Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Overcrowding leading to poor sanitary conditions in IDPs camps and communities contributes to further cholera outbreak in Borno Nigeria.

By Janet Cherono
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

The number of people who have been affected by cholera in northeast Nigeria has increased to 10,000. The disease is spreading quickly in congested displacement camps with limited access to proper sanitation facilities.

One of the major causes of the outbreak is the congestion in the camps that makes it difficult to provide adequate water, sanitation and hygiene services. The rainy season has also worsened the conditions.

NRC is calling on the local governments in Nigeria’s northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe to end the cycle of yearly cholera outbreaks.

If more land is not urgently provided for camp decongestion and construction of health and sanitation facilities, Nigeria is steering towards yet another cholera outbreak in 2019.

Over the last decade, northeast Nigeria and other areas of the Lake Chad Basin have been affected by cholera outbreaks almost every year, due to poor hygiene facilities in displacement camps and host communities. More than 1.8 million people are displaced in Nigeria, as a result of ongoing conflicts.

Maiduguri has the highest concentration of displaced people, with 243,000 displaced people cramped in camps, camp-like settlements and already crowded host communities, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

In Kagoni Sangaya displacement camp, the eight latrines that were built to cater for about 150 displaced people are now being shared by 500 people. Camp residents said they end up defecating in the open which causes cholera and other water borne diseases in the area.

More than 10,000 people have been afflicted by the ongoing cholera outbreak in Nigeria, according to the government. Of these, 175 were reported dead in the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe as of early November 2018.

The number of deaths resulting from the disease is higher than would be expected in a situation where timely and efficient treatment is available. This indicates inexistent or insufficient access to clean water, sanitation, hygiene and health services.

We are calling on the authorities to provide more space in camps and host communities for the construction of new water and sanitation facilities, and for the international community to provide the necessary funding. Only this way can we prevent new cholera outbreaks.

NRC has responded to the cholera outbreak by transporting at least 180,000 liters of clean water daily from Maiduguri to communities around Tungushe and Konduga towns, constructing more latrines where there are space and by sharing information about hygiene and cholera prevention with affected communities.

Facts and Figures:

– By 7th November, the cholera outbreak in northeast Nigeria includes 1762 registered cases and 61 deaths in Yobe State, 2737 registered cases and 41 deaths in Adamawa State, and 5845 and 73 deathsin Borno State, according to figures from the World Health Organization and the Government of Nigeria.

– An estimated 7.7 million people in the three most affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe now depend on humanitarian assistance for their survival.

– NRC is currently providing life-saving assistance including food and livelihood support to help stabilize the living conditions of over 130,000 families displaced from their homes in northeast Nigeria.

– In 2018, NRC provided water, sanitation and hygiene services to over 56,000 people in Borno state.

– The humanitarian response plan for Nigeria is only 55% funded.

The post Northeast Nigeria: Urgent Need to Combat Deadly Cholera Outbreaks appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Janet Cherono is Norwegian Refugee Council’s Program Manager in Maiduguri

The post Northeast Nigeria: Urgent Need to Combat Deadly Cholera Outbreaks appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Fishermen on the Ugandan side of Lake Victoria. Uganda has ventured into non-traditional methods of fishing on the lake with a few of companies using cage fishing. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
JINJA, Uganda, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

Colvince Mubiru had heard about cage fish farming on Uganda’s lakes. The small business owner decided to try his hand at it and spent USD8,000 to set up farming cages for Nile Tilapia on Lake Victoria, expecting to reap a huge profit. But just six months into his enterprise, he made huge losses.

“It was too costly to manage so I could not continue because I could have lost all I had,” Mubiru tells IPS.

Both Uganda and neighbouring Kenya have introduced cage fish farming as a sustainable method of ensuring a steady supply of fish stock from Lake Victoria.

Africa’s largest lake, Lake Victoria, is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It has, according to the Lake Victoria Fisheries Management Plan III, “experienced dramatic ecosystem change over time resulting into loss of more than 500 endemic haplochromine fish species.”

Uganda began promoting cage fish farming in 2006. Cage culture encloses the fish in a cage or basket made up of floats, anchors and a frame, submerged to a depth of 10 metres.

In Uganda, small tilapia of no less than one gram are stocked in nursery cages at a density of 1,000 – 2,500 fish. These are reared to at least 15 grams in eight weeks, graded, and stocked in production cages and then reared for a further six to seven months to reach a weight of 350-600 grams before they are harvested.

Fifty-two-year-old Joseph Okeny first became a fisherman on Lake Victoria in 1997. But he abandoned wild fishing two years ago at a time when illegal fishing methods were rife and fish were scarce in Lake Victoria. He has since started a boat cruising business instead.

“You could stay on the lake for almost the entire day but could not get enough fish for consumption at home and for sale,” Okeny tells IPS.

But things have changed since Okeny stopped fishing for a living. According to the Status of Fish Stocks in Lake Victoria 2017, released in December by the NaFIRRI of Uganda, the Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) of Kenya and the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI), fish stocks in the lake have recovered by 30 percent compared to 2016 figures.

This also included the stock of Nile perch, a fish not native to the lake, which was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase in stock is noted also in a study by the Makerere University-based Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), which said aquaculture fish production in Uganda alone increased from approximately 10,000 MT per annum in 2005 to approximately 100,000 MT per annum in 2013 – accounting for around 20 percent of the total national fish production in Uganda. The study said 899 tonnes of fish were being produced in Uganda from cages in every six- to eight-month production cycle.

It also stated that there were 28 registered cage culture farmers in Uganda, with a total of 2,135 cages around Lake Victoria alone. However, KMFRI reported last month that this figure is now close to 3,696.

IPS travelled to Uganda’s Jinja district area on Lake Victoria and discovered that six cage fish farms are owned by foreign investors.

The largest of the six sells fish retail to residents around Bugungu where it has established several nursery ponds. It exports the rest to Kenya, DRC and Europe.

Asked why there were no local fish farmers with established cages on the lake, Okeny believes that adopting that technology requires financing that locals cannot afford.

Aside from the cost of the cage, which can start at USD 350, seed or fingerlings, depending on the size, can cost about USD 270, according to Uganda’s National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI). There is also the added cost of feed for the fish.

Fish farming cage on Lake Victoria. Cage culture encloses the fish in a cage or basket made up of floats, anchors and a frame, submerged to a depth of 10 metres. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Dr. Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, a Fish Biology and Ecology specialist with NaFIRRI, has worked in Uganda’s fisheries research for over 40 years, and agrees with Okeny about the cost.

“Cage fish farming is extremely expensive and you are keeping fish in a small area. If you don’t look after them very well, it is not only the environment which is going to lose, but you are also going to lose,” Ogutu-Ohwayo tells IPS.

“It is not cheap when compared to farming in ponds. And that is why cage fish farming must be practiced as a business just like you rear broiler chicken,” says Ogutu-Ohwayo.

Pointing to an abandoned cage floating within the area allocated to fish cages of an international company, Okeny says some locals tried to invest in cages but got their fingers burnt.

“They thought that cage fish farming brings money and they also started fish farming without having enough capital to buy feed,” explains Okeny.

“These people started without consulting those who have experience. So they failed and most of them withdrew from the business. So that is why you see only one cage remaining,” says Okeny.

Researchers of the survey “Prospects of Cage Fish Farming in South Western Uganda” published in June suggest that lack of funds is the main constraint in cage aquaculture and not lack of feed and fingerlings, as has been suggested in other studies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Gerald Kwikirizaa, one of those involved in the survey, told IPS that the results suggested that lack of funds to purchase inputs was the main constraint in cage aquaculture in South Western Uganda.

He suggested that the government could boost cage fish farming through subsidising feed cost for small-holders, especially if quality floating feed is produced locally.

This cage fish farmer plans to harvest fish from the fishing cages on Lake Victoria. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Fishery development is one of the key global development goals in Agenda 2030, which comprises the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with countries seeking to support the restoration of fish stocks to improve safe and diversified healthy diets.

Ending hunger, securing food supplies and promoting good health and sustainable fisheries are among the topics to be discussed at the first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference being held in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 26 to 28. Over 7,000 participants from 150 countries will be discussing, among other things, how to build safe and resilient communities and to ensure healthy and productive waters.

According to Ogutu-Ohwaayo, cage fish farming is common in the Great Lakes of North America. He said Africa should utilise its inland waters to produce more fish instead of relying on declining wild fish populations.

He added that if properly and systematically developed, it can be another means of food production, explaining that 21 percent of Uganda is made up of fresh water, meaning land for food production is scarce. “So we must use our water to produce food. And cage fish farming is one way of using our waters, in addition to other services, to actually produce food,” Ogutu-Ohwayo further explains.

He said Uganda’s population, which is growing at over three percent a year, cannot survive only on wild fishing, which has stagnated.

Ogutu-Ohwayo said aquaculture is the fastest growing food industry in the world and provides an option for meeting the deficit in fish production.

Uganda’s fisheries production for capture fisheries and aquaculture is estimated at 400,000 tons per year, which is not sufficient to meet growing demand. The six kg per capita fish consumption is far below the FAO-WHO recommended level of 17.5 kg.

“My conviction is that Africa should not be left behind in cage fish farming. And we have the capacity not to be left behind if we do it well,” said Ogutu-Ohwayo, also a board member of the International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR), a scientific organisation made up of researchers studying the Laurentian Great Lakes, other large lakes of the world, and their watersheds.

There have been regional efforts to address the declining fish stocks through innovative technologies.

Ogutu-Ohwa told IPS that he is mobilising fellow researchers from the African Great Lakes region to develop best practices for what he described as an “important emerging production industry.”

“You must follow best management practices. Just like you would manage a zero-grazing cow. You must put in adequate management. We as scientists are doing our best to develop these best management practices,” says Ogutu-Ohwayo.

A project known as Promoting Environmentally, Economically and Socially Sustainable Cage Aquaculture on the African Great Lakes (PESCA) is part of the efforts to address social and environmental concerns related to cage culture.

It operates in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi and generally in the African Great Lakes. PESCA has been operational since the beginning of June 2018.

“There have been concerns that cage fish farming is going to spoil the quality of the water. We want to develop tools that would promote cage fish farming in an environmentally and social way,” said Ogutu-Ohwayo.

Meanwhile, Okeny tells IPS that the introduction of cage fish farming and the efforts by the government to fight illegal fishing seem to be paying off.“Now when people go fishing they come back with good fish because that bad practice has been controlled,” says Okeny

He has seen the negative and positive aspects of cage fishing farming. “I think cage fish farming is very productive going by the amount of fish harvested by [a cage fishing company] fish. And because of that, they are paying their workers very well,” Okeny tells IPS as he docks his boat after a busy day.

Related Articles

• Seychelles Issues World’s First Blue Bond to Fund Fisheries Projects
• Africa’s Giant Blue Economy Potential
• Sustainable Coastal Fisheries in the Pacific Depends on Improving Sanitation

The post Lack of Funds Prevent Ugandan Communities from Investing in Cage Aquaculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo courtesy: Pratham Institute

By Annette Francis
MUMBAI, India, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

The image of the ‘struggling’ daily wage labourer in India is one that stakeholders from across the development sector aspire to transform. Financial security, quality living conditions, and opportunity to thrive are the buzzwords in a conversation about the needs of this bracket. These workers—usually associated with the informal or unorganised sector—are assumed to represent the outliers of the national economy.

By definition, the informal sector includes those roles which aren’t taxed or monitored by any form of government. Recent findings however, indicate that 81 percent of India’s employed individuals work in the informal sector, of which 64 percent are engaged in non-agricultural forms of employment. Thus, while the informal sector may only contribute a sliver to national income charts, it clearly takes up a sizeable slice in the national employment pie.

These individuals aren’t guaranteed job security or minimum wage employment, and often lack essentials such as identification documents, bank accounts, insurance coverage, access to quality education, and more. If 81 percent of the nation is working in the informal sector, it implies that the work done by 81 percent of the nation isn’t formally recognised as ‘work’.

 

Challenges around formalising the informal sector

81 percent of India’s employed individuals work in the informal sector, of which 64 percent are engaged in non-agricultural forms of employment. Thus, while the informal sector may only contribute a sliver to national income charts, it clearly takes up a sizeable slice in the national employment pie.
If the problem is so apparent, then why has it been allowed to persist? To understand the wider challenges surrounding this situation, let us explore the case of the construction sector, one which contributes heavily to the migrating population and is widely recognised as a part of the informal economy.

 

1. Tracking and monitoring

For starters, monitoring this extensive cohort is a difficult task, owing to the widespread migration of the labour workforce. It is estimated that there are 5 to 6 million interstate migrants a year in India, growing at a rate of 4.5 percent annually. This includes undocumented workers who migrate seasonally across multiple locations, working for various employers, potentially across numerous sectors. These dynamic parameters make it challenging for government bodies to effectively track informal workers over a long duration. As a result, they are often excluded from state policies at both the source and destination.

 

2. Turning policy into action

For workers in the construction sector there are legal provisions, set within policies such as the Building and Other Construction Workers Act (BOCW, 1996), which aim to protect them from exploitation at the workplace.

However, converting these plans to action continues to be a challenging task. For instance, the act stipulates a cess collection, which is to be directed towards worker welfare. However while INR 70,000 crore had to be collected by the various Welfare State Boards, the actual collection amounted to only INR 26,962.18 crore rupees. Utilisation of the funds collected is even lower still.

The hierarchy of power set within this sector places contractors and sub-contractors at the top, while pushing labourers to the bottom of the barrel. The work hours are long and, the working conditions strenuous. Additionally, frequency of circulation of workers is high owing to the changing nature of skills required in a construction site. Since awareness about BOCW is limited among the workforce, there is hardly any demand for welfare measures.

 

3. Lack of capital

But the problem doesn’t end with worker’s rights. A closer look at the lives of contractors reveals that despite being higher in the hierarchy, they are handicapped by lack of capital and the irregularity of their revenue cycles. As a result, the job security of those employed under them is also at risk.

It is apparent that for these blue-collar entrepreneurs, there are several financial obstacles which prevent them from running their enterprises efficiently and ethically. For example, lack of collateral and poor credit scores prevent them from availing bank loans. Even if they manage to procure loans, the stringent frameworks set within financial institutions reduces the amount of working capital available for utilisation.

 

Entrepreneurship offers a solution

There are organisations working with entrepreneurs to help them overcome the challenges they face.

1. In 2016 Pratham (the organisation I am a part of), deployed the ‘Good Contractor‘ programme, which provides financial assistance, mentorship, and training for upcoming contractors. The USP of the project is that it has defined an ethics matrix with guidelines for labour welfare, and a candidate’s eligibility to continue in the programme is dependent on how they fulfil the requirements in the matrix.

By recognising upcoming contractors as entrepreneurs, the programme has managed to impact the lives of nearly 400 labourers through 35 contractors over two years in Mumbai. The financial autonomy and mentorship that this programme provides, should be recognised as the key drivers for participation from the workforce.

2. At the start of 2018, the Udhyam Learning Foundation launched the Udhyam Vyapaar model, working on a one-one basis with 30 entrepreneurs. The programme empowers youth at a grassroots level by providing one-one mentorship, to help overcome the challenges which they may be experiencing in running their enterprises.

The objective in this case is to foster entrepreneurs from low income backgrounds, irrespective of the sector or scale of the proposed business plans. The organisation plans to partner with NBFCs to provide funding for entrepreneurs in the nearby future.

3. Having worked on a voluntary basis for 5 years within Aurangabad and Nagpur,  Vruksh Ecosystem has been increasing awareness about the same within local communities, reaching out to over 5000 youth from both rural and urban backgrounds. It has managed to support 30 to 40 entrepreneurs working on enterprises within the sectors of agriculture, healthcare, clean mobility, and sustainable cities, and will officially be launched in, November 2018.

The common denominator for each of these organisations is the message of social impact at a grassroots level, while ensuring profitability for entrepreneurs. The numerous spill-over benefits which are generated through entrepreneurship, scales these models beyond the direct beneficiaries.

The chain reaction which can be generated by starting with a small cohort is what makes them truly click. The rise of these initiatives by nonprofit organisations, strengthens the idea that the solution for improving worker welfare lies in the overall systemic change that may be accelerated through entrepreneurship.

 

Role of civil society and CSR

With the push towards entrepreneurship created by the Start-Up India movement, workers in the informal economy cannot be excluded from the picture. While they may be at a disadvantage when compared to their counterparts in the white-collar end of the spectrum, it mustn’t be forgotten that these blue-collar entrepreneurs could open the doors required to organise 81 percent of the working Indian population. This is a mammoth task, which cannot be accomplished by simply creating amendments in policy. So, what do we need to do?

 

1. Inclusive entrepreneurship

We need to recognise that fostering entrepreneurship in an inclusive manner, is steadily becoming the need of the hour. In both rural and urban communities, programmes which focus on employability and foundation skills could begin to spread the idea that entrepreneurship is an accessible career path for people from all walks of life.

 

2. Training and mentorship

Once the message is out there, the next step is building programmes which can help these aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the challenges they will face. These individuals will require mentorship, training in communication, digital literacy, financial literacy, programme management, and so much more. The goal of their training and mentorship would be to enable them to build a sustainable future for themselves, while creating new job opportunities for others.

 

3. Financial support

Financial limitations are one of the primary bottlenecks which prevents interested parties from entering starting their own enterprises, and so corporates play a significant role in the success of entrepreneurship models. When the matter of CSR funds arise there needs to be greater willingness to experiment and invest in these models.

Microfinance institutions and NBFCs should be willing to grant business loans to entrepreneurs who are vetted and vouched for by partner nonprofits. With innovation comes risk, and funding entrepreneurs with limited collateral and personal finances is a gamble, but it is one that is necessary to ensure the success of their ventures.

On a final note, dignity of labour is a message that is yet to be accepted by the Indian community, and while we need skilled workers, the need for job creators is greater still. The cause of bringing the informal worker cohort to the forefront of our economy is one that needs to resonate in all corners of the nation. With a working age population of more than 850 million, we cannot afford to ignore the potential that 81 percent of our national workforce represents.

 

Annette Francis works with Pratham’s vocational training and entrepreneurship arm known as Pratham Institute. She currently focuses on research and innovation projects being pioneered by the organisation. Her primary area of interest is researching technology-based solutions for mitigating challenges in the development sector, specifically within the livelihood and education space. She has previously worked in a teaching capacity with nonprofit and for-profit organisations based in India and Scotland.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

The post Bringing Informal Workers to the Forefront of Our Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

With 81 percent of India’s employed workforce being in the informal sector, we can't afford to ignore their potential. Here's how entrepreneurship could offer a solution.

The post Bringing Informal Workers to the Forefront of Our Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Farhan Bokhari
Nov 12 2018 (Dawn, Pakistan)

The ill-advised euphoria following Saudi Arabia’s promise to lend at least $6 billion to Pakistan will hardly end the many challenges faced by the country — mostly of our own making. And it will cut no ice with the visiting IMF team that is here to negotiate the terms of a possible loan package. The stock market had welcomed the Saudi promise with a robust rise. But a fast reality check is now needed. Three months after Prime Minister Imran Khan formed the new government, several challenges have continued to emerge.

Farhan Bokhari

After years of recurring and widespread abuse of authority under successive regimes, many of Pakistan’s institutions remain weak. While the ‘naya Pakistan’ government has promised to practically reinvent the country, the regime faces the danger of losing direction. The push to fix everything under the sun, beginning with a comprehensive plan to be unveiled after the fast-approaching first 100 days, is clearly a non-starter. Rather than placing too many entrées simultaneously on the table, Pakistan needs clarity and radically improved coordination of action to tackle just a narrow set of key central challenges.

Some of the world’s best-performing governments have succeeded with setting a broad direction and addressing some of the main obstacles upfront, while letting the rest fall in place.

In Pakistan’s case, the biggest pitfalls that have caused today’s disarray have emerged fundamentally from failing performance in three broad sectors: the economy, internal security and religious harmony. On all of these fronts, the performance of successive governments has been dismal.

Pakistan must address three problems before turning to the rest.

The economic crisis of today caused by the reckless spending of the past half a decade will not subside anytime soon. In sharp contrast to the celebratory mood in the corridors of power following the latest bailout and expectations of Chinese aid, there should be a period of mourning instead. More debt will further weaken whatever is left of the country’s sovereignty, unless a fast-paced push gets under way to aggressively fix a dilapidated system of revenue and tax collection.

Other notable aspects of a push to kick-start the economy include an aggressive campaign to fix the widening international trade deficit, along with the internal management of the economy whose growth is held back by a weak policy environment. Challenges such as widespread inefficiency and corruption are the natural consequences of Pakistan’s failure over time to bring its economic management at par with the changing global environment.

The PTI’s message of cleaning up Pakistan will remain hollow unless backed by a clear line of action. History has proven time and again that pauperised states inevitably lose their freedom of action, and there are hardly any exceptions to this proven norm.

A second element to addressing Pakistan’s challenges lies in reforming the country’s internal security conditions to remove the prevailing sense of widespread discomfort in daily lives. Notwithstanding the army’s success of recent years in pushing back the advance of the Pakistani Taliban, much more still needs to be done on the militancy and extremism front. Besides, across Pakistan, the pervasive thana culture rules, with little evidence that this will change soon. The policing network for the subcontinent was initially built in colonial times to serve the ends of a distant power. That construct still exists.

Meanwhile, across the lower judiciary, the daily lament of the public ranges from unusual delays and incompetence surrounding court proceedings to accounts of massive corruption. Taken together, the Pakistani public finds little relief in an area which should be the central responsibility of the state.

Last, Pakistan is in urgent need of a strong push to promote religious harmony in society. As the country advanced its interests in the name of ‘jihad’ across its neighbourhood in the 1980s and after, intolerance in the name of religion grew by leaps and bounds within. Over time, one government after another has simply abdicated its responsibility to ending violence in the name of religion. They have failed to lead Pakistan towards greater unity among members of different sects and religions.

For the prime minister, a journey to a successful and enduring turnaround for Pakistan will be a nonstarter unless the government’s priorities and vision incorporate an inclusive, national mainstream that has Pakistanis from all faiths and beliefs living in peace and security.

These three objectives are both narrow and wide. But a clearer focus on them could eventually resurrect what was once a promising future for Pakistan. In contrast, filling the plate with too many choices runs the risk of shifting the focus away from where it must matter the most.

The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist.
farhanbokhari@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Three challenges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Farmers spread their produce under the sun in the courtyard of their home in Ghool village of the Chakwal district, Pakistan. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

By Ahmed Raza and Daud Khan
ROME, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

Despite the fact that Pakistan’s industrial and services sector continue to grow in importance, what happens in the agriculture sector remains critical to the performance of Pakistan’s economy and the wellbeing of its people.

According to data by the Government of Pakistan almost 60% of the country’s population live in rural areas.  For most of them agriculture forms the basis of their livelihood and spending on health, education, housing and clothing are critically dependant on the performance of the sector.

Poverty also tends to be more concentrated in rural areas and, as a consequence of the migration of many young males to urban areas, the bulk of tasks in agriculture and related rural activities are now carried out by women.

Better agriculture performance therefore also means greater wellbeing for a large segment of the population, less poverty and more money in the hands of women – something that is critical in bringing about a more gender balanced society.

In recent years the performance of agriculture has been lackluster. Since 2011/12 growth has averaged only 2.4% per year and in 2015/16 the agricultural GDP actually fell for the first time in Pakistan’s history. This resulted in strong protests from farmers and rural populations about the low priority given to agricultural and rural development by the outgoing PML-N government.

In recent years the performance of agriculture has been lackluster. Since 2011/12 growth has averaged only 2.4% per year and in 2015/16 the agricultural GDP actually fell for the first time in Pakistan’s history

Pakistan does not have a national level Ministry of Agriculture or of Rural Development.  Most of the responsibilities for agricultural development have been devolved to the provinces as part of the decentralization process that started in 2010 under the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

However, there is a Federal Ministry for National Food Security and Research (MNFSR) and it has a critical role to support and guide agriculture development across the four provinces.  In addition, a number of key policy levers related to trade, tariffs, support prices and regulations related to seeds and fertilizers remain under their control.

A new minister, Sahibzada Muhammad Mehboob Sultan, was appointed to the MNFSR in early October.  The new Minister has an important but uphill task ahead of him. This should not daunt him as many of the critical elements of an action plan are in place and it needs some strong political lobbying to get things moving.

More critically, as argued below, what he does will not require is more money and in fact a review of the current subsidies may actually reduce public outlays – something for which his counterpart the Minister of Finance will be grateful in these tough times.

 

Below is a list of four things the new minister should do:

 

First, operationalize the National Food Security Policy. A new National Food Security Policy was approved at the end of the tenure of the last Government – just before the dissolving of the assemblies. The new Minister should not see the National Food Security Policy as a legacy document of the previous regime.

The Policy has taken several years to complete and the exercise has been consultative and holistic, with strong involvement of the provinces, development partners and other stakeholders. It provides the necessary framework for visualizing the role of agriculture and food systems in the production and consumption of adequate, safe and nutritious foods without compromising the country’s natural resources while at the same time improving the incomes of vulnerable populations.

The new Minister should focus on translating the Policy into action. The focus should be on better managing trade and pricing policies – in particular liberalising trade in products such as wheat and sugar which are important to the poor and which can be imported at low prices, and, at the same time freeing up domestic markets for fruits, vegetables and livestock which are still subject to government monopolies and price caps; improving legislation particularly those related seeds and other inputs as well as to intellectual property rights which act as a brake on national and international investment in machinery, equipment and inputs; leading the way on top-end basic research especially with regard to new and emerging issues such as climate change;  maintain international collaborative agreements especially with regard to transboundary pests and disease control.

 

Second, support provinces with managing public expenditure in agriculture. Almost all development expenditures for agriculture and rural development are in the hands of the Provincial Governments.

Often much of these funds are inefficiently spent with poorly planned projects, slow implementation and high expenditures on recurrent costs, the bulk of which are salaries of support staff. All four provinces have formulated their own agricultural plans and strategies to relaunch growth in the agriculture sector which reflect the growing demand for horticultural and livestock products from the expanding urban population.

Public expenditures, both development and recurrent, will play a large role in bringing about this change. The new Minister should work with his provincial counterparts, supporting and helping them with the more technical complex and difficult tasks such as the restructuring of the public services, revamping their research systems and reforms of land tenancy arrangements.

 

Third, advocate for the phasing out of inefficient subsidies. Presently, inefficient subsidies in the agriculture sector, particularly on fertilizers and the procurement, storage and distribution of wheat, curtail its growth potential.

By the government’s own admission in the National Food Security Policy document, the subsidy on wheat costs the national exchequer close to 200 billion Pakistan rupees, and should be revisited. According to a recent report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the gradual phasing out of subsidies could allow reallocation of public funds towards higher investments in rural infrastructure (such as roads and markets), agro-processing, food logistics and distribution, research and development, and extension services.

In addition, redistributive policies could provide the necessary impetus for enhancing inclusivity in the agriculture sector through better targeting of social safety nets to smallholder family farmers, leading to improved human and social capital in rural areas.

 

Fourth, foster coordination with other sector and related ministries.  Alleviating poverty, eradicating hunger and malnutrition and transforming food systems are challenges that require coordinated and coherent actions across food, healthcare and education sectors. The MNFSR should take on this task , taking advantage of international agreed and supported initiatives such as the national Zero Hunger Programme which integrates agriculture, nutrition and social welfare.

 

Ahmed Raza Gorsi works in international development specializing in food, agriculture and nutrition. Views expressed here are his own.

Daud Khan has more than 30 years of experience on global food security and rural development issues. Until recently, he was a staff member at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.  

The post Considerations for Pakistan’s New Minister for National Food Security and Research appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Picture taken after the signature of the armistice in the Forest of Compiègne. Credit: Public Domain

By Manuel Manonelles
GENEVA, Nov 11 2018 (IPS)

What is the link between the current civil war in Syria, the austerity policy imposed by Germany during the last economic crisis or the Arab-Israeli conflict? Its origin, which lies in the world that was born a hundred years ago, inside a wagon in the middle of the Forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris.

Indeed, it was on November 11, 1914 that the signature of the Armistice between the Allied powers and the German Empire took place, in the above-mentioned wagon. This event marked de facto the end of World War I (1914-18), a conflict that changed the world and still today projects its shadows.

The Armistice was followed by the Paris Peace Conference and, as a consequence, the Treaty of Versailles, that of Sèvres and many others. The birth of the League of Nations, the policy of “reparations” or the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman empires, and in part the Russian one, were other outputs of the end of the Great War. The consequences of some of these historical events are still present today in the international agenda and determine the lives of millions of people, one century later.

 

The Middle East, Kurdistan and Syria

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, through the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920, opened a Pandora’s Box that we still strive to close today. Three examples: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the civil war in Syria and the case of the Kurdistan.

Let us start with the last one, with Kurdistan. Sèvres foresaw the holding of a referendum to decide its future, a referendum that never took place. The uprising of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, the subsequent war and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) were the main causes, but the disunity between the Kurds we could call “pragmatic” and the supporters of a greater Kurdistan also influenced. Similarly, the fact that Sèvres planned to include the oil rich province of Mosul within the territory of an eventual free Kurdistan (which the British were coveting) helped to tip the balance in favor of Turkish interests.

Another unfortunate legacy is, in part too, the current civil war in Syria. It is widely known that the origin of this conflict is related to the emergence of the Arab Spring, the resilience of the al-Assad regime, the infiltration of radical jihadist groups, and the interests of many regional and global powers.

However, part of the current war’s cruelty is intimately related to a State, Syria, resulting from the end of the WWI, with their borders designed to satisfy, exclusively, the French and British colonial interests. A division based on a Franco-British secret agreement taken before the end war, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, that unscrupulously mixed and divided diverse ethnic and religious groups.

Even more, we cannot ignore the icing on the cake of all conflicts, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its origin is linked to the Balfour declaration (1917) before the end of the Great War. This declaration was assumed by the San Remo Conference (1920) -also linked to the Paris Peace Conference- within the framework of the complex maneuvers of the great powers, and other influential groups of interests, during the reshaping of borders of the post-Ottoman Levant.

 

Inheritances in financial policy

In another vein, one of the main elements that also defined the treaties resulting from the Paris Peace Conference, and especially the Treaty of Versailles, was the policy of “reparations”. This policy mainly entailed that the countries that lost WWI had to face the payment of enormous sums to compensate the Allies.

This policy, so aggressive, led to the resignation of a young economist from the British delegation at the Peace Conference, called Keynes, who warned of the destabilizing effects in the economic and financial field that this could have. Indeed, this was one of the main causes of the German hyper-inflationary crisis of the years 1920-23, in which a loaf of bread reached the cost of billions of German marks. The influence of this crisis on the discrediting of the Weimar Republic and the consequent rise of Nazism is well known.

This sequence of events is at the base of the almost pathological animosity of the German economists to inflation. Since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, German official economic and financial policy has been always conditioned by a strict control of inflation: perceived as the mother of all possible and imaginable evils. This was the policy that Chancellor Merkel imposed, not only in Germany but also in the rest of Europe, during the last economic and financial crisis; a restrictive policy that would avoid the supposed danger of inflation. With the consequent austerity policies and their consequences…

All of this and more, a hundred years ago, started in a wagon inside the Forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris.

Manuel Manonelles is the Delegate of the Government of Catalonia in Switzerland, as well as Visiting Professor at the University Ramon Llull – Blanquerna (Barcelona)

 

The post Inside a Wagon in the Forest of Compiègne appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nigerian returnees boarding a plane to Lagos from southern Libya. Photo: IOM/Moayad Zaghdani

By International Organization for Migration
TRIPOLI, Libya, Nov 9 2018 (IOM)

The UN Migration Agency, IOM, resumed its Voluntary Humanitarian Return Programme (VHR) in Libya’s southern city of Sebha yesterday (08/11). VHR provides support to stranded migrants wishing to return to their home countries. In recent months, IOM has been expanding its outreach in the south through multiple field missions to make VHR operations possible.

The charter, which landed in Lagos, Nigeria, came after IOM’s outreach activities with local authorities and Nigerian communities in the south. In close coordination with the Nigerian Embassy in Tripoli, the Organization facilitated the provision of online consular support which enabled the embassy to conduct consular authentication and issue travel documents.

“We have been working intensively in the South to make sure that migrants living in urban settings or detention centres, who wish to return home safely, can receive our support,” said IOM VHR Operations Assistant, Mohamed Hmouzi.

The land transportation for migrants from BraK AL Shati and Sebha, located 80 kilometres and 30 kilometers – subsequently, from Tamanhent International Airport, was secured in collaboration with the local authorities. The migrants were also provided with food and non-food items. IOM provided protection screenings for vulnerable migrants and medical screening prior to their departure.

The charter carried 120 migrants (75 men, 30 women, 6 children and 9 infants) to Lagos. IOM will be working closely with the local authorities to ensure they reach all stranded migrants in the south who are interested in VHR assistance.

So far in 2018, IOM has provided voluntary humanitarian return assistance to a total of 14,622 migrants in Libya, out of which 3,503 were Nigerian migrants. Nigeria is the top country of return from Libya, followed by Mali and Niger.

IOM will continue monitoring and assessing the needs of stranded migrants in southern Libya for the provision of humanitarian assistance, VHR registration, medical care, as well as other pressing needs.

This charter was funded by the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.

For more information, please contact Maya Abu Ata at IOM Libya, Tel: + 00216 58601336, Email: mabuata@iom.int or Safa Msehli, Tel: +216 22 241 842 Email: smsehli@iom.int

The post Suspended for Two Years, IOM Resumes Voluntary Humanitarian Return Flights from Southern Libya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Diversifying Crops to Help Overcome Drought in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 2018 (IPS)

Marco Napoli, who passed away on November 6, began his early professional career as a New York-based correspondent for several international news organizations, including the Italian Il Progresso News, back in the 1960s, long before he was Regional Director, IPS North America.

Marco Napoli

As part of his beat, he had to cover some of the shenanigans of reputed Mafia families in New York, relying largely on anonymous sources in New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Organized Crime Control Bureau.

Marco once recounted one of his more memorable experiences interviewing a legendary Mafia boss in the backseat of a black limousine in New York’s famed Central Park.

Fearful of any possible attacks on the head honcho, who was apparently on a hit list, Marco was uneasily looking over his shoulder as he continued with his interview. Sensing Marco’s nervousness, the Mafia boss looked at him, tapped at the car window with his clenched fist, and told Marco: “Don’t worry, it’s bullet proof.”

And so began some of Marco’s adventurous days reporting from the asphalt jungle—a crime-infested 1960s New York City where a bank robber could get mugged fleeing to his get-a-way car.

At IPS, Marco led a more restrained life as an administrator and financial controller— graduating from shoe-leather reporting to shoe-leather fund-raising, as he pounded the sidewalks of the UN neighborhood, personally following up on project proposals as he shuttled from one UN agency to another – UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, all in the shadow of the UN secretariat where he had a third floor office.

As a longtime Regional Director, Marco was very protective of IPS staffers. When the head of UN media accreditation complained that he does not see any IPS reporters at the daily UN news briefings to justify press credentials, Marco angrily shot back: “Are you now spying on my staff”?

When I first walked into the IPS office in the late 1970s, IPS had a full complement of four staffers—all women, two Americans, one Indian and one French Moroccan. Talk of gender parity at the UN? I found myself a minority of one.

We all worked under the leadership of Marco who not only believed in perseverance and hard work but also punctuality. While Marco’s primary task was the economic survival of IPS, he scrupulously kept away from editorial assignments which were coordinated by an editor-in-chief, first in Rome, later in Amsterdam.

Over the years, Marco successfully extended the IPS empire, to include Canada and the Caribbean. With strong support from Director-General Roberto Savio, Marco was an aggressive fund raiser in the UN system, and sustained strong personal links to all of the UN agencies based in New York.

Marco’s crowning glory was the annual IPS International Achievement Award ceremony held at the UN delegate’s dining room– a high profile event attended by ambassadors, senior UN officials, representatives of civil society and the press corps.

The recipients of the awards, who added a tinge of political glamour, included two UN secretaries-general — Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan and three heads of state: Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland (also a Nobel laureate in 2000) and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

Marco, almost singlehandedly, organized and coordinated the annual events, which in the hands of a novice, would have been a logistical nightmare.

As Marco would recollect, there was only one IPS correspondent, Deodoro Roca, when he joined the UN Bureau in January 1979.

And then began a wave of correspondents and stringers, including Jim Lobe, Mario Dujisin, Joan Draper, Karl Meier, Madeleine Eisner, Asma bin Hamida, Maria Blaque-Belair, Shalini Dewan, Farhan Haque, Jaya Dayal, Alejandro Kirk and Yvette Collymore.

“We shared the office with Japan’s Kyodo news agency and the New York Times (which used part of our office as its archives),” said Marco, who was the political live wire of the Bureau.

Marco, who retired on 31 December 1999, said the UN Bureau had very strong working relationships with successive Secretaries-General, including Kurt Waldheim (Austria), Javier Perez de Cuellar (Peru), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) and Kofi Annan (Ghana).

Under Marco, IPS had one of the most spacious press offices on the third floor of the Secretariat building, which he jealously safeguarded as he presided over several successive IPS UN, Bureau Chiefs, including Claude Robinson (Jamaica), Appan Menon (India) and Rajiv Tiwari (India).

The only drawback was that it was a windowless office– perhaps one of the few such offices among the UN press corps on the third floor. But as one wisecracking IPS Bureau Chief remarked: “We never had a room with a view– but all our new computers had windows.”

The post Marco Napoli, 86, Ensured the Survival of IPS at UN appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A woman making tortillas in her home in the village of San Lorenzo, Chiapas, Mexico. In Latin America, 8.4% of women are in a situation of severe food insecurity, compared to 6.9% of men. Credit: FAO

By Julio Berdergué, Marita Perceval, and Miguel Barreto
SANTIAGO, Nov 8 2018 (IPS)

The number of undernourished people increased for the third consecutive year in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has exceeded 39 million people. In addition, almost one in four adults is obese, while overweight affects 250 million; more than the entire population of Brazil.

For this reason, for the first time, four agencies of the United Nations system -FAO, PAHO/WHO, UNICEF and WFP- have joined together to publish the Panorama of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean 2018.

In Latin America, 8.4% of women are in a situation of severe food insecurity, compared to 6.9% of men. In ten countries, 20% of the poorest children suffer three times more chronic malnutrition than the richest 20%.
This year’s edition focuses on inequality, a fundamental issue for the region. Inequality contributes both to hunger and several different forms of malnutrition. In Latin America, 8.4% of women are in a situation of severe food insecurity, compared to 6.9% of men. In ten countries, 20% of the poorest children suffer three times more chronic malnutrition than the richest 20%. Indigenous populations suffer greater food insecurity than non-indigenous people, and rural populations have higher rates of poverty than urban ones.

Without addressing inequality in food security and nutrition, we will not be able to fulfill the commitment we have adopted to leave no one behind, established in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

It is necessary to understand why malnutrition, lack of micronutrients, overweight and obesity have a greater impact on people with lower income, women, indigenous people, people of African descent and rural families. Above all, we must act in a differentiated way to ensure that these social groups and the populations of territories that are lagging behind can also fulfill their right to food.

FAO, PAHO/WHO, UNICEF and WFP are convinced that it is perfectly possible to transform our food systems to ensure a better diet for all, in a way that is more sustainable an adapted to climate change.

Today we understand that we need actions in production, international trade, processing and marketing of products to have healthy food. We can work to improve environments, in a way that facilitates access to healthy foods, and encourage practices that help people make more informed and responsible consumption decisions.

It is possible to change the current course of the region to accelerate progress towards the goal of eradicating hunger and all forms of malnutrition: the Sustainable Development Goal 2. For this, what we need most is to recover greater political commitment with the eradication of hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

Some governments are already implementing a new generation of policies to address the specificities of the groups that are suffering the most. Innovative public policies to reduce overweight and obesity are also being applied for the first time.

For these policies to be successful, we need the participation of everyone. Together we must think of ways for all the actors of the food system to act more responsibly with society and the environment, from producers to consumers. Together we can build food systems that ensure adequate food in the present and in the future. Together we can guarantee a healthy life for all and become the zero hunger generation.

The post Only Acting Together Can We Stop the Rise in Malnutrition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Julio Berdegué is FAO Regional Representative, Marita Perceval is Director of UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean, Miguel Barreto is Regional Director of WFP

The post Only Acting Together Can We Stop the Rise in Malnutrition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Young farmers and brothers Prosper and Prince Chikwara are using precision farming techniques at their horticulture farm, outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/ IPS

By Busani Bafana
WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands, Nov 8 2018 (IPS)

At every conference she has attended on the youth, Nawsheen Hosenally has been frustrated to hear that agriculture is not ‘cool’. The 29-year-old graduate in agricultural extension and information systems knew she wanted to do something to redeem the image of agriculture among young people.

So the Mauritian and her Burkanibe, journalist husband decided to co-founded Agribusiness TV. Content for the channel is viewed through the website where short video stories about successful youth entrepreneurs who have careers in agriculture are uploaded.

“I had heard so much about how uncool agriculture was and realised no one changes this image but youth themselves,” Hosenally tells IPS.

“Our tagline at Agribusiness TV is ‘seeing is believing’. The visuals showing success stories in agriculture have greater impact than, for instance, reading a publication. Slowly, youth are seeing agriculture differently.”

With a little help from their mobile phones, apps, YouTube and Facebook, young entrepreneurs like Hosenally are changing the face of farming across Africa. Despite having 60 percent of the world’s arable and uncultivated land, the African continent is battling to eliminate hunger and poverty as the majority of its smallholder farmers are getting older, and realising lower crop yields than before.

The likelihood of the agriculture sector spurring Africa’s economic turnaround are huge, as are the challenges of attracting young farmers to an industry employing more than 60 percent of the continent’s population.

Population experts project that Africa’s population will double to 2.5 billion people in the next 40 years. This will place pressure on African governments to deliver more food, energy, jobs shelter, health and better standards of living for their citizens.

The digitalisation of agriculture offers young entrepreneurs the opportunity to create disruptive business models that accelerate modernisation of the sector, says Michael Hailu, Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), based in The Netherlands.

“Young people can relate. When they see other young people doing something, they ask ‘why not me’?” said Hosenally. “By showing that farmers and entrepreneurs can be young and successful, they are changing the narrative about agriculture,” she adds. More young people are tuning into Agribusiness TV for inspiration and farming tips.

The TV channel, which also has a mobile application, attracted 500,000 views in the first year of its launch in 2012. Within six months, the videos had drawn 1 million views. Today, the viewership has increased to more than 8 million on the app, with over 180,000 followers on Facebook and almost 18,000 subscribers on YouTube.

“We conceived it for mobile phones because we were targeting youth,” Hosenally tells IPS. “The statistics are really great and show the audience is growing over time, but in terms of stories we see more impact in the feedback we get. The first impact is when someone is featured online. All of a sudden they are like a star as soon as their video is published. Some have 100,000 views in less than 24 hours. It is visibility that leads to networking and other opportunities.”

A pig farmer from Burkina Faso featured on Agribusiness TV mentioned that he was keen to expand his business into crop production, but did not have a tractor. A Burkinabe living in Spain saw the video and donated a tractor to the young farmer.

“This is the impact we want to see, and this will get more young people to see agriculture as a business,” says Hosenally. She has also created an Agribusiness Shop that sells natural value-added products from youth and women in Burkina Faso through a Facebook page.

More than 1.3 billion people are employed in agriculture across the world, making it one of the largest job providers and key source of income and livelihoods, according to figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Farming role models

Youth in Ghana look down on agriculture because they can only see elderly and poor farmers struggling to make ends meet, says Michael Ocansey, a computer science specialist and founder of Agrocenta, an online platform linking small-scale farmers and large farmer organisations in Ghana.

“Many young people move out of the farming communities to the cities to seek delusional greener pastures,” Ocansey tells IPS. “At AgroCenta, we are changing this by improving the financial livelihood of smallholder farmers, and also making agriculture sexier for the younger generation.”

Ocansey admits that examples of struggling farmers still exist, making it hard to undo the perception youth have about farmers and farming. More success stories may help to change the mind-set so that young people are persuaded to make a career in agriculture.

Lilian Mabonga, Head of Programmes at Ustadi foundation, a capacity development organisation based in Kenya, agrees.

“Many youth do not view agriculture favourably, and it is usually seen as something you do when you retire,” says Mabonga.

“Youth are the majority of the population in my country, and agriculture employs more than 40 and agriculture contributes 26 per cent to GDP while providing livelihoods for more than 80 per cent of the population.”

Barriers to young entrepreneurs

Youth entrepreneurs can face rough ground when it comes to planning a future in agriculture. Many lack access to land and infrastructure, and have inadequate skills and knowledge, as well as limited access to agricultural information, markets and finance.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) forecasts that Africa can increase its agricultural output to 880 billion dollars per year by 2030 if it removes barriers to development, which include, among other factors, low investment, poor credit access for farmers, limited market access, and limited use of modern agro inputs and mechanisation.

Already, Africa’s agribusiness market is projected to be valued at 1 trillion dollars by 2030, according to the AfDB.

Show the money

The perception that you can make money on the farm needs to be supported with advise that hard work must be expected, cautions Lawrence Afere (35), founder of Springboard, an online network of producers and rural entrepreneurs in Ondo State of Nigeria.

“When we project farming as a viable economic opportunity for young people, we should tell them it is a process and you have to get your hands dirty,” says Afere whose programme is working with 3,000 members across six states in Nigeria, growing plantains, beans and rice. Springboard gives the farmers inputs and training, and buys back the produce for processing and value addition.

Access to finance tops the farming bucket list. Some initiatives are helping young entrepreneurs to go into agriculture without breaking the bank.

An FAO programme on Youth Employment is helping to beat poverty by developing the technical skills of young people in agriculture. In Guinea Bissau, FAO has promoted skills development for young farmers in aquaculture after realising that its target group of young entrepreneurs did not have the technical skill to run fish farming projects, even if they had all other resources.

Skills, effective policies and a conducive environment are key foundations on which to build successful agribusiness entrepreneurs, argues Tony Nsanganira, a youth employment specialist with FAO in Ghana.

Entrepreneurship needs education too

Despite the many success stories of agripreneurs, one of the evidence-based studies from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that youth entrepreneurship cannot be the solution for the massive youth employment challenge.

Over the next two decades, 440 million young people in sub-Saharan Africa will enter the labour market looking for work, according to the World Bank and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).

Most youth in sub-Saharan Africa are poorly educated and have low skills, and the majority live in rural areas, says Ji-Yeun Rim, project manager at the OECD’s Development Centre, based in Paris.

“Yet rural youth have high job expectations, and they do not want to farm,” Rim told IPS.

A recent OECD study on rural youth aspirations in developing countries shows that 76 per cent aspire to work in high-skilled occupations, but in reality, only 13 per cent are actually in such jobs.

In the past four years, Rim has coordinated a youth inclusion project supporting governments in nine developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to improve policies targeting youth.

Related Articles

• “Governments are Starting to See that Organic Food Policy Works”
• The Invisible, Hungry Hand
• Kenyan Women Turning the Tables on Traditional Banking and Land Ownership

The post Making Agriculture Cool appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Colombia hosts the highest number of migrants and refugees from Venezuela. Photo: IOM

By International Organization for Migration
Nov 8 2018 (IOM)

IOM, the UN Migration Agency, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency announced today that the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela worldwide has now reached three million.

According to data from national immigration authorities and other sources, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean host an estimated 2.4 million refugees and migrants from Venezuela, while other regions account for the rest.

“Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have largely maintained a commendable open-door policy to refugees and migrants from Venezuela, however, their reception capacity is severely strained, requiring a more robust and immediate response from the international community if this generosity and solidarity are to continue,” said Eduardo Stein, UNHCR-IOM Joint Special Representative for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela.

Colombia has the highest number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela, a total of over one million. It is followed by Peru, with over half a million, Ecuador over 220,000, Argentina 130,000, Chile over 100,000 and Brazil 85,000.

In addition to South American countries, countries in Central America and the Caribbean also recorded increasing arrivals of refugees and migrants from Venezuela. Panama, for example, is now hosting 94,000 Venezuelans.

With rising numbers, the needs of refugees and migrants from Venezuela and the communities hosting them have also significantly increased.

Governments in the region are leading the humanitarian response and coordinating their efforts, including through the Quito Process, which has been an important step towards a regional approach to scale up the response and harmonize policies. The second Quito meeting of governments from the region will take place on 22 and 23 November.

To support this response, the Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Platform, established in September and composed of 40 partners and participants, including UN Agencies, other international organizations, civil society and faith-based organizations, is strengthening the operational response and on a humanitarian Regional Response Plan for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (RMRP), to be launched in December.

The RMRP will focus on four strategic areas: direct emergency assistance, protection, socio-economic and cultural integration and capacity-building for the governments of receiving countries.

For more information contact:

Juliana Quintero, IOM (juquintero@iom.int +54 1132488134)
William Spindler, UNHCR (spindler@unhcr.org +507 69290257 or +41 79 2173011)

The post Number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela reaches three million appeared first on Inter Press Service.

This school was started by one of African Women Rising’s adult literacy groups. The government-run school is far away and children are not able to join until they are older as it is too far away for them to walk. Parents decided to take action, pool their resources and start their own school so their children would not fall behind. This demonstrates the power of community organizing. Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

By Amber Rouleau
SANTA BARBARA, California, Nov 8 2018 (IPS)

While its conflict ended in 2007, Northern Uganda struggles with its legacy as one of the most aid-dependent regions in the world.

Linda Cole, founder of African Women Rising (AWR), who has vast experience working in conflict and post-conflict regions, realized that programs don’t always reach the people who need it the most: those living in extreme poverty.

Couple this with the fact that most post-conflict programs are geared toward men, Cole created African Women Rising with the belief that there is a better way to impart meaningful and long-term change for women in these communities.

Rooted in the conviction that women should be active stakeholders in defining their own development strategies, AWR’s programs focus on providing people with access to capital to be able to invest in farming or businesses, working in partnership with farmers to sustainably improve yields and reduce vulnerability to environmental challenges, and providing adult and girls’ education to empower people to take action in their communities.

In order to become a better farmer, businesswoman, or simply a more productive member of society, women must know how to read, write and calculate. AWR is helping over 9,000 of the most vulnerable women and girls reclaim their lives, and empower future generations, building on initiatives which allow for self-sustaining solutions.

The majority of the women African Women Rising works with are widows, abductees, girl mothers, orphans or grandmothers taking care of orphans and other vulnerable children. For women who were forced to participate in the war against their own people, the return home is often a grim experience.

Many return to areas where access to primary health care, education or arable land to farm is tenuous at best. Accordingly, throughout the last twelve years, AWR has been working to break this paradigm of extreme dependency and create a foundation of self-sufficiency and sovereignty for women in these rural communities, with three foundational programs: micro-finance, education, and agriculture.

Brenda is 24 years old. She has 3 children, the two older ones go to school. Brenda is a participant in African Women Rising’s organic Field Crop program. Using local resources and simple methods for improving the soil and water conservation, she has been able to double her yield. Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

In the last number of years, Northern Uganda has seen a dramatic increase in refugees coming from South Sudan. Over one million people have crossed the border, approximately 80% are women and children, some arriving into the communities where AWR is working. AWR is currently working with 6,600 refugees in Palabek settlement camp, helping them start and maintain permagardens to increase access to food and income.

Their micro-financing program is founded on proven Village Savings and Loan methodology, with an approach based on savings, basic business skills, and access to capital. AWR achieves this through rigorous capacity building and mentorship. The training classes focus on basic business knowledge and accounting to provide women with the tools to be successful.

The viability of AWR’s model lies in its use of community mobilizers who provide technical support and mentoring for each group over a three year period. This year, AWR groups will save over $2 million, all coming from women’s weekly savings of 25 to 75 cents.

“With the money I saved from the Micro Finance group in 2013 I hired a tractor to plow my land and plant simsim. With the income I bought cattle. I now have more than 80 cattle. African Women Rising has changed my life.” Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

As the largest provider of adult literacy in Northern Uganda, AWR’s 34 adult literary centers provide education to more than 2,000 adults. However, they are more than a place to become literate. Participants identify issues that are relevant to them and discuss how to solve them.

For example, the lack of trustworthy candidates in a recent election made over 50 students to run for public office. Centers have also repaired boreholes, opened up new roads, started marketplaces and community schools for children.

African Women Rising is the largest provider of adult literacy in Northern Uganda. Their centers are more than a place to learn to read and write. Building upon the teachings of Paul Freire, they help communities organize, identify, and solve the challenges they are facing. Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

Their education programs for girls focuses primarily on children of AWR members who participate in their livelihoods programs and are reaching a financial status where they can begin to sustainably afford school fees. In some of these regions, not a single girl graduates from primary school – and in Palabek refugee camp, AWR has built a structure, so teachers have a building in which to prepare and teach lessons.

Cole and her organization are working together with parents, caretakers, schools, and government officials to create sustainable change. The program provides academic mentorship and life skills to 1,150 girls in 11 remote schools in Northern Uganda, increasing access and removing obstacles to schooling.

This includes providing washable menstrual pads for girls, so they can stay in school when they are menstruating, one of the biggest barriers for girls in continuing their studies.

With each missed week, girls fall farther behind, often eventually dropping out entirely, perpetuating the cycle of poverty. AWR is building awareness and support for girls’ education in communities, and aims to have 55% of girls graduating their grade level this year.

The organization’s agricultural training program teaches community members how to create, manage, and maintain their gardens (allowing for not only food, but income), over a year’s seasonal cropping cycle, tracking 25 different agroecological based indicators (most agencies track 2 to 3 in a development setting).

Women learning how to use an A-frame to help dig swales to collect water for their Perma Garden. Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

The Perma garden and Field crop programs increase soil fertility, water conservation, and crop yields, teaching farmers in a participatory approach designed to maximize exposure to practical lessons, ensuring year-round access to nutritious vegetables and fruit. A better diet and nutritional intake, means increased income for participants and increased access to healthcare and schooling.

Perma Gardens are designed to produce food year-round. This helps people through the hunger period and, for many, it is also a source of income. Credit: Brian Hodges Photography for African Women Rising

These programs are symbiotic, and while there are no quick fixes, simple, community-based solutions wholly learned over time changes lives. AWR believes in a just and equal world where all people have the opportunity and right to live their lives with dignity.

Through their programs they are working to break the cycle of poverty and dependence: as parents and caregivers are becoming financially stable they invest in the education of their children, and as children learn, a cycle of empowerment and self-sustainability begins. Like a seed planted in a garden, the cultivation of education provides opportunities for the entire community, for generations to come.

AWR depends on grants and donations. For more information on African Women Rising, or to donate, please visit http://www.africanwomenrising.org/

The post Empowering Women in Post-Conflict Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Amber Rouleau is with the communications office for African Women Rising

The post Empowering Women in Post-Conflict Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Julio Berdegué, FAO representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, presents the region's Panorama of Food and Nutrition 2018 in Santiago, which has bad news due to the increase in hunger, malnutrition, overweight and obesity for the third consecutive year. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Nov 8 2018 (IPS)

“For the third consecutive year there is bad news” for Latin America and the Caribbean, where the numbers of hungry people have increased to “39.3 million people,” or 6.1 percent of the population, Julio Berdegué, FAO’s regional representative, said Wednesday.

At the regional headquarters of the United Nations agency in Santiago, Berdegué presented the conclusions of the Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security 2018, which brings more bad news: malnutrition and obesity also increased, in a situation closely linked to the persistence of inequality in the countries of the region.

The report was prepared jointly by the regional division of four U.N. agencies: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation), the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The four organisations called on governments in the region to implement public policies that combat inequality and promote healthy and sustainable food systems."There is no material or scientific reason to justify hunger...We are issuing a wake-up call to governments and societies." -- Julio Berdegué

“There is no material or scientific reason to justify hunger,” Berdegué said during the presentation, pointing out that for the past five years, no progress has been made in the region, and that it has in fact slid backwards for the past three years.

“We are issuing a wake-up call to governments and societies,” he said.

The regional representative highlighted the case of Colombia where “peace has begun to pay dividends in the eradication of hunger,” referring to the positive effects of the peace deal reached by the government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016.

At the other extreme, Venezuela became one of the countries with the greatest number of hungry people: 3.7 million – 11.7 percent of the population.

Since 2014, the number of undernourished people has grown in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela. The largest rise occurred in Venezuela, with an increase of 600,000 people from 2014 to 2017, according to the Panorama.

Other countries severely affected by hunger are Haiti – five million people, equivalent to 45.7 percent of the population – and Mexico – 4.8 million people, representing 3.8 percent of the population.

However, in both Haiti and Mexico, hunger has declined in the last three years. The same is true in Colombia and the Dominican Republic. But these are the only four countries in the region that managed to reduce hunger since 2014.

“If Haiti can do it (reduce hunger), all of the other countries can, too,” Berdegué said emphatically.

According to the Panorama, the rate at which the number of hungry people in the region grew accelerated: between 2015 and 2016 the number of undernourished increased by 200,000, but between 2016 and 2017, it grew by twice that number: 400,000 people.

For Berdegué, the numbers are dramatic because “it’s not about being closer to the goal of zero hunger (by 2030). The goal is not a few less hungry people,” he said, noting that this is a food-producing and -exporting region, where “there is no lack of food, what is missing is money to buy it.”

He added that serious food insecurity affects 47.1 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, and said “the worst thing is that most of them live in South America, the richest part of the region. How is it possible that 62 percent of the hungry are in South America?”

The report establishes a close link between economic and social inequality and higher levels of hunger, obesity and malnutrition.

Five million children suffer from hunger, children in the poorest segment of the population, who are “condemned to a very limited life,” Berdegué said.

He pointed out that the four U.N. agencies found a correlation between hunger and belonging to some ethnic groups.

Referring to indigenous groups, he noted that “In Peru, 25 percent of Quechua children and 23 percent of Aymara children suffer from chronic malnutrition, while at the national level the proportion is 16 percent.”

At the same time, the number of obese people is growing by 3.6 million each year, and today one in four adults in the region are obese. And some 250 million people are overweight: 60 percent of the regional population.

Overweight affects 3.9 million children under the age of five, more than the global average of 5.6 per cent, the report says.

“It’s a rampant and out of control epidemic. We have never eaten so badly. We have to make a shift towards a healthy and nutritious diet,” Berdegué said.

He added that 18 countries in the region produce fruits and vegetables, but export most of them.

“It is essential to regulate fats and salt content in food. There are many people who can’t afford to eat healthy. School curricula should include healthy eating,” Berdegué said, suggesting possible solutions to deal with the epidemic.

Carissa F. Etienne, director of PAHO, said that “although malnutrition persists in the region, particularly in vulnerable populations, obesity and overweight also particularly affect these groups.”

“A multisectoral approach is needed, ranging from ensuring access to balanced and healthy food to addressing other social factors that also impact on these forms of malnutrition, such as access to education, water and sanitation, and health services,” she said in a connection from the organisation’s Washington headquarters.

In her view, “we must make progress in access to universal health so that all people can receive the care and prevention measures they need with regard to malnutrition and its long-term consequences.”

The Panorama states that hunger, malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity especially affect lower-income people, women, indigenous people, blacks and rural families in the region.

In Latin America, 8.4 percent of women face severe food insecurity, compared to 6.9 percent of men, and indigenous populations are more food insecure than non-indigenous populations.

In 10 countries, children from the poorest 20 percent of households suffer three times more stunting than the richest 20 percent.

According to the report, one of the main causes of the rise in malnutrition among particularly vulnerable population groups is changes in the region’s food systems and food cycle from production to consumption.

The greatest effects occur in the most excluded sectors which, although they have increased their consumption of healthy foods such as milk and meat, often have to opt for products high in fats, sugar and salt because they are cheaper.

With respect to the gender divide, the Panorama reports that 19 million women suffer from severe food insecurity, compared to 15 million men.

In all of the countries, the obesity rate for adult women is higher than for men; in 19 countries, the obesity rate for women is at least 10 percentage points higher than for men.

“Gender equity is a valuable policy instrument to reduce inequalities. We need to strengthen it in practice, which involves promoting equality in access to and control of household resources, as well as in decisions to empower women,” said Miguel Barreto, WFP regional director, from Panama City.

Related Articles

• Latin America Backslides in Struggle to Reach Zero Hunger Goal

The post Alert! Hunger and Obesity on the Rise in Latin America for Third Year in a Row appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Opening day of the Annual Conference of the European Center for Peace and Development, City Hall, Belgrade, 26 October 2018

By Boudewijn Mohr
BEAUNE, Burgundy, France, Nov 7 2018 (IPS)

Some 30 years ago, the international banks were afloat with petrodollars, deposited by the oil exporting countries. The banks in turn stepped up lending to Latin America, in a big way. The new branch of Société Générale in New York where I was working at the time followed suit rapidly building up its portfolio, as the bank needed to make loans to get its branch off the ground.

Latin America was not my territory; my clients were French companies establishing subsidiaries in the United States. But when in 1982 I witnessed the panic in New York surrounding the implosion of Mexico’s debt, I wondered; and then began to write about it in a renowned Dutch newspaper in Holland, also offering ideas for solving the debt overhang.

I simply failed to grasp why commercial banks, in their eagerness to make loans, would lend so excessively, as they themselves must have known that such loans carried great risks. The banks probably did so willy-nilly, following in the footsteps of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At that time, the IMF was trying to help redress large balance of payment deficits of countries in Latin America through imposing stiff austerity measures, curbing inflation and trying to rekindle growth.

Today the IMF does not wince pumping 57 billion dollars into Argentina, a questionable step, and if only for weakening its own capital base in exchange for an excessive sovereign loan.

Given Argentina’s history, a portion of the loan unlikely may never be repaid, would need to be re-phased or simply forgiven. Their president says that chance is “zero”. The IMF now needs a major capital injection that may not be so easy to negotiate this time around, according to the Financial Times.

Has then nothing changed since the 1980s?

Not a whole lot in any case. But in my mind something important did change compared to 30 years ago: the world’s money supply today is unimaginably massive. You could call it a bubble of money in circulation; and that means that all that floating money, like the petrodollars of the past, needs to find a home, ergo loans to those countries that have less of it.

Poverty the ultimate threat facing humanity

Most researchers now agree that poverty is the ultimate threat facing humanity, and not only in the developing world. Everything bad emanates from it. Today poverty has increased to unbearable levels for many, a result of conflicts, climate change and rising food prices.

Today’s poverty reduction strategies now include provisions for the poor. This approach is rooted in UNICEF’s tireless campaign for economic adjustment with a human face in the ‘80s under the leadership of UNICEF’s Richard Jolly and his team of economists, and was enthusiastically endorsed by Jim Grant.

The proposal was to shield the poor and vulnerable from the worst effects of the austerity measures through strong social protection and safety nets. It is encouraging to note that Christine Lagarde pledged for more flexible measures in IMF lending that would include strong provisions to protect the most vulnerable.

This intention should be properly institutionalised and respected by her successors. For now, inequality in every aspect of life continues unabated; you are all familiar with the statistics.

Sovereign debt as a threat to peace

In 2012 the Max Planck Research Institute published a discussion paper with the most telling title “Sovereign debt crises as threats to the peace nations”. Its author, Matthias Goldmann, a senior research fellow, found that more reliable data than before enable researchers to point to a correlation between sovereign debt and the risk of armed conflict or even civil war. I have seen this in West and Southern Africa.

Sovereign debt reduces the ability of the state to adequately provide basic services to the most vulnerable, such as health and education services. I have witnessed in Africa that countries in pre-conflict situations have had declining budget allocations for health and education, far below internationally established norms (10% for health and 25% for education).

Beginning in the 1980s, poverty increased steadily in Côte d’Ivoire. World prices of cacao were steadily declining; and conflict in the form of protests and strikes began to rear its ugly head.

I was stationed in Abidjan when it got worse, with demonstrating university students, the university closed, burnt-out cars and soldiers roaming the streets in hijacked vehicles. It took 10 years for the civil conflict to end. In the end the country was exhausted and essentially bankrupt.

After the peace accords of 1992 Mozambique had no trouble finding loans and grants. At the 1995 Consultative Group Meeting in Paris, over 1 billion dollars was raised, a huge sum for its time. In the late 1990s Mozambique’s south developed fast with several huge investments from South Africa, for example a gigantic aluminum smelter near Maputo and upgrading of road and rail network. It was double-digit growth.

But the north, traditionally marginalised, stayed further behind. Not surprisingly, many years later the conflict flared up again between Frelimo and Renamo in the centre and north of the country.

In Rwanda, sovereign debt increased massively in the early 1990s. A structural adjustment programme imposed harsh austerity measures, but military expenditures were exempted. Public services collapsed with cuts in health and education expenditures. Development aid and foreign loans were channelled towards financing the military.

The army swelled to 40,000 troops. Clearly something bad was at hand. But nobody wanted to know. Ethnic tensions, already high in this small and overpopulated country, rose significantly, and then imploded into genocide. Rwanda’s sovereign debt was the worst debt trap the world had ever seen.

When Michel Camdessus retired from the IMF, he warned that poverty would “undermine societies through confrontation, violence and civil disorder”. This, I believe has always been so throughout history, but we paid lip service to change.

With all the problems our planet faces, inequality and poverty should not be the most difficult problems to solve once and for all. After all, states have the responsibility to protect its citizens in a human way, as adopted in 2006 in a unanimous resolution, R2P for short.

To note that R2P does not deny the right to use the military option as a last resort. What is new though is that the UN Security Council in case of a grave violation of this responsibility to protect its citizens, for example genocide, may decide to move into a sovereign nation.

Now if a sovereign debt crisis can be proven to threaten essential social and economic rights of populations and thus might constitute a threat to peace in that country and the sub-region, can the Security Council intervene on the basis of R2P?

What is the correct point to intervene? When there are signs that excessive debt is threatening peace, could the Security Council intervene pre-emptively? Goldmann argues that the Security Council might decide to intervene if there are additional factors, such as ethnical, racial, or structural inequality. These factors usually deteriorate as a result of economic hardship.

And lastly, how would the Security Council relate to and work with the major sovereign debt lender, the IMF, in pre-empting these threats to peace? Intriguing questions which beg for urgent answers.

*Prior to his stint with UNICEF, Boudewijn Mohr was a senior international corporate banker in New York, first with Chase Manhattan Bank in Wall Street and later at Societe Generale branch in New York City. This article is based on an address to the annual conference of the European Centre for Peace & Development in Belgrade last month. The theme of the conference was “A New Concept of Human Security.”

The post Is Excessive Sovereign Debt a Threat to Peace? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Boudewijn Mohr* is a former UNICEF country programme and operational management specialist who travelled across 36 countries on the African continent. He is also a former senior international corporate banker in New York, and author of the recently-released “A Destiny in the Making: From Wall Street to UNICEF in Africa”.

The post Is Excessive Sovereign Debt a Threat to Peace? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Mariano Barraza (L), a member of the Wichi indigenous people, and Enzo Romero, a technician with the Fundapaz organisation, stand next to the rainwater storage tank built in the indigenous community of Lote 6 to supply the local families during the six-month dry season in this part of the province of Salta, in northern Argentina's Chaco region. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
LOS BLANCOS, Argentina, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

“I’ve been used to hauling water since I was eight years old. Today, at 63, I still do it,” says Antolín Soraire, a tall peasant farmer with a face ravaged by the sun who lives in Los Blancos, a town of a few dozen houses and wide dirt roads in the province of Salta, in northern Argentina.

In this part of the Chaco, the tropical plain stretching over more than one million square kilometres shared with Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, living conditions are not easy."I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn't have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don't want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions." -- Enzo Romero

For about six months a year, between May and October, it does not rain. And in the southern hemisphere summer, temperatures can climb to 50 degrees Celsius.

Most of the homes in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, where Los Blancos is located, and in neighbouring municipalities are scattered around rural areas, which are cut off and isolated when it rains. Half of the households cannot afford to meet their basic needs, according to official data, and access to water is still a privilege, especially since there are no rivers in the area.

Drilling wells has rarely provided a solution. “The groundwater is salty and naturally contains arsenic. You have to go more than 450 meters deep to get good water,” Soraire told IPS during a visit to this town of about 1,100 people.

In the last three years, an innovative self-managed system has brought hope to many families in this area, one of the poorest in Argentina: the construction of rooftops made of rainwater collector sheets, which is piped into cement tanks buried in the ground.

Each of these hermetically sealed tanks stores 16,000 litres of rainwater – what is needed by a family of five for drinking and cooking during the six-month dry season.

“When I was a kid, the train would come once a week, bringing us water. Then the train stopped coming and things got really difficult,” recalls Soraire, who is what is known here as a criollo: a descendant of the white men and women who came to the Argentine Chaco since the late 19th century in search of land to raise their animals, following the military expeditions that subjugated the indigenous people of the region.

Today, although many years have passed and the criollos and indigenous people in most cases live in the same poverty, there is still latent tension with the native people who live in isolated rural communities such as Los Blancos or in the slums ringing the larger towns and cities.

Since the early 20th century, the railway mentioned by Soraire linked the 700 kilometres separating the cities of Formosa and Embarcación, and was practically the only means of communication in this area of the Chaco, which until just 10 years ago had no paved roads.

Dorita, a local indigenous woman, stands in front of a “represa” or pond dug near her home, in Lote 6, a Wichí community a few kilometres from the town of Los Blancos, in Argentina’s Chaco region. The ponds accumulate rainwater and are used to provide drinking water for both animals and local families, posing serious health risks. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The trains stopped coming to this area in the 1990s, during the wave of privatisations and spending cuts imposed by neoliberal President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

Although there have been promises to get the trains running again, in the Chaco villages of Salta today there are only a few memories of the railway: overgrown tracks and rundown brick railway stations that for years have housed homeless families.

Soraire, who raises cows, pigs and goats, is part of one of six teams – three criollo and three indigenous – that the Foundation for Development in Peace and Justice (Fundapaz) trained to build rainwater tanks in the area around Los Blancos.

“Everyone here wants their own tank,” Enzo Romero, a technician with Fundapaz, a non-governmental organisation that has been working for more than 40 years in rural development in indigenous and criollo settlements of Argentina’s Chaco region, told IPS in Los Blancos. “So we carry out surveys to see which families have the greatest needs.”

The director of Fundapaz, Gabriel Seghezzo, explains that “the beneficiary family must dig a hole five metres deep by 1.20 in diameter, in which the tank is buried. In addition, they have to provide lodging and meals to the builders during the week it takes to build it.”

“It’s very important for the family to work hard for this. In order for this to work out well, it is essential for the beneficiaries to feel they are involved,” Seghezzo told IPS in Salta, the provincial capital.

Fundapaz “imported” the rainwater tank system from Brazil, thanks to its many contacts with social organisations in that country, especially groups working for solutions to the chronic drought in the Northeast region.

Antolín Soraire, a “criollo” farmer from the Chaco region of Salta, stands in front of one of the tanks he built in Los Blancos to collect rainwater, which provides families with drinking water for their needs during the six-month dry season in northern Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Romero points out that so far some 40 rooftops and water tanks have been built – at a cost of about 1,000 dollars each – in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, which is 12,000 square kilometres in size and has some 10,000 inhabitants. This number of tanks is, of course, a very small part of what is needed, he added.

“I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn’t have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don’t want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions,” says Romero, who studied environmental engineering at the National University of Salta and moved several years ago to Morillo, the capital of the municipality, 1,600 kilometres north of Buenos Aires.

On National Route 81, the only paved road in the area, it is advisable to travel slowly: as there are no fences, pigs, goats, chickens and other animals raised by indigenous and criollo families constantly wander across the road.

Near the road, in the mountains, live indigenous communities, such as those known as Lote 6 and Lote 8, which occupy former public land now recognised as belonging to members of the Wichí ethnic group, one of the largest native communities in Argentina, made up of around 51,000 people, according to official figures that are considered an under-registration.

In Lote 6, Dorita, a mother of seven, lives with her husband Mariano Barraza in a brick house with a tin roof, surrounded by free-ranging goats and chickens. The children and their families return seasonally from Los Blancos, where the grandchildren go to school, which like transportation is not available in the community.

Three children play under a roof next to goats in Lote 6, an indigenous community in the province of Salta in northern Argentina. It is one of the poorest areas in the country, with half of the population having unmet basic needs, and where the shortage of drinking water is the most serious problem. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

About 100 metres from the house, Dorita, who preferred not to give her last name, shows IPS a small pond with greenish water. In the region of Salta families dig these “represas” to store rainwater.

The families of Lot 6 today have a rooftop that collects rainwater and storage tank, but they used to use water from the “represas” – the same water that the animals drank, and often soiled.

“The kids get sick. But the families often consume the contaminated water from the ‘represas’ because they have no alternative,” Silvia Reynoso, a Catholic nun who works for Fundapaz in the area, told IPS.

In neighboring Lote 8, Anacleto Montes, a Wichi indigenous man who has an 80-square-metre rooftop that collects rainwater, explains: “This was a solution. Because we ask the municipality to bring us water, but there are times when the truck is not available and the water doesn’t arrive.”

What Montes doesn’t say is that water in the Chaco has also been used to buy political support in a patronage-based system.

Lalo Bertea, who heads the Tepeyac Foundation, an organisation linked to the Catholic Church that has been working in the area for 20 years, told IPS: “Usually in times of drought, the municipality distributes water. And it chooses where to bring water based on political reasons. The people in the area are so used to this that they consider it normal.”

“Water scarcity is the most serious social problem in this part of the Chaco,” says Bertea, who maintains that rainwater collection also has its limits and is experimenting with the purchase of Mexican pumps to extract groundwater when it can be found at a reasonable depth.

“The incredible thing about all this is that the Chaco is not the Sahara desert. There is water, but the big question is how to access it,” he says.

Related Articles

• Even Rocks Harvest Water in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Northeast
• Prickly Pears Drive Local Development in Northern Argentina

The post Rainwater Harvesting Eases Daily Struggle in Argentina’s Chaco Region appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani remained defiant after the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran. In a nationally televised address, the president said the Islamic republic will “proudly bypass the sanctions.” PHOTO: AFP

By Syed Mansur Hashim
Nov 6 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Last month, a flotilla of ships carrying more than 20 million barrels of Iranian oil headed off to China’s north-eastern Dalian port in a bid to stave off the impending US sanctions that just came into effect on November 4. According to Russian media, the Iranians were quite confident that the country would be able to sell its oil bypassing the latest round of sanctions. Obviously, a deal has been reached with China because the port of Dalian typically saw shipments of oil between 3 and 4 million barrels a day. So, a jump of this magnitude can only mean one thing.

Despite much bluster, things have not gone exactly the way the US had envisaged. Increasingly, more and more nations have called US’s bluff on its threat that individuals and institutions in foreign countries would be penalised if they broke the Iran oil sanctions. This is reflected in the dampening of international prices of crude oil when the US stance was softened by waivers that allow for major players like China, India, Japan and some other countries to buy Iranian crude. We now know that the US administration has stated that it will “temporarily” allow eight importers to keep on buying Iranian oil. The top importers for Iranian oil have been China, India, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. India has already stated that its policy on oil import is not going to change. The fact that the US has already softened its stance is hardly a major “success” for that country’s foreign policy.

Senior members of the US administration have been stung by fellow party members for the lacklustre nature of sanctions against Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been under pressure from some Republican senators to take a harder line against Iran. Indeed, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has apparently hinted that institutions and individuals that use SWIFT, the financial messaging service to do business with Iranian entities, could face repercussions. This could perhaps explain why India and Iran are finalising steps that would allow New Delhi to pay for oil imports in Indian rupees (INR). From what has been reported in The Times of India, India is taking steps to make payments via an account in UCO bank (in India), which has no international exposure and is not connected to SWIFT. According to that report, 45 percent of Indian oil payments were made in INR from the UCO account and 55 percent paid in euros. Given the threat of US sanctions that have just taken hold, the new arrangement could mean that the entire payment will now be made in INR.

Now, where does that leave US foreign policy? Beyond statements by the Secretary of State like “we strongly encourage those nations to ensure that Iran spends that money on humanitarian purchases to benefit the Iranian people,” what can the administration do to stop other nations from doing business with Iran? Some of its staunchest allies, like South Korea, have received waivers (according to Bloomberg and Reuters) to continue to import Iranian oil, which means it is pretty much business-as-usual because with China, Japan and India exempted, these sanctions are not all that serious but in an election year, it makes the administration look good that it’s doing something to contain the so-called Iranian threat.

Mr Pompeo has released a list of 12 demands that Iran must comply with if it wants the sanctions lifted. These are: stopping “support for terrorism,” withdrawing from the Syrian conflict, halting all nuclear and ballistic missile development, etc. There is zero possibility of Iran withdrawing from the Syrian conflict without a comprehensive peace treaty coming into effect (that will be overseen by the big powers). Iran has invested much in the Syrian conflict and this goes far beyond man and material. This conflict is what propelled Iran into a rising regional power and it will take more than sanctions to change Iranian foreign policy.

In fact, Iran has been living with one form of sanction or another for decades now and the only thing these sanctions have achieved is driving millions of people into poverty. Iranians are a proud people. The country fought a bitter war with Iraq for about a decade, suffered a great deal and continued to suffer under sanctions brought against it over the years. Things are not going to change because of the latest round of sanctions because today, Iran has a lot more friends than it did yesterday. Friends who are going to circumvent policies that are meant to limit the presence of Iranian oil in the international market.

Syed Mansur Hashim is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Will the Iran sanctions work? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By FR. RANHILIO CALLANGAN AQUINO
Nov 6 2018 (Manila Times)

THAT the State must make available a complete, adequate and integrated system of education is not debated.

That everyone who desires to should be admitted to universities or colleges of their choice is not only debatable, it is false! More perverse yet is the proposition that when the State grants students the benefits of free tertiary education, the beneficiaries owe the State no service at all!

Access is an issue especially for state universities and colleges because that is their raison d’être: to make available the benefit of higher education to as many as qualify for it. True, every Filipino enjoys the right to education but that does not fling the doors of higher education institutions wide open to every bum who loiters in, takes a leisurely stroll through different subjects on the curriculum until he decides he has had enough, and then wanders out, as senselessly and as cluelessly as when he came in.

Teachers with PhDs after their names are not necessarily effective or even competent teachers. After all, there are many graduate schools in the Philippines that churn out PhDs each year in whom there is not the least philosophical thought nor any genuine doctoral stature. Just the title, nothing more. But experts in their disciplines who can teach effectively — that is a rare breed, and it costs a lot to engage their services. And books are expensive, no matter that the Philippines will soon be the copyright infringement capital of the world. A motley collection of disparate volumes will not meet the requirements of regulatory, much less accrediting agencies. And so a well-stocked library with recently published volumes by acknowledged authorities is a treasure trove, and only institutions with well-packed treasure chests can establish such libraries. Laboratories are another matter, for while one has only admiration for the ingenuity by which teachers in far-flung barangays make do with whatever they have for contraptions in place of proper laboratory equipment, this cannot be for the laboratories of higher education institutions of which very high levels of research are demanded.

Given the scarcity of resources for tertiary education, right reason dictates that the slots available be distributed to those with the best chance of making optimal use of them. Access to university then cannot be access for all — but access for those best able to benefit themselves and their communities from university or collegiate education. This is not being unfair. This is simply the acceptance of a fundamental human phenomenon: capacities and the possibilities they offer are never the same for different individuals, and the formation of the human spirit does not take place only within universities under the tutelage of professors. Artists of the highest caliber are trained, their artistry honed, in conservatories, in art galleries and even the homes of masters of the arts and of the crafts. And they have gifted the world with many of its inestimable treasures, compared to the trash that many term papers or supposed researches turned in to despairing and despondent professors indeed are!

No, it is not a universal right to be admitted to university. If it were so, then every applicant could bind the university to accept her — a position as impracticable as it is legally bereft of warrant. If anything at all, it is every higher education institution that enjoys the right to determine, on academic grounds, who it will accept — and this includes the right to choose the more capable students through stringent admission requirements and screening tests. Sadly, of course, those who come from secondary schools with better prepared teachers and more helpful facilities have the better chance at garnering the available slots. But well-conceived and fairly implemented affirmative action should be able to address this systemic bias in some significant way. Quality schools do not only produce quality graduates. They also need quality students — where quality is not necessarily defined by economic indices.

What should be demanded is that the selection mechanisms be fair — that they project capacity for university education rather than the effectiveness or insouciance of learning in basic education. If it is possible to do this with children before school age, I do not see why this should be any problem at all for high school graduates.

And that is why universities and colleges that routinely reject letters of recommendation in behalf of students who do not meet the mark are correct. This snobbishness is healthy and helpful. It turns its back on the habitual importuning of politicians for whom quality is not necessarily the priority, but patronage. It is as bad to deny access to those to whom it should be granted as it is to grant it to the undeserving only because of the bellowing of well-placed patrons!

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@outlook.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

The post Access and quality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Niaz Murtaza
Nov 6 2018 (Dawn, Pakistan)

How do major messes get created? The genesis of some messes reflects the decisions of elites over a small period of time, eg, the Rwanda genocide. But other messes emerge gradually, with various elite groups adding different, mutually reinforcing, layers of the mess over time to produce an intractable situation.

Dr Niaz Murtaza

Today, we face one of these complex messes with high ethnic and class tensions, extremism, political instability, economic stagnancy, corruption, civil-military imbalance and poor social indicators. South Asia is a poor region. But even within it, our problems are more acute. Others are gradually shedding such problems. We seem stuck with them and are ahead today only of Afghanistan and perhaps Nepal.

How did we get here and who added which layer of the mess? The path dependency idea suggests that a state’s initial inheritance limits its development trajectory for long. But external factors and how the nation deals with them and its inheritance via national will also matter. For a state divided horizontally (ethnicity, faith etc) and vertically (caste and class), one must also review internal struggles over the national will and whose will usually won.

Our inheritance included divisions, and low income, literacy and industrial levels. There was a tiny educated but elitist middle class. The nation lacked precious natural resources and its agrarian base was controlled by large landowners. It had to establish governance quickly to deal with the large inflow of refugees that gave it an initial welfare bias. The logic for freedom invoked faith, but didn’t clarify whether the aim was securing Muslim rights or having a faith-driven state. Many say this freedom rationale was the root cause of the current mess, but this view needs more analysis.

The will of elites and unelected forces has remained dominant.

Faced with big challenges and internal divides, the middle class in charge centralised power rather than mobilising and empowering all identity groups. The Kashmir issue was the first major external factor, which turned the welfare bias into a security one, heightened centralisation and empowered unelected forces. The Korean War provided a windfall. But it accrued to a tiny group of traders and made them into industrialists as the state marginalised farmers to benefit traders.

The Cold War alliance with the US exacerbated existing fault lines. Power shifted from elite politicians to bureaucrats and then to generals, the centralisation and elitist biases were strengthened and ethnic demands further marginalised. High-level corruption emerged. All this ultimately led to the ’71 division. But curiously, despite other issues, faith issues then were relatively muted, challenging the thesis that extremism today is the inevitable result of the faith-based freedom logic.

The ’71 tragedy nonetheless made us geographically and ethnically more cohesive and this and the marginalisation of unelected forces gave a fresh chance to build an egalitarian state. The PPP’s initial politics raised hope, but it was dashed as earlier biases re-emerged soon. The Gulf bonanza and the huge out-migration gave limited prosperity to the masses. But it also pushed us under the sway of the theocratic Saudi state, with its impact on state policies evident even under Bhutto.

These trends intensified under Zia, coupled with the Soviet Afghan invasion. The use of Saudi Salafist ideas by the state gave rise to faith-based politics. It is doubtful that sans the Saudi links, extremism would have become so embedded in Pakistan despite the faith-based freedom logic. Drugs, arms, mass corruption, sectarianism and ethnic conflicts reached new heights. Under the Musharraf era and a new US alliance, extremism crystallised into terrorism. Two fair polls invoked hope of democratic consolidation but governance remained abysmal and the dubious 2018 polls dashed hopes further. Thus, today, the burden of the initial inheritance remains largely intact. Furthermore, external factors coming our way have done more damage than good and have exacerbated the burden of the initial inheritance. The will of elites and unelected forces has remained dominant.

Generals, bureaucrats, landlords, industrialists and the middle class have all contributed to the mess, each ruling group blinded by their immediate interests. We share many of the same limitations of other larger Saarc states. But commitment to people’s welfare seems higher in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh.

The defining difference seems to be the presence in Pakistan of a deep state that is more immune to popular pressures than even corrupt politicians, that freely uses faith to strengthen its own hand and often has entered into harmful alliances with the US. Thus, while there are many offenders in the Pakistani story, the biggest external one has been the US and the biggest internal ones its client generals.

The writer is a Senior Fellow with UC Berkeley and heads INSPIRING Pakistan, a progressive policy unit.
murtazaniaz@yahoo.com
www.inspiring.pk

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Genesis of a mess appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Editor, Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
Nov 6 2018 (The Sunday Times - Sri Lanka)

Musical chairs is a party game but what we see today is a cacophony of voices between supporters of competing political parties egging on two leaders trying to sit in one seat to the derision of the world.

This is no fun time in Sri Lanka. The country has been turned topsy-turvy by President Maithripala Sirisena’s impulsive decision on October 26 through sheer political expediency to sack the Prime Minister and appoint a new one without recourse to Parliament.

Many feel he could have done better than to throw the country into a state of limbo and confusion worse confounded. It has split the country and its people whose sovereignty, which includes their franchise, he undertook to protect.

This brings to focus the question of the office of the Executive Presidency, an issue that was in the forefront among other issues that brought President Sirisena to where he is with the solemn pledge to abolish the system that breeds autocracy. Now lost in the fog of the ongoing political turmoil, the issue in fact ought to emerge once the perplexity and confusion of the day clears.

Very clearly, Sri Lankan politicians have grappled with handling the wide powers vested in an Executive President. In countries that have a Presidential system, most notably the United States, or a hybrid system of government like in France, the separation of powers and the institutions as well as the democratic political culture act as a safety net from a President acting as an autocrat.

There is no gainsaying that a parliamentary dictatorship is no different to a presidential dictatorship. A new word in the political lexicon has emerged; “Democratorship”.

When J.R. Jayewardene introduced the Executive Presidential system, he cited the instability that existed in the country in 1960 when two Parliamentary elections had to be held within three months, and in 1964 when a government fell by one vote in Parliament. He argued that a strong Executive President would hold the country together when the vagaries of political winds destabilise Parliament and the country. Such a President was to be not only the Head of State, but also the Head of Government.

The October 26 decision of President Sirisena, however, did just the opposite. The Executive President himself destabilised Parliament by sacking the incumbent Prime Minister without notice. Whether Sri Lanka should revert to having a non-political Head of State purely to ensure the country remains stable in the midst of political headwinds and tailwinds has been the subject of public agitation for some time.

The then Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and now the de facto leader of the party headed by the newly elected Prime Minister wrote to this newspaper in its issue of November 20, 1994; “Today, sixteen years after its introduction, a consensus is emerging across the political spectrum that the parliamentary executive model must be re-introduced”. Since 1994, all parties have ridden to office with the solemn pledge to the voters that they would do away with the Executive Presidency because, while in Opposition they have had a taste of its repressive nature – only to give that pledge short shrift when ensconced in that same seat. President Sirisena has been no exception.

Learned and not-so-learned pundits can argue till the cows come home on the provisions of the Constitution. But there is no better way to interpret the Constitution other than to honour it in spirit rather than in letter.

This is the first time in the country’s 70 years since Independence that a new Government has been installed overnight without an election. In 1952 and 1959, when Prime Ministers died in office, the same Government continued under new leaders, but they soon went for elections to get fresh mandates. Governments have been brought down by Parliamentary votes (1964 and 2001) and by premature dissolutions (2004), but never has a Government been replaced overnight invoking questionable provisions of the Constitution and had Opposition party supporters march into state institutions like Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts (the Sturmabteilung – the Storm Detachment) did in Nazi Germany during the power grab of that era. A dangerous precedent has been set in motion and Sri Lanka is fortunate that the military top brass maintained in this situation that they will follow legal orders and not entertain ideas of exploiting the political situation in the country.

Palace coups and the change of guard in a country’s leadership happen in Saudi Arabia, but never before in Sri Lanka. We have said it before (beginning in our issue of November 23, 2014) that given the fickleness of politics and the impatience of Opposition parties to bring down Governments – always scheming, bribing and promising — that elections should be on fixed dates. This does not leave out the excitement of Democracy and Elections, but it leaves out the uncertainty and the volatility that a country and its economy can ill afford.

The United States is a good example to follow. They have given their electoral process some stability. Take this coming Tuesday when they will be having mid-term elections for their Parliament (Congress). All elections are fixed for the first Tuesday of November. Every US citizen knows the exact date of even the next US Presidential election, four years to the date of the previous election. There is no Constitutional punditry involved in trying to interpret the US Constitution on the matter. No throwing the people into a frenzied pastime of guessing when the next election is or what the stars of political leaders portend.

The question here is not whether the country is in an economic mess. The country has always been in an economic mess. Or whether the President’s alleged assassination inquiry was not moving fast enough. Those are shallow arguments to justify the steps that were taken on October 26. The only question is whether the President respected the Sovereignty of the People (Article 3 of the Constitution) – which includes the Franchise of the People and which he undertook to protect when he took his oath of office as President on January 9, 2015.

As of this day, some may well say that Sri Lanka has a de facto Prime Minister and de jure Prime Minister, yet another world record. Those who say that the new Government is legal can be asked if it is legal but illegitimate until it has proved it commands the majority of Parliament. If the new Prime Minister fails to get the majority support of Parliament, the country goes into bigger turmoil. The President has said he will resign in that case, but taking his word at face value has not been easy. If the new Prime Minister cannot legitimise his appointment through a Parliamentary confidence vote, by hook or by crook, this is only the beginning of a bigger Constitutional crisis to come.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The post Bigger constitutional crisis to come? appeared first on Inter Press Service.