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By Fahad Ferdous
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 21 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(UNB/IPS) – Bangladesh is collecting data on international transactions of multinational companies to stop them from siphoning off money from the country.

Dhaka ranked second in South Asia by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) in terms of illicit outflow of money. Some $5.9 billion was siphoned out of the country in 2015 through trade mis-invoicing.

The Transfer Pricing Cell of the National Board of Revenue, the revenue collecting authority of Bangladesh, has prepared a list of companies and is collecting data on priority basis. NBR sources said the cell will mainly collect data from the important offices and prepare separate files for each of them.

Transfer price is the price at which divisions of a company transact with each other for goods or services. It usually takes place when two related companies or two subsidiaries controlled by a parent, engage in international trade with each other.

But sometimes, high prices are shown for an imported product or service to evade taxes. This illegal practice is known as ‘transfer mispricing’. There are allegations that multinational companies are siphoning off billions of taka in the pretext of transfer pricing.

The NBR now has decided to collect data of multinational companies at its 9th board meeting. It will create separate tax profiles for the companies after completing audit.

On July 2, 2014, the NBR issued rules regarding transfer pricing under a provision incorporated in the Finance Act 2012. The Board took two years for framing the rule.

Some tax officials said it will be a time-consuming task. Initially, 921 companies operating in Bangladesh will be under the purview of their auditing, a senior tax official said..

In the preliminary stage, information about international transactions will be collected and the companies will be given a question paper. The next course of action will be decided after getting the answers, the official said.

The Deputy Commissioner of Taxes (DCT) may impose a penalty equivalent to a maximum one percent of the value of each international transaction in case of failure to keep, maintain or provide information, documents or records or comply with the notice.

A penalty of up to Tk 300,000 (USD 3,573) can be imposed by the DCT for failure in giving report by chartered accountants.

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Some of the US women legislators elected to office in November 2018

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 21 2019 (IPS)

The dramatic increase in women legislators voted into office last November and the historic high of women candidates for the 2020 presidential elections have visibly changed the male-dominated political landscape in the US.

The reasons for the transformation include a growing new political power structure; the rise of gender empowerment; the widespread impact of the #MeToo Movement against sexual abuse; and perhaps, most important of all, a backlash against US President Donald Trump’s steady stream of public insults denigrating women as “bimboes”, “dogs” “fat slobs,” “disgusting animals” and “having low IQs”.

At the November mid-term elections, a record 102 women won seats in the US House of Representatives and 10 won in the Senate, for a total of 112 women — the most ever to serve in the US Congress.

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, told IPS: “As a US citizen and an activist promoting women’s rights everywhere, like many, I was pleased with the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections”.

“In my opinion, Mr. Trump’s bombastic misogyny did influence this outcome, both in the numbers of women who decided to run for office in the various elections across the country, and also in the voting that brought so many women into office,” she declared.

“I think it is also the result of women recognizing the changing power structures – even if too slow for many – and deciding to use their individual power to add momentum to those changes,” Williams added.

In its 2018 annual survey of parliamentarians worldwide, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), based in Switzerland, rightly pointed out last week that the November elections in the US were apparently “historic” where diversity in women’s representation was particularly remarkable, with younger and more ethnically diverse women entering both the Senate and the House of Representatives– and for the first time.

Both the lower house (23.5 per cent of all representatives) and the upper house (25 per cent) included more women than ever before.

Of these, 37 per cent were women of colour, including the first two Muslim women and the first two Native American women.

The 2018 election also yielded the two youngest women ever to be elected to the U.S. Congress, both aged 29, as well as five new lesbian, gay, and bisexual parliamentarians (4 of them women).

Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids are the first Native American women elected to Congress while Rashida Tlaib and Ihlan Omar are the first Muslim women to represent their states in the House.

And, at 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Abby Finkenauer are the youngest women to serve as US legislators.

Tlaib was born in the US to Palestinian immigrant parents, and Omar, who migrated to the US from a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing the civil war in Somalia, is the first Somali American to serve in the US Congress.

Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe, is the first Native American indigenous woman elected to Congress, alongside Sharice Davids, who is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, a Native American tribe that hails from Wisconsin.

And there is also a historic number of women—six in all — who have formally declared their candidacies for the US Presidential elections scheduled to take place in November 2020.

They include four Senators: Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Marianne Williams, an Independent candidate.

Sanam Aderlini, Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the International Civil Society Action network (ICAN) told IPS “white supremacy” gained a significant boost in the US with Donald Trump’s victory.

His rhetoric and attitude towards women, particularly strong, independent women who challenge him, has always been vitriolic.

“And, of course, the fact that so much of it is directed at women of color is itself indicative of the ugly mix of racism and sexism that is at the core of these movements and ideology,” said Anderlini.

She pointed out that these extremist movements have very rigid interpretations of gender, and so sadly, the lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGBTQI) community is also typically targeted,

“What we are observing is the rise and spread of different forms of identity based extremism. These movements tap into visceral faith or ethno-racial identities. They also all have the subservience of women and the notion of hyper masculinity and patriarchy at their core”

With regard to women in particular, they seek to either co-opt women to support the movement, or coerce them to control them, said Andelini, who is also on the Commonwealth Panel of experts on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE).

It is most evident, she pointed out, in the obsession with the control over women’s bodies – either in terms of their covering or in terms of their reproductive capacities.

“Because, they want to control women, they are particularly vitriolic towards women’s rights activists and movements, because they challenge the very essence of what extremist movements represent,” she declared.

Mavic Cabrera Balleza, Chief, Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS: “I would rather call it “Feminist movements redux” rather than “backlash” because it is inspired by the activism of feminists in previous generations”.

She said the plural in “movements” also represent the diversity and universality of the feminist ideology.

“I also believe that the election of more and unprecedentedly diverse women in US Congress during the 2018 mid-term elections is only partly because of President Trump.”

As you can see, she said, women are not only condemning the sexist and misogynist messages or demanding punishment for sexual abuses, they are also shining the spotlight and demanding response to issues that have been around for many years but have not been adequately acted upon–if at all.

These include migration, gun violence, universal health care, environmental degradation, wars and militarism –among others.

She said the phenomenal #MeToo campaign on sexual abuse against women has given rise to #Time’s Up, #Niunamenos, #NotOneMore, #BalanceTonPorc, #TotalShutDown, and other campaigns.

“My greatest hope is that the results of the 2018 mid-term elections in the US will resonate around the world as different countries are experiencing or are threatened by authoritarianism”.

“I want to see successful non-violent resistance movements across the world within the next decade. I and my colleagues in the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders are actively contributing towards the realization of this vision,” Cabrera Balleza said.

Anderlini told IPS the overlap or mutually beneficial transactional relationship between the white right and the evangelical movement is not a coincidence either.

“We see it in the Trump-Pence duo,” she noted, referring to Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence.

“Precisely because they target and seek to control women, women were the first to mobilize and speak out and resist. This happens in every country I know – from 1979 Iran, when the Islamists sought to impose the hijab and 100,000 women marched in protest, to Washington DC in 2017 and the million women march”.

The mobilization of women into the political sphere is an extension of these developments, Anderlini said.

In many other countries, the pathway to power is blocked for women so they sustain their activism in civil society.

In the US luckily, there are more opportunities. It is also because of years of work by groups such as Emily’s List and others encouraging and supporting women to run for office, she declared

http://www.icanpeacework.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AnderliniKeyNOTE-March-1.pdf

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Maths and physical science teacher Peter Tabichi (far right) in class. The Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School teacher has been nominated for the one million dollar Global Teacher Prize. Courtesy: Peter Tabichi

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Nakuru County, situated in a remote, semi-arid part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, could pass for an ordinary secondary school in any part of Africa. But ordinary it is not.

Maths and physical science teacher Peter Tabichi’s love for science is changing the lives of Keriko’s 480 students for the better.

In a region frequently blighted by drought and famine, Tabichi’s students come from poor families–almost a third are orphans or have only one parent–with many going without food at home. The students have mixed experiences from drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, early school dropout, young marriages and there have been cases of suicide.

Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School reflects the challenges of education access in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa; lack of teaching and learning resources, high student to teacher ratios, high drop-out rates and teacher demotivation.

According to the United Nations Education and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion, with over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 not attending school.

Further, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data states that almost 60 percent of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school. The organisation warns that without urgent action, the situation will likely get worse as the region faces a rising demand for education due to a still-growing school-age population.

Filling the education gap with science

Tabichi, a member of the Franciscan Brotherhood, donates 80 percent of his monthly income to help his students in need.

But it is his dedication and passionate belief in his students’ talent, that has embolden the poorly-resourced learners to take on Kenya’s best schools in national science competitions.

Through his mentorship, Tabichi’s students participated in the 2018 Kenya Science and Engineering Fair where they displayed an invention that allows blind and deaf people to measure objects.

Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School came first nationally in the public schools category competition organised by the science fair. The maths and science team qualified to participate at the INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair in 2019.

Using the school’s only computer, and despite the poor internet connection and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1, Tabichi has impacted his student’s impoverished lives. He started a Talent Nurturing Club and expanded the school’s Science Club, helping pupils design research projects that are of such a high standard that 60 percent of them now qualify for national competitions.

“My four colleagues and I also give low-achieving pupils one-to-one tuition in Maths and Science outside class and on the weekends, where I visit students’ homes and meet their families to identify the challenges they face,” Tabichi told. “I use ICT in 80 percent of my lessons to engage students, visit internet cafes and cache online content to be used offline in class.”

In February 2019, Tabichi was named one of the top 10 finalists for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize 2019. The one million dollar award recognises an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession and highlights the important role of teachers.  Tabichi and nine other finalists were selected from over 10,000 nominations and applications from 179 countries around the world.

The Global Teacher Prize was established five years ago and aims to recognise the exceptional work of teachers all over the world.

Tabichi is excited about his nomination for the prestigious award, describing it as a God-given honour.

“I did not anticipate it,” Tabichi, told IPS. “But I feel that I deserve it since I have transformed the lives of many students. Also, the nomination makes me view all the hard-working teachers throughout the world as superheroes that the world needs to give recognition for bringing a positive change to society.”

Turning challenges into opportunities

Raised in a family of teachers, Tabichi said he recognises the great contribution teachers bring to their communities through their dedication and passion. He added that he was inspired by his father to perceive a teacher’s role as that of enlightening others on how to tackle the challenges of life.

On what can be done to make education, especially at early and primary level accessible to all, Tabichi believes that making it free, equitable and raising the quality of education is a start.

Asked what he will do with the Global Teacher Prize, should he win?

“The main focus will be on the community and school. For example, I would strengthen the Talent Nurturing Club, the Science Club and inter-school science project competitions,” said Tabichi. He added, “I would also invest in a school computer lab with better internet connectivity. In the community, I would promote kitchen gardening and production of drought tolerant crops.”

Congratulating Tabichi for his nomination, Founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize, Sunny Varkey hoped Tabichi’s story would inspire those looking to enter the teaching profession.

“The thousands of nominations and applications we received from every corner of the planet is testimony to the achievements of teachers and the enormous impact they have on all of our lives.”

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Message by the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue (“The Geneva Centre”) Ambassador Idriss Jazairy

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Mar 20 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – The 2019 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and this year’s theme devoted to tolerance, empathy towards the Other and celebration of diversity, comes at a timely moment.

We are witnessing a populist tidal wave deriving from the disruptive effects of a phenomenon of globalization without a human face, lacking a moral compass. Populist parties are strengthening their presence in numerous countries, becoming mainstreamed in the political landscape and bringing in their wake increasingly tumultuous waves of xenophobia and ethnic discrimination, particularly targeted at people of Arab and African descent. The situation is prone to explosions of violence by the hostile pronouncements of some world leaders or by a mere state of denial entertained by the latter.

The messages of these populists and extremists are furthermore based on deliberately distorted interpretations of religious teachings to install hate, fear and prejudice, thereby critically jeopardizing social harmony and exacerbating marginalization and repression of minorities based on religion or ethnicity. Such messages are fomenting divisiveness and dangerous myths, instigating hostility and violence.

In parallel, racial discrimination has been exacerbated by the continuing and widening gap between the elite and the lower income groups, institutionalizing social stratification and subsequent societal fracture.

As global citizens, we cannot turn a blind eye to the increasing spread of hatred and discrimination resorted to as an attempt to seize or consolidate political power. There is a pressing need to stand up to these dangerous forces that seek to distort societies that were once praised for their openness and tolerance towards diversity in the social fabric and pluralism as an underlying approach. This is a time for vigilance to fight against the rise of prejudice in an increasingly aggressive manner.

The Durban Declaration and Plan of Action against racism, adopted 18 years ago, remains valid today as it calls for a consolidated strategy to restore rights and dignity for all, taking into account recent trends and developments, to address this scourge with a view to its ultimate elimination.

A vital component of such a strategy would be to ensure universal recognition and respect of equal citizenship rights for all throughout the world. It was towards this end that the Geneva Centre organized a World Conference on 25 June 2018 on the theme of “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights.” The conference sought to capitalize on the fundamental convergence of religions, creeds and value systems to mitigate the marginalization of communities worldwide with the goal of eliminating xenophobia and all forms of intolerance. The conference produced an outcome declaration aimed at moving towards greater spiritual convergence to support equal citizenship rights and resulted in a consensual global vision to promote this goal. The Geneva Centre will shortly be issuing a two-volume publication on the world conference.

The Geneva Centre wishes on this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to join hands with all those involved in such a noble endeavor.

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Excerpt:

Message by the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue (“The Geneva Centre”) Ambassador Idriss Jazairy

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Lorato Modongo at the “Speak Up, Speak Out: Young Advocates Advancing SRHR Through Storytelling” in New York, during the current 63rd sessions at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), March 2019.

By Lorato Palesa Modongo
GABORONE, Botswana, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

This week, I joined thousands of activists, campaigners, thought-leaders, and change-makers in New York to advocate for women’s rights and promote gender equality during the 63rd session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

While many of the conversations will push for policies and programs at the global level, we must not lose sight that the work of dismantling patriarchy and gender inequality must also begin within our families and communities.

I was raised in a small village in Botswana called Palapye. Like many Batswana children, I was raised by my grandmother alongside 3 of my boy uncles and cousin. I was the only girl child in this houseful of boys.

I did everything with these boys. I played soccer on the streets with them. I climbed trees with them. I would fall and bruise my knees with them. I was carefree and naive. I never consciously saw myself as different from them. Until one fateful Saturday morning.

I was 8 years old. My grandparents had left for another village and wouldn’t be returning until a day later. In their absence, we did what most children do with newfound freedom. We ate what we wanted including the rice and meat that was reserved for Sundays. We let a heap of dishes pile up in the sink.

As the day went on, the place became a mess. We didn’t bother with any broom or mop. How could we? We were glued to the TV–watching whatever channel we desired. There was no adult policing us to say, “But that is for adults! Watch cartoons instead!”

When my grandparents came back the next day, my grandmother (May she rest in power), nearly had a heart attack at the sight of the messy state of her house. “Le thakathanktse ntu yame jaana, naare la tsenwa?” she exclaimed in Setswana. “Why have you messed up my house like this? Are you all crazy?”

Silence.

Our eyes darted about with no proper explanation. My grandmother continued, “Lorato! Ke a go botsa!” Lorato, I am asking you! I paused. Why was I being singled out to answer this question?

So, with my notorious loud mouth I asked, “Why me when they all created this mess?” “Because you are the girl,” she responded.

I protested of course. The person who should be responsible for this is my older 15-year-old uncle, since in my 8-year-old mind, older people had to be the responsible ones. My protest sort of worked. I didn’t have clean the dishes. But my uncles did NOT clean up either.

Lorato Modongo (second from left) runs Teen Lead in Botswana. The project mentors high school students about leadership, personal development, consent and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights.

It was my grandmother who did what she did every day–all the chores.

This moment was my first introduction to gender roles. It was my first memory where I came to realize that girls and women must physically labor in their households. I realized that my beloved grandmother labored daily for us not because she was older, but because she was the only woman in the house.

And here I was, at age 8, being recruited and positioned for that same role.

Since then, I became more aware and conscious of the many inequalities in my world that were rooted in gender differences. In the classroom, for example, I noticed how as girls we had to act “more appropriately.” We had to tone our voices down and not go galaotega – to not speak on loudspeaker.

I noticed how when puberty hit, our developing breasts were a source of embarrassment. Our periods had to be talked about in hushed voices. We had to hide our sanitary pads. Our legs. Our legs had to be closed because respectful women close their legs.

Also, if you do not close your legs, men will see your thighs and they would want to see what is between your thighs. And no one will believe you because what business did you have, not covering your juicy, near ripe 15-year old thighs?

I noticed on National TV and newspapers and school books how there was little or no representation of women leaders in all kind of spaces in my country. I read history books about all the great leaders. Not a single mention of any African woman.

I witnessed inequality in everyday life: in education, in access to health services, in transport, in political power, and in the microcosm of family life. But it clicked and became more clearer when I was recruited to participate in research project during my 3rd year at University of Botswana.

During this project, we explored access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services for young girls like me. We explored how girls showed up in my world.

Hushed.

Invisible.

Respectful.

Nice.

Ambitious but with a limit.

Aware of self, but not too self-aware so as to not scare men off.

We explored how the world showed up for girls like me: With violence and rage and policing.

We explored our reality. The prevalence of sexual violence and rape and all types of violence upon our bodies. Although gender-based violence is prevalent across the world, in Botswana, over 67 percent of women have experienced abuse—which is double the global average. Research shows that 40 women are raped each week in the country.

We explored the policies and laws that sought to either protect us, or further our plight in the patriarchal society. We explored all this and own existence and agency in the world.

I better understood how access to SRHR and agency over women’s bodies are all linked to gender inequality. But it all began when I was 8. Access, or lack thereof, to SRHR services is linked to a need to police, dominate, and control women’s bodies.

Until we don’t dismantle patriarchy and gender inequality at the core within a family and community, we will not make progress at a societal, national, or global level.

In the words of Tapiwa Mugabe, “My ancestors live and breathe vicariously through me.” Unlike my grandmother’s generation, I have the space to speak up and speak out.

Being here today, I know she would be proud. Her defiant, rebellious granddaughter who at 8 refused to clean the house, stands before you today at 29 refusing to accept how the world shows up for women like me, for women like us.

*Lorato Modongo was born and raised in Botswana. She earned a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Research Psychology. She is also a Women Deliver Young Leader from the Class of 2013.

The post Dismantling Patriarchy Must Begin at Home: A Reflection on Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lorato Palesa Modongo* is co-founder of Teen Lead Botswana, which offers training and workshops to high school students on gender-based violence, consent, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), and leadership development.

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Manoj K. Pandey is Lecturer in Economics, Australian National University; Vani S. Kulkarni is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; and Raghav Gaiha is (Hon. ) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

By Manoj K. Pandey, Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
Canberra, Philadelphia and Manchester, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

Depression is often distinguished from other non-communicable diseases or NCDs (e.g., cancer, diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, hypertension) because of the stigma attached to it. Among other consequences, those suffering from depression are often denied access to medical care. Indeed, the latter is an outcome of interaction between supply of and demand for medical care. On the provider side, stigmatizing attitudes by service providers are identified as a barrier to access. On the demand side, stigma and low mental health literacy by community members are just as emphatically reported as barriers to accessing care.

Manoj K. Pandey

But there are striking similarities between depression and other NCDs too. There are strong inter-relationships between them (eg, between depression and cancer, depression and diabetes, depression and strokes).

Many NCDs share common risk factors such as tobacco use, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diets that are associated with cardio-vascular diseases (CVDs), diabetes, and cancer. The South African adult population has high levels of these risk factors, and large proportions of the disease burden can be attributed to these modifiable risk factors. Mental disorders increase the risk of all these diseases, which in turn increase the risk of mental disorders (Patel et al.2018 a).

Our recent study focuses on the association from depression to other NCDs, based on a state-of-art analysis of the five waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) panel survey data for South African adults (30 years and above) for 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016/17 (Pandey et al. 2019). NCD outcomes are the dependent variable with depression in the initial year and other explanatory variables that vary with time or do not. Examples of the former include age, wealth, whether living alone and affiliation to social networks, and of the latter gender and ethnicity. Although much has been written on the association from NCDs to depression, the research on the reverse association from depression to NCDs remains patchy. Hence the focus here is on the latter.

There are robust associations from depression to other NCDs in South Africa. With controls for socio-economic factors, the initial condition of moderate and severe depression is robustly associated with NCDs such as high blood pressure, stroke, heart diseases, cancer, and at least one NCD in subsequent years. This result is also consistent for mental health conditions where poor baseline mental health condition increases the risk of NCDs later. Moreover, the risk of NCDs is higher when severe depression or poor mental health conditions are present (with or without NCDs)—with a slightly larger risk when severe mental health conditions co-occur with an NCD in the initial year.

Vani S. Kulkarni

Although there is no evidence of a gradient between NCDs and wealth quartiles, there are a few striking contrasts. Relative to the wealthiest (in the top 25% bracket or 4th quartile), the least wealthy (bottom 25%/first quartile) are less likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke, while those in the second quartile show a lower risk of stroke. So the proposition that NCDs are diseases of affluence cannot be rejected outright.

Relative to the Africans, the Whites are less likely to suffer from diabetes but more vulnerable to heart diseases, cancer and at least one NCD. The Coloureds have higher risks of NCDs while the Asians/ Indians are more vulnerable to diabetes and heart related problems. At older ages, the proportion of black Africans is higher than it was previously which accounts for the decrease in lung cancer because black Africans have a lower rate of smoking than White and Coloured people. The South African Indian community is more insulin resistant than other ethnic groups and therefore at greater risk of diabetes type 2 and ischaemic heart disease.

The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development (2018) and WHO (2015) report adverse impacts on the health of the caregivers. Caring for a person with a chronic, disabling NCD or mental disorder, such as cancer or dementia, is stressful and associated with an increased risk of chronic health problems, including depression, hypertension, sleeping problems, and fatigue; increased use of psychotropic drugs; and premature mortality. Indeed, such indirect impacts on caregivers, who are often members of the patient’s household, result in sick households.

The Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002 in South Africa requires that service users undergo a 72-h emergency management and observation period for involuntary admissions to designated general district and regional hospitals across the country, before they are referred to specialist psychiatric hospitals. However, implementation remains daunting, with inadequate infrastructure and specialist staff. Indeed, several studies are emphatic that this requirement has negatively affected the quality of care provided (Petersen et al. 2017).

Raghav Gaiha

A policy shift from a singular disease focus to individual patient as one unit is needed. In the South African context, for example, diabetes and depression are separated within the health-care institution so that someone with depressive symptoms during routine diabetes care does not simultaneously get medical attention for the former. Of particular importance is integration of depression and NCD care in primary health care with a view to increasing prevention, screening, self-management, treatment and rehabilitation in order to achieve equitable, efficient and quality health services in South Africa. Arguably, simultaneous medical care for mental disorder and other NCDs also has considerable potential for overcoming the stigma of a mental disorder. However, the integration has been impeded by lack of trained doctors and nurses, essential equipment, its poor maintenance, and adequate funding.

A case could be made for substantially higher investment in primary health-care systems (Patel et al. 2018 b). On the supply side, these investments include greater accountability of services to local communities, enhanced sensitivity of providers to local conditions and beliefs, and provision of care to the needy. On the demand side, effective local services can address complex problems of patient access, offset the financial burden of adult chronic illness, and restrict unnecessary use of expensive private care. Although additional resources are needed, the magnitude is likely to be less than projected if the efficiency of investment in primary medical care is factored in.

The post Depression Is More than a Stigma appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Manoj K. Pandey is Lecturer in Economics, Australian National University; Vani S. Kulkarni is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; and Raghav Gaiha is (Hon. ) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

The post Depression Is More than a Stigma appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ian Richards
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

A $64 million plan to move 750 back office jobs from the UN’s main duty stations to four new centralized service centres in Budapest, Montreal, Nairobi and Shenzhen, could end up being a waste of money.

Called the global service delivery model, this holdover from (former UN Secretary-General) Ban Ki-moon hopes to save the organization $23 million a year. Locations were chosen following an Amazon-style bidding war. While the assessment scores remain a closely-guarded secret, low wages played a key part.

The proposal (http://www.undocs.org/a/73/706), currently before the General Assembly, makes a number of promises.

First, that service quality will improve, although with administrative staff working far from their clients and no measurement of current service levels, this is hard to substantiate.

Indeed to-date there has been no study on how different duty stations carry out the same administrative processes and what they could learn from each other. It is also not clear why a relatively new service centre in Entebbe should shift operations to neighbouring Nairobi.

Second, that delivery of administrative services will “follow the sun,” allowing offices and missions to get same-day service in whichever continent they are based. Yet the centre for French-speaking operations in Africa and Europe is slated for Montreal, five to eight time zones away.

The project’s main selling point is financial. Through resulting cost savings, the UN’s 193 member states have been promised that they’ll make back their initial investment by 2022.

But putting figures into the kind of business model used for making investment decisions, and with modest adjustments for capital costs, technology improvements and cost overruns that include fast-rising salaries in some chosen locations (see endnote), it appears unlikely that the project will break even before 2029 – so in ten years instead of three.

By then, with new technologies and ways of working, and the UN preparing for a future beyond its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an entirely different administrative system might be required, rendering the investment obsolete.

On top of that, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in contrast to his predecessor, is pushing decentralization, handing department heads unprecedented powers to hire staff and manage procurement.

They may choose to increase the size of their own on-location administrative offices at the expense of the services they buy from the four centres, undermining an already fragile business case.

From a business point of view, the global service delivery model, not forgetting the associated disruption, would appear to be a poor investment; such a finding is of course not unusual and in line with experiences elsewhere.

But with the UN facing cash shortages, there may be more productive ways to spend $64 million and cheaper ways to reduce administrative overheads.

Footnote:
In developing the model* we took the cost figures provided in A/73/706 and adjusted them as follows:

• We assumed that costs in both the baseline and GSDM options would reduce by 2.5 percent a year. This reflects the impact on headcount of evolving technological improvements as well as recent budget trends concerning posts in administration. Reduced headcount would have the effect of slightly reducing the relative gains of moving to a lower wage location.
• We assumed minor cost overruns of 30 percent, given that the proposal might contain optimistic forecasting, that it might not be possible to mitigate all the risks outlined in the proposal, the likelihood of unforeseen cross-subsidies from other budgets, funds already spent, implementation delays and relatively fast-growing salaries in Budapest, Nairobi and Shenzhen. For context, estimates for Umoja’s overspend run from 120 percent and up.
• We employed a standard net present value calculation, which is standard for investment decision-making, and set a discount rate of 2 percent to reflect the risk-free cost of capital faced by the governments.

*The model was developed jointly with colleagues experienced in management consulting and accounting and is available on request.

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Excerpt:

Ian Richards is President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at UNCTAD.

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By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 20 2019 (IPS)

Awareness of Austism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has continued to grow worldwide, in recent years. But the number of diagnoses have continued to increase unabated.

Indeed, the number of people diagnosed with Autism has continued to rise by 6% to 15% percent globally, since 2010. With diagnoses covering a range of similar disorders affecting a person’s interaction, communication and behaviour, there is no specific cure.

 

 

Research in usually focused on the management of ASD symptoms. In the developed world, this is enabling, but progress in developing countries remains slow.

There are an estimated 70 million people in the world with Autism, and 80% of them live in developing countries.

Whilst indiscriminate when it comes to race and culture, ASD affects 1 in 4 boys. Currently, it is estimated that as many as 1 in 59 children are born with Autism and, in many countries, resources are so scarce for children that they can end up being socially and culturally marginalized for life.

World Autism Awareness Day is observed on the 2nd April every year, in an effort to encourage member states of the United Nations to take measures to raise awareness about people with Autism.  The theme for this year’s UN World Autism Awareness Day is “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation”.

“For many people on the autism spectrum, access to affordable assistive technologies is a prerequisite to being able to exercise their basic human rights and participate fully in the life of their communities, and thereby contribute to the realization of the SDGs. Assistive technology can reduce or eliminate the barriers to their participation on an equal basis with others.”

 

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By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Water is a precondition for human existence, and for the sustainability of our planet. It is entwined with almost everything human, from climate change and global economy to gender issues and human rights.

Worldwide, 100 million families are stuck in a cycle of poverty and disease, because they don’t have access to safe water.

 

 

In some countries, women and girls spend up to 6 hours every day walking to get water for their families.

Water-borne diseases kill more children under the age of five than malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS – combined.

In developing countries, as much as 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions, and 2.4 billion people worldwide lack access to a toilet.

Water scarcity, flooding and lack of proper wastewater management continue to hinder social and economic development.

The United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 calls for “ensuring the availablity and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, by 2030.”

Accordingly, World Water Day – celebrated on March 22nd – is observed internationally as day to inspire people around the world to learn more about water-related issues, and to take action to make a difference.

This year’s World Water Day theme, “Water for All,” is focused on tackling the water crisis as it affects marginalized groups, including women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others.

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Tourists cool off from high temperatures on the beach at the archaeological site of Tulum, in the southeastern Yucatan peninsula, an area of Mexico highly vulnerable to climate change. Powerful hurricanes, storms, drought, heat waves and rising sea levels are climate change effects that impact the mental health of the country's population. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Minerva Montes lost her home on Holbox Island in 2005 when Hurricane Wilma hit the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. Rebuilding her home was quicker and easier than overcoming the psychological aftermath of the catastrophe.

“They activated the evacuation alarm, I didn’t know what to do, I packed my things and put them on the ground floor, because I had heard that the wind didn’t hit there. But I didn’t know then about the effects of the flood,” she said."The first thing is to save lives and get people into safe places. And after that comes the psychosocial intervention. What we pay a lot of attention to is the kind of reaction they have to such an extreme situation. Some people manage to overcome the situation on their own and help others, whole others continue to feel panic." -- Jorge Álvarez

Montes, who is involved in wildlife rehabilitation, had just moved to the island a year earlier. The island, located about 1,600 kilometers from Mexico City and home to some 2,000 people, forms part of the municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Quintana Roo. And she had only been living in a house on the edge of the beach for a few months.

Montes, whose adult son no longer lived with her, took temporary refuge in the town of Tizimín, in the neighboring state of Yucatán, waiting for the emergency to pass and for her partner to return from abroad. A week later, she returned to what had been her home.

“What we saw was shocking, there were holes in the ground everywhere. I had the suspicion that I was not going to find anything (of the house). There were no walls, only the roof was still there. Everything I had put away to protect it had disappeared,” she told IPS during a trip through the Yucatán peninsula to observe how the local population is adapting to climate change.

Montes, who turned her nearly demolished house into a small hotel, sensed that the worst was coming, although she did not describe what she felt as fear. “You’re left with the feeling that you’re starting over. It was a hard and painful experience. It is not easy to be the victim of a disaster,” she said.

Hurricane Wilma, which reached a category 5 force due to the speed of its winds and the volume of rain dumped, making it one of the most powerful of the 21st century, hit Mexico’s Atlantic coast from Oct. 21-23, 12 years ago, to continue its destructive path towards the U.S. state of Florida.

Millions of people have suffered the same experience, exposed to the onslaught of climate change and its psychological consequences, which require attention and can become a public health problem as storms, floods, droughts and heat waves become more severe.

Mexico is highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change.

A total of 480 Mexican municipalities are especially exposed to the phenomenon, of the 2,457 into which the country is divided, according to a report by the government’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC). The risks, the study estimated, threaten more than 50 million people, out of a total population of 128 million.

The Yucatan Peninsula, which divides the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, encompasses the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, and plays a key climate role, as it is home to rainforest that regulates water flow and temperatures in the region. Credit: Public domain

Particularly vulnerable to global warming, the Yucatán peninsula, which includes the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, plays a vital climate role, as it is home to rainforest that regulates water flow and temperatures in the region.

This year, springtime began a month earlier than usual, surprising people with unusually high temperatures in several areas of the country, while the weather service is now forecasting rain in the coming weeks.The climate footprint on health

The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has highlighted the impact on mental health of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or droughts, during its 2017 regional health conference, which was held shortly after three unusually strong hurricanes wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, especially in island countries.

According to the United Nations regional agency, climate change will be a factor in the emergence of new diseases, particularly in the countries most vulnerable to the phenomenon, such as Caribbean island nations, and especially infectious, respiratory, cardiac and mental diseases. It called on governments to adapt their health policies to the new situation.

Globally, according to PAHO, it is estimated that in the 2030s the climate footprint on health will cause 250,000 additional deaths annually, from diseases such as those highlighted by the agency.

The latest official data confirms that this country is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in Latin America, following Brazil, with the launch into the atmosphere of 446.7 million net tons, according to figures from 2016 published last year by INECC.

For Jorge Álvarez, coordinator of the Crisis Intervention Programme for Victims of Disasters in the psychology department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the impact is important and the situation is only going to get worse, since the climate roulette unleashed by human activity continues to spin.

“The first thing is to save lives and get people into safe places. And after that comes the psychosocial intervention. What we pay a lot of attention to is the kind of reaction they have to such an extreme situation. Some people manage to overcome the situation on their own and help others, whole others continue to feel panic,” he told IPS.

Frequent symptoms include sleep disturbance, panic attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which “if not resolved soon, require specific assistance.”

While Mexico has made progress in issuing early warnings for other climate events, as well as in its rapid disaster response system, the mental health of victims could become a critical issue.

This country ranks among the 10 nations and territories in the world with the highest absolute disaster losses, amounting to 46.5 billion dollars from storms, on a list headed by the United States, with 944.8 billion in losses.

This is indicated in the 2018 report “Economic losses, poverty and disasters 1998-2017”, produced by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters of the School of Public Health of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Between 2000 and 2019, Mexico issued 2,145 emergency, disaster and extreme weather warnings, 1,998 – or 93 percent – of which were in response to hydrometeorological events, while the remaining seven percent responded to geological, chemical and health problems.

On the other hand, according to the government’s National Risk Atlas, natural and man-made disasters have left a death toll of at least 7,700, more than 27 million people affected by losses and more than 21 billion dollars in damage.

The DN-III-E Plan, implemented by the Secretariat (ministry) of National Defence in disasters, includes immediate psychological care, but is ambiguous as to the follow-up of victims.

The link between these events and climate change is already attracting the attention of academia.

The study “Higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the United States and Mexico,” published in the scholarly journal Nature Climate Change in July 2018, found that the suicide rate increases 0.7 percent in U.S. countries and 2.1 percent in Mexican municipalities for each one degree Celsius rise in average monthly temperature.

The authors of the report, researchers based in universities in Canada, Chile and the United States, compared temperature and suicide data from hundreds of counties and municipalities between the years 1990 and 2010.

They also studied depressive language in more than 600 million social media updates to assess whether hotter temperatures affected mental well-being.

“This effect is similar in hotter versus cooler regions and has not diminished over time, indicating limited historical adaptation,” says the report, which projects that “unmitigated climate change” could lead to between 9,000 and 40,000 additional suicides across the United States and Mexico by 2050.

Montes is afraid another disaster could happen.. “A category 4 or 5 hurricane could wipe out everything. It frightens me to think about what could happen to people, the wildlife and vegetation. If the island disappears, there is no plan B, where to go? who to go to? I’m in a more vulnerable situation than if I lived in a city,” she lamented.

She says the government should provide more assistance. “Psychological support is essential, because people need to regain emotional security. The fear of losing one’s life, one’s health, everything you face afterward, paralyses you,” she said.

According to Álvarez, psychological follow-up and prevention are fundamental. “Disasters also involve socio-organisational aspects, which include many factors. A disaster aggravates existing conflicts,” he said.

Related Articles

• Climate Change Threatens Mexico’s Atlantic Coast
• Mexico’s Forests, Both Victim of and Solution to Climate Change

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

With the Washington Consensus from the 1980s being challenged, President Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and China pursuing its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), most notably with its own initiatives such as the multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the political and economic landscape in East Asia continues to evolve. Jomo Kwame Sundaram was interviewed about likely implications for developing countries in the region and beyond.

Belt and Road Initiative

What do you think of world growth prospects and China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Although there are some hopeful signs here and there, there are few grounds for much optimism around the North Atlantic (US and Europe) for various reasons. Unconventional monetary policies, especially quantitative easing (QE), have helped achieve a modest recovery in the US, but appears less likely to succeed elsewhere. Such measures have also accelerated massive wealth concentration, which is why a few of the world’s richest men own more than the bottom half of the world’s population.

The situation is more promising in East Asia due to China’s diminished but sustained growth, and its almost unique rising labour share of national income. Most importantly for others, China has been willing to finance massive infrastructure projects, although this has given rise to a host of problems. For example, Chinese contractors are known for using Chinese material and human resources as far as possible, minimizing multiplier benefits for host economies. A few years ago, China’s ambassador to Tanzania publicly apologized for the conduct of Chinese firms in Africa, but most others tend to see all Chinese in monolithic terms. Meanwhile, US, European, Japanese, Indian and other competition for influence has helped increased options for other developing countries. However, it is not yet clear that China’s BRI and ‘alternative globalization’ will be enough to sustain rapid progress in the region.

Trade liberalization?

You once said that “If President…Trump lives up to his campaign rhetoric, all plurilateral and multilateral free trade agreements will be affected.” Now, with the US having withdrawn from the TPP, why are the Japanese, Australians and Singaporeans still pushing for the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive TPP) with all the others without the US?

It must be emphasized that the US, the EU and Japan have done little to advance trade multilateralism and keep the promise of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, flawed as they are against developing country interests. Meanwhile, the Japanese, Australians and Singaporeans are trying to hype up the CPTPP as a political counterweight to China. But as a trade agreement, it will not do much except to strengthen foreign corporate power and further weaken governments, e.g., through its investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions.

Why will the CPTPP have little impact on growth, but will strengthen the power of foreign enterprises?

Let us be clear that even with the original TPP, all projections, including the most optimistic ones by the Peterson Institute, projected very modest economic growth attributable to trade liberalization. US government projections were much more modest. About 85 percent of the Peterson Institute’s projected ‘growth gains’ were attributed to ‘non-trade measures’, mainly broadening and strengthening intellectual property rights (IPRs) and foreign corporate legal rights against host governments with its ISDS provisions, which they are promoting as features for so-called 21st century free trade agreements. So, for example, if stronger IPRs raise the prices of medicines, the value of trade will also rise! With ISDS, if a government decides to ban the use of a toxic agrochemical to protect farm workers and consumers for instance, it will have to compensate the supplier for loss of profits!

International financial institutions

Do you think the Washington Consensus is threatened by South-led financial institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank?

Although still very influential, the Washington Consensus is acknowledged to have been superseded by new policy prescriptions. Despite recent ethno-nationalist Western reactions, all too many developing country governments still believe that further trade liberalization will boost growth. Meanwhile, financial globalization continues despite its adverse effects for growth, stability and equity.

Now, digital globalization is supposed to have wonderful progressive effects when it has clearly accelerated concentration of power and wealth, albeit with the rapid ascendance of innovative new players able to quickly consolidate lucrative monopolies.

I wish the new multilateral development banks would be bolder, but thus far, they have largely chosen to work within the dominant framework shaped by the Washington Consensus, probably to secure market confidence.

Credit from China’s banks, usually benefiting China’s corporations, is far more important than what the AIIB and NDB offer. Of course, lending by China’s banks has undermined the BWIs’ monopolies, and this has already been reflected by new policy initiatives by the West and Japan, e.g., to more generously provide infrastructure finance.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has aligned itself more closely with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in order to provide its new initiatives to promote market-based private finance such as securities and derivatives besides public private partnerships.

Capital controls

You have pointed out that both portfolio investment inflows to developing countries have in recent years. Do you think it appropriate to resume capital controls, as Malaysia did during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, to counter capital outflows?

With even China reintroducing capital controls, it is important to consider such options. I have long advocated counter-cyclical ‘capital account management’ to smoothen financial cycles, rather than to only impose controls after a crisis, as effective capital account management must be pro-active, agile, and flexible.

Almost by definition, capital account management is context specific. There are few ‘one size fits all’ rules. What I specifically called for in the early and mid-1990s is probably no longer relevant or appropriate. The challenge is not to expect the last crisis to recur, but to protect national economic progress from likely future threats.

Capital inflows to sustainably enhance the real economy should be prioritized, not portfolio flows which tend to be speculative, easily reversible, and do not enhance the real economy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

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The International Organisation for Migration’s peer-to-peer campaign is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers, trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. Credit: Amadou Kendessa Diallo/IPS

By IPS Correspondent
CONAKRY, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo was a prisoner in Libya between October and November 2017, but he was not helpless. Far from his home in Guinea he understood the power of an organised union.

He mobilised other detainees around him to maintain order in the prison and to demand better conditions while in detention.

And when he finally returned to his home in West Africa, he used the power of the collective voice again, this time to caution others against experiencing what he did in Libya.

Back in Guinea, Diallo became part of the International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) peer-to-peer campaign, which is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers (MAM), trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. As part of the campaign, the returnee migrants, who are volunteers, also attend community events where they speak in public about their own stories and first hand experiences.

The aim is to capture and present authentic and balanced stories about their migration experiences and their reintegration back home. These are shared on social media as well as through local media.

Les bandits en Algérie

Cet homme guinéen a beaucoup souffert sur la route vers l’Algérie. Il y avait même des bandits là-bas ! Prenez soin de vous et de vos proches. Partagez son histoire. #MigrantsasMessengers

Posted by Migrants as Messengers on Friday, November 16, 2018

Diallo, who was incarcerated in Libya for being an irregular migrant, understood how a group of people with a common cause could become a powerful influence for change. So he create an association with about 50 other young returnees migrants, to caution people against irregular migration.

“The fact that we managed to mobilise people of many nationalities in a prison, [I thought] why not call the migrants here to make an association? I contacted those with whom I was in prison in Libya. IOM has called us for the project Migrants as Messengers. After the training, as we were bonded, we said we continue like this,” he told IPS.

“The objectives are to sensitise young people to abandon irregular migration, to set up reintegration projects to reintegrate migrant returnees first and to attract potential migrants to invest in our projects. [It aims to show them how] to succeed at home,” Diallo said.

The association is still very young, but is making progress.

Mariama Bobo Sy, the spokesperson for IOM in Guinea, told IPS, “The association’s executive office, which is made up of six people, was set up after the permission and the approval was granted on Aug 28, 2018 by the governorate of Conakry, the capital city. As we speak, these trained VFOs have become independent and have been taking part in various IOM projects that focus on migration in all aspects.”

Highly motivated, the association members willingly share their experiences in neighbourhoods and public places. They have conducted sensitisation campaigns at universities, through traditional media and social networks and also meet with other returned migrants to help them tell their stories. They plan to work in partnership with businesses and other employment providers to promote the professional reintegration of returned migrants.

IOM, for its part, has agreed to pay the fees for the headquarters of the association as they set up. Lucas Chandelier the communication officer at IOM in Guinea told IPS: “We are supporting  them to help them get started but the idea is that they can stand on their own and find their own funding. And the fact that they are an association will allow them to raise other grants, other than those of IOM.”

*Additional reporting by Issa Sikiti da Silva in Cotonou, Benin.

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• From Irregular Migrant to Graduate Lawyer: One Woman’s Journey to Success
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• ‘All the Roads Leading to Agadez and Italy are Dangerous’

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By Era Dabla-Norris and Kalpana Kochhar
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

As girls, we were raised with the belief that we could accomplish anything, and that no barrier was insurmountable. Yet, for so many women, the reality doesn’t quite meet their aspirations. Things weren’t exactly equal in the relatively conservative middle-class society in India where we both grew up.

But we thought of gender inequality as largely an issue of social justice. It was only after we started delving into the topic that we came to realize that it is an equally significant economic issue.

Women make up almost half of the world’s working-age population of nearly 5 billion people. But only about 50 percent of those women participate in the labor force, compared with 80 percent of men.

Not only is female labor force participation lower, but women who are paid for their work are disproportionately employed in the informal sector—especially in developing economies—where employers are subject to fewer regulations, leaving workers more vulnerable to lower wages and job losses.

Furthermore, even in the formal sector, women doing the same work and having the same level of education earn less than their male counterparts. And, because women generally spend less time in the paid labor market, they have lower pensions and face a higher risk of poverty in old age.

Among those who do work, few rise to senior positions or start their own businesses. Women also shoulder a higher share of unpaid work within the family, including childcare and domestic tasks, which can limit their opportunity to engage in paid work and constrain their options when they do.

The IMF’s research highlights how the uneven playing field between women and men imposes large costs on the global economy. Early IMF studies on the economic impact of gender gaps assumed that men and women were likely to be born with the same potential, but that disparities in access to education, health care, and finance and technology; legal rights; and social and cultural factors prevented women from realizing that potential. In turn, these barriers facing women shrank the pool of talent available to employers (Kochhar, Jain-Chandra, and Newiak 2017).

The result was lower productivity and lower economic growth. The losses to an economy from economic disempowerment of women were estimated to range from 10 percent of GDP in advanced economies to more than 30 percent in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa.

More recent research suggests that the economic benefits of bringing more women into the labor force exceed previous estimates. This is because women and men may have the same potential, but they bring different skills and ideas—that are economically valuable—to the table (Ostry and others 2018).

Gender differences may reflect social norms and their impact on upbringing, social interactions, risk preferences, and response to incentives. For instance, studies have found women to be more risk averse, reflecting greater fear of failure, and less competitive.

Women’s greater caution has benefits: gender-balanced corporate boards improve firm performance, especially in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. Gender diversity on boards of banking supervision agencies is also associated with greater financial stability (Sahay and Čihák 2018).

Similarly, banks with higher shares of women board members have thicker capital buffers, a lower proportion of nonperforming loans, and greater resistance to stress, possibly because having more women in executive positions contributes to diversity and complementarity of thought, leading to better decision-making.

Drawing on macroeconomic, sectoral, and firm-level data, a recent IMF study (Ostry and others 2018) suggests that men and women complement each other in the workplace in terms of different skills and perspectives, including different attitudes toward risk and collaboration.

As a result, increasing women’s employment boosts growth and incomes more than previously estimated, exceeding the improvement that comes simply from adding workers.

Among countries where gaps in participation rates are the largest, closing them adds 35 percent to GDP, on average. Four-fifths of the gains come from adding workers to the labor force, but fully one-fifth arises from the boost to productivity brought by greater gender diversity.

The study also shows that increasing women’s labor force participation produces large gains in economic welfare, which account for changes in consumption goods, home production, and leisure time; these gains exceed 20 percent in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (see Chart 1).

Another important finding: when more women participate in the labor force, men also benefit. Why? Because women’s complementary skills raise productivity, boosting wages for everyone.

This increase in productivity more than makes up for the decline in wages that might be expected when more workers are competing for jobs.

But simply bringing more women into the workforce may not be enough. A recent IMF study sounds a cautionary note on the challenges women face in a rapidly changing labor market (Brussevich and others 2018).

Digitalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are hollowing out jobs that involve routine and repetitive tasks while increasing the value of jobs involving management and cognitive skills.

Hard-won gains from policies to increase the number of women in the paid workforce and close wage gaps may be quickly eroded if women are overrepresented in jobs at high risk of automation.

Indeed, the study finds that women perform more routine tasks than men across all sectors and occupations, although there is significant variation across countries.

The risk of displacement is particularly high for less-educated women, those aged 40 and above, and those in low-skill clerical and sales jobs.

Meanwhile, women across sectors and occupations are underrepresented in professional and managerial positions that are at lower risk of displacement by technology.

Globally, women hold fewer than 20 percent of board seats in banks and bank supervision agencies (Sahay and Čihák 2018) and account for fewer than 2 percent of bank CEOs.

In the fast-growing tech sector, women are 15 percent less likely than men to be managers and professionals and 19 percent more likely to be clerks and service workers (see Chart 2).

Given the current state of technology, the study estimates that 26 million women’s jobs in 30 countries (28 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development plus Cyprus and Singapore) have a greater than 70 percent chance of being displaced by technology within two decades.

On a global scale, this suggests that 180 million women’s jobs are at risk. While more men than women are at risk of being displaced by automation, the number of female jobs lost represents a larger proportion of the female labor force.

What can be done? Because gender inequality is so multifaceted, there is no single remedy, and the best policy approach will vary across countries, depending on the level of economic development, existing gender gaps, and the speed at which the new technology affects the economy. Three broad areas can be highlighted:

First, policies to bring more women into the workforce: A range of institutional, legal, regulatory, and fiscal policy levers have been shown to boost female labor force participation.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, policies should seek to foster opportunity and remove barriers. Policies and infrastructure that make it easier for women to reconcile work and family life are particularly effective.

Emerging market and developing economies should

● Invest in infrastructure. In rural South Africa, for example, electrification increased female labor force participation by 9 percent. In India, building adequate sanitation facilities narrowed gender gaps in education and in female labor force participation. Mexico introduced public buses exclusively for women to ensure that they could travel safely.

● Support female entrepreneurs by increasing their access to finance. Women often face more restrictive collateral requirements, shorter maturity of loans, and higher interest rates than men (see “Banking on the Future of Women” in this issue of F&D). Initiatives such as Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Programme and Chile’s simplified deposit accounts have helped close the gender gap in borrowing rates.

● Promote equal rights for women. Measures include addressing laws governing inheritance and property rights. Malawi, Namibia, and Peru revised their legal frameworks to reduce gender discrimination; in the decade that followed, female labor force participation rates increased substantially in all three countries.

Advanced economies should

● Push for greater parity between maternity and paternity leave. In Sweden, this has helped mothers return to work more rapidly and has shifted underlying gender norms about parenting.

● Promote access to affordable, high-quality childcare. An example is Japan, which expanded childcare leave benefits from 50 percent to 67 percent of salary. Research shows that cutting the cost of childcare by half could increase the number of young mothers in the labor market by 10 percent.

There is also considerable evidence that women are more responsive to specific tax policies than men. These include policies that do not penalize the secondary earner, who is still most likely to be female, by replacing family taxation with individual taxation, as Canada, Italy, and Sweden have done.

Tax relief measures for low-income families have also been found to increase employment rates for women. The reason: tax relief reduces the tax burden and increases after-tax earnings for women, thus increasing the incentive for women to join, or remain in, the labor force.

Examples include the earned income tax credit in the United States and a combination of tax credits and transfers in Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Second, policies to provide women with the right skills and to empower women in the workplace: Gender parity in investments in education and health are necessary to ensure that women can obtain quality jobs.

In India, for instance, IMF research suggests that female labor force participation would rise by 2 percentage points if Indian states increased education spending by 1 percent of GDP. Building skills early would also provide the most important safeguard against displacement by technology and allow women to benefit from new work opportunities.

For those already in the workforce, fiscal instruments such as tax deductions for training in the Netherlands and portable individual learning accounts in France can remove barriers to lifelong learning. Countries could also consider subsidizing training by private companies via dedicated payroll taxes and public grants.

Concerted efforts are needed to provide women with more opportunities to rise into managerial and leadership roles by setting relevant recruitment and retention targets for organizations, setting promotion quotas as was done in Norway, and creating mentorship and training programs.

Large gender gaps persist in access to the digital technology that creates new job opportunities: 60 percent of the global population, mostly women in emerging market and developing economies, still have no access to the internet; 250 million fewer women are online than men.

Public and private investment will be essential to support technological adoption and close digital gender gaps. Finland’s approach to ensuring universal access to broadband connectivity, digital education for all, and digital access to business and government services is a good example of a comprehensive approach to closing the gender digital divide.

Third, easing transitions for displaced workers: Given that female workers face a particularly high risk of being displaced through automation, it will be essential to ensure equal support for displaced men and women through labor market policies to improve skills, connect workers with jobs, and promote job creation.

Social protection systems will also need to adapt to more flexible forms of work, such as telework. To address deteriorating income security associated with rapid technological change, some advanced economies may consider expanding noncontributory pensions and adopting basic income guarantees.

Recent decades have seen considerable progress in leveling the playing field for economic opportunities, but much more work remains to be done. The good news is that countries across the globe have embraced the imperative for gender equality.

Policymakers, governments, and corporations now recognize the benefits for economic growth and development of giving women equal opportunities, and they are seeking to improve their policies and practices in this area.

The IMF is committed to working with other international organizations, governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector to reduce barriers to gender equality by providing policy advice and analysis.

The post Closing the Gender Gap: The Economic Benefits of Bringing more Women into the Labour Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Era Dabla-Norris is a division chief in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, and Kalpana Kochhar is director of the IMF’s Human Resources Department.

The post Closing the Gender Gap: The Economic Benefits of Bringing more Women into the Labour Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has vowed to eradicate extreme hunger and malnutrition on a self-imposed deadline of 2030.

But it is facing a harsh realty where human-induced climate change – including flash floods, droughts, heatwaves, typhoons and landslides– is increasingly threatening agriculture, which also provides livelihoods for over 40 per cent of the global population.

In an interview with IPS, Dr. Hans R. Herren, President of the Washington-based Millennium Institute, said while agriculture remains the single largest employer on a global scale, it is even more so “when we talk about the entire food system– from production to consumption.”

It is worth to note, he pointed out, that the people employed along the food value chain, are the least well paid, with farmers, and many in the food preparation industry, among the least paid and poorest members of society.

Dr. Hans R. Herren – President Millennium Institute

“How is this possible, given that without food, there is no life?”, he asked.

“We do have a structural problem in agriculture, with a number of blockages (see report of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food System (IPES) titled “From Uniformity to Diversity “ 2016) which hamper the transformation in the food system and would allow for more equity as well a better food quality, accessibility, in all regions of the world.”

This is important given that climate change is a major challenge to agricultural production, in all parts of the world, with increasing impact in already food-challenged areas in many sub-tropical and tropical areas of the world, said Dr Herren, who is also President and Founder of the Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development.

The United Nations admits that significant changes are needed in the global food and agriculture system if we are to nourish the hungry.

“In our world of plenty”, says UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “one person in 9 does not have enough to eat while about 820 million people still suffer from hunger”.

Speaking at the Fourth Environment Assembly in Nairobi March 14, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said the newest 5G technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) “can help build smarter agricultural systems, energy efficient buildings, more connected energy grids and give us real time information to better respond to climate-induced natural disasters.”

But how close, or how far away, are we from this goal?

“Real-time information about weather patterns increases crop productivity, improving both food yields and economic security.”

The opportunities that these new technologies will create for climate action are immense, she said, pointing out that they do come with potential risks.

“5G is projected to use twice as much energy as we consume for today’s digital networks. This is concerning for a world that needs to lower emissions – not grow them.”

But governments must ask digital and internet companies to power their new infrastructure and data centers with clean energy and cool the centers with waste water, she said.

The new technology reality will require us to plan ahead – and invest differently, she added.

Asked if the UN’s much-publicized Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which calls for the eradication of extreme hunger and malnutrition by 2030, is realistic, Dr Herren said: ““Yes, Goal number 2 is achievable within the 2030 time period given for the SDGs.”

“However, (it will) not, if one continues to invest in short term projects, that may boost production in the short term, but jeopardies it in the medium and long term, by destroying soils, loosing biodiversity and ruining farmers with dependencies on external inputs and government subsidies.”

He said there is enough food to nourish the world population by 2050, projected at some 9.0 billion people.

“Today we do produce already enough for such a population, and the problem is less the quantity than the access. We overproduce and waste lots of food in the developed world, while in the countries in transition, farmers are being neglected,” said Dr Herren,

He said it has been easier for their governments to import subsidized, cheap food from overseas rather than help the local farmers produce the needed food.

“I have 30 years of experience in Africa, and know that farmers there can produce sufficient affordable and quality food for all. This with some R&D (research & development) support, market access and also more investments in infrastructure along the food value chain”.

With these investments, he noted, one would also create quality jobs, raise income levels and support economic, social development.

With the right agricultural practices, such as agroecology– not the green revolution approach that is still promoted by the Gates Foundation, USAID, the World Bank and other development agencies– one would promote the change needed to make agriculture the engine of growth, the solution, not the problem when it comes to climate change, and support good health and prosperity for the people in countries in transition.

“We are not too far off, but still need a dramatic and urgent transformation toward agroecology if we want to have solutions that are truly sustainable and in line with achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG),” said Dr Herren.

He said the UN’s “ Agriculture at a Crossroads” Report, which he co-chaired, suggested a transformation of the conventional and industrial agriculture model towards agroecology, organic, permaculture and other forms of sustainable agriculture, but the blockages mentioned in the IPES report have been standing in the transformation’s way.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The 2018 annual report of the State of Food Security and Nutrition identifies climate change as a key force behind the ongoing rise in global hunger. How much of damage could be inflicted by extreme weather conditions on food and agriculture in the foreseeable future?

Dr HERREN: Climate Change (CC) is the most important threat to food production, and must both be mitigated and adapted to. Agriculture can be a key element in mitigation, by sequestering carbon underground, but this is only possible with organic/agroecology based agriculture.

These forms of agriculture bring resilience into the system, because they are diverse, deal with the soil and in harmony with the local environment. They do not use external inputs based on fossil energy, and so are CC neutral in the worst case, and CC positive at their best, when practiced with all the science that has been developed already to support them.

To ignore CC and the impact on agricultural production, by continuing the promotion of the green revolution model, with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and GMOs is criminal, this knowing that alternatives exist and are feasible at all.

IPS: Has there been enough investments in infrastructure and technology to improve agricultural productivity – particularly in the developing world, and more so in Africa? If not, why is this lacking?

Dr HERREN: No, there is a lack of R&D investments by governments, same story in the, so called, developed world actually. We need to reinvent the agriculture and food system research and extension infrastructure, which remains mostly stuck in the green revolution paradigm, of solving all problems with chemicals and plant breeding, GMOs today.

Agriculture is very dependent on local ecological factors, so research has also to be done close and with the farmers, a change in the way one does R&D. It is the role of government mostly, with some support from the private sector to assure that good science and without patents is made available to the farmers…not the other way around as is the case now, where development agencies and major foundations are dictating what is good for the farmers.

IPS: In the foreseeable future, there are predictions that food in itself may be treated as a medicine— healthy eating patterns like the Mediterranean diet focusing on nuts, fruits, olive oil and vegetables—to fight diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Is this feasible in a distant future?

Dr HERREN: What is needed is a healthy production system, which produces healthy food, residue free and rich in nutrients. This food can only come from organic and agroecologically produced food. Most of the food produced via green revolution methods, that include all the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for crops, feed and fibers, growth hormones and antibiotic in animal production are unhealthy, lead to cancer and chronic diseases that are burdening already bankrupt governments around the world, with health care costs totally out of control.

Therefore, and also because on the health of the planet, a change in the food system is urgently needed. The change can be done, we can produce enough quality food everywhere on the planet to satisfy everyone’s needs (but not greed, as Mahatma Gandhi so rightfully said).

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Climate Change: a Threat to Agriculture & UN’s Goal to Eradicate Hunger appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Modern slavery and human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries and one of the biggest human rights crises today, United Nations and government officials said.

During an event as part of the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), government officials, UN human rights experts, and civil society representatives came together to discuss the staggering trends in human trafficking as well as steps forward in the fight against modern slavery.

“Given that slavery was officially abolished in the 19th century and pretty much every country in the world has outlawed it, the trends are really alarming,” Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the UN Christian Wenaweser told IPS.

“Modern slavery is one of the defining human rights crisis of our time… it is very much an international and transnational phenomenon so we can do this together. We have to tackle it together,” he added.

An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 71 percent of victims of modern slavery are female.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that out of the detected trafficking victims, 49 percent are women and 23 percent are girls.

The vast majority of victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while others are exploited for forced labor and forced marriage.

“The gender dimensions of the practice cannot be ignored. Modern slavery and human trafficking constitutes gender-based violence against women and girls… gender inequality is a both a cause and a consequence of this phenomenon,” said Australia’s Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer.

Panelists also noted that women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitations in situations of armed conflict.

Nadia Murad, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is UNODC’s Goodwill Ambassador, was among thousands of Yazidi women who were kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS).

Many are forced to be sex slaves, and reports found that IS even uses social media sites such as Facebook to sell Yazidi women as sex slaves.

While Murad was able to escape, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has also kidnapped women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. A report by the Henry Jackson Society found that Boko Haram members would impregnate women in order to produce the “next generation of fighters.”

“Boko Haram’s fighters do not capture people, their standard procedure was to kill the men and treat the women and children as booty to be bargained over and sold for profit,” said Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.

“These examples show that trafficking and sexual violence, including sexual slavery, are not just incidental but systematic, institutionalised and strategic,” she added.

However, new international initiatives are underway to fight modern slavery and human trafficking including some by the financial sector.

“That which we walk by, we endorse. I think that’s really critical for all of us, especially in the financial sector itself that while we may not actively participate in trafficking, if we walk by or turn a blind eye…then in a sense we are endorsing it,” said the Commissioner of the Financial Sector Commission against Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Frederick Reynolds.

Ambassador Wenaweser also highlighted the role of the financial sector, stating: “Modern slavery is essentially the economic exploitation of people. You make people into a commodity and you make a lot of money, so the role of the financial institutions is really key.”

Globally, modern slavery generates 150 billion dollars annually.

In fact, one of the major drivers behind sexual trafficking is revenue.

According to the Henry Jackson Society, IS alone generated up to 30 million dollars in 2016 through abductions. As the group struggles to finance its operations due to the decrease in revenues from other sources such as oil sales and taxation, modern slavery may increase.

The Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking hopes to combat this illicit industry.

Also known as the Liechtenstein Initiative, the Commission is a public-private partnership that brings together leaders from the financial sector, civil society, as well as survivors to find innovative ways to end modern slavery including through anti-trafficking compliance and responsible investment.

“We have chosen this because we are a financial center…and we wanted to put the expertise of our financial centre to a positive and constructive use,” Ambassador Wenaweser told IPS.

In September 2019, the initiative will provide a roadmap with actionable steps and concrete tools for the financial sector.

While the financial sector alone cannot solve the complex issue, Reynolds noted that they are a key part of the solution and highlighted crucial actions such as the increased exchange of information between the financial sector and law enforcement.

Patten pointed to the need to address root causes of human trafficking including gender discrimination as well as the importance of a survivor-centred approach.

“[Survivors’] testimonies can inform and strengthen our responses to improve prevention…Women and girls cannot be reduced to currency in the political economy of armed conflict and terrorism. They cannot be bartered, traded, trafficked..because their sexual and reproductive rights are non negotiable,” she said.

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• Slavery is Not a Thing of the Past, It Still Exists Today Affecting Millions

The post Fighting the World’s Largest Criminal Industry: Modern Slavery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post Fighting the World’s Largest Criminal Industry: Modern Slavery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Climate change and a lack of care for the environment could have devastating consequences for Saint Lucia’s healthy ecosystems and rich biodiversity. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Alison Kentish
CASTRIES, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

In 2015, the Caribbean was “the region that could” on the climate change scene. Countries rallied under the ‘1.5 to Stay Alive’ banner, in the face of an existential threat. The now former Sustainable Development Minister of Saint Lucia Dr. James Fletcher emerged as a climate change champion at the time. But now, three years on, the scientist is giving regional climate action a C- in an assessment.
“We had tremendous momentum going into Paris. We had everyone engaged; journalists, civil society, the Caribbean Youth Environment Network and artistes. Now, it’s as if having achieved the Paris agreement, we patted ourselves on our shoulders, said job well done and dropped some of the enthusiasm,” he told IPS.
Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What are your thoughts on developments since leading a team of negotiators to the Paris Talks?

Dr. James Fletcher (JF): We have excellent Caribbean negotiators and they continue to ensure that we preserve the things we fought so hard for, such as loss and damage in the agreement and the 1.5.
Last year, the tabling of the special 1.5 report was an important development but we did not seem to have much success in getting the COP to formally recognise the report. The language spoke about ‘noting’ rather than ‘embracing and endorsing’ the recommendations. That was disappointing.
The biggest disappointment, however, is the disengagement of the political apparatus. Going into Paris, we had the engagement of the Caribbean’s political apparatus.

We had the CARICOM chairman, who at the time was Prime Minister of Barbados Freundel Stuart. CARICOM Secretary General Irwin LaRocque was present and so was the former Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Dr. Kenny Anthony, who had responsibility for climate change. We had leaders who were engaged, stayed with us, helped to develop momentum in talking to people like Ban Ki Moon, the then Secretary General of the United Nations and former U.S. President Barack Obama, to ensure that we had political support.
That political engagement has stopped, not just at the level of heads of government, but also at the ministerial level. You don’t see that coalition of Caribbean ministers speaking strongly, with one voice, on climate change anymore and we’ve lost as a result.

 

Dr. James Fletcher (second from left), with Jamaican artistes and the Director General of the OECS Commission Dr. Didacus Jules (far right) celebrate the success of the 1.5 to Stay Alive Campaign during the Paris Climate Talks. Courtesy: Dr. James Fletcher

 

IPS: At the highest levels, how can we improve the climate change discussion?

JF: Unfortunately, we’ve changed the narrative to one just on climate finance. When our ministers, prime ministers and Saint Lucia’s prime minister, who has responsibility for climate change, speak, they speak almost exclusively about mobilising climate finance. Finance is extremely important, but not the only thing that we should be agitating for. If we cannot get industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to get us closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it doesn’t matter what level of climate financing we mobilise, we will not be able to stay ahead. We’ll have catastrophic impacts that no amount of money will help mitigate.

IPS: Do you think the realities of the last few hurricane seasons have made people more aware of the realities of climate change?

JF: Absolutely. Caribbean civil society is clued in to climate change. It’s heartening when I walk around and people tell me, ‘Every time we hear about climate change we think of the work that you guys did,’ and ‘This is serious, what are we going to do?’

Hurricanes Maria and Irma brought home climate change in a very real way to Dominica, the British Virgin Islands and other islands. People understand how dramatic and catastrophic climate change can be.
Fishers tell you that the fish catch is not what it used to be. They have to go much further out now to catch the pelagic [fish] that they were used to catching and are not getting the catches that they used to. In many different ways and sectors, people are experiencing climate change.

IPS: You are assisting Dominica to build climate resilience. How important is a body like the Climate Resilience Execution Agency of Dominica (CREAD)?

JF: The prime minister, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria made a bold statement that he would make Dominica the first climate-resilient country in the world. CREAD is the vehicle to get that done.
I was asked to stay on to develop the Dominica Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan, which is the overarching plan out of which CREAD’s work plan flows. It’s the blueprint for how Dominica will become climate resilient. It’s based on three pillars; prudent disaster risk management, building resilient systems and effective disaster response and recovery, understanding that Dominica, like other Caribbean islands, will be impacted by hurricanes. With climate change, warmer oceans, warmer temperatures, you will have more severe hurricanes. At some point, every one of us will be in a position where we will have to recover from a hurricane or major storm.

IPS: Caribbean countries are pushing renewable energy programmes. Are you happy with what you are seeing?

JF: I think we could have done more, particularly in Saint Lucia. We should have had a 12 megawatt (MW) wind farm. We dropped the ball and, unfortunately, when the government tried to pick up that ball, the investor died in a tragic plane accident. I’ve been informed that the government, along with the Saint Lucia Electricity Services (LUCELEC), is trying to reactivate those discussions with another partner.

The commissioning of a 3.2 MW solar farm by LUCELEC is a step in the right direction. LUCELEC is hoping to build more utility-scale solar photovoltaic facilities with battery storage. The price of solar is going down and hopefully the price of battery storage will also go down.

The window for geothermal is closing. The cheaper solar and battery storage get, the more unattractive geothermal will become, because geothermal is a risky proposition. ….Dominica has made some serious inroads there, as has St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We’re a bit behind the curve, but hopefully Saint Lucia can get some test wells drilled and see what potential there is.

IPS: Is there any project that you would like to see undertaken?

JF: We planned on replacing 21,000 high pressure sodium street lights that cost the government around 11 million dollars annually, with LED lights…..we had a project with the Caribbean Development bank through blended financing…..we would be able to reduce the spend on electricity from streetlights to five million dollars. That project, for some reason, the government decided not to pursue, to the chagrin of the CDB because they were going to use Saint Lucia as a pilot.

The second one involves energy legislation. We’ve done quite a bit of work as we have an Electricity Supply Act that basically gives LUCELEC a monopoly for the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. That makes it impossible for any independent power producer to come in and get involved in the generation of electricity from renewable sources…… for some reason this has stalled. I really would like to see that legislation come into parliament this year.

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• The Caribbean Reiterates “1.5 Degrees Celsius to Stay Alive”
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Women are responsible for providing water for their families. Many spend hours travelling to the wells and back home every day, carrying heavy clay pots on their heads. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Monika Weber-Fahr
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

I am drafting this on International Women’s Day – March 8 – with an eye towards World Water Day on March 22. On International Women’s Day we celebrate progress in gender equality. At the same time, we recognize how much remains to be done: how many women remain excluded from decision-making across many professions. Changing this is urgent. Water – clean and accessible – is getting scarcer at an alarming rate. While working to change this, we cannot afford to exclude women.

The water community has made political statements on gender equality, going back to 1992 when the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development included Principle #3, affirming that “Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.” Was this merely lip service? A developing world woman carry a jug of water on her head remains a stubborn image of women and water. To be sure, this image points to a daily tragedy: the fact that hundreds of millions of people do not have a convenient source of water, and that women and girls spend hours each day collecting water, losing productive time and opportunities, and living in fear for their safety. Like others, Global Water Partnership (GWP) commends the people and organisations that provide infrastructure to bring clean water nearer to communities.

Working to ensure access to safe water and sanitation is a challenge that goes beyond infrastructure. Water needs to be managed. And only inclusive water management, as GWP’s Gender Action Piece points out, has the potential to reduce inequalities, uphold human rights, and improve sustainability. “If segments of the population are excluded, projects are likely to fail. Why? Without considering the diverse needs and practices of a community, it is unlikely that results will be sustainable, and deliver the human development and economic outcomes intended.”

It’s kind of simple, but not often applied: “Nothing about them without them” as we say in the Gender Action Piece. Easy to remember.

The principle applies to all water management. Getting our water resources back in shape is a huge task – rivers and aquifers need attention so they can provide the water we need to grow the crops that will feed our growing population, the water we need for growing cities, the water we need for growing industries. We cannot afford to exclude anyone who uses water or who has a solution: the poor, youth, indigenous peoples – any minority may hold a key to the future of water.

Today’s World Water Day theme is “Leaving no one behind,” a theme designated by our close partners at UN-Water. Today, says UN-Water, “billions of people are still living without safe water – their households, schools, workplaces, farms and factories struggling to survive and thrive. Marginalized groups – women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others – are often overlooked, and sometimes face discrimination, as they try to access and manage the safe water they need.”

“Leaving no one behind” is the central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. That agenda includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which – Number 6 – is about water. Part of that goal zeros in on work that has been piloted by GWP and its thousands of member organizations: integrating water resources management across all people and organizations that have a stake in water. The genius of this approach is that it has always been about inclusion.

So how does one practice “integrated” water resources management? Again, kind of simple: to achieve efficient, equitable, and sustainable water management, all stakeholders must have genuine opportunities to actively participate in water management decisions. Only then can decisions be taken that reflect how we all value water – reflecting its social value, its economic value, and its environmental value. In fact, it is interesting to watch how decisions change once we grasp the true value of water – which happens when those sitting at the table represent the full, rich, spectrum of society. GWP sees this whenever our Country Water Partnerships convene stakeholders to debate such decisions.

GWP was recently evaluated for how we do our work. I was glad to see that the evaluation found our network to be of “unique breadth and depth” – providing us, the evaluators said, with singular “legitimacy and reputation.” How? By working as a ‘neutral’ convener of stakeholders, as a convener who speaks “nothing about them without them.”

There are only 12 years to go when all the SDGs should be achieved by 2030. That’s a huge challenge, requiring a massive transformation to the way we run our planet. There are many unsung heroes and heroines whose hard work, grit, and determination create a safe space for people to come together to build common ground for water management decisions, working with everyone, everywhere. Want to join us at the table?

Excerpt:

Monika Weber-Fahr, is Executive Secretary of Global Water Partnership

By Yash Bhandari
WISCONSIN, USA, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

The U.N.’s World Water day is fast approaching as the state of the world’s consumable water supply remains dismal. Billions of people face at least the very real risk of scarcity, if they’re not facing scarcity already; and about a third of the world’s groundwater systems are in danger of becoming depleted.

With the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017, things are looking grimmer still. Several state governors, Republicans and Democrats both, and Puerto Rico have even ignored the federal withdrawal and pledged to uphold the agreement on a state level. So far, seventeen U.S. states have committed to upholding it. You can learn more about the U.S. Climate Alliance here.

Furthermore, in October of 2018, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report claiming that we have only 12 years to keep global temperatures to about 1.5C—if there is even a half a degree increase, it would likely exacerbate floods, droughts, extreme heat, and poverty, all of which will affect millions of people all around the world. The Paris Agreement, in theory, would prevent this from happening.

But Dr. Isaac Hankes—a meteorologist and a Weather Research Analyst at Refinitiv—has a different view. He claims that “the Paris climate agreement is as political as it is scientific, and even if fully embraced will not offset much more than about 0.1°C of warming.

This underscores the importance of personal action by anyone concerned about the effects of warming to make a difference by making energy-saving decisions. Such opportunity now exists in nearly all facets of a home, and actions as simple as installing LED light bulbs or smart power strips could easily supersede any slower-moving government action in offsetting emissions-based warming.”

This points to the necessity for individual action in the face of institutional opposition as well as institutional inefficacy. The problem is that in order for there to be individual action, there must be an impetus; in order for there to be an impetus, there must be, at base, awareness.

A recent survey conducted by Rockay—an eco-conscious manufacturer of running apparel—reveals that awareness is exactly what more than half of Americans lack on the issue of climate change. Conducted online via 3GEM RESEARCH & INSIGHTS, the survey polled 1500 American adults, ranging from ages 18 to 55+. The findings were surprising.

For example, when the responders were asked if global warming will have deleterious effects in their own lifetime, the results were split. 34% answered they did indeed believe that there will be a global-warming-induced impact in their own lifetime; about the same percentage answered the opposite, with 7% claiming that global warming was a “hoax” outright.

Additionally, 32% seemed to be more ambivalent about the issue, answering “kind of,” pointing to an acknowledgment of a fundamental lack of awareness.

This same lack of awareness manifests itself in what is perhaps a more pernicious way. When asked the question, “Are you aware of the Paris Agreement and what it entails?” a whopping 56% of respondents answered “no.” Remember, the Paris Agreement is designed to, in theory, mitigate or even prevent entirely floods and droughts and extreme heat that are set to upend the lives of millions of people worldwide.

Remember too, that politically, the Agreement is a hot topic, creating rifts between politicians, government agencies, and even among nations on how to proceed.

Given this, it’s probably fair to say that climate change, and perhaps even foreign affairs, just isn’t on the mind of most Americans. At least not in any potent sort of way.

In fact, when the respondents were asked about how often they actually spoke about global warming with their friends and family—effectively gauging their level of concern—a tepid 14% said they “often” do. By contrast, 50% responded that they “rarely” or “never” do.

The significance of these findings is potentiated by two assumptions.

The first is that the Paris Agreement alone may not be as effective as would be ideal. The second is that the true solution lies in effectuating a change in the habits of individuals, rather than of entities.

Rockay’s survey indicates that actually succeeding in effectuating this habitual change in individuals is difficult due in part to the fact that these individuals generally have no awareness that there is actually a problem to solve, and thus they have no impetus to change.

To combat this, Rockay urges people to start small, with something easy that has potential to not just combat climate change, but water wastage as well: laundry. You can read more about the why and how here.

The hope is to raise awareness of the facts and trust that the collective consciousness will evolve to reflect them. Because only then would the earth and its inhabitants stand a chance.

Excerpt:

Yash Bhandari is research editor at Rockay, a clothing manufacturer that focuses on the exclusive use of eco-friendly and recyclable materials

Masood Ahmed is President of the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD) & former Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management, at the World Bank

By Masood Ahmed
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

All incoming World Bank presidents bring a public record of their views about the bank and about development more generally. David Malpass, who is on track to become the bank’s next president, has not been shy in criticizing the role and management of the institution he now plans to lead.

The commentary on his nomination has detailed how his vision of the World Bank’s role and his reservations about multilateral solutions to global development challenges are at odds with the views of the bank’s shareholders and staff and—most importantly—with the needs of its clients, developing countries.

Past statements need not predetermine the direction of the Malpass presidency. Through his initial pronouncements and actions, Mr. Malpass can demonstrate that he is now the leader and guardian of an organization of 189 member countries acting together to achieve shared goals and promote common interests.

A good starting point would be for Mr. Malpass to acknowledge that the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement provide a framework for action that most of the bank’s members have endorsed.

Recognizing the value added by multilateral, regional, and national development finance institutions acting as a system, not just in their own narrow interests, would also be an important step.

Here are the seven priorities for the World Bank that Mr. Malpass should consider endorsing in his initial statements and actions:

1. Support Africa’s development and integration into the world economy.

The central development challenge for the next two decades will be to help low-income Africa deal with its demographic, environmental, and developmental challenges. The success or failure of this endeavor will determine the future of the 2.5 billion people who will inhabit the continent by 2050—with major spillovers for every other region in an increasingly interconnected world.

The World Bank is already the largest multilateral financier of Africa’s development, but it can play an even stronger role to facilitate a more coherent approach by Africa’s other large development partners—including the European Union and China. In doing so, it needs to promote and finance country platforms for joined up development support and recognize that much of this development will come from private sector initiative.

2. Target the people left behind.

Development progress is always uneven. Even as countries move up to middle-income status, women, minorities, and disadvantaged regions disproportionately suffer from disease that is simple to prevent; struggle with basic numeracy and literacy, which is simple to teach; and lack human security that is taken for granted elsewhere.

And the transition from below to just above the poverty line is both fraught with challenges and easily reversed. More broadly, two billion people live in countries where sustainable development outcomes are affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, making delivering on the SDGs an intellectual and operational challenge.

Jim Kim—Mr. Malpass’s immediate predecessor—helpfully pushed the bank further into these spaces and Mr. Malpass would do well to confirm the institution’s continued focus on this agenda.

3. Help middle income developing countries make the right development choices.

Emerging markets and middle-income developing countries will increasingly drive global growth. The sustainability of their new infrastructure will define how livable our planet will be for the next century. Their economic success will provide markets for global exports and jobs around the globe.

The policy and investment decisions they make will impact our collective financial and environmental future. It would be a missed opportunity of historic proportions for the World Bank to watch these developments from the sidelines. It has a critical advisory and financing role in middle-income countries—not least as a catalyst for private finance.

Working with these countries also provides the bank with hands-on knowledge of development progress on the ground—knowledge that is essential for the bank to be a credible intellectual interlocuter for its low-income members.

So, it is important for Mr. Malpass to signal that focusing the bank’s financial support on where it has the most impact is not shorthand for pulling back from the vibrant partnership it enjoys with middle-income countries.

4. Mainstream work on global public goods.

Any number of knowledgeable observers, including a high-level group convened by the Center of Global Development (CGD) and an Eminent Persons Group set up by the G-20, have convincingly articulated why the challenge of development cannot be met without addressing problems—and opportunities—that span across countries in an increasingly interconnected world.

Whether it is preparing for the next pandemic; dealing with climate change; managing the ever-increasing flow of refugees; establishing an international tax regime that limits avoidance through tax havens; or coping with the regulatory and ethical challenges posed by big data, AI, and digital technology; action will need to be coordinated across countries and regions.

The Bank for good reasons, the bank has progressively become a major player in a number of these areas, but it still does this as an add-on to its main business, which continues to be organized around country-by-country lending.

Shareholders have not helped by creating a plethora of special facilities and trust funds that the bank manages on their behalf, which sometimes subvert the very priorities that they set for the institution when they meet in its the board to set strategy.

Mr. Malpass has the opportunity to rationalize the bank’s work on global public goods and to make this a core part of the Bank’s regular operations.

5. Be an active player in the debate on development pathways for the 21st century.

Every retrospective evaluation of the World Bank’s value add emphasizes the intellectual contribution it has made to furthering development thought and practice. That role is even more important given the widespread questioning of so much of what was taken as “good practice” in development cooperation.

Many countries are looking to China as the new model for shaping their own economic development strategy, and, no doubt, there is much to learn from China’s extraordinary journey over the past 50 years.

However, it is the World Bank as a global organization that should provide the home for discussing which of those lessons can be usefully emulated by others. Learning from China should be part of the World Bank’s intellectual agenda—not an alternative to it.

6. Engage actively with the other players who finance development.

Regional development banks are sometimes bigger players in their regions, national development banks are an underestimated force, and private foundations are major actors for driving innovation and a results-focus.

Private finance will be the key for making real the aspiration of ‘billions to trillions’ for development finance. Civil society provides ideas and holds the system accountable. The WB has a special role in making the development finance system be more than the sum of its parts. Mr Malpass needs to approach this task with serious commitment and a degree of humility. The results will be well worth the effort.

7. Don’t move around the boxes!

Every incoming president is tempted to reorganize the bank—partly to make it “their bank” and partly out of a genuine desire to make the machine work better. While no organizational structure is without its shortcomings, the cost of reorganization is often grossly underestimated.

The dust is only just beginning to settle on Jim Kim’s badly implemented and long drawn out reorganization; the last thing that an incoming president should do is embark on another round of moving boxes around.

Nor is this the moment for a wholesale changing of the guard at the senior leadership level just to show there is a new sheriff in town. The organization will deliver more and better with a bit of stability and continuity, albeit with the nudges that Mr. Malpass will want to give to align it better with his own vision.

The World Bank’s role as a multilateral development organization cannot be completely insulated from tensions among its major shareholders. Mr. Malpass comes from an administration that sees the World Bank as an instrument in a broader stand-off with China’s growing influence.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing him will be to demonstrate that he has now moved to lead a multilateral organization that can be a “zone of mutual interest” where, with the cooperation and trust of all shareholders, he can advance global development goals that are in the interest of all.

Excerpt:

Masood Ahmed is President of the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD) & former Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management, at the World Bank

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

EU Parliament elections take place every fifth year and votes have steadily been decreasing. In the last 2014 election, the overall turnout was 42.54 percent of those entitled to vote, in some nations it was just around fifteen percent. Nevertheless, results will not only be eagerly awaited by pro- and anti-EU activists, but also by ideologist from non-member countries. Particularily vociferous among such people are Steve Bannon, who wants to “Make America Great Again” and Aleksandr Dugin who wants to “Make Russia Great Again”.

Bannon, former Chief Strategist in the Trump administration, has identified “EU globalism” as his main enemy, “if I drive the stake through the vampire, the whole thing will start to dissipate.” To that end he has in Brussels founded The Movement to support right-wing populist groups opposing the EU. However, the initiative has so far not been particularily successful. It is hard to unite nationalistic secessionists. Marine Le Pen´s right-wing party Rassemblement national constitutes the biggest section of Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), a EU parliamentary group comprising far-right parties from across Europe. In spite of agreeing with most of Bannon´s ideas Le Pen does not want his support: “He is an American, not European and can thus not play a leading role in a nationalist drive to save the real Europe.” She would probably state that neither can a Russian like Aleksandr Dugin.

Describing himself as the only “ideologue” Donald Trump listens to, Bannon might nevertheless be a useful ally for European far-right wingers. He has his tentacles all over the world and did for example tell Brexiter Nigel Farage: “You’re going to have to fight to take your country back, every day. Whether it’s Italy, France, England, or the United States. If we quit, they [the Liberals] are going to be in control.””

Even if he has been called Putin´s Rasputin, Dugin has probably not the same hold on his President as Bannon has on Trump. Yet, after criticizing him for “ignoring ideas and history”, Dugin later became convinced that Putin had improved and now declares that the President´s later speeches are inspired by Dugin´s ideology and he hails Putin as an incarnated tsar:

There are no longer any opponents to Putin’s line and if they exist, they are mentally ill and should be clinically examined. Putin is everywhere. Putin is everything. Putin is absolute. Putin is irreplaceable.

Bannon might agree, since he repeatedly has acclaimed Putin´s intelligence and pointed out that the Russian President shares his views of traditionalism and nationalism: “Putin is very, very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States where he strongly reaches out to social conservatives with his message about more traditional values.” Bannon would probably also agree with Dugin when the Russian “philosopher” exposes opinions like:

The so-called ideology of human rights inherently refuses to recognize any kind of collective identity, including that of nationality and citizenship. Hence, we see provoked and uncontrolled migration, refugees, European self-hatred. The EU will necessarily continue the same politics of immigration, promoting transgenderism, transhumanism, postmodernity, and so on. If Trump would become the real Trump and not a puppet, America could play a positive role, though currently it is not Trump’s America, but rather an aggressive neocolonialist and interventionist country. Trump has been hijacked by neocons and fanatical groups who are trying to start a global war.

Is an ideologue like Dugin really capable of influencing European politics? Maybe. Recently, the Italian weekly L´Espresso provided an example of Russian alleged covert support to a nationalistic party.1 By following tracks left by the Russian oligarch Igor Rotenberg, who had avoided paying off huge Italian debts, L´Espresso unveiled a complicated pattern of suspicious bank accounts in tax havens and well-known banks. Igor is the son of Putin´s close friend and judo instructor Arkady Rotenberg. Arkady and his brother Boris gained billions of rubles through lucrative state contracts; like a new highway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, huge building projects in Sochi, a bridge between Kertj on Crimea and Krasnodar Kraj, which with its 18 kilometres is Europe´s longest. The Rotenberg brothers also invest in real estate abroad. Due to their economic support to the war in Ukraine they were blacklisted by the US and the EU. Like many other oligarchs they have found various means to circumscribe the sanctions, one is covert support to European populist parties.2

The Rotenberg family has interests in Gazprom, Russia´s biggest, mainly state-owned company, though it is also supported by oligarchs close to Putin, among whom we find Konstantin Malofeev. He is not only a wealthy man providing economic support to the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass, he has a life mission as well – fighting “moral disintegration” in the form of atheism, liberalism, feminism, abortion, immigration and homosexuality. Malofeev supports several European fringe groups, as well as established xenophobic political parties.

In July 2018, Italy’s Supreme Court ordered the nationalist party Lega Nord to repay 49 million euros misappropriated from the Italian State, while freezing 1.5 million euros deposited in Lega Nord’s bank accounts. The ruling might be withdrawn and the party assets released if Lega Nord begins to repay the embezzled funds. According to L´Espresso Matteo Salvini, leader of Lega Nord, as well as Italy´s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior has with Konstantin Malofeev worked out a scheme meaning that Lega Nord will receive a four percent commission from the sale of 3 million tons of diesel administered by Malofeev´s Avangrad Oil & Gas.

Aleksandr Dugin is assumed to have played an important part in the deal. His influential foundation Edinenie, Unity, is headquartered at the same address as Konstantin Malofeev’s company. Dugin is a frequent visitor to Italy and serves as a contact with Malofeev. His involvement is more ideologically than financially motivated. He considers Italian culture to be opposed to “detrimental influences” from the US and has declared that “Italy will be at the forefront of a great populist revolution that will change the world.” What Dugin probably refers to is Lega Nord`s “achievements”, like turning away immigrants and asylum seekers. He also appreciates that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte from the beginning of his term has promoted a foreign policy characterized by an increasing rapprochement of Italy with Russia. He has advocated termination of international sanctions, which according to him is damaging to Italian economy and has offered Russia a strategic partnership in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

Bannon is also a great friend of Italy and as a conservative Catholic he would probably agree with Dugin´s declaration that:

We nationalists want a strong, stable state. We want order and healthy families, positive values and a strengthening of the influence of religion and the Church.

However, Bannon´s piousness and earnest belief in “family values” might be questioned. He has been married and divorced three times and his ex-wives have accused him of misdemeanour, domestic violence and battery. Bannon considers Pope Francis’s influence as detrimental to the “true” Catholic Church and has in Italy joined ranks with ultra-conservative Catholics who actively oppose Pope Francis, among others Istituto Dignitatis Humanae, a faction that within the Catholic establishment attempts to undermine the Pope’s position with the hope that he will resign.

Whatever we may think of Dugin´s and Bannon´s influence over the leaders of their respective nations and their nutty ideas, based on ultra-nationalistic nativism, fascist ideologies, Oriental mysticism and conspiracy theories, it cannot be denied that they in Europe, Russia and the US are influencing nationalist and xenophobic movements. An effort to counteract these dangerous notions would be to vote in the upcoming EU Parliament elections.

1 L´Espresso No. 9, anno LXV, 24 febbraio.
2 In 2018, Forbes Magazine estimated Arkady Rotenberg´s personal wealth to 2,7 billion USD.

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.

Excerpt:

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”
                                                       Polonius in Hamlet