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IOM’s Missing Migrants Project attend the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos (Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants). Credit: IOM

By International Organization for Migration
Mexico City, Nov 6 2018 (IOM)

Each year, the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos (Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants) crosses Mexican territory in search of their children who went missing trying to reach the United States.

For the first time, the Mothers’ Caravan was joined in Mexico City by mothers from other continents, with the aim of building a transnational movement to remind the international community that one disappearance, one death, is one too many.

Over 40 mothers and other family members searching for missing migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Senegal, Mauritania, Tunisia and Algeria came together to share their stories, to build ties, and to exchange experiences of searching for information on the whereabouts of their children.

IOM’s Missing Migrants Project attended this historical event as an observer.

The summit was convened by the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano and the Italian Carovani Migranti, two NGOs which assist mothers and families of missing migrants in Central America and Italy, respectively. Associations representing families of the missing sent delegations to the Summit, including the Tunisian Association Mères des Disparus, the Algerian Collectif de Familles des Harraga d’Annaba, the Mauritanian Association des Femmes Chefs de Famille, the Salvadoran Comité de Migrantes Desparecidos, the Honduran Comité de Familiares de Migrantes Desaparecidos del Progreso and the Mexican Red de Enlaces Nacionales.

Rosa Idalia Jiménez has been looking for her son, Roberto Adonai Bardales Jiménez, since 28 May 2013. He disappeared when he was 14, as he fled poverty and violence in his home country towards the US border. He wanted a safer, better life. The last time Rosa heard from him, he was preparing to cross the US-Mexico border into Texas from Reynosa, Mexico.

Rosa shared her story this weekend at the first-ever Global Summit of Mothers of Missing Migrants. The Summit took place in Mexico City 2–4 November 2018 as part of the 8th World Social Forum on Migration.

It is not only mothers who participated in the Summit, but also sisters, brothers, fathers, grandmothers. They wear photos of the missing around their necks, in the hope that someone will recognize their loved ones and be able to help find them. They vow not to rest until their searches are over.

The disappearance of a loved one, no matter the context, leaves a family mourning their loss, or waiting for news of a missing father, husband, wife, mother, son or daughter. Caught between grief and hope, families begin a search for information about their loved ones that can take years or a lifetime. Coming together around such tragic circumstances, the mothers can share their stories of pain, grief, and, above all, endless love for their missing children.

Over the course of three days, mothers and family members at the Summit discussed the many obstacles they face in their search for their missing relatives. Without national or international search mechanisms, families are left to navigate a confusing web of institutions and bureaucracy with little state support.

Nonetheless, they persist: the mothers’ caravan has organized annual marches through Mexico to raise awareness and search for lost loved ones since 2005. By the end of this first Global Summit of Mothers of Missing Migrants, participants mapped out a plan to globalize the struggle of families searching for missing migrants. A manifesto was collaboratively drafted on the final day of the Summit, setting out the mothers’ demands for truth and justice for their missing sons and daughters.

As the way forward, the mothers agreed on a list of actions, which include joint advocacy campaigns around key events, supporting regional initiatives put forward by each association, and creating an online platform to coordinate their efforts.

The Summit thus marks the beginning of a global movement of mothers and families of the missing: there is an urgent need to raise awareness about deaths and disappearances during migration and to combat indifference towards these global tragedies.

For further information please contact Marta Sanchez Donis, IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, Tel: +49 1511 0001 187, Email: msanchez@iom.int

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A souvenir vendor sells Eiffel Tower models for tourists in front the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero in Paris in 2011. Photo: REUTERS

By Adnan Morshed
Nov 6 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

In Paris recently I noticed an extraordinary phenomenon unfolding around the Eiffel Tower during a casual afternoon stroll. The sans-papiers—as the undocumented migrants are known in local parlance—vended touristy souvenirs around the Champ de Mars, Place du Trocadéro, and the Palais de Chaillot. They often played hide-and-seek games with the police to avoid detection. Struggling migrants from Africa—or more specifically from countries such as the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, Mali, Senegal, Eritrea, and Niger—these vendors live a shadow life in Paris and survive in a particular type of parallel underground economy of the city’s tourism industry. Curiously, they sell mostly one product: miniature replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Their surreptitious economic footprint wraps around Gustave Eiffel’s soaring tower, built in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution.

Here is the great irony. The sans-papiers—whose best self-defense in a hostile environment, one would imagine, is to be socially invisible—make a living peddling the most visible, conspicuous architectural icon of Paris. Many of them cross the Mediterranean Sea in rickety boats risking their lives, gradually move from different port cities to the cultural and economic heart of France, and, finally, occupy a social space that accidentally conflates two most unlikely global conditions: the migrant’s unstable, floating life, and iconic architecture, percolating within the transient space of global tourism.

The story doesn’t end there. The miniature Eiffel Towers are made in China. The socially invisible migrant sells the most visible architectural trope of French cultural chauvinism to tourists from across the world.

The state system seems to tolerate the sans-papiers as long they are humanoid silhouettes, not real people with real names, real addresses, real families, and personal histories. Always at the mercy of the state’s shifting migration politics and the focus of many worried gazes, they are the spectral protagonists of a global narrative, one in which Europe, Africa, and Asia converge at the foot of a wrought-iron tower.

The social dramas that take place around the Parisian monument offer poignant narratives of modern migration, globalisation, xenophobia, anticipation, and nationalist angsts. Thus, the migrant’s story couldn’t be explained away as one of mere resilient survival.

In 2005, estimates of France’s illegal immigrant population were placed somewhere around 400,000 people. Undocumented migrants have been trickling into Paris. According to some aid groups, as many as 100 migrants pour into Paris, the “City of Lights,” each day. The dream is to get asylum in France or cross the English Channel to eventually reach Britain. In 2016, over 160,000 migrants crossed the central Mediterranean Sea to arrive in Italy and other European destinations. Many perish in the rough waters of the sea. The United Nations Refugee Agency reported that 239 migrants drowned in two boat capsizes alone in 2016.

The crisis has sparked new kinds of transnational dialogue. European government officials have been trying to persuade African governments to beef up their efforts to minimise the northbound traffic. Aid and other forms of international cooperation have been promised. For instance German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to Ethiopia, Mali, and Niger to discuss how the refugee crisis in Europe could be resolved through sharing resources and offering military aid.

Why are African and Asian migrants flocking to Europe en masse?

Many African observers believe that the current migration crisis is a result of some of France’s postcolonial practices. French businesses brought large numbers of workers from former African colonies as cheap labour. Current migrants continue to come to France with hopes of finding work, building a better life, and joining family members who have already settled there. They also try to escape from ethnic conflicts, civil wars, corrupt governments, and lack of economic opportunities in their home countries.

Furthermore, there is this entrenched belief among Africans that France has built enormous networks of corruption across Africa in collusion with African leaders. Still, many desperate Africans believe that risking their lives in a perilous boat journey is far better than living under a constant threat of death in their native countries, devastated by ethnic rivalry. A brighter life is only one sea voyage away, no matter how precarious it is. Thus, the crowded boats on the Mediterranean are signs of extreme desperation and anxious global mobility.

When some of the people survive the dangerous sea journey, arrive at the Eiffel Tower, and begin vending its Chinese-made miniature version, globalisation and national identity dovetail in a saga of unlikely protagonists and their hide-and-seek economies. As much as the Eiffel Tower, the sans-papiers inadvertently become new emblems of France and a category of “Frenchness” that the country projects on to the world stage.

Like the uncertain and unwelcome lives of the migrants roaming around its base, the Eiffel Tower’s beginning was dubious. Before it was inaugurated on March 31, 1889, Gustave Eiffel’s monumental structure attracted the wrath of many of France’s famous writers, artists, and intellectuals, who wrote a scathing letter, rejecting the iron “monstrosity” as fundamentally incompatible with French values and aesthetic consciousness. Eiffel sought to justify his creation on both aesthetic and functional grounds, offering a range of historic precedents and a seemingly inexhaustible list of practical uses for the tower.

In the 21st century, the sans-papiers find themselves in a somewhat parallel situation, having to justify their presence in France on grounds of human rights, open-society ethos, and social justice. The great French writer Guy de Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower, the then-tallest human-made structure in the world (the record previously held by the Washington Monument), yet he lunched at the restaurant located inside the tower, so that he wouldn’t have to see it. By going in, thereby internalising it, Maupassant self-choreographed a love-hate relationship with the Eiffel Tower.

Here is another uncanny parallel with the undocumented migrants, who suffer constant humiliation of social exclusion in their adoptive country, while, paradoxically, selling her undisputed cultural symbol to thousands of global tourists each day. Their livelihood depends on the very icon of the country that frequently refuses to give them legal status. The Eiffel Tower is the epitome of French pride and the refugee’s uncomfortable hope for the future.

Could Gustave Eiffel in the late 19th century imagine a more ironic practical use of his monument as the subterfuge of anxious migrants?

Adnan Morshed is an architect, architectural historian, and urbanist. He teaches in Washington, DC, and serves as Executive Director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism at BRAC University. His books include DAC/Dhaka in 25 Buildings (2017) and Oculus: A Decade of Insights into Bangladeshi Affairs (2012). He can be reached at amorshed@bracu.ac.bd.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Japan joins Kenya as a co-host of the Blue Economy Conference. Kenya's Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma (left) met the Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono on October 6, 2018 in Tokyo. Credit: The Nation

By Toshitsugu Uesawa and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

With good reason, Africa is excited over the prospects of sharing in the multi-trillion maritime industry, with the continent’s Agenda 2063 envisioning the blue economy as a foremost contributor to transformation and growth.

The United Nations has described Africa’s oceans, lakes and rivers as the “new frontier of the African renaissance”.

The Blue Economy conference is happening in Nairobi from 26 November to 28 November 2018. We commend the Governments Kenya and Canada for spearheading this important initiative.

The UN family is pleased to be part of this and Japan is honoured to join this as a co-host.

The theme of the Blue Economy conference and the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, will focus on new technologies and innovation for oceans, seas, lakes and rivers as well as the challenges, potential opportunities, priorities and partnerships.

Ambassador Toshitsugu Uesawa

“The conference presents immense opportunities for the growth of our economy especially sectors such as fisheries, tourism, maritime transport, off-shore mining among others in a way that the land economy has failed to do,” said Ambassador Macharia Kamau, Principle Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kenya.

The conference is anchored on the two conceptual pillars of: Sustainability, Climate Change and Controlling Pollution, and Production, Accelerated Economic Growth, Jobs and Poverty Alleviation.

Consider the potential: more than half of the countries in the continent are coastal and island states. Africa has a coastline of over 47,000 km and 13 million km2 of collective exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

Yet, very little of the potential of the blue economy is actually exploited. It is estimated that Africa’s coastline currently hosts a maritime industry worth $1 trillion per year, but could potentially be worth almost three times that in just two years’ time.

As the continent looks at the promise of prosperity from its maritime resources, it must keep an eye trained on the dangers that lurk when such resources are not properly managed.

With the narrative of oil discoveries, sustainable exploitation based on enforcement of national and international legislation must guide any strategies for exploitation of the blue economy.

Siddharth Chatterjee

Current realities in the sector justify the cautious approach: as a result of over-exploitation of the region’s fish stocks, it is estimated that Africa is losing US 1.3 billion dollars every year.

Globally, laissez faire activities around marine resources result in pollution that compromise biodiversity and human health. It is estimated for instance that between five and 13 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, causing at least $13 billion annually in economic losses.

For the more than one-quarter of Africa’s population that lives within 100 km of the coast and derive their livelihoods there, climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification and rising sea levels, all present further challenges.

These are the challenges that SDG 14 on conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources seeks to confront.

It is clear that if the continent is to establish a viable blue economy, African countries must begin with focus on the current limited infrastructure and capacities to assure maritime security and coastal protection.

The second imperative is to establish partnerships, including innovative financing models, preferably driven by the private sector.

The initial signs are encouraging. Already, more than half of the countries in Africa have adopted the African Charter on Maritime Security and Development (“Lomé Charter”), agreeing on continent-wide marine protection and security measures. This will include cooperation in training, establishment of national maritime coordination agencies, and most importantly, harmonisation of national maritime legislation.

The above will be part of the continent’s long term vision for the development of the blue economy, elaborated well in the Africa Integrated Maritime Strategy (2050 AIM Strategy).

We must come together to deal with the complexity of the task ahead. Challenges abound in the numerous negotiations, planning, coordination and stakeholder engagement tasks that must be achieved first.

Investors will be convinced in participating in the African blue economy, when some of the above are taken care of. The absence of data, policy and legal frameworks will be obvious impediments to the large-scale maritime infrastructure investments needed to realize the ambitious goals of the 2050 AIM Strategy.

At the international Blue Economy conference that takes place in Nairobi, many investors and countries will have an opportunity to examine which sector of the blue economy they can realistically focus public and private investments in.

With proper regulatory frameworks, the blue economy sector will not only present pathways out of poverty for the continent, but they will also ensure an environmentally sustainable future.

The Blue Economy can be a driver of Africa’s structural transformation, sustainable economic progress, and social development.

The post Africa’s Giant Blue Economy Potential appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mr. Toshitsugu Uesawa is Japan’s Ambassador to Kenya and Siddharth Chatterjee is the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

The post Africa’s Giant Blue Economy Potential appeared first on Inter Press Service.

On the other side of Windward Carenage Bay is Salt Whistle Bay on the Caribbean Sea coast. The world famous beach attracts visitors to the Mayreau, where tourism is a main stay of the economy. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

As a child growing up in Mayreau four decades ago, Filius “Philman” Ollivierre remembers a 70-foot-wide span of land, with the sea on either side that made the rest of the 1.5-square mile island one with Mount Carbuit. 

But now, after years of erosion by the waves, he, and the other 300 or so persons living on Mayreau, are confronted with the real possibility that the sea will split their island in two, and destroy its world famous Salt Whistle Bay.

At its widest part, the sliver of land that separates the placid waters of the Caribbean Sea at Salt Whistle Bay from the choppy Atlantic Ocean, on Windward Carenage Bay, is now just about 20 feet.

“There is a rise in the sea level with climate change. You can see that happening, and not just in that area alone,” Ollivierre told IPS of the situation in Mayreau, an island in the southern Grenadines.

The sliver of land near Salt Whistle Bay once had a grove of lush sea grape trees.

“As the sea eroded the land, it washed out the roots and as it washed out the roots, the plant could no longer survive, so they dried up,” Ollivierre said.

Beneath the waves, the destruction is as evident.

“On the ocean bed in that area, it doesn’t have any coral. It is just a mossy bottom. It doesn’t have anything there,” Ollivierre told IPS.

If the land separating both bays were to be totally eroded, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an archipelagic nation, would see its number of islands, islets and cays increase from 32 to 33.

But this could be potentially devastating for Salt Whistle Bay, which Flight Network, Canada’s largest travel agency, ranked 16 out of 1,800 beaches worldwide last November.

A major part of the economy on Mayreau is the sale of t-shirts and beachwear to the tourists that Salt Whistle Bay attracts. If the beach is compromised, the islands might not be as attractive to visitors and its economy would suffer.

“My fear is that if the windward side breaks through onto the other side, it can actually erode that whole area… All of that area is sand and it not so much sand separating both sides so we really have to be careful and take the necessary measures to prevent that from happening,” Ollivierre said.

Ollivierre’s fear is shared by tour operator Captain Wayne Halbich, who has been conducting sea tours among the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for almost three decades.

Halbich has witnessed the impact of rising sea level on Mayreau and he often tells his guests, light-heartedly, that Mayreau has the shortest distance between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

“That was actually a lot wider, and it was covered almost entirely by the sea island grape trees. It is going slowly,” he told IPS.

“This is a serious problem. This is what I always say to people. We are seeing really concrete signs in relation to global warming. It is also from the fact that the reef is dying. The reef cannot produce sand and any sand you lose is not coming back. That is the other story,” he says.

And, unless something is done quickly, one cyclone — which is now more frequent and intense in the Caribbean — could cause the worst to happen in Mayreau.

“If we have a storm this year, it would break away,” Halbick told IPS, as he reiterated his fears that Mayreau could lose its famous Salt Whistle Bay.

The situation in Mayreau has captured the attention the national assembly in the nation’s capital, with Terrance Ollivierre, Member of Parliament, for the Southern Grenadines asking Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves what can be done quickly to remedy the situation.

Gonsalves said that his government has been working with a private sector operator who has the resources and equipment nearby to be able to do some remedial work.

He said there have been a number of suggestions by technical experts, including a quick fix of putting some boulders at the beach at Windward Carenage as a kind of mitigation.

“But much more is required than that and it is going to be a larger project. So, the long and short of it, the fight which we are having on climate change, is a fight which relates to what is happening at Salt Whistle Bay. Rising sea levels, wave action, and then, of course, people moving away a lot of natural barriers, which have been there.

“When we talk about climate change and some people deny it and many of our own people scoff at it and when our people are not sufficiently alert and have not been in respect of the sea grapes and the manchineel, the mangrove, the coconut trees, even sand, we are paying for it.”

The prime minister told lawmakers that some persons have suggested that nothing be done at Mayreau and that the sea would return the land in the natural course of things.

“That’s not a scientific approach. We have a difficulty and we are trying to help.”

The lawmaker who called the situation to the attention of the parliament also agreed that doing nothing is not an option.

He pointed out that some persons had suggested that approach at Big Sand Beach in Union Island, another southern Grenadine island.

Residents are still waiting for the sea to return the sand to the once-famous beach, which has been reduced from 50 feet to less than 10 feet wide.

Among those who are taking action are Orisha Joseph and her team at Sustainable Grenadines Inc., a non-governmental organisation, which over the last year has been restoring the largest mangrove forest and lagoon in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, located in Ashton, Union island.

The work will create breaches in strategic areas of an abandoned marina to create water circulation in the area, which has been almost stagnant for the last 20 years.

As part of the project, the group has planted 500 mangroves trees in Union Island.

“Wherever you have those types of mangroves, you would not have erosion as the roots help to filter silt and it also breaks the energy of the wave, like around 70 percent.

“So you have your first line of defence, which is your seagrass, then your coral reef, then your mangrove. So, by the time you have really strong impact then you have a lot of buffer zones to break down that,” Joseph told IPS.

“All in all, as we go into the blue economy, what we need to do is to see how NGO and climate change organisations could really work with government and let everybody know that we shouldn’t be on opposite side,” she said, adding that government must insist that no construction takes place less than 40 metres away from the coastline.

“Everything in the environment is there for a particular reason and we have to be careful,” Joseph said, adding that coast vegetation prevents soil erosion.

To illustrate, she said there is a vine that grows on the sand on some beaches and people remove them to expose more of the beach.

“But when you remove that which is causing the sand to stay in place, then you are creating a bigger problem. We have this problem where people just go cutting down mangroves because they just want beachfront land and not really understanding that this vegetation is there for a reason,” she told IPS.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

Of the ten fastest growing economies since 1960, eight are in East Asia. Two main competing explanations claimed to explain this regional concentration of catch up growth since the late 20th century, often referred to as the East Asian miracle.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The dominant ‘neo-liberal’ Washington Consensus, sought to establish minimalist ‘night-watchman’ state, attributed this exceptional regional performance to macroeconomic stability, public goods provision, and openness to trade and investment.

Meanwhile, more heterodox economists focused on the need for states to adopt pragmatic, experimental ‘trial and error’, selective approaches to overcome market and coordination failures in order to accelerate growth, especially through industrialization.

In this view, the developmental states of Northeast Asia used their ‘embedded autonomy’ viz a viz the private sector to accelerate technological catch-up and achieve rapid growth. But what then is to be learnt from the more modest and mixed progress in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia and the ‘Rest’
The conventional wisdom about Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand (MIT), is that states there lacked the strength, autonomy and embeddedness viz a viz the private sector to successfully adopt Northeast Asian development strategies.

Selective interventions in MIT were said to be subject to too much rent-seeking and corruption, which were widely believed to have slowed growth elsewhere. But this view does not quite fit the facts, i.e., sustained rapid growth in MIT.

Michael Rock’s Dictators, Democrats and Development in Southeast Asia shows how weaker and less autonomous states in MIT, subject to corruption and rent-seeking, successfully achieved rapid growth by pursuing unorthodox interventionist policies.

MIT undoubtedly looks much more like the Rest than Northeast Asia. They are resource rich, but have avoided the ‘resource curse’. They have high levels of ethnic heterogeneity, but have avoided related growth tragedies.

Like the Rest, they have poorer governance—weaker and less competent states, with less autonomy from the private sector, more corruption and rent-seeking. Yet, they have avoided the growth slowdowns and lost decades experienced by many of the Rest.

Nation building first?
So, how did MIT succeed while the Rest did not? Economic take-offs in MIT were preceded by rentier capitalist political elites gaining state control and pragmatically implementing industrial development strategies.

The successes were certainly not primarily about free trade, laissez faire, or being FDI friendly and export-oriented. They were also not easy, took time, and encountered political resistance, instability and violence.

Development did not emerge on the political agenda until elites needed to protect their conservative ‘nation-building’ projects. To consolidate power, they recognized that development and growth were in their long-term political interest.

The inability of political elites to successfully complete their nation-building projects is therefore crucial to understanding ‘failed states’. Such conservative nation-building projects were typically led by ‘centre right’ coalitions composed of monarchies, the military, police, bureaucracy and business elite.

The losers were the Left and popular groups, among others. With the defeat of the Left and histories of openness to foreign trade and investment, elites forged pro-growth political coalitions enabling an open capitalist, but nonetheless interventionist growth strategy to work.

Pragmatic development
This development strategy was more pragmatic than ideological, and rooted in essentially ‘experimental’, ‘muddling through’ and ‘trial and error’ approaches. Thus, even though these were ‘open economies’, the governments were not dogmatic ‘free traders’.

As MIT governments used both markets and states to sustain growth, development policies were certainly not laissez faire, even though they were capitalist, with states far more interventionist than mere night-watchmen.

MIT states sought to promote domestic capitalists to compete in the global economy. Such promotion of rentier business elites was reciprocated with ‘kickbacks’ for political elites to secure political support.

The fact that MIT growth was primarily driven by domestic, not foreign investment, has important implications for development policy. MIT’s favoured capitalists generally responded by substantially increasing the investment to GDP ratio.

MIT growth was thus investment, rather than export-led. The shares of manufactures in GDP and exports are larger than expected while export concentration indices are less than believed, suggesting that selective industrial policies worked, albeit unevenly.

Policy context
This strategy has influenced the size distribution of firms as a small number of very large conglomerates dominate—government-patronized ethnic Chinese conglomerates which dominate the MIT economies and, exceptionally, Malaysia’s ‘government-linked companies’.

This political economy ‘ecosystem’ could have failed if MIT governments were not developmentalist, or if the elites were too greedy, or if the private sector did not invest, or if there were no checks or balances.

Ruling political elites in MIT have been opportunistically or pragmatically nationalistic despite quasi-neoliberal rhetoric to the contrary. They pursued economic development as necessary for regime consolidation, national power and achieving their goals.

Catching-up?
Many observers correctly argue that MIT economies have not been consistently good at catching-up, which is only to be expected from experimenting. Nevertheless, their industrial policies have been effective in upgrading some firms and industries.

There is evidence of learning in aircraft, wood processing and automotive industries in Indonesia, and of substantial learning in palm oil processing and electronics in Malaysia, and agro-processing, cement, automotive parts, and component supplies in Thailand.

MIT governments and capitalists also learned from setbacks and failures without necessarily admitting to them, e.g., when governments took too much, or when government incentives failed, and policies had adverse consequences, even if unintended.

Sustaining growth, industrialization and technological progress remain preconditions for continuing income increases. Yet, all three now seem caught in so-called ‘middle income traps’. Escaping these traps will depend on the governing elites’ understanding of past progress.

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By Dan Smith
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

At a political rally on Saturday, 20 October, US President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the 1987 Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty). This confirms what has steadily been unfolding over the past couple of years: the architecture of Russian–US nuclear arms control is crumbling.

Building blocks of arms control

As the cold war ended, four new building blocks of East–West arms control were laid on top of foundations set by the 1972 Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty):

• The 1987 INF Treaty eliminated all ground-launched missiles with a range between 500 and 5500 kilometres, including both cruise and ballistic missiles.
• The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) capped at equal levels the number of heavy weapons deployed between the Atlantic and the Urals by members of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO).
• The 1991 Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START I) reduced the number of strategic nuclear weapons; further cuts were agreed in 2002 and again in 2010 in the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START).
• The 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) were parallel, unilateral but agreed actions by both the Soviet Union and the USA to eliminate short-range tactical nuclear weapons, of which thousands existed.

Taken together, the nuclear measures—the INF Treaty, START I and the PNIs—had a major impact (see figure 1).

Source: Kristensen, H. M. and Norris, R. S., ‘Status of world nuclear forces’, Federation of American Scientists, 2018.

The fastest pace of reduction was in the 1990s. A deceleration began just before the new century started, and there has been a further easing of the pace in the past six years. Nevertheless, year by year, the number continues to fall.

By the start of 2018 the global total of nuclear weapons was 14 700 compared with an all-time high of some 70 000 in the mid-1980s. While nuclear weapons are more capable in many ways than before, the reduction is, nonetheless, both large and significant.

Cracks appear: Charge and counter-charge

Even while the number continued to drop, problems were emerging. Not least, in 2002 the USA unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty. However, that did not stop Russia and the USA from signing the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT Treaty) in 2002 and New START in 2010, but perhaps it presaged later developments.

Trump’s announcement brings a process that has been going on for several years towards its conclusion. The USA declared Russia to be violating the INF Treaty in July 2014. That was during the Obama administration.

Thus, the allegation that Russia has breached the INF Treaty is, in other words, not new. This year the USA’s NATO allies also aligned themselves with the US accusation, albeit somewhat guardedly (note the careful wording in paragraph 46 of the July Summit Declaration).

The charge is that Russia has developed a ground-launched cruise missile with a range over 500 kilometres. Many details have not been clearly stated publicly, but it seems Russia may have modified a sea-launched missile (the Kalibr) and combined it with a mobile ground-based launcher (the Iskander K system). The modified system is sometimes known as the 9M729, the SSC-8 or the SSC-X-8.

Russia rejects the US accusation. It makes the counter-charge that the USA has itself violated the INF Treaty in three ways: first by using missiles banned under the treaty for target practice; second by deploying some drones that are effectively cruise missiles; and third by taking a maritime missile defence system and basing it on land (Aegis Ashore) although its launch tubes could, the Russians say, be used for intermediate range missiles. Naturally, the USA rejects these charges.

A further Russian criticism of the USA over the INF Treaty is that, if the USA wanted to discuss alleged non-compliance, it should have used the treaty’s Special Verification Commission before going public.

This was designed specifically to address questions about each side’s compliance. The Commission did not meet between 2003 and November 2016, and it was during that 13-year interval that US concerns about Russian cruise missiles emerged.

Now Trump seems to have closed the argument by announcing withdrawal. Under Article XV of the treaty, withdrawal can happen after six months’ notice. Unless there is a timely change of approach by either side or both, the INF Treaty looks likely to be a dead letter by April 2019.

It could be, however, that the announcement is intended as a manoeuvre to obtain Russian concessions on the alleged missile deployment or on other aspects of an increasingly tense Russian–US relationship. That is what Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, implied by calling the move ‘blackmail’.

Arms control in trouble

Whether the imminence of the INF Treaty’s demise is more apparent than real, its plight is part of a bigger picture. Arms control is in deep trouble. As well as the US abrogation of the ABM Treaty in 2002,
• Russia effectively withdrew from the CFE Treaty in 2015, arguing that the equal cap was no longer fair after five former WTO states joined NATO;
• The 2010 New START agreement on strategic nuclear arms lasts until 2021, and there are currently no talks about prolonging or replacing it; and
• Russia claims that the USA is technically violating New START because some US launchers have been converted to non-nuclear use in a way that is not visible to Russia.

As a result, Russia cannot verify them in the way the treaty says it must be able to. The Russian Government’s position is that until this is resolved, it is not possible to start work on prolonging New START, despite its imminent expiry date.

It seems likely that the precarious situation of Russian–US arms control will simultaneously put increasing pressure on the overall nuclear non-proliferation regime and sharpen the arguments about the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW, or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty).

For the advocates of what is often known as the nuclear ban, the erosion of arms control reinforces the case for moving forward to a world without nuclear weapons. For its opponents, the erosion of arms control shows the world is not at all ready for or capable of a nuclear ban.

The risk of a return to nuclear weapon build-ups by both Russia and the USA is clear. With it, the degree of safety gained with the end of the cold war and enjoyed since then is at risk of being lost. Aware of the well-earned reputation for springing surprises that the Russian and US presidents both have, there may be more developments in one direction or another in the coming weeks or even days.

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Excerpt:

Dan Smith is Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

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By WAM
ABU DHABI, Nov 6 2018 (WAM)

The first three renewable energy projects under the US$50 million United Arab Emirates-Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund, UAE-CREF, have broken ground in the Bahamas, Barbados and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, MOFAIC, announced today.

Fully financed by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, ADFD, the UAE-CREF is the largest renewable energy initiative of its kind in the Caribbean, representing a partnership between MOFAIC, ADFD, and Masdar, the project manager and implementing lead.

Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, said, “These renewable energy projects underway in the Bahamas, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines further make the business case for sustainable development and UAE-Caribbean cooperation. They will create jobs and reduce energy costs to stimulate the local economy, while also incorporating concrete measures to address the reality of climate and hurricane risk.”

The three projects, designed by Masdar with the respective national governments, are set to come online by Q1 2019. In the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria, the projects are also being built to elevate storm standards and are located in less exposed areas.

Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, ADFD Director-General, said, “In cooperation with MOFAIC and Masdar, ADFD is proud to witness the rapid pace of development in three of the four country recipients of cycle one of the UAE-CREF. Like its predecessor – the ADFD-funded and fully executed US$50 million UAE Pacific Partnership Fund – the UAE-CREF supports sustainable economic and social development across the Caribbean through helping countries to maximize their vast natural potential for resilient, commercially viable renewable energy.”

“Through strategically partnering with Small Island Developing States, a group of small island countries that share similar development challenges, ADFD will help them achieve sustainable energy solutions that enhance their climate resilience and the economic prospects of the local communities. These projects in the Bahamas, Barbados and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines will have a significant positive knock-on effect on the adoption of renewable energy elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin American region,” Al Suwaidi added.

In the Bahamas, a 900-kilowatt solar PV plant at the national stadium will also serve as a carport with electric vehicle, EV, charging stations. As the country’s first large-scale solar energy project, it sets a regulatory precedent for new renewable energy plants to feed into the grid.

In Barbados, the project has two elements; a 350-kilowatt solar PV carport also with EV charging stations, and a 500-kilowatt ground-mounted PV plant. Both projects are being built in partnership with the Barbados Water Authority.

In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the project sets a strong precedent for using renewable energy to drive down energy costs on its outer islands. Under construction on Union Island, the 600-kilowatt solar PV plant is connected to a 500-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery and is expected to supply all of the island’s daytime power needs. Union Island’s energy costs are currently almost 50 percent higher than those of the main island of Saint Vincent.

The combined output of the solar power plants will be 2.35 megawatts, MW. Collectively, they will achieve diesel savings of more than 895,000 litres per year while displacing more than 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. This represents an annual diesel fuel saving of at least US$1.1 million.

One of the additional aims of the Fund is to promote local capacity building, including training and employment opportunities, with a view to promoting gender equality. The projects’ manager and lead engineer are both women, and women will represent at least a third (30 percent) of the staff employed by the EPC contractors responsible for the new renewable energy projects.

“Masdar is proud to be working alongside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development in the implementation of the UAE-Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund programme, building on the success of a similar collaboration in the Pacific Islands whose 11 projects continue to benefit local communities today,” said Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar. “The projects being delivered through the Fund will be engineered to meet the specific needs of each host country, and make an important contribution to the emergence of a commercially viable renewables sector in the Caribbean and the Latin America region.”

“As a global renewable energy company active in more than 20 countries, with projects ranging from utility-scale power plants to off-grid and remote-area installations, Masdar is honoured to leverage its experience and expertise in collaboration with those of its partners in the UAE-Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund,” Al Ramahi added.

The UAE-CREF aims to deploy renewable energy projects in 16 Caribbean countries over the next three years to help reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports, stimulate economic activity and enhance climate change resilience. Two projects in the first cycle of the fund – in Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica – are currently being reconfigured in the aftermath of the 2017 hurricane season. The second cycle of the Fund – involving renewable energy projects in Belize, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia – was announced at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week and the IRENA Assembly in January 2018. The next cycle of the Fund will be announced in January 2019.

 

WAM/Rasha Abubaker/Nour Salman

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Women and children at an internally displaced persons settlement 60km south of the town of Gode, in Ethiopia, reachable only along a dirt track through the desiccated landscape. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Dan Bloom
TAIPEI, Nov 5 2018 (IPS)

Amitav Ghosh is one of the world’s top novelists writing in the English language today, and Brooklyn-based author of “The Ibis Trilogy” has a new novel set for publication in June 2019.

Billed as a 350-page cli-fi novel set in several locations around the world, it’s historical fiction with a cli-fi theme this time. According to those who have had early peaks at the manuscript, “Gun Island” is about a descendant of a character named Neel who wants to learn more about his ancestry and who first appeared in the author’s earlier trilogy.

The well-received ”Ibis trilogy” was set in the first half of the 19th century and dealt with the opium trade between India and China that was run by the East India Company and the trafficking of coolies to Mauritius. The three books were titled “Sea of Poppies” (2008), “River of Smoke” (2011) and “Flood of Fire” (2015).

There really is a Gun Island off the coast of India, and according to book industry sources, that’s where Ghosh ”might” have taken the title for his much-anticipated new novel, his first in four years. Readers will have to wait for publication day in June 2019 to find out. The novel will appear first in India and Britain in early summer and later roll out in September in New York and Italy, according to Ghosh.

Amitav Ghosh. Credit: Gage Skidmore.

Meru Gokhale, editor-in-chief in the Literary Publishing unit of Penguin Random House India, who has read the book in manuscript form, said on her Twitter feed that “Amitav Ghosh’s new novel ‘Gun Island’ is amazing — lively, humane, fast-paced, almost mystical, contemporary, utterly engaged.”

Meanwhile, a brief online synopsis of the novel sets the scene this way: In Kolkata the main character of the novel named Dr. Anil Kumar Munshi meets, by complete chance, a distant relative named Kanai Dutt, who upends the scholar’s view of the world with a single Hindi word: ”bundook” (gun in English).

In the captivating story Ghosh tells within the 350-page novel, Munshi, a writer and a folklorist, at Dutt’s suggestion realizes that his family legacy may have deeper roots than he imagined, in the tale of a merchant that Munshi had always understood to be the stuff of Bengali legend.

Ghosh describes it as a story about a world wracked by climate change "in which creature and beings of every kind have been torn loose from their accustomed homes by the catastrophic processes of displacement that are now unfolding across the Earth at an ever-increasing pace."
And we’re off in a tale of an extraordinary journey will take readers from Kolkata to Venice and Sicily via a tangled route through the memories of those Munshi meets along the way. What emerges is an extraordinary portrait of a man groping toward a sense of what is happening around him, struggling to grasp, from within his accepted understanding of the world, the reality with which he is presented.

By the way, readers and literary critics around the world will be surprised to learn that the main charcater’s name of Munshi is also a fictitious name that Ghosh uses on his personal blog — “A.K. Munshi” — as a virtual pen name for Ghosh himself, which he has given to a ”virtual assistant” who handles the novelist’s reader and media email inquiries online.

The author of a book of essays in 2016 titled “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable,” Ghosh, while not a climate activist per se has never-the-less found himself at the front lines of literary circles discussing the role of novels and movies that deal with global warming. In a way, “Gun Island” is the globe-trotting novelist’s attempt to write a cli-fi novel.

A self-admitted fan of some of Hollywood’s cli-fi disaster epics, such as ”The Day After Tomorrow” and ”Geostorm,” Ghosh recently told an interviewer that he enjoys those two films.

“I love them! I watch them obsessively,” he said, adding: “My climate scientist friends joke and laugh at me for this because the practical science in a movie like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is bad. But I find these movies very compelling. And I do think both film and television are very forward-leaning in dealing with climate change.”

As for his new novel, Ghosh describes it as a story about a world wracked by climate change “in which creature and beings of every kind have been torn loose from their accustomed homes by the catastrophic processes of displacement that are now unfolding across the Earth at an ever-increasing pace.”

“Climate change is the most important crisis of our times and it’s hitting us in the face every day,” he told a reporter in Canada in an email exchange. “Look at these devastating typhoons and tornadoes, or the wildfires in Canada and California. These are deadly serious weather events and lived experiences.”

Two years after publishing “The Great Derangement” to great fanfare among literary scholars worldwide, Ghosh now admits that the essays began as a sort of personal ”auto-critique,” challenging himself for failing to adequately tackle the issues of climate change in his own novels.

The result may very well be “Gun Island.”

The post Amitav Ghosh prepares ‘Gun Island’ for publication in 2019 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nomads pass the carcass of a goat in April 2000, near Geladid, southwestern Ethiopia, following three years of drought. Picture: REUTERS

By Jeffrey Labovitz
East Africa , Nov 5 2018 (IOM)

Conflict, insecurity, political unrest and the search for economic opportunities continue to drive migration in the East and Horn of Africa.

However, one of the biggest drivers of displacement is not war or the search for better jobs, but changing weather patterns. After five years of drought, more that 1.5-million people were uprooted from their homes as their soils slowly, year by year, dried and cracked.

This year the skies opened up, lonely clouds joined each other, and the rains finally came. But the immediate effect was not joy as one would hope, because whenever there is drought, what follows are floods. Tract of soil hardened by years baking in the sun, turn into racing river beds. Hundreds of thousands who withstood the long dry period lost their homes to an unrelenting wet season. More than 311,000 people were displaced in the May flooding in Kenya alone.

After suffering from a sustained dry period and now a definitive wet period, dare we hope for a return of internally displaced peoples to normalcy with sustained and viable livelihoods?

According to the World Bank, the most recent drought, which lasted four consecutive years, cost the economy of Somalia an estimated $3.2bn. Remarkably, livestock exports fell by 75% and reached a low of 1.3-million live animals compared with a high of 5.3-million in 2015.

This is why, today, we need to talk about goats.

Goats are the prime offering at any celebration in East Africa, whether it is a barbecue, breaking the fast of Ramadan, Christmas dinner, or the culmination of a wedding feast. Nyama choma is the Swahili word for barbecue and it’s the talk of any party. The success of an event corresponds with the quality of the meat.

Goats are omnipresent in the city and in any village. You can see them on the side of bustling markets, dodging cars and people, grazing; their coats dirtied by the East African red cotton soil. They stand below the blooming jacarandas, filling the open space of what is usually a football pitch, crossing pot-holed streets while a fresh-faced boy with a pointed stick, wearing a tattered shirt and shorts, urges them onwards.

Among many rural households in East and Horn of Africa, goats represent the rural community’s social safety net. They represent a marriage dowry, a measure of wealth and prestige.

In Kenya, one goat can sell at market for $70. A juvenile, cherished for its soft meat, goes for $30. In countries where half the population live on less than $1.50 a day, the goat herd represents the family fortune, their bank account, their life savings. When goats go missing, when they die of thirst or starve from hunger, the resiliency of the entire community is compromised. Then, it is the people who are endangered.

While we are talking goats, we can also talk about cows and camels. Cows can be sold for upwards of $500, and camels fetch upwards of $1,000 when sold to Saudi Arabia.

All in all, experts estimate that about 20% of the entire livestock of drought-affected areas has died. While these estimates are not precise, it is safe to say millions of animals died. It is not a stretch to think of more than 10-million livestock deaths.

As aid workers, we talk about people, and we should. When the Horn of Africa last had a famine in 2011, we talked of numbers which are hard to articulate. Years on, it is still hard to imagine the scale of a drought which cost an estimated 250,000 people their lives.

Over the past year, governments and aid agencies worked hard to avoid famine, and large-scale death was averted. We avoided a repeat of 2012. However, this is not a celebration.

Earlier this year Sacdiya, an elderly woman from Balli Hille, Somalia complained: “This drought is absolutely terrible. It’s even worse than the last one in 2011. I have already lost 150 animals to thirst and starvation. How am I supposed to provide for my family with no livestock?”

Ahmed, who lives with his family in a makeshift home built from aluminum and fabric in the outskirts of Hargesia, Somaliland, said: “I lost all of my animals decades ago during my first famine in the 1980s. Back then, as all of my animals were dying, we got so desperate that we started selling the skin hoping to make any money at all. In the past three droughts I have seen in my lifetime, this one is by far the worst I have seen.”

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a UN organisation, tracks the displacement of people. We know that when people leave their homes, they have lost their survival mechanisms. People don’t leave behind their goats and their land, unless they fear they will die. It’s that simple.

Those displaced by environmental conditions surpassed 300,000 in Kenya, half a million in Ethiopia and a million in Somalia. And experts predict that the unpredictable and extreme weather events will only get worse.

For the people affected we need to ask, what will they do?

The Famine Early Warning System network offers evidence-based analysis to governments and relief agencies. While this past year has brought rains to most areas, changing weather patterns mean this is an impasse and we need to think of the future. At the same time, we still have millions in need of our help.

We as humanitarians need to remind the world that we continue to need resources to help our people to survive. We also need to remind the world that we need to take care of our goats as we need livelihoods for sustainable return or people will have nothing to go back to.

More importantly, we need to diversify livelihood strategies if indeed changing weather patterns continue to result in mass displacement and current population growth rates continue to prevail. In other words, we need to help the most vulnerable people to adapt.

For the more than 1.5-million people displaced over the past year, they will continue to be stuck in dismal camps for years to come and are dependent on our generosity.

The irony is that all they want is their goats.

• Labovitz is the regional director for East and the Horn of Africa for IOM, the UN migration agency.

The post The importance of goats in East Africa’s recovery from drought appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jeffrey Labovitz, is IOM Regional Director for East and Horn of Africa

The post The importance of goats in East Africa’s recovery from drought appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Aregashe Addis in the water utility store where she works in Debre Tabor, South Gondar, Amhara, Ethiopia. WaterAid and the UK’s Yorkshire Water utility have provided funding and training to improve the capacity and operations of the Debre Tabor Water Utility, ensuring the community’s poorest and most vulnerable people now have access to water. Credit: WaterAid/Behailu Shiferaw

By John Garrett and Kathryn Tobin
LONDON / NEW YORK, Nov 5 2018 (IPS)

There was a much-needed focus on financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the September 2018 opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Three years on from the watershed 2015 conferences in Addis Ababa, New York and Paris, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has released a new Strategy for Financing the 2030 Agenda, covering the period of 2018-2021.

Whilst welcoming the UN Secretary-General’s new ideas and reaffirmation of core Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) priorities, the UN’s 193 member states need to show stronger resolve and political will to break from today’s business-as-usual financing trajectories.

Willing the end, but not the means

With one-fifth of the time available to deliver the 2030 Agenda already gone, a serious disconnect between the ambition of the SDGs and the means of their implementation is opening up. Intending to set the international community on a course to achieve the SDGs, Guterres’s strategy aims to align global financing and economic policies with the 2030 Agenda and enhance sustainable financing strategies and investments at regional and national level whileseizing the potential of financial innovations, technologies and digitalisation.

Discussions around the strategy’s launch revealed plenty of evidence recognising the urgency of transforming economic and financial systems to advance sustainable development. Research by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), launched on the morning of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Meeting, points to alarming trends in several of the SDGs.

Four hundred million people are likely to be living in extreme poverty in 2030; there is slow progress in reducing inequalities in wealth, income or gender; world hunger is on the rise; and access to safe water and sanitation is actually in decline in some countries.

These human development challenges combine with unsustainable pressures on the environment, reflected in the increasing threats of climate change, rising sea levels, biodiversity loss and degradation of fresh water resources.

UNGA discussions also provided a clearer picture of the costs of achieving key SDGs. New estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of the costs for achieving the SDGs in the sectors of health, education, water and sanitation, energy and transport infrastructure found that US$520 billion a year is required in low-income developing countries (LIDCs).

A central role for raising revenue at home

The SG’s strategy emphasises how important domestic public finance is for sustainable development, and we agree that national ownership should be at the heart of financing solutions. The IMF estimates scope for developing countries to raise tax rates by on average 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from current levels.

WaterAid research on public finance and the extractive industries (a dominant sector in many LIDCs) finds that weak tax regimes or corruption are undermining domestic resource mobilisation and the provision of essential services to people.

In Madagascar, the Government received only 6% of the production value of its minerals in 2015, and in Zambia, forensic audits of copper producers released hundreds of millions of dollars to the exchequer in unpaid tax.

But it’s clear that countries’ efforts to raise revenue at home won’t on their own be enough to reach the ambition of the SDGs. To meet this financing gap, the UN has emphasised the role of private finance, including public-private partnerships and blended finance.

As the latest encapsulation of this trend, the Secretary-General’s strategy drew criticism from the Civil Society Financing for Development (FfD) Group for its over-reliance on mobilising private finance. While private finance is an important part of the financing solution, it is no panacea.

In New York, lenders and investors highlighted some of the obstacles to prioritising private finance in low-income contexts: insufficient data, information gaps and unviable risk premiums. Debt vulnerabilities preclude significant volumes of external non-concessional finance in many LIDCs’ contexts – particularly concerning since 40 percent of LIDCs are now in or approaching a state of debt distress.

Aligning investment and lending decisions with environmental, social and governance concerns, as South Africa and the European Union are seeking to do, is essential. The Secretary-General’s strategy sends a clear message that progress is too slow in aligning markets with sustainable development imperatives.

Recent forecasts of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that oil and coal consumption will reach record levels over coming years is one example of the misalignment of public policies and financial markets with Agenda 2030 and the transition to a low- or zero-carbon economy.

Towards transformative financing and national ownership of the 2030 Agenda

How can the urgency expressed at UNGA lead to the actions required to break out from a business-as-usual financing trajectory? The answer lies in two sides of the same coin: increase money coming into, and reduce money coming out from, LIDCs. We suggest three vital areas for greater attention from the international community.

First, curbing tax evasion and avoidance, and stopping illicit financial flows are essential steps to enable the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. Reform and restructuring of the taxation paradigms around extractive industries and other corporate investment in developing countries is fundamental, to prevent the ‘race to the bottom’ and ensure countries have both policy space and public finance to pay for their development objectives.

Taking action on tax havens—estimated to store wealth equivalent to 10% of global GDP—addressing transfer mispricing by transnational corporations, and supporting improvements in governance and transparency to tackle corruption are prerequisites.

What prevents countries from allocating sufficient resources to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and to sustainable development in general is just as important as what enables them to do so.

Second, achieving the 2030 Agenda requires a much stronger emphasis on international public assistance in grant form, both Official Development Assistance (ODA) and climate finance, targeted to the poorest countries. ODI’s report indicates that 48 of the poorest countries in the world cannot afford to fully fund the core sectors of education, health (including nutrition) and social protection – even if they maximise their tax effort.

And, while the 2030 Agenda may be voluntary, commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change, once ratified, become binding. The same holds true for human rights commitments.

Industrialised countries, overwhelmingly responsible for global warming and climate change, must fulfil their climate finance commitments as an essential first step towards climate justice. Poor communities urgently need support to adapt to the impacts of climate change—compensation for a looming environmental crisis they have had least responsibility in creating.

We could even propose combining targets for ODA and climate finance into a new SDG target for high-income countries. Merging existing targets for ODA (0.7% of GNI) and climate funding ($100 billion a year by 2020) could promote coherence and consistency, and ensure additionality of climate funding.

It could become a mandatory grant-based contribution for sustainable development from high-income countries (as opposed to loans, which can push countries further into debt). An initial combined target of 1% of GNI could be set with a deadline of 2020, rising again in 2025 to 2.5% of GNI – essentially a new Marshall Plan for global sustainable development. Financial transaction taxes and carbon taxes can be important components of funding this increase, supporting financial stability and the transition to a zero-carbon economy.

Third, the international community needs to support institutional strengthening in LIDCs on a much greater scale. IMF research suggests that successful anti-corruption and capacity-building initiatives are built on institutional reforms that emphasise transparency and accountability: for example, shining a light on all aspects of the government budget to improve public financial management and efficient spending. In the water and sanitation sector we find that well-coordinated, accountable institutions with participatory planning processes are necessary to strengthen the sector to enable universal and sustainable access by 2030.

Time is running out

The discussions around financing the 2030 Agenda at UNGA 2018 reminded us that time is running out. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on staying below 1.5 degrees temperature increase adds a new urgency.

Three years into the SDGs’ implementation, where are the ambitious multilateral financing commitments required to ensure that the 2030 Agenda including SDG6 become a reality for everyone across the globe? Fewer than 12 years remain to take urgent action nationally and globally to achieve the 2030 Agenda and ensure all the world’s inhabitants can live in dignity and see their human rights fulfilled.

Between now and next year’s High-Level Political Forum for heads of state in September 2019, the international community must generate the political momentum required for equitable and ambitious financing, to reach the shared commitments of the SDGs.

The post Ambitious Agenda, Ambitious Financing? UNGA Shows a Long Way Still to Go for SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

John Garrett & Kathryn Tobin, WaterAid

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The Fisheries Sector in the Caribbean Community is an important source of income. Four Caribbean countries have done an inventory of the major sources of mercury contamination in their islands. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Nov 5 2018 (IPS)

Four Caribbean countries have done an inventory of the major sources of mercury contamination in their islands, but a great deal of work still needs to be done to determine where and what impact this mercury is having on the region’s seafood chain.

Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica and St. Lucia recently concluded a Minamata Initial Assessment project, funded by the Global Environment Facility, that enabled them to identify their top mercury polluters. The assessment represents a major step for the countries, all of which share the global concern over mercury contamination of the seafood chain that led to the ratification in August 2017 of the United Nation’s Minamata Convention on Mercury.

Public education on the issue is vital, said Tahlia Ali Shah, the assessment’s project execution officer. “When mercury is released it eventually enters the land or soil or waterways. It becomes a problem when it enters the waterways and it moves up the food chain. Mercury tends to bioaccumulate up the food chain,” she said.

“So if people continue to eat larger predatory fish over a period of time” the levels of mercury in their body could increase. Mercury poisoning can lead to physical and mental disability.

Ali Shah works for the regional project’s implementing agency, the Basel Convention Regional Centre for the Caribbean (BCRC), which held a seminar in Trinidad in early October to apprise members of the public about the dangers posed by mercury. The seminar also shared with participants some of the results of the initial assessment and what citizens can do to help reduce mercury in the environment. The four countries plan to roll out public awareness campaigns on the issue, Ali Shah said.

Meanwhile, Jewel Batchasingh, the centre’s acting director, is concerned that the public not overreact to the fear of mercury contamination. She pointed out that fishing and tourism are important industries for the region, “and people tend to panic when they hear about mercury in fish.”

For now, no fish species commonly eaten in the Caribbean has been flagged as a danger,  Ali Shah told IPS. “It is only after years of testing the fish and narrowing down the species that we will be able to better inform consumers in the Caribbean about which fish are safest to eat and give fish guidelines.”

She said the current fish matrix developed by the Biodiversity Research Institute to provide guidance regarding safe consumption levels for various species does not readily apply to the Caribbean. A similar matrix is used by the United States Food and Drug Administration to provide guidance to U.S. consumers.

The main source of mercury contamination for Trinidad and Tobago is its oil and gas industry, which is responsible for over 70 percent of the mercury released into that country’s environment. For Jamaica, the important bauxite industry is the main source of mercury pollution, whereas for St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia, the main source of contamination is consumer products.

Though St. Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica are parties to the Minamata Convention, Trinidad and Tobago and St. Lucia are exploring what steps need to be taken to become signatories.

St. Lucia wanted to take part in the MIA as a preliminary step. It recognised “that the problem of mercury pollution is a global problem that cannot be addressed adequately without the cooperation of all countries and that our population and environment was not immune to the negative impacts of mercury, [so] we wanted to be a part of the solution by ratifying the Convention,” said Yasmin Jude, sustainable development and environment officer and the national project coordinator for St. Lucia’s assessment.

“However, it was important to us that the decision to do so was from an informed position regarding our national situation and in particular, capability to implement the obligations articulated in the Convention.”

The MIA helped Saint Lucia “to get information on the primary sources of Hg [mercury] releases and emissions in the country, as well as an appreciation of the gaps in the existing regulatory and institutional frameworks as it relates to the implementation of the country’s legal obligations under the Minamata Convention on Mercury”, on its way to becoming a signatory, Jude explained to IPS via e-mail.

She added that at this stage “it is premature” for St. Lucia to state what its goals are with regard to controlling mercury contamination or to give a timeline for reduction of mercury in the environment, but the government’s chief concern is to ensure “a safe and healthy environment for our people.”

On the other hand, St. Kitts and Nevis, as a signatory to the Convention, “will adhere to the timelines for certain actions as laid out in the Minamata Convention,” Dr. Marcus Natta, research manager and the national project coordinator for St. Kitts and Nevis, told IPS. He said, “We will endeavour to meet the obligations of the Convention through legislative means, awareness and education activities, and other innovative and feasible actions.”

Keima Gardiner, waste management specialist and national project coordinator for the Trinidad and Tobago project, said one of the biggest challenges her country will face in becoming a signatory to the convention “is to phase out the list of mercury-added products” that signatories are required to eliminate by 2020. “This is very close for us. We are a high importer of CFL (compact fluorescent) bulbs and these bulbs are actually on that list of products to be phased out.”

As for the energy sector, which the recently concluded assessment shows is the country’s main mercury polluter, “the idea is to try and meet with them directly to try and encourage them to change their practices and use more environmentally friendly techniques…and monitor their emissions,” Gardiner said.

• The first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 26 to 28 and is being co-hosted with Canada and Japan. Over 4,000 participants from around the world are coming together to learn how to build a blue economy.

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By WAM
DUBAI, Nov 5 2018 (WAM)

Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and in collaboration with the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Government of the UAE will host the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) third Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, on 11-12 November in Dubai.

More than 700 world-leading experts from over 70 countries will participate in the meeting, which aims to address preparations for the huge wave of technological disruption that will come with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and The Future and Co-chair of the Global Future Councils, said the event is aligned with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, which emphasises the need to prepare for tomorrow, today, to strengthen international partnerships to achieve common goals and to adopt a future outlook for the government performance in the UAE.

He added that the Global Future Councils is a network of 38 distinct councils each focused on a specific future issue, such as cybersecurity, quantum computing, governance, innovation, bio-technology, energy and water, space, healthcare, education, commerce and investment.

The outcome of the meeting will shape the agenda for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, as well as the Forum’s ongoing global initiatives.

WAM/Hassan Bashir/Hatem Mohamed

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Journalists around the world face threats and attacks, often instigated by government officials, organised crime, or terrorist groups said U.N. Special Rapporteurs David Kaye, Agnes Callamard, and Bernard Duhaime, expressing concern over the plight that journalists are increasingly facing. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 2018 (IPS)

Violence and toxic rhetoric against journalists must stop, say United Nations experts.

Marking the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, U.N. Special Rapporteurs David Kaye, Agnes Callamard, and Bernard Duhaime expressed concern over the plight that journalists are increasingly facing.

“Journalists around the world face threats and attacks, often instigated by government officials, organised crime, or terrorist groups,” their joint statement said.

“These last weeks have demonstrated once again the toxic nature and outsized reach of political incitement against journalists, and we demand that it stop,” they added.

While Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal death and the subsequent lack of accountability has dominated headlines, such cases are sadly a common occurrence.

According to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 1010 journalists have been killed in the last 12 years.

Nine out of ten such cases remain unsolved.

Latin America and the Caribbean has among the highest rates of journalists killed and impunity in those cases.

Between 2006-2017, only 18 percent of cases of murdered journalists were reported as resolved in the region.

In the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) annual impunity index, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia make the top 14 countries in the world with the worst records of prosecuting perpetrators.

Out of the 14 journalists murdered in Mexico in 2017, there have been arrests in just two cases.

In an effort to raise awareness of crimes against journalists, UNESCO has launched the #TruthNeverDies campaign, publicising the stories of journalists who were killed for their work.

“It is our responsibility to ensure that crimes against journalists do not go unpunished,” said UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay said.

“We must see to it that journalists can work in safe conditions which allow a free and pluralistic press to flourish. Only in such an environment will we be able to create societies which are just, peaceful and truly forward-looking,” she added.

Among the journalists spotlighted in the campaign is Paul Rivas, an Ecuadorian photographer who travelled to Colombia with his team to investigate drug-related border violence. They were reportedly abducted and killed by a drug trafficking group in April, and still little is known about what happened.

Similarly, Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach Valducea was shot eight times outside her home, and gunmen left a note saying: “For being a loud-mouth.” She reported on organised crime, drug-trafficking and corruption for a national newspaper.

U.N. experts Kaye, Callamard and Duhaime urged states to conduct impartial, prompt and thorough investigations, including international investigation when necessary.

“Staes have not responded adequately to these crimes against journalists…impunity for crimes against journalists triggers further violence and attacks,” they said.

They also highlighted the role that political leaders themselves play in inciting violence, framing reporters as “enemies of the people” or “terrorists.”

Recently, over 200 journalists denounced President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media in an open letter, accusing him of condoning and inciting violence against the press.

“Trump’s condoning of political violence is part of a sustained pattern of attack on a free press — which includes labelling any reportage he doesn’t like as ‘fake news’ and barring reporters and news organisations whom he wishes to punish from press briefings and events,” the letter stated.

The letter came amid Trump’s comments during a rally which seemingly praised politician Greg Gianforte who assaulted Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in May 2017.

“Any guy who can do a body slam, he’s my kind of—he’s my guy,” he told supporters.

Similar rhetoric is now being used around the world, including in Southeast Asian countries where the “fake news” catchphrase is being used to hide or justify violence.

For instance, when speaking to the Human Rights Council, Philippine senator Alan Peter Cayetano denied the scale of extrajudicial killings in the country and claimed that any contrary reports are “alternative facts.”

“We call on all leaders worldwide to end their role in the incitement of hatred and violence against the media,” the rapporteurs’ joint statement concluded.

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• The Shrinking Space for Media Freedom in Uganda

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By Mohammed Jalal Alrayssi
ABU DHABI, Nov 4 2018 (WAM)

The recent trailblazing steps taken by ADNOC to deliver growth across value chain and expand its partnership model on international markets are seen as a step forward on the path to underpin its integrated 2030 Strategy, which is premised to transform the way the Group maximises value from every barrel, and deliver the greatest possible return to Abu Dhabi while helping meet the world’s growing demand for energy.

These initiatives have been well-received by the Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC) as being a quantum leap on the way to ensure ADNOC’s transformational development and sustain its efficient contributions to the nation’s economic diversification strategy, laid down as per the prudent vision of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the direct overseeing of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

The ambitious downstream growth strategy initiated by ADNOC, unlocks new opportunities for large segments of investors in the public and private sectors alike, by optimising performance and maximising value through engaging international investors in collaboration with SMEs to intensify the use of national products and services.

The economic diversification policy embraced by the country, stems from prudent utilisation of oil & gas revenues to ensure sustainable income streams for generations to come in a way that dissipates any concerns about the depletion of oil wealth. A concern that is set to be replaced with confidence and optimism instilled by the pioneering steps being taken to maximise revenues and unlock values of the hydrocarbon sector while investing these revenues in future industries, namely advanced technology, AI, etc.

At the heart of ADNOC’s economic diversification strategy lies a firm belief in the significant value boasted by the UAE as a world-class logistics hub that connects the country with its strategic partners across Europe and Asia through modern ports that provide unmatched world services.

ADNOC’s new five-year business plan and capital investment growth of AED 486 billion (US$132.33 billion) between 2019-2023, approved today by SUPC, along with the new oil and gas finds, corroborate in no uncertain way the Group’s resilience and ability to keep pace with world developments. A pioneering role the ADNOC has been playing over the past decades and will continue to assume over years to come through its robust partnership model inside and outside the country, driven by the UAE’s soft power as well as the great potential of its youth and women’s empowerment.

Translating the late Sheikh Zayed’s sound bite that man is the one who builds plants, ADNOC reaffirms that man is its most cherished asset and that hopes are pinned on this generation whose members are well-equipped with state-of-the-art technology to ensure the wise leadership’s vision for a safe, stable and bright future for the nation.

WAM/Hatem Mohamed/Hassan Bashir

WAM/Hassan Bashir

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Excerpt:

Mohammed Jalal Alrayssi is Executive Director of the Emirates News Agency, WAM

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By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Nov 3 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Only a few would be persuaded that President Donald Trump is deeply informed about any moderately complex subject. Ballistic missiles is one such. In fact, such a notion becomes firm when one considers his expression of bewilderment when Japan did not shoot down the North Korean “Hwasong-15” missile in flight just as the Saudis had done the Houthi projectile fired from Yemen. Anyone with even meagre understanding of missile technology would know that thetwo situations were not the same. And that the former action would have been well-nigh impossible with available Japanese capability.So when he caught out the Russians cheating on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 1987, he took many by surprise. The Russians might have indeed tried to pull wool over American eyes by quietly deploying a new medium range weapon in violation of that landmark agreement. This is not to say that Mr Trump came to this conclusion on his own. At least it was apparent that he heeded counsel in this regard, which in itself is a silver lining of no mean consequence.

During much of the Cold War period, as nuclear weapons, particularly among thesuperpowers proliferated, peace was maintained on the premise of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In other words, since the key powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, had the capability to obliterate each other, neither wanted to initiate a war. Then in the mid-1970s a US Secretary of Defence propounded that all nuclear conflict need not lead to MAD. In what is known as “Schlesinger Doctrine” named after him, he enunciated a kind of “limited war”that there could be small scale nuclear conflicts, with weapons of lesser yield, gradually escalating to higher levels, rendering a nuclear war “fightable” and even “winnable”. The view was that the enemy would capitulate along the path of escalation. Design and production of weaponry followed theory. Shorter range missiles, more precise weapons, and theory justifying their “tactical” rather than “strategic”use,emerged.

There are usually two types oftargets in a nuclear war: “counterforce” directed against hardened and military structures, and“countervalue”, against“soft targets” as cities and civilian populations. Since long range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) were imprecise, their targets were logically softer, or mainly “countervalue” ones. But intermediate or medium range missiles (IRBMs and MRBMs)would have greater precision and therefore higher capacity to “kill” hardened “counterforce” targets. Because there would be greater propensity to use more precise weapons with lesser collateral damage, theorists considered these more “destabilising” than the larger imprecise weapons which would certainly attract devastating response.

Acutely aware of these dangers, the US and Soviet leaders, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the 1987 INF Treaty.It required them to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.As a result, bothsuperpowers destroyed 2,692 missiles by the treaty’s implementation deadline of June 1,1990.The US removed their Cruise and Pershing missiles deployed in the UK and Germany, and the Soviets their deadly SS-20s out of the range of Europe. Some believe North Korea may have gone on to procure some of these.

Around the middle of the current decade, both the Americans and the Russians began to allege non-compliance of the treaty by the other. The US blamed Russia for developing the SSC-8, a land-based intermediate range cruise missile. Moscow raised its own concerns about the US placement of a missile defence launch system in Europe that can be used to fire cruise missiles, and manufacturing armed drones that equalled ground-launched cruise missiles prohibited in the treaty. Nonetheless, both parties declared their “support” for the treaty in a United Nations General Assembly statement on October 25,2007, inviting other nuclear powers to join it. An intended target of the call was perhaps China, which roundly ignored it, and continued developing its own deadly weapons. It includes the “Deng Feng” (East Wind), DF-26, an IRBM with a maximum range of 4,000 km which put the US installation of Guam in the Pacific under threat. The non-party status of China to the INF Treaty actually concerns both the US and Russia, though the former, understandably more so.

Others have also got into the game.The Indians have “Agni” and “Shaurya” missiles, with some variants of the former IRBMs having ICBM range and capabilities. The Chinese of course would factor in India. While Pakistan does not have ICBMs, which is not required vis-à-vis India, it has its “Shaheen-3” missile that would be its credible deterrent with regard to its principal adversary. It can strike at any target within India or as far as Myanmar, or even Israel if appropriately deployed. Israel, another undeclared nuclear power, possesses “Jericho-2” and “Jericho-3” with ranges of 1,500to 3,500 km and 4,500 to 6,500 km respectively.Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons, has developed several types of IRBMs, namely “Emad”, “Qader”, “Sejjil”, “Soumar”, and “Khorramshahr”, all with range between 2,000 and 2,500 km. Of these “Khorramshahr” can carry three conventional warheads, weighing upto 1,800 kg.

The massive destructive power of some of these conventional weapons are so great as to blur their difference with smaller tactical or “theatre” nuclear weapons. There exists a voluntary agreement with 35 members called the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), set up in 1987. It seeks to limit control on spread of export of missiles and related technology, but only India from those with recently acquired capabilities is a member.

Should Mr Trump pull out of the IMF Treaty, the result would most certainly be destabilising. Both the US and Russia will begin to develop newer and deadlier weapons. Without the INF Treaty, and others of this ilk, disarmament and arms control initiatives will take a huge hit. Then, in a new era of rearmament and arms de-control, peace and stability can only hinge only on deterrence, or fear of devastating retaliation. This will be a return to primordial human behaviour and psychology. Not a wholesome situation, or solution, but sadly may be an inevitable one.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former foreign adviser to a caretaker government of Bangladesh and is currently Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Alberto Flores (center) works hard to harvest the few bunches of plantains that he managed to salvage from his plantation, which was flooded and ruined after the rains that hit El Salvador in mid-October. He estimates his losses at 2,000 dollars. And in August he lost his maize crop, to drought. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 2 2018 (IPS)

Disconsolate, Alberto Flores piles up on the edge of a road the few bunches of plantains that he managed to save from a crop spoiled by heavy rains that completely flooded his farm in central El Salvador.

“Everything was lost, I have been cutting what can be salvaged, standing in water up to my knees,” said Flores, a 54-year-old peasant farmer from San Marcos Jiboa, a village in the municipality of San Luis Talpa, in the south-central department of La Paz.

Flores told IPS that as a result of the rains, which hit El Salvador and the rest of Central America in mid-October, he lost some 2,000 dollars, after nearly a hectare of his plantain (cooking bananas) crop was flooded."We must consider the protection of agriculture and how that improves food security, and to this end we must work on prevention measures that make productive systems more resilient and that generate sustainable development.” -- Mariano Peñate

San Marcos Jiboa is a rural community of 250 families, 90 percent of whom are dedicated to agriculture. Most of the local farming families were affected by the torrential rains, IPS found during a tour of the area.

The damage was mainly to chili peppers, maize, beans, bananas, pipián – similar to zucchini – and loroco (Fernaldia pandurata), a creeper whose flower is edible and widely used in the local diet.

Other parts of the country and the Central American region were also hit hard.

Central America has been described in reports by international organisations as one of the planet’s most vulnerable regions to the onslaught of climate change.

And yet, tools that help farmers mitigate weather shocks, such as agricultural insurance, are not widely available in Central America, although important initiatives have been launched.

“I’ve heard about agricultural insurance, but no one comes to explain what it’s about,” said Flores, who perspires heavily as he piles up clusters of green plantains.

Compared to Mexico or countries in South America, Central America has made little progress in this area, according to the report Agricultural Insurance in the Americas, published in 2015 by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The report states that the efforts made in the region have not generated the expected results, although it cites a growth in agricultural insurance premiums in Guatemala, where they totalled 2.25 million dollars, followed by Panama (1.8 million) and Costa Rica (just over 500,000 dollars), according to data from 2013.

Experts pointed out that the high cost of agricultural insurance premiums, which is about 13 percent of an agricultural loan or investment, is one of the reasons, as well as a lack of information on and culture of using insurance.

Rows of banana plants on a farm flooded by heavy rains in the village of San Marcos Jiboa, in the central Salvadoran municipality of San Luis Talpa. The rains that hit Central America in mid-October not only impacted crops but also left 38 dead and more than 200,000 people affected in the region. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“Basically, it’s expensive,” Saúl Ortiz, Guate Invierte’s Risk Analysis and Management Coordinator, told IPS by telephone from Guatemala. The financial institution manages a trust fund of more than 70 million dollars in agricultural support in various areas, including insurance.

It is precisely because of these costs that Guate Invierte emerged in 2005, added Ortiz, to support the country’s small and medium producers and give them the chance to take out a policy. The initial plan was to extend it throughout the region.

In addition to being a state guarantor of agricultural credits acquired by farmers from other financial institutions, Guate Invierte offered insurance not linked to loans, with a subsidy of up to 70 percent of the cost of the premium.Climate impact

"Climate change definitely has consequences for production and for people's livelihoods, especially those who depend on agriculture," FAO consultant in El Salvador Mariano Peñate told IPS.

The soil is deteriorating and the livelihoods, especially of the poor, are being hit hard because of the impact on the yields of their small-scale crops, and indirectly, due to the reduction of employment, he said.

That affects food security, he added, not only of the population affected by these climatic phenomena, but also of the people who depend on the crops grown in the affected areas.

"We must consider the protection of agriculture and how that improves food security, and to this end we must work on prevention measures that make productive systems more resilient and that generate sustainable development," he said.

But that scheme failed because the government stopped injecting funds, and in 2015 Guate Invierte ceased to offer subsidised insurance not linked to loans, although it maintains coverage for customers who do have loans.

In El Salvador, while there is not a consolidated market, one kind of policy aimed at small farmers has begun to operate.

In July, Seguros Futuro, together with the state-run Agricultural Development Bank, launched the Produce Seguro programme, with coverage for earthquakes, droughts and excessive rainfall.

It is a microinsurance scheme aimed at the bank’s portfolio of 50,000 clients, whether they are farmers or involved in other productive sectors.

Unlike traditional insurance policies, which in the event of a catastrophe only pay for physically verified crop losses, Produce Seguro offers “parametric” insurance.

This kind of insurance pays a set amount for a specific event, based on the magnitude of the disaster, such as an earthquake or flooding, as measured y satellite and other advanced technology which indicates, for example, the level of rainfall in a given area.

The higher the level of rainfall in the policyholder’s area, the higher the indemnity.

In the case of rainfall, the initial level is 136 mm of water accumulated over three days. The information comes from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Salvadoran Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

“We don’t have to do any verification in the area, everything is based on the charts,” Daysi Rosales, general manager of Seguros Futuro, told IPS.

The pilot programme is supported by Swiss Re, the Swiss reinsurance company. The cost of premiums is five percent of the credit contracted with the BFA, which is affordable to farmers.

As a result of the last downpours, “the parameters have already been met and some level of compensation will be made, although we haven’t paid yet because the event just occurred and we are processing the payments,” said Rosales.

Rosales and Ortiz concur that state participation has been key to the expansion of agricultural insurance in South American countries or Mexico, something that has not happened in Central America.

“In Mexico, 90 percent is paid by the State; it is the State that buys the insurance, not the people,” said Rosales.

Meanwhile, on one of the flooded plots of land in San Marcos Jiboa, Víctor Alcántara, another farmer who was affected by the rains, said the impacts of natural disasters are felt virtually every year in this country, where climate change has become more severe this century.

“This time the blow was twofold: first we lost our maize in August, to drought, and now I’ve lost almost my whole loroco crop because of the rain,” he added.

Alcántara said he had invested 300 dollars in planting loroco, and has lost 60 percent of the crop due to the heavy rains.

Added to this is the loss of half a hectare of maize, worth around 400 dollars, due to the drought that affected the area in August, in the middle of the May to November rainy season, which is when the two annual harvests take place.

In August, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme warned in a joint statement that the drought would impact the price of food, since maize and beans, basic to the Central American diet, have been the most affected crops.

Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras reported losses of 281,000 hectares of these crops, on which the food security and nutrition of 2.1 million people depend, the report said.

Now that his maize harvest is ruined, Alcantara said he will have to figure out how to put tortillas on his family’s table.

 

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The first caravan reached the town of Matías Romero in Oaxaca state yesterday (01/11). The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs estimates that 4,000 people spent the night there. Photo: Rafael Rodríguez/IOM

By International Organization for Migration
SAN JOSE, Nov 2 2018 (IOM)

The UN Migration Agency, IOM, continues to provide support and assistance to migrants who have joined the migrant caravans crossing Central America and opted to seek asylum in Mexico or return to their countries of origin.

In the Siglo XXI Migratory Station of Tapachula, managed by the National Institute for Migration (INM) of Mexico, IOM and the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE) have been supplying food and basic hygiene kits to over 1,500 migrants from the caravans seeking asylum in Mexico.

“IOM maintains its position that the human rights and basic needs of all migrants must be respected, regardless of their migratory status,” says Christopher Gascon, IOM Chief of Mission in Mexico. “In coordination with UNHCR we will continue to monitor the situation of the caravan counting on field staff, the Mexican Office of Assistance for Migrants and Refugees (DAPMyR), and partner NGOs, providing information regarding alternatives for regular and safe migration, as well as options for voluntary returns.”

A second caravan of approximately 1,800 Central American migrants admitted on Monday (29/10) by Mexican migration authorities arrived last Wednesday (31/10) in Huixtla, Chiapas state, and plan to move today, according to local authorities. This group initially started the regularization process in Mexico but later opted to continue the trek north without seeking asylum.

A third caravan of around 500 migrants departed from El Salvador last Sunday and crossed Tuesday (30/10) into Mexico, where most of them requested asylum. A fourth group of migrants left on Wednesday (31/10) from San Salvador with some 1,700 individuals, according to an IOM monitoring team. The final group spent last night in the Guatemalan town of Tecún Umán, on the border with Mexico.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the first caravan reached the town of Matías Romero in Oaxaca state yesterday (01/11). An SRE press release estimates that about 4,000 people spent the night there.

After walking some 850 kilometres from San Pedro Sula in Honduras, fatigue is evident in many of the migrants who spent last night in Matías Romero.

Exhaustion and the challenges ahead have caused many migrants to opt for voluntary return, offered by Mexican authorities and Honduran consular officials. Counting on its Mesoamerica Program funded by the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), IOM is now also able to provide voluntary return assistance to migrants.

At the Honduran border control points of Agua Caliente and Santa Rosa de Copan, between 19 and 24 October, IOM provided 2,141 hygiene kits and basic food supplies to returnees. Migrants are returning to Honduras on buses that keep arriving at a rate of four to six per day while other migrants have returned by planes provided by the Mexican government.

“The caravan phenomenon in Central America is another expression of a migration process that the region has been facing for quite some time,” explains Marcelo Pisani, IOM Regional Director for Central America, North America, and the Caribbean. “It is a mixed migration flow, driven by economic factors, family reunification, violence and the search for international protection, among others.

“Nevertheless,” adds Pisani, “we are concerned about the stress and demands that caravans place on the humanitarian community and the asylum systems of receiving countries, which ultimately have limited resources to face this challenge or to properly care for and protect migrants.

“The effective protection of human rights for all is based on the respect of processes conveyed in international treaties and national laws, which must be the frame of reference for any action that may be implemented in this situation,” concluded the IOM Regional Director.

For more information please contact Jorge Gallo at the IOM Regional Office for Central America, North America and the Caribbean, Tel: +506 2212 5352, Email: jgallo@iom.int

Watch the video here.

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Sudanese journalists at a press conference in Khartoum in this picture dated 2012. Credit: Albert González Farran - UNAMID

By Zeinab Mohammed Salih
KHARTOUM, Nov 2 2018 (IPS)

The day before Amnesty International released a statement calling on the government of Sudan to end harassment, intimidation and censorship of journalists following the arrests of at least 15 journalists since the beginning of the year, the head of the National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) Salah Goush accused Sudanese journalists, who recently met with western diplomats, of being spies.

Goush made the statement before parliament where he signed the code of conduct for journalists.

“They were called and interrogated to let them know that this [meeting with Western diplomats] is a project of spying,” said Goush to Sudan’s parliamentarians on Thursday Nov. 1. He then announced that the NISS was dropping all complaints against the journalists.

But Amnesty International said in its statement issued today, Nov. 2, that “the Sudanese government have this year been unrelenting in their quest to silence independent media by arresting and harassing journalists and censoring both print and broadcast media.”

“This just shows that Sudanese officials have not changed their ways- they still accuse journalists and activists of being spies and other trumped up accusations,” Jehanne Henry, a researcher on Sudan and South Sudan at Human Rights Watch, told IPS about Goush’s comments to parliament.

On Tuesday, a Reuters stringer in Khartoum and two other local journalists were questioned by the state security prosecutor about their earlier meetings with European Union diplomats and the United States’ ambassador to Sudan.

At the time they were told that they might face charges when the investigation is completed. Prior to Tuesday, five other journalists were also interrogated for meeting the same diplomats and the NISS stated that two more journalists were to be questioned on the same matter.

“What the NISS is doing to us is a form of extortion and it’s a terror act to stop freedom of the press. Journalists have the right to meet diplomats, government officials and opposition and anyone else and they can talk to about freedom of speech or anything else. Journalists are not spies,” Bahram Abdolmonim, one of the three journalists interrogated by the NISS on Tuesday, told IPS. He added “journalism is a message”.

Prior to Abdolmonim’s questioning three female and two male journalists were summoned to the NISS prosecutor’s office and where questioned for meeting with western diplomats and discussing freedom of speech.

These are not the only incidents of clampdown against journalists. On Oct. 16 five journalists were arrested in front of the Sudanese parliament for protesting against the barring of one of their colleagues from parliament.

“Since the beginning of 2018 the government of Sudan, through its security machinery, has been unrelenting in its crackdown on press freedom by attacking journalists and media organisations,” said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty international Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

Amnesty International also said that there was an increase in print censorship and that editors receive daily calls from NISS agents to question them about their editorial content. The editors have to then justify their storylines. NISS agents also show up at printing presses and either order editors to drop certain stories or confiscate entire print runs.

“Between May and October, the Al Jareeda newspaper was confiscated at least 13 times, Al Tayar was confiscated five times and Al Sayha four times. A host of other newspapers including Masadir, Al Ray Al Aam, Akhirlahza, Akhbar Al Watan, Al Midan, Al Garar and Al Mustuglia were each confiscated once or twice,” the statement said.

Broadcast media have also been subjected to censorship. Earlier last month, NISS suspended a talk show on Sudania24 TV after it hosted Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, formerly the Janjaweed troops, who are accused of committing atrocities in Darfur.

Across the country reporting is tightly restricted. Conflict zones like Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, are especially difficult to report from.

“The Sudanese authorities must stop this shameful assault on freedom of expression and let journalists do their jobs in peace. Journalism is not a crime,” said Jackson.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Sudan 174th out of 180 countries on its 2018 World Press Freedom Index, charging that the NISS “hounds journalists and censors the print media.”

Journalists in Sudan are often arrested and taken to court where they face complaints that range from lying to defamation.

Amnesty International called on the Sudanese government to revise the Press and Printed Materials Act of 2009.

“We work in fear in here, when I write something I’m not sure if I will end up going to jail or be interrogated by the NISS,” one journalist who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of their safety told IPS.

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• When Being ‘Offensive’ or ‘Morally Improper’ Online Carries an Indeterminate Jail Sentence in East Africa
• African Governments Mark World Press Freedom Day with Crackdown Against Online Journalism

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Tents set up at Alsabeen hospital in Sana'a Yemen for screening suspected cholera cases.

By Anna Kucirkova
TEXAS, USA, Nov 2 2018 (IPS)

Cholera outbreaks across history regularly killed a hundred thousand or more. It isn’t well known today because it was essentially eliminated in the Western world.

It last erupted in the U.S. in the 1800s, eradicated by water and sewage treatment systems that prevented it from spreading via contaminated water. However, cholera is making a comeback around the globe, and it could again become a major killer.

Cholera is caused by eating or drinking something contaminated with the Vibrio cholera bacteria. Because it is waterborne, Western cases tend to occur when someone eats contaminated sea food.

In the developing world, people drinking water from rivers where others bathe and defecate contribute to its spread. That is why the World Health Organization (WHO) records around 150,000 cholera cases per year.

Cholera remains common in places with poor sanitation systems or where they do not yet exist. That is why cholera is considered epidemic in places like Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

Tropical climates that don’t get cold enough to kill the bacteria, wet soil that breeds it, and unsanitary groundwater that mixes with drinking water can cause one patient’s effluent to spread to an entire community.

The literal environment prevents the bacteria from being truly eradicated, resulting in it being found in overcrowded slums. Storms and flooding can interfere with local water supplies, bringing in contaminated water that people then drink.

It periodically erupts in active war zones and overcrowded refugee camps that cannot maintain a clean water supply. The lack of proper hygiene in these places certainly contributes to its spread. Yemen and Syria, both in the midst of civil wars, are the worst examples of this.

The cholera outbreak in Haiti has shown that cholera can come roaring back after other natural disasters that disrupt clean water delivery. Globalism contributes to cholera’s spread, as well.

For example, the Haiti outbreak was likely precipitated by U.N. peacekeepers that picked up cholera in Nepal, arrived in Haiti and then infected the local water supply through poor hygiene. The outbreak killed over ten thousand and infected hundreds of thousands more.

Now a country already struggling to deal with critically damaged infrastructure has to manage cholera, too. This is a tragic blow, since Haiti worked for years to eradicate the disease.

The infection and death rates were made worse by the under-developed medical system that the disaster rendered inoperable. In nations with underdeveloped medical systems, they can’t keep up with the load of the epidemic, spreading faster and killing many more than it would in a better equipped region.

Bangladesh struggles with endemic cholera. One of their solutions was vaccination against the disease. Vietnam, too, has set up a vaccination program to prevent humans from becoming a transmission vector. Both countries have set up programs to curtail their devastating effects, as well.

Globalization can take cholera to countries that have lived without it so long that doctors don’t know what they’re dealing with. This can lead to the disease spreading beyond what can easily be contained.

Within a few hours of symptoms appearing, patients can lose so much fluid that they’re rendered bedridden. This dramatically increases the risk of transmission to others. These few hours are also the ideal time to give someone a mix of fluids and antibiotics to prevent them from becoming dangerously dehydrated. If a patient is misdiagnosed, they could die of dehydration within two or three days.

In tropical countries lacking fully developed water and sanitation infrastructure, the soil and untreated groundwater hosts cholera bacteria that can contaminate public water supplies.

The outbreak is made worse by patients spreading it through bodily fluids to those who may have safe drinking water. And because patients can readily travel, the disease can spread rapidly through new vectors.

The ebola outbreak in Dallas, Texas was caused by a man, who knew he was exposed, booking a flight to Texas to visit family he hadn’t seen in more than a decade. He arrived knowing he might carry the disease and with the hope he’d be treated in the more advanced American hospitals.

Cholera periodically spreads to new areas for the very same reason; people who are sick board buses and planes to get help elsewhere. The less dramatic example is someone carrying cholera traveling by car to an urban hospital, spreading the disease as they travel.

This is the downside of globalization and has long been the basis of strong immigration controls – to make certain that immigrants didn’t bring diseases with them. Tuberculosis was routinely screened for in the 1800s and 1900s, but buses, trains and aircraft make it possible for cholera to go global despite its rapidity.

Overcrowded cities have always provided a place for cholera to claim many victims. One major difference today is scale. A cholera epidemic in London two centuries ago would claim tens of thousands in a city of perhaps a million.

Third world cities that are home to five to fifteen million, many of whom live in slums, could see a million or more deaths in a bad cholera epidemic. And the constant flow of people from the countryside to the city in the developing world creates a constant risk of an epidemic.

Thanks to our understanding of disease transmission, sanitation and treatment, cholera (https://connectforwater.org/cholera-is-becoming-a-serious-problem-heres-why/) outbreaks are rarely as catastrophic as the past. But we need to recognize that modern medicine is still in a war with this ancient foe that will continue to threaten humanity for the foreseeable future.

The post Cholera Threatens a Comeback Worldwide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Cumhuriyet's headquarters dressed up for Victory Day, which commemorates Turkish victory against Greek forces at the Battle of Dumlupınar (August 26-30, 1922). Credit: Christopher Shand

By Christopher Shand
Nov 1 2018 (IPS)

Censorship, controversial judicial proceedings and imprisonment: such is the current risk run by independently-thinking journalists in Turkey.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkey 157th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index, describing the country as the ‘biggest jail for journalists in the world’. The authorities have raided and closed many media outlets, censored social networks and the internet, even ignoring decisions of the Constitutional Court after a state of emergency was established post the failed military coup in July 2016.

Cumhuriyet has been Turkey’s oldest and much trusted newspaper for almost a century. This editorial change may lead to a shift in the reporting of issues such as human rights, gender equality, secularism and protection of the environment.

One of the latest changes believed to be part of this transition happens to be the change in leadership of the independent newspaper Cumhuriyet. On September 7, 2018, following the meeting of the new board, former editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu resigned along with several other journalists who questioned its impartiality.

Several sources confirmed that the new administration was elected with the help of public authorities and that they started turning a blind eye on events critical of current government. They have already been scrutinized for underreporting on issues related to the Kurdish people or past prison massacres.

Cumhuriyet has been Turkey’s oldest and much trusted newspaper for almost a century. This editorial change may lead to a shift in the reporting of issues such as human rights, gender equality, secularism and protection of the environment.

These issues have been fearlessly reported by Murat Sabuncu and his editorial board during recent times. In 2015 Cumhuriyet was awarded the Freedom of the Press Prize by Reporters Without Borders in recognition of its defence of liberal values in the face of Turkish Government pressure. The year after, the newspaper received the Right Livelihood Award for its ‘commitment to freedom of expression in the face of oppression, censorship, imprisonment and death threats’.

In October 2016, four months after the coup and following a denunciation from members of the current board, Mr Sabuncu, along with other colleagues, was detained and imprisoned without charges. He was then convicted of collusion with terrorists and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Mr Sabuncu and colleagues were released in March this year, pending the result of their appeal to the Turkish Supreme Court.

This is the last interview of Mr Sabuncu as editor-in-chief.

Murat Sabuncu in Cumhuriyet’s headquarters, in front of Atatürk’s portrait. The newspaper defends the secularism and democracy Turkey first president stood for.

Murat Sabuncu in Cumhuriyet’s headquarters, in front of Atatürk’s portrait. The newspaper defends the secularism and democracy Turkey’s first president stood for. Credit: Christopher Shand

Interviewer

As a part of the government’s reaction to the 2016 ’coup d’état’ the media in Turkey have suffered from shut-downs and the arrest of journalists. What exactly are the accusations that the government has made against the media? And what is the nature of the evidence to support those accusations?

Each and every time its democracy was interrupted, Turkish intellectuals have paid the price, with journalists taking first place. This process was at work during past military coups, and it is now taking place under the current AKP government, which has increased its pressure in recent years. Lately, several journalists have been arrested, charged and convicted for being members of a terrorist organization or of helping organizations associated with terror. Evidence varies from case to case, but they all have in common their involvement in the communication of “news stories, articles or social media posts”. As a journalist, I am appalled and saddened that accurate reporting of “news” should be considered as constituting a “crime”.

Furthermore, the charges were shown to be unfounded. As a whole, our newspaper was incriminated for having “supported every terrorist organization in Turkey”. Everything private, our belongings, our houses, our bank accounts (our own but also those of our partners or ex-partners over the previous 30 years) were controlled. Of course, the authorities found nothing that was incriminating.

To give you an example, one of the charges levelled against our columnist Hakan Kara and cartoonist Musa Kart was that of having telephoned the ETS Tour agency to book holidays. It turned out that this company was under investigation for links with the Gülenist organization, former allies of the government and now held responsible for the coup attempt. As a consequence, the telephone call was used to incriminate the two journalists.

Are there any aspects of the process that distinguish the case of Cumhuriyet from that of other press outlets?

When I appeared for the first time in court after nine months of imprisonment, I began my plea as follows: « What an interesting and tragic coincidence it is that today is Press Freedom Day in my country. As the editor-in-chief of a century-old newspaper, I am pained to have to be defending journalism and newscasting on such a day, but not for my personal imprisonment. »

After that plea, I remained imprisoned for another nine months. In April of this year, I was sentenced to 7½ years in prison. If the Supreme Court approves the sentence, I will spend three more years in prison. However, there are many journalists who were tortured, imprisoned or assassinated at different periods in Cumhuriyet’s history.

Perhaps what distinguishes Cumhuriyet from other news outlets in Turkey is our determination to tell only the truth, no matter how difficult the circumstances.  Now we are paying the price for doing that, just as we have in each previous, non-democratic era.

Do the authorities want to make an example of you in order to intimidate any independent investigation media?

Without false modesty, Cumhuriyet is potentially Turkey’s most influential newspaper. Foreign and domestic ambassadors, politicians or journalists regard it as the most neutral and enlightened medium outlet here. They read it to be informed on what is really happening. As it always defends democracy and freedom, it is de facto perceived as an opponent to any party violating these values.

Consequently, it is logical that an anti-democratic and illiberal authority will want to stifle such a journal.  As happened for example with Hürriyet, another newspaper which was financially sanctioned for a while, then bought by a mogul close to the president such that its reporting is now aligned with that of government opinion.

However, there are still many independent media in Turkey. Although less influent, some like Evrensel and Birgun remain important. But with the current economic crisis, Cumhuriyet ends up by being the only one able to cover certain stories, like the 700th gathering of the ‘Saturday mothers’, families of people who forcibly disappeared after the military coup in 1980.

Some would say that Cumhuriyet keeps strong links with political parties, threatening its neutrality?

Ahmet Şık, with whom I shared my prison cell, one of our main investigative journalists, has just joined the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is left-wing and pro-minority. As long as he worked for Cumhuriyet, he did so as a journalist, and exclusively as a journalist. As soon as he announced his decision to engage himself politically, we immediately stopped his collaboration with us just as we had done with another of our correspondents in Ankara right after he joined the CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party.

No doubt they won’t be the only journalists to engage themselves politically in Cumhuriyet’s history, as can happen with any other media organisations. But I refute the accusation of Cumhuriyet as possessing any political affiliation.

Going back to the trials that lasted from July 2017 to April 2018, on what basis have you lodged your appeal?

We describe what news reports we conveyed. We argue the case that journalism should not be considered as a criminal activity. We state that the charges are an attempt to intimidate journalism through us.

Is there any distinction between the basis of your appeal and that of your colleagues?

I have not read the appeals of others. But I have always said the same thing since the first day. We do not want freedom and the delivery of rights just for ourselves. We demand that everyone be judged independently, on a level where the principles are dominant, not the people. There are still journalists, lawyers, deputies, and rights advocates in prisons. We were lucky to be from Cumhuriyet newspaper. But many people, unknown and unmentioned, are still in prison only for their opinions. We want everyone to benefit from our country’s laws.

What elements do you consider might influence the outcome of your appeal(s)?

On September 9th, it is six months since I left prison. Since then, I have been working at the newspaper every day, weekends included. Neither the sentence I was given nor the court’s upcoming decision crosses my mind. I do my job. I do it with love. The appeal is not my problem. It is the problem of my country. I will bow to the will of my readers and of democracy, not to that of a few powerful men. I won’t leave the country out of fear but will remain among my fellow citizens.

Are we to be a country that believes in the rule of law, or are we going to create traitors in each era, to exploit them for political ends? Those who sentenced us know very well that we are only newsmen, people engaged in journalism for 30 to 60 years in this land. In any case, History will make its own judgement.

What do you see as being the key points that describe the current state of your journal/the media in general within Turkey?

Ninety-five per cent of the media in Turkey is under government control. There are 2-3 newspapers, including Cumhuriyet, 4-5 news websites and a few TV channels that continue to resist. The price of resistance is to either lose one’s freedom or go bankrupt because advertisers fear the government. But news is a necessity. True and accurate news is indispensable for any real democracy. So, the media will sooner or later create a model in which it can breathe more easily.

I needed to cross a strong security barrier to enter your building. Is that related?

It is. Defying the authorities can create many enemies. But we especially had to adopt strict security precautions after we published the Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons in 2015.

What are your hopes and fears for the future of the Press within Turkey over the immediate future?

I have no fears, but I do have a great amount of hope, because there is a majority of young people believing in democracy for my country. There can be no room for fear if my country is to see happier days, when no one is alienated and the rule of law is respected. Hope and struggle are needed.

How do you consider that the current economic difficulties in Turkey might influence the situation of the press?

The Turkish press must buy its paper from abroad. Now both paper prices have increased, and the lira has lost value. An already difficult economic sustainability has become even more difficult. The news websites and TV channels lose commercial support if they are not close to the government. The economic crisis will make conditions even more challenging.

Beyond the current economic crisis, Cumhuriyet itself is suffering from an advertisers’ embargo for fear of potential government retaliation. We have almost no advertising revenue right now and our sales have dropped to approximately 40,000 copies/day, although 1.3 million persons still check-out our web pages every day.

Do you consider that the current situation of the Press will change now that the ‘state of emergency’ is being terminated?

Turkey is in a perpetual state of emergency. Nothing has changed in terms of freedom. But this is not limited to my country. The whole world is going through a crisis because of the actions of autocratic leaders such as Trump, Putin, Orban… But are others so innocent? What about the European leaders negotiating over the lot of immigrants, each of whom is a human life? Only the people and those who strive to uphold freedom will change the world for better. Don’t expect this to come through the politicians.

Do you see the current situation as being a systemic illness in the state of Turkey or the result of individual political decisions?

Both are true. Democracy has never functioned fully in Turkey. Every political period and government conducted its own witch-hunt. Now we’re going through such a time. But it is also a fact that the most recent years are among the most oppressive that Turkish democracy has had to withstand.

What factors do you think influenced most the outcome of the recent elections within Turkey, resulting in the confirmation of the current government?

It resulted from several weaknesses within the opposition. Another point was a lack of strategy from the opposition CHP, the social-democratic party’s most brilliant candidate trying unsuccessfully to imitate Erdogan’s style and populism. Why would Turkish people have chosen another party with similar rhetoric and style?

Do you believe that the current government could improve the position of the press within Turkey and even the country as a whole within the current political set-up? 

I have enough experience to know that it is wrong to expect change from the government alone. The public must embrace freedom by engaging in civil society organizations, by entering politics, and expressing more of their democratic demands. The situation of the opposition parties is taking the country to an even more difficult stage. We will see new political entities and leaders in the upcoming period.

What do you consider that the Right Livelihood Award might have/has done to change the situation of yourself and press colleagues in your predicament?

When we found out that we’d received the award, we were still at liberty. We felt so proud. We set up a delegation, which included me, to receive the award. Then we were arrested and unable to travel. Orhan Erinc, the president of the Cumhuriyet foundation, was also under a travel ban and so he couldn’t make it either. While in prison, I read the message he sent through Zeynep Oral in the newspaper. Somewhere he said:

The editorial principles, set out by our founder and first lead author Yunus Nadi in Cumhuriyet’s first issue published on May 7, 1924, are found in the preamble to the Official Deed of the Foundation: “Cumhuriyet is an independent newspaper; it is the defender of nothing but the Republic, of democracy in the scientific and broad sense. It will fight every force that tries to overthrow the Republic and the notion and principles of democracy. It will endeavour for the embracing by society of the principle of secularism along the path of ‘Enlightenment’ ushered in by Ataturk’s revolution and principles. Cumhuriyet, which adopts the “Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” as the universal constitution of democracy, deems by way of basic principle that its goals may only be attained within the independence and integrity of the Republic of Turkey established by Atatürk.” 

We will continue our struggle to keep those principles alive. The award gave us strength to do so.

The post Editorial Changes at Cumhuriyet: the Loss of a Major Independent Voice in Turkey? appeared first on Inter Press Service.