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Takahiro Nanri (left - black jacket), Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation, joins hands with a leprosy survivor (right). Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for almost five decades. Since 2014, Nanri has been leading the foundation’s leprosy projects across the world and has deep insights into the challenges faced by the people affected by leprosy as well as the organisations that work with them.

He also shares the dream of Yohei Sasakawa – the chairman of Nippon Foundation – to see a leprosy-free world and believes that despite several challenges and roadblocks, this dream is indeed possible to realise.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Nanri talks about the idea behind the regional assembly of leprosy-affected people in Asia that was held in Manila.

He also tells how people who are affected by leprosy  are treated as social outcasts and why they must be integrated with the rest of the society. Finally, Nanri shares his views on how and why leprosy-affected people’s organisations should become sustainable.  Excerpts of the interview follow:

Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for five decades. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): Is there a reason behind Mr Sasakawa’s personal interest in leprosy? Why has the foundation continued even when it is not a big global threat anymore?

Takahiro Nanri (TN): As far as I know it was in the 1960s [when the Sasakawa family] visited leprosariums in some countries like Korea, South Korea, Nepal and at that time there was no Multidrug Therapy ( MDT) and the situation in the sanatoriums was very severe. So they had decided to fight against leprosy and launched the leprosy elimination programme and even established the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation.

I am very proud of the fact that this foundation has continued to work on the same issue for 50 years because, although compared to other diseases, this may have decreased, but there is still no end to leprosy.

IPS: How long have you been working on leprosy and what has been your biggest observation?

TN: I have been working on leprosy since 2014. But I have been working on poverty issues for the past 25 years. People affected by leprosy are really poor. So, working for leprosy is in a way working on poverty too.
Several years ago, there was the concept of the bottom of the pyramid; and we talked of the people living at the bottom of the pyramid and how to uplift them. We talked of using microfinance, social business approach etc. But I have realised that the people living with leprosy are actually living outside of the pyramid. That is why I feel integration is very, very important.

IPS: How did you come up with the idea of the Regional Assembly of Organisations of Leprosy- Affected People in Asia?

TN: Last September, we had a small meeting. We invited and had a discussion with some of the people’s organisations from India, Indonesia, Brazil and Ethiopia on what could be done. This September, there will be the World Congress on Leprosy where there will be academics, experts, governments. The congress is a crucial event but often organisations of the affected people are left behind. So, we came up with the idea of organising a pre-congress event where the affected people’s organisations so that it can also be a way for preparing themselves for the congress.

IPS: Why is sustainability still such a big issue for organisations of leprosy–affected people?

TN: Sustainability is not only an issue of leprosy affected people, but also for all the NGOs of the world. I don’t really have an answer here. It depends on each organisation, each leader. Every NGO, every organisation has to find its own way and its own strategy to sustain itself. Should they approach foundations, survive on external grants, seek membership fees, donations , do social business—it’s up to them. As foundations we can provide financial grant, but not forever. What we can do, however, is think together on what could be the next step.

IPS: There are many hidden cases in the world of leprosy. Can you share an example of a good action by a government that tried to act on this.

TN: In India, the government made a very brave decision. In 2016 they started a campaign to identify the endemic leprosy cases all over the country. And since then, every year, they do case detection camps. It has brought in the open many new cases that were previously hidden. It also resulted in an increase in the number of leprosy cases in the country, but after that it started to decrease as the cases were treated . So, this is an example I feel other governments can also follow.

IPS: How are you feeling now that the assembly has concluded?

TN: My expectation is very simple: this venue is for the people affected by leprosy. They should be able to discuss whatever they want to and decide whatever they want to decide.
Here, we saw is they are trying to be more pro-active, opening up,coming up with some issues, some ideas on how they can strengthen their partnership, soI am happy.

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The post Q&A: Leprosy-affected People Live Not at the Bottom, but Outside the Social Pyramid appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Approximately three billion people around the world depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods as fisheries alone generates over 360 billion dollars to the global economy. However, human activity continues to threaten this crucial landscape including through overfishing. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Over recent years, there have been shocking reports of marine endangerment and plastic pollution. The threats are clear, and now urgent action is needed more than ever.

Marking World Wildlife Day on Mar. 3 with its theme “Life below water”, the United Nations has stressed the need to promote and sustain ocean conservation not simply to protect underwater life, but also societies.

“‘Life below water’ may sound far away from our daily life; a subject best left to scientists and marine biologists; but it is anything but,” said President of the General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa.

“Increasingly we are coming to understand how connected our world is and how much impact our actions are having on the oceans, on the rivers and waterways, and in turn on the wildlife, above and below water, that have come to rely on them,” she added.

Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Ivonne Higuero echoed similar sentiments, stating: “When we think about wildlife, most of us picture elephants, rhinos, and tigers…but we should not forget about life below water and the important contribution they make to sustainable development, as enshrined in Goal 14 of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.”

The oceans and its critters have been among the foundations of human societies. Approximately three billion people around the world depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods as fisheries alone generates over 360 billion dollars to the global economy.

More than that, oceans help regulate the climate, producing 50 percent of the world’s oxygen and absorbing 30 percent of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Yet, human activity continues to threaten this crucial landscape including through overfishing.

According to the U.N., around 30 percent of fish stocks are overexploited, often at unsustainable levels. While some policies are in place to reduce overfishing, illegal fishing is still commonplace.

Illegal and unregulated fishing constitutes an estimated 12 to 30 percent of fishing worldwide.

For instance, the high prices of caviar has fuelled illegal overfishing and near extinction of species of sturgeon and paddlefish.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed 16 of the 27 species of sturgeon and one of the six species of paddlefish as endangered.

Espinosa particularly pointed to the issue of plastic pollution in oceans which has become a growing concern worldwide.

“Every minute a garbage truck worth of plastic makes its way to the sea. Some of this plastic remains in its original form, while much more is broken down into microplastics that are consumed by fish and other creatures, eventually finding their way into our own food, our own water,” she said.

“This is not the way we treat our home, our planet. This is not the way we maintain a sustainable and healthy ecosystem,” Espinosa added.

An estimated 5 to 12 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean every year and many have ended up on the beaches of the world’s most isolated islands and others in the guts of whales and sea turtles.

Even in the 7-mile deep Mariana Trench, research found all specimens had plastic in their gut.

According to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the oceans could have more plastic than fish by 2050 if current trends continue.

But through the dark clouds, there is a glimmer of hope as civil society organisations, U.N. agencies, and governments band together to protect oceans.

Launched by U.N. Environment (UNEP), the Clean Seas campaign is now the world’s largest global alliance for combating marine plastic pollution with commitments covering over 60 percent of the world’s coastlines.

The 57 countries who have joined the campaign have pledged to cut back on single-use plastics and encourage more recycling.

Already, many governments have taken up the challenge.

In December, Peru decided to phase out single-use plastic bags over the next three years.

In the U.S., cities such as Seattle and Washington, D.C. have implemented a ban on plastic straws and businesses could receive fines if they continue to offer the items.

Though this makes up only a small fraction of the marine plastic pollution issue, such low-hanging fruit seems to be the best place to start.

International non-profit organisation Global Fishing Watch has established an online platform where they record and publish data on the activity of fishing boats, providing a map of hot spots where overfishing might occur and who is responsible.

After recording data on more than 40 million hours of fishing in 2016 alone, they found that just five countries and territories including China, Spain, and Japan account for more than 85 percent of observed fishing.

The Environmental Defence Fund (EDF), on the other hand, has utilised a rights-based management approach, working directly with fishermen who receive a secure “catch share” upon complying to strict limits that allow fish populations to rebuild.

This approach has helped combat the issue of overfishing, which has dropped 60 percent since 2000 in the United States, and provides stable fishing jobs with increased revenue.

For instance, EDF worked with fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico where red snapper stocks were overexploited and continually declined. Scientists determined a sustainable threshold to catch red snapper which was then divided into shares and allocated to the fishermen.

With strict limits as to how much to fish, the red snapper population quickly flourished and by 2013, it was taken off the “avoid” list organised by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Higuero also highlighted the role CITES which regulates international trade in marine species, ensuring it is sustainable and legal.

“Well-managed and sustainable international trade greatly contributes to livelihoods and the conservation of marine species…we are all striving to achieve the same objective of sustainability: for people and planet – where wildlife, be it terrestrial or marine, can thrive in the wild while also benefiting people,” she said.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed to the importance of marine life for current and future societies.

“Marine species provide indispensable ecosystem services…let us raise awareness about the extraordinary diversity of marine life and the crucial importance of marine species to sustainable development.  That way, we can continue to provide these services for future generations,” he said.

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The post Healthy Oceans, Healthy Societies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Many returned migrants in Nigeria are involved in an IOM sponsored initiative aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS   

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Nigeria accounts for some of the largest number of irregular migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa.

Since April 2017, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has assisted over 10,000 stranded migrants in Libya, Niger, Mali and other transit or destination countries to return to Nigeria. 

This is being done under the European Union (EU)-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

Some of the returned migrants have successfully settled down to a new life of business under the EU-IOM initiative. But beyond this, some of them are taking time off their business schedules to volunteer for an IOM-sponsored advocacy programme called Migrants as Messengers, which is aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of embarking on irregular migration.

 

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The post Hope Springs Once Again for Nigeria’s Returnee Migrants appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Art: Jack Forbes

By Editor, CPJ
Mar 4 2019 (IPS-Partners)

South Africa, one of the media freedom beacons in sub-Saharan Africa, will hold national and provincial elections on May 8. As the country celebrates 25 years of democracy, the press in South Africa faces old and new challenges, including physical harassment and cyber bullying. The press freedom environment, including the safety of journalists, will be one of the key indicators for the health of the country’s democracy and the freeness and fairness of its polls.

CPJ’s Emergencies Response Team (ERT) has compiled a Safety Kit for journalists covering South Africa’s election. The kit contains information for editors, reporters, and photojournalists on how to prepare for the election and how to mitigate digital, physical and psychological risk.

Journalists requiring assistance can contact CPJ via emergencies@cpj.org.

CPJ’s Journalist Security Guide has additional information on basic preparedness and assessing and responding to risk. CPJ’s resource center has additional information and tools for pre-assignment preparation and post-incident assistance.

Menu:
Editor’s Safety Checklist
Physical Safety: Covering rallies and protests
Physical Safety: Covering hostile communities
Physical Safety: Covering crime
Digital Safety: Basic device preparedness
Digital Safety: Identifying bots
Digital Safety: Online harassment
Digital Safety: Securing and storing materials
Psychological Safety: Managing trauma in the newsroom
Psychological Safety: Trauma-related stress

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By Leire Gurruchaga Iraola
BARCELONA, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

The data – with its sexism and its gaps – shows us that many of the barriers girls experience are determined merely by their gender.

This inequality, present in all societies, is by far the most widespread bias. At Educo we are determined, like the women and girls we work with, to put a stop to this injustice. And not just on International Women’s Day March 8, but every day.

During the next decade, 14.2 million girls under the age of 18 will be married each year. That’s 39,000 girls every single day. In Mali, where Educo works, 52% of girls are married before they turn 18.

Meanwhile, of the 57 million primary-school-age children out of education, 31 million are girls. In Bolivia, another country where Educo operates, women in urban centres have an average of 10.2 years in school, and in rural areas just 4.9 years.

Overall the most dangerous place for women is considered to be India, due to the high risk of sexual violence and slave labour. Educo has been present in India since 2009 working with some of the most vulnerable – but resilient – members of society, such as Priya Mitra.

Priya was spotted one day loitering in a red-light district in India’s Mumbai by a team from Prerana, a local NGO Educo supports. The seven-year-old had come to Mumbai from West Bengal with her mother, Neelam, after her alcoholic father died suddenly. Vulnerable, broke and in search of work, Neelam was sold into the sex trade.

The team made contact with Neelam through Priya. Three months after this first encounter, Neelam was attending regular life skills workshops for mothers, while Priya was enrolled in an education support program.

The project Priya attended was primarily focused on instilling in the children and mothers from red-light areas the importance of formal education.

The following year, Priya started school where she excelled receiving a scholarship, much to the joy of her mother. “I will support her education as long as she wants to study. I will stay in Mumbai and give her the best education I can,” says Neelam Mitra.

By the age of 11, Priya was an active member – and the youngest – of a children’s collective focused on equal participation and democracy. As well as her activism and volunteering at a local youth centre, Priya is a keen and skilled singer who was one of eight children selected for a cultural exchange program in Canada.

Receiving an education like this is critical for girls but is often overlooked due to deep patriarchal structures. In Mali, where child marriage as a tradition is being challenged, girls are particularly vulnerable to dropping out of school.

This means that despite government efforts to promote gender equity, the education gap between girls and boys remains wide.

In 2015, Educo in Mali set up a scholarship program aimed at primary-school-age girls, while their mothers learnt more about income generation and budgeting for school supplies.

The increase in these mothers’ economic capacity has not only enabled them to cover their daughters’ school costs but has improved their status within the family and community.

So far, over 2000 girls have benefited from this program, of which 95% have remained in primary school and 80% have gone on to secondary school. “The project officers give me a lot of courage because every day they come to my school with advice on how to study at home and how to be diligent in class,” says Fadimata Dramé.

This rural community in central Mali has subsequently changed in many positive ways for the women and girls there. Most notably, there has been a significant decrease in the number of child marriages and none of the girls involved in the scholarship program have been wed early.

Gender discrimination is enough of a hurdle for women and girls but add a disability into this mix of injustice and it is an even more difficult scenario. In Bolivia, 3 out of every hundred people has a disability. But this has not stopped Andrea Cornejo from achieving.

At 9 years old Andrea was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a rare degenerative disease that took away the strength in her muscles. She had to wait until the was sixteen for an operation, which led to her becoming a wheelchair user.

This operation marked the before and after in her life. Aware of the discrimination women and girls faced in Bolivia already, she was now struck with the additional bias against people with disabilities.

It was not only these physical barriers, from schools to public transport not being wheelchair-friendly but also the sheer attitudes of so many people, that led Andrea to become an activist.

“Children and adolescents with disabilities must stop being seen as victims and become protagonists,” she says. In 2015 she was elected as a municipal councilor in Bolivia’s La Paz.

Like for Andrea, Educo’s work is built upon the belief that all children should have the opportunity to fulfill their rights, irrespective of their gender, ability or any other status. But as the data show us, girls and women are severely discriminated against across the world.

Promoting gender equity and the rights of women and girls is not only a question of social justice, but an inherent principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and an essential requisite for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN theme for this International Women’s Day is “Think equal, build smart, innovate for change”. Through Educo’s work, we know that women and girls can and do think equal, build smart and innovate for change as long as they are given the opportunity. Just like Priya, Fadimata and Andrea.

We call for every woman and girl to have the right and the real possibility to decide and to build the future she wants for her body and for her life. We call for a diverse and colourful world in which pink and blue do not impose limits, where no one tells any woman or girl how far she can go today or any day.

* Some names have been changed

The post International Women’s Day: Don’t Let Anyone Tell You How Far You Can Go appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Leire Gurruchaga Iraola is Gender Specialist at Educo, described as a global development and humanitarian action NGO with over 25 years’ experience working to defend children and their rights, and especially the right to an equitable and quality education.

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Thobias Alexander Manas (R), here with his former social worker Kalep Manikari (L), was shunned and driven from his school, home, and village in West Timor when he contracted leprosy as a teenager. Thanks to individual intervention and skills training, Thobias, now age 52, owns a sewing shop and a rice and poultry farm, and is a community leader in the village that once rejected him. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

The tragic tale of Thobias Alexander Manas’s personal experience with leprosy is all too typical.

Manas, who is now 52, is from West Timor, Indonesia, and was afflicted with leprosy as a grade 10 student. The reaction to his illness as soon as he exhibited signs of the disease was predictable. Shunned by his friends and forced to leave school, Manas was eventually driven out of his family’s home by his sisters and exiled from his village. He was eventually reduced to an isolated existence in a shanty he cobbled together from discarded materials, he told IPS through an interpreter.

When his disease became too painful–it had progressed to the point where Manas suffered permanent deformity of his hands–he made his way to a government health clinic where he was finally properly diagnosed and prescribed treatment. Fortunately for Manas, the clinic had a referral arrangement with UK-based Leprosy Mission International, which offered assistance to Manas.

“Thoby had to end his schooling because of his sickness, and so the most important thing was to offer him some kind of skills training,” explained Kalep Manikari, a former field worker for Leprosy Mission International and now a youth minister. Manas received training in tailoring, and was able to return to his village and set up a small shop.

His talent in spite of his disability helped to overcome the stigma he had experienced earlier, and it helped that Manas had been shrewd in his choice of vocation: His village only had one other clothing maker – who has now been his wife for 19 years. “Still, my family was against the marriage, because I had been sick,” Manas tells IPS through his interpreter. “But I said, it’s up to us to manage our lives, so we went off and married without their consent.”

Facing the prospect of losing not just one but both of the only people who could provide well-made clothing in the village, Manas family eventually accepted his marriage and his business thrived; he explained that he had recently diversified into poultry and rice farming, and had been able to send his daughter to college. Is was not without some pride that Manas described how he is now considered “well-off,” and has been transformed from a once-shunned leprosy sufferer to one of his village’s leaders.

Conference attendees at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia held a brainstorming session to develop ways in which their groups could generate sustainable incomes. Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

Practical social entrepreneurship

Skills and livelihood training has always been a key objective of organisations supporting people affected by leprosy, and the three-day conference was filled with success stories much like Manas’s. While this remains a priority strategy, leprosy advocacy groups are shifting more of their focus toward organisation-level social entrepreneurship.

In a workshop session at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia in Manila on Monday afternoon, conference participants discussed various ways their groups could generate revenue through social entrepreneurship.

The approach is as much practical as it is aspirational. A common theme that emerged in the conference’s first day was the challenge faced by organisations in achieving and maintaining financial sustainability. Government and other donor grants are variable, and unavoidably limited. As Dr. Takahiro Nanri, the executive director of the Sasakawa Memorial Health Fund (SMHF), commented, “We are willing to give a great deal of support to these organisations, but whether we wish it or not, sometime it will have to end. Hopefully that does not happen before the organisations are able to stand on their own, so that is what we are trying to help them achieve.” SMHF is a subsidiary of the Nippon Foundation (TNF), one of Japan’s largest foundations.

Social entrepreneurship, the conference participants agreed, was a practical approach to meeting financial and social needs. Revenues from products created by organisations of people affected by leprosy fund the organisations’ activities, while providing livelihoods for their beneficiaries.

Even though there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the idea of organisation-level social entrepreneurship, there was a sense among the conference participants that in some circumstances success might be more easily described than achieved. Differences in resources and capabilities may narrow options for some organisations and expand them for others.

That reality makes it important for organisations to give equal attention to both collective and individual entrepreneurial opportunities, Manas suggested. “I just needed a chance. It’s important that organisations help people who can help themselves.”

Related Articles

• Living with Leprosy on the Climate-Vulnerable Kiribati Island Atolls
• Q&A: We Need a Holistic Approach to Eradicate Leprosy
• Capacity Building the Key to Fighting Leprosy

The post Individual Empowerment Still Important in Leprosy Groups’ Strategies appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

I assume it was the Swedish author Stieg Larsson´s Millenium trilogy (2005-2007) that generated the popularity of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, as well numerous movies and TV-series that followed in its wake. A typical Nordic Noir novel takes place within a gloomy landscape of dreary towns, or a semi-deserted countryside, where under the thin surface of an apparently well-ordered society, murder, misogyny, rape, racism and international crime syndicates are thriving.

As a Swede with my roots in a sleepy provincial town where nothing sinister seemed to happen I was inclined to consider Nordic Noir as some kind of Scandinavian magic realism, quite removed from Swedish everyday life. However, reality seems to be changing. In Sweden, as well as in the rest of the world, men are losing their traditional hold on power, as well as occupations that once craved more physical strength than brain power quickly are disappearing, making a woman just as capable as a man to manage any branch of human activities. A development that makes several young men bewildered and foster feelings of powerlessness and misogyny.

During a brief visit to my hometown I recently had a cup of coffee in one of the cafés and became involved in a discussion with one of the locals who use to hang around there. He was a retired police officer and told me:

– Things are changing fast around here. We are now getting our fair share of drug pushers and violent crime. Criminals are better connected, have more money, improved mobility and they actively recruit young guys around here. Youngsters who do not know anything, have dropped out of school and thus cannot get a decent job. They believe through crime they might become somebody, earn money and gain some respect. Most of them are as lost there as they were in school.

I hope he did not talk about any of my former pupils. I had for some years worked as a high school teacher in my hometown. When I made my first stint as teacher not one of my pupils had dropped out, though when I twenty years later returned to the same school, five boys and one girl disappeared from my classes during their first year. Something had happened, but I was unsure of how and why.

In Sweden, women in 2006 surpassed men in educational attainment and since then the gender gap has been widening. In 2016, 48 percent of Swedish women had at least two years of tertiary education, while the corresponding level for men was 35 percent. Gender ratio for applicants to higher education was 60 percent women and 40 percent men.1 PISA2 results from 2012 demonstrated that school performance of Swedish boys was considerably lower than that of girls and this gap was bigger than in any other OECD country. It was speculated that Swedish boys’ extensive computer gaming stole time from their homework. The situation was described as a national crisis and Swedish school policies are currently being overhauled.

In virtually all countries and economies girls do on average outperform boys in reading. Even if gender differences in science performance tend to be small, the share of top performers in science and mathematics is generally larger among boys than among girls. However, with every year this tendency is changing. Even if Finland currently is the only country in which girls are more likely to be top performers in science, other countries are approaching the same condition, while in Finland, Macao, Albania, Macedonia, Georgia, Jordan, Malaysia, Qatar and Trinidad/Tobago, girls scored higher than boys in mathematics.3

In the United Arab Emirates where some earlier barriers to girls schooling have been removed, they now out-perform boys at all levels and across all subjects, while in higher education, women make up 71 percent of graduates. Across the Emirates boys are dropping out of secondary school at rates of up to 20 percent in a single year. This trend has been explained by the fact that boys view connections in pursuit of employment opportunities as more potent in achieving social and economic success, while women consider education as a means to gain social freedom and influence.4 However, there are indications that boys school dropout is becoming a globalized trend. In the Caribbean region, boys´ dropout rate is generally 20 percent higher than the one for girls and similar trends are apparent in the entire LAC region.5 In countries like India, Senegal, the Gambia, Bangladesh, Mongolia and Nepal, where there were far fewer girls than boys enrolled in secondary school in 2000, the situation had by 2016 been reversed, leaving boys further behind than girls.

Does it matter if more boys than girls drop out of school, and/or to a lesser degree attend higher education? I asked the retired police officer if he thought boys were more inclined to commit crimes than girls:

– Without doubt, he answered. If a girl ends up in crime it´s due to her background, her earlier experiences and not so much because she had left school too early. With boys it´s different. The fact that they are out of school too early makes them inclined to commit crime. I think that for some of them it´s a status thing, if they fail with everything else they can at least succeed in crime.

The modern world increasingly requires specific knowledge and skills, making people with limited schooling ever more marginalized. The risk of becoming poor, socially excluded and having poor health, as well as being trapped in delinquency is dramatically higher among youth who exit education before having reached an upper secondary/high school diploma. The old police also appeared to be correct about girls and crime – research indicates that much fewer girls than boys are trapped in crime due to school dropout.6

For example, in Sweden high school dropouts are much less likely to be able to support themselves from a regular income. They have a mortality risk three times that of graduates, and are five times as likely to have been sentenced to prison by the age of thirty. Furthermore, dropouts tend to be inhibited by the social bonds the school and/or a steady job may provide and instead find security in criminal bonding. They become frustrated when aspirations cannot be fulfilled due to their miserable socioeconomic status. A recent Swedish Government report pointed out school failure as the single most important predictor for becoming a member of the NEET group, i.e persons “Not in Education, Employment or Training.” In EU countries the numbers of NEETs are estimated to 15 percent of people between 15 and 29 years of age. According to the police officer I met it is among this group of people criminals are recruited.

While I after my meeting with the retired police officer was driving home through the dark Swedish forest I imagined that if nothing was done to address men´s feelings of powerlessness, Nordic Noir could soon shift from being magic realism to becoming a description of an actual, global reality.

1 https://english.uka.se/
2 OECD´s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study evaluating educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.
3 http://www.oecd.org/pisa/
4 https://www.thenational.ae/there-are-many-reasons-why-boys-drop-out-of-school-1.687412
5 https://gemreportunesco.wordpress.com/2018/07/04/promoting-changes-in-gender-norms-in-latin-america-why-boys-education-matters/
6This and much of the following is based on Bäckman, Olof (2017) ‘High School Dropout, Resource Attainment, and Criminal Convictions’. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, No. 54.

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

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The post Living with Leprosy on the Climate-Vulnerable Kiribati Island Atolls appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In Dakar, staff members from UN Women Senegal and other UN agencies attend a presentation on sexual harassment in the workplace, part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 2016.

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

As multilateralism takes a beating from President Trump amid the “new world disorder,” as one European diplomat put it, three women who know the United Nations inside and out through previous top leadership jobs have originated a Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.

The goal is to bring together former UN female colleagues who held top jobs as well to “partner and raise our voices on matters regarding women equality and multilateralism,” said Susana Malcorra, one of the three women who started the group.

“By now we are more than 25 and keep adding.”

The other two former UN leaders behind it are Helen Clark, who ran the UN Development Program from 2009 to 2017 and was the prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008; and Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian politician who was the director-general of Unesco from 2009 to 2017.

Dulcie Leimbach

They plan to advocate for gender equality and multilateralism through op-eds, papers, conferences, mentoring and other sources in multiple languages “to shed light into matters that each one of us have worked in our different fields of expertise,” Malcorra said.

Malcorra, an Argentine, was the chief of cabinet for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from 2012 to 2015 and previously led the UN Department of Field Support.

She left the UN to become foreign minister of her country under President Mauricio Macri. She left that post in 2017 to move to Madrid to be near her family, she said.

All three women were candidates in 2016 for UN secretary-general, to succeed Ban, a South Korean.

Of 13 candidates, seven were women. António Guterres, who ran the UN Refugee Agency for 10 years and was a prime minister of Portugal, was selected by the UN Security Council for a five-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2017.

No woman has ever headed the UN.

The three women are now affiliated with different academia, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The idea for the initiative, which has no outside financing yet, came from a conversation among the women, Malcorra said, at last fall’s annual General Assembly open debate. It took shape in November and December, when the “scouting” process began.

“We felt that, as candidates to become SG” — secretary-general — “it would be very powerful to launch this together.”

The trio are introducing the group as the International Women’s Day approaches, on March 8, and the yearly UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) kicks off for 11 days on March 11.

They will use their personal Twitter handles to promote the group and these hashtags: #WomenLeadersForPositiveChange; #WomenForMultilateralism; and #WomenLeadersForInclusiveChange.

The timing of the group’s debut coincides as other international efforts to reinforce multilateralism — the policy of countries working jointly to solve global problems — include France and Germany partnering for the first time as rotating presidents of the UN Security Council for March and April, respectively.

The launching also occurs as France and Germany work jointly to keep Europe unified while Britain exits from the European Union and some politicians elsewhere in Europe — such as in Hungary and Italy — seem intent on fragmenting the continent further.

This is a “loosely connected” network of women, former colleagues and friends, Malcorra said of the new group, “who share some serious concerns about the state of the world, the multilateral institutions and, particularly, about a trend to pushback policies regarding gender parity and women empowerment. The signs we see are very worrisome in this regard.”

The group has written an open, two-page letter, which begins: “We join our voices as women colleagues who have worked in governments and in multilateral organizations in support of promoting humanitarian relief, advocating for human rights principles and normative policies, advancing sustainable development, and resolving some of the world’s most complex conflicts.

“We ourselves have leveraged multilateralism in order to drive positive change for peoples and our planet. Now we collectively call attention to the need to achieve full gender equality and empowerment of women across all ambits of society and the critical importance of multilateralism as a vehicle in support of that.”

The space that women leaders now collectively occupy, the letter warned, was “not opened up easily and can never be taken for granted.”

It is signed by, among others, Sahle-Work Zewde, the president of Ethiopia who served as UN envoy to the African Union; Baroness Valerie Amos, a Briton who ran the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; Ertharin Cousin, an American who directed the World Food Program; Louise Fréchette, a Canadian diplomat who was a UN deputy secretary-general; Navi Pillay, a South African judge who was most recently the UN’s high commissioner for human rights; Mary Robinson, an ex-president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner for human rights; Zainab Bangura, a politician from Sierra Leone who was the UN’s envoy on sexual violence in conflict; and Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan who served as a UN envoy for children and armed conflict.

What can women bring to multilateralism that is different from what men can offer?

“What women always bring to the table: a different and enriching perspective,” Malcorra said. “But multilateralism is also key to the advancement of policy discussions about gender as the Beijing Conference [on women in 1995] proved. CSW is not moving as envisioned and we must keep pushing.”

The initiative, Malcorra added, will not finish in March. “We expect to continue until UNGA” — the annual UN General Assembly opening debate, in the fall.

*Previously, Dulcie Leimbach was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association (UNA) of the USA, where she edited its flagship magazine, The InterDependent, and migrated it online in 2010. She was also the senior editor of UNA’s annual book, “A Global Agenda: Issues Before the UN.” She has also worked as an editorial consultant to various UN agencies. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years, editing and writing for most sections of the paper, including the Magazine, Book Review and Op-Ed.

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Excerpt:

Dulcie Leimbach* was a fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of CUNY from 2012 to 2017. She is the founder of PassBlue, for which she edits and writes, covering primarily the United Nations, West Africa, peacekeeping operations and women's issues.

The post Three Ex-UN Leaders Form Women’s Group to Save Multilateralism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Marie Lisa Dacanay is the president of Manila–based Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia. With 20 years of experience in development management, social entrepreneurship and enterprise development, Dacanay is also a university professor and an acclaimed author with several books on social entrepreneurship in Asia.

Today, Dacanay was at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia where she presented some valuable ideas and advises on how to build successful models of social enterprises. The assembly was supported by the Nippon Foundation (TNF)/Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF).

In this video she tells IPS what models of entrepreneurship can especially be tried by how people from the most marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society – such as those affected by leprosy.

The post Building Successful Social Enterprises appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Filipino businessman Ariel Lazarte was diagnosed with Hansen’s Disease in 2014. Since his treatment he has built a successful business and has become a patron for those affected by the disease. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
MANILA, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

When Ariel Lazarte from Quezon City, Philippines, was first diagnosed with leprosy in 2014, his life seemed as if it were falling apart. But now more than four years later Lazarte’s life is a huge contrast from the poverty and isolation he experienced as a person affected by leprosy.

Now the owner of multiple businesses, including ones in transport and construction, and the owner of a large family home as well as an in-patient home for persons receiving treatment for leprosy, Lazarte was driven to become a success by his strong desire to help others.

“I didn’t get any help from my family, my friends, my relatives. I only trusted the doctor,” Lazarte tells IPS of the year he spent receiving treatment for leprosy, which is also known as Hansen’s Disease. “I was very thirsty for the help from others. I was in need.”

He was one of the participants of the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia. The assembly is being held in Manila, Philippines, Mar. 3 to 5 and is supported by the Nippon Foundation (TNF)-one of the biggest private foundations in Japan that has been working to provide assistance to people with leprosy since 1975.

At the time of the diagnosis, the then 32-year-old who worked as a manager in a fast food store, was able to afford treatment at a private hospital. But instead of being cured, his condition worsened.

Eventually, he lost his job and felt more and more alone as his wife stopped sharing a bed with him and his friends stopped visiting. His wife’s dried fish kiosk business become their sole support of income and much of the money was spent on survival and not medicine.

And while he kept receiving treatment, he kept thinking: “I’m dying.”

Eventually Lazarte’s doctor told him he couldn’t cure him and referred him to the Jose Reyes Memorial Hospital. He began an 8-month treatment course that eventually cured him.

“The doctor promised me I would be helped. And I promised that I would help those with leprosy,” Lazarte says, explaining that it didn’t want others who were affected by the disease to experience what he did.

According to Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana, Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Department of Health, the country has 1,000 new leprosy patients a year. Of these only one in four receive treatment because many fear the social stigma.

Unique to the Philippines, jeepneys are long wheel based taxis, converted from American jeeps left in the country after World War II. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

But after a year of treatment that cured him of Hansen’s Disease, Lazarte started fulfilling his promise.

Lazarte started small. With 15 dollars, he bought some shorts and pillows and began selling them. Soon he bought a tricycle – a Filipino transport bicycle with a small cab. And soon he owned seven of these.

And then later he was able to afford a jeepney. Unique to the Philippines, jeepneys are long wheel based taxis, converted from American jeeps left in the country after World War II.

He is now the owner of 12 jeepneys.

With the money from the businesses he built a 4-bedroom in-patient home for those receiving treatment for Hansen’s disease. Situated just outside the capital, it houses people receiving treatment at the Jose Reyes Memorial Hospital. The property also has a car so the patients can drive to the hospital, which is some 45 minutes away, for their check ups.

He’s very clear about what he spent the income from these business on in the early days. “I knew that my wife was able to support my children …so I kept on dreaming of having enough money to buy my afford to the house [for the leprosy patients].”

While they now have a large home and not all Lazarte’s income goes into the in-patient home, Lazarte says that wants the Hansen’s Disease patients to learn to self-sufficient. They have a garden to plant vegetables for resale and recently received funding for a poultry project.

“I started my own pathway for my own direction,” he tells IPS.

Related Articles

• First Asian Leprosy Assembly Calls for Greater Social Inclusion for the Affected
• Leprosy Remains a Stubborn, Unseen Problem in the Philippines
• A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020?

The post Leprosy Survivor Creates Hope and Support for Others Affected by Disease appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Landscaper Elaine Caparroz, 55, nine days after being brutally beaten in her residence by a man with whom she had an eight-month Internet relationship. Aided by the doorman of her building, she survived with bruises on her entire body, a broken tooth and 60 stitches. Hers is just one of the more high-profile cases of women murdered or assaulted in Brazil, which in 2018 totaled 4.7 million or 536 every hour. Credit: EBC

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Crime, a key issue in far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s election in Brazil, has a dimension that is gaining in visibility and could turn against his government: gender violence.

Elaine Caparroz, a 55-year-old landscaper, was beaten for four hours in the early hours of Jan. 16 in her own home. As a result, she was unrecognisable, lost a tooth and needed 60 stitches.

This was the highest-profile case in recent days in this country of 209 million people, where so far this year, up to Feb. 22, there were 176 victims of femicide and 109 unsuccessful gender-based murders, according to the daily monitoring of cases by Jefferson Nascimento, a lawyer and researcher from São Paulo, based on press reports."The new laws encourage women to report the attacks, but many cases of violence remain hidden, because women are afraid, they do not believe in the judicial system, many depend financially on their violent husbands, and there is a lack of effective policies." -- Ana Miria Carinhanha

Caparroz’s attacker, with whom she had an Internet relationship for eight months before taking him into her home, was caught in the act, arrested and charged with attempted femicide, which was specifically defined as a crime in Brazil in 2015, with stiff penalties as it is considered to have aggravating factors.

Other cases of women killed or wounded by gunshots or knives, sometimes in front of their children, have shaken Brazil so far this year, drawing more attention to the statistics and the perception of an increase in gender-based violence in Latin America’s giant.

There were 4.7 million physical attacks in 2018, or 536 per hour, according to the report “The Victimisation of Women in Brazil” by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, in its second edition released on Feb. 26. In the first edition, with data from 2016, there were respectively 4.4 million in total, or 503 per hour.

In 2018, the attacker was known by the victim in 76.4 percent of cases, compared to 61 percent in 2016 – most often the partner, ex-partner, ex-boyfriend or neighbor.

The data is based on a survey carried out by the Datafolha Institute, which interviewed 2,084 people across Brazil on Feb. 5-6.

“We have laws and protocols, but there is a lack of public policies to deal with violence. Women’s police stations, for example, cover less than 10 percent of Brazil’s 5,570 municipalities, and most are concentrated in the wealthier regions, the South and Southeast,” said Marisa Sanematsu, director of content at the Patricia Galvão Agency, a women’s rights organisation based in São Paulo.

This is a result of the apparent contradiction between the passage of several laws that stiffened the sentences for crimes against women and the rise in gender-based violence.

In 2006, the Maria da Penha Law established harsh penalties for domestic violence and discrimination against women, in addition to creating specific courts and mechanisms to protect and assist victims.

The Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, inherited functions from the now-defunct secretariats of Policies for Women, Racial Equality and Human Rights. She describes herself as “extremely Christian” and forms part of the ultraconservative religious core of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which defends the traditional family, rejects “gender ideology” and prioritises the fight against organised delinquency but not against gender violence. Credit: EBC

The law is named after a woman who was left paraplegic by two murder attempts by her then husband in 1983.

The mother of three, now 74 years old, became an activist for women’s rights.

In addition, since 2015, a new law on femicide has classified it as an “atrocious crime” which is an aggravating factor that leads to harsher sentences than other homicides.

“Legislative advances in and of themselves are of little use if they are not accompanied by protective measures, support networks for victims, and actions to ensure that the laws are enforced,” argued Sanematsu.

Because of this, many women are afraid to report the attacks, as they have no protection against possible reprisals, and have nowhere to turn for the defence of their rights, she said.

“The new laws encourage women to report the attacks, but many cases of violence remain hidden, because women are afraid, they do not believe in the judicial system, many depend financially on their violent husbands, and there is a lack of effective policies,” said Ana Miria Carinhanha, a lawyer who works with Criola, an organisation that advocates for the rights of black women.

And the situation is getting worse due to the economic crisis and the consequent scarcity of public resources and also due to the conservative orientation of the extreme right-wing government, which came to power on Jan. 1 with a markedly sexist discourse whose 22-member ministerial cabinet includes only two women.

In addition to prioritising the fight against alleged “gender ideology,” which is supposedly poisoning education and society, Bolsonaro signed as one of his first measures a decree that makes it easier to keep firearms at home and at work.

The government has also pledged to extend to civilians the authorisation to carry weapons in public places, which is becoming more and more widely permitted – as well as criticised – in the United States, in the wake of a spate of school shootings and other mass killings.

“This increases the risk of femicide and also further inhibits women for reporting attacks, out of fear of guns,” which are traditionally used by men and are “a deceptive defence mechanism,” lamented Sanematsu, a journalist who specialises in gender violence.

Millions of women poured onto the streets in demonstrations ahead of the October elections, under the slogan #EleNão (#NotHim) to prevent the triumph by Bolsonaro, known for making misogynistic, racist and anti-democratic statements during his years as a lawmaker, between 1990 and 2018.

The protests failed to block the election of the former army captain, although a lower percentage of women than men voted for him.

It is now clear that for the government the priority is the fight against organised crime, especially drug trafficking, and corruption. Its approach to the question of domestic violence, “is still unclear, which is a bad sign, even though society considers it an important problem and is demanding solutions,” said Sanematsu.

For this reason, women’s rights groups are organising protest marches throughout Brazil on Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, against femicide and other sexist violence, general violence, and the expansion of access to firearms.

According to a report by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum, 42 percent of attacks on women occur in the home, compared to 29 percent on the street.

Black women are the most frequent victims. The survey found that 28.4 percent of black women suffered physical aggression in 2018, against 27.4 percent of all Brazilian women over 16 and 24.7 percent of white women.

The “structural racism” in the country also means that more black people in general are murdered, and that black women are less covered by public policies and earn lower wages, said Carinhanha.

That is why Mar. 8 will also be marked by demonstrations by black women and campaigns against racism, she announced.

“The new government promotes institutional and personal violence, and is aggressive and intolerant of civil society organisations,” and in response society must mobilise, she argued.

“Women are the great force against violence and for equality in Brazil today, along with the new generation of young people,” said historian Daniel Aarão Reis, a professor at the Federal University Fluminense, in Niterói, a city near Rio de Janeiro.

In his opinion, they should avoid the fragmentation that occurred in the United States, where the recent growing female protagonism has been marked by “identity patterns separating black and white women.”

He also warned that in the early days of Bolsonaro’s government, women’s advocates took sometimes contradictory actions and decisions, and said they should be “more cohesive” and more forceful now that the opposition and popular protests are growing.

The post Violence Fuels Mobilisation by Women against Brazil’s Anti-Gender Equality Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS's coverage of International Women's Day, celebrated on March 8.

The post Violence Fuels Mobilisation by Women against Brazil’s Anti-Gender Equality Government appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Extreme weather associated to climate change has resulted in million of dollars in loss and damage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

In the tiny eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, proverbs relating to the weather are very common.

Everyone knows that “Who has cocoa outside must look out for rain”, has nothing to do with the drying of the bean from which chocolate is made or the sudden downpours common in this tropical nation.

So when the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines announced in 2018 that there was a need to put aside some money for “a rainy day” because of climate change, citizens knew that the expression was both figurative and literal.

In this country, highly dependent on tourism, visitors stay in hotel and other rented accommodation have to contribute 3 dollars per night to the climate change fund.

They join residents who had been contributing to the Climate Resilience Levy, for over one year, paying a one percent consumption charge. The funds go into the Contingency Fund.

As with many other small island developing states, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has had to struggle to finance mitigation and adaptation for climate change.

In the year since the Climate Resilience levy was established, 4.7 million dollars has been saved for the next “rainy day”.

The savings represents a minuscule portion of the scores of million of dollars in damage and loss wrought by climate change in this archipelagic nation over the last few years.

In just under six hours in 2013, a trough system left damage and loss amounting to 20 percent of the GDP and extreme rainfall has left millions of dollars in damage and loss almost annually since then.

The 4.7 million dollars in the climate fund is mere 18 percent of the 25 million dollars that lawmakers have budgeted for “environmental protection” in 2019, including climate change adaptation and mitigation.

However, it is a start and shows what poorer nations can do, locally, amidst the struggle to get developed nations to stand by their commitments to help finance climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Never before in the history of independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines have we managed to explicitly set aside such resources for a rainy day,” Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves told lawmakers this month as he reported on the performance of the fund in its first year.

He said that in 2019, the contingency fund is expected to receive an additional 4.7 million dollars.

“While this number remains small in the face of the multi-billion potential of a major natural disaster, it is nonetheless significant. If we are blessed with continued good fortune, in the near term, the Contingency Fund will be a reliable, home-grown cushion against natural disasters,” Gonsalves told legislators.

He said the fund will also stand as an important signal to the international community that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is committed to playing a leading role in its own disaster preparation and recovery.

Dr. Reynold Murray, a Vincentian environmentalist, welcomes the initiative, but has some reservations.

“I am worried about levies because very often, the monies generally get collected and go into sources that don’t reach where it is supposed to go,” he told IPS.

“That’s why I am more for the idea of the funding being in the project itself, whatever the initiative is, that that initiative addresses the climate issues.

“For example, if you are building a road, there should be the climate adaption monies in that project so that people build proper drains, that they look at the slope stabilisation, that they look at run off and all that; not just pave the road surface. That’s a waste of time, because the water is going to come the next storm and wash it away.”

Murray told IPS he believes climate change adaptation and mitigation would be best addressed if the international community stands by its expressed commitments to the developing world.

“My honest opinion is that a lot of that financing has to come from the developed countries that are the real contributors to the greenhouse problem,” he told IPS.

“That is not to say that the countries themselves have no obligation. We have to protect ourselves. So there must be a programme at the national level, where funds are somehow channelled into addressing adaptation and mitigation. The mitigation is more with the large, industrialised countries, but small countries like us, especially the Windward Islands, mitigation is our big issues…”

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is making small strides as a time when the finance minister said the 437 million dollar budget that lawmakers approved for 2019 and the nation’s long-term developmental plans, must squarely confront the reality of climate change.

“This involves recovery and rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure, investing in resilience and adaptation, setting aside resources to prepare for natural disasters, adopting renewable energy and clean energy technologies, and strengthening our laws and practices related to environmental protection,” the finance minister said.

Related Articles

• Q&A: Caught Up in the Opportunities of Climate Change and Less So With Adaptation
• Accelerating the Caribbean’s Climate Resilience
• Youth Bridge the Gap Between Climate Change and Climate Awareness in Guyana

The post Saving for a ‘Rainy Day’ Takes on New Meaning in Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana, the Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Ministry of Health, eels strongly about the social exclusion and stigma experienced by the leprosy patients and is eager to make a notable change in the way the society perceives leprosy and those who live with it. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana is the Assistant Secretary in the Philippines ministry of health. With nearly two decades of  work both as a senior government official and also as an expert in several non-government organisations, Laxamana has deep insight into the issue of leprosy in this Southeast Asian nation and the challenges faced by those who are affected by the disease.

She feels strongly about the social exclusion and stigma experienced by the leprosy patients and is eager to make a notable change in the way the society perceives leprosy and those who live with it.

On the sidelines of the ongoing  Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia in Manila, Laxamana tells IPS how a new, holistic approach is needed to eradicate leprosy  and  improve the quality of life for all leprosy patients. She also informs how small measures like helping the children of leprosy-affected families can help remove societal stigma and  pave ways for social inclusion.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How and at what point is it decided to separate a family from the community?

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana (MFL): Previously, it was the government that decided. If a child tested positive, it would be separated from the mother. That used to be very harsh.  But now, its not like that anymore. Now if a baby shows the symptoms, the baby is tested and if the results are positive, then the baby is treated along with the mother and the father, but it stays with the parents. The treatment now is family based.

IPS: Typically, how who are the leprosy patients in the Philippines?

MFL: Actually, generally those who are afflicted by leprosy are poor people. The main reasons are that  (lack of) nutrition, lack of awareness, remote location of their areas and lack of access to the services.

IPS: Have you met anyone whose condition matches this? How did it change you?

MFL: Yes. In the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, I met a woman – a mother of a 2 year old boy. She already had visible physical symptoms and her hands were already deformed. I asked her, have you been receiving the treatment? She said, ‘No, I don’t go to the health center anymore because the staff there say I can infect them’.  So I told her, you have to be tested before anyone can say you are infective. But in my mind, I thought, so this is what is the progress we have had: we have done advocacy, awareness generation  – everything and yet the staff here are not willing to go near the patients.

That’s when I learnt that there had not been any amendment or reviews of the previous policies. I also asked myself, why is the budget for leprosy so low? And I came to think that there maybe also lapses in our government, maybe leprosy is not  a priority for  our government. Maybe they think that there isn’t a Hansen’s disease here in the Philippines anymore.

IPS: You had left the government job to work with the non governmental organisations, such as USAID, EU, Save the Children, among others. But you returned in 2016. How are you working differently this time?

MFL: When I was offered the position of the Assistant Secretary–which is a part of the Executive Committee (a high level decision-making group), I thought that I could now make actual impact by discussing an issue with my fellow committee members and making constructive recommendations for deciding on a new policy. For example, while working for the non-government organisations, I discovered that we are making policies without any inclusion of inputs from local level, from the communities. And that is something I can now raise this issue to the national government.

IPS: What changes do you expect to see in next five years?

MFL: I have been talking to the sanatoriums in the Philippines. They have many in-house lepers who are not active anymore, they are just living in the sanatoriums compounds. What we did was turning some parts of the sanatoriums into general hospitals. We can have fund the hospitals with facilities and equipments, so that outside patients can go in for treatment and the in-house patients can continue to get treated, but the outsiders will know that they are not active anymore. This will augment financial resources.

So, right now I am telling the sanatoriums that let us develop the standards based on the facilities , equipment and the human resources that they need. Once we have this standard, we can propose to the government for a specific, yearly budget  allocation for the leprosy programme.

IPS: You are very vocal about social inclusion of the affected people and their families. How can this be achieved ?

MFL: A great way to do this is to take a holistic approach by providing the affected people opportunities to education, employments, training etc. For example, in Culion, I met a leprosy affected family whose daughter wanted to go to college and become a nurse. So I said, maybe we can ask the governor of the state to provide her a scholarship. Now, if such a child is brought to a college and given the opportunity to study, she can interact with a hundred others there and inform them about her family, their life. People around her can understand that she is not infective – this way a new level of engagement can begin.

Related Articles

• A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020?

The post Q& A: We Need a Holistic Approach to Eradicate Leprosy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Dr Maria Francia Laxamana, assistant secretary of health in the Department of Health, Philippines outlines her recommendations for a leprosy country by 2020.

She spoke to IPS the first ever Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia.

The three-day regional event was organised by the Philippine government-run Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH), the Coalition of Leprosy Advocate of the Philippines, and the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF). The foundation has been actively supporting the fight to eradicate leprosy worldwide since 1975.

According to Laxamana, only one in every four in the Philippines seek out medical treatment for the disease and social stigma is one of the main reasons why they hide their condition.

For the Philippines to achieve the global target of reducing leprosy cases by 2020, it would be crucial to have policies that could look at the disease in the local context and can provide solutions that are locally applicable.

 

The post A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

When it comes to sustainability of non-profits working in the field of leprosy, Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri said that while the foundation was prepared to support organisations, a financial investment would inevitably be limited. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy, or SPP, has proven to be an effective strategy in reaching out to often isolated sufferers in local communities throughout Asia. A significant challenge to civil society organisations, however, is finding enough management talent to maintain and expand the programmes.

Capacity building, providing organisational and management training to SPP participants doing the heavy lifting for leprosy advocacy groups in their work in individual countries, was highlighted as a significant priority by the participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia in Manila on Mar. 3.

Starting from scratch

The challenge is made even more difficult because many programme volunteers come from marginalised communities, or have had their own education interrupted by complications or social ostracism associated with leprosy.

Amar Bahadur Timalsina, president of International Association for the Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA), Nepal, told IPS that capacity-building is likely the biggest problem facing his organisation. “Many of the people working with us are completely uneducated, and some are even illiterate,” Timalsina said. Many of Nepal’s leprosy patients are found in poor communities, and face significant discrimination.

“Right now, we are focusing on building the capacity of our board members and programme managers,” Timalsina said. “Fortunately, we are able to work with the Leprosy Mission Nepal, who are able to provide us with expertise in business management, finance, and social programme management.”

The discrimination that prevents leprosy sufferers from accessing education and seeking out medical and social assistance in Nepal is perhaps a bit stronger than in some other countries, as it is still part of the law in one respect. In his presentation to conference delegates, Timalsina highlighted IDEA Nepal’s efforts to amend a constitutional prohibition of marriage between leprosy sufferers and unaffected persons, and to include information on leprosy in the country’s health education curriculum.

Differing approaches

While the capacity-building challenge is a common priority, organisations in different countries have adopted different approaches to addressing it. For example, the focus of PerMaTa Indonesia, which means Gem in Bahasa, places heavy emphasis on emotional and social support for persons affected by leprosy. The organisation also directs much of its attention to youth. PerMaTa’s Yuliati explained that the social focus helped leprosy patients gain acceptance, which is particularly important for young people to have continued access to education. Over the long term, it will help the skills capacity of the organisation; in the short term, however, PerMaTa must still rely on some degree of outside expertise.

China’s Handa faces a similar challenge, but has actually been able to quantify its need for expertise. The organisation, which has about 3,500 members across 14 provinces and serves nearly 9,500 beneficiaries, has structured its board so that one-third of its members are private-sector professionals, Handa representative Qi Xiuli told the conference delegates. With this arrangement, overall policy objectives are generated by persons affected by leprosy who make up two-thirds of the board, while the professional board members take charge of practical implementation of the organisation’s initiatives.

Capacity tied to financial sustainability

Beyond the day-to-day goal of carrying out programmes and managing organisations in an efficient way, capacity-building is key to helping the various organisations secure financial sustainability.

In a group discussion, Dr. Arturo Cunanan, Director of the Philippines’ Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital and the country’s foremost leprosy advocate, pointed out the need for organisations to secure a substantial initial investment in order to be able to work on sustainability. Cunanan suggested that this might be one way organisations could address their capacity gaps.

“That initial investment may be in the form of a financial investment, but it could also be a technical or capacity investment,” Cunanan told the conference delegates.

Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation Executive Director Dr. Takahiro Nanri pointed out, however, that a financial investment would inevitably be limited. “You can start off with grants from government or non-government sources, you can gather some financial resources in the form of membership fees, but these are limited,” Nanri said. “In order to be truly sustainable, the organisation has to create an income-generating programme,” and for that, the organisation would need sufficient expertise.

Having that capacity, however, would make achieving sustainability much easier, boosting the organisation’s credibility to potential donors. “We know you probably couldn’t generate real income to sustain your organisation for quite some time,” Nanri told the delegates. “But we [Sasakawa Foundation] could justify supporting you for, say, three years, if we could see that you were able to develop a business plan that would be viable in that amount of time.” Expertise in business and management is needed to be able to develop such plans.

Fortunately, most organisations seem to be successfully balancing the goals of becoming self-reliant and accessing enough expert help in planning and carrying out financial and operational strategies. In the group discussions, however, all the conference participants agreed that greater public awareness of their work would greatly benefit their respective organisations’ goals.

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Coalition of Leprosy Associations of the Philippines (CLAP) community outreach organisers Jennifer Quimno (left) and Michelle Ann Oreo (right). Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

By Ben Kritz
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Jennifer Quimno could put anyone at ease. So when she travels across the Philippines as part of peer to peer programme that helps identify new leprosy cases, people generally allow her to examine them.

“We met a young boy, about 16 years of age, who had symptoms of leprosy, and we needed to examine and send pictures of his skin rashes to the doctors for diagnosis,” Quimno told IPS. Quimno, herself a former leprosy patient, was able to put the teenager at ease. “One of his rashes was on his buttocks. He was a little embarrassed to show it at first, but when I asked him nicely, he let us take a look.”

That unique sensitivity toward persons affected by leprosy is a valuable resource in identifying new cases and encouraging patients to seek treatment, Frank Onde, the president of the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines (CLAP) explained.

“Strengthening the participation of persons affected by leprosy is the most effective way to reduce the burden on government health departments,” explained Onde, one of the keynote speakers at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia. The assembly is being held in Manila, Philippines, Mar. 3 to 5.

Helping their own

Under the programme organised by CLAP, former patients are trained in community outreach and help to identify potential cases for diagnosis and treatment. Using people who have personal experience with the disease helps to reduce the reluctance of leprosy sufferers to seek treatment, Onde said. Not only can the outreach workers relate on a personal level with others affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen Disease, their own experience also helps healthcare personnel make accurate diagnoses, he added.

Launched in the cities of Manila and Cebu in November 2018, the programme, ‘Strengthening Participation of People Affected by Leprosy in Leprosy Service’, known as SPP, is currently working among known affected communities. It pursues the twin objectives of gathering demographic information to update the Philippine Department of Health database and identifying relapse or new leprosy cases.

Quimno, who is a field health officer with the regional Department of Health office in Cebu, said that personal experience helps to build trust. “We know what they are experiencing,” she explained. “We can also tell them exactly what the consequences of not seeking timely treatment will be.”

Coalition of Leprosy Associations of the Philippines (CLAP) president Frank Onde (left), and CLAP volunteers Mark Anthony Esparas (centre) and Ariel Lazarte (right). Credit: Ben Kritz/IPS

Grassroots connections

While CLAP’s activities are officially supported at the national government level—the coalition is represented on the Department of Health’s National Leprosy Advisory Board—it is at the smallest level of government where the initiatives of the coalition’s individual organisations are substantially embraced.

“We coordinate with local government units at the municipal and barangay [village] level, including the mayor’s office and the city or municipal health official’s office,” Quimno explained. “Since our individual member groups are the ones doing most of the work right in their own communities, they are really embraced by their local officials.”

Mark Anthony “Macoy” Esparas, a CLAP outreach volunteer in Manila, agreed. “We do receive a lot of help from the local governments,” he told IPS. “What we do is helping them as well.”

CLAP advisor Joseph “Boyet” Ongkiko highlighted the success of one CLAP member group in Cotabato, Mindanao, southern Philippines, which formed a cooperative of motorcycle taxi drivers to provide livelihoods for people affected by leprosy. “At first, the community was reluctant to patronise the drivers,” Ongkiko told the conference attendees. “Now, they have been accepted so well, that the cooperative even has non-Hansenite members.”

Other livelihood activities pursued by the member groups of CLAP—the coalition represents a total of 19 local organisations across the Philippines—include production and marketing of various household products, clothing, and small-scale farming.

Financial sustainability challenge

While CLAP’s initiatives are steadily gaining traction among people affected by leprosy and local communities alike, the organisation is concerned about its prospects for sustainability.

“That is our biggest challenge right now,” Onde said. “At the moment, our financial support is really only coming from the Sasakawa [Memorial Health] Foundation, and we would like to better secure our future.”

Financial sustainability is a common worry for leprosy advocacy groups throughout the region, but in the Philippines, Onde explained, CLAP and other organisations face a unique challenge. In 2013, a large-scale conspiracy dubbed the “Pork Barrel” scam and involving the misappropriation of billions in legislators’ development funds was exposed. Funds intended for local projects were diverted to fabricated non-government organisations and then pocketed by the scam perpetrators, including a number of lawmakers.

“Since the Pork Barrel scam, it has become difficult for a lot of civil society groups, not only us, to attract donors,” Onde said. “So one of our important tasks is to try to share information about what we’re doing to convince potential financial supporters that we are a legitimate, sustainable organisation.”

One advantage for CLAP is its close connection to the government’s own leprosy control efforts. “We have a consultative role in the government’s National Leprosy Control Programme and the Leprosy Roadmap 2016-2022,” Onde said. “That does help give us some credibility, and of course, we strive to do good work to match that.”

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Amar Bahadur Timalsina, president of IDEA, Nepal, a group founded by people with leprosy for people with leprosy, is in agreement that there needs to be greater inclusion for those affected by the disease. Timalsina was affected by disease, also known as Hansen’s disease, as a child. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MANILA, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Amar Bahadur Timalsina wasn’t allowed to attend school as a young boy because he was affected by leprosy. But decades later, after treatment and being able to re-integrate into his community, the boy who was once denied an education is now inspiringly the principal of a school of 400 students.

“I suffered from leprosy when I was 12 years old. At that time I was forced to leave my village and my community,” Timalsina told IPS.

But after that Leprosy Mission Nepal supported me with a recommendation letter, he was subsequently able to attend an orphanage “where I got an opportunity to continue my studies.”

“At my school there are 400 students and 30 staff. Now if I go to my village, there is no discrimination, no stigma and everyone welcomes me like any other person,” he said.

Timalsina, who is president from the International Association for the Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA), Nepal, a group founded by people with leprosy to support others with the disease, is in agreement that there needs to be greater inclusion for those affected by it.

Participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia kicked off today, Mar. 3 in Manila, Philippines, made a vocal appeal to adopt and embrace greater social inclusion and build a stigma-free society for those affected by leprosy

The three-day regional event, which is the first of its kind to be held, was organised by the Philippine government-run Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital (CSGH), the Coalition of Leprosy Advocate of the Philippines, and the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF). The foundation has been actively supporting the fight to eradicate leprosy worldwide since 1975.

Participants at the Regional Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Asia kicked off today, Mar. 3 in Manila, Philippines, made a vocal appeal to adopt and embrace greater social inclusion and build a stigma-free society for those affected by leprosy. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“The biggest challenge before us today is stigma,” said Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana, Assistant Secretary in the Philippines Department of of Health and one of the key speakers at the conference.

According to Laxamana, only one in every four in the Philippines seek out medical treatment for the disease and social stigma is one of the main reasons why they hide their condition. So, for the Philippines to achieve the global target of reducing leprosy cases by 2020, it would be crucial to have policies that could look at the disease in the local context and can provide solutions that are locally applicable.

For example, we should not be looking at leprosy just as a disease, but take a holistic approach and provide the affected people with a package of support that includes not only drugs, but also education, vocational skill trainings and employment. Such a package will not only help improve their quality of life, but also pave the way for greater social inclusion, resulting in removal of social stigma, she said.

“Integration is very important and we as a foundation, hope, we can contribute to the integration [of people affected by leprosy] with the society,” said Dr. Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director of SMHF and the second key speaker of the day. Reiterating the dedicated and continuous support of the foundation to eradication of leprosy, Nanri informed that SMHF has been organising regional assemblies across the world, including Africa, Latin America and the current one in Asia, to facilitate greater engagement and participation of all experts and leaders working on the disease.

Alice Cruz, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, pointed out that social exclusion and stigma was having a devastating effect particularly on the children of those affected by Hansen’s disease. Addressing the assembly virtually, Cruz emphasised the need for sensitisation of school teachers because in many countries children with leprosy were expelled from schools by  the teachers themselves.

“Teachers in endemic ares should be trained on leprosy ad the schools should be one of the first places to raise awareness on leprosy’s signs and symptoms, but also on the human dignity and rights of the persons affected,” she said.

Dr Arturo Cunanan, chief of CSGH, said that while those working in the field always talk about the social stigma and discrimination that people with leprosy face, the question is how to measure this. “Usually, government will not address issues of human rights, not unless they know about the issue of burden.”

There are representatives from six nations in the region attending  the assembly: Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, China, Nepal and Kiribati. While some are working with the government at the policy level, others are working directly with the affected communities and are expected to  share their respective experiences and impacts to find a common, collective way to fight leprosy more effectively in the future.

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Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), told IPS in an interview that the ambitions around establishing strong early warning systems in the Caribbean date back to the early 2000s. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BRIGDETOWN, Mar 3 2019 (IPS)

Caribbean countries have been signalling their willingness to dedicate time and resources to implement and sustain effective multi-hazard early warning systems.

Most countries located in the hurricane belt face being impacted during the yearly Atlantic Hurricane Season. But all Caribbean countries face another challenge—climate change

Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), told IPS in an interview that the ambitions around establishing strong early warning systems in the Caribbean date back to the early 2000s.

But he said, “it still remains incipient, despite the fact that there has been some level of investment in the area over time.”

“I think Jamaica would have been the farthest advanced way back in the 90s with the Rio Cobre warning system which included a community warning infrastructure as well as telemetre gauges linked to the met offices and to the National Disaster Management Office,” he said

Jackson believes countries “have gotten more caught up . . . in the opportunities of climate change . . . and less so with advancing what is considered to be adaptation.”

The CDEMA head said his unit has been working with its partners to look at framing a common vision, recognising the need for a more comprehensive investment in establishing people-centred early warning systems at national level.

“We have so far delivered a solutions package for four of our members—Antigua & Barbuda, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—looking at their gaps and using that to define the priority areas for investment to establish these early warning systems.”

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is the state of early warning systems in the Caribbean?

Ronald Jackson (RJ): We are trying to implement interventions around an integrated early warning systems agenda in all our 18 states by 2024, which is the sort of end cycle of this particular strategy. We’ve broken that up into bite size amounts from the point of view of how we are going to try to attract investments at a specific juncture over the life of that strategy, but by 2024 certainly to address the needs of the 18 [Caribbean Community] CARICOM member states as it relates to integrated people-centred early warning systems.

In Guyana for example, they don’t have hurricanes, but they do have flood issues which would require them looking at a flood warning system that is linked to tropical cyclonic events. A country not faced with challenges related to significant flood events may also want to look at their tsunami warning systems. So, we are targeting having a full system in each of our states by 2024.

IPS: What, if anything, would you like to see countries do differently?

RJ: We have gotten more caught up I would think in the opportunities of climate change, which is really the energy aspect of it, and less so with advancing what is considered to be adaptation. There is more of a heavier occupation on the opportunities of climate, which is good.

The opportunities are in the area of renewable energy and how best we can capitalise on that and I think it is a necessary process that we must embark on and embark on fully because of the benefits to be derived.

You can reduce the cost of energy, allowing you to release additional resources into areas of resilience building—one of which is early warning. But the area which is categorised as adaptation in climate change, which is where you will see people use the language more around risk reduction and prevention, is an area that has not gotten the same level of focus as the climate mitigation aspect which is where you look at clean energy, reductions of emissions and so on. That for us is where the greatest threat is. The human security element of climate change is where we should be focusing heavily because we’re talking about people being displaced. You’re talking about floods, you’re talking about the loss of livelihoods. That’s where the greatest threat for Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and in fact any developing island nation, lies. They have to face the challenge of having limited land masses and resources and having that constantly being impacted by the changing climatic conditions—sea level rise, saline intrusion, water scarcity, flood conditions and other environmental and health related issues—all aligned to climate change.

IPS: Given the challenges Caribbean countries have been facing, could it be that there still exist some misconception regarding adaptation?

RJ: As it relates to adaptation, we seem to think a lot of the interventions required are new. They are not new, we’ve been grappling with those things that are packaged under the theme of adaptation for some time. These are largely programme areas at national level which if you look at the analysis they have never, in my mind, in the last 20 years or decade or so received very strong budget allocations. That’s what the analysis is showing us. There could be a lot of questions or reasoning around that. It could be how countries determine what are the main priorities of the day given the limited resources and the fiscally strangling environment in which they are operating.

IPS: Which takes us to the issue of funding. As is the case with almost everything else, procuring funds is an issue. What has been the experience of countries getting funds for sustaining Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems?

RJ: There is programme support from international sources. The challenge there is that it’s been ad-hoc—either financing one element or two elements of the four elements of people-centred early warning. Part of it is also sustainability because there are different elements that exist. The problem also is, can you maintain the infrastructure? Can you replace the parts in a timely manner? So, there is also a sort of maintenance issue that is linked to budget allocation.

*Interview edited for clarity.

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Large tracts of land in the Sinhapura area of Sri Lanka’s North Central Polonnaruwa Province. Globally, 80 percent of such land degradation is caused by agriculture. Credit: Sanjana Hattotuwa/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2019 (IPS)

As the environment continues to degrade and natural resources deplete at unprecedented rates, spelling disastrous consequences for societies, a new tool aims to bring financial institutions into the fight to protect nature.

Launched by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA), ENCORE is the world’s first comprehensive tool linking environmental change with its economic consequences, allowing financial institutions to assess and act on risks.

“We look at various ways of making sure that financial institutions and businesses understand that nature is a provider of services that they depend upon and that needs to be recognised so that you can better take it into consideration when you make decisions,” United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s (UNEP FI) Programme Leader Anders Nordheim told IPS.

FirstRand Group’s Head of Environmental and Social Risk Management Madeleine Ronquest echoed similar sentiments to IPS, stating: “Awareness about the importance and value of natural capital and the importance of biodiversity and natural habitat needs to be raised…the ENCORE tool is a good solution for risk mapping of a portfolio and creating insight to various natural capital risks that have to be addressed as well as for understanding what the knock on impact is.”

Natural capital is the world’s stock of natural resources such as soil, water, and clean air, all of which are vital for economic activity.

Any negative changes in natural capital impact the businesses that depend on it, and thus the financial institutions that lend or invest in those companies.

This mindset, which places an economic value on nature and therefore connects nature and the economy, is a useful way to engage with financial institutions, Nordheim noted.

“When you talk abut natural capital sometimes there is the implication that it puts a price a nature which is not at all what we are about. It is really about recognising the value of it and how it is needed in society,” he said.

“Our aim is to arrive at a society that is in balance with nature where there is no overexploitation or degradation of environmental assets, where everything is sustainable and productive,” Nordheim added.

However, we have a long way to go to reach this vision.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), land quality is getting worse as over 75 percent of the world’s land surface is significantly and negatively impacted by human activity.

Globally, 80 percent of such land degradation is caused by agriculture. Since 1950, 65 percent of Africa’s cropland, which millions depend on, has been affected by land degradation by mining, poor farming practices, and illegal logging.

The consequences of the growing problem includes more and severe droughts, increased food insecurity, and massive economic losses.

A showcase assessment of the FTSE 100 Index using ENCORE found that 13 of the 18 sectors representing 1.6 trillion dollars in market capitalisation were associated with production processes that are highly dependent on nature. Agriculture, aquaculture and forest products were among the sectors that will experience the most economic loss as land degradation and natural resource depletion accelerates.

UNCCD puts the figure much higher, estimating that the global economy will lose a staggering 23 trillion dollars by 2050 through land degradation.

ENCORE enables financial institutions to assess environmental risks and its impact on natural capital assets and production processes.

“Especially in a financial institution quantifying risk brings the message home far more effectively than by having a pure academic discussion. It is for this reason that we not only want to place a value on nature but also demonstrate financial impact if this risk is not mitigated. It certainly changes the conversation,” Ronquest said.

FirstRand was among the first institutions to use ENCORE to identify environmental risks in South Africa.

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in the South African economy. However, land degradation due to soil erosion, unsustainable farming practices, and one of the country’s worst droughts has impacted the economy and food security.

Ronquest noted that FirstRand is already experiencing natural capital risk and credit default in their agriculture portfolio, and stressed the importance of working in collaboration towards sustainable societies.

“Skills transfer to young farmers is important and this is one of the areas where the bank funds and facilitates the process to support a growing community of sustainable and resilient farmers,” she told IPS.

Many institutions like FirstRand have already begun investing in green projects in light of environmental challenges such as climate change.

In the United States, investment in renewable energy industry surpassed 40 billion dollars in 2017.

A financial sector survey show that such investments will increase, reaching up to one trillion dollars between 2018 and 2030.

While action around climate change is crucial, Nordheim highlighted the need for financial institutions to also pay attention to degradation caused by human activity.

“It all links back to human action, but sometimes in these discussions we find that there is a very strong focus on climate change as increases of temperature without broadening the debate into including how temperature variations then affect other connected systems,” he said.

“I think one of the challenges we have is that it is maybe not happening at the scale and speed that we would want to see. But it is happening,” Nordheim added.

Ronquest urged all stakeholders to consider the relationship between nature, economy, and the well-being of all.

“The interconnectedness of the natural environment and the economy is undeniable. When one is neglected the other will suffer. In a country where a lot of work needs to be done to address social injustice, poverty and inequality; food security, land degradation and water security will only inflate the negative social impact and have a severe impact on the developing economy,” she said.

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