the first, is that although we have done very well in removing red tape, we need to do more about cutting the overall costs of doing business. We need to bring down the costs of financing, energy, and infrastructure.

We have tried to put in place many reforms to mitigate these challenges, but these ongoing structural issues still must be dealt with.

F&D: What are you doing specifically to overcome these challenges, and how do they relate to the reforms you are pushing for?

CA: When we think about the Rwanda of the future, we consider the advantages and challenges that we have as a country. It is for this reason that we want to position ourselves as a knowledge and services hub, given that this sector does not rely heavily on transport and logistics.

We have also been promoting leisure tourism, such as the push to visit the mountain gorillas in the national park. In addition, we are promoting a new sector called MICE, which stands for meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions, and it is already accounting for about 10 percent of our tourism receipts.

It is the fastest-growing segment of our tourism sector, and through this we are making Rwanda a hub for regional and global events. In this way, we have invested in service-based sectors to respond to our challenge of being a landlocked country.

This interview, which originally appeared in the F&D magazine, has been edited for length and clarity.

COURTESY OF THE RWANDA DEVELOPMENT BOARD
Opinions expressed in articles and other materials are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

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Excerpt:

Andrew Kanyegirire is Senior Communications Officer at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The post Rwanda: Open for Business appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nippon Foundation President Yohei Sasakawa and Socorro Gross, Pan American Health Organisation representative in Brazil, hold a press conference in Brasilia at the end of a 10-day visit to this country by the Japanese activist who is also World Health Organisation Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BRASILIA, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

“The ambulance team refused to take my sick friend to the hospital because he had had Hanseniasis years before,” said Yohei Sasakawa, president of the Nippon Foundation, at one of the meetings held during his Jul. 1-10 visit to Brazil.

His friend was completely cured and had no visible effects of the disease, but in a small town everyone knows everything about their neighbours, he said.

This didn’t happen in a poor country, but in the U.S. state of Texas, only about 20 years ago, Sasakawa pointed out to underline the damage caused by the discrimination suffered by people affected by Hansen’s Disease, better known as leprosy, as well as those who have already been cured, and their families.

“The disease is curable, its social damage is not,” he said during a meeting with lawmaker Helder Salomão, chair of the Human Rights Commission in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, to ask for support in the fight against Hanseniasis, the official medical name for the disease in Brazil, where the use of the term leprosy has been banned because of the stereotypes and stigma surrounding it.

The highlight of the mission of Sasakawa, who is also a World Health Organisation (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, was a meeting on Monday Jul. 8 with President Jair Bolsonaro, who posted a message on Facebook during the meeting, which had nearly 700,000 hits as of Thursday Jul. 11.

In the 13-and-a-half minute video, Bolsonaro, Sasakawa, Health Minister Luiz Mandetta and Women, Family and Human Rights Minister Damares Alves issued a call to the authorities, organisations and society as a whole to work together to eradicate the disease caused by the Mycobacterium Leprae bacillus.

A preliminary agreement emerged from the dialogues held by the Japanese activist with members of the different branches of power in Brasilia, to hold a national meeting in 2020 to step up the fight against Hanseniasis and the discrimination and stigma faced by those affected by it and their families.

The idea is a conference with a political dimension, with the participation of national authorities, state governors and mayors, as well as a technical dimension, said Carmelita Ribeiro Coriolano, coordinator of the Health Ministry’s Hanseniasis Programme. The Tokyo-based Nippon Foundation will sponsor the event.

Brazil has the second highest incidence of Hansen’s Disease in the world, with 27,875 new cases in 2017, accounting for 12.75 percent of the world total, according to WHO. Only India has more new cases.

The government established a National Strategy to Combat Hanseniasis, for the period 2019-2022, in line with the global strategy outlined by the WHO in 2016.

Brazilian Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights Damares Alves (L) receives a gift from Yohei Sasakawa, president of the Nippon Foundation, at the beginning of a meeting in Brasilia, in which the minister promised to strengthen assistance to those affected by Hansen’s Disease, including the payment of compensation to patients who were isolated in leprosariums or leper colonies in the past. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Extensive training of the different actors involved in the treatment of the disease and plans at the state and municipal levels, tailored to local conditions, guide the efforts against Hansen’s Disease, focusing particularly on reducing cases that cause serious physical damage to children and on eliminating stigma and discrimination.

Before his visit to Brasilia, Sasakawa, who has already come to Brazil more than 10 times as part of his mission against Hansen’s Disease, toured the states of Pará and Maranhão to discuss with regional and municipal authorities the obstacles and the advances made, in two of the regions with the highest prevalence rate.

“In Brazil there is no lack of courses and training; the health professionals are sensitive and give special attention to Hanseniasis,” said Faustino Pinto, national coordinator of the Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis (MORHAN), who accompanied the Nippon Foundation delegation in Brasilia.

“Promoting early diagnosis, to avoid serious physical damage, and providing better information to the public and physical rehabilitation to ensure a better working life for patients” are the most necessary measures, he told IPS.

Pinto’s case illustrates the shortcomings in the health services. He was not diagnosed as being affected with Hansen’s Disease until the age of 18, nine years after he felt the first symptoms. It took five years of treatment to cure him, and he has serious damage to his hands and joints.

His personal plight and the defence of the rights of the ill, former patients and their families were outlined in his Jun. 27 presentation in Geneva, during a special meeting on the disease, parallel to the 41st session of the Human Rights Council, the highest organ of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Pinto is an eloquent advocate of the use of Hanseniasis or Hansen’s Disease, rather than leprosy, a term historically burdened with religious prejudice and stigma, which aggravates the suffering of patients and their families, but continues to be used by WHO, for example.

Yohei Sasakawa (2nd-L), president of the Nippon Foundation, accompanied by two members of his delegation, took part in a meeting with Congressman Helder Salomão (C), chair of the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, who pledged to support initiatives to eliminate leprosy in his country. Faustino Pinto (2nd-R), national coordinator of the Movement for the Reintegration of Persons Affected by Hanseniasis (MORHAN), also participated. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Discrimination against people with the disease dates back to biblical times, when it was seen as a punishment from God, said Sasakawa during his meeting with Minister Damares Alves, a Baptist preacher who describes herself as “extremely Christian”.

In India there are 114 laws that discriminate against current or former Hansen’s Disease patients, banning them from public transport or public places, among other “absurdities”, he said.

In India, they argue that these are laws that are no longer applied, which justifies even less that they remain formally in force, he maintained during his meetings in Brasilia to which IPS had access.

Prejudice and misinformation not only subject those affected by the disease to exclusion and unnecessary suffering, but also make it difficult to eradicate the disease by keeping patients from seeking medical care, activists warn.

His over 40-year battle against Hansen’s Disease has led Sasakawa to the conclusion that it is crucial to fight against the stigma which is still rife in society.

He pressed the United Nations General Assembly to adopt in 2010 the Resolution for the Elimination of Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy and their Families.

He said these attitudes and beliefs no longer make sense in the light of science, but persist nonetheless.

Treatment making isolation for patients unnecessary in order to avoid contagion has been available since the 1940s, but forced isolation in leprosariums and leper colonies officially continued in a number of countries for decades.

In Brazil, forced segregation officially lasted until 1976 and in practice until the following decade.

With multi-drug treatment or polychemotherapy, introduced in Brazil in 1982, the cure became faster and more effective.

Information is key to overcoming the problems surrounding this disease, according to Socorro Gross, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) representative in Brazil who also held meetings with the Nippon Foundation delegation.

“Communication is essential, the media has a decisive role to play” to ward off atavistic fears and to clarify that there is a sure cure for Hansen’s Disease, that it is not very contagious and that it ceases to be so shortly after a patient begins to receive treatment, Gross, a Costa Rican doctor with more than 30 years of experience with PAHO in several Latin American countries, told IPS.

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Richard Taylor, a Professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL) (far left) is the principal investigator in a project to study groundwater resources to understand more how to use the resource to alleviate poverty. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
DODOMA, Tanzania, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in three African countries in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa.

“We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, then groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of sustainability,” said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL).

Through a project known as Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa (GroFutures), a team of 40 scientists from Africa and abroad have teamed up to develop a scientific basis and participatory management processes by which groundwater resources can be used sustainably for poverty alleviation.

Though the study is still ongoing, scientists can now tell how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they respond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already looking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more sustainability.

“Our focus is on Tanzania, Ethiopia and Niger,” said Taylor. “These are three strategic laboratories in tropical Africa where we are expecting rapid development of agriculture and the increased need to irrigate,” he told IPS.

In Tanzania, scientists from UCL in collaboration with their colleagues from the local Sokoine University of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the WamiRuvu Basin Water Board, have been studying the Makutapora well field, which is the only source of water for the country’s capital city – Dodoma.

“This is demand-driven research because we have previously had conflicting data about the actual yield of this well field,” said Catherine Kongola, a government official who heads and manages a sub section of the WamiRuvu Basin in Central Tanzania. The WamiRuvu Basin comprises the country’s two major rivers of Wami and Ruvi and covers almost 70,000 square kilometres.

She notes that scientists are using modern techniques to study the behaviour of groundwater in relation to climate shocks and also human impact, as well as the quality of the water in different locations of the basin.

“Groundwater has always been regarded as a hidden resource. But using science, we can now understand how it behaves, and this will help with the formulation of appropriate policies for sustainability in the future,” she told IPS.

Already, the World Bank in collaboration with the Africa Development Bank intends to invest some nine billion dollars in irrigation on the African continent. This was announced during last year’s Africa Green Revolution Forum that was held in Kigali, Rwanda.

According to Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, boosting irrigation is key to improving agricultural productivity in Africa.

“In each of the areas where we are working, people are already looking at groundwater as a key way of improving household income and livelihoods, but also improving food security, so that people are less dependent on imported food,” said Taylor. “But the big question is; where does the water come from?”

Since the 1960s, during the green revolution in Asia, India relied heavily on groundwater for irrigation, particularly on rice and wheat, in order to feed the growing population. But today, depletion of the groundwater in the country has become a national crisis, and it is primarily attributed to heavy abstraction for irrigation.

The depletion crisis remains a major challenge in many other places on the globe, including the United States and China where intensive agriculture is practiced.

“It is based on such experiences that we are working towards reducing uncertainty in the renewability and quantity of accessible groundwater to meet future demands for food, water and environmental services, while at the same time promoting inclusion of poor people’s voices in decision-making processes on groundwater development pathways,” said Taylor.

After a few years of intensive research in Tanzania’s Makutapora well field, scientists have discovered that the well field—which is found in an area mainly characterised by seasonal rivers, vegetation such as acacia shrubs, cactus trees, baobab and others that thrive in dry areas—can only be recharged during extreme floods that can also destroy agricultural crops and even property.

“By the end of the year 2015, we installed river stage gauges to record the amount of water in the streams. Through this, we can monitor an hourly resolution of the river flow and how the water flow is linked to groundwater recharge,” Dr David Seddon, a research scientist whose PhD thesis was based on the Makutapora well field, told IPS.

Taylor explains that Makutapora is known for having the longest-known groundwater level record in sub-Saharan Africa.

“A study of the well field over the past 60 years reveals that recharge sustaining the daily pumping of water for use in the city occurs episodically and depends on heavy seasonal rainfall associated with El Niño Southern Oscillation,” Taylor said.

According to Lister Kongola, a retired hydrologist who worked for the government from 1977 to 2012, the demand for water in the nearby capital city of Dodoma has been rising over the years, from 20 million litres in the 1970s, to 30 million litres in the 1980s and to the current 61 million litres.

“With most government offices now relocating from Dar Es Salaam to Dodoma, the establishment of the University of Dodoma, other institutions of higher learning and health institutions, and the emergence of several hotels in the city, the demand is likely going to double in the coming few years,” Kongola told IPS.

The good news, however, is that seasons with El Niño kind of rainfall are predictable. “By anticipating these events, we can seek to amplify them through minimal but strategic engineering interventions that might allow us to actually increase replenishment of the well-field,” said Taylor.

According to Professor Nuhu Hatibu, the East African head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, irrigation has been the ‘magic’ bullet for improving agricultural productivity all over the world, and “that is exactly what Africa needs to achieve a green revolution.”

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The post Avoiding the Mistakes of the Asian Green Revolution in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marco Funk
BERLIN, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

When the Italian police recently arrested Carola Rackete, captain of the Sea-Watch 3 search and rescue vessel, the Central Mediterranean Sea suddenly entered the international limelight once again.

Media coverage of the most dangerous migration route in the world had previously been quite muted everywhere except Italy, where for months Interior Minister Matteo Salvini used every opportunity to publicly lambast the German NGO’s activities – despite low numbers of arrivals.

In fact, Captain Rackete became Salvini’s (and increasingly his voters’) enemy of choice well before her arrest. At the same time, she became a hero to those who support rescuing migrants at sea.

Yet despite the uproar, the row about NGO rescue ships represents only a small part of the complex geopolitical puzzle that drives irregular migration along this route. Carola Rackete’s arrest will have a very limited impact on the overall situation.

In order to truly understand what’s going on in the Central Mediterranean, one must retrace migrants’ steps all the way back to their countries of origin – often in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East or even South Asia.

Some are refugees as defined by the 1951 Refugee Convention, others are not, but practically all of them have good reasons to leave their homes. This mixed migration flow typically crosses several countries before entering Libya, the main gateway to Europe.

EU efforts in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi have focused heavily on curbing migration to Europe. Some activities bend or even violate international law to keep migrants at bay.

African migrants crossing the Sahara Desert face dangers as severe as those at sea, with an uncounted death toll possibly far greater than that in the Mediterranean. Once migrants enter Libya, they find themselves in a comparatively wealthy country – Libya holds Africa’s largest oil reserves.

However, it is also a war-torn country in political disarray since the fall of ex-dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The Libyan situation

At the moment, there are over 660,000 migrants in Libya according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration. Their conditions vary according to nationality and location.

Some long-term residents from North Africa or the Middle East are quite happy to stay in Libya, while more recent arrivals from sub-Saharan countries often face severe discrimination, exploitation and abuse.

As Libya never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees have no legal status in the country and cannot seek international protection there. In fact, undocumented migrants in Libya can be arrested and imprisoned at any time.

Local militias, acting as police in areas they control, also run detention centres where they extort money from migrants or sell those who cannot pay to smugglers and human traffickers.

Some of these same militia members are on government payrolls and are supported directly or indirectly by EU missions seeking to train and equip border police and coast guard officials.

EU efforts in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi have focused heavily on curbing migration to Europe. Some activities bend or even violate international law to keep migrants at bay.

But there’s no way to address the issue effectively without settling the ongoing power struggle between the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and rival Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA), based in the east of the country.

While the internationally recognised GNA is officially supported by the EU and Italy in particular, its actual control of Libyan territory is limited to Tripoli and some areas of Western Libya controlled by allied militias.

Meanwhile, France backs the LNA, which controls the east and parts of the south of the country either directly or by proxy through local militias. Haftar launched an attack on Tripoli in April 2019, just days before a planned national conference to organise presidential and parliamentary elections to help solve the political crisis in Libya.

The conflict is currently at a stalemate, with Haftar’s forces fighting against the GNA on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The EU needs a common strategy

The EU’s split position isn’t just awkward but indeed counterproductive in finding a solution to the conflict, and by extension the migratory situation as well. Italy and France should agree on a common strategy and facilitate a peace deal between the GNA and the LNA by using their respective influence on each side of the conflict.

The EU could then step up its capacity building work, help professionalise Libya’s security sector, strengthen civil society and invest in projects that unlock Libya’s economic potential. Stability and prosperity in Libya would significantly reduce migratory pressure to Europe by making it safer and more attractive as a destination country for labour migrants – as it was before the revolution.

As the European Parliament and the European Commission start their new terms this year, migration should be back at the top of their agendas.

Stabilising Libya will certainly take time and may not even be possible because the conflict is so complex and involves a multitude of internal and external non-EU actors. The EU must therefore simultaneously work towards a sustainable search and rescue, reception and relocation mechanism for those who manage to leave Libya.

Italy’s decision to close its ports and criminalise NGOs attempting to bring rescued migrants to shore is certainly deplorable. Yet it’s also understandable given the lack of solidarity other EU member states have demonstrated long before Salvini was elected to government.

As a result, Malta now feels the cold shoulder of northern and eastern European indifference as it receives more and more arrivals diverted from Italy. The current practice of ad-hoc, case-by-case relocations for each boatload of migrants rejected by the Italian authorities is simply not sustainable.

Solving the question of asylum seeker relocation within the EU may even be more difficult than achieving peace in Libya, as the never-ending standstill in negotiations between the European Parliament and Council on the reform of the Dublin Regulation demonstrates.

But it must be done. There’s no other way to handle the arrival of migrants seeking asylum in Europe. The alternative is a political backlash in frontline member states that threatens the entire EU project.

As the European Parliament and the European Commission start their new terms this year, migration should be back at the top of their agendas. However, in contrast to the last terms, they should approach irregular migration through the Central Mediterranean not as an isolated issue, but rather as one element in an interlinked set of challenges requiring integrated policy responses.

Only then does the EU stand a chance at finding sustainable solutions that can withstand the inevitable migratory pressure facing Europe in the future.

This article first appeared in International Politics and Society published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

The post Migrants, Militias & the Mediterranean Sea appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marco Funk is a Policy Officer at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung EU Office, where he is responsible for the foundation’s Brussels-based activities related to EU migration and home affairs. He previously worked as a Policy Analyst for the European Policy Centre, where he focused on EU migration and asylum policy.

The post Migrants, Militias & the Mediterranean Sea appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Secretary-General António Guterres visits a Training Centre in Kamakunji, Kenya, and talked to youth about countering violent extremism, and preventing radicalization. (9 July 2019) Credit: UNEP/Duncan Moore

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

During the egregious Dusit attack, Kenya demonstrated remarkable, resilience, solidarity and stood firm against the terrorists.

Combined with a swift and highly efficient surgical response from the law enforcement agencies, Kenyans united together in empathy and all barriers came down in a collective show of humanity.

It is well known that for a long time all over the world, well-meaning counter-terrorism responses only ended up alienating some sections of society. Recent insights into drivers of extremism however are showing that forging partnerships with such communities, formerly subjected to profiling and hard-line policing, is a better option to challenge hateful extremism.

Globally, race, ethnicity, religion, dress, political ideology or any combination of these traits have all been used to single out people for attention. A whole-of-society approach is now offering communities an opportunity not just to stand up to stigmatization but to engage dialogue that could deal with the root causes of violent extremism.

During his visit to Kenya for the African Conference on Counter-Terrorism Conference in Africa, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had a chance to interact with a community in Nairobi’s Kamukunji suburbs, where grassroots level people have organized themselves to tackle the contentious issues that have made the area a target of radicalization.

In his interaction with the leaders, structural inequalities and alienation from terrorism response agencies were mentioned as important conversations that need to take place.

“Kenya is showing the way in pursuing cohesiveness and creating conditions where diverse people and can live and respect each other and stay alive to prevent manifestations of extremism, and in this the country has the full support of the UN,” said Mr. Guterres.

An important challenge in dealing with extremism and radicalization has been the varied and evolving nature of the drivers of violent extremism within communities, and countries.

The reality is that local communities are best placed to understand what these drivers are, why they change, and how best to address them. Yet, too often they have been excluded from policy dialogue on countering violent extremism.

A relatively common thread especially among the youth is that they simply want to be heard. Led by the area Member of Parliament, Yusuf Hassan, himself a victim of a grenade attack that confined him to a wheelchair for years, the Kamukunji community has identified appropriate interlocutors to lead in the process of countering radicalization at the local level.

This has involved developing trust between the different communities in the area, and between the communities and state actors in the war on terror, especially the police. Leadership has been exceptional in partnering with agencies such as the UN to unlock the potential of the community to develop tailored, local responses to the threat of extremism.

Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Centre, together with the United Nations Country Team, among other partners, is working in counties and communities to develop county action plans on preventing violent extremism. These plans are notable for their inclusive approach, their attempt to be measurable, and responsive in an effective and efficient way.

For Kamakunji, that has had numerous terrorist incidences, there are very encouraging signs coming out of the area, of a community not just coming together to pick up the pieces after the attacks, but to strive to work together to make such occurrence less likely. The answer has been in taking the fight to extremists through community solidarity, trust, dignity, respect and good citizenship.

The emphasis now is on winning hearts and minds, while ensuring that the pillar of security is robust in countering violent extremism.

A fundamental pillar in the prevention of violent extremism are the youth of Africa. By 2050, there will be 2.3 Billion people in Africa, of which 830 million will be young people.

The way youth resilience manifests itself is highly dependent on their social, economic and political environments. When youth are empowered and provided opportunities for participation, they are most likely to capitalize on their resilience constructively. For this reason, youth are Africa’s most important asset in the prevention of violent extremism and peacebuilding. They are the very foundation of every community.

If Africa is to curtail the spread of violent extremism and achieve sustainable development, there must be determined focus on the empowerment, education and employment of youth- of a generation unlimited.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya

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Natalia Kanem

By Dr. Natalia Kanem
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

Every year on World Population Day (July 11), UNFPA receives queries from journalists about the total number of people around the world. Numbers are indeed important because they help governments develop policies that respond to evolving needs for services such as education and health.

While global population is currently around 7.7 billion, what is perhaps more important than the numbers is the bigger story they tell–a story about sex: who has it, when they have it and under what circumstances. It is also a story about agency.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Whether a woman or teenage girl has the power to decide about sexual relations will have a profound impact on her life.

UNFPA statistics from 51 countries show that only three in five married women make their own decisions about intimacy with their partner, use of contraception, and their healthcare. In some of the least developed countries, it is only 1 in 14 women who have such power.

Lack of agency, or power, in these areas can translate into forced sex, unintended pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, and families that are larger than a woman wants. And with these consequences can come long-term harm to a woman’s health and the denial of her rights.

This is what a lack of agency meant for one young woman in Burundi: Charlotte was 17 when she was forced to marry and leave school, closing out opportunities for higher education, employment and economic independence.

Her husband deserted her after she became pregnant, and Charlotte was left to manage serious complications during delivery by herself. In the end, she lost her baby and fell into a coma for four days.

Unfortunately, she developed an obstetric fistula, a normally preventable condition, that caused urinary and fecal incontinence. Charlotte’s father then forced her to live in a brick hole in their backyard for nine years because he couldn’t bear the stench.

Thanks to UNFPA, Charlotte finally got the surgery she needed, but she will never get back the nine years she lost. A lack of agency early in life kicked off a calamitous chain of events that robbed her of her dignity and health and derailed her future.

Lack of agency in sex is often linked to child marriage. Every day, 33,000 girls become brides against their will and in violation of their rights. About 95 per cent of teenage births occur in developing countries, and 9 in 10 of these births occur within a marriage or union.

Millions of girls around the world pay a high price every day due to lack of access to comprehensive sexuality education and taboos around speaking openly about sexual and reproductive health.

There are 214 million women in developing countries who want to prevent a pregnancy but are not using contraception. Without family planning information and services, these women lack the power to make their own decisions about whether, when or how often to become pregnant.

And this amounts to a violation of their rights affirmed through international agreements and resolutions dating back as far as 1968.

We have ample evidence of how a lack of agency negatively impacts a woman’s health and well-being. But there is also abundant evidence of an economic impact as well.

Societies where women have the power to make decisions about the timing and spacing of pregnancies and in other aspects of their lives also tend to be more prosperous, equitable and resilient.

Twenty-five years ago, at the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, 179 governments recognized the importance of agency in sexual relations and promised to empower women and girls in every aspect of life to enable them to chart their own futures.

Central to the ICPD’s Programme of Action was a commitment to achieve universal sexual and reproductive health and to protect every woman’s right to make her own decisions about the timing and spacing of pregnancies.

Since then, the world has made impressive gains in bolstering agency, particularly through expanding access to contraception. Still, there are hundreds of millions of women and teenage girls who have been left behind, especially in poor, rural or marginalized communities.

We cannot accept defeat. We must take action to fulfill the commitments made at the ICPD and achieve the world we imagined: one where every pregnancy is wanted, where people choose freely whom to marry as adults, where no one is subjected to gender-based violence, and all girls are protected from violence and the harm caused by practices such as female genital mutilation–a world where agency, especially when it comes to sex, is a reality for all.

This world can be a reality, but it requires more than hope. It demands conviction, courage, partnership and dedication from us all. That’s why this November, UNFPA and the governments of Kenya and Denmark are co-convening the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 to finish the job we started in 1994.

On this World Population Day, I call on all governments to join us in Nairobi, to look beyond the numbers, and to breathe new life into the global movement to achieve the world we imagine.

The post Let’s Talk About Sex – and Why Power Matters appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Natalia Kanem is Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

The post Let’s Talk About Sex – and Why Power Matters appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The United Nations has warned that drought, disease and war are preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions.Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned of drought, disease and war preventing farmers from producing enough food for millions of people across Africa and other regions, leading to the need for major aid operations.

A report called the Crop Prospects and Food Situation by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that shortages of grain and other foodstuffs have left people in 41 countries — 31 of them in Africa — in need of handouts.

“Ongoing conflicts and dry weather conditions remain the primary causes of high levels of severe food insecurity, hampering food availability and access for millions of people,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Tuesday.

Southern Africa has experienced both dry spells and rainfall damage from Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique on Mar. 14. The storm caused “agricultural production shortfalls” and big “increases in cereal import needs,” added Haq. 

Farmers in Zimbabwe and Zambia have seen harvests decline this year. Some three million people faced shortages at the start of 2019, but food price spikes there will likely push that number upwards in the coming months, researchers say.

In eastern Africa, crop yields have dropped in Somalia, Kenya and Sudan due to “severe dryness”, added Haq. 

According to the FAO, life for rural herders in Kassala State, in eastern Sudan, has been upended by a drought that has forced them to move livestock away from traditional grazing routes in pursuit of greener pastures.

“Life would be so hard if our livestock died. We wouldn’t have food or milk for the children,” Khalda Mohammed Ibrahim, a farmer near Aroma, in Kassala State, told FAO. “When it is dry, I am afraid the animals will starve — and then we will too.”

Droughts are getting worse, says the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

In Asia, low yields of wheat and barley outputs are raising concerns in North Korea, where dry spells, heatwaves and flooding have led to what has been called the worst harvests the hermit dictatorship has seen in a decade, the report said.

More than 10 million North Koreans — or 40 percent of the country’s population — are short of food or require aid handouts, the U.N.’s Rome-based agency for agriculture said in its 42-page study.

FAO researchers also addressed the spread of a deadly pig disease in China that has disrupted the world’s biggest pork market and is one of the major risks to a well-supplied global agricultural sector.

China is grappling with African swine fever, which has spread across much of the country this past year. There is no cure or vaccine for the disease, often fatal for pigs although harmless for humans.

By the middle of June, more than 1.1 million pigs had died or been culled. The bug has also been reported in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, North Korea and Laos, affecting millions of pigs and threatening farmers’ livelihoods.

The FAO forecast a five percent fall in Chinese pork output this year, while imports were predicted to rise to almost two million tonnes from an average 1.6 million tonnes per year from 2016 to 2018.

Conflict is another worry, the FAO said. While Syria and Yemen have seen “generally conducive weather conditions for crops”, fighting between government forces, rebels and other groups in both countries has ravaged agriculture.

Violence in Yemen has triggered what the U.N. calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million people displaced and 24.1 million — more than two-thirds of the population — in need of aid.

Last month, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) announced a “partial suspension” of aid affecting 850,000 people in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, saying the Houthi rebels that run the city were diverting food from the needy.

Likewise, in Africa, simmering conflicts in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan have caused a “dire food security situation”. In  South Sudan, seven million people do not have enough food.

Related Articles

• Food From Thought
• Looking to the Land in the Climate Change Race
• Desertification ‘More Dangerous and More Insidious than Wars’

The post Drought, Disease and War Hit Global Agriculture, Says U.N. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UN Environment.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 10 2019 (IPS)

In case you were not aware or just do not remember: all you eat, drink, breathe, wear, take as a medicine, the cosmetics you use, the walls of your house, among others, is full of chemicals. And all is really ALL.

For instance, in your bathroom, formaldehyde often sits in your shampoo, microbeads in your toothpaste, phthalates in your nail polish and antimicrobials in your soaps, while your medicine cabinet contains a myriad of synthetic pharmaceuticals.

In your kitchen, a juicy strawberry may carry traces of up to 20 different pesticides.

The size of the global chemical industry exceeded 5 trillion dollars in 2017. It is projected to double by 2030. Consumption and production are rapidly increasing in emerging economies.

And the perfumed bin-liners and air fresheners contain volatile organic compounds that can make you nauseous and give you a headache. And the list goes on…

Who tells all these and many other shocking facts is one of the top world organisations dealing with the sources and dangers of pollution and contamination – the UN Environment, which on 29 April 2019 released its Global Chemicals Outlook.

 

Chemicals, chemicals, chemicals everywhere

See what Tanzanian microbiologist and environmental scientist Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said in her introduction to this report:

“Chemicals are part of our everyday lives. From pharmaceuticals to plant protection, innovations in chemistry can improve our health, food security and much more. However, if poorly used and managed, hazardous chemicals and waste threaten human health and the environment.

“As the second Global Chemicals Outlook lays out, global trends such as population dynamics, urbanisation and economic growth are rapidly increasing chemical use, particularly in emerging economies.

“In 2017, the industry was worth more than 5 trillion dollars. By 2030, this will double.

“Large quantities of hazardous chemicals and pollutants continue to leak into the environment, contaminating food chains and accumulating in our bodies, where they do serious damage.

“Estimates by the European Environment Agency suggest that 62 per cent of the volume of chemicals consumed in Europe in 2016 were hazardous to health.

“The World Health Organization estimates the burden of disease from selected chemicals at 1.6 million lives in 2016. The lives of many more are negatively impacted…”

Referring to the agreed objective that, by 2020, chemicals will be produced and used in ways that minimise significant adverse effects on the environment and human health, Joyce Msuya warned “At our current pace, we will not achieve the goal.”

 

Key findings

The following are three key findings included in the report, among many others.

One is that the size of the global chemical industry exceeded 5 trillion dollars in 2017. It is projected to double by 2030. Consumption and production are rapidly increasing in emerging economies. Global supply chains, and the trade of chemicals and products, are becoming increasingly complex.

Another one is that, driven by global mega-trends, growth in chemical-intensive industry sectors (e.g. construction, agriculture, electronics) creates risks, but also opportunities to advance sustainable consumption, production and product innovation.

And a third one is that hazardous chemicals and other pollutants (e.g. plastic waste and pharmaceutical pollutants) continue to be released in large quantities. They are ubiquitous in humans and the environment and are accumulating in material stocks and products, highlighting the need to avoid future legacies through sustainable materials management and circular business models.

The Global Chemicals Outlook covers three broad inter-linked areas building upon the findings of existing and concurrent studies:

 

Production, trade, use and disposal of chemicals

Both the continuous growth trends and the changes in global production, trade and use of chemicals point towards an increasing chemical intensification of the economy.

This chemical intensification of the economy derives largely from several factors, such as the increased volume and a shift of production and use from highly industrialised countries to developing countries and countries in economic transition.

Another factor is the penetration of chemical intensive products into national economies through globalisation of sales and use.

Then there are the increased chemical emissions resulting from major economic development sectors.

According to the report, products of the chemical industry that are increasingly replacing natural materials in both industrial and commercial products.

Thus, petrochemical lubricants, coatings, adhesives, inks, dyes, creams, gels, soaps, detergents, fragrances and plastics are replacing conventional plant, animal and ceramic based products.

Industries and research institutions which are increasingly developing sophisticated and novel nano-scale chemicals and synthetic halogenated compounds that are creating new functions such as durable, non-stick, stain resistant, fire retardant, water-resistant, non-corrosive surfaces, and metallic, conductive compounds that are central to integrated circuits used in cars, cell phones, and computers.

 

Penetration of chemical intensive products 

The Global Outlook also informs that many countries are primarily importers of chemicals and are not significant producers. Agricultural chemicals and pesticides used in farming were among the first synthetic chemicals to be actively exported to developing countries.

Today, as consumption of a wide range of products increases over time, these products themselves become a significant vehicle increasing the presence of chemicals in developing and transition economies, the report explains, adding the following information:

 

• These include liquid chemical personal care products for sale directly to consumers; paints, adhesives and lubricants; as well as chemically complex articles ranging from textiles and electronics, to building materials and toys. Emissions from products pose different management challenges from those associated with manufacturing, as   they are diffused throughout the economy, rather than being concentrated at manufacturing facilities.

 

• Trade in articles has been identified as a significant driver of global transport of lead, cadmium, mercury and brominated flame retardants.

 

• It is often the case that electrical and electronic equipment, which contain hazardous or toxic substances, are purchased in developed countries before being disposed of or recycled in unsafe and unprotected conditions in developing states or countries with economies in transition.

 

• Products such as cell phones and laptops are being purchased and used in regions of the world recently thought to be too remote.

 

• Increasing consumer demand for electrical/electronic goods and materials, along with rapid technology change and the high obsolescence rate of these items have led to the increasing generation of large quantities of obsolete and near end of life electronic products.

 

• These trends contribute to global electronic waste generation estimated at 40 million tons per year.

 

Chemical contamination and waste associated with industrial sectors of importance in developing countries include: pesticides from agricultural runoff; heavy metals associated with cement production; dioxin associated with electronics recycling; mercury and other heavy metals associated with mining and coal combustion, explains the Global Outlook.

They also include: butyl tins, heavy metals, and asbestos released during ship breaking; heavy metals associated with tanneries; mutagenic dyes, heavy metals and other pollutants associated with textile production; toxic metals, solvents, polymers, and flame retardants used in electronics manufacturing, and  the direct exposure resulting from the long range transport of many chemicals through environmental media that deliver chemical pollutants which originate from sources thousands of kilometres away.

 

Credit: UN Environment.

 

Health and environmental effects

According to the report:

 

• Chemicals released to the air can act as air pollutants as well as greenhouse gases and ozone depleters and contribute to acid rain formation.
• Chemicals can contaminate water resources through direct discharges to bodies of water, or via deposition of air contaminants to water. This contamination can have adverse effects on aquatic organisms, including fish, and on the availability of water resources for drinking, bathing, and other activities.
• It is common for soil pollution to be a direct result of atmospheric deposition, dumping of waste, spills from industrial or waste facilities, mining activities, contaminated water, or pesticides.
• Persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals are found as widespread contaminants in wildlife, especially those that are high in the food chain. Some of these chemicals cause cancers, immune system dysfunction, and reproductive disorders in wildlife.
• In some countries, the runoff of pesticides and fertilisers from agricultural fields or the use of chemicals in mining in neighbouring countries, may leach into ground water, or run into estuaries shared across national boundaries.
• Fisheries, an important source of protein and of economic value for populations around the world, can be severely affected by chemicals. Persistent organic pollutants can accumulate in fish, especially those high in the food chain. As a result, the value of this otherwise excellent protein source is diminished or lost completely.
• Exposure to toxic chemicals can cause or contribute to a broad range of health outcomes. These include eye, skin, and respiratory irritation; damage to organs such as the brain, lungs, liver or kidneys; damage to the immune, respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, reproductive or endocrine systems; and birth defects and chronic diseases, such as cancer, asthma, or diabetes.
• Workers in industries using chemicals are especially vulnerable through exposure to toxic chemicals and related health effects.

 

These include an increased cancer rate in workers in electronics facilities; high blood lead levels among workers at lead-acid battery manufacturing and recycling plants; flame retardant exposures among workers in electronic waste recycling; mercury poisoning in small-scale gold miners; asbestosis among workers employed in asbestos mining and milling; and acute and chronic pesticide poisoning among workers in agriculture in many countries.

In spite of these and other immense negative impacts on health and the environment, the more than 400 scientists and experts around the world, who worked over three long years to prepare the Global Chemicals Outlook, underscore that the goal to minimise adverse impacts of chemicals and waste will not be achieved by 2020.

“Solutions exist,” the 400 world experts emphasise, “but more ambitious worldwide action by all stakeholders is urgently required.”

Otherwise…

 

Baher Kamal is Director of Human Wrongs Watch where this article was originally published. 

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