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Midwives Lucie Banionia and Lydie Mawelo help deliver the future at the General Reference Hospital in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the world's fastest-growing countries. Credit: UNFPA/Junior Mayindu

By Maniza Habib
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 28 2023 (IPS)

International family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) are critical to achieving gender equity, but U.S. investment in them is not nearly sufficient to meet the moment.

The Biden-Harris FY2024 budget request proposes to invest $619.43 million for bilateral FP/RH programs plus $57.5 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)– a total of $676.8 million. That’s 11% more than Congress appropriated last year, and it’s one of the only proposed funding increases in the global health sector this year, yet it’s still just a fraction of what’s needed.

The fair-share U.S. contribution, i.e. what it would need to contribute proportionately to ensure the all women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have their modern contraception needs met, is calculated to be $1.736 billion.

Family planning gives people control over their own bodies and futures. At its core, it’s about empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives, including if, when, and how many children to have, and how far apart to space births.

Access to family planning enables women to pursue their education and participate more meaningfully in economic and political life.

These are all necessary components of gender equality. Yet U.S. funding for international FP/RH has stayed flat for a decade while global population, reproductive health needs, and barriers to access have been growing. It is high time for the U.S. to meet its responsibility to help close the gap.

A group of children smile in Ismail Bhand village in Pakistan’s Shaheed Benazirabad district, Sindh province. Credit: UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani

There are 923 million women of reproductive age in LMICs who want to avoid pregnancy. About a quarter of those (218 million) have an unmet need for modern contraception. They want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern method. Reasons for this vary from government restrictions on accessing contraceptives to service providers refusing to distribute them to having to travel daunting distances to the nearest clinic.

These hurdles are compounded by gender-based discrimination. For example, stigma surrounding contraceptives and sex make it particularly difficult for young, single women to access services.

Marginalized groups face discriminatory attitudes in clinics, including in the U.S., where members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and Black, indigenous, and other people of color are often denied services and resources to meet their family planning needs.

The world needs much more robust support from the U.S. to overcome these obstacles and pave the way to achieving global gender equality. Due to the lack of sufficient investment to dismantle barriers to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) worldwide, U.S. support for overarching gender equality goals will inevitably be weakened, a new Population Institute report finds.

Some governments are showing they understand this problem and are changing policies accordingly. For example, President Xiomara Castro of Honduras just lifted a 14-year ban on emergency contraception, which will revolutionize access to FP/RH services. Beginning April 1, the provincial government of British Columbia will provide prescription contraception at no charge.

The U.S. has a responsibility to lead on global SRHR but ceded its leadership in recent years and is getting left behind. U.S. bilateral and multilateral FP/RH programs have been under attack, especially in the wake of Trump-era restrictive policies.

The modest increase in FP/RH funding in the current budget proposal shows the Biden-Harris administration recognizes the importance of global SRHR. But it doesn’t reflect the urgency or level of commitment needed.

At the same time, it undercuts SRHR by including the Helms Amendment, an outdated prohibition on using U.S. foreign assistance funding for abortion as a method of family planning. In practice, implementing the Helms Amendment has meant denying abortions even in instances of rape or incest, or in cases where it would save a woman’s life.

Failure to aim at U.S. fair-share levels of FP/RH funding in the latest budget proposal is a missed opportunity. Let’s not miss any more. Global population recently passed the 8 billion mark, and the need is growing.

We can meet the moment by recognizing the fundamental connections between SRHR, gender equality, and sustainable development, and accepting the obligation of the U.S. to lead on achieving them.

Maniza Habib is Research Associate at the Population Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that supports reproductive health and rights.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Puente Madera community, in the municipality of San Blas Atempa in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, is opposed to the sale of land to an industrial park in that town, one of the 10 projects in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor, as demonstrated at a February 2022 protest. CREDIT: APIIDTT

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 28 2023 (IPS)

In March 2021, the community assembly of the municipality of San Blas Atempa, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, approved the sale of 360 hectares for the creation of an industrial park. But part of the community opposed the initiative due to irregularities, such as the falsification of signatures of supposed attendees, including those of people who had already died.

The facility is one of 10 planned within the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor (CIIT), which in turn is part of the Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus that the Mexican government has been implementing since 2019 with the aim of developing the south and southeast of this country of 1,964,375 square kilometers and almost 130 million inhabitants."It is the replica of the maquiladora model, jobs that exploit workers and cheap labor. There are legitimate concerns, like water, and what kind of industries will be installed. The isthmus is not an industrial zone.”
-- Geocomunes

Mario Quintero, a member of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), said the plan is plagued by “land grabbing, exploitation, dispossession, and displacement of peoples.”

“It is a large-scale geopolitical project in a geostrategic region. The system is corrupt. The way this is being carried out is obscene. The government agrees to the lease, but then says it is going to expropriate,” the activist told IPS from the municipality of Juchitán, in Oaxaca, some 480 kilometers south of Mexico City.

The 200-km wide isthmus is the narrowest area in Mexico between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, in the Gulf of Mexico, which has a large indigenous population and is abundant in biodiversity, hydrocarbons and minerals.

In addition to the 10 industrial sites of 360 hectares each in size, called “Development Poles for Well-being” and focused on exports, the CIIT includes the renovation of the ports of Salina Cruz, on the Pacific Ocean in Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos in the state of Veracruz.

It also includes the reconstruction of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Railroad, which links Chiapas, in the state of the same name, with Dos Bocas, in Tabasco.

In addition, it involves the upgrade of the Salina Cruz and Minatitlán refineries, in the state of Veracruz, the laying of a gas pipeline and the construction of a gas liquefaction plant off the coast of Salina Cruz.

But this industrial model is criticized for the few benefits it brings the host communities and the fact that the largest economic benefits go to exporters, and due to its environmental impacts. For example, the municipality of Coatzacoalcos is one of the most polluted in the country.

The non-governmental organization Geocomunes, dedicated to building maps for the defense of common goods, provided IPS with a list of effects such as the pollution of rivers and aquifers, as well as poor working conditions.

“Except for the promise of jobs, it’s business as usual. It is the replica of the maquiladora model, jobs that exploit workers and cheap labor,” the organization said. “There are legitimate concerns, like water, and what kind of industries will be installed. The isthmus is not an industrial zone, it implies a change in the traditional economy. It’s important to look at what kind of employment it will bring. Construction means precarious employment.”

The organization also anticipates that the industries will not arrive as soon as promised, since industrial production does not only consist of the installation of companies.

 

The Interoceanic Corridor seeks to connect both coasts of Mexico, the Pacific and the Atlantic, through highways and a refurbished railway, to promote industrial development in the south-southeast of the country and foment exports. CREDIT: Fonadin

 

Appetite for exports

Mexico, the second largest economy in Latin America, is home to more than 500 industrial parks on more than 51,000 hectares, which swell the automotive, electronic, food and beverage, metallurgical, medical, textile and aerospace industries.

Altogether, more than 3,700 companies generate some three million jobs in these industrial parks.

The trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – ​​in force between 1994 and 2020, when it was replaced by the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) – fomented the installation of export assembly plants or maquilas.

They mainly set up shop in northern Mexico, the area closest to the United States, drawn by tax benefits, lower wages and more lax environmental regulations than in their nations of origin.

The northern state of Nuevo León and the central states of Mexico and Guanajuato are home to the largest number of maquilas.

But the socioeconomic conditions in these places have not improved, as demonstrated by the available statistics.

Figures from the government’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) indicate that poverty and extreme poverty increased in Nuevo León, home to some 150 industrial poles, between 2018 and 2020.

Overall poverty rose from 1.07 million people to 1.34 million (from 19.24 percent to 24.3 percent of the population) while extreme poverty climbed from 40,000 to 124,000 people (0.7 percent to 2.1 percent).

In Nuevo León, one of the states with the highest levels of income per person and social development in the country, home to 5.78 million people, the unemployment rate stood at 3.57 percent in 2022, and 35.8 of the workforce was in the informal sector of the economy.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to Mexico City and home to 113 industrial facilities, poverty grew from 7.04 million to 8.34 million people (from 41.8 percent to 48.9 percent of the population), while extreme poverty rose from 783,000 to 1.4 million people (from 4.7 percent to 8.2 percent).

The state of Mexico, population 17 million, had 4.46 percent unemployment in 2022 while 56.8 percent of the workforce was in the informal sector.

The results are similar in other states where industrial parks have been built.

In contrast, in the southern state of Oaxaca, poverty and extreme poverty declined, from 2.58 million to 2.75 million people (from 64.3 percent to 61.7 percent) and from 868,000 to 860,000 (from 21.7 percent to 20.6 percent), respectively.

Oaxaca, which so far has only one industrial pole, is home to 4.13 million people, with an unemployment rate of 1.28 percent in 2022 and 81 percent of the labor force in the informal sector.

 

The Interoceanic Corridor is part of the Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus, covers the southern state of Oaxaca and the southeastern state of Veracruz, and has drawn opposition from local communities who consider it an imposition by the government and a threat to their culture and territory. The photo shows a Mar. 21, 2023 protest against the megaprojects, outside the United States Embassy. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

 

More hydrocarbons

The Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus covers 46 municipalities in Oaxaca and 33 in Veracruz, forming an area where 11 of the country’s 69 indigenous peoples live, totaling 17 million native people.

The Corridor revives a set of similar projects that then President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) proposed in 1996 but which never were carried out. Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018, is recycling them.

The CIIT budget, under the Ministry of the Navy, grew from 162 million dollars in the first year, 2020, to 203 million in 2021 and to more than double that, 529 million, in 2022. But in 2023 it has shrunk to 374 million.

The Corridor divides the 10 projected industrial poles equally between Oaxaca and Veracruz. On Mar. 21 López Obrador announced that the tender for four locations in Oaxaca would be held in early April.

The Tehuantepec isthmus is a region already impacted by the presence of other infrastructure, such as 29 wind farms, most of them private. That installed capacity, plus new wind and solar fields, will fuel the new industrial facilities.

The Mexican government also projects the laying of a 270-km gas pipeline with a transport capacity of 500 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), between the towns of Jáltipan and Salina Cruz.

The pipeline will complement the 247-km Jáltipan-Salina Cruz gas pipeline that has been operating since 2014 and transports 90 Mmcf/d.

The new pipeline, at a cost of 434 million dollars, will carry 430 MMcf/d to the planned liquefaction plant near Salina Cruz and between 50 and 70 MMcf/d to the industrial parks.

The Federal Electricity Commission, responsible for the project, calculates that it will supply gas to 470 plants and 30 industrial parks.

The communities are fighting it and will seek to build autonomy through local self-management projects, according to Quintero.

“The project is not going to improve the lives of the communities, just as the railroad in the 20th century or the hydroelectric plants failed to do, or the refinery (in Salina Cruz) or the wind farms, because their promises translate into belts of marginalization,” said the activist. “Development and benefits for whom?”

Geocomunes doubts the promise of development. “The land, the water, basic things that are at risk. Who will bear the costs? What is the government going to demand?”

Related Articles

• Protection for Indigenous Peoples Runs Up Against Hurdles in Mexico
• The Mayan Train and the Fight for Mexico’s Ancient Jungle
• Indigenous Women in Mexico Take United Stance Against Inequality

The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

Yes, lower the retirement ages! That is the key message that workers worldwide are conveying to their governments.

Rather than increasing retirement ages as many governments are now proposing, men and women worldwide want to stop working well before they reach old age, which is approximately 60 years.

After toiling for years in factories, offices, shops, backrooms, vehicles, fields, etc., most workers around the world want to stop working before they reach old age. That desire translates into exiting the labor force and receiving a government pension at approximately age 55 years.

Government officials, economic advisors, business leaders and many others calling for raising retirement ages will no doubt consider lower retirement ages to be preposterous, verging on financial blasphemy and leading to an economy’s doom. Some have argued that lowering retirement ages places an unaffordable and unfair burden on taxpayers.

The number of young women and men available to work is the largest ever. Whereas the proportion of the world’s population between ages 18 to 59 was 52 percent in 1950 and numbered 1.3 billion, that proportion increased to 56 percent in 2022 and numbered 4.5 billion

On the contrary, rather than leading to an economy’s ruination, a retirement age of 55 years may usher in a “retirement renaissance” resulting in untold benefits to societies worldwide.

The renaissance will enhance and extend the quality of life for those in retirement. It is also expected to decrease unemployment rates, lead to increased motivation among younger employees to continue working until retirement, provide businesses with energetic, healthy, well-trained youthful workers as well as foster cross generational interactions, recreation, hobbies and cultural activities.

In addition, the renaissance may contribute to raising low fertility levels by making childcare more readily available. Today two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a country where the fertility rate is below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman.

The retirement renaissance will permit retired men and women with adult children to assist with childcare and related activities. With grandparents available for childcare, young working mothers and fathers can be expected to be more favorably disposed to having additional children.

The protests, demonstrations and objections in Asia, Europe, North America and elsewhere reflect the public’s resistance to working until, as they claim, broken-down and close to near death. Large majorities of workers have clearly conveyed their opposition to their respective government proposals requiring people to work well into old age before they are entitled to receive their promised retirement pensions.

The various projected insolvencies of government pension systems, often cited as justification for raising retirement ages to record breaking high levels, are often dismissed by workers and their supporters as irrelevant. The insolvencies, workers contend, are simply financial excuses concocted by government officials and their wealthy supporters, who object to paying their fair share of taxes, to justify their goal of raising retirement ages and cutting pension benefits.

In addition to higher taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, workers argue that governments have plenty of financial resources at their disposal to permit lowering retirement ages and financing pension programs. Some contend that countries could substantially reduce their defense spending and redirect the substantial savings to retirement pension programs.

Admittedly, it is certainly the case that on average people are living longer than in the recent past and the proportions of elderly are increasing. However, those increases in longevity have not been shared equally across populations.

In general, those with high incomes have experienced longevity gains, while low earners have seen little gain in longevity. Moreover, workers contend that living longer should not translate into working longer and receiving reduced retirement pension benefits.

Both men and women spend decades working at jobs that they don’t particularly enjoy and for bosses they loathe. Many would argue that it only seems fair and reasonable to have several decades available to workers permitting them to do what they desire before they eventually face death. People are largely opposed to working until they are tired, bed ridden and unable to enjoy the remaining years of their life.

It is also the case that women on average live several years longer than men. At age 65, for example, at the global level women live close to three years longer than men. Even larger differences in life expectancy at age 65 between women and men are observed in other countries, such as France and Japan at nearly four and five years, respectively (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Taking into account those well documented sex differences in longevity, the retirement age for women could be several years greater than that for men, perhaps 57 and 54 years, respectively. Such a difference between women and men would help to ensure gender equality in the number of retirement years.

In addition, neither men nor women should be forced to work beyond the recommended lower official retirement ages for men and women. Of course, exceptions should be permitted and lower official retirement ages should not bar individuals from working in old age if they choose to do so.

Some heads of state, elected officials, government bureaucrats, investors, business owners, academics, the wealthy, entertainers as well as many others are choosing for personal reasons it appears to work beyond official retirement ages. Some current heads of state, for example, are well beyond the official retirement ages of their respective countries with few of their constituents objecting (Figure 2).

 

Source: Author’s compilation.

 

With the world population reaching a record-breaking 8,000,000,000 people, the number of young women and men available to work is the largest ever. Whereas the proportion of the world’s population between ages 18 to 59 was 52 percent in 1950 and numbered 1.3 billion, that proportion increased to 56 percent in 2022 and numbered 4.5 billion.

There’s no denying the fact that the world’s population is older than in the past. Over the past 70 years, the proportion of the world’s population aged 60 years and older has nearly doubled, from 8 percent in 1950 to 14 percent in 2022. However, the increase in the proportion elderly is offset by the decrease in proportion of children below age 18 years from 40 percent in 1950 to 30 percent in 2022 (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Also, some believe that rapidly improving technologies, including robots, androids and artificial intelligence, can complement and broaden a country’s labor supply. Those technologies are expected to offset reductions in the size of the labor force as people retire at around 55 years of age.

Many governments have enacted or are seriously considering raising retirement ages. Increases in today’s retirement ages are viewed by workers as nothing more than pension benefits cuts.

Proposals for raising retirement ages are viewed by workers as relying on faulty actuarial analyses of bankruptcy, dire warnings of pension insolvency and catchy phrases such as “Vivre plus longtemps, travailler plus longtemps” (“live longer, work longer”).

Moreover, conservative government officials in general are resistant to raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations. However, many of those officials are favorably disposed to raising retirement ages, which would result in reductions in pension benefits. Also, some government officials have rejected calls to return retirement ages back to 60 years.

In sum, in addition to meeting the wishes of billions of working men and women who want to retire well before reaching old age, lower official retirement ages of approximately 57 years for women and 54 years for men may usher in a “retirement renaissance” that could result in untold benefits to societies worldwide.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

 

Building renewables plants across the Global South is a preferable alternative to generate fewer emissions — but the international community has to date been unwilling to provide the substantial funding needed to construct this type of additional generation capacity at the level developing countries require. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Philippe Benoit
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 28, will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, which, together with its Gulf neighbors, enjoys abundant solar, natural gas and financial resources. At the same time, many poorer countries are struggling to generate the additional affordable electricity they need to power their development — especially as wealthier nations halted their overseas financing for high-emitting coal power plants.

Unfortunately, the UAE and other Gulf states can’t easily export their solar resources to developing countries. However, they can export their natural gas to support affordable low-emissions power production in poorer countries if combined with donor-financed carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS)-equipped gas-fired power plants.

The lead-up to COP 28 provides an opportunity to explore this mechanism to support low-emissions economic growth in poorer countries — a “gas for poverty and climate” power proposal.

The decision to build more coal power plants reflects the difficult dilemma faced by many poorer countries: They are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and yet they do not feel they can afford to forestall investing in affordable power generation and the shorter-term economic benefits it provides, even if this means building high-emitting coal power plants

As I noted in an earlier opinion piece, the decisions by the G-7, China and others to halt overseas financing for coal power plants serve important climate goals but do not eliminate developing countries’ need for more electricity at affordable prices. According to a February Reuters report, the Pakistan government has decided, in the face of high and volatile natural gas prices, to pivot from building gas-fired plants to more affordable coal-fired ones notwithstanding the higher emissions.

This shift is all the more unsettling given the devastation Pakistan suffered last year from massive flooding with an intensity potentially exacerbated by climate change.

The decision to build more coal power plants reflects the difficult dilemma faced by many poorer countries: They are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and yet they do not feel they can afford to forestall investing in affordable power generation and the shorter-term economic benefits it provides, even if this means building high-emitting coal power plants.

The upcoming COP 28 context might provide a way out, one that leverages the hosting of the event in the gas-rich Gulf region, with the stated interest of wealthier countries and multilateral development banks to support poorer countries in the energy transition.

The proposal has two basic elements: an undertaking by a Gulf producer to provide natural gas at a preferential low price to new “low-emitting” gas-fired power plants built with concessional climate finance in partnering developing countries.

The preferential pricing builds off of three interrelated Gulf state dynamics: the abundance in the region of gas resources, Gulf programs to contribute to the economic development of poorer countries and efforts to lower emissions from petroleum, such as the application of carbon capture technologies. The sales price would be fixed at a concessional level — e.g., notionally at (or even potentially below) the cost of production, liquefaction and transport, rather than generating typical market returns.

The subsidy embedded in this structure would be recognized as a financial contribution by the gas-supplying country to both international development and global climate efforts. This structure could potentially also be used by wealthy gas countries from other regions, such as possibly Norway, interested in simultaneously supporting development and tackling climate change.

The second element is the use of this natural gas in gas-fired power plants equipped with “carbon capture, utilization and storage” technologies to produce “low-emissions” electricity.

Many countries have looked to expand the use of gas-fired plants in part because they emit less than half the carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilowatt hour (kWh) of a coal plant. But their emissions are still consequential, potentially in the order of 350 grams of CO2/kWh according to one estimate —  a significant level when considering the “net zero emissions” targets put out by various countries or embedded in the climate modeling of the International Energy Agency.

CCUS is one tool to substantially further reduce these emissions by 90 percent or more. The potential result is CO2 emissions per kWh that are so low they might even be termed “near-zero emissions.”

Although CCUS technologies have been developed and tested for many years on power plants, they have yet to be deployed at a large scale. One reason is that they are expensive per ton of reduced CO2 emissions. Consequently, their cost would undermine a developing country’s electricity affordability objective.

To overcome this hurdle, the CCUS-equipped gas-fired plant would need to be financed in large part through highly concessional climate funding, to be provided notably by the international donor community. There may also be an opportunity to tap into carbon markets to fund both capital and operating expenditures given the lower (i.e., avoided) emissions from the CCUS-equipped plant as compared to the alternative of a new coal-fired power plant or a gas-fired one without CCUS.

There are, of course, additional complexities to explore. For example, the plant would need to be able to access reasonably priced options for CO2 use or storage. In addition, the greenhouse gases (including methane) emitted in producing and delivering the natural gas to the plant would need to be limited to ensure the produced electricity remains “low emissions” when considering the full value chain.

Further analysis would also be needed on the pricing and other terms to make this structure attractive for the natural gas supplier, the donor community funding the CCUS-equipped plant and the developing country’s electricity consumers.

Building renewables plants across the Global South is a preferable alternative to generate fewer emissions — but the international community has to date been unwilling to provide the substantial funding needed to construct this type of additional generation capacity at the level developing countries require. And, as noted earlier, the technologies don’t yet exist for the Gulf states to export their abundant solar power resources, notwithstanding current discussions about green hydrogen.

The hosting of COP 28 in the Gulf provides an opportunity to think creatively about how to mobilize the gas resources of that region (and elsewhere) to better support both the development needs of poorer countries and the global climate effort. This COP 28 “gas for poverty and climate” power proposal might provide some elements.

(First published in The Hill on March 8, 2023)

Philippe Benoit has over 25 years of experience working in international energy and sustainability, including prior management positions at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency.  He is currently adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and  research director at Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050.

The potential for indigenous crops and plant species to address hunger remains largely untapped even as extreme weather changes threaten to cripple food systems. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

Elizabeth Njoroge recounts her poverty-stricken upbringing in Ting’ang’a village in the Central part of Kenya, growing up on a diet heavy on Amaranth and pumpkin.

The 45-year-old speaks about the shame of neighbours finding out the frequency with which her family consumed foods associated with poor and extremely food-insecure households.

“Terere (Amaranth) grew just like weed. We often sneaked into other people’s farms to pick the vegetable because only poor people ate terere and only babies ate pumpkin. Eating pumpkin as a family was considered a sign of poverty,” she tells IPS.

That was then; today, Zachary Aduda, who is an independent researcher in food security, says people’s understanding and appreciation of indigenous foods has grown.

“Native foods that were previously considered only fit for the very poor and vulnerable have been commercialized because of their documented high nutritional value. They include amaranth, which is also a neutralizer for vegetables that are considered bitter such as the black nightshade, locally known as osuga,” he says.

But as Kenya struggles to be free from the grips of the most severe drought in the last 40 years, he says indigenous foods have not been sufficiently utilized to halt the pace and spread of food insecurity and, more so, in the arid and semi-arid parts of the country.

The drought has resulted in the East African nation being considered seriously food insecure, with severe nutrition vulnerabilities leading to high malnutrition levels and poverty.

A UN food security outlook for October 2022 to January 2023 indicated that the number of people in Kenya facing hunger could reach 4.4 million and that 1.2 million people were projected to have entered the emergency phase and are in urgent need of food support.

The potential, Aduda tells IPS, for indigenous crops and plant species to address hunger remains largely untapped. Kenya, alongside a vast majority of the world, relies heavily on three crops – maize, wheat and rice.

Research by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that the three crop species meet an estimated 50 percent of the global requirements for proteins and calories.

Hellen Wanjugu, an agriculturalist based in Nyeri County, one of Kenya’s food baskets, says native crops and plant species are not only heavy in nutrition but can withstand ongoing extreme changes in weather patterns.

Take, for instance, amaranth: “It is easy to grow, matures fast and when cooked, very rich in nutrients such as calcium, manganese, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, folate, iron, zinc and potassium.”

Maize, wheat and rice production is buckling under the pressure from extreme climate change and pest infestation. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the size of farm acreage planted with maize has declined by approximately a quarter in recent years, an alarming development since maize is a staple food crop.

Aduda speaks of inadequate efforts to support resilience interventions around the production of indigenous foods. He says there is too much focus on fertilizers and little to no focus on the difficulties farmers face accessing and multiplying indigenous seeds.

“Every ethnic group in Kenya boasts of its own traditional crops and vegetables in line with the climate of their region. But there is a problem because our smallholder farmers, who are the backbone of our food system, cannot easily access the indigenous seeds they so urgently need,” he says.

Kenya’s smallholder farmers account for at least 70 percent of the country’s production, and their combined output meets an estimated 75 percent of domestic food needs in the country, according to government data.

“But, a vast majority of these farmers rely on informal seeds system. Traditionally, seed saving and sharing among farmers was a very normal and common practice. This way, farmers largely controlled the seeds system, and they were able to grow native species and promote our agricultural biodiversity until a prohibitive law came into place in 2012,” Wanjugu tells IPS.

The Seed and Plant Varieties Act 326 of 2012 was originally established to protect farmers from being duped into buying unregistered or uncertified seeds. Uncertified seeds are often low yielding and easily succumb to changes in weather and pest infestation.

But the 2012 Act also strongly prohibits the sale, exchange and sharing of indigenous seeds in Kenya. A violation of this law could lead to up to two years in jail, a fine of up to $10,000 or both.

A group of farmers are currently in court with a public interest litigation towards the amendment of the seeds law to allow the saving and sharing of indigenous seeds to boost the production of indigenous foods.

As it is now, farmers are required to buy seeds every planting season, which has placed the cost of farm input beyond the reach of many peasant farmers.

Wanjugu says the seeds law has removed the control of seeds from the hands of farmers and into the hands of multinational corporations, who are slowly dictating what farmers can grow because of the high seed prices.

Exotic vegetables such as cabbages and kale now account for about three-quarters of the total vegetables consumed in Kenya, she added.

She says this aligns with UN research that shows while more than 7,000 wild plants have been documented wild worldwide, either grown or collected, less than 150 of these species have been commercialised. Out of these wild plant species, the world’s food needs are met by only 30 plant species.

“Today, food recipes for indigenous species are available from reputable institutions and organizations such as FAO. Native species taste much better than exotic plants and are more nutritious, but farmers lack the capacity to fully lean on indigenous plant species to meet our food needs,” she emphasizes.

Aduda speaks of Kenya’s recent entry into the era of GMOs after the lifting of a 10-year ban, which he says has created debates that are moving the country further and further away from the critical issues facing farmers today.

He stresses that using indigenous knowledge and seeds, supporting farmers to overcome water stresses, deploying sufficient agricultural extension officers as it were many years ago, and improving connectivity between farm and market will produce the silver bullet to build a food-secure nation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The Kenyan capital Nairobi. Credit: UN-Habitat/ /Julius Mwelu

By Gabriel Odima
MINNESOTA, USA, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

The dark road to democracy began with the manner in which the Kenyan Presidential election of August 2022 was handled. Today, the Church in Kenya is calling for dialogue between the ruling regime and the opposition. The issue here is not about dialogue, but the legitimacy of the President William Ruto. The situation in Kenya reminds me of a similar situation in Rwanda in early 90s.

In 1994, the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and Africa Council of Churches sent a combined mission to Rwanda. The mission’s findings reported that ” the churches in Rwanda have been discredited by aligning themselves far too much with the former Hutu dominated regime and its tribal politics”.

According to the report, one member of the mission stated, ” In every conversation we had with the government and the church people alike, the point was brought home to us that the church itself stands tainted not by passive indifference but errors of commission as well”. Unfortunately, the church in Kenya today is aligning themselves with the ruling regime.

The Kenyan Tragedy

Seven months after Presidential election in Kenya, every organization, institution and government which had kept silent as if the Kenyan Presidential election were free and fair began to speak. The current crisis in Kenyan could have been prevented.

The attitude adopted by African Union (AU), the international community, governments, international press and human rights organizations after last year’s presidential election made the current situation in Kenya inevitable. In a democracy, except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his or her rights to assemble freely and associate with other persons or to impart ideas.

The Kenyan regime has to come to terms with this realty.

In the 21st century, the forces against the development and sustenance of democracy and the enjoyment of human rights by the citizens of Africa are strong and powerful. A political map of Africa to show states ruled by the gun and states ruled by the ballot, if made, will show only a handful of the latter. Such map will not. however, show the real human tragedy which the gunmen and their supporters and apologists have wrought the African peoples.

In Africa, oppressive regimes, and most of those regimes are illegitimate like the case of Kenya today, is the driving force of conflict. The use of the gun like the current situation in Kenya today is only a short- term remedy and also creates a chain reaction to the problem.

Promoting democracy in Africa does not only serve moral interests of the United States of America but it helps to prevent war, reduce the influx of refugees. Preventing wars in Africa and creating a peaceful democratic society is cheaper than fighting wars.

When General MacArthur conquered Japan, he wrote a new constitution for the people of Japan. This constitution became the pillar of Japanese democracy. The United States and other nations of Western Europe helped Japan build its economy.

Today, Japan is the leading economic power house in Asia. If this worked for Japan, a nation without natural resources, how about Africa with abundant natural resources? General MacArthur did not do it alone, but it took the commitment on part of the Japanese people to rebuild their nation.

In the case of Kenyan’s current crisis, it is important to address the issue Hon. Raila Odinga has raised about the server to bring transparency in the election process. Kenyan people need to address the issue of accountability, corruption and transparency.

The policy makers in Washington should revive an effective policy that will enforce political reforms and curb electoral malpractices across Africa. Overhaul bilateral relationships with individual countries and attached conditions to U.S. foreign aid.

Such conditions should include human rights violations, political reforms, electoral reforms, accountability, good governance and transparency. Washington should emphasize respect of territorial integrity of each nation. No country in Africa should have the power to invade another country for selfish interests. A civilized nation cannot engage in military coups, rebel activities, political assassinations and massive human rights violations.

The United States has a responsibility to promote democracy and good governance across the continent of Africa. For any democracy to develop and mature there should be accountability, transparency and an effective constitution which reflects the will of the people and allows political freedom such as (a) Freedom of speech and expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media. (b) Freedom to assemble and to demonstrate together with others peacefully and unarmed and to petition. (c) Freedom of association which shall include the freedom to form and join associations or unions, including trade unions and political and other civic organizations.

Rev. Gabriel Odima is President & Director of Political Affairs, Africa Center for Peace & Democracy, White Bear Lake, MN 55110 USA
E-mail: africacenterpd@aol.com

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Eliana and Carla, two Venezuelan sisters who came to Chile without legal documents through the border town of Colchane, complained about the lack of clear procedures to regularize their immigration status. The lack of papers causes problems when it comes to accessing healthcare and social security and to bringing children and siblings to Chile for family reunification. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

The Chilean government tightened controls on the northern border to curtail the influx of migrants, especially Venezuelans, along a 1,030-km stretch of border with Bolivia and Peru.

Some 600 military personnel joined the police force to reinforce control, initially for a period of three months.

Left-wing President Gabriel Boric, in office for a year, visited Colchane, a small town in the Andean highlands, on Mar. 15 to talk with the 1,800 local residents, most of whom are Aymara indigenous people."It was very hard. I wouldn't want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey.” -- Carla

Undocumented migrants coming to this country enter mainly through that town, triggering social tension and growing expressions of xenophobia, although also drawing shows of solidarity and support from society.

“We have decided to take responsibility for the neglect and lack of equipment and have launched a plan to improve infrastructure and living conditions on the northern border,” said the president.

He said the area was receiving “absolutely uncontrolled migration” that brought the total number of immigrants to 1.4 million, equivalent to seven percent of the current population of this long, narrow Andean country.

The military will have adequate accommodation and will be equipped with thermal cameras and satellite communication systems to double the detection capacity and monitor uncontrolled areas.

The aim, said Boric, is “to contain and reduce irregular migration, but in particular to combat criminal organizations that take advantage of these flows and of people’s needs, to commit crimes such as human, drug and arms trafficking.”

Chile’s border with Peru is 169 kilometers, and with Bolivia 861.

Boric said it was important to “not open the door to hate speech,” just days after a 22-year-old Venezuelan who was proven to be drunk was arrested and charged for allegedly running over and killing a police officer, sparking a wave of xenophobia.

The president also announced that in the next six months he would present a “national migration policy in accordance with the new challenges facing the country,” which in recent decades has become a growing destination for migrants from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, and in the last decade for Haitians and especially Venezuelans.

 

Hundreds of Venezuelans gather early every day in front of the Venezuelan consulate in the municipality of Providencia, in Santiago, to apply for the documents that would allow them to move forward in the regularization of their migration status and that of their family, and make it possible for them to to legally bring in relatives. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since 2013 more than 7.13 million people have fled Venezuela, the majority to other Latin American countries, in one of the largest international displacement crises in the world.

Minister of the Interior and Public Security Carolina Tohá confirmed that there was a list of more than 20,000 reportedly undocumented migrants to be deported.

“When President Boric took office, there were already 20,000 people facing pending deportation orders,” she said.

Two draft laws are making their way through the legislature aimed at expediting deportations for immigrants convicted of drug crimes.

The National Migration Service informed IPS that “in 2022, 1,070 people were deported, which represented a 19 percent increase from the 913 deportations carried out in 2021.”

It also stated that “of the almost 500,000 pending applications (for regularization of immigration status), in the entire year of 2022 until January 2023, more than 365,000 have received a favorable response.”

“About 265,000 involved Temporary Residence applications, which will gradually become applications for Permanent Residence,” the National Migration Service added.

 

Erika Vargas and José González are Venezuelan immigrants who came to Chile legally and only have to regularize their children’s citizenship status to complete the process and gain peace of mind. They said they have only suffered sporadic misunderstandings because of the use of different idioms or vocabulary. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Marginal conditions for undocumented migrants

A survey of “campamentos”, the term given to slums in Chile, found 39,567 migrant families living in them, representing 34.7 percent of the total.

The number of migrants coming in through unauthorized border crossings has mushroomed from 2,905 in 2017, to 56,586 in 2021 and to 13,928 in the first quarter alone of 2022 – figures that do not take into account migrants under 18 years of age, according to the Catholic Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM).

Macarena Rodriguez, chair of the SJM board of directors, told IPS that the influx of migrants through unauthorized border crossings “is not synonymous with people fleeing from justice,” but with people escaping poor life opportunities in other countries.

That is the case of two Venezuelan sisters, Eliana, 36, and Carla, 33, who have traumatic memories of their entry through Colchane, on separate trips, coming by land from Venezuela.

“I came with a ‘travel advisor’ (smuggler or coyote). In Bolivia it was complicated because of many groups that operate there. They kidnapped us in a border area. We were locked up for six or seven days waiting for that person to pay to get us released,” said Eliana.

She came to Chile in September 2021 after living in Peru for almost three years.

“We paid that person to take us to Santiago on a trip without complications. The normal journey is three to four days from Peru, but it took me 15,” she told IPS.

Carla traveled with her eight-year-old son Eduardo and arrived in Chile 15 months ago.

“It was very hard. I wouldn’t want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey,” she said.

 

Immigrants of various nationalities go daily to the offices of the National Migration Service, on San Antonio street in Santiago, where they are attended if they have made an online appointment. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

The sisters both work in Santiago and live in a small rented room in the municipality of Quinta Normal, on the west side of the Chilean capital, for which they pay 312 dollars a month.

“It was difficult to find a school. I thought it was like in Venezuela where you just register your child with his birth certificate. But here they ask for an identity document and educational records,” said Carla, who, like her sister, only wanted to be identified by her first name.

They have both adapted, but they complain about the lack of a protocol to regularize their situation.

“I would like to stay. I am in the process of bringing my daughter, who stayed in Venezuela, but it has become very difficult because I don’t have papers,” Carla said.

“I miss my family and the beaches. I am from the East, where it’s all coastline. There are beaches and islands there, it’s spectacular,” she added.

Eliana said “Chile is a country that opens its doors. There is a lot of work. We have never experienced hunger here, or gone without a place to sleep.”

She wants to bring another sister and her three children to Chile.

“I would like to make a life here, but it is difficult without papers,” she said. “With papers it would be easier to get health coverage, for example. I tried to legalize my status, but there are many hurdles. There is no set procedure with clear steps to follow.”

Another Venezuelan Erika Vargas, 42, originally from the western Andean state of Táchira in that country, lives with her husband and four children in Rancagua, 90 kilometers south of Santiago. She came to Chile five years ago.

“My husband came a year earlier and sent me a permit to travel with the children,” she told IPS.

“We’re doing fine…the children have documents and now we are in the process of getting permanent residency,” she explained while lining up at the Venezuelan consulate in the capital.

Her husband José González, 40, came from the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui thanks to a “democracy visa” created by former President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022).

“I’m a civil engineer and I have a degree in public accounting, and I work in logistics in a mining company,” he said. “My wife came a year ago, she works in education. We all came legally.”

González lamented that he could not practice his profession because “to get my degrees recognized I would have to pay about six million pesos (7,500 dollars).”

What the experts say

The SJM’s Macarena Rodríguez said the presence of the military in the north “is aimed at preventing or reducing the influx of people with criminal records and the entry of weapons.”

“It’s a temporary measure that will be in place as long as the military is there, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is providing care for these people,” she told IPS.

According to Rodríguez, the movement of troops is designed to attack the security crisis rather than forming part of a public policy regarding mobility.

“If you came in by means of an unauthorized crossing, which is the case with the majority, you have no way to regularize your situation… it doesn’t matter if you have a work contract or ties to Chile,” she said.

 

Located in front of the Venezuelan consulate, in the Santiago municipality of Providencia, Rincón Venezolano offers a popular menu of typical products from that country. Venezuelan food businesses and restaurants are making their way into the landscape of the capital and other Chilean cities. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Germán Campos-Herrera, an academic at the Diego Portales University, said the deployment of military troops forms part of “an institutional framework that guarantees that the use of firearms is restricted to cases where people’s lives are endangered.”
.
He believes, however, that elements such as “a much stricter control of those who enter and leave and knowing who are the migrants who commit crimes and are in an irregular situation” are missing.

Rodríguez said “We had not experienced these levels of exodus in the region. None of the countries of the Southern Cone (of South America) have experienced this before.”

That is why Boric wants to talk with Bolivia and Venezuela and raised the issue at the 28th Ibero-American Summit, held in Santo Domingo on Mar. 24.

“There have been positive signals, from both Bolivian and Venezuelan authorities. They are willing to talk and it is an opportunity that we have to take advantage of,” said Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren.

“It was not a central theme of the Summit, but it was an opportunity to have contact with the authorities of both countries, express concern and make progress in a forum, towards contact and dialogue,” he added.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants await a solution to their lack of papers, and they praise positive examples, such as the Temporary Work Residence granted by Colombia.

“We could regularize ours status and contribute to the State,” commented Eliana, one of the Venezuelan sisters.

The National Migration Service told IPS that it is developing a project to connect visa applications with the National Employment Service.

“Every year there are unfilled vacancies available in agriculture, transportation or construction. With this project we not only seek to make the flow of migration more orderly but to regulate it and make our migration policy more economically rational,” the National Migration Service said.

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The life of women has become extremely restricted in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in August 2021. 

By Anonymous
Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

Afghan girls have been denied the right to attend school and university since the Taliban took power in August 2021. But as if this was not tragic enough, many girls have also been forced to marry too early in life.

A combination of poverty and the fear of girls being forced to marry the islamist fighters of the Taliban movement are the main reasons behind the increasing rate of teenage marriages in the country.

In order to save them from the Taliban, a group that violates their basic human rights, parents would rather marry off their underage daughters elsewhere.

Forced marriage of underage girls has been practiced in Afghanistan before but it has increased significantly since the return of the Taliban to power in 2021, twenty years after they were ousted by the U.S troops.

The Taliban have forcefully married dozens of girls, often using intimidation, coercion, and death threats. Also, the covid pandemic, closing of schools, the disappearance of employment opportunities for women and the harsh economic situation has forced families to marry off their teenage daughters in order to cope. The dowry received from the marriage helps to feed the rest of the family for some time.

According to the UN Childrens’ Fund UNICEF, girls are sold into marriage even as babies. UNICEF estimates that 28 per cent of girls are forced into marriage before they turn 18.

“I have even seen girls married off at the age of 14 in one of the northern provinces”, says Zainab (name changed), a woman activist. She is deeply concerned about girls marrying under-age, saying it is violence against teenage girls.

The Taliban have resorted to kidnapping girls and threatening them with forced marriage. Besides, the Taliban gather information on the number of unmarried girls in a family and if there are any, they want them for marriage.

They send forms to be filled out in the mosques, particularly requesting for information on girls aged between 13 and 18, according to Zainab. Families would therefore give up their daughters to relatives for marriage rather than let them fall into the hands of strangers.

In Kabul and in other provinces, members of Taliban have even threatened to kill family members of under-age girls who refuse to give their daughters up for marriage and have forced teenage girls to marry men with two or three wives. Young and educated girls have had haunting experience from such cases.

“My friend is 15 years”, narrates Maria (name changed), “a Taliban commander of over 50 years, and already married to two wives came and proposed to her. She turned him down. The girl’s family had to flee in the night to a hiding place without even taking their belongings”.

In another case, Marwa (name changed) in Kabul said a member of the Taliban had sent her first wife to her family to propose to a 10th grade girl, threatening to kill their son if they refuse to give up their daughter for marriage. The teenage girl’s father had no option but to hand her over. She was 30 years younger than the man.

This story was produced by Learning Together, a voluntary network of Finnish female journalists. The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.

 

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.

It's a struggle for artisanal miners working in South Africa to be legalised due to onerous requirements. Credit: NAAM

By Fawzia Moodley
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

Greed, poverty, irresponsible legal mining giants which exploited and then abandoned South Africa’s mines, together with the government’s failure to enforce regulations on the mining giants to rehabilitate mines before closing them, have created fertile ground for a thriving illegal artisanal mining sector called Zama Zama, many of them run by criminal syndicates.

South Africa’s economy has largely been mining based, and under apartheid, white-owned mining companies exploiting lucrative gold, diamond, coal, and chrome grew rich, using cheap local and migrant labour from neighbouring countries.

Post-apartheid, the ANC government has tried to bring black ownership and small-scale miners into the mining sector and, more recently, attempted to decriminalise artisanal miners who use rudimentary tools and are largely involved in surface mining.

According to submissions made by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), the Benchmarks Foundation, and the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG), policy weaknesses, lack of enforcement, bureaucratic bungling, and red tape have ensured that the status quo from apartheid remains largely intact.

The LRC contends that retrenchments due to mechanisation or closure of unprofitable mines have increased illegal mining. The lack of enforcement of laws relating to the rehabilitation of closed mines has created space for criminal Zama Zama and artisanal miners who are perforce illegal to operate in disused or abandoned mines.

Artisanal miners in the North West province of South Africa at work. Credit: NAAM

With the publishing of the Policy on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in March 2022, artisanal miners all over the country are forming cooperatives in a bid to be legalised. But it is an uphill battle to get permits.

The LRC also warns of further conflict and xenophobia because the law precludes foreign Zama Zama from getting permits. However, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe says: “It must be clear that once an individual illegally enters our country and engages in illegal economic activity, such an individual cannot be sanitised through being issued with a small-scale mining license.”

Robert Krause, an environmental researcher, says that the roots of the problem lie in “the mining houses shirking their environmental rehabilitation responsibilities as well as failure to invest in a post-mining economy for workers and the surrounding community.”

There are nearly 6000 ownerless and derelict mines, many of them “abandoned by mining capital before the present regulatory dispensation under the National Environmental Management Act and the Financial Provisioning regulations.”

Krause says there is “a persisting pattern of large mining houses selling off their mines towards closure to companies they know full well will not be in a position to carry out their rehabilitation duties.”

Legal loopholes and lax regulation by the regulator enable this.

“The companies that end up with liabilities frequently go insolvent, and the financial provision for closure is often treated as just another claim.”

He says, “Mine abandonment fuels illegal or artisanal operations, as low-grade ore is left behind, convenient entrances remain open, and people in need of work are thrown out of the economy.”

When the profitable reserves are depleted, there’s an employment crisis. Then, the option for survival, mainly where closure is not done properly, is to become a Zama Zama.

Krause says the artisanal miners need material support and capacitation from mining companies and the state, “instead they are still often treated like criminals while violent criminal syndicates flourish.”

According to an Oxpeckers environment journalism probe a few years ago, “a fortune has been set aside for mine rehabilitation in South Africa. But large mines are not being properly closed, and the money cannot be touched.”

Oxpeckers say that although the money cannot be used for rehabilitation while a mine is still operational, the DMRE can use it if it is abandoned.

“The department is yet to provide an instance in which this money has been used, however. Instead, most mines are not deemed legally closed, and the money cannot be touched.”

But Mantashe says: “It is estimated that it would cost over R49 billion to rehabilitate these mines. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) receives R140 million per annum for the rehabilitation of mines. With this allocation, we can only rehabilitate at least three mines and seal off 40 shafts per year.”

The minister revealed in September 2022 that 135 shafts in the Eastern, Central, and Western Basins in Gauteng (province) were sealed over three years. The DMRE intended to seal off another 20 in the current financial year, prioritising the Krugersdorp area where Zama Zama gang raped a film crew in July last year.

Mantashe says that the rehabilitation of mines is a long terms project: “We must appreciate that it would take a long time to completely rehabilitate all these mines at this rate due to budget constraints and security threats to officials executing this programme.”

Advocates for the legalisation of artisanal miners say the government needs to provide resources to fund environmental assessments and facilitate a local buyers’ market via a national buying entity to sell their mined products.

“People in South Africa need to finally see the benefits of the mineral resources of South Africa, as in the past colonial and Apartheid practices coupled with large-scale mining have deprived the majority of this benefit,” the LRC group says.

Clearly, this is a pipe dream, as the struggle by artisanal miners to get permits to become legal has underlined.

The irony is that their legalisation will not only allow them to earn a living but also pay taxes and end their constant harassment by criminal elements and the police alike.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Iraqi university students protesting against the government, 2020. Credit: Mohsin/Shutterstock

By Shivan Fazil and Alaa Tartir
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

Over the past two decades Iraq has been affected by several waves of intense conflict and violence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the United States and United Kingdom toppled the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

It also ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army.

A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.

Today Iraq is enjoying its most stable period since 2003. Armed violence persists in different forms, but it is sporadic, fragmented and localized. However, the country remains fragile and divided, and its people face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to address. This Topical Backgrounder aims to provide a snapshot of the situation in Iraq 20 years since the invasion.

A fragile, oil-dependent economy

Crude oil exports accounted for an estimated 95 per cent of federal revenues in 2020. Successive governments have done little to wean Iraq off this heavy dependency on oil rents and diversify the economy. This has led to a bloated public sector characterized by patronage and to a shortage of jobs for new graduates—especially those without the necessary connections and networks.

The dependency on oil rents also exposes the Iraqi economy to fluctuations in global oil prices. Not only does this make long-term development planning difficult, but in 2020, when global oil prices plunged, the government was left unable to fund basic services or even pay public-sector salaries and pensions.

Public debt reached 84 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), and GDP itself fell 16 per cent, inflaming anger at the government. Although oil prices quickly recovered, two years of government paralysis and political turmoil have made it difficult for Iraq to take advantage and invest the increased revenues.

Despite having large natural gas reserves, Iraq currently relies on gas imports from Iran. The US and Iraq’s European partners are keen to end this dependency and to help Iraq become energy-independent.

However, the political and economic turmoil of the past few years in Iraq have stalled investment in capacity to separate and process gas from Iraqi oil fields, and instead vast quantities of gas associated with oil extraction are flared off.

This leaves Iraq still dependent on Iranian gas and electricity imports, greatly increases its climate footprint and creates acute air pollution in parts of the country. The situation is a prime illustration of the complexity of Iraq’s security challenges and governance failures, which interact in complex ways with its oil-dependent economy, tumultuous regional dynamics and environmental issues.

The changing face of armed violence

Today, Islamic State is thought to be unable to recruit more members in Iraq and only an estimated 500 fighters are still active in the country. Major military operations against Islamic State have thus ended.

In 2020, the US began reducing its military footprint in Iraq—which had risen sharply in response to the rise of Islamic State—and only around 2500 US military personnel remain in the country, at Iraq’s invitation, in an advisory role.

A key task as the threat from Islamic State dissipates is to deal with the Popular Mobilization Forces (an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization comprising a number of predominantly Shia militias, some supported by Iran) as well as smaller militia groups linked to ethno-religious minorities in the country’s north that were formed in the name of community self-defence.

One of the goals of successive Iraqi governments has been integrating these forces into the Iraqi security forces, but progress has been slow. Most of the militias are nominally under the Ministry of Defence.

However, many seem to act independently of government and outside institutional jurisdiction. Some have been accused of human rights violations and abuses against civilians, particularly during the mass anti-government protests in 2019.

Another task, being urged by the US and the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to improve how the Peshmerga—the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI)—and the Iraqi Armed Forces interact.

A lack of coordination and intelligence-sharing has undermined the efficiency of security operations, particularly in the disputed territories of Iraq. Prior to the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government in Baghdad were jointly administering security in these territories.

Iraq has also suffered from the spillover of civil conflicts and counterinsurgency in neighbouring countries, especially in some of its more remote regions. Iran and Türkiye have both launched missile strikes or armed incursions against opposition forces on Iraqi territory in recent years.

Identity politics and worsening state-society relations

The United States and other members of the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and supported its transition to post-Ba’athist democracy lacked a long-term vision. They often failed to anticipate the consequences of major decisions, such as the disbanding of the Iraqi Army in 2003 or several initiatives put forward by the transitional authorities.

One of the most consequential of these initiatives was the establishment of Muhasasa Ta’ifia, a form of consociationalist elite bargain that was adopted after 2005. Under Muhasasa Ta’ifia, government posts, sinecures and departments are shared out among the Kurdish, Shia and Sunni political elites after an election—often after a lot of fraught inter-factional horse-trading.

Voters are offered a choice of parties within a given ethnosectarian bloc, but no choice of policy platforms. There is no parliamentary opposition to hold the government accountable.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia was conceived as a way to stop Iraq fracturing and divisions along the major ethnosectarian faultlines, to encourage the groups to collaborate and to avoid one group becoming too dominant. While it has arguably succeeded to an extent in those aims, it has also given rise to ineffective governments, lack of accountability, and a public sector rife with corruption and patronage.

As a result, a major new faultline has emerged, with ordinary citizens united across ethnosectarian lines by grievances against the governing class. Along with corruption, citizens complain of economic mismanagement, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, weak public services and more. Largely youth-led anti-government protests in 2019 expressed their feelings of alienation from the political elite with the slogan ‘We want a homeland’.

Mass protest has been growing since 2015. The October Protest or Tishreen Movement that began in 2019 was large enough to topple the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in early 2020 and was violently suppressed by state forces and militias.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia caused another political crisis in 2021–22 when elites were unable to agree on a new government for over a year after a general election in October 2021. Voter turnout in that election fell to a record low of 44 per cent, illustrating the growing popular disillusionment and frustration with the political system.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia seems unlikely to change in the near term, but there are some signs that it is slowly breaking down, and perhaps even starting to make way for a more issue-based politics. For example, political factions have recently been forming alliances beyond their ethno-sectarian blocs.

Following the 2021 election, Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shia Sadrist movement, proposed forming a majority government with a sizeable parliamentary opposition—although this was rejected by other factions.

More positively, the Tishreen Movement spawned its own political candidates, some of whom won seats. Their potential to influence federal politics is negligible, but they may be able to push forward change in subnational politics.

The Kurdistan Region in federal Iraq

The Kurdistan Regional Government has a peaceful, if occasionally fraught, relationship with the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG enjoys a high level of autonomy, which includes maintaining its own military forces, the Peshmerga.

Early on in the transition process after 2003, Kurdistan was recognized as Iraq’s most stable region, and its leaders as having valuable experience of government that the other transitional authorities lacked. This was also partly due to the no-fly zone and other measures to protect the Iraqi Kurds from Iraqi government attacks implemented by the United States and European partners after the first Gulf War in 1991.

The Kurds in Iraq have largely distanced themselves from the Kurdish independence movements in neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey, to the extent that Peshmerga forces have even clashed with Turkey’s Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) forces operating on Iraqi soil.

Relations between the KRG and the federal government are complicated by long-standing disagreements over oil revenue sharing and control of the disputed territories, which include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The KRG brought these territories under its control after Iraqi security forces withdrew in the face of Islamic State advances in 2014. Resolving the status of the disputed territories should have taken place a decade earlier, according to the 2005 constitution.

When the major military operations to defeat Islamic State came to an end in 2017, tensions between the federal government and the KRG were intensified by the KRG’s push for greater autonomy. The KRG organized a referendum for independence that also included the disputed territories that were then under its control (including Kirkuk).

The federal government rejected the referendum and retook the disputed territories with military force, supported by the Popular Mobilization Forces, and implemented other punitive measures against the KRG.

The KRG and state-society relations in the KRI have similar problems to those found at the federal level. The KRG budget relies heavily on independent oil exports and on budget transfers from Baghdad, removing the incentive to diversify the economy. And the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have been in a power-sharing agreement since the unification of two Iraqi Kurdish enclaves in 2006.

This agreement sees government and administrative posts shared between the two parties—an arrangement not dissimilar to Iraq’s Muhasasa Ta’ifia. As in the rest of Iraq, residents of the KRI complain of corruption, patronage and mismanagement by the Kurdish authorities. Many have left Iraq to seek asylum in Europe and elsewhere.

Relations with Iran and the US

In the field of diplomacy, Iraq’s strongest relationships and ties are with Iran and the US. Nevertheless, Iraq has sought to diversify its diplomatic and economic relations in recent years, including with Arab Gulf states as well as Egypt and Jordan.

Iran is Iraq’s largest trading partner, although Iraq’s imports from Iran—worth around $9 billion in 2018—vastly outweigh trade in the other direction. Iraq and Iran have also cooperated extensively in the fight against Islamic State.

Iran’s influence in Iraq, much of it exercised through Shia political factions, has been a source of anger among protesters, especially as Iranian-backed militia groups have been involved in violence against anti-government protests.

In addition to having guided the post-invasion political transition, the USA remains Iraq’s main source of security support and of military and development aid. The USA has recently increased pressure on Iraq for tighter control of dollar sales in order to stamp out potential money laundering that benefits Iran and Syria.

Steps taken to do this contributed to a significant drop in the dollar value of the Iraqi dinar, leading to soaring inflation in early 2023 and the replacement of the central bank governor.

Iraq has been caught in the middle of regional tensions, particularly due to its diplomatic and geographic closeness to Iran. In recent years Iraq has tried to take an active role in resolving these tensions. For example, with French support Iraq has organized two regional summits—one in Baghdad the other in Amman, Jordan—aimed at de-escalating regional tensions. In 2021 Iraq hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a prelude to the China-brokered détente announced in March 2023.

The situation for Iraq’s minorities

State failure to protect Iraq’s many ethno-religious minorities is a long-standing problem. Since 2003, many minorities have been displaced due to insecurity, often migrating to the KRI—which was seen as calmer, safer and more tolerant—and in many cases out of Iraq altogether.

The Islamic State group targeted minorities, particularly those of non-Abrahamic faiths. The worst of this was in Nineveh Province, known for its mosaic of ethnic and religious diversity. The Islamic State attacks on the Yezidi group in Sinjar district were so devastating that they have been recognized as a genocide.

Many of the minorities who were displaced during the Islamic State occupation have not returned—partly down to the presence of the many militias still active in their areas of origin and a general sense of insecurity, but also because they feel they can make a better life in their new homes.

A UN-brokered agreement between the KRG and the federal government in 2021 that was aimed at normalizing the security situation in Sinjar has had little effect on the ground that would encourage the internally displaced Yezidis to return.

Although minority citizens in Iraq are experiencing lower levels of armed violence based on their identity, discrimination against them seems to have worsened in the wake of the Islamic State occupation. SIPRI has been working in the Nineveh Plains region on ways to improve intercommunal relations and help minorities to re-establish their cultural practices and social relations.

Multiple civil society and grassroots groups are pushing for a reimagining of Iraq, where ethnicity and sect play a much smaller role. However, Iraq’s powerful political blocs are keen to maintain the current power-sharing arrangement, even though it does not seem likely to bring prosperity or lasting peace.

The legacy of the invasion still runs through many of the challenges that Iraq faces, but no longer defines them. Gradually, Iraq is shaping its own destiny—hopefully to the benefit of all its citizens.

Read more about SIPRI’s package of interviews, opinion pieces and reference materials to mark the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Shivan Fazil is a Researcher with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Dr Alaa Tartir is a Senior Researcher and Director of SIPRI’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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On Mar. 22, 2023, dozens of people watched a live broadcast from San José, Costa Rica, on a large screen at the University of El Salvador, in San Salvador, of the open hearing of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, listening to the testimony of witnesses in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case. The screenshot shows Beatriz's mother giving her testimony. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.

That will happen if the Inter-American Court rules that El Salvador violated the right to health of Beatriz, as the plaintiff is known. In 2013 she sought to have her pregnancy terminated because it was high risk and her life was in danger."I hope that in the end my daughter's name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman.” -- Beatriz´s mother

But she was not given an abortion, only a tardy cesarean section, which affected her already deteriorated health and, according to the plaintiffs, eventually led to her death in October 2017.

The hearing on the emblematic case was held Mar. 22-23 at the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica. Beatriz’s case builds on similar ones: the cases of Amelia, also from El Salvador, Esperanza from the Dominican Republic, and Amelia from Nicaragua.

The seven judges heard the arguments of the plaintiffs, the representatives of the Salvadoran State and the witnesses on both sides.

After the hearing, the parties have 30 days to deliver their written arguments and the magistrates will then take several months to debate and reach a resolution.

 

The open hearing held by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is the first time that the complete ban on abortion has been tried, and the verdict will have implications for Latin America, a region that is especially restrictive in terms of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. CREDIT: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

 

A historic case

“I hope that in the end my daughter’s name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman,” Beatriz’s mother said when testifying on the stand. Her name was not revealed in court.

The hearing has drawn international attention because it is considered historic for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in a region that is especially restrictive with regard to the practice of abortion.

“This will be the first case where the Court will rule on the absolute prohibition of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, particularly regarding the risk to health and when the fetus is nonviable,” Julissa Mantilla Falcón, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), told the Inter-American Court.

Beatriz turned to the IACHR when the Constitutional Court of El Salvador denied, on Apr. 11, 2013, her request for an abortion.

On Apr. 19, the IACHR issued a precautionary measure in favor of Beatriz, and on May 27, 2013, it asked the Inter-American Court to adopt provisional measures which would be binding on the State.

In its November 2020 Merits Report, the IACHR established that the Salvadoran State was responsible for the disproportionate impact on various rights of Beatriz, by failing to provide her with timely medical treatment due to the laws that criminalize abortion.

The IACHR identified the disproportionate impact of this legislation on Salvadoran women and girls, especially the poor.

The Commission stated that it did not expect full compliance by the State with the recommendations of the report, and therefore referred the case to the Inter-American Court, which now, ten years later, is a few months away from handing down a resolution.

 

Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case, hopes that the Inter-American Court sentence will set a legal precedent and pave the way for the modification of the 1998 law criminalizing abortion under any circumstances in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

For her part, Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the case, told IPS that she hopes that the Inter-American Court ruling will set a new precedent.

She said her hope is that the court will rule that laws in El Salvador and the region banning abortion under all circumstances must be modified.

In addition to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are the countries in the region where abortion is completely prohibited in their penal codes. It is only legal in five countries in Latin America, while it is allowed only in strict circumstances in the rest.

“Or at least it should be allowed for specific reasons or exceptions, such as safeguarding health and life, or the incompatibility of the fetus’s life outside the womb,” Recinos said.

Twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay.

The IACHR and the Court make up the inter-American human rights system. They are independent bodies and in the case of the Court the sentences are final and binding, although they are not always enforced.

Recinos spoke to IPS at the University of El Salvador, in the country’s capital, where dozens of people gathered to watch the hearing, broadcast live from San José, on a large screen.

The activist added that it is likely that the Court will rule against the Salvadoran State, backing the IACHR’s conclusions.

The Court is made up of judges Ricardo Pérez Manrique (Uruguay), Humberto Sierra Porto (Colombia), Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor (Mexico), Rodrigo Mudrovitsch (Brazil), Nancy Hernández López (Colombia) and Verónica Gómez (Argentina).

In March 2003, Beatriz requested an abortion during her second pregnancy, because she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy organs, and preeclampsia, a dangerous increase in blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as other health problems.

In other words, her life was at risk. In addition, the fetus had malformations and would not live long at birth.

However, the medical personnel, although they were aware that an abortion was indicated to save Beatriz’s life, did not carry it out due to the fear of prosecution.

Beatriz was forced to continue with a pregnancy that continued to harm her health as the days went by.

But after the Inter-American Court granted provisional measures, Beatriz underwent a cesarean section on Jun. 3, 2013, almost three months after requesting an abortion.

The child, who was born with anencephaly, missing parts of the brain and skull, died just five hours later.

 

Activists for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in El Salvador demonstrate on Mar. 22 outside the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, during the hearing for the emblematic case of Beatriz v. El Salvador. Many carried green balloons, whose color is a symbol of the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America. CREDIT: Collaborating Organizations

 

Misogyny on the part of the State

Since 1998 El Salvador, this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, has been the most drastic in the region in the persecution of abortion, punishing women who terminate their pregnancies with sentences of up to 30 years, in all cases, even when the life and health of the pregnant woman is at risk or in cases of rape.

The legislation mainly affects poor women in rural areas. According to data from women’s rights organizations, 181 such cases have been prosecuted since 2019.

Guillermo Ortiz, a gynecologist and obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, testified before the Inter-American Court: “Yes, I saw many women die because they did not have access to a safe abortion, despite my having requested it.”

In her testimony, Beatriz’s mother said that the many doctors who treated her daughter had recommended that the pregnancy be terminated, but did not dare to perform an abortion or c-section to remove the fetus, for fear of going to prison.

“They told my daughter that they couldn’t, because in El Salvador it’s a crime, and if they did, they could go to jail,” said the mother.

“The State failed Beatriz twice,” said the mother, before breaking down in tears.

She was referring to the failure to carry out an abortion promptly, despite her daughter’s serious health conditions. She also was talking about a motorcycle accident that the 22-year-old suffered later.

“She had an accident that shouldn’t have been fatal, she was in stable condition” when she was admitted to the hospital in Jiquilisco, a municipality in the eastern department of Usulután.

But a storm caused a flood in some parts of the hospital, so they transferred her to the hospital in Usulután, the capital of the department.

“The doctor who treated her there didn’t even know what lupus was,” she said. In the hospital, Beatriz caught pneumonia.

The mother’s testimony and that of the other witnesses at the hearing has been closely followed in El Salvador and other nations by feminist and human rights organizations that have been monitoring and criticizing the country’s strict anti-abortion law.

Pinar Selek, a Turkish writer, is the victim of one of the most Kafkaesque trials in Turkey's history. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
BIARRITZ, France, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

The woman we’re meeting in a house on the outskirts of Biarritz -800 kilometres southwest of Paris- is a university professor, the author of several books and hundreds of articles, and a well-known human rights activist.

Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek's case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club - a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world

According to Turkish courts, she also planted a bomb that killed seven people and injured more than 120 in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar 25 years ago.

“Up to four scientific reports, including the one from the Turkish police themselves, pointed to a gas explosion, but later they said that it had been a bomb, and that I had planted it,” Pinar Selek tells IPS. This 51-year-old Turkish woman is embroiled in one of the strangest trials in the history of the Turkish judiciary.

“It’s Kafkaesque,” she blurts. “The case is based on the testimony of a Kurdish man who said that we had planted the bomb together. Later, he claimed to have confessed under torture, and that he didn’t even know me. He is free in Turkey, and I am in exile.”

On June 21, 2022, the Turkish public news agency Anadolu announced the annulment by the Supreme Court of Turkey of Pinar Selek’s fourth acquittal. Previously, she had been found innocent in three criminal proceedings.

But the sentence to life imprisonment is already firm and unappealable. On January 6, 2023, the Istanbul Court of First Instance issued an international arrest warrant for her.

Martin Pradel, Selek’s lawyer, talks about a “purely political case”.

“I have never heard of any other case that has gone on for 25 years without legal evidence of any kind. And this is without mentioning that Pinar has been acquitted up to four times,” Pradel told IPS over the phone from Paris.

The lawyer urged the French state to give Selek protection as a French citizen. If not, he added, the next step would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

 

Several French town halls such as the one in Marseille have also turned to her case. On March 29 she will receive the Medaille de la Ville de Paris, a recognition awarded by France´s capital city (Courtesy Pinar Selek)

 

“Where are they?”

Born into an Istanbul family of left militants, Pinar Selek has devoted her life to making visible those “invisible” in her country of origin: women and Kurds, prostitutes, Roma, homosexuals, Armenians…

“Where are they?” has always been her question as a researcher, and also as an activist. It was this vital commitment that brought her to prison in 1998, after refusing to hand the police a list of Kurdish contacts for one of her sociological studies.

“When they started building new prisons, we resisted being transferred. More than 300 died under attacks in which prisons were even bombed,” remembers Selek.

She was released after more than two years of captivity, torture, and a hunger strike in which, she says, dozens died. Back on the street, she was one of the founders of Amargi, a groundbreaking feminist organization in Turkey, and also the first feminist bookstore in the history of her country.

She has added a set of tales and a few books of her own to its shelves, but she has not been back in a long time. She had to leave the country in 2009 and, after getting her French citizenship in 2017, she settled down in Nice, where she teaches at the University Côte d’Azur, a public institution.

Ilya Topper, a Spanish journalist and analyst based in Istanbul for more than ten years, sees the trial opened against Selek in 1998 as “part of that brutal campaign against everything that seemed to treat Kurdish demands as a topic that could be discussed.“

“Until around 2005, anyone within a hundred meters of a protest which held a banner with a slogan that had any remote resemblance to a phrase once said by someone from the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) would be put in jail for many years,” the expert told IPS over the phone from Istanbul.

Until just over a decade ago, he adds, mayors were still sentenced for saying something in Kurdish on charges of “speaking a non-existent language.” He illustrates it with a concrete case:

“In 2011, a Kurdish mayor was sentenced to half a year in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros for naming a public park after Ehmedi Xani, an 18th-century Kurdish poet. The controversial issue was not the writer, but the initial letter of his last name: it is written with X, which exists in Kurdish, but not in Turkish.”

The trial against Selek, underlines the analyst, “highlights the deterioration of the Turkish Judiciary in a country where you can go to prison for any reason.”

 

Pinar Selek fears that her international arrest warrant will affect her family in Turkey and restrict her movement even within France. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS

 

Solidarity

Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek’s case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club – a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world.

In a telephone conversation with IPS, its president, Burhan Sönmez, mentioned other notorious cases in Turkey, such as that of the publisher and human rights defender Osman Kavala, or the opposition politician Selahattin Demirtaş

“Both remain behind bars despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling for their immediate release,” Sönmez stressed from London.

Solidarity goes hand in hand with denunciation. More than a hundred personalities including intellectuals, political leaders and social agents will attend the hearing to be held in Istanbul on March 31. It’s a legal formality to notify Selek of her firm life sentence.

Michele Rubirola, former mayoress of Marseille and today the first deputy of the consistory, is the one chosen to represent the city. In a telephone conversation with IPS, Rubirola spoke of “someone who is a victim of injustice and oppression.”

“Selek ‘s academic struggles have turned into political struggles, and the relentlessness of the political and judicial power she is facing consolidates her as a true human rights activist,” added the delegate.

A judicial process that has lasted a quarter of a century is reaching a key moment just a few weeks before decisive elections in Turkey, a referendum on the more than two decades in the power for Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“My trial is one of the indicators of the evil rooted in Turkey: it reflects both the continuity of the authoritarian regime and the configurations of the repressive devices,” laments Selek.

She also confesses concern about how it may affect her family in Turkey, and herself in her host country.

“I am convicted of a massacre and my movement may be restricted internationally, and even within France. Moreover, Turkey is asking me for millions in compensation for the deaths and the destruction and there´s an international financial convention that could be executed in France,” she recalls.

Today, her only certainty is that she will try to move on with her life. Other than her work at the university, she also gives talks and organizes events and protests. Exile, she says, “may have uprooted me from my country, but not from the street.”

An abandoned school in Pama, Burkina Faso. Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

By Marine Olivesi
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

Over a million children in Burkina Faso are currently affected by school closures with 6,134 academic institutions shut as of February 2023, an increase of over 40 per cent since the end of the last school year.

Nearly one out of four schools country-wide are now out of service due to rampant insecurity and violence, which has forced close to two million people into displacement.

On the eve of the high-level conference on Education in Emergencies, organised by the European Commission and the United Nations Children’s Fund in Brussels, the Norwegian Refugee Council together with the Education Cluster in Burkina Faso and the FONGIH, two umbrella entities representing 87 national and international organisations operating in the country, called for increased access to education for children left behind, whether they are internally displaced or live in enclaved areas.

“Only about a quarter of the children driven out-of-school have been given new classrooms. The majority are left without access to education, robbing them of their childhood and of their chance to become independent adults and citizens,” said Hassane Hamadou, NRC’s country director in Burkina Faso.

“The longer this situation drags on, the graver it becomes, the harder it will be to reverse this trend and protect their futures. The authorities in Burkina Faso as well as humanitarian and development organisations must urgently renew their efforts to stop this educational hemorrhage.”

Out of eight schools, only two are operational in the blockaded town of Pama in the East region, one of the three regions with the highest number of school closures along with Sahel and Boucle du Mouhoun. Six teachers and a few volunteers are currently serving over 1,000 children in Pama.

“For those of us who are still here, it’s a very personal decision to stay,” explained a teacher. “Education is a universal right, so we feel it’s our duty to carry on. But fear doesn’t go away easily. Often, we have to stop classes because we hear gunshots here or there.

Threats loom large, and conditions are tough, but we can and must overcome challenges to assist children who never wished to be put in this situation.”

Over 31,000 teachers have been affected by the education crisis nationwide, of which about 6,300 have been redeployed so far in schools hosting large numbers of internally displaced students. The reopening or relocation of around 300 schools since January marks a welcome step in the right direction.

However, it is now crucial to increase the use of “double shifts approach” in operating schools, to set-up more classrooms wherever possible, and to accelerate the reassignment of teachers to new sites in displacement areas.

This crisis has disproportionately impacted girls. A study conducted by Plan International revealed that girls are 2.5 times more at risk of being driven out of schools than boys in a crisis situation. Meanwhile, ongoing efforts to help teachers meet the growing psycho-social needs of students often traumatized by displacement and conflict must be sustained and increased nationwide.

“Insecurity is a big part of why so many schools close, but food insecurity in the Sahel and East regions is also a driver of school dropouts,” said Tin Tua’s director, Yembuani Yves Ouoba. “Guaranteeing that schools and non-formal education centers provide meals and children are being fed are effective ways of keeping them in the system.”

“We are witnessing an accelerating assault on education. Teachers are threatened and parents are frightened. Children are paying the heaviest price. When a child is not at school, he is more at risk of being exploited, being a victim of violence and trafficking, or even being recruited by armed groups,” said the Representative of UNICEF in Burkina Faso, Sandra Lattouf.

“We welcome the effective partnership and collaboration with the Ministry of National Education, Literacy, and Promotion of National Languages, which is strengthening access to education in challenging contexts. We must act now to not lose the next generation and renew efforts to strengthen emergency and alternative education solutions.”

Parties to the conflict must do more to protect school infrastructures from attacks and not occupy academic buildings. We welcome the upcoming inter-ministerial order to set up national and regional committees in charge of the implementation of the Safe School Declaration and hope they help make schools safe for all Burkinabè children.

• At the end of February 2023, 6,134 schools were closed in Burkina Faso, a 44% increase since May 2022 (4,258). This represents 24% of all academic structures in the country. (Source: Ministry of Education’s statistical monthly report on Education in Emergencies from February 28, 2023)
• Number of closed schools in other West and Central African countries due to insecurity: 3,285 in Cameroon, 1,762 in Mali , 1,344 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 878 in Niger, 181 in Nigeria, 134 in Chad and 13 in Central African Republic (Source: Unprecedented School Closures Jeopardise the Future of Millions in West and Central Africa, NRC, UNHCR, UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait, March 2023).
• The regions of Boucle du Mouhoun, East and Sahel in Burkina Faso are the most impacted by school closures and each hosts between 1000 and 1200 closed schools. (Source: Ministry of Education’s statistical monthly report on Education in Emergencies from February 28, 2023)
• School closures impact 1,050,172 students as well as 31,077 teachers. 262,388 of these children have so far reintegrated a formal classroom. (Source: idem)
• Girls are 2,5 times more at risk of being driven out of school than boys in a crisis situation according to a 2020 study conducted in Mali and Burkina Faso (Adolescent girls in crisis, voices from the Sahel, Plan International, August 2020)
• Two schools out of eight are currently operational in Pama, with 6 teachers and 6 volunteers serving over 1,000 children. (Source: NRC interviews of teachers in Pama, March 2023)

Marine Olivesi, is Advocacy Manager for Norwegian Refugee Council in Burkina Faso

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Longtime political prisoners in Bhurtan, in photos provided by their families. Top row: Lok Bahadur Ghaley; Rinzin Wangdi; Chandra Raj Rai; Kumar Gautam. Bottom row: San Man Gurung; Birkha Bdr Chhetri; Omnath Adhikari; Chaturman Tamang. © Private.

By Elaine Pearson
SYDNEY, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

“The physical torture was merciless,” said one man, “so we had no option but to present ourselves to the court based on [the security forces’] demands and their statements.”

“They would beat me up, so I confessed, although it wasn’t true,” said another.

Such allegations have appeared over and over  again in the work of Human Rights Watch around the world. But most people don’t expect to hear them from the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, whose rulers famously claim to maximize “gross national happiness” instead of mere GDP. This idea, enshrined in the kingdom’s 2008 constitution, has been taken up by economists and the United Nations, and inspired an annual World Happiness Report.

But Human Rights Watch has documented the presence of  at least 37 inmates in the country’s prisons who are described under Bhutanese law as “political prisoners” because of alleged political crimes against the state.

The origin of most of these cases goes back to the period around 1990, when the Bhutanese state drove around 90,000 Bhutanese who speak Nepali as a first language into exile. In a country that had around 550,000 people, that was a large share of the population

The origin of most of these cases goes back to the period around 1990, when the Bhutanese state drove around 90,000 Bhutanese who speak Nepali as a first language into exile. In a country that had around 550,000 people, that was a large share of the population.

The ruling elite, from the Ngalop community, had come to see the Nepali-speaking community as a threat to Bhutan’s cultural identity and their own dominant position. New, discriminatory citizenship laws stripped many of their citizenship, while “Bhutanization” laws aimed at enforcing a version of national identity based on Ngalop culture and language.

Amid widespread security force abuses, many Nepali-speakers were forced to flee and became refugees in nearby Nepal, although a sizable Nepali-speaking community remained in Bhutan.

Thousands were arrested for peacefully protesting these policies. Many were released on the condition that they leave the country, or after serving their terms. Bur the longest serving political prisoners have been in prison, serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole, since 1990.

They include eight  former Nepali-speaking soldiers of the Royal Bhutan Army who allegedly attended protest  at a secretive and remote jail used to imprison former officials accused of treachery.

Another 15 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese have been imprisoned since 2008 – 12 of them serving sentences of life without parole. These were young men who had fled Bhutan as children with their families, and came back to Bhutan as part of a campaign for the right to return by a banned group called the Bhutan Communist Party.

Most were captured shortly after their arrival, some with small arms and others with political pamphlets. At their trials for treason, the prosecution contended that because their families fled when they were infants, these young men had “abandoned the country and decided to be enem[ies] of Bhutan.”

Five of the political prisoners belong to a different community known as Sharchops (“Easterners”). Four men and a woman are imprisoned for alleged connections to another banned political party, the Druk National Congress, which campaigned for parliamentary democracy and human rights in the 1990s – before Bhutan adopted a democratic constitution.

In every case for which  Human Rights Watch obtained testimony, it was alleged that the prisoners were severely tortured at the time of their arrest and trial. “He was tortured by the army,” said the sister of a prisoner who was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to life. “They [the prisoners] were beaten and burned. When I met him, he was very sad, his eyes were full of tears.”

Under the Bhutanese legal system at the time, none of the accused had defense lawyers at their trials. In 2019 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention interviewed some of these prisoners, noted that under Bhutanese law they have “no prospect” of being released alive unless they are granted an amnesty, and recommended that their convictions be reviewed.

A prisoner who met the Working Group told Human Rights Watch that guards had warned inmates not to tell the UN experts the truth about their treatment: “You have to live with us. They will leave tomorrow, so think wisely before speaking.”

The prisoners are prevented from making or receiving telephone calls to their families in Nepal, or other countries — such as the United States, Canada, or Australia — where refugees have resettled. They are also prevented from sending letters, and their families do not know whether the letters they send are delivered. This causes great distress to the prisoners themselves, and their loved ones, who don’t know what condition they are in.

Bhutan’s legal philosophy is guided by Buddhist principles emphasizing concepts such as “compassion.” The country is now a parliamentary democracy, but King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is still uniquely empowered to release these prisoners. It can be done. In 1999, his father King Jigme Singye Wangchuck granted amnesty to 40 political prisoners. Only last year, the king granted amnesty to a political prisoner serving a life term.

These cases belong to a different time, before Bhutan’s 2008 democratic reforms. Bhutan should  let all the political prisoners return to their families.

 

Excerpt:

Elaine Pearson is Asia director at Human Rights Watch

Governments low- and middle-income countries are encouraged to take note of a new story that finds cash transfers help with mental health of those living in poverty. Credit: Annie Spratt/Unsplash

By Francis Kokutse
ACCRA, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

Poverty alleviation policies, especially cash transfers, will not only improve the poor condition of the beneficiaries but can also play a role in strengthening the psychological health of people as well as improve the mental health of those living in poverty in low- and middle-income countries (LMICS), including Africa, a new study has said.

An example of these poverty alleviation programmes is the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), under Ghana’s ministry of gender, children and social protection for extremely poor and vulnerable households. This is made up of orphaned children, persons with severe disabilities without productive capacity as well as elderly persons who are 65 and above.

The aim is to improve, among other things, basic household consumption, and nutrition among children below two years of age and the aged. It is also intended to increase access to health care services among children below five years of age.

The study found more than 20,000 Africans, out of 26,794 people receiving these cash transfers under poverty alleviation programmes in six countries across Africa, admitted that this financial assistance does have some effect on their mental health.

A co-author of the study, Clara Wollburg, affiliated with the department of social policy and intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, told IPS, “13 out of the 17 studies were conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of those studies, four were located in Malawi, four in Kenya, two in South Africa, and one each in Zambia, Mali, and Uganda.”

The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” And in Africa, StrongMinds Uganda says “despite the high prevalence of mental illnesses across the continent, mental health remains under prioritized in many African countries.”

The study, “Do cash transfers alleviate common mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries? A systematic review and meta-analysis,” published in PLOS One journal on February 22, 2023, said their “findings lend weight to the hypothesis that poverty alleviation can play a role in strengthening psychological health of people living in poverty in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs.)”

It said their “analysis shows that providing populations living in poverty with cash transfers leads to improvements of depression and anxiety disorders. However, these benefits may not be sustained once the financial support ends,” the authors said.

Nigerian-born associate professor in psychiatry living in the US, Andrews O Newton, said the recent Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decision that has denied a lot of people access to cash could lead to depression. “Depression is the commonest form of mental illness. However, most people do not know because sufferers are not seen outside. The chronic stress caused by governmental policies makes it more severe, and one terrible consequence is suicide,” Newton said. The CBN has since been legally obliged to delay its deadlines to redesign the currency.

He said, “extreme poverty dehumanizes,” adding that such a situation is likely to lead to “feeling sad and empty, poor concentration, lack of drive and motivation, poor sleep as well as lack of energy.

The study focused on people living in poverty, who are recipients of cash transfers, and participants in inactive control groups, who received no transfers or were enrolled at a later stage, served as a comparison group. Active control groups receiving alternative interventions were not included, as this makes a causal inference about the effects of the transfers difficult.

They included conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes (CTPs) targeted at households living in poverty in LMICs but did not apply an absolute low-income/poverty threshold, relying only on the relative threshold for grant eligibility applied by the organizations administering the transfers.

“Our findings have important implications for policymakers in Africa as they show that providing cash transfers to people living in poverty not only improves poverty indicators and school attendance, for example, but also meaningfully impacts depression and anxiety outcomes of beneficiaries. This is especially true for unconditional cash transfers,” Wollburg said.

She said they analyzed cash transfer programs that were specifically targeted to low-income and/or deprived households as indicated by, e.g., low monthly household expenditure and consumption, inability to meet basic needs, food insecurity, low educational attainment and high HIV risk.

Esenam Abra Drah, a mental health advocate in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, said, “from personal experience if you don’t have money, it can be frustrating.” Esenam understands this because she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in August 2015 at the time she was studying Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Linguistics at the University of Ghana.

Currently serving as an executive member of Psychosocial Africa, a grassroots mental health support group set up by, and for people with lived experience of mental illness, Drah admitted as the study showed that her situation affected her schoolwork though she was able to graduate.

The study cautioned that policies aiming to address the poverty-mental health cycle should consider unconditional, longer-term support to populations living in poverty.

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Cyclone damage in Vanuatu. Credit: UNICEF/ReliefWeb

By Jotham Napat and Patricia Scotland
LONDON, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

Human life is sacred and every individual deserves an equal chance in life. We have a common desire, we all want to lead a free, fulfilling existence, with dignity, where our basic needs are met, with opportunities to advance and equal treatment under the law. These are fundamental human rights, protected by international law, which we all have a shared responsibility to protect.

Out of the horrors and bloodshed of war, we created an international system for cooperation between nations under the United Nations, with our rights enshrined by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Today, our rights are threatened not only by weapons, but by the destruction of our environment, our earth, our only home.

Climate change is wreaking havoc on people’s basic human rights to life, food, water, housing, health and a decent standard of living. And as the IPCC stated just this week, we have a “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to prevent this destruction.

Hon Jotham Napat

We cannot let these rights be taken away from us – particularly from vulnerable communities. We must act.

This month, when formidable twin cyclones Judy and Kevin slammed into the small island nation of Vanuatu within days of each other, they laid waste to homes, infrastructure and crops, severely impacting more than 80% of the population.

And like many other climate-vulnerable Pacific Island countries, whose territories are 99 per cent ocean, Vanuatu could see more than a metre rise in sea levels by the end of the century, placing entire coastal communities further in jeopardy.

Elsewhere in the world, drawn-out droughts in East Africa – the worst seen in 40 years – are killing millions of livestock and placing 17 million people at risk of starvation.

In South Asia, tropical cyclones are becoming ever more destructive, with the likes of Cyclone Amphan (2020) displacing nearly five million people across India and Bangladesh.

These worsening conditions are not freaks of nature, they are a predictable – and predicted – process of intensifying environmental damage caused by human activity. The world’s scientific community is unanimous and unequivocal that human influence has driven up average global temperature, causing unprecedented changes across the entire climate system.

Rt Hon Patricia Scotland

The burning of fossil fuels to supply skyrocketing energy needs and the release of harmful greenhouse gases continue to trigger harmful, irreversible consequences for the environment – and it is the most vulnerable which suffer the most.

It is one of the world’s deepest injustices and the root of growing inequality. While the most climate vulnerable countries have contributed the least greenhouse emissions that cause climate change, they are forced to endure the very worst of its impacts.

Small island developing states – two thirds of which are in the Commonwealth – contribute less than 1 percent of global emissions, while the world’s poorest nations contribute less than 4 percent. Yet it is their people who are frequently and directly in jeopardy, including their rights to development, self-determination and a healthy environment.

Addressing these injustices provides the foundation for an initiative led by Vanuatu, a Commonwealth member country, to obtain official advice from the world’s highest court.

On 29 March 2023, Vanuatu, along with more than 115 other co-sponsoring countries including a host of Commonwealth nations, will table a proposed resolution at the United Nations General Assembly requesting an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice.

Such an opinion, though non-binding, would outline the obligations of states under international law to protect the environment and future generations from climate change. It would also clarify the legal consequences of harming the environment, taking into account the impacts on vulnerable communities and future generations.

This is not an attempt to blame or shame countries for the policies of the past, it is an attempt to clarify international climate obligations which can help all nations be more ambitious and effective. It has the potential to focus climate action not only on degrees of Celsius and tons of carbon, but on to preventing the most serious climate impacts on our people and our planet.

Disaster response efforts led by the National Disaster Management Office of Vanuatu to support affected communities after dual Cyclones Judy and Kevin. Credit: NDMO Vanuatu

This moment deserves our attention. All Commonwealth countries adhere to the Commonwealth Charter, which places the utmost importance on protecting the environment, and centralises the need for multilateral cooperation, sustained commitment and collective action on climate change. The International Court of Justice plays a vital role in multilateral cooperation as the main judicial organ of the United Nations – and the Commonwealth Charter emphasises the value of the rule of law at every turn.

There is no question that international law can be a vital tool in establishing and delivering climate justice. In the most vulnerable parts of the world, it is often all that stands between climate resilience and catastrophe, between prosperity and destitution.

When the resolution is tabled at the General Assembly, it will be worthy of careful consideration and support by all UN Member States. The breadth and diversity of countries at the heart of this effort underscores the grim reality that climate change does not, and will not, spare any of us. In this, we do not have a choice, only a responsibility, because it is a matter of life or death. We must therefore use every mechanism at our disposal to rise to the challenge of climate justice in a fair and effective way.

Hon Jotham Napat is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and External Trade of Vanuatu, a Pacific Island nation on the frontlines of climate change.

Rt Hon Patricia Scotland, KC is the sixth Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and the first woman to hold the post. She leads an organisation of 56 countries working together to promote democracy, peace and sustainable development.

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Black Sea Grain Initiative has been renewed - for now. Credit: Ihor Oinua/Unsplash

By Alexander Kozul-Wright
GENEVA, Mar 22 2023 (IPS)

Given the complex interplay between geopolitics and financial markets, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent shockwaves across the global economy. Admittedly, the implications both within and between countries have varied. However, there were some common denominators, including higher commodity prices.

Price disruptions were particularly severe for ‘soft’ agricultural commodities. During peacetime, Russia and Ukraine produced a large amount of the world’s grain, supplying 28 percent of globally traded wheat and 75 percent of sunflower products. Before the war, they were also among the world’s top providers of barley and corn.

After the start of hostilities, exports of grain were severely disrupted. For four months, Russian military vessels blocked Ukrainian ports. Supply constraints triggered market volatility and price rises. Wheat, for instance, reached a record high in March 2022. This left millions of people, particularly in developing countries, at the frontline of a food crisis.

Then, in July 2022, two agreements were signed: one was a memorandum of understanding between the UN and Moscow to facilitate global access for Russia’s food and fertilizer exports; the second was the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), signed by Russia and Ukraine, facilitating the safe export of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea.

Brokered by the UN and Turkey, the BSGI opened a protected maritime corridor through Ukraine. The agreement assuaged concerns about global grain supplies and led to price declines. Over 900 ships of grain and other foodstuffs have left Ukraine’s major ports since last summer.

Prior to the conflict, between 5-6 million tons of grain were exported from Ukraine’s seaports every month, according to the International Grains Council. By the end-2022, Ukraine had once again reached its historical exporting capacity (at just under 5 million tons). Production responses elsewhere also helped to increase global supplies.

Still, Ukrainian exports to developing countries remain below pre-war levels. And while unblocking the trade corridor did help to address food insecurity in 2022, export backlogs were significant. Today, grain prices (while they have come down in recent months) remain elevated.

Against this backdrop, negotiations between UN officials and Russian Federation representatives – headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin – kicked off in Geneva last Monday on a possible extension of the BSGI. Subsequent to a four-month renewal last year, the deal was set to expire on March 18th.

Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the deal’s importance. He stressed that “it contributed to lowering global food costs and offered critical relief to people…, particularly in low-income countries.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, also called for the initiative to be extended.

For their part, Russian officials argued that ‘hidden’ sanctions – targeting fertilizer firms and the country’s main agricultural bank – have undermined commodity exports. By way of background, exemptions were carved out for some Russian food and fertilizer products after Western sanctions first targeted the Kremlin in February 2022.

In Geneva, delegates stressed that over-compliance and market avoidance by private companies had resulted in Russian commodity exports being under-traded. They noted that sanctions on its payments, logistics, and insurance systems created a barrier for Moscow to sell its grains and fertilisers in international markets.

In response, they requested that national jurisdictions enhance exemption clarifications for food and fertilizers products. “I think it’s a fair request,” says Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Hidden sanctions are impeding Russian financial transactions and undermining allegedly exempted exports.”

When the BSGI was last renewed in November, Russia threatened to renege on the deal unless hidden sanctions were addressed. While they eventually agreed to an extension, Moscow has since insisted that its own agricultural exports (notably ammonia) be included in the BSGI as a condition for its renewal.

Under the deal’s latest iteration, Russia’s pre-condition went notably unaddressed. Moscow, in turn, agreed to extend the deal for just two months. Ukraine, meanwhile, issued conflicting statements on the matter. Over the weekend, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov tweeted that the agreement had been extended for four months.

So far, the UN has not specified the length of the renewal, but “this could be the last time an extension is agreed,” according to Ghosh. “Russia is probably going to use this latest agreement as a threat. Rejecting a third extension in the spring may force the international community to listen to their concerns”.

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A woman with tuberculosis in Pakistan went undiagnosed for five years because she could not afford the $2 transportation cost from her village to the Civil Hospital in Tharparkar. Credit: OCHA/Zinnia Bukhari
 
Each year, the UN commemorates World TB Day—March 24-- to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of tuberculosis (TB) and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.

By Nyuma Mbewe and Swati Krishna
LUSAKA / PUNE, Mar 22 2023 (IPS)

Despite being both curable and preventable, the TB pandemic is a global health crisis and a leading cause of death worldwide. COVID-19 brought into sharp focus how women bear the brunt of pandemics. In 2021, over three million women and girls fell ill with TB, resulting in 450,000 needless deaths.

As women leaders in global health, on this 2023 World TB Day, we believe that systematic and sustained investment to tackle gender-related barriers is essential to get the world back on course and end TB by 2030.

We must confront the root causes of gender inequality and reshape the power dynamics across health systems, promoting the voice of women in their own care, to reach our global goals, for a safer, healthier world for all.

To better understand how gender norms and inequalities increase the burden, stigma and discrimination on women resulting in the failure to prevent, detect and treat TB infection, adopting an intersectional lens is a necessary step.

Differentiating the impact of TB based on the intersection of different determinants such as sex, gender, ethnicity, age, location and socioeconomic status can improve health planning, along with confronting legal, cultural and social barriers that are preventing improved health outcomes.

Using evidence-based knowledge, we can tailor interventions and care strategies for populations with increased vulnerabilities and curb the spread of the disease.

The Global Fund data has shown that women often face additional barriers to accessing TB diagnosis and treatment in countries with high rates of TB. Women generally wait longer than men for diagnosis and treatment, and may be discouraged from seeking care by a lack of privacy or child-care facilities in health services.

In some contexts, women have been less likely to undergo sputum smear examinations due to cultural norms and perceptions about femininity as well as gender dynamics of service provision. Young women in high HIV burden settings face increased TB risk.

The stigma, discrimination and exclusion associated with HIV amplifies and is amplified by TB-related stigma, especially for key populations. This impacts TB detection, access to reliable health services and treatment adherence.

It is past time to prioritize measures that emphasize women’s fundamental role in building resilient health systems and workforce. Globally, women are 90% of frontline health workers, and 70% of the overall health workforce.

Despite challenging working conditions, and lack of formal representation, women continue to show outstanding leadership across the health sector. Evidence shows that community-based and ambulatory care results in better TB outcomes compared to hospital-based or inpatient care. Yet their contribution is often undervalued, underpaid, and they occupy less than one quarter of management roles.

Women are the vast majority of nurses and community health workers (CHW) that play a vital role in the delivery of TB care and people-centered approaches to treatment, yet their voices are more often than not absent from decision-making fora. Valuing women, working at all levels of health, including CHWs is essential for the prevention, detection and treatment success of TB.

Making health systems fit for purpose means promoting gender parity in management, leadership, and governance. Mechanisms that harness the talent and expertise of women in the health workforce will result in better health systems, and support improved health governance.

Women in Global Health is committed to work with global health institutions to ensure that structural gender barriers are addressed and promote accountability for resilient health systems that improve health at every level.

Recent history has taught us that pandemic responses have often overlooked the specific needs of diverse women. Health leaders must promote and create opportunities for gender transformative leadership to strengthen health systems and ensure quality services. It is urgent to both recognize and include women and people of all gender identities for more impactful health interventions.

As we commemorate World TB Day, we appeal for increased efforts and stronger commitments to promote gender parity in decision-making across the health sector. This must be matched with sustained investments in gender transformative policies and programs to build resilient health systems and a workforce that adequately represents the diverse communities it serves.

Dr Nyuma Mbewe, a member of the Women in Global Health, Zambia Chapter, is an Infectious Diseases Physician with Zambia’s National Public Health Institute and is based in Lusaka, Zambia.

Dr Swati Krishna, a member of the Women in Global Health, India Chapter, is Young Investigator at KEM Hospital Research Centre and consultant to the iDEFEAT TB project of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. She is based in Pune, India.

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Using naturally occurring microbes, a Kenyan entrepreneur has developed a molasses-based supplement that pre-ferments animal feeds to unlock all the necessary nutrients that would otherwise find a way out of the animal through cow dung, and dairy farmers have fallen in love with the product. According to Henry Ambwere, the Nakuru-based entrepreneur who developed the […]

Jean Claude Muhire, Rwanda Program Director of BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, a flagship program at BRAC International, and Samuel Dusengiyumva, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government sign the MoU in Kigali, Rwanda. Credit BRAC UPGI.

By Joyce Chimbi
KIGALI, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)

Against a brutally painful historical backdrop, a story of hope and resilience unfolds in Rwanda.

A story that lays bare Rwanda’s innovative approaches to empowering her people, for an estimated half of the population still lives in poverty. In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, Rwanda ranked 102nd out of 121 countries with sufficient data to calculate last year’s global hunger index score.

Within this context, BRAC International signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Rwanda under the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC) to support efforts to empower people in extreme poverty to develop sustainable livelihoods and break the poverty trap long term. This is part of the Government’s broader efforts to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.

“I am delighted to see the Government of Rwanda take a leadership role in addressing extreme poverty,” said Greg Chen, Managing Director of BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), a flagship program at BRAC International.

The four essentials of the Graduation approach and initial outcomes. Credit: BRAC UPGI.

The MoU was signed on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, by Jean Claude Muhire, Rwanda Program Director of BRAC UPGI, and Samuel Dusengiyumva, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government.

BRAC International is a leading nonprofit organization with a mission to empower people and communities in poverty, illiteracy, disease, and social injustice, touching the lives of more than 100 million people in the last five decades. And now seeks to touch even more lives in the land of a thousand hills through this partnership.

“We are happy to serve as a partner in advancing the Government of Rwanda’s new National Strategy for Sustainable Graduation (NSSG) and to accelerate the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty,” said Muhire.

The MoU positions BRAC International as a key partner in advancing the Government of Rwanda’s new National Strategy for Sustainable Graduation (NSSG), recently approved by Cabinet in November 2022 to accelerate the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty in Rwanda and contribute to the achievement of the targets set out in the National Strategy for Transformation, 2017 to 2024.

“We are committed to combating extreme poverty by scaling the multifaceted, evidence-based Graduation approach through governments across Africa and Asia and reaching millions more people,” Chen said.

Similar to BRAC’s Graduation approach, which was established in Bangladesh in 2002, the NSSG defines Graduation as a two-year program for households to benefit from inclusive livelihood development programs, multifaceted interventions, access to shock-responsive social protection services, and market access that creates an enabling environment for households to “graduate” out of extreme poverty.

To date, BRAC’s Graduation program has reached more than 2.1 million people in Bangladesh alone and supported the expansion of Graduation in 16 additional countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Guinea, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.

Leveraging 20 years of experience implementing, testing, and iterating the Graduation approach, BRAC International is extending support in the design, delivery as well as evaluation of the Graduation program to Rwanda, supporting the Ministry of Local Government in critical areas.

Areas such as providing technical capacity and expertise in the implementation of the Graduation strategy and making available necessary communication, advocacy, and technical resources to ensure smooth implementation of the Graduation strategy.

Equally important, collaborating with the Ministry will ensure the scale-up of an inclusive, holistic Graduation strategy that includes all Graduation essentials. In all, efforts will focus on the four essential components identified as fundamental to implementing Graduation successfully.

These essential components include meeting participants’ day-to-day needs such as nutrition and healthcare, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training – all facilitated through coaching that calls for regular interactions with participants. Rigorous research by Nobel Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo proves that the combination of support and resources provided through this multifaceted approach is critical for long-term impact.

Overall, the Graduation approach is grounded in the conviction that people living in vulnerable situations can be agents of change if they are empowered with the tools, skills, and hope they need to change their lives.

Perhaps with such people-centered efforts to scale an evidence-based approach, Rwanda could become known for more than its scenic beauty and clean capital city. It could also make history by becoming one of the first countries on the continent to establish a sustainable path out of extreme poverty by 2030.

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